The old tennis ball in the backyard found it too stifling staying in the back all day, and secretly egged Chen Shi on, wanting to go play in the front shop. Although the shop rarely had customers, it was at least livelier than the backyard!
Chen Shi warned it. “You have to promise not to cause trouble, and you’re not allowed to move the dolls in the shop around, then I’ll bring you over.”
The old tennis ball agreed, so Chen Shi carried it over to the shop in a small basket, hanging it beneath a flower stand, where it didn’t look out of place at all.
He Yu noticed the newly hung basket, and seeing Chen Shi watching him nervously, took a small cat plush doll from the shelf and placed it in the basket.
Chen Shi let out a breath of relief. As long as the boss didn’t mind!
He Yu went back to the room in the back to make breakfast, and the small cat plush doll in the basket shifted slightly, as if someone had curiously poked at it.
“The boss has accepted you, but you must never cause trouble! Watch out or the boss will beat you up!”
Chen Shi was leaning against the edge of the basket quietly giving this reminder when he suddenly heard the doorbell being triggered.
A customer had arrived.
He looked up, and it turned out to be Xiang Yang again.
Xiang Yang felt that this doll shop owner was no ordinary person!
Although according to the records, that perpetually empty shop’s history only showed that the location had poor feng shui, prone to accumulating yin-baleful qi, and unsuitable for habitation, Xiang Yang still felt that the shop wasn’t simple.
His current judgment was based only on his own intuition. Ji Shanyao wouldn’t help him investigate together. After reading through the file, her only thought was:
This shop owner sure is unlucky… could it be that he’s naturally born with a constitution that attracts yin energy?
That kind of constitution would also be suited to being an exorcist. However, when ordinary people haven’t encountered paranormal incidents, one shouldn’t actively lead them onto this path.
Once you set foot on this path, there’s no turning back. Although being an exorcist isn’t necessarily a bad thing—being able to strengthen one’s spiritual reserve and extend one’s lifespan is something countless people seek—the price is that afterward you’ll frequently encounter paranormal incidents, and there’s no escaping it anymore. These incidents could potentially cost you your life.
But Xiang Yang kept remembering the incident before, when the fake mannequin from the underground mall had chased him all the way to the doll shop’s door before inexplicably disappearing.
At the time, he’d been afraid the fake mannequin would run off somewhere else and harm innocent people, so as soon as he got back he immediately reported it to the Paranormal Affairs Bureau. The Paranormal Affairs Bureau then dispatched an exorcist skilled in tracking techniques, but they hadn’t found the fake mannequin, and there had been no reports of the fake mannequin hurting anyone since.
Afterward, Xiang Yang had also asked his mentor at the Paranormal Affairs Bureau to go check out the underground mall together with him—exorcism is a dangerous business, and the Paranormal Affairs Bureau assigns mentors to newly joined members, responsible for teaching and protecting them.
The mentor detected the yin-baleful qi in the underground mall, but said that although some yin-baleful qi had accumulated there, it hadn’t reached a level capable of condensing into a ghost or monster.
“How could that be?” Xiang Yang reflexively protested. “I really did encounter a mannequin moving around on its own.”
“This concentration of yin-baleful qi can’t give birth to a monster.” The mentor explained to him very responsibly. “Look at the map—although this shop has few people and easily accumulates yin-baleful qi, the shop behind it has a lot of foot traffic. Although the crowds can’t pass directly through the wall, the human energy [renqi] can transfer through, dispersing part of the yin-baleful qi.”
The shops in the underground mall were arranged in a layout resembling the character “丰” (feng), with a row of shops on either side of the wall. For a person to get to the shop on the back side, they’d have to walk a long way, but the actual distance between the two shops was very close.
Separated by just a single wall, one inside and one outside, yet the human energy on the two sides of the shops was completely different. Behind the fake mannequin’s shop was a small store selling beaded jewelry accessories, with exquisite items and quite a few customers—indeed a thriving shop. With the influence of the beaded jewelry shop, the shop behind it indeed couldn’t accumulate much yin-baleful qi.
“Are there no special circumstances?” Xiang Yang asked.
“Unless there’s a stronger obsession-catalyst. If there were a ghost or monster capable of emitting an obsession-catalyst, it would have caused a huge commotion long ago.
The formation of both ghosts and monsters is inseparable from obsession. When a living being dies, if their obsession is too strong to enter reincarnation, they transform into a ghost. When yin-baleful qi accumulates, it transforms into a monster.
You went at midnight. With yin-baleful qi gathered, and hitting that particular hour, you were probably momentarily confused by the yin-baleful qi and had a hallucination.”
The mentor settled the matter with this conclusion, and naturally no one thought this had anything to do with the doll shop owner.
Today he’d come looking for evidence! Xiang Yang secretly patted his pocket. His pocket bulged with an inconspicuous little pouch, which even moved a little.
He had recently happened to obtain a Qi-Eating Mouse. This little thing looked like a hamster, but was extremely skilled at sensing qi, far more sensitive to abnormal auras than a human. If there was something wrong with the doll shop, it would definitely be able to detect it!
Sure enough! As soon as he entered the doll shop, the Qi-Eating Mouse started getting excited.
A hamster head topped with small round ears poked out of Xiang Yang’s pocket. The little hamster excitedly twitched its nose, its little head turning left and right, then suddenly fixed its gaze on the curtain leading to the back of the shop.
“What did you find?” Xiang Yang asked quietly.
The small bamboo basket hanging on the flower stand swayed gently twice. It seemed as if some presence had lightly leapt down from the basket to the ground. On the floor, small plum-blossom-shaped footprints invisible to the naked eye appeared one by one, quietly approaching Xiang Yang.
The little hamster stiffened, and in a flash darted back into the pocket, head down and rear end up, still desperately trying to burrow itself to the bottom of the pocket.
What was going on?
Xiang Yang was still puzzled when He Yu walked out carrying a bowl of instant oatmeal. “What’s wrong?”
The male lead again. So annoying!
Xiang Yang stiffened. “Nothing, nothing, haha…”
The little rookie was still rather thin-skinned; secretly bringing a Qi-Eating Mouse to investigate someone was quite embarrassing.
“Oh, it’s you. What brings you here?” He Yu asked.
“I came… I came to buy a doll!” Xiang Yang quickly came up with an excuse for himself.
He casually grabbed a doll from the shelf. “I want to buy this one!”
He Yu reminded him. “Are you sure?”
That was a rattan-woven doll he had bought before, entirely handmade, not mass-produced stock from a doll factory. He had picked out a few he liked to keep for himself, and put the rest in the shop. They hadn’t been cheap when he bought them, and the price wouldn’t be low either.
Only then did Xiang Yang notice the price tag, and his heart gave a wince.
“I—I picked up the wrong one.” He quickly put down the rattan-woven doll and instead picked up an ordinary small doll next to it. “I want to buy this one.”
Xiang Yang quickly paid and took his item and left. The small footprints on the floor retreated back to the flower stand, and with a light leap, jumped back into the basket. The bamboo basket swayed, stirring the hanging pothos leaves, as if someone were proudly wagging their little tail.
After leaving the shop, Xiang Yang let out a breath of relief. Although the shop owner looked like a young man with gentle features, Xiang Yang always felt there was a certain oppressive force about him—it was fine when there was no particular purpose, but whenever he tried to probe, he couldn’t help but start feeling nervous.
When he got back to where he was staying, Xiang Yang took the Qi-Eating Mouse out of his pocket and cupped it in his palm. “Xiaobao, did you find something?”
Xiaobao shook its head frantically.
Xiaobao doesn’t know anything! Xiaobao doesn’t want to go there again!! There’s a cat there aaaaah!!!
Xiang Yang didn’t understand mouse language, so communication was difficult, and in the end he gave up, puzzled. Because of Xiaobao’s unusual reaction, he still felt something was off about the doll shop. But since Xiaobao absolutely refused to go to the doll shop again, Xiang Yang could only keep running to the shop himself often, trying to discover something.
The little rookie was thin-skinned, and had to buy a doll every time he came, successfully propping up Chen Shi’s sales performance.
Chen Shi welcomed him warmly, but He Yu wasn’t buying it. “You’re a young man—what do you need to buy so many dolls for?”
Xiang Yang protested. “So what if I just love buying dolls?”
“Is your salary enough for you to spend like this every day?” He Yu asked.
Xiang Yang: ...That stung.
Everything He Yu stocked was fine merchandise, and even the ordinary dolls weren’t cheap. He could hold out buying for a few days in a row, but if he kept it up… he’d be reduced to eating plain buns and pickled vegetables for the rest of the month.
Xiang Yang patted his pocket, then suddenly flashed He Yu a particularly sunny smile. “Boss, is your shop hiring?”
“Not hiring, not hiring!”
Even if they were hiring, they wouldn’t hire him!
“Alright then.” Xiang Yang left regretfully.
The next day, He Yu got up in the morning, tidied up, and opened the shop door, and there at the entrance was Xiang Yang, standing leaning against the wall holding several bags.
He Yu: “…Why are you here again?”
Xiang Yang had been dozing off, and the moment he saw He Yu, he reflexively flashed a bright sunny smile. “Boss, you’re open. Have you had breakfast? I brought small wontons!”
He lifted up the bag in his hand, and the savory fragrance of bone broth wontons wafted out along with the steam.
He Yu’s mouth started involuntarily watering.
“Come in.”
The wonton soup was simmered from large bones, with laver seaweed and dried shrimp in it, the broth clear and fragrant. The wontons were made in the southern style, thin-skinned and small, with a bit of meat slightly curled at the edge, achieving a delicious savory flavor with a smooth texture—very suitable for breakfast.
Chen Shi pretended he’d already eaten breakfast before coming to work, silently swallowing back the unworthy tears welling at the corners of his eyes.
Being able to smell the fragrance but not taste what it was—what cruel torture!
After He Yu finished the small wontons the other had brought, he felt too embarrassed to chase him out again. Xiang Yang stayed in the shop, helping Chen Shi sweep and tidy up like a shop employee, practically camping out in the shop for the whole morning.
After that, Xiang Yang brought delicious food every day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, never repeating the same dish. He had grown up in Jinnan City, and there wasn’t a street or alley whose most delicious or most authentic food he didn’t know about.
After a few days, He Yu finally couldn’t help hinting to him, “Don’t you have to work?”
Is it really okay for the male lead to be drawing a salary from the Paranormal Affairs Bureau while spending all day working for free at my shop?
Xiang Yang felt a bit embarrassed and said vaguely, “My work hasn’t been busy lately.”
Recently the Jinnan City branch of the Paranormal Affairs Bureau was actually quite busy, but Xiang Yang was still a little rookie, still at the stage of needing someone to guide him. Exorcism was something that could potentially endanger one’s life, and unless it was a mission whose danger level had been reviewed as extremely low, there was no way they’d let Xiang Yang go alone by himself. Now that the Paranormal Affairs Bureau had gotten busy, the senior members didn’t have time to mentor him, so instead he ended up with free time on his hands.
He quickly changed the subject. “The cumin baby potatoes I brought this time were good, right? It’s from a shop in the underground mall, they’ve been in business for many years, the flavor’s especially good!”
Xiang Yang dawdled around in the shop for a good while longer before leaving.
Not long after he left, the neighbor Big Sister Wu passed by, just about to cross the street.
Just as she stepped onto the crosswalk, Big Sister Wu suddenly felt someone yank her back hard, her whole body involuntarily lurching backward, immediately followed by the ear-piercing screech of an emergency brake.
Big Sister Wu was startled into a jolt, and looked up to see a large freight truck stopped right against her body. The driver got out of the cab, his face pale, and seeing that Big Sister Wu was unharmed, exploded into cursing. “Don’t you look where you’re going when crossing the street? You trying to get yourself killed?”
He had been driving normally, but that spot was a blind corner, and the freight truck had a blind spot too, so he hadn’t expected someone to suddenly dart out—it had nearly caused an accident.
Seeing he hadn’t hit anyone, the driver didn’t want to argue further, got back into the cab, and drove off.
Only then did Big Sister Wu react, her face turning pale too. Not caring about the driver, she turned to look at the person who had pulled her back.
He Yu’s hand was still tightly gripping her arm, and he was slowly letting out a breath. He’d been startled too.
He’d already been a bit too slow when he first spotted that something was wrong with Big Sister Wu’s condition—he had darted straight from behind the counter to the doorway. Fortunately there were no customers in the shop, only Chen Shi, so there was no need to worry about a news story like “doll shop owner suddenly displays superhuman powers to save someone.”
Big Sister Wu was babbling incoherently. “Little Boss He, thank you! Thank you!”
“It’s fine now, it’s fine now.” He Yu comforted her, brought her back into the shop to sit down, and had Chen Shi pour her a cup of hot water to help her calm down.
Big Sister Wu held the cup of water, her hands still trembling slightly, sitting there murmuring to herself, “How did I not watch where I was going…”
She couldn’t even remember what she’d been thinking about at the time. When crossing the street she genuinely hadn’t seen the car turning the corner, and she hadn’t seen He Yu either when he pulled her back. She’d never been like this before—every time she crossed the street she’d check both sides for vehicles in advance—it was just that today, somehow, her mind had wandered off…
Her complexion looked terrible, not the kind of terrible from being startled, but the kind of terrible where her entire state seemed to be gradually deteriorating. It was precisely because He Yu had noticed her complexion was off that he’d rushed over.
Big Sister Wu was a robust, healthy person, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, clearly full of vitality at a glance, but in just the few days since he’d last seen her, her complexion had started turning sallow, her forehead had darkened, and the wrinkles around her eyes had become much more pronounced, as if she’d grown considerably more haggard and aged.
He Yu quietly focused his attention and looked at her—a faint halo of light emerged over Big Sister Wu’s body.
Plants have spirit-light, and so do people and animals. A plant’s spirit-light envelops the entire plant, while an animal’s spirit-light has a point of concentration; a person’s spirit-light concentrates in three places: the space between the brows, the chest, and the lower abdomen.
In a healthy person, the halos in these spots are dense and stable, but the three halos on Big Sister Wu’s body were very diffuse and scattered, which showed on her face as a darkened complexion between the brows. Even with a temporary illness, all three spirit-lights shouldn’t waver like this. He Yu was still pondering this when he suddenly saw the three spirit-lights on Big Sister Wu’s body flickering and drifting, and the outer layer of light suddenly scattered away, leaving Big Sister Wu’s body, and dispersing off to who knows where.
(tn: darkened complexion between the brows=a sign of ill fortune/health in physiognomy)
Big Sister Wu still wanted to thank He Yu, but he stopped her.
“You don’t look like you’re in great spirits—have you been busy lately?” he asked.
“I’m okay, just a bit tired lately.” Big Sister Wu had already recovered somewhat; just as she said this, she yawned, and found it strange herself. “I haven’t really been busy with anything lately. I did go back to my hometown for a visit a while back, though.”
The day she’d just gotten back from her hometown, she’d still looked quite fine.
“Let me buy something.” Big Sister Wu forced herself to muster some energy and stood up.
Chen Shi immediately switched into professional mode. “Who are you buying it for?”
Big Sister Wu thought about it. “I’ll buy it for my little nephew.”
She hadn’t originally planned on buying it for anyone in particular—she’d just wanted to thank He Yu. Thinking of her nephew, Big Sister Wu couldn’t help but sigh. “This kid has always been quite tough and lively, jumping around all day without a moment’s rest, but now he’s fallen ill, gotten so thin he’s unrecognizable, out of breath after just a couple steps.”
Big Sister Wu’s floodgates opened again. “I went back to my hometown a while back, like I said, and it was only after I got back that I found out how seriously ill my nephew was. That kid used to be quite sturdy, could eat three bowls of rice in one sitting, but now he only drinks half a bowl of porridge. I urged them to go to the hospital, and they said the hospital had already checked, and it’s anorexia combined with malnutrition.”
“How is he doing now?”
“Called a couple days ago, and I heard he’s gotten noticeably better, already able to eat a full bowl of rice, and able to get up and walk around. Good timing—let me pick out some toys for him, get the kid moving and active a bit more, so he’ll know when he’s tired or hungry, eat more, sleep more, and slowly recover.
His family really went scrambling for any cure they could find when things got desperate, too.
Praying to gods and Buddhas, they tried everything. Before I left, they even stuffed a bundle of incense sticks into my hands, begging me to help light incense every day to pray for the child’s blessing, and they even called to check up on it.”
“What kind of nonsense is that!” Big Sister Wu shook her head and sighed. “But still, the kid’s recovering now, and that’s what matters most.”
“Lighting incense to pray for blessings?” He Yu asked.
“It’s like this—you take a piece of red paper, write my nephew’s name on it, place it on a table, and light a stick of incense facing the red paper every day.” Big Sister Wu explained.
He Yu had a rough idea of what was going on. He thought about it, didn’t say anything outright, and gave Big Sister Wu Xiang Yang’s contact information.
Big Sister Wu was also a sharp, perceptive person, and it only took her a moment to understand. Her expression changed; after taking Xiang Yang’s contact information and thanking He Yu, she hurriedly left.
Chen Shi was still completely in the dark—hadn’t Big Sister Wu just said she wanted to buy a doll? Now she’d rushed off in a hurry, and Chen Shi had lost a sale for nothing, feeling quite wronged. He asked He Yu, “Boss, what’s going on?”
“She’s probably had her lifespan stolen by someone,” He Yu said.