“Lord of Wang Mountain? Isn’t that a fabricated deity used for brainwashing?” Xiang Yang frowned.
The Descent Cult had used this so-called Lord of Wang Mountain to fabricate a whole system of theories and doctrines, deceiving a bunch of clueless fools into joining, repeatedly brainwashing them until they became fanatical subordinates who obeyed orders, doing all sorts of conscienceless, immoral things in the name of the Lord of Wang Mountain to seize profit.
This operating model of theirs had already continued for many years. No one had ever seen this so-called Lord of Wang Mountain manifest any divine miracle, and the so-called Wang Mountain itself was of unknown location. The mid-and-lower-level members of the Descent Cult didn’t understand that the Lord of Wang Mountain was merely symbolic — had the top-level members suddenly gone mad?
Lei Da shook her head, expression heavy. “The Lord of Wang Mountain may very well exist.”
Xiang Yang was stunned. He wanted to press further, but Lei Da refused to say any more.
“As long as you know it’s dangerous right now, that’s enough. The Descent Cult’s people have been very active recently — you must not go investigating things on your own anymore.” After giving him a few words of warning, Lei Da hurried off again. Xiang Yang had always been sensible, so she could set her mind at ease about him.
Xiang Yang kept his head lowered.
He was going to disappoint Lei Da. He was definitely going to investigate the Descent Cult.
In fact, he had already gotten involved even earlier than this.
Xiang Yang had a special physical constitution — Extreme Yang Fate.
This rare, special constitution was extremely precious — it could be called a nemesis to ghosts and monsters. Any ghost or monster that touched him would be burned. But force works both ways: while the ghost or monster would be harmed, he too would suffer for it, and if things went badly, it could cost him his life. Because of this, his constitution had been sealed, and it now existed in an on-and-off state of efficacy — the Paranormal Affairs Bureau didn’t even know about it.
Xiang Yang raised his head. There was fire in his eyes.
Meanwhile, at the branch director’s office —
Ji Shanyao was sitting there. She too had heard about the Descent Cult matter and had come to find the branch director because she wanted to be involved in this case.
Branch Director Yao Hu wasn’t very willing. Ji Shanyao’s parents had been extremely close friends with her, but both of them had passed away early. Ji Shanyao worked at the Paranormal Affairs Bureau, and Yao Hu looked after her a great deal.
Ji Shanyao was only 17 this year, still a minor. Her entry into the Paranormal Affairs Bureau was due to a special exceptional recruitment. On one hand, Ji Shanyao’s natural talent truly was very high, her abilities surpassing many veterans; on the other hand, Ji Shanyao had come into contact with paranormal incidents very early on and had already set foot on the path of an exorcist. The pull that exists between paranormal matters doesn’t care about age — Ji Shanyao was destined to come into contact with more and more related affairs. Rather than let her face these things in ignorant confusion, it was better to have her enter the Paranormal Affairs Bureau early, where she could also be safer.
The Descent Cult was simply too dangerous. Whether out of care for the child of old friends, or out of a sense of responsibility toward a minor girl, Yao Hu was unwilling to let her get involved with cases concerning the Descent Cult.
Unable to persuade her, Yao Hu sighed. “Shanyao, there’s no need for you to push yourself this hard. Some things can’t be forced. Your younger sister… you need to accept fate on that.”
Ji Shanyao’s expression remained blank, but Yao Hu, who knew her well, could see the frustration and stubbornness beneath it.
Sure enough, she insisted, “My abilities are sufficient, and my request is reasonable. I will resolve the case at hand as quickly as possible.”
…
While the Paranormal Affairs Bureau was busy with the Descent Cult matter, He Yu was opening the gift Xiang Yang had brought him.
It was dried bamboo shoots and ham — the quality looked good at a glance.
He Yu happily took all the items over to Granny Sun. Afterward, Granny Sun made dried bamboo shoot and pork dumplings, plus a large pot of dried bamboo shoot and ham soup, and sent half of it over to He Yu.
The soup had been simmered for several hours and was incredibly delicious. He Yu ate to his heart’s content.
Granny Sun watched him with a kindly expression, chattering on, “Dried bamboo shoots need to be soaked in rice-rinsing water to rehydrate — that makes them tender and flavorful. The ham you brought is very good, nice and oily, so don’t add more oil when making the soup. Right near the end when it’s almost done, add a bit of napa cabbage heart…” She loved rambling on about her cooking methods, not because she wanted He Yu to learn them, but simply because seeing him eat so happily gave her a great sense of accomplishment.
He Yu liked listening too — he found it very warm and comforting.
He had added a reclining lounge chair in front of the shop that could be tilted back, and every afternoon, the sunlight would fall right there. The shop didn’t get many customers, so Granny Sun would sit there and listen to the news for a while.
There had been a major case from years ago solved locally.
Several years earlier, a gang of bandits had robbed a gold shop, involving a huge sum of money. The police had responded swiftly and quickly caught the suspects. But there had been three bandits in total, and in the end only two were caught — the gold hadn’t been fully recovered either. According to the confessions of the two captured bandits, the third person, resentful that his share of the gold was too small, had stolen the gold and fled; the other two had just been about to chase after him when they were caught by the police.
This third bandit had remained on the wanted list ever since, never caught despite all these years.
Recently, the police had obtained a major lead. They found the third bandit’s corpse out in the wilderness. According to the autopsy report, this bandit’s time of death was close to the time of the original gold shop robbery. The back of the deceased’s skull had been fractured by a blow from a blunt object, but the actual cause of death was asphyxiation.
Combined with various other pieces of evidence, it was determined that the three men had gotten into a dispute back then over an unequal split of the loot. The first two bandits had conspired together, ambushing him from behind and striking the back of his head with a hammer, then burying his body. But the deceased had only been unconscious at the time, not yet dead — he had actually been buried alive by the two of them.
After killing him and hiding the body, the two suspects had hidden away part of the gold; to avoid worsening their crime, they had insisted at the time that it was the third bandit who had stolen the gold and run off.
“Poor thing…” Granny Sun sighed.
There was no other major news after that — just things like a truck driver somewhere getting into an accident and being injured due to fatigued driving.
Granny Sun sat in the lounge chair, and as she listened, she unconsciously fell asleep. He Yu took down a round, plump cat-face cushion from the shelf, dug around through the opening on the back, and the cat plush turned into a blanket, with the flattened cat face sitting right in the center of the blanket and two little cat ears standing up on it.
He Yu covered Granny Sun with the blanket. He smirked, corners of his mouth turning up smugly, muttering to himself quietly, “I knew this would definitely come in handy!”
Chen Shi’s mouth twitched. Recently the plush toy shop had gradually started getting some business, but no customer had ever shown favor toward this particular type of plush that had a blanket stuffed inside it. For one thing, a blanket as the filling material didn’t feel as nice to the touch as other stuffing; for another, once you took the blanket out, trying to fold it back up and stuff it back in so the plush looked full and neat again wasn’t easy at all. Its price was also higher than both ordinary plush toys and ordinary blankets.
To put it precisely and accurately: it was a beautiful piece of junk.
Every time Chen Shi tried recommending it to customers, he struck out completely, but there was nothing to be done since this particular item had been personally selected and stocked by the boss himself. The boss ran the shop just for fun and never cared about profit — Chen Shi had even assumed he didn’t care about customer preferences either.
As evening approached, Granny Sun woke up. She had slept very soundly, and upon waking she was still a bit groggy; seeing He Yu hazily, she mumbled a few words.
Hearing her call out “Xiao Yu,” He Yu brought her a cup of water. “Take your time, no need to rush getting up.”
Granny Sun blinked, her hazy eyes gradually clearing. “What time is it? How did I fall asleep?”
“It’s past 5 o’clock. You slept so soundly.” He Yu smiled.
“I should get going home.” Granny Sun slowly got up.
He Yu saw her off, then reopened the shop door. Seeing the closed shop door, Granny Sun’s expression turned very tender.
Regardless of whether business was good or not, He Yu, afraid of disturbing her sleep, had been willing to close the shop for several hours — that alone showed his thoughtfulness.
After seeing Granny Sun across the street, He Yu smiled and waved at her cheerfully.
A cloud drifted over, and He Yu suddenly sensed something; he turned around and saw that the earthbound spirit had appeared on the road at some point, clinging to the curb, staring fixedly in this direction again.
He Yu: …
So annoying! His good mood was gone in an instant!
On the way back, sure enough, the earthbound spirit was tailing along behind him again.
He Yu snorted coldly — he was now completely able to ignore the earthbound spirit. This guy was sneaky as hell, always appearing during the day when it was overcast, and hiding beneath the road whenever He Yu got angry enough at night to go beat it up.
Once Little Coal Ball grew up a bit more, if the earthbound spirit still dared to follow him out in broad daylight, He Yu would beat it up in broad daylight too!
Halfway across the road, the sun came out again. The earthbound spirit instantly hid back beneath the road.
He Yu wrinkled his nose and furrowed his brow. He thought he’d just caught a faint whiff of the smell of blood, carrying killing intent. But the earthbound spirit had already hidden away, so he couldn’t be sure.
Back at the shop, He Yu found Chen Shi with his nose plugged up. He was just thinking about the earthbound spirit, and asked, “Did you smell something?”
Chen Shi nodded with a look of utter despair. “I smelled it. It’s really fragrant.”
He Yu: ?
The dried bamboo shoot and ham soup in the kitchen was bubbling away, giving off heat — He Yu was planning to heat it up for dinner, and the delicious fragrant aroma filled the entire room. Chen Shi, unable to help himself, let tears fall from the corners of his eyes.
“Boss, do you know what a terrifying torture it is to be able to smell something but never taste it?”
He’d already endured it for so long! He truly couldn’t take it anymore!
He wanted to eat dumplings, waaah!!!
He Yu suddenly understood, looking a bit embarrassed. “Let me research how to let spirit puppets taste flavor too.”
Upon hearing the word “research,” Chen Shi’s face went pale. “No need, no need — Boss, it’s fine if you just seal off my sense of smell instead.”
At least if he couldn’t smell it, he wouldn’t be so hungry for it.
He Yu had no choice but to regretfully give up on the idea.
He’d left some frozen dumplings in the fridge for Xiang Yang, but the kid hadn’t come by in a while.
He Yu was no longer on guard against Xiang Yang the way he used to be. Even though he knew in his heart that this kid was the protagonist, it was hard for anyone to keep being wary of a little rookie who grinned sunnily at you all day showing all eight teeth, who knew all sorts of delicious local snacks in the area inside and out, and who kept coming to work for free at your shop every single day.
Business at the shop lately was still just average, mostly customers who had no idea about the shop’s reputation as a haunted house.
He Yu didn’t care in the slightest — only Chen Shi worried endlessly over the shop’s business, spending all day thinking about whether this plush toy was more eye-catching and suited for placement near the entrance to attract potential customers, or whether that shelf was blocking sightlines and should be moved to make the shop look more spacious and cozy.
He Yu let him fuss about however he liked, while he himself leaned on the counter, chin propped on a pen, staring at his phone. These past couple days he’d been searching online for garden landscaping flowers, and had taken a liking to a newly cultivated variety of hollyhock — a lush double-bloom type, its color transitioning from a gentle apricot-yellow into orange-pink, delicate and lovely. Hollyhocks were cold-resistant and easy to grow, with a long blooming period.
He jotted the flower’s name down on paper, where a whole string of plant names had already been listed. He wasn’t sure if the flower‑bird‑fish market would have it, and planned to go take a look.
Chen Shi was still fussing about pointlessly in the shop when the doorbell suddenly rang. He turned his head by reflex, flashing an enthusiastic smile. “Welcome— oh, it’s you.”
Seeing Xiang Yang, Chen Shi’s enthusiastic smile deflated halfway through.
Chen Shi used to welcome Xiang Yang warmly. Back then Xiang Yang had been thin-skinned and embarrassed to hang around for too long without reason, so he’d buy a plush toy every time. But later, once the little rookie’s pockets started running thin, he switched to bringing snacks instead. With no sales to be had, Chen Shi’s specially reserved enthusiasm for customers retracted right along with it.
Extremely realistic of him.
After all, every time this guy brought something delicious over, Chen Shi had to suffer through it all over again.
He Yu had Chen Shi handle hosting for the moment while he went to the back to get the frozen dumplings for Xiang Yang.
Xiang Yang didn’t treat himself as an outsider either — spotting fallen leaves and dust that had blown in onto the shelves, he casually picked up a rag to wipe it down.
Chen Shi had just had his sense of smell sealed, forced to fully accept the cruel reality that he couldn’t eat, and was in a rotten mood. He was jealous that Xiang Yang would soon get to eat that plate of dumplings he himself couldn’t have, so he came over and yanked at the rag. “No, no, no, don’t trouble yourself! You keep stealing my job — the boss is going to think I’m slacking off.”
Xiang Yang blinked, then broke into a grin. “Brother Chen, what’s this about? It’s just something handy to do.”
Just then He Yu came back and saw this, asking, “What’s going on?”
The two of them were each pulling on one corner of the rag, and with He Yu’s interruption, their hands accidentally touched during the movement — both let go as if electrocuted.
The back of Chen Shi’s hand burned with shocking pain; he clutched his hand, grimacing.
Xiang Yang’s face went pale, and he too pressed down hard on the back of his own hand. He felt that the spot where Chen Shi had just touched him was icy cold to the bone. Looking at Chen Shi, whom he’d been getting along with for so many days now, his mind was in complete turmoil.
Was Chen Shi a ghost or monster?
But they’d been getting along for so long — he’d never noticed anything off about him at all!
Ghosts and monsters were bound to harm people! Xiang Yang wanted to run, but in the next instant he thought of something else — an ordinary ghost or monster could never possibly work obediently as a shop clerk, unless — it was a spirit puppet controlled by an exorcist!
Xiang Yang suddenly looked at He Yu, eyes lighting up.
So the shop owner really was a big shot after all!
“Big shot! Please take me on as your disciple!”