When a wild ghost follows a living person, it’s basically for one of two reasons: to ask for help, or to do harm.
Old Man Li just assumed it was the second, and completely forgot that Ji Yi had the kind of muscle to knock a chunk off his gravestone with a single punch. He barged right up and tried to drag the apron ghost away.
Before he could get his hands on him, another ghostly head poked out from the room behind. “What’s going on? Oh my, where’d this wild ghost come from?”
“This, this—” the apron ghost stammered, caught off guard.
Normally an ordinary household wouldn’t have any ghosts, let alone two at once. The two ghosts closed in around him, both eyeing the apron ghost warily.
The apron ghost was just about to explain that he meant no harm, that he’d followed Ji Yi home without Ji Yi knowing, only wanting to cook him a meal, but seeing that both ghosts were on in years, he asked them a question first. “Are you two the ancestors of this house?”
Old Man Li and Old Man Sun exchanged a look, and instantly all four hands started waving. “We wouldn’t dare say such a thing.”
Could they really pass themselves off as Ji Yi’s ancestors? Who’d dare claim a bargain like that? Not if it meant losing their graves, they wouldn’t.
A flash of shrewd light lit up the apron ghost’s eyes. In a knowing, mysterious tone he asked, “Oh, so you’re looking for someone to take your place, are you?”
“Huh?” Old Man Li went blank.
Old Man Sun denied it even harder. “What proper ghost goes looking for a stand-in?”
The apron ghost chuckled softly, clasped his hands behind his back, and turned into the very picture of a man in the know. “Those who know, know. No need to keep up the act.”
Ji Yi had already set the things in his hands down on the eight-immortals table. He’d been about to turn and tell the apron ghost that he could, in fact, see and hear him, but when he heard the ghost bring up finding a stand-in, his turn faltered for a second. Then, as though nothing were the matter, he strolled right past the ghosts, fished out the watermelon that had been soaking all morning in the wooden bucket by the courtyard, and set about slicing it himself.
The apron ghost said from the side, “So what if I’m after a stand-in? You look for yours, I’ll look for mine. I won’t fight you over this young fellow. I only heard him say he’d never eaten anything good, so out of the kindness of my heart I came to cook him a meal, that’s all. My own stand-in’s long been picked out, I’m making my move tonight.”
Ji Yi popped a piece of melon into his mouth. The sweet, crisp flavor burst across his tongue. “Which one did you pick?” he asked.
With his back to Ji Yi, the apron ghost didn’t stop to notice that the voice asking sounded rather too young. He answered away on his own. “I picked that fellow who runs the eatery in town. Running a restaurant into a state like that, every meal he cooks is a waste of good food.” He fancied himself a man of noble character, and as he talked his head lifted higher and higher, his chest puffing out. “Anyone who’s ever eaten there is bound to praise me for carrying out justice on Heaven’s behalf [1]ridding the world of a wrongdoer jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931967_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931967_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.”
Ji Yi nearly choked on the watermelon in his mouth.
As a fellow victim of that little eatery, he honestly found it hard not to agree with some of what the apron ghost said. But at the end of the day, this was about finding a stand-in to kill a living person. If cooking bad food was enough to get you marked by a chef ghost as his replacement, well, the world was hardly short of people who did their jobs carelessly, who wasted opportunities and squandered their lives. Were they all to have their lives claimed by ghosts as a matter of course? The logic held up, but if you actually let it run loose, the whole world would descend into chaos.
Of course, most ghosts hunting for a stand-in didn’t bother with such reasoning. Most of them either tricked people into jumping into a river or off a cliff, or muddled their heads into a car crash, all so they could free themselves from the endless torment of being trapped at the site of their own accident. That was the source of the eerie legends you heard in certain places, like the shopping malls where a few people leap to their deaths every year. Some of those were exactly this sort of thing.
So it turned out ghost-nature and human-nature weren’t so different: both had many sides. Look from one angle and it seemed good, look from another and it turned bad. This apron ghost could have the kindness to improve a living man’s meals, and also the resolve to harm a person at any moment. He pitied Ji Yi for not getting enough good food to eat, yet couldn’t care less whether Ji Yi was the stand-in for a pair of old ghosts.
Ji Yi had only meant to sample this ghost’s cooking and treat himself to something better than usual. But hearing all this, he couldn’t just casually let the ghost go back. What if he really did go drag off the restaurant owner as his stand-in tonight?
Cooking badly hardly warranted the death penalty.
Hearing the violent coughing of the living man behind him, the apron ghost turned his head and looked at Ji Yi with some suspicion.
Ji Yi raised his eyes to look right back. Man and ghost locked gazes, four eyes meeting.
The apron ghost’s suspicion grew thicker and thicker. Turning his face aside, he asked Old Man Li in a low voice, “Why do I get the feeling this living man can see us?”
Honest and plain, Old Man Li said, “Your feeling is correct.”
Old Man Sun laughed, ha-ha, and clapped the apron ghost on the shoulder, then sidled up eagerly beside Ji Yi. “Boss Ji, next time you leave out food, could you add a box of pastries? I need to check whether that boy of mine has used decent ingredients. If he still hasn’t changed his ways, I’ll have to find some way to visit him in a dream and give him a good scolding.”
Ji Yi nodded to Old Man Sun. These old fellows did a fair bit of work for him around here, and he’d already promised to leave them food and money on the first and fifteenth of each month.
Watching the way the two ghosts were behaving, the apron ghost had already sensed something was off, and the thought of retreat crept into his heart. But he’d backed up only two steps before he felt a scorching yang energy behind him. Glancing back, he saw the courtyard blazing with the harsh noonday sun, bright and glaring.
Ghosts belong to yin, so naturally they fear yang energy. In the old days, criminals were beheaded at high noon precisely because that was the hour when yang energy was at its peak in the day, able to suppress foul and evil forces.
If Ji Yi had been able to see him this whole time…
Thinking back from that angle for a moment—Ji Yi buying the umbrella had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. Clearly, he’d spotted the ghost and then played up his own misery to lure him back. And looking at the whole house’s quaint, old-fashioned air, and the eager manner of the two old ghosts, the apron ghost’s eyes went wide with alarm. “You, could you be some kind of celestial master or Daoist priest?”
The more the apron ghost thought about it, the more it fit. No wonder those two old ghosts were being so meek, even claiming they weren’t after a stand-in, probably they’d been detained here too, and were too afraid of this Daoist to tell the truth. Only he’d been foolish enough to spill everything.
The apron ghost’s already ghastly-pale face went even grayer. He thought to himself, “The old ghosts have seen more of the world after all. I’m still too green.”
“Who’s a Daoist?” said Ji Yi. “Does this haircut of mine look like a Daoist’s?”
The apron ghost said solemnly, “You might be one of those householder Daoists. Plenty of them marry and raise families. Not growing your hair out proves nothing.”
Then he remembered he’d just said, right to Ji Yi’s face, that he was going out to harm someone tonight. Now, if Ji Yi wanted to subdue and destroy him, he had a perfectly legitimate reason to do so. In an instant his heart turned cold as dead ash.
Even if Ji Yi didn’t kill him, being bound here to serve at another’s beck and call like those two old ghosts was something the apron ghost wanted no part of.
“I really am not a Daoist,” Ji Yi tried to explain, that he was neither a Daoist nor especially bothered about whether the ghost had meant to find a stand-in. He only wanted a simple, decent meal.
The apron ghost, however, had already lost control of his emotions inside his own imagination. He lunged straight at Ji Yi in one final, desperate struggle. “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
His eyes went bloodshot in an instant, radiating a wicked aura. Even the apron on his body tore apart as, in that single moment, boundless power erupted from him.
What a load of nonsense!
Holding his unfinished half-slice of watermelon, Ji Yi watched the apron ghost suddenly rear up to attack. He nimbly leapt backward to dodge, his last step carrying him into the sunlight in the middle of the courtyard, and he didn’t forget to gnaw down the rest of the melon while he was at it.
The apron ghost couldn’t brake in time. Half his body plunged into the sunlight, and at once black smoke came pouring off him all over, with a sizzling sound, as if he’d been deep-fried in oil.
“Oh, good grief,” Ji Yi said, no longer bothering with the melon rind. He directed Old Man Li and Old Man Sun. “Quick, drag him inside before the sun cooks him to death.”
Old Man Li and Old Man Sun each grabbed one of the apron ghost’s feet and hauled him into the shade.
The apron ghost lay there gasping. Ji Yi crouched down in front of him, looking at the skin that had scorched black in just those few moments. “Why are you so hotheaded? You wouldn’t even let me finish. I’m not a Daoist and I’m not a celestial master. I brought you back because I wanted a good meal, that’s all. Where are you from, ghost? Is your home far from here? How long have you been dead? From now on, just stay here and cook for me. I’ll give you spirit money and food.”
The apron ghost still didn’t fully believe Ji Yi, but he knew he was in no position to resist, so his answer was reasonably honest. “My home is up in Beishan. I’ve been dead over thirty years.” As for the second half of what Ji Yi said, though, he wasn’t tempted in the slightest. “My grave’s not short on spirit money. I don’t want to be your cook.”
Ji Yi, who’d been eating instant noodles for the better part of half a month, let his face fall, brows knitting tight. “There’s no room to discuss it?” He’d thought the terms he offered were quite generous. Who knew there’d really be a ghost who didn’t care for money.
“No room to discuss it!” The apron ghost’s eyes darted about, surveying the terrain. “When are you going to let me go?”
Ji Yi, whose mouth was fairly watering, said, “I’d rather not…”
As they were talking, a black cat padded in through the door, its eyes, like moonlight, falling on the ghost lying on the ground.
The aura around the black cat had been fully reined in, but the bright light in those two eyes marked it, at a glance, as no ordinary cat. The apron ghost knew there were quite a few little monsters that had cultivated into spirits up in the mountains behind, and figured this cat might be one of them. So he shouted toward it, “Little kitten! Hurry into the mountains for me and see if you can find Lord Lin Zhao, tell him to come save me!”
If you can’t win, all that’s left is to call for backup.
In this stretch of Beishan, there wasn’t a spirit-monster or a ghost who didn’t know of Lin Zhao. Even the netherworld’s officers commanded far less respect than Lin Zhao did. Lin Zhao didn’t meddle in others’ affairs, but the one thing he couldn’t tolerate was a living person making trouble right under his nose.
It was on this hope that the apron ghost tried to pin his fate on a black cat, never dreaming that the black cat was Lin Zhao himself, in transformed shape.
The black cat had meant to ignore the whole scene entirely. But the moment it heard those two words—”little kitten”, its gaze froze on the apron ghost, terrifying to behold.
Ji Yi was rather sensitive to the words “little kitten” too. He nearly failed to keep a straight face and almost snickered out loud. But since Lin Zhao was already walking over this way, he could only hold it in and pretend to be a proper, serious person.
“Save you from what?” Right in front of the apron ghost, the black cat abruptly transformed into a young man in black with his hair bound up, except the color in his eyes was plainly cold to the extreme.
The apron ghost was already scared witless, unable to get out a single word, trembling all over. “L-Lord…”
This wasn’t a case of “speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives” [2]the one you mention shows up right then jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931967_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931967_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. This was flat-out a horror story.
Lin Zhao turned to look at Ji Yi again, waiting for him to explain.
Ji Yi told Lin Zhao the whole thing, that he’d wanted to improve his meals, then discovered this ghost meant to find a stand-in and harm someone, and now planned to keep him here to cook, which also amounted to saving the restaurant owner’s life.
Lin Zhao paid no attention to any of the rest. He seized on just half a sentence of Ji Yi’s. “You said having guests who love good food come by might be good for business?”
Ji Yi had only said it in passing, because some guesthouses offered meals, and guests would mention it in their reviews, which could sway other guests’ choices to a certain degree.
He nodded. “That’s right.”
Lin Zhao lowered his eyes and looked at the ghost again. His stance was suddenly crystal clear. “From now on you’ll work here and serve the guests well, to wash away the sin of scheming to find a stand-in. How’s that?”
Look at that high-sounding justification, look at that posture, phrased like a question but leaving no room to refuse.
Ji Yi had neither the ability nor the pretext to kill a ghost, Lin Zhao, however, had both the ability to kill a ghost and no need for any pretext at all.
A single word from Lin Zhao was enough to strip the once-unwilling apron ghost of even the courage to object. He scrambled up, all obedience. “The Lord is right. My crimes are monstrous. I’ll go scrub the kitchen at once.”
Watching all this, Ji Yi felt he’d gotten a grip on a bit of Lin Zhao’s style. It seemed that as long as it had to do with running the guesthouse, he’d lend a hand.
Whatever the case, the good news was that from this day on, he was saying goodbye to instant noodles!
Ji Yi’s mood lifted. He strolled over to the kitchen, watched the apron ghost inside preparing to cook with all the meekness of a new bride, and sighed aloud, “You’ve got sins to scrub away, and I’ve got a guesthouse to build up big. We both have bright futures ahead of us.”
Lin Zhao, who hadn’t yet left: “…”
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