Back in the day, he would have been beheaded by the heroes of Mount Liang…
By the end of the exemplary works showcase, the fear value Jiang Wei had collected had actually grown to 101. Truly, many hands make light work.
After class, she was a bit reluctant to leave the classroom. Slinging her backpack over her shoulders, she kept hovering around crowded areas to harvest the lingering aftershock of fear from her classmates.
Quite a few students were genuinely interested in Jiang Wei’s short film and specifically crowded over to ask questions:
“Weiwei, was that paper doll a prop you prepared?”
“Jiang Wei, did that paper doll actually look up? I saw your video on the Bilibili homepage yesterday. While I was playing basketball, I even heard photography majors talking about how the paper doll wasn’t a pre-arranged prop—everything was real! Did you check those two flashlights afterward? Was it just loose contact, a quality issue, or were you really affected by a mysterious magnetic field in the haunted house that caused them to cut out automatically?”
“Huh? Really? Was there something fishy about that paper doll?”
“Holy shit, don’t scare me. I still have to sleep tonight.”
“Weiwei, you’ve got guts. You actually dared to do a spirit exploration. If it were me—hey, even if you paid me, I wouldn’t dare.”
“Now that is taking a shortcut on a sharp curve. Doing spirit-exploration videos is seriously a great track.”
“A great track? Why don’t you try it then? Even if you had eight lives you wouldn’t dare.”
Everyone chattered away, surrounding Jiang Wei with questions. Normally, Jiang Wei would have slipped away already. Today, however, she was in no rush to leave. She actually answered everyone’s questions one by one and purposely slowed her pace.
When she finally walked out of the teaching building and turned toward the cafeteria, she took a moment to check her phone, and sure enough, her fear value had ticked up by a few more points.
It was all cold hard cash.
During lunch, Jiang Wei ordered an extra meat dish: deep-fried fish chunks that were crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and eaten dipped in spiced salt. It was intensely savory and fragrant. Truly wonderful—was she about to enter an era where she could have fish at every single meal?
As she savored the lingering aroma of meat in her mouth, she pondered and calculated:
Her fear value was over 100. Sucking an item from the [Abyss] cost 100 fear value points, meaning she had enough accumulated to pull another item right now. Should she draw?
The last item she pulled was [A Pool of Viscous Blood]. That item had proven exceptionally useful for scaring people; using it in the restroom on Sun Tian last time had netted her a massive chunk of fear value. The items she pulled went into her [Blessings] inventory, meaning they could be used repeatedly in the future to snowball an even greater amount of fear value, which in turn could be traded for more gold beans and [Abyss] gacha draws.
Besides, pulling items from the [Abyss] carried a genuine sense of anticipation—mystery boxes were all the rage nowadays, and who knew, she might just fish something extraordinary out of the abyss.
As long as it wasn’t another pool of blood, anything else would be a pleasant surprise.
Still, 100 points was undeniably a bit steep; thinking it over and over, she felt a lingering sense of reluctance.
Back in the dorm room, Jiang Wei repeatedly flipped through the black-bordered app.
With 108 fear value points, the items available for purchase in the [Offerings] catalog had expanded significantly.
She currently had a few thousand RMB in her bank card and a few hundred in her cafeteria meal card. Should she buy another golden prayer bead? Or buy something else instead?
Who knows, maybe there was something even more valuable than golden prayer beads.
Switching from propping her chin with her left hand to her right, Jiang Wei ultimately decided to spend 10 fear value points to exchange for a single golden prayer bead.
Rubbing the gold bean that suddenly materialized in her palm—humans just naturally loved gold. Next, she spent 36 fear value points to exchange for a [Small Jade Pendant]—after all, since it had the word “jade” in it, it ought to be valuable.
A bone-chillingly cold object suddenly materialized in her palm, feeling like ice. Jiang Wei gripped it in her palm and warmed it for quite a while before it finally warmed up.
The jade pendant was nearly oval-shaped, smaller than she had imagined—only about 3 cm long, 1 cm wide, and quite thin.
She spent ages searching online on her computer before confirming this was a Weng Zhong pendant used for warding off evil spirits. Legend had it that Weng Zhong was a fierce general who struck terror into the hearts of the Xiongnu; standing one zhang and three chi tall, his valor and strength far surpassed ordinary men.
Fierce deities to suppress evil—an old traditional custom.
Weng Zhong’s figure was depicted using simple lines. At a glance, he looked simply like an ancient person in a long robe, with facial features limited to the outline of a long beard and face. Though the carving was simple, the lines were fluid and possessed a strong artistic aesthetic.
The jade pendant was a warm, gentle white. Could it possibly be the Hetian jade people talked about online?
Bringing it close to her nose and sniffing, there was a faint, elusive fragrance.
When held up under the light, it seemed to shimmer with hazy white mist, looking glossy and jewel-bright—strangely endearing.
Jiang Wei knew nothing about jade, nor about jade-carving techniques or exorcism jade pendants. Just how good its quality, craftsmanship, and value actually were—she searched online for the better part of the evening without reaching any firm conclusion.
She first found a long black leather cord, threaded the pendant through it, tied a decorative knot, and hung it around her neck.
The black-bordered app was deeply bizarre, but she had checked online and found no evidence that anyone else had ever possessed anything similar.
Those prayer beads and exorcism jade pendants she had bought with fear value had very explicit, clear-cut uses in ghost movies, but now that she held them in the real world, she had no idea whether supernatural uses like “warding off evil” would still actually work.
Jiang Wei wore it to bed and slept through the night without dreaming, nor did she feel like her sleep was any deeper or sweeter.
Still, she had a hunch: there was no way it was just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill piece of jade.
…
After classes ended at dusk, Jiang Wei headed straight to the commercial district where she cashed in her gold beans. After converting the gold beans into cash, she found a jade shop and asked the owner if he bought jade.
With high expectations, she unclasped the jade pendant and handed it to the owner. The shopkeeper pulled out a pile of tools and inspected it back and forth repeatedly with various instruments.
It made Jiang Wei rather nervous—with such a grand production, it had to be worth a ton of money.
“Young lady, nowadays gold is easy to offload, but jade is hard,” the owner placed the jade back onto a small tray lined with brocade and handed it back across the counter to Jiang Wei. “Besides, this piece of jade is way too small. At a glance, you can tell it’s just scraps left over after cutting something like a bracelet.”
“So?” Jiang Wei pinched the jade pendant, tucked it back around her neck, and asked with a feigned casual air.
“As for the quality of the jade, it’s just so-so. Well, if you’re serious about selling it, I’ll take it off your hands for 100 RMB,” the owner swept his small eyes over the little jade pendant tucked back into Jiang Wei’s collar. Putting his white gloves back on, he began twirling his small-leaf red sandalwood prayer bracelet while speaking with total nonchalance.
“100?” Jiang Wei stared in disbelief, her eyes widening.
The 36 fear value points she had spent to acquire it were equivalent to around 10,000 RMB. For the owner to buy it for 100 RMB, why didn’t he just go rob a bank?
“That’s a fair offer. Look at this piece of jade you’ve got—it’s this tiny, and what on earth is even carved on it?” The owner tapped his finger on the tabletop without even lifting his eyes.
“Weng Zhong, for warding off evil.”
“Nowadays everyone wants to attract wealth and treasure. If it were a gourd, a peanut, or a Chinese cabbage, that’d be one thing, but what’s the use of warding off evil?” The owner shook his head. “A scrap this small can’t even be recut into anything else.”
Even if the owner thought it was worthless and didn’t want to buy it, he could have just declined—did he have to disparage it like this?
Jiang Wei pressed her lips together to swallow her temper, turned around, and walked straight toward the exit.
“Hey, 200 tops,” seeing that she was genuinely walking out, the owner stopped twirling his beads, leaned his upper body toward the glass counter, and raised his voice slightly to counter-offer.
Jiang Wei paused at the doorway, turned her head to cast a sharp glare at the owner, and walked out without even giving him a word in response.
She went on to browse several other jade shops and high-end jewelry stores in the shopping mall. Some shops bought jade, while others didn’t. Most of them gave her a serious appraisal, putting the lowest valuation at 400 RMB.
Every jade appraisal master she spoke to noted that the pendant was carved from very decent Hetian jade, but the current jade market was sluggish, and the piece was indeed a bit small, meaning the acquisition price would definitely be much lower than market value and couldn’t fetch an exceptionally high sum.
When Jiang Wei mentioned what the owner of the first shop she visited had said about the jade material being poor, the down-to-earth jade appraising master couldn’t help laughing:
“He saw you’re young and tried to bluff you into selling low. Given the quality of this piece, buying it for 100 is just plain ruthless. There are so many jade shops in the market; nobody is going to walk into just one shop and ask for only a single quote. That owner thinks everyone else is as stupid as he is.” The veteran master had another unflattering remark at the tip of his tongue—offering 100 RMB was practically treating Jiang Wei like a little fool. Unwilling to upset her further, he changed the subject:
“The quality of your jade is good, and the carving style is rustic and unpretentious—it has the vibe of Han Dynasty jade carving. You know, right? Han Dynasty jade carvings are very famous, and this one is carved with a bold grandeur. It holds a certain artistic value.
“If you run into someone who knows their stuff, selling it for a few thousand is easy. As for me buying it—I’ll give you 3,000. Absolutely solid and fair.”
“Thank you, master.” Jiang Wei put the jade pendant back around her neck. Even if she could sell it for 3,000, she wouldn’t bear to part with it. Something even more expensive than golden prayer beads—how could it possibly only be worth 3,000?
The pricing assigned to these [Offerings] by the black-bordered app couldn’t possibly be random. What was the underlying reason the small jade pendant was more expensive than the golden prayer bead? Perhaps… it really did possess exorcism properties.
Sighing quietly, Jiang Wei decided against selling it.
As long as she refused to sell it and kept it hanging around her neck, it would forever remain priceless.
“No worries. If you ever want to sell it, come see me. A fair acquisition—guaranteed to be the most reasonable price on the market.” The master nodded, put his tools away, and went back to watching his short videos on his phone.
On screen, a shadowy beauty host looked deathly pale, and even he couldn’t help feeling a sense of suspense.
The young girl who bravely ventured into a haunted house got startled by a flashlight suddenly blinking out, and he jumped in fright as well, only to find it amusing once he recovered his wits, unable to hold back a chuckle.
After a moment, he suddenly paused the video and tilted his head to look toward the doorway—the space there was completely empty.
Wait a second. Was the young girl who came in to sell the jade pendant just now a bit like that wildly popular spirit-exploration streamer in the video?
…
Stepping out of the shopping mall, Jiang Wei walked past the very first jade shop she had visited. Remembering the veteran master’s words earlier, the more she thought about it, the angrier she got.
Trashy, unscrupulous merchant—trying to bully her for being young and scamming her out of her jade pendant for 100 RMB. Back in the day, he would have been beheaded by the heroes of Mount Liang to consecrate their battle flags—executing him would practically count as a righteous deed for public good.
Walking a few more steps, Jiang Wei suddenly came to a halt.
Her gaze lingered back and forth between the jade shop, the Mixue Ice Cream shop on its left, and the Holiland bakery on its right. After a few seconds of silence, she spun around and strode into Mixue Ice Cream.
Ordering a signature 2 RMB soft-serve ice cream, Jiang Wei leaned against the wall—right on the other side of that wall was the jade shop. Fondling the jade pendant hanging against her chest, she slowly and leisurely licked her ice cream.
Unseen and unnoticed by anyone else, she deployed her eerie domain, blanketing the jade shop on the other side of the wall within its boundaries.
…
The jade shop owner’s surname was Zhang. Though he called it a jade shop, he also sold various woods in the store—small-leaf red sandalwood bracelets, black ebony bracelets, Hainan huanghuali bracelets, and giant clam shell beads. Naturally, he also carried high-imitation knockoffs made of inferior woods.
Just like jade, these types of wood didn’t have uniform, stable prices like gold did; their prices fluctuated wildly depending on quality, and most buyers simply couldn’t tell the difference between good and bad jade, or genuine and fake sandalwood.
Shopkeeper Zhang loved doing this kind of business. Whenever he managed to hook a single gullible sucker, he could make an unexpectedly tidy profit, and it felt wonderful.
Taking advantage of the absence of customers in the store, he swapped out the display case’s lighting for green bulbs. Under that illumination, any piece of jade looked emerald-green, translucent, and ridiculously expensive.
As he stood there admiring those artificially glorified jadeite pieces with satisfaction, fantasizing about how to trick customers into happily converting their hard-earned money into his wealth, he suddenly heard the sound of a water droplet.
The sound was very close by—a splat, accompanied by a rather viscous texture.
Not paying much mind, he closed the glass display case and reached for the white gloves he used when handling his prayer beads, when Shopkeeper Zhang heard a second splat.
Lifting his head to look toward the source of the sound, he noticed two dark droplets on the open floor space in front of the counter.
He walked around the counter and bent down to inspect them, when a single droplet of liquid went thump right against the hairline on his forehead.
Straightening his back, he reached up and wiped his brow; the liquid was extremely sticky. Rubbing it between his fingertips and bringing it up to examine, it was dark red and emitted a fishy, foul stench.
Making a disgusted grimace, he tilted his head back to look upward—
At just a single glance, his heart skipped a beat.
He saw red liquid continuously welling out from the seams of the ceiling panels. The viscous liquid connected like a descending waterfall of blood, pouring straight down toward his head and face.
“Ah, holy shit—” Zhang Egan screamed in sheer terror, violently stumbling backward. Unluckily, he stepped right into a small puddle of blood, his footing slipped, and he went crashing straight down backward.
Falling flat on his back, his face pointed toward the ceiling. Fortunately, his head and face narrowly missed the worst of it, and the red liquid merely splashed heavily across his waist and abdomen.
The viscous liquid stretched into sticky threads, carrying an overwhelming, nauseating stench. It was blood—undeniably blood!
“Hoo… hoo…” he sat up, keeping his head tilted high to fixate on the ceiling.
Countless flowing lines of red connected him and the ceiling, as if some monster were pouncing down from above, burrowing straight into his body.
Zhang Egan had never been this terrified in his entire life. His heart rate went haywire; his eardrums felt as though they were about to be shattered by the pounding of his own heart.
He scrambled frantically to kick away the blood on his legs, crawling backward and kicking his heels, but the blood seemed to have a mind of its own as it chased after him, stretching out a bloody trail wherever he scrambled, still splashing down toward his face.
At the terrifying realization of what was happening, all the color drained completely from his face.
He let out incoherent shrieks. Adrenaline spiked, his limbs went numb, and he felt as though he was about to pass out cold.
With a loud thump, the back of his head slammed against the glass display case behind him, but he couldn’t spare a thought for the pain. Curling his body into a ball, he flipped over onto his hands and knees and scuttled frantically behind the counter.
Hiding behind the counter, he shivered as he tried to strip off his blood-splattered clothes and pants, only to look down and see that his waist and abdomen were only smudged with ordinary dust—there was no blood on them at all.
“?” Perplexed, he frantically fumbled at his hem and waistband, looking back and forth, but indeed found no blood whatsoever.
Staring blankly in utter bewilderment for a good long while, he abruptly poked his head out to check the open space in front of the counter—there wasn’t a trace of blood left anywhere.
He looked up again. The ceiling only featured flush-mounted lights and the black seams between the ceiling panels. Just a moment ago, blood had been pouring down in sheets, as if someone had died and decomposed right above the panels.
How had everything vanished into thin air?
Swallowing hard, Zhang Egan pressed himself flat against the floor with his head tilted up, breathing heavily for a long time before he finally managed to calm down.
He propped himself up against the counter, stared at the ceiling for a long while, and then walked over to pace around the open floor space several times.
There was nothing there.
He touched his forehead and checked his fingertips; the blood that had been there moments before had completely vanished.
Could he have been seeing things just now? Was it a hallucination?
Yet that viscous tactile sensation, the heavy feeling of sticky blood splashing all over his body—it had been so clear, how could it possibly have been a hallucination?
He stood in a daze for a long time, still feeling deeply unsettled.
…
Back next door, Jiang Wei had finished her ice cream, leaving her stomach feeling icily chilled.
She wiped her mouth with a tissue, rubbed her stomach with both hands to generate warmth through friction, and strolled out of Mixue Ice Cream.
Glancing sideways back at the jade shop where Shopkeeper Zhang was still sitting behind the counter in a daze, Jiang Wei lowered her head to unlock her screen. After exchanging for the golden prayer bead and the small jade pendant, her 108 fear value points had dwindled to 62. Now, having given Shopkeeper Zhang a good scare, her fear value had rebounded back to 74.
The 36 fear value points spent to exchange for the small jade pendant had been partially recouped by 12 points, and Jiang Wei felt much better.
The lingering annoyance of being bluffed and played for a fool by Shopkeeper Zhang had also dissipated somewhat. Slinging her canvas bag over her shoulder, she detamped to the bakery next door to buy some bread before striding back toward campus.
Author’s Notes:
[Volume 1 modification completed. Volume 2 will be modified and uploaded tomorrow evening at 9:00 PM.]
[On Weibo and Xiaohongshu: Jinjiang Qinghou has illustrations of the Weng Zhong jade pendant; feel free to check them out if you’re interested.]