Chapter Six: The time when the rice ball was tricked by a ghost “Who was that?” Zhao Zheng asked out of curiosity. He"d never seen such a well-behaved Tang Yuan. He thought that Tang Yuan was the most well-behaved in front of his parents, but who could have known that he was actually the most well-behaved in front of this "uncle".
“My husband1.”
Zhao Zheng"s expression went ugly. "d.a.m.n, is he even thirty years old yet? You call him Shushu?" Won"t he kill you?
“Yeah, he"s under thirty.” Tang Yuan smiled a little shyly and whispered, “I think that he likes me calling him shushu, because every time I call him shushu, he gets really excited.”
Zhao Zheng didn"t want to be friends with this guy anymore. After all, he was too much of a sand sculpture2. The man isn"t excited at all, okay? The man wants to beat you up!
Zhao Zheng, who saw the truth, didn"t talk nonsense with him any longer and dragged him out.
Along the way, Tang Yuan was thinking about what Xie Yu said. Xie Yu said ‘ghosts are cunning, don"t be deceived by its appearance"?
So what"s the appearance?
He thought for a long time and suddenly there was flash of inspiration in his mind. He immediately patted Zhao Zheng"s shoulder and said, “Xiao ZhengZi, Daddy was tricked.”
Zhao Zheng is puzzled. “What"s wrong?”
Tang Yuan explained, “Daddy was deceived by the appearance.”
(t/n: he"s calling himself daddy, like "I"m yo daddy" lol)
“Ah?” Zhao Zheng was dumbfounded, “What are you talking about? I don"t understand.”
Tang Yuan waved his hand, “I will tell you later, let"s go back to the hospital first.”
Zhao Zheng wondered aloud, “Didn"t we just leave the hospital?”
Tang Yuan replied, “I have some questions that I forgot to ask.”
“Oh.”
They hadn"t gone far, so they made it back to the hospital in barely a minute. Zhao Feng and Ye Lan saw that the two of them had returned and were ready to talk when they heard Tang Yuan ask, “Uncle Zhao, after you sent off that woman that day, except for the lipstick, there were no other strange phenomena?”
Zhao Feng thought it over carefully, then shook his head. “There was really nothing else that seemed strange.”
On the side, Ye Lan thought it over and asked tentatively, “I found a used lipstick in his pocket. Is that the strange phenomenon?”
These words made Tang Yuan smile, “That"s it.”
What he had learned previously with Xie Yu and what he knew of the female ghost, all combined explained the problem. Ghosts cannot harm people freely. Besides being powerful or having a debt with the person in question, they had to have some kind of medium to be able to harm humans.
According to Zhao Feng and Ye Lan"s words, Tang Yuan judged that the female ghost attacking Zhao Feng was due to the third situation and the medium was the lipstick that was brought home by Uncle Zhao.
“I had lipstick in my pocket? I didn"t even notice.” The more Zhao Feng thought about it, the more he became afraid.
Tang Yuan asked, “Auntie, do you remember where you put the lipstick?”
“I locked it in the drawer.” She originally thought it was evidence of Zhao Feng"s infidelity, who could have guessed it was an ominous thing that almost killed their whole family.
“So shall we go back and find it?” Zhao Zheng looked at Tang Yuan, wanting to see what instructions he had.
Tang Yuan has no objections, “Mhm.”
The two young people ran back home in a rush. Zhao Zheng used the key to open the drawer that his ma had mentioned but didn"t find the lipstick. He was just about to call his ma, when he saw that Tang Yuan had opened the closet. He asked, confused, “Rice Ball, what are you doing?”
Tang Yuan did not answer his question but said, “My husband told me to not be deceived by appearances.”
Zhao Zheng replied, “What the h.e.l.l does that mean? What appearance, aren"t we supposed to be finding the lipstick?”
Tang Yuan smiled, feeling Zhao Feng"s clothes in the closet one by one. Then he laughed and pulled out the lipstick and said, “I was almost fooled by this appearance.”
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Footnotes:
1. lao gong (老攻): old attack (aka cutesy way to refer to the top in a gay relationship), h.o.m.onym for husband, so I"m using it here ↩
2. Sand sculpture (沙雕), internet slang, idiot, d.i.c.khead; sometimes used to describe characters/plots, e.g. in a novel ↩
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meanwhile, Xie Yu is dying of blood loss from the phone call
Chapter Seven: The time when Xiao ZhengZi was scared by a ghost Zhao Zheng looked at the lipstick he was holding and said, dumbstruck, “How did you know that the lipstick was in the closet?”
Tang Yuan explained, “The place where the black aura is heaviest in your household is here. Except for here in the black aura, there was nowhere else to hide the lipstick, otherwise it would be exposed instantly.”
“Hidden?” Zhao Zheng paused for a second, “Are you saying that the ghost hid this thing?”
Tang Yuan nodded, “Yes.”
He had been overthinking it before, so that he couldn"t grasp the key point. But he actually only needed to find this ghost"s medium. If he found this most important thing, he didn"t have to look at the appearance, so he naturally wouldn"t be deceived by its appearance.
The irony was that this ghost hid itself in Zhao Feng"s clothes. Zhao Feng had black qi on him, so the clothes he usually wore naturally would have the black aura. The ghost thought that Tang Yuan, a novice, wouldn"t realize, but it didn"t think about how for the clothes that Zhao Feng wore, the black aura wouldn"t actually stay on the clothes all the time, but would disappear quickly. If the ghost had actually left, then the clothes worn by Zhao Feng wouldn"t always be covered in such a strong aura. And the aura had also been growing stronger and stronger.
This kind of idiotic trick had also deceived Tang Yuan, an inexperienced, new tianshi who was just getting started, but any other tianshi probably would have found out quickly.
Zhao Zheng rushed over to pull on Tang Yuan"s sleeve, his eyes circling all around, “So the ghost has been watching us the whole time?”
Tang Yuan replied in honesty, “Yes.”
Zhao Zheng almost started to cry. “Didn"t you say previously that the ghost was already gone?” He paused, then suddenly had a realization. He sniveled and squeezed in closer, “I get it, the ghost made you think it had left. In fact, it didn"t actually leave. That"s what you mean saying you were fooled, right?”
“Right.”
Now that he had the lipstick to act as a medium, Tang Yuan could find the female ghost. He recalled the spells he had studied and immediately thought of a spell that made the ghosts materialize. So he focused his spiritual power into the spell and shouted, “Demons and ghosts, quickly appear.”
He made no mistake in the spell. His spiritual energy was unusually pure and hot and the female ghost was directly knocked out of the lipstick hiding place.
The female ghost was wearing a red dress. She slammed to the ground and for a long time couldn"t get up. Tang Yuan took out the oil-paper umbrella and poked at the female ghost. Surprisingly, the female ghost suddenly screamed.
The voice of the female ghost was a soundwave attack. Since Tang Yuan had just initiated his spiritual consciousness, his spiritual strength wasn"t very high, but his qi was thick and he was unaffected by this sound wave. But Zhao Zheng cried out in pain.
Tang Yuan"s attention was distracted by Zhao Zheng, so his hands were moving slowly and the female ghost took this opportunity to escape. Tang Yuan didn"t rush to chase after the female ghost, instead turning to check Zhao Zheng"s situation.
One of the hundred spells he had learned was a healing spell, specifically to heal damage from ghosts. After taking a look, he quickly asked Zhao Zheng, “Zhao Zheng, how do you feel?”
Zhao Zheng was in a daze, so he didn"t even hear what he said. He asked like a half-deaf old man, “Rice Ball, what"d you say?”
Tang Yuan can only repeat loudly, “I said, how do you feel? Feel okay?”
Zhao Zheng said, “What"d you say?”
Tang Yuan: “I said do you feel okay? Can you hear me?”
Zhao Zheng said, “I can"t hear you.”
Tang Yuan wanted to hit the guy and he roared, “I said, you are my son!”
Zhao Zheng: “…”
Tang Yuan said, “Did you hear me?”
Zhao Zheng replied, “I heard you.”
What a mess, at such a moment of urgency, he was still so dumb.
Tang Yuan got up to go find the female ghost. Zhao Zheng quickly caught up with him and comforted, “Don"t be so scared, I am with you. If the ghost attacks you, you can shove me forward as a shield.”
Just now, when Tang Yuan forced the ghost to materialize, he had seen that Tang Yuan"s body had been shaking the whole time. Even a fool would know that Tang Yuan was afraid, that"s why he was playing up the dumb act a bit, so that Tang Yuan wouldn"t be so scared.
His words made Tang Yuan laugh. “Rest a.s.sured, I, your daddy, can handle this ghost.”
He hadn"t been confident before, but after seeing the female ghost, he had realized that the female ghost wasn"t terrible and wasn"t very strong, so he felt that he could clean the female ghost right up.
Zhao Zheng didn"t hit him, he just nodded. “Do you know where the ghost is running to now?”
Tang Yuan raised the lipstick in his hand and said, “The lipstick is in our hands, so she"s not far away. She"s probably in this building.”
Zhao Zheng"s family was very rich, so they lived in a single-family villa. However, the villa had a total of five floors, including the bas.e.m.e.nt, so it would take a long time to search the floors one by one.
Tang Yuan said, “You were just attacked by the female ghost, go to the top floor to bask in the sun to recover.”
Zhao Zheng didn"t dare to go, “No, I can"t leave you.”
Tang Yuan ruthlessly replied, “I think you"re getting in my way.”
Zhao Zheng: “…” That year, in the village where the apricots bloomed, in the light rain (reference to famous poem), did you finally turn your back on me?
Tang Yuan went to find the ghost. Zhao Zheng grievously went to the top floor. He didn"t know why, but when he found that his household"s stairs were actually echoing as he walked up, he felt that something was wrong.
He paused after a few steps and the echo disappeared. He took a few more steps and the echo came back. But, if he was wearing sneakers, why did they give off the echo of high heels?
He turned his head back slightly, squinted his eyes, and looked back. He saw a splash of red behind himself and he became so scared that both legs suddenly went weak. He remembered that when Tang Yuan forced the female ghost to materialize, the female ghost had been wearing a red dress. So he didn"t even need to look at all to know what the thing behind him was.
“Rice Ball, help me, the ghost!”
He howled at the top of his lungs and ran upstairs.
When he turned a corner, he looked back. Sure enough, he saw a woman in a red dress. The woman"s hair was messy and there was still blood on her neck. The thing that caused Zhao Zheng to crack the most was that the female ghost had a large blood-covered mouth that was slowly splitting open as she giggled at him.
“Aaaaah!”
Zhao Zheng ran like mad up the stairs, but soon he realized that though he had run for a long time, it actually turned out he was just moving in place and that the female ghost was already standing right behind him.
His body shook as he turned to face the female ghost and once again saw the female ghost"s face and that big b.l.o.o.d.y mouth.
But soon he found that something was wrong. The female ghost"s mouth didn"t seem to be that big. The reason why he had thought the mouth was huge was because the female ghost……had lipstick painted on crookedly??!
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