Chapter 18
Chapter 18 Angry Spirits
Then, Old Guo asked, “So, little brother, are you interested in this? Shall we get our hands dirty?”
“Is there money to be made?” asked Ye Shaoyang .
“Of course there is; why would I go and risk my neck if there wasn’t money?” Old Guo explained, as he smiled cunningly . He put out his hand and extended all five fingers, “50 thousand, paid by the police department . ”
“That’s not a lot of money for killing an undead lord,” Ye Shaoyang said .
“50 thousand is not a lot?” Xiao Ma yelled in shock, “Let’s do this, I’ll in join too!”
Ye Shaoyang rolled his eyes and looked at him, “Why are you coming along? What can you do?”
“I’ll be a small helper; I can carry things and bring you guys drinks . I only ask for a little share of the money, hehe,” Xiao Ma stated politely .
Old Guo laughed and said, “Let him go come along then, he might become useful when the time comes . ”
A short while later, the three of them went out to start their mission . As they walked out from the house, Ye Shaoyang stood beside the upright paper dolls and pointed at them . Then, he said, “Give it another month, and these paper dolls will form specters . ”
Old Guo sinisterly laughed and said, “I want them to form specters . ”
Ye Shaoyang asked with confusion, “What? Why?”
“I’ll tell you when we get back . Let’s go . ”
After they walked out from the alley, Old Guo told them to wait, while he went to another street to drive his old Pa.s.sat . Ye Shaoyang did not know the brand of the car, but it looked exceedingly derelict . He boarded the car and subsequently asked, “Big brother, why are you driving this kind of car when you’ve been making so much money?”
“Haha, I just don’t want to flaunt my wealth . if I stand out too much in this old area, they will surely come to me for money . ”
Ye Shaoyang and Xiao Ma looked at each speechlessly . What a scrooge this man must be, to actually worry about people coming to him to borrow money?
While in the car, Xiao Ma continually asked Ye Shaoyang for an explanation on undead lords . Ye Shaoyang did not like being pestered, so he slowly explained to Xiao Ma, “All spirits, demons, the undead, and specters have different levels of power, undead are divided into ‘mourning undead, undead demon, undead lord, and undead king . ’ All of them have unique features . For example, an undead lord usually has a layer of needle-like white hair . The undead that have more than five hundred years of cultivation are considered to be quite powerful . ”
When Xiao Ma heard that undead lords were quite powerful, he became uneasy and nervously asked, “Are they more powerful than the drowned undead we saw last night?”
“The drowned undead only have a horrifying appearance; they usually only have a few hundred years of cultivation . So, they are comparatively weaker than an undead lord . ”
Xiao Ma nervously gulped the saliva in his mouth . Then, he took a deep breath and said, “Okay then … just … just try to protect me okay?”
“Don’t worry man, you’ll be fine,” Old Guo looked at him evilly .
After they drove out from the city area, they continued for another 10 minutes before they finally reached a small town . Old Guo got out of the car and pointed at the mountain behind the small town, “That’s Mount Gu, and the shelters are under it . I won’t be able to drive up there, so we’ll just have to walk the rest of the way . ”
As they walked toward the mountain, Ye Shaoyang received a message from Zhou Jingru that asked him out for dinner . Even though making money and hunting spirits were important, but the chance of dating a girl was even more important . However, Ye Shaoyang had no choice, he was already at the site and very far from town . So, he texted a reply, “Xiao Ma just broke up with his girlfriend, and he wants to kill himself . I am trying to comfort him . I’ll give you a treat tomorrow . ”
Outside the shelter was a temporarily built metal fence . In front of it stood four policemen that guarded the place . One of the policemen saw Old Guo and came up to greet him, “Hey Master Guo, Captain Zhao has already called me to let me know . So, are you going to go in now?”
Old Guo answered with an affirmative, so the policeman proceeded to open the metal fence for them . As the policeman saw them slowly walk in, one of them asked hesitantly, “Master Guo, do you need us to accompany you?”
“No thank you, we’ve got this . ”
The policeman was greatly relieved . He nodded and said, “That’s good, that’s good, be careful though . ”
When they reached a bit deeper into the hole, the temperature dropped by a few degrees . Old Guo used his torch to shine ahead while Ye Shaoyang lighted up an altar candle and handed it to Xiao Ma .
“Don’t we have a torch, why did you light up a candle? Xiao Ma asked in doubt .
“This altar candle is filled with Qixing Gra.s.s Powder . It can detect Yin Qi,” as he explained this, Ye Shaoyang looked at the candle . It was burning with a black and green flame . After he saw this, he said to Old Guo, “This place not only has undead lords, but there are also some powerful spirits . ”
Xiao Ma asked, “How can you tell?”
“Black fire represents the aura of the undead, and green fire represents the aura of spirits,” Ye Shaoyang was quite annoyed and said, “Can you ask these things later?”
As they ventured deeper and deeper, they came across some small rooms on both sides . These rooms were a few meters in size . Old Guo explained to them that these rooms were built so that the refugees had places to rest if the air raids went on for very long .
“The homeless used to stay in these rooms, but after those series of incidents, no one dares to come,” Old Guo proceeded to shine the light into the rooms . Junk filled the rooms, and some of them even had mats or old clothes .
Ye Shaoyang let out a sigh, as he saw the hard life that the homeless had lived .
Further in, the tunnel was divided into three paths . None of the three seemed to have an end . Ye Shaoyang sighed and said, “Why is this place so big?”
Old Guo explained, “Of course it is, Stone City was one of the main targets of the bombings from j.a.pan . So, they built one of the largest air-raid shelters here under this mountain . It is believed that this place can shelter up to 10 thousand people . That’s why the corpse problem is difficult for the police . If this was a small place, they could have brought a few men with flamethrowers and cleared out the whole thing . Unfortunately, this place is a big maze, so it is almost impossible to clear it unless you have a few hundred people . ”
Old Guo first brought the two of them to the place where he previously saw the undead lord . It was in one of the rooms . As Old Guo directed the light into the room, they saw white hairs all over the floor .
“What’s this stuff, fungi?” Xiao Ma asked, as his hand reached out to touch it .
Ye Shaoyang quickly slapped his hand and told him, “Don’t touch that, it’s filled with corpse poison . ” Then, he then rubbed a layer of cinnabar ink onto his hand and carefully picked up some hair from the ground . He burned the hair on the altar candle . When the hair touched the flame, it became a sticky black fluid .
This definitely came from an undead!
All of a sudden, the candle flame went out . Ye Shaoyang was shocked, as only very powerful spirits would be able to put out these flames . Then, he quickly told Old Guo, “Light up the other candle . ”
Old Guo quickly took out the three-colored lotus candle and lighted it up . All Maoshan Sect Daoists used these when hunting for spirits in tombs or caves . The candle used cinnabar as a wick; the candle was formed from a special wax . Not only could it bring light, but it also had the ability to stop spirits from shapeshifting and tricking people’s minds . The orange-yellow light of the candle shined through the hallway, and a fuzzy humanoid figure could be seen coming from the depths of the tunnel .
Xiao Ma asked with a shaky voice, “Is that an undead?”
“It’s a spirit,” said Old Guo .
Ye Shaoyang pulled out his peach wood sword and waited patiently . He used the light from the candle to see what he was facing . The spirit had a long figure, while two braids hung from its shoulders . This meant that it was a female spirit . She was wearing a long red dress and a pair of black embroidered shoes .
“She’s an … an ancient servant girl?” Old Guo took a deep breath and said, “Gosh, she’s at least a few hundred years old then . She’s probably at the level of a hateful spirit!”
“What’s a hateful spirit? How powerful are they?” Xiao Ma stepped back and used the two of them as shields, as he turned on his questioning mode .
“It’s the power level of spirits, just shut up for now,” Old Guo replied without going into the details .
Ye Shaoyang did not wait for her to get close . Instead, he swiftly produced some copper beads and threw them at the female spirit . But the female spirit was agile, so she dodged the beads and pulled out something from her pocket . It was a piece of wood that was dripping with blood .
“Coffin wood!” Old Guo yelled, “That’s her cursed weapon!”
Usually, more powerful spirits would choose something that was full of Yin Qi and fuse it with their spiritual energy . In doing so, that item became their weapon, which would grow stronger with them . The female spirit held the piece of coffin wood in her hand to strike Ye Shaoyang . He knew this was not going to be an easy spirit to deal with, as the aura from the coffin wood was quite intimidating, even from afar!