Purana
Ruan Yunsheng was sitting cross-legged on the couch with her eyes closed, when she suddenly felt a piercing chill on her back. She turned around abruptly.
"ah!"
A green-faced, fang-toothed ghost face was almost touching the tip of her nose, and a scarlet tongue hung down to her chest, still dripping with blood.
"Is there something wrong with you Yincha?"
Ruan Yunsheng nearly fell off the couch as he leaned back, clutching his pounding heart. He angrily exclaimed, "Do you have to be so terrifying every time you appear? Can't you try a more benevolent look?"
Hei Wuchang tilted his head, and his fangs retracted with a click: "How do you know this is not our original appearance?"
"I guessed." Ruan Yunsheng rolled her eyes and thought to herself, how could she not know after spending so much time with the people from the underworld in her previous life?
Seeing that the Black and White Impermanence weren't fooled by her, Ruan Yunsheng quickly changed the subject: "Did Yama send you to check on us?"
Bai Wuchang's chains rattled. "Yan Jun said..."
He suddenly leaned in close, his cool breath brushing Ruan Yunsheng's ear. "Miss Ruan, if you don't keep your promise to her, don't blame him for being rude."
Ruan Yunsheng jumped up with a start: "I'll go right away!"
So on a dark and windy night, Ruan Yunsheng wrapped himself in a cloak and dragged his tired body towards the mass grave outside the city.
Looking at the wandering souls floating in front of her, she took out the jade flute from the space, and the Black and White Impermanence beside her quickly put on earplugs. They were waiting to rely on this job to support their family.
The night wind was howling, and Ruan Yunsheng's flute music was heard faintly. The tune was very strange, as if someone was pinching the neck and forcing the person to sing, or as if a rusty knife was scraping bones, which made people's teeth ache.
But those wandering souls seemed to be possessed, swaying and gathering from all directions. An old man with half of his head missing floated out from behind a dead tree, a woman covered in wetness crawled out from a grave, and even the bones in the soil made "cracking" sounds, piecing together a hunched ghost figure.
"Open the gates of hell!" Hei Wuchang shouted softly and slammed his mourning stick into the ground.
"boom--"
A dark crack appeared in the ground, and a mottled stone bridge spanning the Blood River could be vaguely seen. At the bridgehead sat a wrinkled-faced woman named Meng Po, stirring the bubbling soup in the pot with a long-handled spoon.
The wandering souls had dull eyes as they lined up and floated across the bridge. They took the coarse porcelain bowls and drank them all, heading towards their journey to the afterlife.
On the other side, several vengeful ghosts covered in blood were screaming and rolling around in the sound of the flute. There was also a female ghost in a wedding dress digging her nails deep into the ground. Every sound of the flute was like a branding iron, burning her soul and making it smoke.
"Collect." Bai Wuchang swung out the chains, and the female ghost was instantly tied up like a dumpling. "The thirty-seventh one..." He kicked the struggling evil ghost at his feet. "These are enough to keep the judge busy for half a year."
The flute sound stopped abruptly. Ruan Yunsheng held her knees and gasped for breath. The hair on her forehead was soaked with sweat. She felt as if her lungs were hollowed out. Even her fingertips were trembling slightly. This song of rebirth was even more tiring than singing it in KTV for three hours.
The Black and White Impermanence were counting tonight's "harvest". The resentful ghosts strung on the chains were still twisting unwillingly. He nodded with satisfaction, took out a bronze bell from his sleeve and threw it to her.
"Ring the bell if you need anything." He said it concisely.
Bai Wuchang added to her confusion, "Three long and two short calls are for emergency calls, two short and one long is for chat service."
"I know, I know!" Ruan Yunsheng waved his hands weakly, watching the two ghost messengers turn into green smoke and disappear into the night.
She stared down at the bell in her hand, on which were engraved the four small words "Special Supply from the Underworld". Suddenly, she felt a familiar sense of powerlessness. Isn't this the underworld version of 24-hour on-call overtime?
The night wind blew dead leaves past her feet. Ruan Yunsheng sighed deeply and walked home with tired steps. When she passed the edge of the mass grave, she looked back for some unknown reason...
The Naihe Bridge that should have disappeared was still vaguely visible in the moonlight. Meng Po at the bridge head seemed to notice her gaze, slowly raised her head, and gave her a meaningful smile.
Ruan Yunsheng shuddered violently and quickened his pace to escape from this strange place.
It’s over, it’s over. I hope she won’t find out that I’ve slipped through the net.
As soon as the sky was getting light, Ruan Yunsheng got up early, went to the market, bought a bunch of unknown things, went into the room and never came out again. Then he heard the sound of "ding ding dang dang".
Wan Niang, who was hanging clothes in the yard, almost dropped the freshly washed sheets with a trembling hand. She pricked up her ears and heard Ruan Yunsheng muttering excitedly from inside the house: "Add some more cinnabar... No, or sulfur powder?"
Several girls quickly gathered in the corridor, pushing and shoving each other to look through the crack in the door.
"A'Luo, go ask the young lady what she is doing?" Sister Qing pushed A'Luo who was at the front.
"Why me?" A'Luo shrank her neck. "I'm not going."
"Go quickly!" Hua Rong gently pushed her from behind, "You are the bravest."
"Don't slander me!"
Before Luo could finish her words, she was pushed and staggered, almost knocking the door open. She turned around with a red face and glared at everyone, but saw that everyone was looking at her expectantly and making a "please" gesture.
"Okay, okay..." Luo took a deep breath and just raised her hand to knock on the door -
"Bang!"
The door suddenly opened from the inside, and Ruan Yunsheng poked her head out with messy hair and suspicious red powder on her face. She was holding a strange copper kettle in her hand, and purple smoke was hissing out of the spout.
"You've come just in time!" Ruan Yunsheng's eyes lit up, and he pulled Luo into the house, "Help me try out my new invention."
"Wait! I haven't agreed yet..."
Outside the door, the girls looked at each other, and then burst into screams: "Ah! There's a ghost!" Then they ran out of the door in fear.
"A'Luo, please explain it clearly!" Hua Rong stamped her feet anxiously and shook A'Luo, who was huddled at the back.
Ah Luo closed her eyes tightly and pointed at the corner of the wall with trembling fingers: "Right, right there! No eyes, half of her head is covered in blood... She's biting her own fingers!"
The girls all turned their heads and saw only an overturned teacup in the empty corner.
"How can there be a ghost?" Wan Niang bravely took two steps forward, "A Luo, are you dazzled..."
"real!"
Ah Luo suddenly screamed: "She's crawling towards this side! Ahhhh——"
The girls were frightened by her and stepped back collectively, bumping into Ruan Yunsheng who had been standing behind them for some reason.
"Miss?" Hua Rong turned around and met Ruan Yunsheng's smiling face, holding a strange copper pot in his hand.
"Come, let's all try my new invention."
"Wait! Don't..."
"puff……"
The pungent dust sprayed towards them, and the girls screamed in pain.
"My eyes!"
“It’s so spicy!”
"Ahem...what's that smell?"
Huarong rubbed her eyes with tears streaming down her face. Suddenly, she paused. In her blurry vision, she saw a bloody figure in the corner! The ghost was using her broken fingers to pick at the broken pieces of a teacup on the ground. Half of her head was tilted, and her dark eye sockets stared straight at them...
“Ahhhhhhhhh—”
The screams nearly blew the roof off.
Ruan Yunsheng noted with satisfaction: "The effect lasts about thirty seconds, and the side effect is irritation and discomfort... Hmm, it needs improvement."
The effect of the drug gradually wore off, and the girls collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath in shock. Ah Luo was the first to come to her senses, trembling as she grabbed Ruan Yunsheng's sleeve. "Miss, are you, are you possessed by that female ghost? Why are you talking nonsense..."
Ruan Yunsheng chuckled and patted her head. "Remember those 'little tricks' in the inn's cellar?" She blinked. "That was all thanks to An Yue's help."
"An Yue?"
Ah Luo repeated the name in a low voice, and suddenly her eyes widened: "That's the one just now..."
"Yes, she was also killed by the Zhuang family father and son." Ruan Yunsheng's voice became softer. "She was originally a zither player in the music hall. She was only nineteen when she died."
The courtyard fell silent for a moment. Wan Niang pinched the corner of her clothes and asked hesitantly, "But even so, Miss, facing this kind of thing every day... Aren't you afraid?"
"Pfft, I was just trying to scare you!" Ruan Yunsheng suddenly laughed out loud and shook the spray in his hand. "An Yue changed her appearance on purpose. She was actually very beautiful when she was alive."
She raised the spray with a wicked grin, "Want to see it?"
"don't want!!"
The girls screamed in unison and scrambled to the door. They never wanted to experience the feeling of their eyes being soaked in pepper spray again!
Ruan Yunsheng laughed heartily as he returned to the house. An Yue was floating in the air, her blood-red wedding dress fluttering in the wind. She said with a resentful tone, "It's all your fault. You forced me to act so scary..."
"Oh, isn't this for training them?"
Ruan Yunsheng patted An Yue's shoulder with a smile, even though his palm went through her: "We are the ones who are going to open a haunted house, how can we not have this little courage?"
So she picked up the copper pot again, poured some strange powder into it, and adjusted the formula again.
In her previous life, the Black and White Impermanence had indeed given her the formula, but she was alone at the time, and her friends and family had long since distanced themselves from her because of her eyes. Now...
The girls' laughter could be heard outside the window. Huarong was chasing A'luo to apply ointment to her. Wanniang and Qingjie were squatting in the yard, studying how to carve patterns on An Yue's tablet. Even the youngest Xiaotao was holding a pile of cloth, saying she wanted to make a new dress for "Sister An Yue".
Ruan Yunsheng looked at the lively scene, and the corners of her lips unconsciously rose. The sunlight shone through the window onto her cheek, making her already bright face even more lively and vivid.
"I'm going to use a milder formula this time..." She hummed as she added a spoonful of scented powder to the spray, "something that allows them to see you for a longer time without being irritated..."
An Yue floated to her side, looked at the purple liquid bubbling in the copper basin, and suddenly whispered, "Actually... I'm very happy to see the sun like this again."
Ruan Yunsheng paused his stirring hands and looked out the window. The warm sun was gently enveloping the haunted house, as if even the shadows were plated with gold.
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