Chapter 29: The shallow partnership in Baishui Village
Shangning Province is far away from Tiancheng. If you drive there, you have to find a place to stay overnight.
Lin Zhuyue and his four companions didn't want to stay at the highway service area, so they simply exited the highway and found a hotel in Taihe City. Although the hotel was a four-star hotel, Taihe City was a small city with a low per capita income. A night in two standard rooms would only cost 760 yuan, and they could apply for reimbursement from the Spiritual Master's Mansion.
The hotel has a gym with advanced equipment, but it is not visited by many people.
After seeing the fitness facilities, Shi Can called Lin Zhuyue out of the room to ride an exercise bike.
The spinning bikes in this hotel are all relatively new models. There is a screen in the middle of the handlebars with a game on it. People riding the spinning bikes can compete in the game. Whoever rides faster will reach the finish line first and taste the fruits of victory.
Before Lin Zhuyue transferred to the Spiritual Master Academy, she rode a bicycle to and from school for more than a year. She felt that Shi Can was definitely no match for her in cycling.
But she lost two rounds of games in a row.
Shi Can wiped the sweat off his face with the towel draped around his neck. He drank some electrolyte water, sat down on the seat with a relaxed attitude, and asked:
"Another round?"
"What's wrong with you?"
Lin Zhuyue was so exhausted that he was out of breath. He asked,
"Did you take adrenaline?"
"Why don't you ask me if I'm on stimulants?"
Shi Can got out of the car, opened the new towel that Lin Zhuyue had brought him, and said,
"Wipe it off."
Lin Zhuyue sat on a long bench nearby, leaning against the wall, her limbs tangled in disarray. She didn't want to move even a finger, as if she were paralyzed. So she didn't take the towel Shi Can offered her. She just glanced at it and continued to play dead.
Shi Can picked up a towel and rubbed her head, ignoring her whimpering. After that, he handed her a bottle of electrolyte water and said to Lin Zhuyue, who was furious, with an angry expression:
"If you're exhausted, let's stop here for today. Rehydrate yourself and remember to massage your legs when you get back to your room, or you'll be in trouble tomorrow."
After returning to her room, Lin Zhuyue took a quick shower and then soaked in the tub for another half an hour. While soaking, she complained about the incident to Wen Miyan, who was washing her face and doing skincare.
"His physical strength is quite terrifying."
Wen Miyan applied essence on her face and said,
"Once, he and Ye Yangjia were on a mission to catch a water ghost. Shi Can and the ghost were pulling at each other, but the ghost couldn't pull him over and was directly caught ashore. You don't know how strong water ghosts are in the water. The Spiritual Master's Mansion has done special tests before, and some water ghosts are conservatively estimated to have a pulling force of 180 kilograms."
"...It seems that from that time on, Ye Yangjia never dared to say 'Hit me if you dare' again."
Lin Zhuyue recalled that when she was injured before, Shi Can seemed to hold her very easily.
Lin Zhuyue yawned while soaking in the bathtub and said:
"I feel like 30 kilograms is my limit."
"Because you're thin."
Wen Miyan turned her head and looked at Lin Zhuyue's body buried in the water. It was slender and had no muscle lines.
"If you work out and build muscle, your body's strength in all areas will increase significantly."
Lin Zhuyue felt sleepy, so she climbed out of the tub and wrapped herself in a towel. After drying herself a little, she took out a bathrobe from the closet and put it on.
Lin Zhuyue didn't like the bathrobes in most hotels because the fabric was rough and it felt like sleeping in a towel. But this hotel's bathrobes were fine. The fabric was soft and smooth to the touch and very comfortable.
She climbed into bed in her bathrobe.
It's easy to fall asleep when you're particularly tired. Lin Zhuyue's eyelids started drooping as soon as he touched the pillow, and his consciousness gradually sank into darkness.
When she woke up again, it was Wen Miyan who woke her up.
Wen Miyan opened the curtains and said to Lin Zhuyue, who had just woken up, when the sunlight came in:
"The hotel's breakfast buffet is almost over. If we start now and move quickly, we should still be able to catch it."
Lin Zhuyue got up reluctantly.
Before she came to the Spiritual Master Academy, she was just a senior high school student. She didn't wear makeup or curl her hair. Every morning, she only needed to wash her face, brush her teeth, comb her hair, and then apply some lotion as skin care, and she was completely done with her grooming.
The hotel's buffet restaurant is on the eighth floor.
The buffet breakfast in this four-star hotel is not simple, it can even be said to be luxurious. It is a bit like Cantonese dim sum, but it also has a seafood buffet. The quality of the salmon and sweet shrimp looks very good.
However, the hotel's behavior is really not very authentic.
Lin Zhuyue and her group of four stayed in two standard rooms, but the hotel only gave them two breakfast buffet coupons, one for each room. If two guests in a standard room wanted breakfast, they had to pay for a separate coupon.
When Lin Zhuyue and Wen Miyan arrived at the buffet restaurant on the eighth floor, Shi Can and Ye Yangjia had already started eating.
"Are you two coming for breakfast?"
Shi Can glanced at his watch and said,
"I thought you were going to eat compressed biscuits in the car, but the compressed biscuits I brought are quite delicious. They are especially delicious when eaten with milk."
Wen Miyan counterattacked without any hesitation:
"Be careful, I'll throw two cockroaches into your car. Your car will be overrun with cockroaches in no time."
"You are not a human being, Wen Miyan."
Shi Can pushed aside the sweet potato that he had cut with the side of a spoon on the plate and said disdainfully,
"It's really awful. It's watermelon red, not smoked potato."
Lin Zhuyue picked some food and sat down next to Shi Can. She also had things she didn't like, but because of her grandmother's constant preaching, she had developed the habit of eating food even if she didn't like it.
She ate the shrimp dumplings with a frown, eating slowly and with difficulty. She didn't dislike shrimp dumplings, but the crystal skin of the shrimp dumplings in this restaurant was not well made and tasted very astringent and starchy.
Seeing her like this, Shi Can picked up his chopsticks and took away another shrimp dumpling from the small steamer in front of Lin Zhuyue.
"Can't you just go get it yourself if you want to eat it?"
Ye Yangjia couldn't stand Shi Can's behavior of snatching food,
"We don't have only one cage. Do you have to eat other people's food?"
Wen Miyan said, "Shut up."
Ye Yangjia felt very aggrieved. He couldn't understand why Wen Miyan was helping Shi Can in the argument. Shi Can's mouth was more powerful than Lingwu Jueren's attack. Ye Yangjia was already losing the argument, and with Wen Miyan involved, he was even more defeated.
After breakfast, they checked out of the room and went downstairs to drive.
Lin Zhuyue lost his appetite because of the shrimp dumplings, and he took very little food from the table afterwards. Although he finished eating everything, he was obviously not full.
Shi Chan feels like she is eating cat food.
No, she couldn't eat as much as the baguette. The baguette was a hungry kitten, and it only took fifteen seconds to finish a plate of raw meat. Once the meat entered her mouth, she swallowed it directly, and her small teeth seemed to have grown white.
Shi Can opened the trunk, dug out a box of snacks from the corner, and stuffed it into Lin Zhuyue's arms. Inside the box were freeze-dried yogurt, dried mango, macadamia nuts, crab roe-flavored sunflower seeds, and small packages of crispy cereal.
After Shi Can stuffed his snacks into his mouth, he threw the car keys to Ye Yangjia, went to the passenger seat, and took out a map drawn by a patrolman from the mission file bag.
He wants to study the topography of Baishui Village.
"Isn't there a scale on the third floor of the hotel?"
Lin Zhuyue sat in the back row, unpacking snacks while whispering to Wen Miyan,
"I weighed myself and found I weighed 54kg. I haven't been eating much lately, and when I touched my stomach, my iliac bone felt more pronounced than before."
"Because your muscle density has increased."
Shi Chan heard the voice from the back row and said without turning his head,
"You're not skinny in terms of body fat percentage, but your weight is really too light for your height. You need to gain weight."
"When you gain weight, as long as you do it the right way, you'll improve your figure, not gain weight. Don't do things like eating only half an apple a meal to lose weight just because you're gaining weight."
Lin Zhuyue felt a little guilty.
She actually did this kind of thing.
She grew up late, and in junior high school she looked much rounder than she is now, with thicker legs. Every time she wore sportswear that was slightly tighter than her legs for ease of movement during gymnastics and mock side exercises, both boys and girls in her class would tease her about being fat.
But according to physical examination standards, she is clearly of normal weight.
She once tried eating only half an apple at a meal, but before she could do this more than twice, the nanny who took care of her told her mother about it, resulting in her being scolded.
Later, she was admitted to Yuancheng No. 1 Middle School. Although Yuancheng No. 1 Middle School was dilapidated, the students were generally of good quality. They would neither steal other people's diaries nor call others fat.
Lin Zhuyue also began to grow taller and taller, her figure became slender, and her legs also had beautiful lines. When Lin Zhuyue was just entering her second year of high school, she would occasionally hear the schoolmates walking behind her say with a hint of envy that her legs were beautiful.
"Most students at the Spiritual Master Academy exercise daily. Except for those who are much shorter than you, and some who are physically unable to exercise due to poor conditions, everyone in the elementary and advanced divisions should be heavier than you."
Wen Miyan took a piece of freeze-dried yogurt from the box on Lin Zhuyue's legs and said,
"It would be better if you gain weight to 65kg."
This number is a bit far away for Lin Zhuyue...
But she had a kind of expectation in her heart——
I feel like I can kick those annoying junior high school classmates over with one kick.
In the afternoon, they finally reached the border of Shangning Province, but it was still a long way from Baishui Village. The driver changed from Ye Yangjia to Shi Can, but soon changed back.
Shangning Province has many mountains, and the highway often passes through tunnels, where speed limits are imposed.
Shi Can had to speed up and slow down from time to time. He was not willing to perform this task in the first place and was unhappy. Faced with such road conditions, he drove very aggressively and simply handed the driving rights to Ye Yangjia.
After getting off the highway, they took the national road and headed into the mountains. While there was a road in the mountains, it was just a dirt road, not paved with asphalt or bricks, and the surface was bumpy. There were also roads up and down the mountain, and the dirt road circled the mountain, with a towering mountain on one side and a cliff on the other. And the road wasn't wide enough. Shi Chan felt like he couldn't go any further and wanted to back up several times.
However, the Wrangler still managed to reach its destination.
Baishui Village is deep in the mountains. There are about thirty households in the village. The houses are old and dilapidated. The newest one has white walls and green tiles. The walls are very dirty, and the eaves are covered with spider webs and there is even a swallow's nest.
The people of Baishui Village have relied on farming for generations. There are many fields on the surrounding mountains, but there are more forests formed by wild trees, and one or two houses have been occupied by weeds.
The person who came out to pick up Lin Zhuyue and his group was the patrolman who reported the abnormal phenomena in Baishui Village to the Spiritual Master's Mansion. He was a man in his forties with a beard and long hair. He was wearing a white Tang suit with black buttons and looked very steady.
As soon as he saw two girls in the car, he started to lose his temper.
"Didn't I tell the Spiritual Master House? All the spiritual masters who come to handle this matter must be men, no women!"
He seemed to want to punch the car.
"Did the Spiritual Master Mansion turn a deaf ear to my words?" "Yes, they did. Get out of the way now and don't get in the way."
Shi Chan pressed the steering wheel hard, emitting a sharp and piercing horn, warning,
"Be careful or I'll run over you."
The patrolman angrily pointed them to where to park.
Shi Chan stopped the car, opened the door and got out.
Someone had just died in Baishui Village, and the village was in the process of holding a funeral. People wearing white cloth hats and white mourning clothes were coming in and out of the houses. A few of them seemed to be craving cigarettes, standing at the door with cigarettes in their mouths, intending to finish before leaving.
Lin Zhuyue, Wen Miyan and Ye Yangjia also got off the car.
Shi Chan opened the trunk and took out two pairs of rings.
Lin Zhuyue wore a bracelet when he first performed a mission. There was a "line" connecting the two bracelets of the same color that was difficult for ordinary people to see. Teammates could confirm each other's positions through this line.
Still the same, Lin Zhuyue and Shi Can wore red bracelets, Wen Miyan and Ye Yangjia wore blue ones.
The patrollers were still complaining about the Spiritual Master's Mansion:
"What a bunch of bastards! I'm going to rip all their ears off when I get home for Chinese New Year! Ears that won't listen are useless. I might as well chop them off and stew them with pig ears."
"Are you Hannibal Amagi?"
Shi Can said quietly,
"Stop complaining. We didn't even curse. What's your name? How do you address me?"
The patrolman said, "My name is Lin Yunfei... What the hell?"
Lin Zhuyue had just put on the bracelet and looked up at him.
The moment the patrolman saw Lin Zhuyue's face clearly, he couldn't help but curse. His expression was terrified. He even raised his hands to rub his eyes and pinched himself, as if he had seen a ghost.
The village chief came out of the house and asked:
"Xiao Lin, is the guest you mentioned here?"
Behind the village chief followed a young man in his twenties. He was not as delicate and charming as Shi Chan, but he was very handsome and looked like a well-behaved and honest person.
The young man's eyes lit up when he saw Lin Zhuyue. When he saw Wen Miyan sticking her head out from behind the car, he already looked impatient.
Shi Can pulled Lin Zhuyue behind him.
"I'm Shi Can, an apprentice spiritualist affiliated with the Spiritual Master House of the National Security Special Branch. I've been commissioned by the Spiritual Master House to deal with the abnormal phenomenon observed by Mr. Lin."
Shi Can introduced it seriously and cautiously,
"I'm the leader of this mission, and these three are my team members. This is Lin Zhuyue, and those two are Wen Miyan and Ye Yangjia. We will deal with the unusual phenomena in the village as soon as possible."
"Oh, no hurry, no hurry."
The village chief smoked his pipe and said slowly,
"I'm Baishui Village's chief, Bai Wenbin, and this is my child, Bai Yucheng. Don't worry, little one. Stay in the village for a few more days. Once the funeral is over, we'll have time to host you."
"No hurry."
Shi Chan responded calmly,
"The academy's midterm exams are coming up soon, and I have other troubles to attend to, so I have to get back home early. If I waste time on a mission, my homeroom teacher will pull my ears and scold me."
This was said to the village chief.
As a young new-age class teacher, Fu Xingwei does not advocate beating or scolding students for education. He basically does not scold students, let alone pull their ears.
"There's no time to lose."
Shi Chan said to the village chief,
"This family is holding a funeral, right? Are there any unusual phenomena?"
Village Chief Bai stepped aside to make way for the entrance.
"Just go in and take a look."
This room was originally the main hall. After the old man passed away, the things in the room were moved out and used as a temporary place for the body. The wood for the coffin was very poor. It is said that the old man's children and grandchildren only raised half of the money for the coffin, and the remaining half was paid by his relatively wealthy son-in-law.
The people keeping guard in the main hall looked at Lin Zhuyue and his group with some curiosity, but they did not stop them. Obviously, they had heard from Mr. Lin in advance that there was an expert who would come to solve the problem of footprints during the funeral.
but……
Shouldn't the master be an old man with a white beard? Why are these people so young? They must be children, right?
The room was thick with the scent of incense, paper, and candles, and the floor was covered in a layer of paper ash. Footprints were visible on the ash, and there were also traces of snakes crawling nearby, likely left by something being dragged.
Lin Zhuyue whispered to Shi Can:
"There's a very oppressive, gray aura, but it seems different from pure yin energy."
Shi Chan took out the compass, squatted down, and brought the compass slightly closer to the footprints. The compass needle began to sway from side to side, which meant that the footprints were left by a spirit.
"This aura is indeed not like that of an ordinary ghost."
Shi Can stood up and handed the compass to Lin Zhuyue.
"I saw in the mission files that the footprints only appeared after March of this year, right? Are there more deaths in the village this year than in previous years?"
"Yes, quite a few have passed away this year, sixteen in all. Last year only three passed away."
The village chief answered Shi Chan's question.
"But those who passed away were all elderly people, all of them were sick and it was time for them to pass away, so we didn't think it was unusual."
"It was Xiao Lin who said this was abnormal and wrong."
"Oh, right..."
The village chief added,
"After our Yucheng's second grandfather passed away, his cousin Tianci dreamed that the old man was tied up and dragged away. He kept struggling and asked Tianci to save him."
"But when the ghost officer drags people away, don't they always feel very reluctant and want to cry for help?"
Shi Chan asked casually while checking the traces:
"Did this second grandfather do anything bad in his lifetime?"
Shi Chan seemed to be asking casually.
But the village chief seemed to be choked, his face changed, and after a long while he replied:
"His second grandfather was an honest man when he was alive. Apart from killing chickens and pigs, did he ever do anything bad?"
Shi Can stroked the marks on the coffin and said:
"Then I'll tell you straight up. Ghost messengers are actually very polite. They don't chain or drag good people away. They only use soul-binding chains when they're taking evil people to hell."
Everyone in the mourning hall had a gloomy face.
Shi Can raised his head, looked at their expressions with amusement, and then changed the subject and said:
"But it's also possible that the second grandfather really didn't want to leave, and the ghost catcher had no choice but to use the soul-binding lock to drag him away."
“There are still some residual souls in here.”
Shi Can stroked the coffin and said,
"I don't know if the one who took the old man's soul away was a ghost messenger. If it was, then we don't have to worry about it. If not, we must catch this guy pretending to be a ghost messenger."
"But, regardless of whether it's true or not, the other party will come to the mourning hall again for this remnant soul. Tonight, tomorrow night, or the night after that, or the night after that... In short, the other party will definitely come."
The village chief asked, “What should we do then?”
"We will stay at the funeral home to keep vigil."
Shi Can brought a stool over and pressed Lin Zhuyue's shoulders to let her sit down. He pointed at Ye Yangjia and Wen Miyan and said to the village chief,
"Tonight we two will guard the grave, and tomorrow night they two will guard the grave. After the burial, we will go to the grave and guard it until the soul-catcher comes."
The people in the mourning hall had no objection to this.
The matter was settled. Shi Can took Lin Zhuyue out of the mourning hall and went to the car to get a travel bag. Some tools they needed were in it.
Lin Zhuyue asked: "Is it really a ghost messenger?"
"Fake."
Shi Can took out his and Lin Zhuyue's travel bags.
"I feel more like something that eats souls."
Ye Yangjia added: "It can also catalyze death."
"You two should sleep in the car tonight."
Shi Can handed the car keys to Ye Yangjia,
"Hold the intercom. If anything happens, Lin Zhuyue and I will call you."
There was no signal in this place, so the cell phone couldn't be used, so the only way to get here was through a walkie-talkie. It was unknown how much mountain road Lin Yunfei had walked to get here, and it must have taken a lot of effort to get the message back to the Spiritual Master's Mansion.
"Why don't I and Ye Yangjiashou stay together?"
Wen Miyan looked at Lin Zhuyue with some worry.
"The eyes of the village chief and his son are shining when they look at Zhuyue, just like weasels seeing meat. If there is any trouble in the village, I can beat them, Zhuyue..."
"This spirit is very strange. Lin Zhuyue and I have strong perceptions. We can perceive things at the fastest speed, but you two may not be able to feel them."
Shi Can rejected Wen Miyan's proposal.
"There aren't many souls left in the coffin. It's a one-time bait. We have little chance of making a mistake."
Wen Miyan sighed.
The village chief’s son Bai Yucheng walked out of the mourning hall.
"Um... my dad asked me to ask you, do you want to come to my house for a cup of tea? And have dinner?"
Bai Yucheng invited stumblingly,
"I'll go back and ask my mom to kill a free-range pheasant and stew it with wild mushrooms. It's delicious."
He looked at Lin Zhuyue eagerly. Lin Zhuyue shook his head and refused, saying:
"No need, we brought our own food. We are not allowed to eat outside during the mission. This is the rule of the Spiritual Master's Mansion."
The Spiritual Master's Mansion didn't have such a rule. Lin Zhuyue was just making it up. She was looking for a reason to reject the other party, and using the Spiritual Master's Mansion as a shield was a good option.
Bai Yucheng said dejectedly: "...Okay."
Before it was completely dark, Shi Chan borrowed a kettle. It originally contained boiled water, but Shi Chan poured it all out, drew water from the well, rinsed the kettle several times, and then boiled another pot of water to make three buckets of instant noodles.
Shican munched on the peanut-flavored compressed biscuits.
Lin Zhuyue asked: "Don't you eat instant noodles?"
Ye Yangjia picked up a fork of instant noodles and said:
"This young master thinks the smell of instant noodles is too strong. Every time he finishes eating them, he feels like he's covered in the smell of instant noodles, so he sprays deodorant or perfume like crazy."
Lin Zhuyue asked:
"So he can't eat hot pot either?"
"He only eats clear soup, and he has to go to a private room. He won't allow people eating hot pot with him to have spicy soup bases, not even shuangyang hot pot. If he gets even slightly smoked, he'll get very irritable."
Ye Yangjia looked very painful.
"Eating hot pot with him is pure torture."
Wen Miyan added: "He can't eat grilled fish either."
"Then you can't eat barbecue, right?"
Lin Zhuyue asked curiously,
"Didn't we go to a barbecue together before?"
Ye Yangjia said, "There's an exhaust pipe right above the barbecue stove. You won't get much of the smell on you. Just spray some deodorant on it."
Lin Zhuyue looked at Shi Can with a slightly surprised look.
Shi Can looked back unhappily and said:
"What are you looking at? If you keep looking, I'll charge you."
Lin Zhuyue took out his wallet and handed it to Shi Can.
She found that Shi Can was very handsome both from the front and from the side. She didn't quite understand why the nickname given to him in the academy was "Tyrant" instead of "Succubus of the Spiritual Master's Mansion". Although he had a bad temper, he looked very seductive.
"Young Master has amazing bones."
Lin Zhuyue said to Shi Can sincerely,
"I have never seen such a strange person before, so I took a few more glances. I apologize for any offense, young master. Please forgive me."
Shi Can: “……?”
Shi Chan put the wallet back and asked:
"Ms. Lin, could you please not be so sarcastic? It's easy to kill our partner. After all, our partnership is very shallow and can't withstand such a test."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
