Chapter 30 Plague Sets the Mountain on Fire
After dinner, Wen Miyan and Ye Yangjia slept in the car.
Lin Zhuyue and Shi Can returned to the mourning hall.
The deceased had four sons and one daughter. Three of his sons died before him, and his daughter, troubled by the unfair treatment she received from her parents, left home and never returned. Therefore, the only ones keeping vigil for the old man were his youngest son, Bai Tianci, and the family of the village chief next door, who was his grandfather's brother.
Bai Tianci knelt in the mourning hall, filling the lamp with a pot of tung oil. This was the local custom; before the burial, the incense and the lamps could not be extinguished, so someone had to keep an eye on them.
"Excuse me, can you please get out?"
Lin Zhuyue said to the middle-aged man who had just added tung oil,
"It's very dangerous when a spiritual master is on a mission. If you are in the house, you might be affected."
Bai Tianci nodded, stood up and was about to leave.
He was very cooperative with the psychic because he had previously dreamed of his father being dragged away in chains, crying out for help in agony. He thought that if it wasn't a ghost messenger who took his father away, he would definitely cooperate with the psychic to catch him.
Before leaving, he did not forget to remind:
"Remember to refill the tung oil lamp and the incense, and burn nine pieces of yellow paper every two hours."
"Even if he burns it, he won't be able to receive it."
Shi Chan's words are blunt and ruthless.
"Only a remnant of the soul remains. It will dissipate sooner or later."
Bai Tianci's expression tensed.
The room was silent, with only the flickering flame of the tung oil lamp.
Lin Zhuyue sensed the tension and worried that Shi Can would clash with the victim. Truth-telling people are inherently unpopular, and Shi Can had a unique knack for making his words sound like a punch, especially when he told the truth.
Fortunately, Bai Tianci was more rational. He knew that what Shi Can said was true, and that it was not Shi Can who caused things to become like this, but that "ghost messenger". He lowered his head and said:
"Please make sure you catch him."
Shi Chan agreed to the request:
"Of course, that's our responsibility."
Bai Tianci gave another reminder:
"I'm outside, call me if you need anything."
After saying this, he left the mourning hall.
Shi Chan took out items from his travel bag and started preparing.
Lin Zhuyue was also helping. She took the incense ash, realgar and cinnabar handed to her by Shi Can, and added the talisman water from the burned talisman paper used to suppress evil spirits. She mixed the ingredients roughly and started to sprinkle them on the windowsills, covering every windowsill.
Shi Can hammered two nails into the door frame at a height of thirty centimeters from the ground, soaked the red rope in talisman water, and spread a thin layer of incense ash on the floor of the mourning hall.
After all preparations were complete, they brought two small stools and sat on either side of the door, each holding one end of the red string they had fished out of the talisman water. The string hadn't been tightened yet, hanging loosely on the ground.
They were quietly waiting for the ghost messenger.
But some people are restless.
Bai Yucheng brought them tea, persimmons, and soon a bag of handmade egg rolls...
"Are you annoying?"
Shi Chan started frowning when he first brought something in, and when he finally couldn't help it when he brought the egg rolls,
"Didn't I tell you not to enter the mourning hall? Do you have a problem with your ears? Do you need me to recommend an ENT specialist?"
Bai Yucheng's face turned pale in an instant, like a pitiful little white flower. He lowered his head aggrievedly and said:
"I, I just thought you'd be hungry because it's tiring to stay in the mourning hall all night."
"If you knew how hard it would be, you wouldn't have come here."
Shi Can didn't show any good face to him.
"Your coming in and out like this affects our ability to catch monsters. If we can't catch them tonight, we'll have to continue guarding tomorrow night. That's really tough."
Bai Yucheng apologized and left in frustration.
Lin Zhuyue took a nap.
Shi Chan noticed her movements and asked, "Are you sleepy?"
"A little."
Lin Zhuyue took out his cell phone, which had a weak signal and was lagging even when making calls. He glanced at the time and turned the phone over so that Shican could see the screen.
"It's almost one in the morning. Is the 'ghost messenger' still coming?"
Although everyone has determined that the person whose footprints filled the mourning hall was not a ghost messenger, since they still don't know what the other person is, they just call him "ghost messenger".
"It's hard to say."
Shi Can took out a bag of chocolate from the travel bag at his feet, handed it to Lin Zhuyue, and said,
"Dark chocolate, it contains caffeine and it can refresh you."
"Thanks."
Lin Zhuyue opened the outer packaging, handed the bag to Shican, and asked,
"Do you want to eat?"
Shi Chan refused: "No, I'm used to it."
Lin Zhuyue peeled off a chocolate and asked:
"Do spiritualists often work late at night?"
"Well, because spirits also know how to exploit their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Many Yin-attributed spirits remain dormant during the day and only come out to cause trouble at night. That Pen Fairy is an exception."
Shican was very troubled by this when he was first promoted to the senior department, but as time went by, he got used to it.
"If we want to catch them, we must first find them, so we have to fight them in the dark of night when they are willing to come out, which is also when they are at their strongest."
Wouldn't that be dangerous?
Lin Zhuyue wanted to say this, but then she remembered that her companions had mentioned to her more than once that being a spiritual master was actually a very dangerous profession.
The hall was silent for a long time, with only incense sticks and oil lamps that had been refilled in advance burning. Shi Can had deliberately sprinkled a layer of incense ash on the floor of the hall. I don't know what method Shi Can used, even if there was a wind, the incense ash would not be blown away.
Outside the house, Lin Yunfei sat on a bench and kept watch.
The vigil attendant, Village Chief Bai, and Bai Yucheng were also there, along with a few relatives. With the exception of Lin Yunfei and Bai Yucheng, everyone else had a cigarette, either a homemade dry tobacco or a cheap one.
Village Chief Bai exhaled a puff of cigarette and said:
"That little girl surnamed Wen over there is really dishonest. Why is she dyeing and perming her hair at such a young age?"
"My grandmother is French."
Lin Yunfei almost rolled his eyes.
"Brown hair and curly hair are hereditary. Didn't you see that her eyes are also gray-blue? Why didn't you mention that she wears colored contact lenses?"
Village Chief Bai coughed awkwardly.
Someone nearby said, "That guy surnamed Lin is quite well behaved."
Lin Zhuyue has a kind of "quiet" beauty in her appearance. Her facial features are very delicate, but not ostentatious. At first glance, you get the feeling that "this girl is so well-behaved."
"I advise you not to take advantage of her."
Lin Yunfei made his words clear.
"Many people in Tiancheng care about her. If anything happens to her here, you can expect the spiritual masters to retaliate. You and your ancestors will never have a good life, and your family may even be destroyed."
Village Chief Bai said angrily: "Hey, you——"
Lin Yunfei said bluntly:
"I know you yearn for glamorous, beautiful, and sophisticated people, but before that, you have to look at yourself and see if you are worthy of them."
Village Chief Bai asked, "Aren't the conditions in Jade City good enough?"
Lin Yunfei commented: "It's too far off. Forget it. Maybe you can have a chance if you reincarnate again."
In the funeral room.
Lin Zhuyue suddenly remembered Wen Miyan saying that the ghost messenger could not appear in the world, which made her very curious. Now she suddenly remembered this and tried to speak to Shi Can:
"Um, the ghost messenger..."
Shi Can put his index finger on his lips: "Sh ...
The lights in the ancestral hall were dim, but the light was bright enough to see many things clearly. A cold breeze blew in from outside the door.
On the incense ashes that were deliberately scattered on the ground, footprints appeared one after another, accompanied by the sound of iron chains and the traces of dragging iron chains, slowly walking towards the coffin from the door.
Shi Chan pointed to the red rope in his hand.
Lin Zhuyue understood what he meant.
The red rope wasn't long, but it was more than enough to seal the entrance to the mourning hall. Lin Zhuyue had also sprinkled the windows with talismanic water. Once the red rope was pulled up and attached to the nails pre-installed on either side of the door, the "ghost messenger" who entered the mourning hall would have no way to escape.
A talisman had been left on the coffin in advance, but this talisman was drawn by Shican using well water, and after it dried, no trace could be seen at all.
The "ghost messenger" quickly approached the remnant soul he was thinking about and touched the coffin.
The talisman on the coffin reacted with a sizzling sound, and the "ghost messenger" retreated as if burned, revealing his true form.
He was wearing a slightly old black suit, a black hat on his head, a loop of chains on his left hand, and a padlock with a hook in his right hand.
It really looks like a ghost messenger.
But this "ghost messenger" has another characteristic. He wears a red mask on his face. The mouth on the mask has fangs. His facial features are ferocious and a little sinister, which makes people feel very uncomfortable.
Shi Can looked the other person up and down and said:
"I thought so. It's the plague."
Lin Zhuyue had read about plague in his textbook.
Plague, or Plague Ghost, is a type of ghost. However, unlike other ghosts, Plague often wears a ferocious mask. It devours the lives of the living, so where Plague exists, the death rate increases significantly. Upon death, Plague drags the soul back to its lair with chains, feasting on it as a delicacy.
Because the plague was always accompanied by the sound of chains, people often mistakenly believed it was a "ghost messenger" or "soul-catcher," believing it was there to take the dead souls to their proper place. But in reality, the villagers could not go to their proper place at all, having been completely devoured by the plague.
When he was discovered, Wen's first reaction was to run away. However, he was caught by the red rope at the door. When he tried to escape through the window, he was burned by the mixture of incense ash, talisman and water that Lin Zhuyue had placed. He anxiously banged around the house, making a lot of noise, but it was completely useless.
Shi Can summons the spiritual weapon Absolute Blade.
Golden fragments emanated from Lin Zhuyue's hands, and those tiny points of light gradually coalesced into a mass of flames, each possessing the fluidity of flowing water. The golden amber fire was like a water arrow with a pursuit function. Under Lin Zhuyue's control, it swiftly and flexibly pursued the plague that scurried through the room.
Someone outside noticed the commotion and asked:
"What happened in there?"
Shi Can said, “Don’t come in!”
Wen was probably forced into a corner and couldn't run away, so he simply ran straight towards Shi Can, who seemed less aggressive than Lin Zhuyue, and threw out an iron chain to try to capture Shi Can.
Unexpectedly, Shi Can grabbed the chain with his backhand, and with the hand holding the chain as the center of the circle, he rotated his body and hit Wen with his elbow. Shi Can let go of the chain, hooked his middle finger, and more than ten small five-thunder curses hit Wen directly.
The plague was struck by lightning and collapsed to the ground, unable to move.
Lin Zhuyue asked: "Is it over?"
"immediately."
Shi Can walked towards Wen with the absolute blade in hand.
"Just one more blow and it'll be solved."
But just as the sword was about to pierce through the plague ghost's body, the plague suddenly turned into a black wind and drilled out from the corner of the wall.
"Did he run away?"
Lin Zhuyue hurried to the place where the plague had escaped to check.
"What kind of situation is this?"
Shi Can also felt puzzled.
He had set up various simple and complex barriers in every accessible area of the house. He was no novice in setting barriers, or rather, he was quite good at it. He had only encountered a few cases of ghosts escaping from barriers.
Lin Zhuyue soon made a major discovery. She waved to Shi Can and said:
"Hey, come and see."
Shi Can walked over and looked at the place where Lin Zhuyue pointed.
——Rat hole.
Shi Chan’s silence was deafening.
Oh no, I overestimated the living conditions of the villagers in Baishui Village.
Lin Zhuyue looked at the tiny gap and couldn't help but hold her forehead. She couldn't help but sigh that reality was truly magical and that any kind of accident could happen.
Lin Zhuyue asked: "Do you want to chase her?"
"Look at how fast he runs."
Shi Can used his absolute blade to poke the mouse hole.
"If I could catch up to him, I'd join the national team and compete in the Olympics. I'm in great shape and I might even win three consecutive championships."
Lin Zhuyue asked in confusion: "What should I do then?"
"don’t worry."
Shi Chan stood up and walked out the door.
"Although he runs fast, he is very greedy and easy to catch."
Bai Tianci asked anxiously, "Have you caught the ghost messenger?"
"No, we are just starting to catch them now."
Shi Can held the absolute blade, his eyes fixed on Lin Yunfei.
"Is there any wood with Yin properties in the village?"
Bai Tianci didn't understand what Yin-attributed wood was.
But Lin Yunfei knew.
Lin Yunfei graduated from Tiancheng Spiritual Master Academy. Because his spiritual power was too weak, he was not qualified to become a spiritual master and could only be a patrolman. However, he still learned the basic theoretical knowledge very well.
"The village chief has it at home."
Lin Yunfei thought about it carefully.
"There's a locust tree in the village that's so old it barely has any leaves. The village chief had Yucheng cut it down and take it home for firewood."
After being humiliated by Lin Yunfei, the village chief angrily took Bai Yucheng home.
"I'll go look for it at my uncle's house."
Bai Tianci threw away the cigarette in his hand, stomped it out with his foot, and just after walking a few steps, he turned back and
"Are there any size requirements? How much should I use?"
"One piece is enough. It's this long and this thick."
Shi Can raised his hand and gestured, then said,
"It can be bigger than this, and smaller is fine, but not too small."
Bai Tianci took note of Shi Chan's request and immediately set off to the village chief's house to look for wood. The village was not big, and Bai Tianci's house and the village chief's house were only a few steps away. It would take some time to knock on the door at night, but he would be back in a few minutes.
Lin Yunfei leaned against the wall and couldn't help but look at Lin Zhuyue several times and asked:
"Little girl, do you know Ling Yan?"
"I don't know him."
Lin Zhuyue lied without thinking.
"But many people in Tiancheng say that I look like him. Do you also know that Ling Yan?"
Shi Can sat on a mat next to him. He did not stop Lin Zhuyue from finding out about Ling Yan.
"Alas, anyone in Tiancheng who's older than you knows Ling Yan? If he were still alive, the so-called strongest spiritual master would have no place for this kid from the Shi family."
Mentioning Ling Yan, Lin Yunfei only felt regretful.
"What a pity! People are narrow-minded. The spiritual masters can't tolerate Ling Yan's existence after all."
Lin Zhuyue was a little curious about his biological father and asked:
"What on earth did he do?"
Lin Zhuyue couldn't understand why her biological father was rejected by the spiritual masters. After all, the spiritual masters could even accept someone like Shi Can. Did her father deserve a beating even more than Shi Can?
Lin Yunfei smiled, with a hint of sadness in his smile:
"If I tell you, I'll have to go to jail for at least ten years. When I get out, I'll be over fifty and a bachelor. It'll be hard for me to find a wife, and I'll be alone for the rest of my life."
Bai Tianci soon came back carrying a piece of locust wood.
Shi Can asked him to place the locust wood upright, then summoned the Lingwu Jue Blade, and with a flick of his hand, the locust wood was evenly split into six pieces.
Shi Can arranged four of the locust wood pieces, and for the remaining two pieces, he dug a hole in one piece on the left side of the center, cut the other piece in half, and dug two symmetrical holes in the remaining half.
The limbs, torso, and head, a little wooden man was made.
"Light a fire."
Shi Can said to Lin Zhuyue,
"Just a little bit, put it in the hole."
Lin Zhuyue suppressed his spiritual power as much as possible. Three tiny golden petals floated out from his palm and fell into the empty holes of the wooden man.
"It has a lot of yin energy, but also has a little bit of yang energy."
Shi Can knew that Lin Zhuyue didn't understand, so he explained,
"When a person dies, the soul is like this."
Lin Zhuyue understood that because the plague ghost would devour the souls of the dead, Shi Can created a "new" ghost to lure the plague ghost into the trap.
Shi Can beckoned his finger, and the wooden figure, which had been lying flat on the ground, actually stood up. It obeyed Shi Can's command and walked deep into the mountains.
"Although the Plague Ghost is stupid, he just got beaten up and knows he can't come to this place again in the short term."
Shi Chan carried his travel bag and followed the wooden man.
"So we have to put the wooden man farther away."
Lin Zhuyue carried her bag and followed Shi Can's pace.
Lin Zhuyue tentatively said, "Ghost Messenger..."
This was the second time she asked Shi Chan this question.
"Many years ago, it wasn't the spiritual masters who maintained the balance of yin and yang in the world, but the underworld. Later, some spiritual masters hoped to become the only group in the world who could mediate yin and yang, so that they could gain respect and power. To achieve this, they paid a huge price and sealed off the underworld."
Shi Can said in a calm tone,
"The underworld, the ghost messengers, and the soul-collectors are all in the underworld and have no way of coming to the human world. Therefore, when we accepted this mission, Lao Fu and I both believed that the 'ghost messenger' from Baishui Village was most likely a fake."
Lin Zhuyue and Shi Can gradually walked into the mountains.
Shican found a folding stick from his bag. He unfolded the stick and used it to push the leaves with every step he took to avoid poisonous snakes lurking underneath.
His eyesight was good enough for spotting ghosts, but not for poisonous snakes. Vipers, with their camouflaged colors, would hide in piles of leaves, making them hard to spot.
There is a mountain god in Baishui Mountain.
Not long after walking, Lin Zhuyue saw the stele inscribed with "Hou Tu's Deity." Shi Can fished out a small cylinder of incense from his travel bag, pulled out a stick of Vietnamese Nha Trang, lit it with a lighter, and inserted it into the incense burner in front of the stele.
"Here it is."
Shi Can let the wooden man lean against the stele, raised his hand and pointed to the higher hillside next to him, and said,
"Let's go wait there."
Shi Can was the first to climb up the hillside. He cleared the fallen leaves, reached out to pull Lin Zhuyue up, and took out a bag of realgar powder and sprinkled it around to prevent poisonous snakes from approaching.
Lin Zhuyue sat on the hillside. She took out her cell phone, originally wanting to check the time, but after turning on the screen, she tugged at Shi Can in surprise and said:
"There's a signal here."
"Isn't this the time to be on your phone?"
Shi Can took out the bag containing the recurve bow from Lin Zhuyue's travel bag, assembled the recurve bow, and handed it to Lin Zhuyue along with the bow and arrow, saying,
"Pay attention to the movements around you. You might notice the approach of the plague before I do. After all, your intuition is better than mine."
Those who know Shi Chan might be shocked to hear this.
Shi Chan is a proud and conceited man.
Sometimes he would rather have his legs broken than admit that someone is better than him.
But Lin Zhuyue really made him realize that there are always people better than you. That's the fact, and he couldn't accept it no matter how much he refused to accept it.
They waited most of the night.
Lin Zhuyue's eyelids were twitching.
Shi Can took out the bag of chocolates he had given to Lin Zhuyue and asked:
"Eat a little?"
Lin Zhuyue ate a piece.
But she thought it probably wouldn't work.
She is very resistant to caffeine.
Lin Zhuyue's previous school started high-pressure education in the second semester of his sophomore year. He got up earlier than the chickens and went to bed later than the dogs. He was extremely sleep-deprived and relied on instant coffee to survive every day.
She drank a cup of coffee when she woke up, a cup after morning self-study, a cup in the afternoon, and another cup after the first evening self-study class. She drank four cups of coffee a day until she started to feel uncomfortable in her heart.
The little caffeine in the dark chocolate is just a drop in the bucket for Lin Zhuyue.
They stayed there for a while until daybreak began to appear.
The drowsy Lin Zhuyue suddenly woke up.
"Here I come."
Shi Chan also noticed it.
Soon, a chilly wind blew. If you looked closely, you'd see it was gray. The red-masked Plague Ghost quickly revealed itself and instinctively approached the puppet Shi Chan had prepared.
"Born by the mountains, growing beside the water, it only has a form, but no soul. Now it has a spiritual body and spiritual fire, absorbing souls and energy——"
Shi Chan finished chanting the spell and clenched his five fingers.
"receive!"
The plague ghost noticed something was wrong with the wooden man and was about to escape when he was forcibly sucked into the wooden man by an irresistible suction force.
Lin Zhuyue stood up, raised her recurve bow, and amber fire clung to the arrowhead. She aimed at the wooden figure and drew the bowstring to its full length.
The moment he let go, the golden arrow flew away from the string.
It was like a meteor, streaking through the night sky, passing over the mountains and forests, and accurately hitting the wooden man.
The next two seconds were peaceful.
However, in the third second, the wooden man exploded, and the golden amber fire burned violently with yin and evil energy, almost igniting the night sky of Baishui Mountain.
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