Sun Qi was already drifting in and out of consciousness. Jarred awake by the jostling motion, she realized she had been slung over Ding Shi's shoulder. With every step he took, his shoulder drove right into her stomach, making her violently nauseated. "Wang Wu... just let me die."
With a determined gaze, Ding Shi replied, "No man left behind. Never give up."
Sun Qi asked weakly, "Could you change positions? I'm not asking for a bridal carry, but a piggyback would do, wouldn't it?"
"We're almost there." Ding Shi gave a perfunctory reply. He had been bossed around by the village chief all day, spent the night matching wits and courage with the ghost grandma, and now had to moonlight as a rescue worker. But at the thought that there was still karmic merit to be had back at Grandma Wang's house, he couldn't afford to waste time. Though he didn't know what karmic merit was good for or how to obtain it, anything free was worth taking.
At this thought, Ding Shi picked up the pace. Sun Qi felt even worse and dry-heaved repeatedly, gagging between words: "Wang Wu... you're a good person."
For a moment, Ding Shi felt a twinge of bewilderment. Was he? Maybe! He was saving someone's life, after all—even if it was just a quest from the village chief.
Sun Qi asked, "How much time do I have left?"
Ding Shi glanced at the system countdown: seven minutes remained. "Two minutes," he said. If he told the truth and she knew there was plenty of time, there was no telling what other demands she might make.
Sun Qi took a deep breath. "I can hang on."
So Ding Shi broke into a sprint.
As an urban professional, Sun Qi had strict standards for her weight. A hundred jin or so was nothing to Ding Shi, especially with her belly serving as a cushion. In under five minutes, he arrived at Dr. Qian's house.
He hammered on the door for thirty seconds. Following Dr. Qian's instructions, he placed Sun Qi onto the bed. Dr. Qian said, "Xiao Ding, go boil a pot of hot water for me."
Ding Shi glanced at the system interface—no new quest. Sure enough, he was merely the village chief's assistant, not the entire village's assistant. He replied, "Dr. Qian, as long as evil still plagues this village, I cannot stop to boil hot water." Having said that, he abandoned Dr. Qian, who was still trying to parse his words, and dashed off.
He hurried as fast as his legs would carry him toward Grandma Wang's house, even taking a spill along the way. When he finally made it, he arrived just in time to see the ghost grandma dissolve into specks of starlight and fade away, several points of light drifting directly into Blind Zhao's body.
*Is that merit?* Ding Shi strode up to Blind Zhao, fixing him with a stare that demanded an explanation: *Why didn't you wait for me?*
Blind Zhao caught on quickly. Reaching into his robes, he brought out a brass bell. "This is a family heirloom the master gave to my grandfather. There are only two in existence, and now I'm giving you one."
Since the outcome was already settled, Ding Shi accepted the bell with good grace and asked, "Uncle Zhao, could you explain to me what karmic merit does, and how one earns it?"
Blind Zhao studied Ding Shi for a moment, then gestured for them to talk as they walked. "Helping Grandma Wang fulfill her lingering obsession and sending her soul back to the underworld—that is karmic merit. For ordinary people, karmic merit serves only one purpose: it determines whether a person can reincarnate into a good life after death."
Ding Shi tried to translate that into game terms: *Does karmic merit lessen the death penalty?*
As he escorted Blind Zhao home, the guilt-ridden old man shared a great deal of ghost lore that hadn't been in *On Ghosts*, covering folk knowledge like the three fires within the human body and how to ward off spirits. When they drew near Blind Zhao's home, the conversation shifted from San Niang to zombies. Blind Zhao stated explicitly that zombies had almost nothing to do with spirits.
To put it simply, a zombie was an exceptionally tough corpse. But because it lacked a soul—or possessed only an incomplete soul—it was essentially incapable of thought. Its attacks on livestock and people, and its tearing into living flesh, were purely beastlike instincts. To the living, a zombie was far more terrifying than a ghost. Moreover, zombies came in various grades, though Blind Zhao didn't go into detail—even against the weakest, run-of-the-mill Tier 1 zombie, Ding Shi wouldn't stand a chance anyway.
Zombies possessed one defining trait—a weakness, in a sense. Much like female mosquitoes, they tracked their prey by detecting its breath.
Why had Ding Shi asked about San Niang? He believed the rumor of a great treasure hidden inside her coffin was fairly credible. Since Blind Zhao had sworn up and down that taking the treasure wouldn't cause any repercussions, Ding Shi decided to scout out San Niang Temple during daylight tomorrow. If everything went smoothly, he would make his move tomorrow night.
The only thing worrying him was whether Zhang San, who lived right next door to San Niang Temple, had already snatched the treasure.
After seeing Blind Zhao home, Ding Shi headed back toward the village chief's house. Along the way, he first converted the talisman diagram into a card. The system classified the talisman card as miscellaneous, just like the stone card. That was likely because the paper merely contained the drawing instructions for the talisman, rather than possessing the powers of a true talisman.
Next came the brass bell card, which the system classified as an item. Its sole function was to attract ghosts: whenever the bell was rung, any spirits in the area would be drawn to the sound. The bell had a maximum audible radius of fifteen meters, subject to factors like ambient noise and terrain. In other words, the damned thing actually adhered to physical laws.
***
On the fourth day, at eight in the morning, the village chief shook Ding Shi awake. Ding Shi peered up at him with dark circles under his eyes, his expression screaming: *Are you trying to run me into the ground?*
The village chief said amiably, "Xiao Ding, go represent the village office at Grandma Wang's house to read the eulogy, and see her off on her final journey."
Instead of answering right away, Ding Shi sat upright. "Village Chief, did something happen over at the school?"
The village chief replied, "Blind Zhao told me everything. So pitiful... that poor boy, gone at such a young age to join his grandma. The authorities already took the corpse away this morning."
Ding Shi asked, "What about the volunteer?"
"She's still on an IV drip over at Dr. Qian's," the village chief replied. "Doesn't seem to be in any serious danger. Here is the eulogy." He set a prepared speech on the nightstand.
Ding Shi asked again, "Isn't the wake supposed to last three days?"
The village chief explained patiently, "Blind Zhao says Grandma Wang's situation is unusual, so we can't follow the old customs. He's performing funeral rites right now, and the coffin will be carried out at nine sharp."
Ding Shi yawned and nodded. "Understood."
Half an hour later, Ding Shi dragged his exhausted body to Grandma Wang's house. Watching Blind Zhao—clad in Buddhist robes and a Taoist cap—hopping and chanting energetically before the coffin, Ding Shi felt a fleeting surge of bewilderment. *How does this man have so much energy?*
Half-asleep, Ding Shi went through the motions and read the eulogy. Blind Zhao announced that it was time to drive in the coffin nails and lift the casket. A junior member of the Wang clan walked at the front carrying the funeral portrait, while clan members tossed joss paper into the air along the path as four pallbearers set out with the coffin. Yawning repeatedly, Ding Shi followed the funeral procession on a one-kilometer trek to the burial mountain.
Though the mountain was tall, the Wang family cemetery wasn't high up. Lower the coffin, burn joss paper, set off firecrackers, cover it with dirt—done.
By the time he followed the procession back to the village, it was already eleven-thirty in the morning. The pass out of the mountain lay to the south, barely two hundred meters from San Niang Temple. Ding Shi slipped away from the returning crowd, stepped behind a patch of reeds, and unzipped his trousers to relieve himself. One of the mourners glanced back, thought nothing of it, and kept chatting as he walked on.
Ding Shi used the excuse of taking a leak to survey the surroundings. After all, if he was going to steal something, he had to avoid prying eyes. Following the trail uphill, he safely passed the temporary residence shared by Haitang and Zhang San. But as he looked ahead, he saw a crowd of villagers gathered outside San Niang Temple.
Ding Shi suddenly felt like an utter clown. If he could have simply walked up to scout the place in broad daylight, why had he bothered sneaking around like a thief in the shadows?
Chapter 16