Early morning, the seventh day of the fifth month in the first year of the Republic.
Guangdong Lian of later ages; now, Lianshan Commandery.
Within Lianshan Commandery, Wuyue Town.
Within Wuyue Town, Five Fingers Alley.
Within Five Fingers Alley, Little Yizhuang.
Creak—
The door of the side room opened from within, and a youth in a blue-green Daoist robe, handsome from every angle, walked out rubbing his bleary eyes.
"First month since I transmigrated... twentieth day since I took a master... fifteenth day Master and Senior Brother have been away from home..."
Liu Xiu stared expressionlessly at the yizhuang, still as empty as ever, and couldn't help feeling this apprenticeship was a little wonderful, and a little not.
The wonderful part was that his master now was Maoshan's senior brother, Shi Jian. Yes—that Shi Jian, the Lightning Dharma King.
Senior Brother Shi Jian, who with one Lightning-Rushing Thunder Hand and one Muchun Great Art had nearly beaten Ninth Uncle off the map.
A disciple of Maoshan's sixty-ninth generation, the very Senior Brother Shi Jian now contending to be Maoshan's next person in charge.
The wonderful part was finished.
Time for the not-so-wonderful part!
Liu Xiu had succeeded in taking Shi Jian as his master, but this old... this ever-firmer-with-age, firm-as-bedrock master wouldn't teach him a thing!
At present his master Shi Jian was either on the road, taking Shi Shaojian out to slay demons and exorcise evil, or on the road slaying demons and exorcising evil.
Except for the first five days after he was accepted, when Shi Jian stayed at the yizhuang because Shi Shaojian was hurt and taught him a little, he then went straight back out to slay demons and exorcise evil!!
Liu Xiu could understand that much. Who had told his master to want advancement so badly? Even so, he felt that wanting it and doing the work still weren't enough.
From what he had pried out of Senior Brother Shi Shaojian, the Maoshan Sect at present seemed to favor Lin Jiu as the next person in charge.
Shi Jian had always worked hard. Every day he was either on the road slaying demons and exorcising evil, or midway along that same road.
But it was no use against the fact that people favored Ninth Uncle more as the Maoshan Sect's next Dragon Head. However hard Shi Jian tried, his future would probably only take him from the present Red Pole 426 to a later Marshal 438.
As for Dragon Head... let it go...
Rather than counting on rising through his master's rank, Liu Xiu felt he would do better to think hard about how to escape the certain-death bind in the plot of Jiangshi Supreme.
"As I remember it, the plot of Jiangshi Supreme went like this..." Liu Xiu turned it over in his mind and decided a song could sum it up.
Crazy Guobao's Jiangshi Supreme!
On the fifteenth of the seventh month the Ghost Gate opens
A desolate stage sings a ghost-opera stage
Lonely souls pack every row below
Wencai sidles over
Qiusheng, lustful, falls for Xiaoli
He knocks down the ghost runners and stirs up disaster
Ninth Uncle's real name is Lin Fengjiao
He sets the array and suppresses the ghosts
Hey-oh, hey-ha, the crowd of ghosts scatters and flees the streets
Hey-oh, hey-ha, the yin wind blows the yellow talismans askew
Hey-oh, hey-ha, the Primordial Eight Trigrams Array takes the front rank
Hey-oh, hey-ha, Shi Jian takes the stage...
...
Hey-oh, hey-ha, thunder arts split brick and tile
Hey-oh, hey-ha, the corpse-demon opens its mouth and drinks human blood
Hey-oh, hey-ha, Hundred Treasures Soup is splashed and true forms are revealed
Hey-oh, hey-ha, the righteous and the wicked clash!
Boom and rumble, thunder arts shake the hills
Talisman-light after talisman-light breaks evil and clears calamity
The Eight Trigrams Array turns and bites back; the evil path falls at last
The villains end with their souls flown and gone
Maoshan's righteous way holds this land
Daybreak comes, and every ghost and monster is swept clean~
Right—he had forgotten to say it. In his previous life he had worked in the entertainment world. How he had transmigrated, he didn't know. He only remembered that just before crossing over, he had finished learning a foreign language.
"What a pain..."
Liu Xiu said it inwardly. After all, with a lustful senior brother like this one, the death trap seemed impossible to avoid.
And according to comments from some netizens, the matter also concerned Shi Jian's attainment of the Dao. It was a kind of unavoidable tribulation.
Still, no big problem. It was early yet. So far he had not heard that his martial uncle, Ninth Uncle, had received the post of Underworld Bank Taipan.
That meant the plot of Jiangshi Supreme still needed some time before it began. That stretch of time ought to be enough for him to defy heaven and change his fate... right?!
"Say... where's my cheat? I can't have no cheat, can I? That doesn't make sense. I did transmigrate..."
Liu Xiu, who had spent a whole month looking for his cheat and still hadn't found it, turned this over helplessly. But he did not go on fretting about where the cheat was. He thought instead about what to eat in a little while!
"Right. What should I eat?"
Liu Xiu pondered as he began to wash up. When he had finished, and was just about to go to the kitchen and start cooking, a panicked voice came with urgent pounding on the yizhuang's shut gate.
"Daoist Shi, save us..."
"My master's not here..."
Liu Xiu called it straight out. What he had really wanted to say was for the other not to panic, even though he knew the other was very much panicking.
A dozen or so seconds later.
In the courtyard.
"A-Xiu, you and A-Long grew up playing together. You can't stand by and watch him die..." The middle-aged man's voice was thick with tears.
The man's name was Qin Erniu. His son was named Qin Xiaolong, a native of Wuyue Town, and one of the many neighbors of Liu Xiu's original body.
"That's right. I played at my house, and he played at his house. We really did grow up playing!" Liu Xiu nodded as he said it.
He paid no mind to the embarrassment that rose on Qin Erniu's face. But when he saw an illusory Thunder Dharma Eye appear above the ritual room, his expression turned grave, and he said seriously, "Uncle Qin, first tell me exactly what happened. Let me say this up front. If A-Long offended people from the gambling den, you've come to the wrong man. You ought to go find the security team!"
He said it mainly because he knew this A-Long was a hopeless gambler. Basically, whenever something went wrong, it was because he owed money and wouldn't pay it back.
"No, no. A-Long ran into something unclean!"
"Ran into something unclean?"
......
The Qin household.
The Qin household was not large: only a dilapidated courtyard enclosed by earthen walls, plus four main rooms and two side rooms.
Entering the courtyard, Liu Xiu frowned slightly. His gaze lingered a moment on the weeping Mother Qin, rested two seconds on the several bruises around Qin Amei's wrist, and then turned to Qin Erniu.
"This is Amei? She's grown so big!"
"She's already fifteen this year..."
Clearly more concerned about A-Long, Qin Erniu led Liu Xiu to the woodshed door. As the door opened, Liu Xiu saw A-Long trussed hand and foot atop the pile of firewood, and his brows drew even tighter.
"Ghost possession..."
What household's ghost was this bold? Didn't it know that everywhere within thirty li of Wuyue Town was his master Shi Jian's territory?
Liu Xiu looked strangely at A-Long, whose face was both greenish and white, whose body bore marks of self-harm, and who was plainly possessed.
"What? Ghost possession!" came from both at once.
Qin Erniu and his wife went pale with shock. Hearing the word "ghost," A-Long's younger sister Qin Amei turned white with fright and fearfully backed up several steps.
Liu Xiu said nothing, only frowning as he watched A-Long, who was looking straight at him—or rather, watched the ghost possessing A-Long.
From the satchel on his back he took out pomelo leaves, drew them across both eyes, opened his Yin-Yang Eyes, and spoke to the male ghost possessing A-Long, a ghost who looked a little over thirty.
"Why have you, sir..."
"You're that Liu Xiu who knelt at the yizhuang gate for three days and three nights before Daoist Shi took you in?" A-Long spoke in a tone unlike his own, one carrying respect.
The strange, chilly voice coming from A-Long's mouth scared the three of them—Qin Erniu and the others—into darting behind Liu Xiu in a flash, even though A-Long was their own son.
Liu Wants-to-Advance-Too-Badly Xiu nodded. His face and his eyes stayed as they were, and he said expressionlessly, "Yes. That's me!"
No help for it. If he hadn't knelt, it wouldn't have worked. Never mind that the original body's parents had long since passed on, that the fields had been taken by the uncles, and that the original body had been so poor all that remained was one broken-down house.
The simple fact that this world had demons, ghosts, and monsters had left Liu Xiu deeply uneasy. And so he had traded gold for a future.
The result was excellent.
His gold had been successfully cashed.
It was only that his knees still hurt, and still hadn't healed!
The thought lasted only an instant. Liu Xiu was just about to ask why the other had possessed A-Long when he heard "A-Long" speak with a chuckle.
"I have long heard of your great name. Long heard of it. My surname is Zhang, my given name San. In life I was also a man of Wuyue Town. Possessing A-Long this time is only so I can take the life that is owed to me..."
A-Long—no, it should be said that Zhang San, inside the body he had possessed—paused, then went on before Liu Xiu could speak.
"...I was a well-behaved wandering soul, and I never took it on myself to cling to the living. This time A-Long was at the end of his road. He knelt before my grave and begged bitterly, willing to pay with his own yang lifespan, and asked me to lend him a hand so he could win money at the gambling hall and sweep all before him..."
"Impossible! Our A-Long would never do that!"
Before Zhang San had finished, Mother Qin retorted in a fury. Zhang San said no more. He only looked at Liu Xiu with a smile.
"I know Daoist Shi's fame is tremendous, and that his way has always been to kill the wrong one rather than let one go. But... I didn't do anything wrong this time, did I?"
A tone that already had Liu Xiu sewn up made Liu Xiu's brows crease. Just as Qin Erniu and his wife were about to speak—
Smack—
Liu Xiu's hand shot out, and a talisman slapped onto A-Long's forehead. With a scream, Zhang San was forced out of A-Long's body.
"Stinking Daoist, I give you face and you don't—"
"Heaven's net and earth's web, the Four Saints attend the altar... Kui and Gang of the Northern Dipper, by decree I summon the heavenly soldiers. Wandering soul Zhang San, possessing a man to seize a life, relying on a pact to bring harm on mortals... By the Most High's command, swiftly, swiftly, in accordance with the statutes! Seize him for me!"
In one hand Liu Xiu held the ghost-catching gourd. With the other he pinched the mudra matched to the Ghost-Seizing Spell he was chanting. A pull of suction came from the opened mouth of the gourd, and Zhang San screamed, shrank, and was sucked inside.
Slap! Slap! Slap...
The mouth of the gourd was capped, and Liu Xiu swiftly stuck a dozen or more soul-suppressing talismans onto it. The voice that had begun in arrogance and anger was left with nothing but impotent rage.
"Stinking Daoist Master, you're not being reasonable..."
Liu Xiu gave a scornful laugh. When it came to crooked reasoning, he fancied himself no worse than anyone, and he said, "Don't use a willing bargain as a fig leaf. A vengeful ghost that clings to people and demands their lives for a day is a harmful vengeful ghost for life! I can't be bothered to reason with you. You're not fit to hear it!"
As he spoke, Liu Xiu paused, then went on. "So what if he begged you? You lent him yin power to gamble and overdrew a living person's yang lifespan. The root of the harm is on you. Can you wriggle out of even that?"
Once such, always such. Too lazy to explain; unfit to hear.
When he finished, Liu Xiu gave the ghost-catching gourd a hard shake, shaking the other into speechless agreement, and then looked at Qin Erniu and the other two.
"All right. This matter's over..."
Just as he was speaking, an arrogant voice came from outside. "Where's that rotten little gambler A-Long? Don't let him hide. Today's the grand day his little sister gets married. Have him come out and drink the wedding wine..."
"That's right, A-Long. Your Amei is marrying our Third Master. From now on you're one of our gambling den's own people. Hahaha..."
Wave after wave of wild, scornful laughter came from outside. Liu Xiu saw Qin Amei's already pale little face go a sudden stark white.