Poverty Ghost

"This time the commission I took was from a cultivator at the Qi Refining stage. He's been latched onto by a Poverty Ghost." "Poverty Ghosts aren't especially rare. There were plenty of them in ancient times. Stay around a Poverty Ghost long enough, and misfortune clings to you until you're destitute. The seniors of Mount Longhu devised talismans specifically for dealing with them." Zhou You was puzzled. "Then how..." Su Tingxue sighed. "When I accepted the commission, I thought it would be the same as before. I agreed without a second thought." "But the Poverty Ghost this time has changed. The old talismans don't work. It's fiercer than the ancient ones. Even a short time near it brings misfortune. Cash vanishes into thin air. Your phone shops by itself and buys useless things, and the charges go through on their own." "Because he couldn't see ghosts, the Poverty Ghost used his phone to buy a pile of useless things. Only when the packages arrived at home did that cultivator realize a Poverty Ghost had latched onto him. He tried to return them and found the return button dead." "What did he buy?" Zhou You asked, curious. "Air from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau." Zhou You: "..." "When I dealt with the Poverty Ghost yesterday, I didn't have enough experience. I didn't realize it was a new type, and I got hit too. I bought something useless." "What did you buy?" "Einstein's brain." "..." Zhou You pressed his lips tight. Only by recalling the embarrassing middle-school history of him and Chu Xiaoyao acting up together did he keep from laughing. At the thought of yesterday's exorcism, Su Tingxue's eye twitched. The ghost hadn't been removed, and half her money was gone. Luckily she had text alerts, noticed in time, and beat an emergency retreat. If she had kept at it, she would have been penniless. This money hadn't come from her family. She had earned it the hard way, subduing demons and exorcising ghosts for other people. Her bicycle, glutinous rice, and shaved ice had all been bought with money like this. Half her savings vanishing left her heartsick. "Automatic deductions would be bad enough. According to that cultivator, a Poverty Ghost can even make you take out loans on your own, borrowing on all sorts of apps to buy useless things. He's already buried in debt." Zhou You tensed. Shouldering a loan was no small matter. "No need to worry about loans. We're both minors. We can't get one. We wouldn't even pass a loan app's review. The Poverty Ghost isn't strong enough to break through that and force the two of us to borrow." Su Tingxue was setting Zhou You at ease. Otherwise she wouldn't have come to him for help. She had thought it over and over. Zhou You was the most suitable of all: underage, an immortal cultivator, able to see ghosts, and broke. "That's good, then." Zhou You thought a moment, agreed, arranged with Su Tingxue to ask leave from evening self-study tomorrow and set out, then hung up. Dealing with ghosts felt like great fun. Third year of high school was this bitter; he ought to find some amusement. But there was one thing Su Tingxue had gotten wrong. He was not broke the way she imagined. Like Nuomi, he had his own little treasury. Going by what Su Tingxue had said, once they dealt with the Poverty Ghost, the money in that little treasury would probably vanish. At that thought he pulled open a drawer. A fifty-yuan note lay quietly inside. ... The next morning, when Zhou You saw Chu Xiaoyao, he grandly slapped the fifty yuan onto the desk, brimming with heroic spirit. "What do you want to eat? Today only. My treat." Rather than wait for the Poverty Ghost to deduct his little treasury dry, better to splurge once: buy two fried chicken legs in the cafeteria, or a novel at the school store, and spend the whole fifty. Chu Xiaoyao stared at Zhou You in disbelief, a bad feeling rising. "You're not about to do something drastic, are you? Who bullied you? I'll go settle it for you. Don't look at me having no cultivation attainment right now. If it really comes to a fight, I still have ways." At those words Nuomi wailed. "Sect Master, don't die! If you die... oh. If you die, you'll just be the same as me." Zhao Zhuo turned his head, saw the fifty yuan, and was stunned. "Whoa, fifty yuan! Youzi, we absolutely can't go doing anything illegal!" Zhou You: "..." I just took out fifty yuan. Does it warrant this? Fine. Fifty yuan really was a huge sum. The meal money from home was only twenty-five a day. Zhou You was already thinking ahead: once he graduated and found a good job, earning fifty or a hundred a day, wouldn't that be flying high? Seeing that everyone had misunderstood, Zhou You had no choice but to tell Chu Xiaoyao and Nuomi that he was going to deal with a Poverty Ghost. It was the first time Chu Xiaoyao had heard of such a thing. "Say, can a Poverty Ghost be eaten?" Zhou You sought guidance from the great one. The great one widened her eyes and warned, "You dare eat this ghost? Aren't you afraid you'll turn into a Poverty Ghost too? Be careful you don't end up with the same fate as the Lord of the Hungry Ghost Path." "All right." Zhou You often missed the taste of Eye-blocking Ghost. Looks like there'd be nothing for his appetite this time. Next came the question of how to spend this huge sum of fifty yuan. "How about you lend me the fifty? Once the Poverty Ghost is dealt with, I'll pay you back." Chu Xiaoyao came up with a plan. "Would that work?" Zhou You felt a loophole wouldn't be that easy to slip through. Otherwise, why hadn't Su Tingxue done it? "A mere Poverty Ghost? Don't even dream of stealing a single cent from this seat!" Chu Xiaoyao patted her chest in guarantee. "Rest easy, Sect Master. I'll help keep watch too!" Nuomi copied Chu Xiaoyao and patted her own chest. Zhou You looked at the one person and one ghost, both swearing so solemnly—one empress left with nothing but memories, temporarily unable to cultivate, and one female ghost timid as a mouse—and felt very uneasy about the fifty yuan. "Forget it." Zhou You didn't much mind whether the fifty could actually be held onto. If it couldn't, he'd just count it as spent on the two of them. Then he'd have Su Tingxue reimburse the loss. Come evening, Zhou You and Su Tingxue met at the school gate. Seeing him, Su Tingxue was rather surprised. "Why do you have so many mosquito bites? Have the mosquitoes moved in on you?" Zhou You laughed, bright and open, a boast in his tone. This was a cultivation method he had comprehended on his own. "I'm refining my body." Su Tingxue's face was blank, her head tilted, utterly at a loss. What kind of body refining was this? Could this be Wenchang True Lord's exclusive body-refining art—getting bitten by mosquitoes every day? Legend had it that Hu Weiyong, the last chancellor of the Ming, was bitten to death by mosquitoes over the course of a single night. Had Wenchang True Lord drawn his inspiration from that? Reasonable enough, actually. The place they were going this time was rather far, so Su Tingxue chose to take a cab. The destination was a mid-range residential compound from more than ten years ago. After all these years, the compound looked thoroughly ordinary, and some parts could even be called run-down. Downstairs, a slovenly young man in his twenties was scrolling through videos while waiting for the two of them. He counted as the second cultivator Zhou You had come to know. Seeing them was like seeing saviors. His eyes lit up, and he bowed with proper courtesy. "Fellow Daoist Su, we meet again. Is this the fellow Daoist you said could deal specifically with Poverty Ghosts?" Su Tingxue inclined her head. The slovenly youth bowed again. "Kong Fan of Azure Ox Temple greets you, fellow Daoist." Zhou You copied the gesture with proper form and returned the bow. "Zhou You of the Carefree Sect greets Fellow Daoist Kong." Zhou You nodded to himself. This self-introduction was much more presentable. If the Carefree Sect hadn't been founded, it would have turned into "Zhou You of No. 2 High, third year, Class Three, greets Fellow Daoist Kong." It felt completely different. Zhou You didn't introduce himself as sect master. His cultivation attainment was too low. Saying it would shame the Carefree Sect. Carefree Sect? Never heard of it, Kong Fan said inwardly. Their Azure Ox Temple was a minor sect. Its sect leader was only at early Foundation Establishment, nothing compared with a top major sect like Mount Longhu. Yesterday Su Tingxue had come to help and gone home in defeat. Before leaving, she had said she would find a helper. Since Fellow Daoist Zhou You had been invited by that Su Tingxue of Mount Longhu, his background had to be impressive. Could he be from a hidden sect? "Please lend a hand, Fellow Daoist Zhou. That Poverty Ghost is hiding in my home." Kong Fan was somewhat agitated. The sooner that Poverty Ghost was dealt with, the sooner he could rest easy. "The Poverty Ghost is in your home and doesn't go anywhere else?" Zhou You asked. He was worried that when they went to catch it, the ghost would flee through a wall, and then it would be hard to deal with. "It can't leave. The Poverty Ghost is the previous owner. After he died, he was trapped in the house. I taught the agent a lesson, and only then did he tell the truth!" Kong Fan spoke with hatred. He had suspected from the start that something was wrong with the house, and the agent had flatly refused to admit it. He was not a man who liked to get physical, but this time there had been no choice. The Poverty Ghost had cheated him out of his money and left him in debt. He had even been ready to go eat leftovers at McDonald's. Only by using an immortal cultivator's methods to torture a confession out of the agent did he learn who the Poverty Ghost was. "When that Poverty Ghost was alive, he saw other people start businesses and make big money. Jealous, he insisted on starting one too. He hadn't paid off his mortgage or his car loan when someone sweet-talked him into spending four hundred thousand yuan in franchise fees to open an off-brand milk-tea shop in a small county town. His wife couldn't stop him no matter how she tried. She persuaded him for a long time to no avail, then took their son and divorced him. Sure enough, the milk-tea shop lost every last cent." "After that he survived by borrowing on all sorts of loan apps. He borrowed from every place that would lend, cycling the loans each month, borrowing from one place to pay another, until at last no one would lend." "Later he saw other people making money in stocks and wanted to turn things around that way. He lost his parents' pensions in it too." "Still refusing to accept he was jinxed, he mortgaged the house and the car, went to a casino to gamble, and ran up a mountain of debt. In the end he killed himself in the house." "No one expected his resentment to tower to the heavens. After death he became a Poverty Ghost. Whoever draws near it is cursed by it."