Chapter 162: Living Burial (1)

Seeing Blind Liu's deadpan expression, I realized he wasn't joking. I was baffled. "Old Liu, why do you want me to redeem a coffin? I don't practice ghost arts. Besides, if I drag it all the way back here, where am I supposed to put it? If I keep a coffin in my little shop, who'd ever dare buy anything from me again?"

"I certainly won't steer you wrong. This Lacquered Wooden Coffin isn't for you; it's for the Fate Ghost," Blind Liu said, slowly savoring the wine in his cup. "For those who raise ghosts, a good coffin is a rare treasure—something you can only stumble across, never actively seek out. This lacquered wood gathers yin energy; it's exactly what those dark entities love most."

"Are you sure you haven't had too much to drink?" I glanced at the bottle of Child Immortal Wine, now down to the dregs, and snatched the cup right out of Blind Liu's hand. "Explain yourself before you take another sip. That Fate Ghost is an evil creature. If I actually raise it to maturity, what happens if it turns on me?"

"It shouldn't. A Fate Ghost is different from an ordinary Little Ghost that hasn't developed any sentience. They are formed in that liminal state right on the verge of death, making their intellect far sharper than average. Moreover, you personally killed its first master. In a way, you indirectly avenged its murder. If we go by karma, it owes you a favor and should help you out once."

"Has all that fortune-telling rotted your brain? You're talking about karma with a ghost?" I shook my head, feeling thoroughly unsettled just imagining a coffin sitting in my shop.

"I'm merely offering a suggestion. How you choose to proceed is entirely up to you." Blind Liu smoothly swiped the nearly empty bottle. "It's getting late. I ought to be heading back. See you around."

He tucked the bottle into his coat and ambled out of the shop, leaning heavily on his carrying pole, leaving me sitting alone at the table.

"The Fate Ghost..." I murmured. Opening the Black Embroidered Cloth Bag I kept on me, I flicked off the lights and tipped the pitch-black eyeball out into my palm.

The ghost inside the eyeball had absorbed the yin energy scattered by Lu Xing's Fate Ghost. Its form was much more solid now, and it looked like it had grown quite a bit.

"Can I actually trust you?" I muttered to myself. The Fate Ghost inside the eyeball naturally didn't reply. It was incredibly timid. Ever since I took it out of the bag, it had been cowering deep inside the eyeball, not daring to move an inch. It seemed terrified of me.

'The Lacquered Wooden Coffin costs five points. Is it really worth spending five points to nurture this Fate Ghost?' I recalled just how terrifying Lu Xing's Fate Ghost had been, and then remembered something Blind Liu had told me a long time ago: once a Fate Ghost reached Mahayana, it could block a fatal calamity for its master.

"Forget it, I'll trust you this once." Slipping the Black Eyeball back into the bag, I took out the Underworld Live Show Phone and sent a message.

"Spend points. Redeem the Earth God Clay Statue, the Qi Gathering Pill, and the Lacquered Wooden Coffin."

"Points deducted. Redemption successful. Remaining points: 22."

After receiving the text message from the Underworld Live Show, I didn't immediately head to the bank. One of the items I had redeemed this time was rather extraordinary—a coffin.

'That coffin is about the size of a bank vault. Let's see how the Underworld Live Show plans to hand it over this time.'

I waited until a little past eleven o'clock at night. Only when the pedestrians outside had thinned out did I throw on a hoodie and leave.

When I arrived at the bank, the manager was sitting anxiously in the lobby, exactly as I expected. She hurried over the moment she saw me. "Mr. Gao, you're finally here."

"Are you the only one here?" I looked around. Though there were security cameras covering every angle of the bank, there wasn't a single security guard in sight, just this manager.

"I am solely responsible for your items. The bank will do everything in its power to ensure your privacy." The manager wore a practiced, professional smile as she led me deeper into the bank.

We went underground. I entered the password and opened the private safe, only to find a single black cloth parcel inside.

"Where's the coffin?"

Seeing me stand there in frozen silence, a clear trace of unease flickered across the manager's face. "Is something missing? Is there a problem?"

Her reaction was even stronger than mine. Clutching the parcel, I shot her a covert glance. This woman's eyes harbored an emotion I was intimately familiar with—fear.

It was just a simple package pickup, so why was she so terrified? Did it mean she would face some special punishment if anything went wrong with it?

Was this woman also connected to the Underworld Live Show?

I didn't say a word. I just set the parcel on the floor and turned my back to her to open it.

There were only three items inside. The first was a carved jade box radiating a chill, which held a pill about the size of a longan.

There was also a clay statue that looked like a child had casually molded it out of mud. It was a little old man about half a chi tall, utterly plain and unremarkable.

The last item was a letter. When I opened it, there was only a single sentence written inside: "Guo Village sugarcane field, dig three chi down from the stone stele."

I glanced at it and instantly felt something was off. Looking closer, I was shocked to discover that the handwriting was absolutely identical to my own!

"The Underworld Live Show truly leaves no loose ends." I knew my own handwriting intimately. Given the nature of my work, I always left tiny, specific marks when writing certain characters. I could tell at a glance whether I had actually written something.

"The Underworld Live Show imitated my handwriting, and they even perfectly replicated those little habits I've never told another living soul about!" I scrutinized the words on the stationery again. "It's an exact match. It genuinely looks like I wrote it myself."

I stuffed the letter back into its envelope and shot a sideways glance at the bank manager. She was standing far away in the corner, clearly aware of the rules and not daring to steal a peek.

I grabbed the parcel, gave the manager a quick nod, and hurried out of the bank.

'The address in that letter must be where the Lacquered Wooden Coffin is buried. But how am I supposed to get it all the way back to the shop?' I frowned in deep thought. It was an item I'd spent five points on, after all. If I just left it out there in the desolate wilderness and some wandering ghost claimed it, I'd suffer a massive loss.

'No, I need to head over there right now.'

It was already approaching midnight. I hailed a taxi and headed straight for Guo Village.

It was still called Guo Village, but in reality, there wasn't a single household left. The houses had been forcibly demolished weeks ago, leaving nothing but massive mounds of shattered bricks and broken tiles piled across the farmland. The surrounding trees were still draped in red banners bearing tearful protests against the forced evictions.

'How am I supposed to find a sugarcane field in all this?' I wondered, walking further in. I hadn't gone far before I spotted several night-shift construction workers huddled around a bonfire, playing cards.

I saw them, and they spotted me as well. In the dead of night, they probably assumed I was a thief. Shouting and cursing, they immediately swarmed over to surround me.

"Calm down, brothers. I'm... a wandering Daoist priest." My eyes darting around, I started spouting absolute nonsense.

"You're a Daoist priest? Dressed pretty damn stylish for a priest, aren't you?"

"Erdan, why are you even humoring him? Look at those shifty eyes. He doesn't look like a good guy no matter how you slice it."

"We're about to start construction here. If you don't have any business, stop sneaking around."

Hearing that they were about to start construction gave me a sudden sense of dread. If they dug up the coffin and chopped it into firewood, I wouldn't even have tears left to cry.

"Don't be so quick to doubt me, brothers. I see dark clouds pressing over your heads, and your faces are sallow. It's highly likely you've been entangled by something unclean." Blind Liu had spouted this kind of garbage to me so many times that I'd memorized a few lines. I didn't know the first thing about fortune-telling or face-reading, but my delivery at least sounded professional.

"Take that crap somewhere else. Get the hell out of here!"

"Immeasurable Heavenly Venerable. The feng shui of this place is incredibly bizarre. You are already at death's door, yet you remain completely oblivious." I spoke slowly and steadily, perfectly mimicking Blind Liu's tone.

"Fuck off, you psycho!"

"Foreman Zhang, what do you want to do with him?"

"Just call the cops. Stop wasting breath on this idiot."

Maybe my acting was a little too exaggerated, because none of them bought it. Seeing them roll up their sleeves, I quickly took a step back. "Calm down, gentlemen. I genuinely mean no harm today. But there is an evil fiend buried beneath this land. You absolutely must not act rashly."

I had been observing these men ever since they appeared. I might not know face-reading, but I had formally studied criminal investigation and psychological profiling.

All the houses here had been leveled, yet construction had been delayed. Something bizarre definitely must have happened here.

My eyes swept over the night-shift workers. Their arms and palms were covered in tiny cuts and scrapes, which looked exactly like injuries from flying gravel and debris.

Logically speaking, they didn't need this many people just to keep watch. Yet they were all clustered tightly together around a blazing bonfire. These men were definitely hiding a secret.

Realizing this, I actually relaxed. Channeling Mr. Gu, I put on a perfectly unfathomable expression. "The seven stars align, and the Alkaid star fades. Grass won't grow on your land here, nor will flowers bloom, and the trees twist into bizarre shapes. The terrain is high on all four sides and sunken in the middle. The qi field is utterly stagnant, filthy energy is pooling here, and there is absolutely no way out!"

I copied Half-Immortal Liu's exact speech from the Anxin Hotel. Pinching my fingers together to calculate just like Blind Liu did, I adopted the lofty, masterful demeanor of Mr. Gu, puffing out my chest and raising my head. Then, moving with the same transcendent, otherworldly grace as Lu Jin, I paced slowly back and forth in front of the workers. "A major accident must have happened here recently, one that you deliberately covered up. The victims' grievances remain unresolved, and so their souls linger on this land."

I delivered the lines with such absolute conviction that I almost believed them myself. "You mortals are blinded by greed. You have committed the sin of murder, yet you don't show a single ounce of repentance! If the laws of the Yang Realm cannot bind you, then let the fierce ghosts of the Underworld come to claim your lives!"

The workers' expressions shifted to varying degrees. Clearly, something really had happened here recently.

"Stop spouting bullshit. Do you know what era we're living in, and you're still preaching about ghosts claiming lives? If you're so capable, tell them to come find me right now!" One of them, who seemed to be the foreman, pointed a finger at me and cursed. "Run him off the site!"

"Wait!" I tilted my head and gave him a faint smile. "Do you really want it to come find you?"

The man remained stubborn. "Yeah! If you've really got the skill, have it come over and kill me right now! I had the guts to dig up Guo Village's ancestral tombs; you think I'm scared of this supernatural garbage?!"

'So they dug up the ancestral tombs to clear land for construction. No wonder the villagers hung up all those white-and-red protest banners outside.' I looked at the foreman and pulled out the Black Embroidered Cloth Bag. "Since you want it to come find you, I'll call it right over. But don't say I didn't warn you. There are deities watching three chi above our heads. Reckless words draw karmic retribution."

I beckoned to the foreman, stepping with him into the shadows where the bonfire's light couldn't reach, and opened the bag. "You want to see? Then I'll give you an eyeful."

The Fate Ghost crawled out, its appearance utterly grotesque and ferocious. This time, I made no move to stop it.

Looking at the pale, uncontrollably trembling foreman, I suddenly realized that nurturing the Fate Ghost to Mahayana was actually a fantastic idea. After all, I didn't just have to deal with evil Ghost Cultivators; sometimes I had to face malicious, ordinary people who were far more difficult to handle than any monster.