Gouzi

After arriving in Yang City, Gouzi first helped me find an inn and put down the things I'd brought. Actually, I hadn't brought much—just a few ritual implements and two changes of clothes.

After putting everything away, Gouzi and I found a nearby restaurant.

The restaurant wasn't big, but it looked very clean.

It was only ten in the morning, so there weren't many people around.

After all these years of knowing each other, the first thing us brothers did whenever we met was fucking have a drink. Everything else could be discussed while drinking, or after we were done.

We casually ordered four dishes. There was no particular reason—when ordering dishes, you either ordered two or four.

Because where we Northeasterners came from, three dishes usually meant either an offering to the dead or dishes placed before someone's coffin. In plain terms, putting out three dishes for living people was unlucky.

For a while, people online kept joking about this. Whenever they insulted someone, they'd say, "With your sorry ass, you won't get to eat four dishes your whole life." That was a pure insult.

And whenever someone came to visit our home, there absolutely had to be four, six, or some other even number of dishes. Even numbers represented good fortune.

If we went to someone else's house and they put out three dishes, then we definitely couldn't go back next time. That meant they were insulting us.

Maybe sometimes people didn't think of it that way, but it still meant they hadn't taken you seriously.

Gouzi and I ordered smashed cucumber salad, a must when drinking, along with garlic chicken feet.

The other two were hot dishes: enoki beef rolls and braised eggplant.

Before the food was ready, we had the owner bring us a dozen cold beers—meaning six bottles. Of course, it wasn't that we were only drinking that much; we were afraid that if we got too many at once, they'd stop being cold.

The owner also brought over a plate of peanuts and sunflower seeds for us to snack on.

Us brothers clinked glasses, then chatted about what each of us had been through lately while shelling peanuts.

Once all the dishes arrived, each of us knocked back four or five big green bottles.

I was the first to bring up this matter.

"Old Gouzi, what's going on with this Teacher Wu?"

"Fuck, I don't know either. His house is pretty far from mine. Mine's at the west end of the village, and his is way over at the east end. I'd been in Beijing for the past few years, you know that.

"Then I went south with you. After I came back at the beginning of the year because of something at home, I usually didn't have much contact with the villagers. When Teacher Wu started causing trouble, I didn't even know. I only heard about it from my mom.

"The villagers had called the police before. The cops and people from the psychiatric hospital came, but neither did a damn bit of good.

"But the villagers wouldn't let it go. They kept going to the township committee to make a fuss, demanding they deal with Teacher Wu. Otherwise, the common folk couldn't live in peace after being tormented like this. I heard several sows had already been harassed to death.

"The committee figured they couldn't ignore it either. If it blew up and got reported higher up, it wouldn't be good for anyone.

"So they thought they'd put up some money and find some spirit-medium or fortune-reading type to handle it. They'd brought in five groups already, and none of them worked. They either burned paper and drew talismans, or sat there chanting scriptures with a bang-bang-bang. Not worth a fart.

"Then I thought, Old Ghost, weren't you Cultivating Buddhism and understanding the Dao? I used to hear you talk about this Dharma body and that Supernatural Ability and all that stuff. I don't understand it, but I figured if you could handle it, wouldn't that be perfect? Us brothers could earn this money."

Ever since Gouzi and I met, he had always called me Old Ghost. We'd met back when I was streaming. My username had been Ghostie, while his had been Gouzi, so I started calling him Old Gouzi, and he kept calling me Old Ghost.

Hearing this, it wasn't hard to guess that Gouzi probably hadn't been doing too well in the half year since returning. Or rather, he probably hadn't made much money at all. When he'd previously told me things were fine and pretty good, he'd likely just been too proud to say otherwise.

I pulled out two Hongta Shan cigarettes and handed one to him.

After Gouzi lit mine for me,

I took a puff, chuckled, and the air around me suddenly changed. I said seriously,

"I'm not bragging, brother. Let me tell you the truth—some of the things I said when I'd first understood the Dao might've been a bit full of shit.

"But today, I'm not just drinking and blowing smoke up your ass. In this world, so long as it isn't human, there's nothing your big brother here can't handle!"

At that, Old Gouzi's little eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses instantly gleamed.

He knew me. I wasn't the type to start boasting after a few drinks.

Since I could say something like that, I could definitely do it. I never claimed I could do things I couldn't—not even when bragging. Even my bullshit only came from things I'd actually experienced.

"Holy shit, isn't that perfect, Old Ghost? If this works out, the two of us will make a guaranteed thirty grand. Won't things be looking up then? Hahaha, fuck, once the money's in hand, I'll treat you to a huge bathhouse by the station."

That made me laugh.

I gave him a wicked grin.

"Haha, the full-service package?"

"Hehe, of course it's the full-service package!" Gouzi grinned wickedly too.

Watching Gouzi start fantasizing before the job was even done, I joined in the nonsense.

Some of you might not understand what this "full-service package" meant. Some of you probably did.

Let me put it this way: this dragon wasn't an ordinary dragon. It was a coiling dragon, the kind specially meant to coil around a pillar.

I was only having a few drinks and shooting the shit with him, just joking around. How could a cultivator of the Dao still be obsessed with that kind of temptation? Even if I really went, it would definitely be because I needed it to cultivate my concentration—not because I truly wanted to do anything.

Just like the Fahai played by Teacher Zhao Wenzhuo. Green Snake seduced him back then to help him practice his cultivation and whatnot. Unfortunately, he hadn't held steady at the time, and Green Snake squeezed him big.

But I definitely wouldn't be like that. With my concentration, with this rock-solid physique of mine, even if she didn't squeeze, it would still get big. But that was fine—I could hold steady. I wouldn't fly into a rage out of embarrassment and beat up Green Snake like Fahai did. I'd only say thank you after it was over. That was what you called spiritual attainment.

No matter how wanton the outward appearance, the heart remained unstained by a single speck of dust. Ahem, ahem.

After three rounds of wine and five flavors of food, once us brothers were drinking in a hazy stupor, Gouzi came back to the inn with me.

Of course, don't get the wrong idea, everyone. He got another room for himself; he wasn't staying with me.

Some people might ask, what were two grown men afraid of?

That had to do with me, not Gouzi. When I was eighteen or nineteen, one of my childhood friends went out fooling around and caught some kind of disease somewhere.

One night when he came to my house, he slept with me. We horsed around, fought over the blanket, and kicked wildly at each other. After he stayed at my place for two nights, my balls suddenly started itching, then so did my inner thighs. Fuck me!

When my mom finally took me to the hospital, the doctor said with one hundred percent certainty that my childhood friend had infected me with that disease. I said we hadn't done anything, and there hadn't even been any physical contact. We'd only fought over the blanket.

The doctor said the disease could spread through things people touched. It had definitely been passed on while we were fighting over the blanket.

I didn't believe it at first, so I called my childhood friend to ask. Holy fuck, he really did have that disease. That motherfucker had totally screwed me over. It took a whole week of drinking medicine and applying traditional medicine before I got better!

Ever since then, I'd felt extremely awkward staying in the same room as other men. And if someone snored or something, I couldn't sleep either.

So I either slept alone or slept with women. I absolutely didn't sleep with men.

Why was it fine with women, then? What if a woman had that disease? Fuck, I don't want to talk about this topic anymore.