The Ghost Killed Me

"Patriarch, you died such a tragic death..."

"Patriarch, hurry and take this paper money. Whatever you do, don't be stingy if you run into a malevolent ghost..."

"Patriarch, please don't come back to haunt us. We'll make sure to worship you on schedule..."

The mournful cries lingered in Chen Luo's ears, and he opened his eyes.

White funeral curtains and banners filled his vision. A huge plaque bearing the character "Offering" hung in the center, its strokes vigorous and powerful. Chen Luo lowered his head. He was dressed in a red gentleman's robe of fine material, while gold vessels and jade carvings had been arranged neatly beside his hand...

Chen Luo sat up inside the coffin, and an archaic mourning hall entered his view. Below, a little maid burned paper money while weeping perfunctorily.

Chen Luo was just about to call out to the little maid when a chaotic torrent of memories suddenly surged into him, making him shiver involuntarily. An uncontrollable groan escaped his mouth.

The little maid, who had been sobbing below, finally heard the commotion. She raised her head, and her eyes met Chen Luo's.

At that moment, a flood of memories was being forcibly poured into Chen Luo. His face was contorted.

"Ah—"

A shriek that pierced metal and split stone burst from the little maid's mouth. She rolled and crawled out of the mourning hall, shouting as she ran—

"Oh no! The Patriarch's corpse has risen..."

Ignoring the little maid's terrified cries, Chen Luo struggled to digest the memories in his mind. Before long, he understood his situation.

He had transmigrated...

He had transmigrated into the body of another Chen Luo from this world, who shared his name.

Chen Luo, courtesy name Dongliu, nineteen years old, both parents dead, with an elder sister and a house. He was the Patriarch of the Chen Manor in Wan'an County, Luning Prefecture, Great Xuan Dynasty, born into a family of scholars. He had recognized characters at three, written poetry at five, recited the classics at seven, and accomplished nothing by nineteen...

Ahem, these unimportant memories were best left unexamined.

"I died..." Chen Luo glanced at the coffin he was in and reached a conclusion. "Strictly speaking, it was the Chen Luo of this world who died."

"But how exactly did he die?" Chen Luo tried hard to recall the memories in his mind, and soon understood the whole story.

Starting from the fifteenth of last month, people in the Chen Manor had begun dying. At first, it was the tenants and farmhands on the estate. Then even the servants at the residence in the county town began to die.

At first, the county office thought it was a plague and sent a physician to investigate, only to find that everything was normal. Yet people continued to die one after another.

The authorities grew frantic as well. The dead had no external wounds and no internal injuries, and no symptoms could be identified at all. Thus, rumors spread among the people that this was the work of evil spirits.

Evil spirits—demons, ghosts, monsters, and fiends.

"Rumors really are usually the correct answer." Chen Luo wore a bitter smile. His predecessor had been one of the dead, and in those memories, Chen Luo had also seen the murderer.

It was a ghost!

From his predecessor's memories, Chen Luo knew that in this world, Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism stood side by side; humans, demons, and barbarians coexisted; and ghosts truly, unquestionably existed.

Chen Luo had seen the ghost burrow into his dreams. In the dream, it stretched out a three-foot-long tongue, wrapped it around his neck, and yanked hard. Dream Chen Luo's head seemed to be twisted off, while his physical body outside the dream breathed its last at the same time.

Chen Luo had also heard the ghost whisper in his ear: "The Chen family... wiped out..."

Chen Luo shuddered. Memories resembling scenes from a horror film were better not recalled while sitting inside a coffin. He carefully crawled out of the coffin and sat down on a chair.

His enemy was a ghost, and it would pursue him until one of them died. What was he supposed to do? Asking online—this was urgent.

Chen Luo began racking his brains, trying to see if there was any way to solve the problem.

Since ghosts existed in this world, there naturally had to be methods of exterminating them. Otherwise, wouldn't the mortal world have become the Ghost Realm? When it came to destroying ghosts, the most professional were naturally the Daoists.

From his memories, Chen Luo learned that the Chen Manor had located the Daoist Academy established by the Daoist sect in Wan'an County. But those long-nosed Daoist priests had all run off to participate in the Great Luo Ceremony held once every sixty years, leaving only a few useless Daoist boys behind to keep watch.

The Chen Manor had naturally sent people to inquire in several nearby counties as well. The replies were identical: the Daoist masters weren't home.

There was no Daoism, but there was still Buddhism!

In theory, Buddhism's thunderous sound and karmic flames could also subdue ghosts. However, the Great Xuan Dynasty had always maintained a distant relationship with the Western Regions Buddhist Kingdom and naturally refused to let it establish temples within its borders. Thus, for the moment, the Chen family had no idea where to invite those eminent monks who had attained the Way.

Finally, there was Confucianism. Confucian practitioners cultivated a body of righteous qi, which sent ghosts and gods fleeing. The key point, however, was that it could only protect oneself, not others.

There was no solution!

"Ding—"

Chen Luo made a sound himself.

Nothing happened.

What was going on? Weren't cheat abilities a standard feature of transmigration? Why hadn't it made a sound yet?

"System, the host is calling..." Chen Luo's voice was somewhat urgent.

Silence.

He actually didn't have a cheat ability!

What a joke. He hadn't transmigrated into an ancient era like the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, or Qing dynasties. He had come to a fantasy world where people flew through the heavens and burrowed through the earth! The whole package of "cement, glass, papermaking, perfume, gunpowder, and penicillin" probably wouldn't work...

What's more, he was currently being hunted by a ghost!

It was unreasonable not to give him a cheat ability!

"Could the signal be bad in the mourning hall?" Chen Luo consoled himself and walked toward the outside of the mourning hall. But just as one foot crossed the threshold, a warm, foul-smelling liquid splashed straight into his face, drenching him from head to toe. Chen Luo's vision instantly turned bright red, and for a moment he couldn't see what lay ahead.

At that moment, a burst of noisy footsteps rang out. Chen Luo heard an old, hoarse voice shout, "Move quickly! Black-dog blood won't hold him for long..."

Immediately afterward, Chen Luo felt a pain in his back, as if someone had struck him with a stick. He staggered forward two steps and fell to the ground. Then the old voice shouted again, "A corpse risen from the dead fears coffin nails most! Hurry and use coffin nails to pin him down!"

"Fuck!" Chen Luo's heart clenched. He struggled to get up and shouted, "I'm not dead, I..." But before he could finish, another blow struck the back of his head. His entire brain seemed to fill with the droning of a buzzer, and the world spun around him. In a daze, Chen Luo saw two figures pounce on him, iron nails six or seven inches long in their hands.

"I'm done for. I'm going to become Jesus!" Chen Luo lamented inwardly. Just as his consciousness was about to fade, he suddenly heard a crisp female voice in his ear—"All of you, stop!"

Chen Luo saw a figure running toward him. In an instant, that figure overlapped with a figure from his memories. Chen Luo opened his mouth, but in the end he couldn't call out. Just like that, he fainted...

Chen Luo seemed to have a dream.

In the dream, he saw countless giant brushes descend from the sky and plunge into the earth, black as ink. Then, flowers bloomed from the bristles of those giant brushes. The world, which had originally been devoid of life, instantly transformed into a sea of flowers.

At that moment, a resonant yet distant voice echoed through Chen Luo's mind:

"The Way of Heaven lies in the classics, histories, philosophies, and belles-lettres; the world's countenance lies in tales told and legends spun."

"Dao and Buddha leave the mortal world's affairs alone; how many can comprehend the wonders within books?"

As soon as the voice faded, several petals fell from one of the giant brushes on the ground and drifted before Chen Luo. The petals overlapped, transforming into a sheet of paper covered in writing. Chen Luo reached out to catch it, but the instant his hand touched the page, it transformed into light and shot into the space between his brows.

It was as if a basin of cold water had been poured over Chen Luo's head. His whole body jolted, and at that moment, he clearly felt that something new had appeared in his mind. It was—

Brief Biography of Zhong Kui!

The ghost catcher, Zhong Kui!

"Fallen flowers aren't heartless things; they turn into support and pave the Flower Path."

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