Our Rules

"What's more, isn't there already someone sitting in the front passenger seat?"

Lu Yibai's indifferent words made the taxi driver jolt violently.

He glanced at the empty front passenger seat and feigned anger. "Little brother, it's the middle of the night. Don't make jokes like that—they're frightening. Driving the night shift isn't easy..."

Lu Yibai said in a surprised tone, "Heh, Uncle, you're pretty calm. You're quite good at pretending!"

The taxi driver looked at Lu Yibai. His face had gone slightly pale, but he still forced a smile, which looked awkward no matter how one looked at it.

He held himself together and retorted, "Little brother, you say there's someone in my empty front passenger seat, but I say there's a ghost beside you!"

"Oh, you know that too?" Lu Yibai answered directly.

He was indeed carrying the Lion Umbrella with him. There was a ghost living inside it, after all.

The taxi driver: "..."

Damn, what kind of conversational tactic was this? Young people nowadays were so hard to talk to!

Lu Yibai hadn't intended to scare the driver. In fact, the reason they hadn't taken the taxi nearest to them and had chosen this one instead was that they had sensed ghostly energy and Yin energy inside it!

There really was a ghost in the car!

And the ghost really was sitting in the front passenger seat!

Otherwise, with Lin Xiaoqi's lazy nature, how could she possibly not take the closer taxi?

Even walking a few steps less was a good thing.

Thinking about it now, she really should go out and move around more. If she stayed in the bar all the time, it was hard to run into anything.

No matter how strong Lin Xiaoqi's perception was, it was impossible for it to cover the entire city. See? There was a fish that had slipped through the net right here.

Normally, Lu Yibai shouldn't have directly mentioned ghosts or monsters.

But he could be certain that this taxi driver knew what was going on.

He knew there was a ghost in the front passenger seat.

Just now, he had even enthusiastically invited Lu Yibai to sit in the front passenger seat—to sit on the ghost.

Who the hell would sit on top of a ghost?!

Wouldn't it be better to squeeze together with Ye Yiyi in the back seat?

What did squeezing together in the back seat feel like? Come to think of it, Ye Yiyi had accidentally fallen a few days ago, landing on her butt. Yet her butt hadn't even bruised; it was perfectly fine.

Why was that?

Of course, it was because her little perky butt was springy enough!

"Forget it, Boss. Isn't there a saying: You can never wake someone who's pretending to be asleep?" Lin Xiaoqi said to Lu Yibai.

She was, of course, referring to the taxi driver, who was pretending to know nothing.

Lu Yibai frowned and waved his hand. "That saying is nonsense. My urine isn't yellow; it's very clean. How about I wake him up by spraying him with it?"

Boss Lu's train of thought was truly impossible to describe.

Ye Yiyi, standing nearby, was completely dumbfounded. Only then did she remember that although Boss Lu had seemed quite normal lately, his behavior all along had proven that saying: "He isn't faux leather—he's genuinely shameless!"

The taxi driver's rather handsome, weathered face turned blue, then white. No one knew what he thought of those words.

There really was a ghost beside him, and he really could see it.

Although he had kept stubbornly denying it and forcing awkward smiles, he knew perfectly well what was going on.

The reason he had been so talkative and invited Lu Yibai to sit in the front passenger seat was that he knew there was a ghost there.

Under normal circumstances, how low would a man's emotional intelligence have to be for him to invite another man to sit in front after he had already sat beside two beautiful women?

He wanted the ghost in the front passenger seat to absorb some living energy.

Because this ghost...

was one he had raised!

China was vast and rich, with a huge population.

How huge was it?

The Night Watchmen were people found only one in ten thousand—or even one in a million. Even so, the organization had a fairly substantial number of members.

Among the population of over a billion, there was no shortage of strange and gifted individuals.

In the past, Lu Yibai had never believed in things like "gu worms" or "love curses."

When he was studying years ago and reading Story Club, he had even come across a twist-ending story about a "love curse." It went roughly like this:

The male lead cheated and found himself a mistress, but the mistress didn't seem particularly beautiful. In fact, the female lead was prettier and sexier.

Thus, confused, the female lead went to seek out a master. After he touched her brow, she was able to see things ordinary people couldn't. She discovered that the mistress had planted a gu worm in the male lead and cast a "love curse" on him. That was why he had cheated.

The female lead loved the male lead deeply, so she found a way to remove the gu worm and intended to continue living happily with him. But on their wedding day, the makeup artist accidentally touched the center of the female lead's brow. She saw herself in the mirror, with a coiling gu worm wrapped around her body!

It turned out that her love for the male lead was because she herself had already fallen victim to his love curse!

The story's logic wasn't particularly sound, and it had plenty of holes, but it was still interesting enough. Back then, Boss Lu had only read it for entertainment.

But after joining the Night Watchmen and witnessing so many bizarre things, he sometimes wondered carefully whether there might really be strange and gifted individuals out there.

He had even asked Lin Xiaoqi about it. Lin Xiaoqi said there really were.

Some people were "half-spiritual."

Someone like Lu Yibai was a good-for-nothing among spiritual beings, barely stepping over the threshold of cultivation. That was why he had successfully caught the eye of Ji Dekeng and Lin Xiaoqi, who were also walking the Trash Protagonist School path.

As for those who were half-spiritual, they didn't qualify to become Night Watchmen.

But if they received guidance, they could indeed develop minor abilities that ordinary people didn't possess.

For example, the corpse drivers.

The taxi driver before them was probably a half-spiritual human.

Had he accidentally learned how to "raise a little ghost," or did he belong to some sect with an inherited tradition?

Emmm... Lu Yibai and the others didn't care in the slightest. What does that have to do with me?

They were concerned only with the ghost itself.

Ghosts and monsters couldn't be left alive, because sooner or later they would inevitably become Fierce Ghosts. The goofy thing inside the Lion Umbrella was special; throughout the entire history of the Night Watchmen, there had never been another ghost with intelligence like it.

Besides, the reason he drove a taxi was clearly to let this "ghost" absorb the living energy of passengers who sat on it.

It probably wouldn't absorb too much, but it definitely wouldn't do them any good. It might even shorten their lives.

Perhaps he controlled this ghost by feeding it living energy every day.

Lu Yibai raised the Lion Umbrella, preparing to deal with the ghost.

He poured Night Watchman power into the Lion Umbrella. Immediately, surging Yang energy and waves of heat stirred at its tip.

The taxi driver seemed able to sense it as well. Although he was terrified and didn't understand what kind of person this young man was, he sensed the danger.

He immediately said, "You can't! I have a reason for raising a ghost. I'm doing it because..."

Lu Yibai cut him off. "Please shut up. We don't care about your reasons. If you go on with a long-winded speech, it'll make the chapter seem especially padded."

"You can't! You can't!" Cold sweat streamed down the driver's cheeks, but he still tried his best to protect the ghost.

"There's nothing you can't do. Those are the rules," Lu Yibai said.

"What rules? What rules are you talking about? Who made these rules?" The driver's emotions had already begun to spiral out of control.

"We did," Lu Yibai said.

"Our rules... the Night Watchmen's rules!"