The Shared Karma of All Beings

Once the problem at the cigarette factory was resolved, the local police officer immediately came to clean up the mess.

Ye Bei and the police officer exchanged Tian Shu identification, explained the whole story, and without even taking a statement, Ye Bei hopped on the back of the Red Hare motorcycle and went home during the Chinese New Year.

Back by the artificial lake at the agricultural university, back in front of the detached villa, Brother Ye Bei grinned at the window, his face extremely grim.

Xue Ming muttered, "I'll pay."

Ye Bei waved his hand. "It's nothing, it's just the cost of a meal."

After entering the house, Xue Ming wanted to ask a few more questions.

--For example, what exactly was that monstrous beast in the cigarette factory just now?

Just as he was about to speak, he saw Brother Ye Bei squatting by the window, smoking heavily, like an ordinary middle-aged homebody who had been defeated by life.

So Xue Ming asked, "Brother, aren't you not short of money? If your company is like Nine Realms Station, the salary should be very, very high."

"No, I'm really short of money. Last year, I donated three Hope Primary Schools in Xixing, totaling over 27 million yuan. At the beginning of this year, I already donated over 600,000 yuan to the Paralympic Games. Look!" Ye Bei pulled out his phone and showed his bank balance, "I still have 271 yuan left. I need to finish this task by the settlement date, which is the 10th of next month! If my wife sees this broken glass, she'll get angry and might launch a mental attack on me for spending money."

"Big brother," Xue Ming exclaimed in shock, "You've been doing this all along?"

Ye Bei jumped around the room, trying to find some quick-drying glue to fix it, and answered without turning his head.

"I've become Chang Ghost, so there's nothing for me to spend money on. I can go without eating or sleeping, and at most I'll buy some clothes. Brushing my teeth and taking a shower costs money. I don't even need to call a taxi when I go out. If it weren't for the possibility of disturbing public order, I would run faster than a bus. I don't have any weird habits in my life, and I don't need to save money for my children. If I don't donate it, am I supposed to keep it to buy a house?"

Xue Ming seemed thoughtful. "What I mean is..."

"It's pointless now." Brother Ye Bei casually tossed the naughty cat into the soft cat bed. Within seconds, the Qiongqi beast began to snore, seemingly having exhausted a great deal of spiritual energy and needing a dreamless sleep to recover its mental strength.

Ye Bei and Xue Ming continued, "If you insist on getting to the bottom of this, I just want to do something good. I believe that justice prevails and good and evil are rewarded accordingly. Doing good deeds makes you a good person—do you understand? It's very simple, isn't it?"

Xue Ming immediately squatted down next to Brother Ye Bei and nodded vigorously.

"Yes, it's very simple."

He then reached out to touch the glass.

"Wait!" Ye Bei didn't understand Xue Ming's meaning. "What are you going to do?"

Xue Ming, "I know how to fix it."

Ye Bei looked utterly bewildered. "WTF?!"

How could this guy fix so many shattered pieces of glass? -- That's unbelievable.

Xue Ming dug a bucket of mud from the field and used calipers constructed by spirits to measure the dimensions of the window frame.

Immediately afterwards, Ye Bei saw that the boy's two spiritual arms transformed into all sorts of tools, including square rulers, clay shovels, molds, punches, and trimming knives.

In just a few dozen seconds, a simple clay mold was made.

"Incredible skill!" Brother Ye Bei was completely dumbfounded.

Xue Ming, a little embarrassed, smiled and replied, "Brother, anyone with the right tools can do these things; it's nothing special."

Then he saw the kid rush into the kitchen with the clay mold, turn on the two gas stoves, and get a steel plate from the garage to distribute the heat evenly in the clay mold. After all the moisture evaporated, Ye Bei couldn't even see the air holes in the clay mold. It was perfectly capable of being taken to a factory as a standard model and sent to the assembly line for production.

Xue Ming pieced the broken glass back together as it was originally. He fed the shards and fragments into the grinder that his spirit had transformed into powder, mixed in some of the alumina he carried with him, which was corundum material, and ground into a mixture of quartz sand to fill all the gaps.

Close the mold, add heat, turn on the exhaust fan, and wait for the temperature to reach the point where the glass becomes fluid.

In just three minutes, a piece of glass as smooth as new was made.

Xue Ming lifted it up with his spirit arm, which was impervious to high temperatures, and carefully examined the sand holes and cracks. After confirming that it had no flaws, he put it back into the clay to cool naturally.

He told Ye Bei, "It'll be ready in half an hour."

Ye Bei raised his hand to close his mouth. "Xiao Jiang, your skill is too useful! Where did you learn it?"

Jiang Xueming confessed to Ye Bei, "I can get luminous jewelry and a stick at the underground station—these are gifts from Ming De to the passengers, but once they break, they're gone. I've been trying to figure out how to repair them."

He took out the Steel Heart and the club from his bundle.

"I once helped my friend's father repair toys and tried my hand at those delicate parts. I found that the die-casting process is relatively simple. As long as you make a mold and heat it, you can get small parts with good strength and acceptable precision. Like this piece of corundum, if it breaks or cracks, I can immediately use the alumina I have to make a new one and inlay it."

Ling Weng gave Xue Ming the most practical jewelry; steel and corundum are very inexpensive engineering materials.

Making weapon parts from die-cast carbon steel, and clearing weapons from malfunction in emergencies, are new skills Xue Ming has prepared for his trip to Red Star Hill. His spiritual precision is extremely high, and he can now also make special sticks with iron-aluminum interlayers like those made by Mr. Wen Bucai.

Ye Bei: "Thank you!"

Xue Ming: "You're welcome, but I have a few more questions to ask."

At this point, Ye Bei's expression changed—this kid always starts with this sentence and then goes on for several tens of minutes without stopping to absorb knowledge.

"Go take a shower, we'll talk tomorrow!"

After saying that, Brother Ye Bei rushed back to the second-floor bathroom like a gust of wind, and within a minute, his exaggerated snoring could be heard.

At that very moment--

--Qiongqi woke up.

It seemed to have been feigning sleep, just waiting for Ye Bei to leave.

It carefully tiptoed, walking on two legs like a human, and slowly approached Xue Ming.

"Hey! Kid."

Xue Ming sat on the sofa taking notes, using drawing to record the images in his mind. He had just drawn the scene where Brother Ye Bei broke the sound barrier during the battle.

He had no time to deal with this ferocious beast. Brother Ye Bei had intentionally or unintentionally revealed that this Little Kitty was full of evil intentions. Unlike the BOSS, it was a monster whose ferocity needed to be sealed by a kind person.

"Wow! It's pretty good—want to make some money?" Qiongqi climbed onto the sofa, nestled between Xue Ming's arms, stepped on Xue Ming's thighs, and peered intently at the table edge. "I have a way to help you sell your paintings! Don't you love this business? I can get countless people to praise your work."

Xue Ming: "Not interested."

Qiongqi's face turned extremely ugly. "Uh... do you like women?"

Xue Ming: "I like it."

Qiongqi: "That makes things easier. Let's make a deal. You definitely have the ability to help me. Taowu gave you its Red Mountain Stone, so you must be quite capable, right?"

Xue Ming answered truthfully, "No, I'm too bad at this. The boss was afraid I'd die in the mission, so he gave me this stone."

After saying that, he took out the Red Mountain Stone. The solid cat bell was not attractive to Qiongqi at all; on the contrary, it made him feel disgusted.

Xue Ming stopped teasing the beast and dutifully put away his life-saving item, wondering if he could gain the same divine power as Brother Ye Bei if he really followed the Hunter King's instructions and swallowed the Red Mountain Stone.

That's the power of breaking the sound barrier with the human body, changing the direction of travel simply by striking the air in mid-air. It's the ultimate expression of speed and power. It would be almost impossible for a human body to perform such an outrageous maneuver.

Even with a special soul power that can amplify physical strength, it would be impossible to withstand such an exaggerated instantaneous acceleration.

Viewing these statistics from a game's perspective is like seeing the limits of a character's physical capabilities.

Even with such speed, it would be difficult to apply it effectively in actual combat. The human body's reflexes and electrical signal transmission are subject to delays. Although the passengers' spiritual essence is so powerful that it can break through the limitations of the neural structure, it is still impossible for them to have the ability to control their bodies to stop suddenly, brake suddenly, and change speed at supersonic speeds.

Xue Ming was very worried that if he encountered an insurmountable and inescapable crisis during his trip to Red Star Hill, even if the data on his account skyrocketed when he used Red Mountain Stone, it would still be a power that he could not control.

Qiongqi noticed that the boy hadn't spoken for a while, so he carefully sniffed Xue Ming's scent and immediately used his terrifying mind-reading ability to perceive the thick fog of anxiety within him.

"Oh dear, have you been having some trouble lately, little one? What's bothering you? Tell me, share what's making you unhappy, and I'll cheer you up!"

This big cat has a mouth as foul as my older brother's. Xue Ming put down his pen and prepared to take a shower and go to bed, ignoring Qiongqi's gossip.

"Is your girlfriend unhappy? Or Taowu withholding your wages? Why not work for me? Let me tell you, working for me is a very promising job. Do you see my lackey? He's eating and drinking like a king every day, his wife is fair-skinned and beautiful, and he's constantly speeding towards his life's ideals."

Xue Ming arrived at the bathroom door and asked a question out of politeness.

"I'm going to take a shower, do you want to come with me?"

Qiongqi's eyes widened in shock, as if he had seen a ghost.

"Who wants to be with you?"

Then came the cold sound of the door closing, as if all politeness had been exhausted.

In just a few minutes, a handsome young man, steaming from head to toe, emerged from the bathroom. Xue Ming walked toward the guest room, Qiongqi immediately clung to him, like a stubborn patch of skin that was hard to peel off.

"Hey, hey, hey! Kid, don't push your luck! That's enough! I'll allow you to refuse me twice, but that's the third time, right? -- My bottom line is two times. I'm a very capable ferocious beast, not like the calamity beasts you're familiar with! Completely different!"

Xue Ming didn't say anything, but ran to the bedroom door again, intending to be polite.

"Sleep together?"

Qiongqi pouted and said, "Who wants to sleep with you!"

Then came the cold sound of the door closing; Qiongqi's evil plan died in its infancy before it could even be uttered.

It was very unwilling to give up and pounded on the door.

"Kid! My bottom line is three times! ~It's become three times! ~Let's get straight to the point! As long as you're willing to kill that good-for-nothing traitor on the second floor who's only interested in picking up girls and fighting monsters, take me away from this godforsaken place, and break my seal, I'll agree to anything you ask."

Xue Ming pushed open the door, revealing a crack, and looked down at the naughty cat.

"If I may ask, are you very difficult to kill?"

Qiongqi immediately became smug, eager to reveal all his amazing abilities. "Of course! Like being hit by a machine gun, or being charged by a rhinoceros monster, or having a multi-ton safe smashed on me, I wouldn't even feel a pang of pain. At most, I'd just pass out. Do you want that kind of body too? Indestructible! You can even come back to life after death! Do you want your little sister to become stronger? I have some unparalleled divine skills here!"

Without saying a word, Xue Ming grabbed the ferocious beast.

He remembered that Brother Ye Bei had said that the only weakness of this ferocious beast was that it couldn't lie.

Then there was a click.

He twisted Qiongqi's neck, breaking it cleanly and neatly, with half of its tongue still hanging out, drooling.

Qiongqi said weakly, "I'm going to get angry. I'm going to..."

Xue Ming then tossed it into the cat's bed, and soon the extremely annoying sales pitch finally turned into purring.

Lying in bed, he pondered deeply...

--If Brother Ye Bei has to endure this level of close harassment from telecom fraud every day, it would truly be torture.

He fell asleep shortly afterward.

At 9:30 in the early morning, Jiang Xueming woke up precisely like an electronic alarm clock.

As usual, after washing up and tidying myself up, I rushed to the kitchen and put the glass back before my sister-in-law got up.

Then they heard Qiongqi tilt its head, grabbing Xue Ming's trouser leg and yelling.

"Hero, I won't talk nonsense anymore. Can you give me a chiropractic operation? I can't even eat breakfast now. I call this torture. Later, I'll take a selfie of myself and post it on Weibo. Then you can forget about making it on the internet."

Xue Ming casually straightened the bad cat's neck, just like in the style of Tom and Jerry, very bizarre and cartoonish.

Qiongqi shook its head and mumbled for a long time before finally controlling its tongue and regaining its energy. Just as it was about to speak, it heard a rapid knocking on the door.

On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, guests arrived.

Brother Ye Bei hasn't gotten up yet, and his sister-in-law is probably still resting.

Jiang Xueming ran to the door to look outside, but couldn't see anything through the peephole. Strangely, a strange chill crept into his mind.

Then the knocking became more urgent, like drumming.

Xue Ming simply opened the door, wanting to see what kind of demon or monster could render his Inspiration and vision ineffective.

The result was quite unexpected.

Standing outside the door was a small man, barely 1.58 meters tall, who couldn't even get close to the peephole and was in the blind spot of the room.

He looked very, very young, wearing a mourning robe and carrying a basket of local Henan specialties; he had come to offer New Year's greetings.

The short man, wearing sunglasses, looked up at Jiang Xueming.

Jiang Xueming then said, "Brother Ye Bei is still sleeping. Who are you?"

As the short man walked inside, he said, "I'm his informant; there's no need to tell you my name."

Qiongqi covered its nose, as if it had smelled a terrible stench, and hid back in its cat bed.

Xue Ming was relieved. The cat had shown a strong tendency to detect tastes when they first met.

It likes bad people and dislikes good people. If you can keep it far away, it must be a very good person.

The intelligence officer delivered the local specialties to the kitchen and then, right next to the stove, rummaged through the molds Xue Ming had left behind, his eyes wide with interest as he observed the craftsmanship of the molds.

"That's interesting. Did you make this?"

Jiang Xueming: "Yes."

Then I saw this short, stocky man take three steps at a time and sit down next to Jiang Xueming, taking out a cigarette and pouring tea.

Xue Ming first refused the cigarette, then started chatting with the intelligence officer.

During the conversation, we learned that--

--The [Black Tar] from last night was a man-made calamity beast.

The intelligence officer worked at the factory four times to investigate the strange phenomena and found black tar in the factory's sewage treatment workshop.

The intelligence officer explained to Jiang Xueming in detail, "Man-made calamity beasts can also appear in modern society; specifically, they are a form of collective karma."

Xue Ming immediately began taking notes.

The intelligence officer continued, "Do you know what virtual idols are?"

Xue Ming: "Vtb? A costumed person?"

Intelligence agent. "What the hell is this? I mean, an idol in the broadest sense."

Xue Ming: "Oh, I see."

The intelligence officer continued, "If many, many people want something to happen, then it will definitely happen. Even a worthless clay statue will have people kneeling and worshipping it, trying to don divine robes, become a god, and acquire divinity—doesn't that sound incredible?"

Xue Ming: "Indeed."

The intelligence officer pointed to the photos of black tar in the document bag.

"Hengyin City has more than three million smokers, and the monthly production and sales of cigarettes are enormous. When people can't buy cigarettes even with money, and they are about to run out of stock, a strong collective will has created this monster."

Xue Ming exclaimed in surprise, "Is that even possible? So many people in the world believe in Christianity, does that mean God really exists?"

"Who knows?" The short man pulled down his sunglasses, revealing dark eyes, and said, enunciating each word clearly, "Who! Knows!"

This question stumped Xue Ming.

This intelligence officer exudes an astonishing aura, like a blazing fireball.

"Jiang Xueming, is this your name? I've seen this name in Ye Bei's WeChat chat and call logs. He once asked you about your diet. The diet can calculate your body fat and weight, so I can be sure that this person is you—now, back to the main topic."

The intelligence officer tossed the documents aside, pulled out a small knife, and then cut out individual words from the documents to form complete sentences.

"Modern society has many strange phenomena, like the birth of demons. An actor can unconsciously transform into another personality, becoming the image that the audience likes. We call this creating a persona. A type of instant noodles will change its flavor based on feedback from most users. This phenomenon is called product upgrading. Idol groups will wear different clothes based on fans' comments and preferences. The factors that determine whether an idol stays or leaves the group are just cold data. This is called survival of the fittest."

Leave four large characters on the desktop.

"The creation of black tar was also like this. Countless people wanted to continue smoking, and their strong will drove a certain soul to throw itself into the cigarette factory, becoming the epicenter of this Spirit Calamity. Then, human flesh was thrown into it to supply the factory's production activities. Black tar is not a simple monster, but an artificial Spirit Calamity composed of more than forty souls and workshops."

--This is called [the shared karma of all beings].