"Can I pay with a card?"
Uncle Zhang: "What card? You don't have any money, so why come here to buy a Soul Lamp? Little Gu Niao, what kind of customers are you introducing me to?"
"Shh! Don't say my name." Little Gu Niao hurriedly waved her hands. "They're outsiders. Just have them pay with something else!"
Uncle Zhang looked baffled. "If I'm not taking money, what can I take?"
Then he quickly caught on, a smile of unclear meaning appearing on his face. "Oh, that. They're all skin and bones. Even if they pay, how much could they possibly give?"
"Don't take too much Lamp Oil. Just enough to get them out of here."
Uncle Zhang turned to Hu Xingde. "I need to collect a small price for the Soul Lamp. Don't worry, it won't endanger your life. So, what do you say? Want to buy it?"
Then he looked at Ji Wu and Xu Zhou. "The three of you can pay together. That'll be safer."
Ji Wu asked, "Uncle Zhang, what exactly do you mean by 'price'?"
In a Ghost Domain, you absolutely couldn't let anyone collect an unknown price from you. Otherwise, you might not even know how you died. Even as a Contract Anomalist, you had to be extremely cautious.
Sometimes, an anomaly wasn't particularly powerful, but it had rules that killed anyone who touched it. If you didn't trigger its instant-death rule, it was easy to contain.
But once you triggered that rule, even if you were stronger than the anomaly, you would still die.
Uncle Zhang stroked the beard on his chin. "Well, I don't mind telling you. The Lamp Oil for a Soul Lamp is refined from special fats, and it's very precious. That's why Soul Lamps are so expensive. Since you don't have money to buy one, you can trade some raw materials instead."
Uncle Zhang had made his meaning so obvious that Ji Wu, with his extensive experience handling all kinds of anomalous incidents, quickly understood what he was getting at.
Ji Wu pointed to himself. "Twenty jin."
Then he pointed at Xu Zhou and Hu Xingde. "Ten jin, twenty jin."
Uncle Zhang sized them up and nodded in approval. "That'll do."
"For fifty jin, I can give you twenty milliliters of Lamp Oil. That'll be enough to get you out of here."
Hu Xingde looked confused. "What do you mean, fifty jin?" Why did this sound like they were buying pork, weighing it by the jin?
Uncle Zhang took out a sheet of dark yellow oil paper and wrote: "Today, three customers came to buy a Soul Lamp—20 milliliters of Lamp Oil. They will pay a total price of fifty jin. A fair trade, witnessed by Yama."
Then he wrote ten jin and twenty jin underneath. Finally, he pressed his fingerprint into the ink pad beside him and stamped it onto the paper.
"Come on, put your fingerprints here."
Ji Wu read through the contract first, making sure there were no tricks or loopholes in the wording. Only then did he pull Xu Zhou over and have him press his fingerprint beside the ten jin. Ji Wu pressed his own fingerprint beside the twenty jin.
Hu Xingde did as they had and pressed his fingerprint beside the other twenty jin.
Once they had all finished, Uncle Zhang took the contract and lit it with a match.
As the oil paper burned, it gave off a strange smell—not exactly pleasant, but not unpleasant either. The longer you breathed it in, the more it made you want to keep smelling it, as though it went to your head.
It burned up quickly, disappearing in just a few seconds.
The smell faded with it.
Only then did Hu Xingde snap out of his daze. He probably hadn't even realized what expression he'd been wearing.
Ji Wu and Xu Zhou were more resistant. They thought the smell was a little unusual, but didn't get lost in it.
The contract had taken effect!
Hu Xingde puzzledly rubbed at his body. What was going on? He felt much lighter. He looked down at his stomach.
His beer belly, the result of drinking and an unhealthy diet, had gone flat!
He grabbed at his waist. The fat there had disappeared without a trace!
It wasn't his imagination! He felt like he'd lost a lot of weight in an instant!
Hu Xingde had the most fat on him, so the change was the most obvious. Ji Wu hadn't had much body fat to begin with, so losing twenty jin affected him a little. He'd have to eat something good to make up for it when they got back.
Xu Zhou had already been thin and was still growing. After losing ten jin, he looked like a bamboo pole, as if a gust of wind could knock him over.
Ji Wu clicked his tongue. "Eat more meat when we get back, or people will think the Aberration Association mistreats its members."
Xu Zhou rubbed his arm. "So 'ten jin' meant the flesh on our own bodies."
Thinking about it that way, it was kind of terrifying.
But for people who struggled to lose weight, this was a dream come true!
All you had to do was press your fingerprint and you'd lose twenty jin! What kind of paradise was this? Where was the morality? Where was the bottom line? Where was the address?
Maybe Uncle Zhang would even be worshipped as a god of weight loss.
"Meat?" Hu Xingde grabbed at himself again and realized he really had lost a lot of weight. He moved around, but didn't feel any pain or discomfort.
Although he found it strange, he put the feeling aside so they could get out of there.
"Give me the Soul Lamp!"
Uncle Zhang said, "Wait. I'll get the Lamp Oil."
He went to the shelves and picked out a clear twenty-milliliter bottle. Inside was a cloudy, yellow, pus-like viscous liquid. This was Lamp Oil, a substance refined from special human fats.
"One bottle of this Lamp Oil will keep the Soul Lamp lit for about an hour. You can pour it in here."
Uncle Zhang showed them how to refill the Soul Lamp. His service was impressively thorough.
Hu Xingde tried to snatch the Soul Lamp, but Ji Wu held him back and smoothly took it from Uncle Zhang. Xu Zhou took the Lamp Oil.
"It's better if I carry the Soul Lamp, don't you think?"
Faced with Ji Wu's smile, which didn't reach his eyes and was full of menace, Hu Xingde shuddered and didn't dare reach for it.
He could only trail nervously close behind them.
Ji Wu had learned this lesson after facing anomalies many times. Ordinary people's emotions were too unstable, and fear often made them do stupid things in the face of an anomaly.
Sometimes they even destroyed important items, or performed a running slide straight into an anomaly's mouth. In short, they could pull all kinds of stunts. There was nothing they couldn't do if you could imagine it.
Over time, Ji Wu had developed a good habit: never let ordinary people handle important items, and always keep an eye on their emotions. If necessary, knock them out before they lose control and get everyone killed with one reckless move.
Ji Wu poured half the Lamp Oil into the Soul Lamp, then used one of the matches Uncle Zhang had included to light it.
The Soul Lamp's red glow fell faintly across them.
Once it was lit, the gaze that had been watching them from somewhere out of sight finally disappeared.
"Supervisor Ji, are we just leaving like this?"
Xu Zhou asked. They still had a mission to complete.
"We can't handle this anomaly. Unless Bai Zuo is here—no, even he'd probably struggle to deal with it alone."
Before you continue