"San Shui, I've seen how hard you've worked lately. I think you're ready to take the helm of Tianmen Funeral Home."
Chen Weiyi looked at Chen Miao, his eyes filled with pride.
After a moment of surprise, Chen Miao nodded.
"Elder Uncle, I'll do my best to run Tianmen Funeral Home well."
"Heh, good. I have faith in you."
With San Shui taking over the Funeral Home, even hauntings won't be a problem.
Hearing his elder uncle's thoughts, Chen Miao remained silent.
"All right, San Shui. I'll announce this to everyone this afternoon. But before that, let's go offer incense to your parents."
Chen Weiyi rose as he spoke.
Then Chen Miao followed his elder uncle to the Funeral Home's columbarium.
His parents' memorial tablets were housed there. This wasn't a standard feature of Tianmen Funeral Home; his elder uncle had specially set aside a space for them, inaccessible to outsiders.
Once there, Chen Weiyi looked at the memorial tablets of Chen Miao's parents, brushed away the dust, and murmured a few words tinged with sorrow.
Only when he finally brought up Chen Miao did his tone brighten.
"Heh, little brother, San Shui is doing well. He's steady and dependable, and I've handed the Funeral Home over to him. Watch over the boy from heaven. Keep him safe, and let everything go smoothly for him in the years ahead!"
"And you, sister-in-law, don't worry. With San Shui's abilities, he's sure to find a good wife. When he does, I'll have him bring her to see you!"
With that, Chen Weiyi stepped aside, leaving the space before the offering table to Chen Miao.
"San Shui, offer your parents some incense."
Chen Miao took two steps forward and looked up at his parents' memorial tablets.
People said a person died three times.
The first death was the end of the body: your heart stopped, your breath faded, and a doctor pronounced you dead.
The second death was your disappearance from society: your photographs were put away, your name was no longer mentioned, and the last person who remembered your face passed away.
The third death was eternal obliteration: the tree you planted died, the house you built vanished, and the final trace of your existence disappeared from the world.
Looking at the photographs on his parents' memorial tablets, Chen Miao found their faces, which had grown somewhat hazy in his memory, becoming clear again.
Perhaps this was why people paid their respects to their ancestors every year.
"Dad, Mom, I'm doing well now. My life is fulfilling. You don't need to worry."
After speaking, Chen Miao reached out and took some incense from the offering table, ready to light it.
Smack!
A palm struck the back of Chen Miao's head.
The emotion he had just worked up abruptly vanished. Bewildered, he turned and saw his elder uncle standing beside him with a stern expression.
"How many sticks of incense are you planning to offer your parents?"
This boy's a complete bonehead!
Chen Miao froze, then looked at the four Incense Sticks in his hand. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
Damn it, I did that out of habit!
That afternoon, Chen Weiyi gathered everyone at the Funeral Home and announced, before the dozen or so staff members, that Chen Miao would become deputy director.
He also explained that from now on, all matters were to be reported directly to Chen Miao.
The implication was clear: although his title was deputy director, he would have the authority of the Director.
This arrangement was the result of a discussion between Chen Weiyi and Chen Miao.
Keeping Chen Weiyi as Director in name would save them some trouble.
For instance, those employees who had wanted to leave but hadn't yet might wait a little longer to see how things went. They might assume that if Chen Miao couldn't manage, Chen Weiyi would come back to pick up the pieces.
After all, a job that provided dormitory accommodation was practically one of a kind in Tianmen County.
Less than an hour after the announcement, Chen Weiyi breezily left the Funeral Home, leaving the sprawling establishment in the hands of Chen Miao, a young man not yet twenty-five.
From that moment on, the office on the second floor of the service hall with the "Director" sign became Chen Miao's new office.
All of Chen Weiyi's personal belongings had been taken away, but the bookshelves, tea table, and other furnishings remained.
Chen Weiyi had told Chen Miao he could change anything he liked, but Chen Miao left it all untouched.
Strangely enough, despite being in his twenties, his tastes were quite similar to those of his fifty-year-old elder uncle. He found nothing wrong with the office's decor or layout.
After that, Chen Miao went to move his bedding and other belongings from his dormitory room into the office.
When several service staff on the first floor saw him doing so, they all enthusiastically pitched in to help.
As for why he was moving his bedding over, naturally, it was because the Director's Office came with a bedroom!
From now on, Chen Miao could both work and sleep in the Director's Office!
As for the Funeral Rites Specialist's office beside the farewell hall, Chen Miao would only be stationed there on days when a memorial service was scheduled.
Leaving it empty was something of a waste, but there was no helping it. Chen Miao wasn't considering hiring another Funeral Rites Specialist for now.
One reason was that it was difficult to recruit someone for a certified position like Funeral Rites Specialist in a small county town. The other was that Chen Miao alone could handle the Funeral Home's current workload.
Once he had truly developed the Funeral Home further, he would have more confidence about hiring!
After all, recruiting someone also meant being able to offer appropriate pay and benefits.
Once everything was settled, Chen Miao sat behind the spacious desk, a surge of ambition rising within him!
Tianmen Funeral Home could certainly shine again in his hands!
After spending a full half hour imagining the future, Chen Miao finally prepared to resume what he had left unfinished: inspecting the things Xiang Shang had sent him.
Just then, however, his gaze swept over the bookshelf.
He paused, then walked over and took down the copy of If Eyes Deceive You.
There was already an "identical" book on his desk. Having another on the bookshelf seemed a little odd.
"I'll give this one to Xiang Shang next time I see him."
As he spoke, Chen Miao tucked the book into his desk.
Soon, he opened the parcel and took out some of its contents, setting them on the desk.
A stack of uncut yellow talisman paper, an inkstone, five small bottles, and the Wolf-Hair Talisman Brush he had bought himself-with these, the only material he still needed for drawing talismans was chicken blood.
Chen Miao picked up one of the five bottles and poured some of the cinnabar into the inkstone to examine it.
Xiang Shang had obtained this cinnabar for him from a friend's family's traditional medicine shop. It was all high-quality cinnabar with a purity of around ninety percent.
It had a bright sheen, a pure red color, and a crystalline form.
Cinnabar of this quality cost around fifty yuan per gram, and Xiang Shang had sent Chen Miao a full five hundred grams in five small bottles!
Its market value was twenty-five thousand yuan!
Compared with the cinnabar, the yellow talisman paper was barely worth anything.
In the end, Chen Miao transferred thirty thousand yuan directly to Xiang Shang, who didn't say much about it.
As his best friend, Xiang Shang knew what Chen Miao was like.
Chen Miao might fleece Xiang Shang out of five hundred yuan, but he would never let him foot a thirty-thousand-yuan bill.
Although he had paid without hesitation, spending thirty thousand yuan all at once still hurt.
Not counting the inheritance his parents had left him, Chen Miao had only saved three hundred thousand yuan in two and a half years of work.
This purchase alone had swallowed a tenth of his savings.
And he still didn't know whether those thirty thousand yuan would produce any genuine talismans.
"Sure enough, cultivation novels talk about wealth, companions, methods, and land, while martial arts novels say studying is for the poor and martial training is for the rich. None of that is nonsense!"
Chen Miao didn't start immediately. Instead, he practiced with ink for another hour, then cut the yellow talisman paper into standard-sized talisman sheets.
After that, he bought two roosters and took them to the cafeteria for the cook to slaughter, collecting half a bottle of chicken blood and putting it in the refrigerator.
He waited until midnight before going out to make several rounds of the Funeral Home.
Along the way, he repeatedly used Yin Gathering, tossing the clumps of yin energy he gathered into his office.
He kept at it for a full hour, only stopping at one in the morning.
By then, the temperature in his office had dropped to somewhere in the teens Celsius.
Chen Miao even had to wear long sleeves to ward off the chill.
Still, this gave him a little more confidence.
"This concentration of yin energy should be enough, right?"
With that thought, Chen Miao took the bottle of now-congealed chicken blood out of the refrigerator.
There was no helping it. Chen Miao had never slaughtered a chicken, and he couldn't exactly do it in his office in the middle of the night.
Fortunately, he had a solution for the congealed blood too. A little more processing would make it usable.
Chen Miao opened the high-powered blender he had used only two or three times since buying it, cut open the bottle, and tipped the clotted chicken blood inside.
A loud buzzing filled the office.
Fortunately, he had already moved out of the dormitory building. Otherwise, this racket would certainly have had all the sleeping residents cursing his entire family.
As the blender pulverized the blood, Chen Miao occasionally added a little water.
Without doing that, the blended chicken blood still wouldn't be usable.
Two minutes later, Chen Miao poured the thick chicken blood out of the blender.
After a glance at it, he sat down, took a sheet of the cut Talisman Paper, and laid it on the desk, securing it with a paperweight.
Following the instructions in Zhong Family Talismans, Chen Miao poured five grams of cinnabar into the inkstone, followed by fifty grams of rooster blood.
Mix and grind!
Only once the cinnabar had been ground down and blended into the chicken blood did Chen Miao pick up the new Wolf-Hair Talisman Brush from the brush stand beside him.
"Then let's begin!"
Chen Miao's eyes shone. After several deep breaths, his gaze gradually became as still as an ancient well.
Enter Iceheart State!
PS: Please send some monthly votes! Today's update is early; tomorrow's will be at the usual time, 10:00 p.m.~
I've posted a layout of Tianmen Funeral Home in the bonus chapter. I have no artistic skills, so I drew it in Excel. Please make do with it! (It looks a little blurry.)
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