"Oh, it's Qiu Sheng. Why do you need so much this time?"
The pharmacy owner asked as he filled a bag with cinnabar.
"Business has been busy lately. I've been using a lot."
"Whoa, several hundred jin of cinnabar at once? Did you raid a zombie's lair or something?"
The owner made the joke with a cheerful grin.
"Better safe than sorry! If I got halfway through a fight and suddenly found I'd run out of talismans, wouldn't I cry myself to death?"
Xu Long slung the cinnabar over his back, then pulled out a dozen or so silver dollars.
Gold and silver currency was dirt cheap from the Main God. Five points could be exchanged for a ton of gold at one hundred percent purity.
As for other forms of money-silver, silver dollars, and paper bills-a single point could get him a huge pile.
This money couldn't be taken out of the Reincarnation Temple, but it could be used in mission worlds. It was a tiny perk of little consequence.
After leaving the pharmacy, Xu Long was planning to buy talisman paper when he suddenly spotted a black man.
Er, not a black man. It was a man whose forehead was shrouded in black qi.
"What's going on?"
Xu Long dabbed up some cinnabar and quickly drew an Eye-Opening Talisman on his palm, then slapped it against his forehead.
A talisman drawn this way was very weak, but it would just about do if he only wanted to take a look.
"Good grief! With that resentment soaring to the heavens, he must have nightmares every night!"
Xu Long marveled inwardly, knowing a job that would earn him points had come along.
"My friend, I see a dark shadow between your brows and no life in your eyes... Whoa..."
After Xu Long tapped him, the man turned around and nearly gave Xu Long a fright.
The dark circles around his eyes were almost as black as a panda's, and his energy and spirit were utterly depleted. In that state, he was close to dropping dead.
"What is it?"
The man asked weakly.
"You haven't had a decent night's sleep for at least a week, have you? Every day, as soon as you close your eyes, you have nightmares. Even when you rest at noon, it's the same."
Xu Long spoke with absolute confidence.
"You... how did you know...?"
At Xu Long's words, the man looked as if he had found his savior. He grabbed Xu Long's hand and refused to let go.
"This is my line of work. Naturally, I could tell what was wrong with you at a glance!"
Xu Long opened the bag and showed him the cinnabar packed inside.
"Understand now?"
"Daoist master! Save me! I haven't had a proper rest in half a month. If this goes on, even if exhaustion doesn't kill me, fright will!"
The man seemed to have been driven close to a breakdown. He dropped straight to his knees, tears and snot instantly streaming down his face.
"Go home first. I'll come take a look at your house tonight!"
Xu Long reassured him, then bought talisman paper and rode his bicycle back to his lodgings with the man.
The man's name was Li Si. He was from the neighboring Li Family Village and owned a large banana plantation.
In other words, he was very rich.
"Your older brother died? And you never found his body?"
Uncle Nine frowned, sensing that something was very wrong.
Zombies sucked blood, and ghosts stole souls. Something that wouldn't even spare the corpse was truly rare.
"Master, could something have become a spirit?"
Xu Long had killed a three-year-old rooster and spoke as he stirred its blood into the cinnabar.
"Become a spirit? It's possible!"
Uncle Nine nodded. "Qiu Sheng, prepare a few more talismans. Come with me later."
"All right!"
Xu Long nodded, then continued grinding and mixing with care.
He worked from noon until dusk and made more than two hundred talismans of various kinds.
Ordinarily, ten or twenty were enough to catch a ghost or a zombie.
If they used too many, it was easy to lose money.
After all, jobs like this were scarce to begin with, and most of their clients were poor families with little money.
But this time was different. Li Si's family owned an entire banana plantation. They could casually swindle a little...
Casually collect a little compensation for their trouble, and it would be enough to support the master and his two disciples for a long time.
Xu Long didn't care about money, but he had to live in this world for thirty days. He couldn't keep pinching pennies the whole time.
Besides, Xu Long was a firm believer in firepower. There were no enemies that couldn't be killed, only firepower that wasn't strong enough.
Throw several thousand talismans at them, and see who died!
"Wen Cai, look after the house."
Before setting out, Uncle Nine kicked Wen Cai in the butt.
Although neither of his two disciples had ever been reliable, Qiu Sheng had improved quite a bit lately and had begun applying himself.
Unlike Wen Cai, who was still as careless as ever and stole whatever he could get his hands on when he had nothing better to do.
Li Family Village wasn't far away. Following the narrow path, they could reach it in two hours.
Being a narrow path, it was naturally harder to travel than the main road.
It was full of bumps and hollows, twisted and winding, and passed through a mass grave.
It was already dusk. The night wind blew through the treetops, making a sound like wailing ghosts and howling wolves.
Xu Long glanced to the side. Shadowy shapes flickered among the mounds of graves, as though something were there.
"Don't look back, or you might provoke something you shouldn't."
After giving the warning, Uncle Nine kept his head down and continued forward.
Uncle Nine didn't want to stir up trouble for no reason, so naturally Xu Long wouldn't go looking for it either.
But though he didn't provoke anyone, someone came looking for him.
Just as Xu Long looked away and prepared to leave quickly, a gust of icy air blew against the back of his neck, making him shiver despite himself.
"Shit!"
Xu Long cursed under his breath, knowing he had been targeted.
Without the slightest hesitation, Xu Long pulled a Blazing Fire Talisman from his bag and slapped it backward.
Boom!
Flames erupted out of thin air, followed by a piercing scream.
The talisman paper was made from ten-year-old yang wood, while the cinnabar had been mixed with the blood of a rooster more than three years old.
A talisman made with those two materials-and a Blazing Fire Talisman at that-burned the thing behind him to death outright.
[Slain a resentful soul! Obtained 5 points!]
The notification sounded in his mind, stirring Xu Long's thoughts.
Barring any surprises, there was a ninety-nine percent chance this was a hidden mission.
And it wasn't an ordinary hidden mission, but a nested one.
Simply put, the hidden mission here was probably to clear out all the ghosts and spirits, but killing those lesser ghosts also earned points.
That meant he could complete one mission and collect twice the rewards.
Missions like this offered very generous rewards, but they were also much more difficult.
Xu Long wasn't worried, though. He planned to settle the matter in Li Family Village first, then deal with these things.
Just as Xu Long had thought, Uncle Nine gave him a meaningful look, then said nothing and continued walking.
There was no hurry to deal with the mass grave. No one came to this place anyway.
But there were more than twenty people in Li Si's family. If someone died because they had been delayed, that would be a grave sin.
"Master, this place..."
After they left the mass grave behind, Xu Long couldn't help asking.
"More than thirty years ago, there was a plague, and everyone in several nearby villages died. The bodies were hard to deal with, so they dug pits and buried them where they were. Because so many people died, and the locust trees around here blocked the sunlight, some unclean things sprang up over time."
Uncle Nine looked back over his shoulder and continued, "This place is far from the main road, and people from the nearby villages don't come this way at night, so I left them alone."