Open

Chu Tianshu made a snap decision. He tossed aside the dustpan, turned around, and found a wooden mop handle.

He held the stick perfectly upright, his eyes fixed on its tip, his shoulders level and his posture straight.

As he drew a long, deep breath, the muscles in his arms swelled one after another. From shoulder to palm, his movements had a violent force to them, yet the focus in his eyes was the same as when he inserted acupuncture needles.

The wooden stick in his hand was one giant needle.

"Open!!"

With a wet crunch, the stick drove down through the bottom of the pit, piercing the remaining layer of earth. A muffled crack came from underground.

The tip of the stick had punched through the lid of a thin-walled coffin that had already begun to rot.

A skeleton lay inside, black smoke coiled around its skull.

"N-no, don't..."

The smoke shook violently, but the stick was swiftly yanked back out.

A glass nail containing cinnabar dropped through the hole above.

The skeleton had barely managed to raise its bone-yellow hands when the glass nail entered the coffin and burst into a cloud of glittering red sand.

Boom!!!

Chu Tianshu stared into the pit at his feet. After that muffled bang, the Yin Qi below gradually weakened.

The smoke drifting out of the hole changed from black-gray to the bluish gray of cigarette smoke.

But he did not stop. Again and again, he thrust the stick straight into the coffin.

"Crude fists and clumsy feet? A mountain savage and bandit?"

"A rotten ghost like you that only preys on children can take physical form and pounce like the wind, but a Daoist can't throw a few punches?"

"And I never said I was a Daoist!"

Thwack!!

When he pulled the stick out again, Yin Qi had stopped pouring from the hole.

Chu Tianshu kept staring for a while longer before letting out a breath of relief. He raised a hand and swept the sweat-damp hair from his forehead to the top of his head, revealing his bright, open features.

He looked up. Ahead, the rolling mist was thinning, and the blue stainless-steel roofing on the factory building had appeared in his hazy field of vision.

Looking back, he saw that the silky mist in the woods was also receding. In the distance, a truck horn sounded faintly.

The conditions under which an Overflow Zone formed still followed no discernible pattern, but those who came before had worked out how one dissipated.

Either the ghosts finished harming the people, or the people finished killing the ghosts. Once either side was gone, this special environment where the Spirit Realm overlapped with reality would dissipate.

Leaning on the stick with his right hand, Chu Tianshu pulled three needles from his body with his left. As he watched the dense fog disperse, exhaustion began to wash over his body and mind. Feeling stifled and feverish, he tore open two or three buttons at the collar of his shirt.

He tilted his face into the wind, savoring its coolness, and failed to notice the pendant on the red cord around his neck quietly changing. Its metallic texture faded, and it became like cloudy jade filled with wisps.

"Hey! Chu Tianshu!"

Teacher Qiao called loudly from the other side of the woods, raising a hand and waving. "What happened just now? Are you all right?"

Chu Tianshu still did not feel much like moving, so he just called back, "It's all right now."

Teacher Qiao saw that sunlight was already falling on the clearing and ran over in long strides.

When Teacher Qiao came close, Chu Tianshu asked, "Did anything happen with Boss Li just now?"

The evil Qi in Boss Li had not yet been cleared away, and his current state resembled sleepwalking. Being so close to the Overflow Zone, he might also have been affected and behaved strangely.

"As soon as the fog came up, he suddenly started struggling, like he wanted to run into it."

Teacher Qiao lifted the stun baton in his hand, and it crackled.

"I could barely hold him down, so before he broke free of the seat belt, I gave him a zap with this. Settled him right down. This thing really does the job."

Chu Tianshu gave him a thumbs-up.

A stun baton was extremely effective against people, and it had some effect on filthy things too.

As an experienced assistant to a spirit medium, Teacher Qiao carried equipment like this with him at home and on his travels, whether he was teaching or off work.

As long as he was not in an environment like the Overflow Zone, he was quite capable of handling emergencies with his equipment.

Teacher Qiao looked around. "Goodness, even the stele's been knocked down. Huh, what's that? Was there a clump of grass over there before?"

Chu Tianshu looked toward the corner.

There were a few discarded plastic buckets and some water stains over there, so a weed growing there would not have been unusual. But this plant really did not look like an ordinary weed; it had a glistening green sheen.

Chu Tianshu walked a few steps toward it and examined it closely.

The plant was about a foot tall. Its leaves had a central vein, but no branching veins spreading to either side. Moreover, both sides were the same shade, unlike normal grass, which was darker on one side than the other.

The little flower growing in the middle was a pale black, with an oily gloss in the sunlight.

"I think I've seen it in a book."

Chu Tianshu searched his memory, and his eyes lit up. "It's Ghost Tooth Grass!"

Ghost Tooth: when a heart goes awry in silence, its teeth knocked out and swallowed, one who endures humiliation and becomes a ghost, yet instead of seeking revenge helps a tyrant commit atrocities, will draw a response from the Spirit Realm, and this plant will grow alongside them.

This plant had probably been left behind by the Overflow Zone.

If the ghosts finished harming the people and caused the Overflow Zone to dissipate, the Spirit Realm's Qi would recede along with the ghosts, leaving nothing behind but bloodshed across the ground.

But if people finished killing the ghosts, the dissipation of the Overflow Zone was instead called "breaking" it.

The Spirit Realm's things would then be left behind in reality, at least in part.

Among spirit mediums, some schools kept ghosts and sent them to carry out tasks.

Ghost Tooth Grass was valuable to those schools. If its nature of serving as the tiger's ghost was made into a medicinal paste, it could help such spirit mediums command ghosts more easily.

Although Chu Tianshu had no use for the grass himself, he could sell it.

That was another sizeable sum!

More than ten minutes later, Chu Tianshu wrapped the Ghost Tooth Grass in his coat, roots, clod of earth and all, and returned to the car.

Boss Li sat slumped in the passenger seat, the needle on top of his head having sprung straight again.

"I've dealt with what was causing trouble. It won't be hard to wake him. Once you get to my house, measure out a small cup of the medicinal liquor in the corner, rub some on his philtrum first, then dilute it with a bottle of mineral water and have him drink all of it..."

Chu Tianshu watched the scenery fly past outside the window, feeling a little dizzy. Eyes closed, he chatted with Teacher Qiao in fits and starts, his voice gradually fading.

When he opened his eyes again, the sunlight outside the car window was a little dazzling.

The day was bright, and it seemed to be around noon already.

He had fallen asleep without realizing it. He opened the car door, squinted outside, and only then stretched out his legs and got out.

The car was parked in the yard outside his house.

Boss Li and his family were sitting by the door with Teacher Qiao. As soon as they heard the movement, they all got up and came over.

"Master Chu, you're awake!"

Boss Li was the first to speak. He hurried over, his voice still a little hoarse and his expression full of warmth.

"I know everything now. Thank you so much, Master. You saved my whole family!"

Boss Li clasped Chu Tianshu's hand in both of his and shook it repeatedly.

Boss Li had forgotten to put down the phone in his hand. The picture on its screen was of the toppled stone stele.

Teacher Qiao had taken the pictures at the time: the toppled stele, the broom that had been bitten apart, and the footprints stomped into the ground.

Chu Tianshu had already looked through that album. It even contained a short video of Boss Li thrashing and struggling in the passenger seat.

Madam Li also nudged Li Xu. "Xuxu, quick, kowtow to the master."

Chu Tianshu hurriedly said, "Don't!"

He stopped Li Xu, but he did not stop Boss Li.

"Then I'll kowtow to the master!"

He started to kneel on the spot. Chu Tianshu quickly reached out to support him, but Old Li's knees still picked up large patches of dust.

He really had saved their family, but none of them had actually come face-to-face with the Ghost Scholar. Could they truly understand how dangerous it had been?

A boss dropping to his knees and kowtowing just like that was still a bit much.

Instead, Chu Tianshu grew a little suspicious. Could this family be short of funds, putting on an exaggerated performance because they want to skip out on the bill?

As he was thinking this, Boss Li took out a card and put it in Chu Tianshu's hand.

"Master, there's a hundred thousand yuan on this card. The password is on the back."

Boss Li said, "Of course, I can never repay you for saving our lives. A hundred thousand certainly isn't much. I'll be sure to keep in touch from now on, and I won't forget you on holidays and festivals. The cost of acupuncture and medicine for Xuxu and me afterward will be paid separately..."

A hundred thousand yuan was no small sum. Boss Li had probably learned a little about the going rate from Teacher Qiao.

Chu Tianshu's doubts vanished, and a smile appeared on his face.

As for his behavior just now, perhaps when Boss Li was not possessed by a ghost, he was simply this straightforward and especially mindful of repaying kindness.

What he did not know was that Boss Li had firsthand experience of the harm the Ghost Scholar could do.

Not the experience of being possessed, though; Boss Li actually remembered little of that.

It was mainly because, after this incident, Boss Li had recalled how he had botched many things over the past six months or more, possibly because of the Ghost Scholar's influence.

In the past, Boss Li had placed great hopes on his son, but not to the point of making Li Xu sign up for damned extracurricular calligraphy and guqin classes during such an important stage as high school, and enter all sorts of Mathematical Olympiad competitions everywhere.

He had also flown into a rage at Li Xu over those extracurricular classes, carrying his bad temper straight into his business dealings.

Over those past six months or more, his factory's business had declined considerably.

Before business negotiations, he could clearly remember to prepare a card as a gift for the person liaising with him at the other company.

But once the talks began, a word or two he disliked would set him off. He would lose his temper and make snide remarks, acting like some learned scholar and great professor who commanded the world with a sweep of his hand and pontificated on affairs of state.

It would have been a miracle if he had closed any deals like that.

This was what frightened Boss Li most in hindsight. If things had dragged on another month or two, even if the ghost had not played him to death, he would have offended every local client.

If he went bankrupt and had to crawl back to his poor mountain village, that would truly be more terrifying than anything.

"Neither of you will need acupuncture going forward. I'll write one prescription for you and another for Li Xu. Also, Li Xu mustn't overexert himself lately. Let him rest as much as possible, and don't trouble him with odds and ends."

Chu Tianshu carried his coat into the living room and sat down in a chair in his own home. It felt comfortable.

"Boss Li, even though the one who harmed you was no longer anything good, that stone stele treated him far too badly. When you go back, hire someone to smash it up, haul it somewhere else, and throw it away."

Boss Li nodded repeatedly.

Chu Tianshu then checked the pulses of father and son. Madam Li joined in too, so he examined all three and wrote each of them a prescription.

Madam Li's was just for general health and regulation.

"You can buy these medicinal ingredients at a licensed pharmacy. Take them for one course of treatment, then come back for a follow-up."

Boss Li and his wife thanked him again and turned to leave.

"Wait a moment."

Chu Tianshu called out and pointed at the candy spread across the table. "Li Xu, come pick one."

Li Xu could feel his parents watching him. Unwilling to look back at them, he hesitantly came over and reached out for a piece of chocolate.

Chu Tianshu slowly smiled. "All right. See you."

"Thank you!"

Li Xu thanked him with his head lowered, then quickly turned and left. Only after stepping through the door did he say, "Goodbye, Teacher."

Teacher Qiao watched the two cars leave, then came over and said, "That kid's state of mind is finally a little better."

Chu Tianshu turned his head toward him, the card held between his fingers. "Shall I split it with you once I withdraw the money?"

"You underestimate me. I'm an old hand at this. I already got cash."

Teacher Qiao pulled out a stack of red banknotes to show him, then stuffed them back in his pocket. "I didn't really help much, yet I took this much. I feel a little guilty."

Chu Tianshu said, "You brought their son over at the risk of bringing the fire down on yourself. Otherwise, their family would probably have fallen apart too. If you ask me, what they gave you in thanks was on the low side."

Teacher Qiao said, "Oh, come on. A teacher may not be considered a father like in ancient times, but we still need some professional ethics. I meant I didn't do much to help you."

Chu Tianshu rolled his neck. "Then treat me to a meal."

Teacher Qiao was about to agree when Chu Tianshu smiled and added, "But not today. I have no appetite today. Once I've recovered, I'll come find you for a feast and eat until your guilty conscience turns into heartache."

Teacher Qiao said cheerfully, "All right, I won't keep you, then. Get some good rest. See you."

He went outside, put on his helmet, and climbed onto his motorcycle. The engine rumbled, and he rode over the bridge and around the bend.

With his departure, today's business had finally come to an end.

Chu Tianshu put the card away, stretched, and shut the front door. He warmed up a large carton of milk and downed it, swallowed a pill, and fell straight into bed.

Outside the window, the sky changed from bright white to the orange-red of sunset. Time passed until even the last glow faded.

A panicked gasp came from inside the room.

After a while, the bedside lamp was switched on.

Chu Tianshu sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes somewhat vacant.

He had taken his medicine before sleeping, yet he had still had another nightmare.

The feeling from the dream of being unable to resist, able only to flee, still clung stubbornly to his chest. It was suffocatingly heavy, yet also strangely hollow, and made him want to vomit.

Remembering the Ghost Gate Reverse Stimulation Needle, the feeling of his whole body swelling with strength and vigor surging through him, made the enormous contrast with his present state all the more unbearable.

When Chu Tianshu raised his hand, his wildly beating heart seemed still to tug at the tiny sinews throughout his body, causing a slight, uncontrollable tremor.

The throbbing reverberation in his temples made his head swim even more. He could not help closing his eyes, his hand groping for and grasping the pendant as he began to chant an incantation.

Outside the window, night had fallen completely. Along the concrete road, the streetlights on the utility poles came on one after another.

Chu Tianshu exhaled slowly. The palpitations and trembling had faded, and he released the pendant, sitting wordlessly on the edge of the bed.

A long time passed before he came back to himself.

"Oh, right, the Ghost Tooth Grass."

He went downstairs, found a large Coke bottle, cut it in half, and planted the Ghost Tooth Grass in it.

With the cap screwed on tightly, the top half of the Coke bottle made a serviceable cup, which he filled with tap water.

As Chu Tianshu watered the plant, he felt around for his phone. No matter how he pressed it, the screen stayed black. Sure enough, it was broken.

Phones were fragile. Not to mention encounters involving exorcising evil and spirits, sometimes even when Chu Tianshu sat quietly cultivating, fluctuations in his Mind Power could accidentally cause his phone to malfunction.

That was why he kept a spare at home.

After watering the plant, Chu Tianshu found his spare phone, swapped in the SIM card, loaded his contacts, scrolled through them, and dialed a number.

Beep, beep, beep-

The monotonous ringing sounded through the receiver.

"Hello, Tianshu."

Once the call connected, a low, gentle male voice spoke. "What is it? Has the medicine become less effective again?"

Chu Tianshu sat down on the sofa and relaxed a little. Deliberately trying for a joking tone, he said, "Brother Baisui, you bring that up every time I call. Anyone who didn't know better would think you were a drug dealer."

Lin Baisui was Grandpa Chu's disciple. By seniority, he was Chu Tianshu's martial uncle, but there was less than ten years between them.

He disliked being called uncle, so he had taught Chu Tianshu to call him "big brother" from childhood. Eventually, Chu Tianshu had grown used to it.

He now worked at the Special Investigation Bureau in the Jianghuai region, the official agency responsible for handling anomalous incidents.

He was the one who had helped find the original source of the special medicine.

"The medicine's still working well enough for me. Don't worry too much."

"But I really did call you today to talk about selling medicine," Chu Tianshu said. "I got hold of a Ghost Tooth Grass plant that's over a hundred years old, and I'm planning to list it on your trading website."

"What do you think would be a suitable asking price?"

Lin Baisui sounded a little surprised. "Ghost Tooth Grass over a hundred years old? You... didn't run into an Overflow Zone, did you?"

Ghost Tooth Grass wasn't found exclusively in Overflow Zones, so how had he guessed so accurately?

Chu Tianshu was surprised too. "I did run into one, but it wasn't a big problem. I've already dealt with it. Aren't Overflow Zones supposed to appear randomly and be really rare? How did you think of that right away?"

Lin Baisui fell silent for a moment, then said, "Some things aren't secrets anymore, so there's no harm in telling you."

"Since the start of the twenty-first century, Overflow Zone incidents have been happening more frequently across the country and even around the world, especially in the past few years."

"Jianghuai lies in the southeast of the Divine Land, where Yang Qi is strong. You're also in the Yangtze River Delta, surrounded by great waters. Efforts to control the river have paid off in recent years, and the feng shui is lively. It's probably for reasons like these that nothing of the sort had happened over there before."

Lin Baisui sighed, his voice full of helplessness.

"Now it's happened over there too. I have a feeling our Jianghuai Special Investigation Bureau will soon have to start working a lot of overtime."

Chu Tianshu frowned slightly. "Then you'll need to be extra careful."

"It's not that dangerous. We don't have many spirit mediums here, but we have plenty of martial artists. Every time I go out, there are always several people from the team backing me up."

Lin Baisui said no more about those matters. He gave Chu Tianshu a price range for the Ghost Tooth Grass, and the two chatted a little longer about how they had been doing before hanging up.

Chu Tianshu put down his phone and stared at the screen, lost in thought.

When Lin Baisui had been invited to join the Special Investigation Bureau, he had come to discuss it with Grandpa. The pay and benefits had been good.

Grandpa hadn't gone, and he had also urged Chu Tianshu not to join.

For one thing, spirit mediums had more freedom outside the organization. For another, they were more likely to encounter danger in the Special Investigation Bureau.

If Lin Baisui hadn't insisted on joining, and if it hadn't been through his connections there that they had later obtained the special medicine, Grandpa Chu would even have wanted him to stay away as well.

But if Overflow Zones were generally becoming more frequent, would independent cultivators, scattered like loose sand, really be safer?

Chu Tianshu looked down at his phone, but before he could reach an answer, he suddenly noticed the pendant on his chest.

When had this little token taken on a texture like jade?!

Chu Tianshu pinched the token and activated his spirit vision. His body jolted, and he straightened his back.

The red light inside the token seemed to have filled it.

Before, it had been like a can of Red Bull with a little missing from the top. Now that tiny gap had been filled.

At least, from what Chu Tianshu could make out, there was no space left at all.

Once the spirit light was full, he could obtain a great opportunity!

Over the past two years, Chu Tianshu had placed more and more hope in this pendant, hoping to rely on it to eradicate the root of his illness.

But now that the red light had actually filled up, he couldn't help feeling a trace of wariness.

The pendant had suddenly filled up today, which was a little unusual. On top of that, what the so-called great opportunity actually was remained entirely unknown.

Mystic Kingdom, Jianghuai region, Special Investigation Bureau headquarters.

After hanging up, Lin Baisui went into his office and typed rapidly, writing a report to inform his superiors of the Overflow Zone that had appeared in Hailing.

There was also a map of the entire country on the computer, with red dots marking many locations. The dots had originally been sparsest in the southeast, and there hadn't been a single one in the Yangtze River Delta.

Now Lin Baisui's mouse cursor rested over that pure land, vertical furrows creasing his brow.

The Special Investigation Bureau had selected and trained quite a few people, and recruited others as well, but there had been so much going on in other regions these past few years that some personnel had inevitably been transferred from here to assist them.

Now that a serious situation was beginning to emerge in Jianghuai as well, he didn't know whether this report would prompt those above to make a decision soon.

Even if they didn't transfer many people back, allocating more funding so they could recruit people from outside the organization to help would be good too.

Before long, the phone on his desk began to vibrate.

Lin Baisui let go of the mouse and answered at once. It was his team leader.

"Did you just report an Overflow Zone incident? In the summary for last quarter that was just completed today, there were actually already three similar incidents in the Yangtze River Delta, counting yours."

"For some time now, the higher-ups have wanted our Jianghuai Special Investigation Bureau to be able to communicate directly with the local police departments, share case intelligence, and simplify procedures, but there's been some resistance," the team leader said solemnly.

"Now there should be grounds for it. Come to the auditorium too. We're attending a meeting."

Hailing, Chu Tianshu's home.

He had already taken the pendant from his neck and placed it on the coffee table in front of him. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped beneath his chin, he wore a conflicted expression.

Leaving the unknown risks aside for now, how exactly was he supposed to trigger this opportunity?

The red light had filled up, but nothing had changed on its own.

The book hadn't mentioned any special secret method, and simply infusing it with Mind Power probably wouldn't work either.

Before Chu Tianshu knew the pendant was full, he had held it while chanting an incantation and already infused it with Mind Power. Some still remained, and the feedback was no different from before.

Suddenly, a wisp of white smoke flashed out of the pendant.

Chu Tianshu's spirit vision was inexplicably interrupted, and he saw the pendant with his ordinary eyes.

The pendant, which had looked like cloudy jade a moment ago, was now free of all mottling, clear as ice.

Chu Tianshu's mind reeled. He suddenly felt the space around him empty, and he fell onto the grass.