The group of ghosts retreated.
To them, they had intended to come to have some hot pot and see a monster in the meantime.
Who knew that because of the lack of money, they didn’t get to eat the hot pot.
And as for the monster, it suddenly mutated and became a divine beast that was super ferocious.
Putting aside the issue of whether or not divine beasts and monsters really existed in this world, just looking at the way the burning giant bird flapped its wings and screamed, the ghosts know that they were no match for it.
Since they couldn’t fight it, it was better to make a run for it.
On the way back, the ghosts were still in a state of anxiety and heightened emotions. If not for the fact that ghosts could not hit each other, the quick-witted ghost would’ve been beaten up by the rest by now.
If one tried to act smart in front of absolute power, it was easy to become a victim of one’s own cleverness. Even the seven or eight-year-old ghost that had wailed without shedding tears understood this principle.
There must also be a reason as to why the little boss of the hot pot eatery could live peacefully into adulthood even though she had such an ability.
For some inexplicable reason, the ghosts helped Meng Xiaoni find a good reason for having lived peacefully for twenty years without being found out.
At the same time, they also deeply understood a truth.
There were rules for being a human, and there were rules for being a ghost.
Humans were bound by law; as for ghosts, they would all have to settle their accounts in Hell in the end; nothing was escapable.
When the time came for the sun to rise in the east, and the temperature grew warmer, the ghosts all returned to their original haunts.
Elder Lu slowly recovered from the events of the previous day and night; he sat in his son’s living room and fanned himself thoughtfully.
Lao Lu was oblivious to all that; he got up early in the morning, bare-chested, and walked from the bathroom to the kitchen to boil water while brushing his teeth, then wandered back to his bathroom to rinse his mouth.
Having finished the college entrance examinations, the grandson Xiao Lu slept through the day these days; he could finally live openly as if recovering from jetlag, sleeping late, and waking up late.
Lao Lu’s wife also got up at this time.
She brushed her teeth and washed her face, put on a facial mask, and went to make breakfast.
First, she turned on the soybean milk machine and put in the beans she soaked last night to grind them into soybean milk.
Then, she took yesterday’s leftover large intestines from the fridge, added a handful of noodles, and a large handful of chilli flakes.
After air-drying large handfuls of red chilis, place them into a hot wok and roast them till blackened and burnt, then pound it with a container—this was how chilli flakes were made. These chilli flakes were either a deep dark red, or a black-red; they no longer looked vibrant, and did not even taste spicy like red chilli.
However, the pepper flakes were more fragrant than fresh red chilis and were easier to store. With these advantages, many in Fengdu liked to use large amounts of pepper flakes in the morning to stir-fry a bowl of chilli pepper noodles.
The ingredients of the noodles could be leftover large intestines from the night before, or ribs, pork liver, and so on. It was a bowl of noodles that was deeply satisfying and filling.
Lao Lu’s wife was a good cook.
She prepared two bowls of noodles in no time at all and went back to the bathroom to remove her facial mask.
Lao Lu came out to eat his noodles.
When Lao Lu’s wife came out, the two of them ate while chatting about the recent events.
“Why did you take on the job of designing the hot pot restaurant?”
“You’ve asked eight hundred times. Didn’t I already say, our son needs money for college.”
“So many things happened back then. You clearly said you would never take up another design job.”
“So many years have passed. If I need to, I will take it up. The main reason was my dad, I guess. I always felt that he wanted me to do design work again when he was alive. But back then, being an ‘eighth-grader’1, I didn’t consider so much; I just wanted to change jobs.”
“You were an eighth-grader for quite a while then.”
“Yeah. When I happened to meet that girl, I only said I’d help her take a look. But as we talked, it suddenly evolved into me taking on the job.”
“Didn’t you also say something about being a living signboard? Hmm, how shameless.”
“I meant that their shop will be my living signboard!”
“Well, it wouldn’t be that difficult for you to go back to do design work, right?”
As the two talked on, Elder Lu heard it all.
As Elder Lu listened, he couldn’t help tsking.
At present, he really didn’t know if attracting the ghost-seeing Meng Xiaoni was a good thing or not. Unusual things were unfolding one by one, and he felt rather uneasy.
To the older generation, simple and ordinary days were good enough; it was good to be able to achieve great success, but if not, that was also fine.
While he was dealing with his internal struggle, there were other ghosts dealing with their own too.
For example, the one that went along to the hot pot eatery last night who had no relatives in the human realm. He squatted under a bridge, thinking hard about how he could get into the hot pot eatery to eat.
While there were ghosts who invited him to eat together, that was obviously not a long-term solution.
If say a family brought a ghost, and this ghost invited a group of ghosts.
How would they all eat?
With all the commotion crowded in the hot pot eatery, even if the little boss didn’t say anything, that bird would probably be so annoyed that he’d blast them all out.
He needed to pay.
And also find a way to deal with the food that remained.
Where would the money come from?
Actually, it wasn’t that ghosts were unable to get money. These group of ghosts have gone up in the skies and down in the ground several times. People across millennia all wished that there was gold, silver, and treasure buried underground. In fact, after wandering about there and there in his afterlife, he had found a lot of that.
Some had owners, and some had no owner at all; underground, in the middle of nowhere, completely forgotten.
But he couldn’t possibly ask the hot pot eatery’s little boss to dig it up herself, right?
Running an eatery, cooking, and then having to dig for money on top of that, seemed a little too much.
The ghost was very troubled.
Another example was the quick-witted ghost from last night.
The quick-witted ghost spirit had also found a solution. In addition to mooching off others unabashedly, he had to find something that could be quickly exchanged for money and make a deal with the hot pot eatery’s little boss.
Once he struck it rich, he might be able to eat until he had to go to the underworld.
The problem was, how was he going to get the little boss to look for the items? In terms of ownership, these things do not belong to him either, right?
Would he have to settle these accounts in the underworld?
He was also very troubled.
Almost every one of the remaining ghosts was very troubled.
Moves, dramas and novels all portray ghosts as powerful beings; they could make lights flicker, make things move, hurt people. But when they really became ghosts, they realised that these were all lies.
Even when their faces flushed from the effort, they could not even move a small bean.
They stared at the light bulb all night, but couldn’t turn off the light even once.
As for the legendary phenomena of gui da qiang2, or gui ya chuang3…
Hah…
Those were all are normal phenomena that could be explained by scientific reasoning. Ignorance was what led to fear, but ghosts were the ones who took the blame. Don’t ghosts have pride too?
Of course, ghosts have pride.
That was why the group of ghosts were struggling to figure out how they could eat hot pot in a proper and aboveboard manner.
As for conveying messages through dreams, this was real, and every ghost could do it.
But the problem was that humans could dream.
A human had about seven or eight dreams in one night. When one woke up in the morning, they either don’t remember any of them, or only remember the last dream that left a bit of impression when it startled them awake.
And as for such dreams, about 70% of it would be forgotten after one brushed their teeth.
It was very rare to be able to convey it after one washed their face.
Conveying a message through a dream was also not an easy thing to do!
Dreams were like the consciousness’s large, sprawling playground for fantasies; before the ghost had time to appear in front of the owner of the dream, the dream might have already changed scenes.
It was too bitter.
The more they thought about it, the more bitter it was. It was bitter enough for them to want to hurry to Hell to get a queue number to reincarnate.
An early reincarnation, just so to have something good to eat.
The ghosts spent the day in sorrow and anguish.
Night fell again.
The ghosts gathered at the park again.
A ghost tugged their companion who went to the hot pot eatery yesterday and asked excitedly, “Did you go to see the monster? Was there really a monster?”
The companion nodded repeatedly, “It was a powerful fire bird!”
The ghost exclaimed, “Wow, I want to see it too.”
The companion dissuaded urgently, “It’s very fierce, and looks very powerful. I think it can burn us all up.”
Another ghost chuckled, “We ghosts are all dead anyway. To be able to see a monster, there will be no regrets in life!”
There were others who had not gone last night who were just as eager to try.
Somehow, as the number of ghosts on the scene gradually increased, any ghost who had been to a hot pot eatery the night before did not support the idea of the other ghosts going. But when pressed for a reason, they could only say that the monster was very ferocious.
The ghosts present all understood that the monster was very fierce, but the problem was…
The ghosts that went there last night, saw the monster, but didn’t die.
Then, why couldn’t they go too?
Some of the keener ghosts felt there was something amiss and started to probe.
By the time Elder Lu got to the park, it was already the latter part of the night.
When he arrived at the park, he saw that the ghosts present were divided into two teams and were in the middle of some kind of textbook-level Fengdu verbal battle. Some were taunting and jeering, some were baring their teeth, some were spewing vulgarities.
Elder Lu looked around in bewilderment and finally spotted his buddy Zheng Zi in the corner.
He drifted over and asked Zhengzi in confusion, “What’s going on?”
Zheng Zi shrank back and scratched his head. “Well, ghosts are blabbermouths after all. Someone spilt the beans about the hot pot eatery. Now everyone knows that there is a hot pot eatery where ghosts can eat. Then, they started quarrelling.”
How could they not quarrel?
Elder Lu followed Zheng Zi and shrank back as well.
Elder Lu frowned, “Then, did they talk about the situation at the hot pot eatery?”
Zheng Zi peeked ahead to make sure that no one had spotted them, then continued, “Yes. About having to pay before being able to eat. And that there’s a phoenix. Also, that the store is about to undergo renovation soon and will be closed. But all these doesn’t stop them from quarrelling.”
Indeed… it couldn’t.
Elder Lu sighed, “Can quarrelling can solve the problem? No!”
Zheng Zi sighed, “Quarreling can’t solve anything, but we can’t fight it out either. Eating hot pot can solve the problem. But there’s so many of us, how can we all eat? Without money, we will have to settle the bill in Hell later.”
The two ghosts sighed, then sighed again; they both felt that it was tough to be a ghost.
The seven or eight-year-old ghost’s head suddenly popped out between them.
He was wearing a bright yellow hat on his head today and looked very cute.
The little yellow hat ghost’s head swayed, “I’ve come up with a method.”
The two old ghosts looked at him.
The little ghost suggested, “Among us, there are those who are preparing to go to the underworld soon, right? Let those ghosts go there to speak with the Yama King.”
Elder Lu was surprised, “About what?”
The little ghost was really smart, “About the business transactions between the underworld and the human realm! The little boss is a human being! But she can make food for ghosts! How many ghosts are there in the underworld crying for food every year when the gates of hell open? Wouldn’t they want to eat hot pot?”
The eyes of the two old ghosts lit up.
The little ghost continued, “Then, the person that has to think of ideas would be the Yama King. If the ghosts really ate hot pot, the Yama King would have to pay for it, right? Besides, the ghosts in this park can’t even keep the secret among ourselves; sooner or later, the underworld will get to know about this hot pot eatery too.”
Although this was just passing on the responsibility of coming up with ideas to the underworld, it was a valid idea.
Elder Lu and Zheng Zi looked at each other, their enthusiasm aroused.
Footnotes:
1 Eighth grader syndrome: 中二 (zhong er); an internet buzzword, referring to the pathological self-awareness of adolescents in the second grade. It is a general term for some behaviours of excessive self-consciousness during the rebellious period of adolescents.
2 gui da qiang: 鬼打墙; literally meaning “ghost building walls”. A phenomenon where people walking around in the dark often find themselves lost and circling back to where they started, as if a ghost had built a wall that kept them from walking straight. There are many good urban ghost stories out there about this phenomenon! This phrase is also used as an idiomatic expression, to mean a person fails to advance in spite of efforts having been made, but in this particular instance, the author is using it as per its original meaning.
3 gui ya chuang: 鬼压床; In China, older generations call the phenomenon of sleep paralysis “Gui Ya Chuang”, literally meaning a ghost is pushing you on your bed.
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