Volume 1 Chapter 1: Ancestor's Instructions
My name is Xifeng. When I was born, I was destined not to live an ordinary life because my family is a unique family. Although my mother is an ordinary woman, my father is a very unique person in the world, and his profession is also unique in the world.
When I was a child, in our ancient town, the tradition of men supporting the family and women raising children was still followed. My father's profession was mysterious and had been the only one in nine generations. He strictly followed the teachings of his ancestors and kept it a secret from his wife. My mother was a very obedient woman. If my father didn't tell her, she would never ask. Therefore, my mother had been married to my father for many years and still didn't know what business he was in.
What is my father's occupation?
A shop specializing in ghost stories!
The so-called ghost affairs only refer to ghosts. No matter if ghosts are sick or injured, bullied by ghosts, or suffer any injustice in the human world, they will take care of everything. As for living people, they will not care at all.
The person who passed down this profession was my great-grandfather, who was the ninth generation elder. He was a descendant of the Maoshan sect and learned the authentic Maoshan techniques. After he debuted, he was famous in the martial arts world for exorcising ghosts and demons. When he was old, he realized a truth, which can be regarded as a summary. Exorcising ghosts and demons can only bring temporary peace to the world. It is a temporary solution, not a permanent solution. The root cause lies in the ghosts and evil spirits. If you want to solve the root cause, you must start with the ghosts and evil spirits. There are many reasons why ghosts and evil spirits harm the world, but few of them harm people for no reason. Most of them have deep resentment before death, no one to worship them after death, injuries and illnesses but no ghost doctor, and their temperaments have changed drastically. They are bullied by ghosts or feel indignant when they encounter difficulties, so they take revenge on the world.
Grandpa Taizu decided to open a ghost shop that specializes in solving these problems for ghosts and calming their emotions. This would reduce the number of evil ghosts in the underworld and bring more peace to the world.
At this point, someone may ask, the customers attracted by this store are all ghosts, they only have ghost money, and they can't travel in the world of the living, how can our family survive?
Hey, you don't have to worry about that. My great grandfather is very smart. He helps a ghost once and gets a ghost tooth. Using Taoist alchemy, 100 ghost teeth can be refined into a black pearl. This thing is a valuable treasure, both in ancient times and now. According to the current market price, one is more than 100,000. In a year, there are always hundreds of ghost teeth in the account, and the income is quite considerable.
Since I was born, my father hung a peach wood plaque around my neck with the words "ghost affairs" engraved on it. Firstly, the peach wood can ward off evil spirits, and secondly, it shows my identity as the next generation heir of the ghost affairs store, and all ghosts should avoid me. Since I was old enough to understand, my father began to teach me Maoshan magic. At that time, it was an era when filial sons were born under the stick. If you didn't want to learn or were lazy, you would either get hit by the bamboo stick on your palm or have your buttocks bruised. No matter how stubborn you were, you would be punished.
Later, when I went to primary school, my classmates saw the wooden sign on my neck and all made fun of me for being a hermaphrodite (a mentally ill person). The teacher also came to me and told me not to wear such feudal and superstitious things. I went home and cried and said I didn’t want to wear it, but my father frowned and scolded me, saying it was feudal and superstitious. If I hadn’t done this job, there would be so many more troublemakers in the world. Today, your teacher wouldn’t dare to say this. I couldn’t take off the sign, otherwise he would break my legs.
My father was very strict. When he got angry, I dared not say a word. Seeing that I was wronged, my mother raised my collar and asked me to tuck the wooden sign inside my clothes so that it would not be exposed. This way, I would be less humiliated at school. But I was still not happy. I was really unhappy to wear this thing to bed every day. However, something happened later, which made me completely understand my father's painstaking efforts.
It happened one morning when I was in the second grade. There was a pond between our home and the elementary school. In winter, the climate in the north was very cold and the ice was thick. Several of my classmates and I went to school together. When we passed the pond, we couldn't help but want to go down to skate. Although my father often warned us before we went out that many people had drowned in the pond and we should never go down to play, but when the children were in the mood to play, they had thrown these warnings behind their ears.
"Hey, come here, there's a hole, let's catch some fish for fun." Ermao waved and called me in the middle of the pond.
Because I was skinny since I was little, they all called me Shrimp. There were two other classmates skating happily on the ice, and they didn't go over to them, so I ran over to them. Ermao was rolling up his cotton jacket sleeves and sticking his entire right arm into the ice hole. I squatted on the side and asked excitedly if he had touched a fish. He said he had touched one and was about to catch it.
I was so happy when I heard that. I didn't do it for greed, but for fun. I helped him grab his arm and pull it out. But the fish was too big, and we fell down and both slipped on the ice.
Ermao cried loudly, saying that a big fish had bitten his finger and wouldn't let go, and he couldn't pull his hand out. I panicked, and quickly called the other two classmates who were skating to help. But our small bodies combined didn't have much strength, and Ermao was pulled into the ice hole, and a splash of water appeared and disappeared above his head.
After the splash, a pale face was faintly revealed, which was very scary. That face suddenly stretched out a long tongue, as long as the tongue of a hanged ghost in a play, and it wrapped around my neck and pulled it down. I was so scared that I cried and pulled back desperately. Two classmates also helped to hold me back. When I struggled hard, the buttons of my cotton jacket broke open, revealing the mahogany card.
The face immediately loosened its tongue, gave me a sinister smile, and suddenly disappeared.
We ran back to the town and called for help to rescue Ermao, but he was already dead. The three of us were all scared out of our wits when we huddled together. Surprisingly, my father did not punish me this time. He took me home and explained to me that Ermao was seduced by Hu Jiang, who drowned in the pond two years ago. This man was mentally disturbed after his wife ran away with someone else. If my father had not given him medicine frequently, he would have caused more trouble. He spared my life after seeing the peach wood sign of the ghost, otherwise I would have ended up like Ermao.
From then on, I never thought about taking off this peach wood plaque. I carried it with me until I graduated from high school and served in the army for three years. I never encountered ghosts again.
After I recovered, I found a job in the provincial capital, got a girlfriend, and planned to stay here and not go back. To be honest, the ghost face I saw when I was a child has always been a nightmare for me. I don’t want to inherit my family’s business and deal with ghosts all day long. But things didn’t go as I wished. Not long after, I heard the bad news that my father was critically ill from my hometown, so I rushed home with my girlfriend.
Before he died, my father said that he had checked in the underworld and that he had reached the end of his life span at the age of 56. Life and death are determined by fate, so he didn’t want me to be too sad. He wanted me to take over the ghost shop because it was a legacy left by our ancestors. If there were many boys in the family, the eldest son would inherit, unless there were no children in the family, then the family line would be cut off.
I really hated myself for not turning a girl, otherwise I wouldn't have to deal with this. Under my father's eager and expectant eyes before he died, could I say no? He finally said that I had been a soldier for three years and was not with him, so I didn't learn many skills. There was an ancient book passed down from my ancestors in the store, which contained all the magic. He only learned a little bit in his life, so he wanted me to work hard to surpass his and my grandfather's achievements.
My father died right after he finished speaking. Seeing the satisfied smile on his face, I knew he was pleased that I agreed to take over the store. I also made up my mind that for my father's sake, I would never change my career in this life.
My girlfriend is very realistic and asked me one question: "Are you going back to the provincial capital?"
I said I would not go back. She said goodbye to me immediately and took a bus back to the provincial capital. We didn't have any contact for three years. This incident made me sad for a long time.
