Volume 3 Chapter 1: Acacia Red Bean Red
After Shen Bing left, I was not idle. I tried to do more work to stop myself from thinking about her. This person is really strange. I had a vague feeling about her before, and sometimes I felt it was unreal. But after listening to Shen Bing's dream talk, it was as if the floodgates in my heart were opened, and the flood rushed out, uncontrollable. My longing for her can be described as a flood.
I don’t know how I could have changed so quickly. From years ago when I couldn’t tolerate any other woman because of Yaxue, to now, in just two months, I have fallen in love with a girl from the provincial capital.
The day after Shen Bing left, I asked a carpenter to make the same old-style door panels. I rearranged the Azure Dragon, White Tiger and Eight Trigrams Ghost Suppression Bureau in the shop, repaired the shelves, and placed the magic bottles on them.
The people in the town are very enthusiastic about me now. The carpenter doesn't charge for making door panels and repairing shelves. But it's better to pay. From time to time, they will come to me to help them check whether the Feng Shui layout of their homes is appropriate , or if someone has a headache or fever, they will ask me for help. I feel that what I do is similar to what Mr. Luo does.
This is good, I don't have much free time to begin with, and now I have almost no spare time, and I have to deal with Wang Zijun's schooling, so I am very busy. But even though I am busy, I feel very empty inside.
After the Lantern Festival, I picked a good day to bury Yaxue's ashes in the ancestral grave. I stayed at her grave for a whole day. Although there was another person in my heart, my love for her did not change at all. If she were still alive, I would never fall in love with anyone else.
Every afternoon when I open my eyes, I am busy. After midnight, when I sit alone in the store without any customers, I feel very bored and want to call Shen Bing. But looking at the watch, I think if I disturb her at this time, I will definitely be scolded. Alas, she has been gone for more than ten days, and I have not called her once. I always can't muster up the courage. You say that I am not afraid of anything, not even ghosts, but I am afraid to call her.
As time went by, I realized that time will dilute everything, just like when Yaxue said goodbye to me. That period was very difficult to endure at first, but after a while, everything will slowly fade away until it is buried deep in my heart and becomes a seed that never sprouts, rotting into soil over time.
Just like Shen Bing and Yaxue, they don’t belong to me, so why should I make myself suffer?
Life went on as usual, and my mood gradually calmed down. Every night I sat in the shop, playing Teresa Teng's Tuberose on the old tape recorder left by my father, squinting my eyes, and it was so enjoyable. I am a conservative person and cannot appreciate new songs, especially Jay Chou's songs. I really want to open the tape and straighten his tongue.
But whenever I hear the clacking sound of high heels outside the store, my heart would inexplicably rise to my throat and I would stretch my neck to look outside. Damn, Aunt Niu from next door walked past my door in a cheongsam and high heels. You are already in your fifties, but you still dress up so flamboyantly, aren't you ashamed? I thought it was Shen Bing.
Alas, I thought I hadn't thought about her for many days, but the sound of high heels brought her back to my mind. Bah, you old pervert, you made me miss you again!
Just when I was getting angry, this kid Wang Zijun came. He would come to my place every night at 11:30 every other night. He begged me for many days, and I only taught him some simple Maoshan introductory knowledge, which was enough for him to cheat and deceive people. It was much better than Master Mao not teaching him anything.
This kid is pestering me to learn something advanced tonight. I told you long ago that you are impatient and not suitable for learning these. If you really have the perseverance, learn the basic knowledge first, and then I will teach you some useful .
As a result, he curled his lips and said, "The introductory knowledge is too simple. Even Qu Mo looks down on me. You asked me to learn something advanced so that I can show off in front of her."
I almost fainted , he was still thinking about picking up girls. You said this girl is also very strange, a girl can learn anything else, but she must learn Taoism and let Wang Zijun have ideas about me. The beginning of Maoshan Taoism stated that it would never be taught to people with bad intentions. Wang Zijun learned Taoism to pick up girls, which means he has bad intentions, and I can't teach him.
I refused, and he just kept on pestering me. Just at this moment, a female ghost came in, and my business came to me. Wang Zijun only took one look and was so scared that he lowered his head and ran out of the store.
Wang Zijun is not a very timid person, but he was scared away by a ghost. I took a closer look at the female ghost, and my heart almost jumped out of my chest.
She was covered in blood, and it was hard to tell whether she was wearing clothes or not. Anyway, the blood outlined her graceful body lines, and she had a good figure. Unfortunately, some parts of her body looked like they had been bitten by a dog , with potholes and blood. Even her entire face was torn, and her left eye had a big hole, revealing the entire eyeball.
You said seeing a ghost in the middle of the night is not scary, what is scary is seeing a female ghost with such a horrible appearance. I took a deep breath, turned off the recorder, pulled my windbreaker to my chest, and asked her, "Tell me what you want to say."
The female ghost covered her face and started crying without saying a word. I thought she must be a ghost who died unjustly and most likely fell from a great height and ended up in this miserable state.
Sure enough, the female ghost cried for a while and said, "I died unjustly... woo woo..."
Usually when a woman dies, unless she died of illness, most people attribute it to an unjust death. That is a common problem, as if they should be immortal and never die.
I said, "Don't cry yet, tell me what's going on."
The ghost wiped her tears. Are they still tears? They are all blood plasma. This squeezed half of her eyeballs out of her eye sockets, making her look even more terrifying. "I died four days ago... Woohoo... I went to Huangshan with some classmates, but we encountered a monster... Woohoo... I was so scared that I slipped and fell off the mountain and died!"
Oh, so she really fell to death. Why did she come to me? Did she want me to help her get revenge? No way. Our shop has a rule that as long as the request is not excessive, we have to accept the business and cannot refuse the customer's request. Otherwise, it will increase the hatred of ghosts towards the human world. The ghost shop did not do good things, but made things worse. Huangshan is thousands of miles away from us. It is not easy to make a trip. At most, I can earn two ghost teeth from her, which is not enough to cover the expenses.
The ghost said that her name was Tang Xiaohan, and she was a sophomore at a university in Huangshan City. In the past, the school would organize a spring outing in the wild in March every year, and the best place to go was of course Huangshan. But later, due to a student fall accident, the school stopped organizing this activity for three consecutive years. The four of them, who were good friends, discussed it and decided to go to Huangshan for a trip on the weekend because they had never had the opportunity to go on a spring outing since they came to this university.
She went with three classmates, two boys and one girl. They didn't have much money, so they didn't hire a tour guide. They entered the scenic area late, and they didn't like climbing with a large number of tourists. They took a small path, and it was dark soon. They got lost while walking. When I heard this, I thought, you are two boys and two girls, probably two couples, otherwise why don't you like to mix with a large number of tourists? You just want to find a quiet place to be intimate, I understand.
