Mystic in Hempen Robes

Encounter a ghost

Seeing the shadowy figure, Ning Haoyu and I yelled in unison, “Who’s there?!”

The figure didn’t answer. Instead, with a sudden *whoosh*, it hunched over and darted to a corner of my small shop.

Its speed was incredible—nothing like what a crouching run should produce.

Seeing it flee, both Ning Haoyu and I felt a surge of boldness. We charged toward the corner together. As I ran, I cursed, “Damn thief, stealing from me? Do you even know what this place was before? A *funeral goods shop*!”

The moment I said “funeral goods shop,” a strange chill ran down my own spine for some reason.

Ning Haoyu nudged me lightly. “Are you trying to scare him or me?”

Talking, we flanked the shadowy figure, trapping it in the corner. Shining the flashlight, we saw it crouched facing the wall.

The figure had a head of white hair and wore dark, messy cotton clothes. Wait—cotton clothes? It was summer. Could it be… *burial clothes*?

The same thought struck both Ning Haoyu and me. We instinctively took a step back.

“Who are you?” I demanded, waving the flashlight shakily over the figure.

Calming myself, I took a closer look. Oh god—the beam of my flashlight was passing *through* its body, illuminating the wall behind. And there was no shadow cast on the wall.

Just as I stood there gaping in shock, the figure moved. Its hands suddenly gripped the wall, and like a gecko, it began scaling vertically upward.

That wasn’t all. Upon reaching the ceiling, its entire body melted *into* it and vanished without a trace.

Leaving Ning Haoyu and me standing there dumbfounded.

Ning Haoyu swallowed hard. “Did you see that, Chu-yi?”

I swallowed too. “Yeah. I’m not blind.”

We stood there for a moment longer, spines icy, then hurriedly retreated from the shop, locking the door behind us. Ning Haoyu asked what we should do. I shook my head. “Never dealt with this before. That thing… was probably a ghost.”

I’d only ever heard Grandpa talk about ghosts and weird stuff. Never seen one myself, always thought they were just his stories. But now I’d encountered one personally…

My thoughts were in chaos when Ning Haoyu nudged me. “You think, since it went into the ceiling… could it be on the second floor? Which renter’s room is above your shop?”

That snapped me to attention. It hadn’t just run; it might have gone into the room upstairs—the one rented by the KTV woman.

Mentioning this, Ning Haoyu asked, “You think something happened? If someone dies here, you’ll never rent this place out again.”

“Pah!” I cut him off. “Don’t jinx it. Come on, let’s go check upstairs. If something’s messing with my livelihood, even if it’s a ghost, I’ll deal with it.”

Ning Haoyu tried to hold me back, but I was already heading for the stairs.

Seeing he couldn’t stop me, he reluctantly followed.

We soon reached the KTV woman’s door. The light inside was off. It was quiet—dead quiet. No telling if something had happened.

Ning Haoyu whispered, “What now?” I thought for a moment, then knocked.

Soon, a slightly panicked female voice came from inside. “Who is it?”

I whispered back, “It’s me. The landlord.”

Her voice relaxed a bit. “Oh, Little Landlord. Not a good time today… it’s *that time* of the month. Maybe come another day?”

She’d misunderstood.

Ning Haoyu looked at me. “You come here often?”

I shot back impatiently, “Bullshit! This is the first time—wait, no, not ‘first time’! We’re here to catch a ghost!”

Our conversation was a bit heated, and she probably heard some of it. She called out, “Little Landlord, is someone with you? What did you just say… a ghost? There’s a ghost in your place?”

I quickly corrected myself. “No, you misheard. We said ‘catch a thief.’ Someone broke into the shop downstairs. Just checking if you folks up here had any trouble.”

With that excuse, I roused all the second-floor tenants. Everyone seemed normal. No one had seen the shadowy figure. After some commotion, I announced the thief had probably run off, told everyone to check for missing items, and said we’d report it tomorrow.

Everyone said nothing was missing, so the matter was dropped for now.

Back downstairs, Ning Haoyu refused to sleep alone and insisted on sharing my room. Honestly, I didn’t want to be alone either. So we squeezed into Grandpa’s room for the night.

We barely slept, kept awake thinking about the shadowy figure. Every little noise made us jumpy. It was almost dawn when we finally drifted into a fitful sleep.

We woke up around noon.

Our first order of business was to check the shop.

Inside, Ning Haoyu and I discovered something odd: the desk, which had been clearly dragged askew last night, was now back perfectly in the center of the room, positioned almost exactly as we had left it yesterday. It was as if last night’s events had been a dream.

Ning Haoyu circled the desk twice. “What the hell?”

I shook my head. Ning Haoyu continued, “Chu-yi, look… maybe we should just burn this thing. It’s too sinister. I don’t want to be responsible for something happening to you.”

I walked over and circled the desk myself. “Burning it might make things worse. That ghost seems tied to this desk. If we destroy it, it might haunt us for life. Our best bet now is to try and… send it away.”

Ning Haoyu stared. “You know how to do that?”

I shot him a look. “Grandpa taught me some things. But I always just listened like they were stories, never took them seriously. Didn’t bother to remember properly. No idea if it’ll work. But before we try to send it away, there’s one thing I have to do first.”

Ning Haoyu asked what. I took a deep breath. “Read its fortune.”

“Are you insane? Read a *ghost’s* fortune?” Ning Haoyu shoved me.

I smiled bitterly. “It’s a rule Grandpa set for me. He said if I ever encountered a ghost and wanted to send it away, I *had* to read its face first. Back then, I thought he was talking crazy. Now… I think *I’m* the one going crazy.”

Ning Haoyu patted my shoulder, full of sympathy. “What exactly *did* your grandpa do before?”

I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t know myself. He said he was just a fortune-teller, and a really good one. But what did fortune-telling have to do with ghosts?

Just as Ning Haoyu and I were talking in the shop, a series of frantic *thump thump thump*s came from upstairs—someone was stomping hard on the floor.

The noise grated on me. I yelled upward, “What’s wrong with you?!”

My shout didn’t stop it. The stomping only grew faster and more furious: *THUMP THUMP THUMP…*

That got me angry. How dare a tenant challenge the landlord like this?

Ning Haoyu and I rushed upstairs, heading straight for the KTV woman’s room—the source of the noise.

Upstairs, we found all other doors locked. Only hers was open—wide open. She stood in the doorway, hands gripping the frame, head hanging low with hair obscuring her face, feet stomping rhythmically on the floor just inside the room.

Seeing this, I grabbed her wrist. “What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

The moment I touched her, her wrist felt ice-cold. After pulling her hands from the doorframe, I quickly let go.

My tug seemed to stop her stomping, but her head remained bowed. She didn’t speak or move.

Ning Haoyu said beside me, “She doesn’t look right.”

I didn’t need him to tell me. I could see it. So I kept my voice calm, no longer shouting. “Hey… are you okay…?”

Before I could finish, she suddenly jerked her head up.

Her face was half-made-up. One side was pale with powder, the other yellowish. At first glance, it looked like a yin-yang face.

Her appearance startled me so much I almost yelled “Ghost!” right then and there.

Her eyes were strange too. Usually, when she looked at me, she’d smile, eyes crinkling into slits. Today, she stared at me blankly, her gaze filled with pure resentment.

Worst of all, she was grinding her teeth right in front of me, as if she wanted to eat me alive.

Meanwhile, I’d already scanned her face thoroughly. The spot between her eyebrows was dark—extremely dark—a sign of overwhelming misfortune and invasive Yin evil. In other words, this woman was possessed.

Furthermore, the area between her eyes, just above the nose—the Palace of Illness and Calamity—was crisscrossed with fine lines. A sign of serious illness. This possession would bring her a major sickness.

Her eyebrows, the Palace of Longevity in facial reading, already showed signs of thinning and falling out. This indicated the coming illness could shorten her lifespan significantly, possibly even kill her outright.

The more I saw, the more alarmed I became.

Ning Haoyu nudged me. “Let’s go back downstairs. She’s not right.”

I grunted in agreement, but as I turned to leave, I suddenly spun back. Using my thumb, I pressed hard on the philtrum above the woman’s lip.

The philtrum is a gate of consciousness, capable of awakening the mind. My press was an attempt to jolt her true awareness awake.

This wasn’t just an ordinary press. It contained a thread of *qi*—a technique Grandpa taught me from qigong. Problem was, I couldn’t even fully perceive *qi* yet, so the attempt was weak.

Luckily, she was caught off guard. My press didn’t fully wake her, but it stopped her frenzied state. Her body went limp and she collapsed.

Ning Haoyu asked, “Did you knock her out?”

I replied, “Stop talking and help me carry her inside. I need to see if Grandpa’s methods actually work.”