New Arc: Wrath
Chapters 54-68
“Meow!”
Something furry brushed against his ankle, and Fu Sang immediately pulled his leg back.
Cats were everywhere.
It felt like cat fur was floating in the air, making him feel like sneezing all the time.
Da Shuangxi’s face was framed in the phone screen, smiling with overflowing maternal love:
“Ahh! Kitty Three heard my voice? Kitty Five is also a good baby, what about Kitty Sixteen, let me see Kitty Sixteen.”
Fu Sang was now regretting taking on the job of feeding Da Shuangxi’s cats for three hundred yuan an hour.
He thought this job was just putting out cat food, adding water, scooping litter, taking out the trash, and leaving…that kind of process.
Who knew that Da Shuangxi had eighteen cats of all sizes at home, each with different tastes. Feeding them required precision down to which cat ate which brand and which flavor of canned food; if they ate the wrong one, they’d get diarrhea.
A loving mother spoils the child…or in this case, her cats.
“What does Old Eight eat?” After sitting here for nearly an hour, they had only gotten to Old Eight out of the eighteen cats.
Fu Sang reasonably suspected that by the time Old Eighteen was fed, Old Eight would be hungry again.
“Old Eighteen eats the dry food in the red packaging on the second row of the third shelf, paired with the small fish freeze-dried treats on the second layer of the snack shelf. He doesn’t like to drink water, so the freeze-dried treats have to be soaked in water in the bowl…this is called ‘tricking water’, and you have to watch him finish all the water.”
Fu Sang’s head was already spinning just hearing this.
He had had enough.
He set up the Spirit Communication spell with one hand, turned the phone’s speaker volume to maximum, raised his hand to rub his temples, and called out loudly:
“Did you hear that?”
“Hey, you brought friends along?” Da Shuangxi was taken aback for a moment, “How embarrassing. How many friends did you bring? How about I send your friends a red envelope too? My place is indeed a bit of a hassle. Sorry for the trouble.”
“No need.” Fu Sang completely went on strike, finding a chair and sitting down:
“They’re slaves. No need for extra money.”
“Don’t say that about your friends, I should pay if I’m supposed to. Why are you being so polite with me?”
“I’m not being polite.”
“Alright, alright.”
Slave Qi Changying was bustling about by the cat shelves, with a group of cats almost completely surrounding him.
Feeding all eighteen cats one by one was indeed a huge project.
After the meal preparation ended, Fu Sang continued directing Qi Changying to add water, scoop cat litter, and add more litter. Once everything was done, he gathered the trash bags and carried them out.
After going out, he threw the trash into the bin, locked Da Shuangxi’s courtyard, and twirled his keys as he headed back.
“Fu Sang.”
Qi Changying called out to him from behind.
Fu Sang ignored him and continued walking toward the shop deeper in the alley.
“You haven’t been willing to talk to me these past few days.” Qi Changying leaned close, wrapped his arms around Fu Sang’s shoulders from behind, sniffed his neck, and whispered:
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Are you RMB? Does everyone have to be willing to talk to you?” Fu Sang let out a light scoff.
Qi Changying didn’t understand his sarcasm and wanted to say something more, but when he looked up, he saw someone standing at the entrance of One Shop.
The person stood in front of the locked shop door, hands in pockets, pacing back and forth…who else could it be but Zhuge Buhuo?
Seeing them, one human and one ghost, appear from the other end of the alley, Zhuge Buhuo quickly hurried over.
When he got closer, he first looked them up and down, eyeing their awful, lovey-dovey couple-like posture, his tone full of disrespect, incomprehension, and lack of blessings:
“Do you two have to be this sticky every single day?”
“Do you feel uncomfortable if you don’t get scolded a couple times every day?” Fu Sang retorted.
Zhuge Buhuo instantly exploded, “What the hell, I haven’t even said anything yet, can you tone down your offensive capabilities? Are you feeling guilty or something?!”
“You haven’t said anything? Who was just barking like a dog then?”
Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly, brushed past him and pulled out his keys from his pocket to open the shop door:
“Did someone at home die and you need to come buy some funeral supplies from me? Let me say in advance, it won’t help…no favors and no discounts.”
“?” Zhuge Buhuo really wanted to tear this person’s mouth apart every time he heard him speak.
But not long ago, Fu Sang had earned him a fortune on the Mitou Village case. When you take from someone’s hand, your own hand is short; when you eat from someone’s mouth, your own mouth is short…what could he do? No matter how harshly he was scolded, he could only obediently take it.
A person can’t forget their roots, nor can they turn their back on someone after getting benefits. Zhuge Buhuo understood the principle of one full meal versus every meal full; he’d need this guy’s help many times in the future. A person needs to be able to bend and stretch, endure humiliation for a time, and a bright future would await him.
Having talked himself into this mindset, Zhuge Buhuo followed Fu Sang into the shop and began talking about the real matter that brought him here today:
“Chen Binglong is dead. Did you know about this?”
Fu Sang walked ahead, his posture lazy: “Mm-hmm.”
“You did it, right?!” Zhuge Buhuo knew this person couldn’t be separated from this matter!
“Sort of.” Fu Sang yawned, “How did he die? Tell me so I can be happy.”
“Holy crap, are you even human… On the second night after we came out of Yongfu, Chen Binglong died at home. The forensic pathologist said it was sudden cardiac death, but when the people from the Spirit Supervision Bureau went to check, they could tell at a glance that he was scared to death…the whole room and his entire body was dripping with yin energy, it was definitely not simple.”
“The Spirit Supervision Bureau had to notify the family, and the family knew this person was connected to the Mitou Village matter. They asked around and it came to me. Can you give me a heads-up next time before you do something? At the very least, I need to have a cover story ready in advance, okay? Suddenly pulling something like this makes it really hard for me to explain. If they catch a clue and dig you out, you won’t be happy either.”
“What’s there to explain? If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have to fear ghosts knocking at your door. He scared himself to death because he had a guilty conscience. What does that have to do with you?”
“Scared himself? That can be said to outsiders, but professionals can see the lingering ghostly aura all over that room at a glance…can they just play deaf and dumb?”
Zhuge Buhuo sighed, “But it really was that fat bastard reaping what he sowed. His landlord found the body; this guy was screaming in the middle of the night, drawing complaints from the neighbors. The landlord couldn’t reach him, so he went to the door and found him dead.”
“It was quite scary in the middle of the night. Many people from the building he lived in came over to watch the spectacle, and the onlookers described it in an extremely mysterious and exaggerated way. The incident even became a minor sensation on social media, and as his name and photo were passed around online, people eventually recognized him.”
“Netizens these days are something else. Within hours, they dug up all his dirty secrets from his early years of scamming and gambling. With all that out in the open, when the old folks at home questioned me, I also told them about his entanglements with the Wu siblings. Overall, it became a story of heavenly justice and retribution. Although underworld spirits were involved in the middle, it was still his karma. After some discussion, the Spirit Supervision Bureau and the family jointly decided not to pursue it further, and that’s the only way I could barely cover for you and keep you out of it.”
“Ah, thank you for your hard work.” After listening to his long-winded explanation, Fu Sang replied with a formulaic response.
“Stop with that fake sincerity with me.”
Zhuge Buhuo rolled his eyes and viciously tore apart Fu Sang’s facade:
“Now that things have come to this, I just want to ask you one thing: when did you do this, and how? How come I didn’t notice a thing?”
Fu Sang let out a scoff: “Of course you couldn’t notice anything. Otherwise, even the spotted pig at the entrance of the village could climb trees, and that would be in the newspaper tomorrow as another strange incident.”
“Can you talk properly without mocking people? Don’t I have any dignity?!”
A person’s patience has its limits. Even Han Xin had only endured the humiliation of crawling between someone’s legs once. Zhuge Buhuo was genuinely about to get angry.
**Han Xin was a brilliant military general who helped found the Han Dynasty. Before he became famous, he was poor and often bullied. One day, a young thug publicly challenged him, saying: “If you’re brave, stab me. If you’re a coward, crawl between my legs.” Han Xin assessed the situation, realized the thug wasn’t worth dying for, and calmly crawled between his legs to avoid unnecessary conflict. Later, he became a great general and could have taken revenge, but he instead forgave the thug and even gave him a minor official position.
“Hey, I covered for you this time. So, it’s not too much to ask you to satisfy my curiosity, is it? Otherwise, I’ll count it as your karma!”
“?” Fu Sang raised an eyebrow and finally stopped bullying him, “Guess?”
“How could I guess that?” Zhuge Buhuo frowned at him.
“I only know you put those two little ghosts into your ruler. Did you bring the artifact back to the capital and find time to go claim Chen Binglong’s life?”
Fu Sang didn’t answer.
He casually walked to the side, picked up a broom handle from the corner, twirled it in a flourish, and when he finished, lightly tapped Zhuge Buhuo on the back with it.
This tap seemed to unblock the Ren and Du meridians in Zhuge Buhuo’s mind.
His eyes widened as something suddenly occurred to him, “You slapped those two little ghosts onto him?!!”
This child is teachable.
It seemed he wasn’t as stupid as imagined.
Fu Sang tossed the broom handle aside:
“Mm-hmm.”
“You… you didn’t use talismans, nor did you cast any spells? Just… just a tap like this?”
Zhuge Buhuo clumsily imitated his movement:
“Just like that, and you managed to put two ghosts onto a person? There were three spirit masters standing right next to you, and none of them noticed?”
It wasn’t that Zhuge Buhuo was overreacting.
There is a barrier between humans and ghosts. Even the most powerful ghosts generally cannot directly possess a living person’s body. For a ghost to invade a human body, certain very harsh conditions must be met. If a spirit master were to operate as a third party, the process would only be more cumbersome and difficult.
But with a simple twirl, Fu Sang actually slapped the two little ghosts out of the artifact like swatting a fly? Wasn’t that terrifying?
Zhuge Buhuo glanced at the broom handle suspiciously:
“There aren’t any ghosts in there, are there?”
Don’t let him also get scared to death tonight.
“If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have to fear ghosts knocking at your door. What are you afraid of?” Fu Sang glanced at him.
“What could I be afraid of? I’m straight as an arrow and not afraid of a crooked shadow! It’s just that I can’t guard against petty people stabbing me in the back!” Zhuge Buhuo straightened his back.
Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly, seemingly not agreeing with his words.
But he still graciously explained to him:
“Those two aren’t really ghosts.”
“Not ghosts? Then what are they?” Zhuge Buhuo perked up.
Fu Sang opened his mouth, but before speaking, as if something suddenly came to mind, he raised his hand and tapped the counter with his knuckles:
“Q&A, one hundred per session. Scan to pay first, then ask.”
“???” Zhuge Buhuo was about to laugh, “Just go die poor already!”
Knowing this guy’s nature, Zhuge Buhuo reasonably suspected that if he didn’t pay, he really wouldn’t say anything. So, while grumbling, he still took out his phone and dutifully scanned a hundred yuan:
“Talk!”
The shop’s secondhand Bluetooth speaker announced the payment receipt in its terrible audio quality; a hundred yuan, not a penny less. Only then did Fu Sang say:
“When Wu Renmei turned into a ghost, most of her hun and nian were drained away. What remained couldn’t sustain her continued existence as a ghost. What sustained her form was the power of the bone ruler itself, along with her emotions and obsessions. Wu Renshuai was even simpler; he was born with a mental disability, unable to distinguish right from wrong, love and hate all jumbled together, and he didn’t meet the conditions for becoming a ghost. The reason he could exist as a ghost for thirty years was also because of the bone ruler.”
“Their existence relied on the bone ruler artifact as a medium. Once I sealed the artifact, they couldn’t even maintain their spirit bodies; all that remained were residual thoughts. Guiding a ghost into a human body is troublesome, but residual thoughts are simple. Moreover, there was still unresolved karma between them and Chen Binglong. I just set the stage; they had their revenge and settled their scores. No one owes anyone anything.”
“Oh… so now that Chen Binglong is dead, where will they go? Back into your ruler?”
“Chen Binglong is dead, and the karma and obsessions of this life are cleared. Naturally, they go to reincarnate. Why would they come back?”
Zhuge Buhuo seemed to understand.
He nodded and, convinced, gave Fu Sang a thumbs-up:
“You’re really something.”
Fu Sang was merciless: “You’re just an idiot.”
Zhuge Buhuo was about to lose his temper, but constrained by the increasingly clear gap in intellect and power between them, he ultimately gritted his teeth and shook his head, not sure whom he was trying to convince: “I won’t argue with you.”
He fidgeted with the copper wind chime hanging on Fu Sang’s counter, “Alright, I can’t stand to stay in this gloomy place any longer. I’m leaving. Contact me if something comes up.”
With that, he turned and walked out. But before pushing the door open, he paused, hesitated for a moment, and then said to Fu Sang:
“By the way, be careful in the future. Don’t be too reckless.”
“What? Is that a threat or a provocation?”
“Can you think of me in a good light for once? All you ever think about is threats and provocations! I just feel… it’s just a feeling, okay…I feel like those old fogeys at Shanju might already have their eyes on you.”
“Oh?”
“I’m telling you this upfront…it’s not me or Buyi selling you out! You know we both have your blood oath on us. Saying even one extra word would have us already on the road to reincarnation, and if we ran we might catch up with the Wu siblings… The main thing is, information is so developed now, and the Spirit Supervision Bureau has such high level access. A quick internal search would show where you bought tickets and where you’ve been. If someone really wants to look into you, no one can stop them.”
“Besides, you’re not exactly clean. None of your matters are small…like hiding an artifact or secretly keeping a Crimson Evil. You’d better keep a low profile. If those old fogeys find out, there’ll be trouble.”
“So what? What can they do?” Fu Sang didn’t seem to care much: “Kill me?”
“Killing you? That probably wouldn’t happen, but…”
Zhuge Buhuo couldn’t help glancing at Qi Changying, who was sitting in the corner playing with a Klotski puzzle:
“They could kill your ghost.”
If this ghost really fit the stereotype of a Crimson Evil, it might be one thing. But Fu Sang’s ancient-style ghost looked really easy to kill…even Wu Renshuai and Wu Renmei seemed tougher than him. Wouldn’t they catch him and refine him in a heartbeat?
Fu Sang, however, seemed not to take it seriously at all.
He let out a light scoff:
“They can try.”
For some reason, upon hearing those words, Zhuge Buhuo couldn’t help but shudder.
He shook his head, probably thinking he was meddling too much, hurriedly said “Goodbye,” and pushed the door open to leave quickly.
The welcome wind chime on the door chimed twice with the opening and closing of the door, then quickly fell silent.
After Zhuge Buhuo left, Fu Sang went around to the back of the counter, fished out a half-finished pack of cigarettes from the pile of clutter, pulled out the last one, lit it, and held it between his teeth.
Then he glanced at Qi Changying, who was seriously playing with the Klotski puzzle and quickly looked away. He opened the drawer, took out the few pages of notes he had taken from the Zhuge residence, spread them on the desk to study for the umpteenth time, casually picked up a red pen and twirled it between his fingers, occasionally using it to scribble a few lines on the paper.
By the time the cigarette burned to its end, Fu Sang had only taken a couple of puffs.
He stubbed it out in the incense burner and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
“What’s wrong?”
A ghost silently pressed up against him from behind.
“Scram. Don’t bother me.” Fu Sang said impatiently.
“Did Buhuo say something just now?” Qi Changying automatically ignored his attack and continued asking:
“You seem very unhappy.”
“.”
“You’ve seemed a bit down these past few days, and you haven’t been paying much attention to me. Or did I do something to upset you?”
“.”
“Fu Sang. Talk to me.”
Fu Sang truly couldn’t understand why there were people like this in the world.
He said ‘don’t bother me’, he said ‘scram’ and ‘get lost’, but they still came up to him over and over like they hadn’t heard, asking the same questions.
“Is your savior complex a little too strong?”
Fu Sang finally looked at him:
“But I’m really sorry. I’m not Su Li. I’m not saying the opposite of what I mean. I genuinely want you to get lost.”
Hearing that certain name, Qi Changying seemed to pause for a moment.
As a result, that tiny, subtle displeasure in Fu Sang’s heart instantly magnified, and all kinds of malicious thoughts writhed and clawed within him.
“What? Do you think I look like him, so you’re treating me the way you treated him? Are you some kind of saint, or did you come down with a system and a mission, and you can’t ascend unless you hit a target number of people you’ve reformed?”
Fu Sang didn’t know who Su Li was, nor what relationship or story that person had with Qi Changying.
He wasn’t curious at all.
He just hated being compared to this person, making vague statements about how they were very alike, or saying ambiguous things as if they’d known each other for a long time.
He was himself, not anyone else.
There were some things he did understand…for example, why his blood unlock other people’s memories? It could only be because he himself had an inseparable connection to that person, be it past lives or some other entanglement.
But so what if it was past lives? Su Li was already dead, a dead person from a thousand years ago. A lifetime’s love, hate, karma…when the person dies, the accounts are cleared.
Now, Su Li is Su Li, and Fu Sang is Fu Sang. Dying and living again doesn’t make you the same person. A similar personality is purely coincidental. He is himself, and no one will treat him as another person, nor force onto him care and karma that don’t belong to him and which he doesn’t need.
“…I’ve forgotten a lot of things from the past, Fu Sang. The name Su Li and the person himself do feel familiar to me, but I can’t remember anything about him. I don’t know how I treated him back then. If I did anything that made you misunderstand or feel uncomfortable, I apologize to you. But please believe me, the way I interact with you truly isn’t modeled after anyone. I’m not treating you as anyone else. Fu Sang is Fu Sang, right?”
Qi Changying seemed to possess an inexhaustible patience that couldn’t be driven away. No matter how harsh the words, he would only quietly absorb them and give back a gentler explanation.
Fu Sang had seen this side of him long ago.
A person, or a ghost, like this probably wouldn’t lie.
That meant that what he said was completely trustworthy. But Fu Sang was still very unhappy.
Even if he wasn’t treating him as someone else, unconsciously saying the same words he’d said to someone else before was still damnable.
Fu Sang grabbed Qi Changying by the collar, pulled him close, and stared into those gray-white eyes:
“Remember whose ghost you are.”
Qi Changying smiled, a little helpless.
He said:
“I’m Fu Sang’s.”
The pent-up frustration of the past few days seemed to finally dissipate a little with those words.
Fu Sang let him go and went back to studying the papers on the table.
Qiyueban’s chicken-scratch handwriting was truly hard to read. Although he’d looked at it many times before, a considerable number of the words and phrases were still completely illegible to anyone in a hundred years. They looked like ghostly scribbles, and looking at them too long just made him angry.
Perhaps noticing something from his movements and expression, and also wanting to smooth things over, Qi Changying said from beside him:
“This is cursive script.”
Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly: “You can read it?”
Qi Changying nodded.
Looking more closely, he shook his head again:
“Not entirely. It’s too cursive, and there are some unclear symbols mixed in.”
“…” So it’s still a waste of time.
Fu Sang didn’t pay any more attention to Qi Changying, and Qi Changying didn’t disturb him. He just quietly and earnestly helped him study the handwriting on the paper.
“It seems to be related to fate and destiny.”
After a long silence, Qi Changying said:
“It mentions ‘Follow The Killing Pattern’ many times. That seems to be a term from The Four Pillars Of Destiny, right?”
These words immediately caught Fu Sang’s attention: “Which characters?”
“These.” Qi Changying picked out a few strings from the mass of ghostly scribbles and pointed them out to him: “Follow, Killing, Pattern.”
Fu Sang nodded without replying, twirling his pen as he found a blank piece of paper and jotted something down on it.
While he was writing with his head down, Qi Changying watched him from the side.
They had known each other for quite a while now, and Fu Sang’s features had long been clearly etched in his mind.
His hair was a bit long, covering his beautiful eyebrows and partially shading his eyes.
Phoenix eyes, different colored pupils, dark circles that never seem to go away no matter how much he sleeps, pale skin, a thin chin, bloodless lips, and a small ring hanging at the corner of his mouth.
Very beautiful.
But when he writes, he habitually furrows his brow, making him look fierce and cold.
Not that he was ever gentle in the first place.
As he watched, Qi Changying couldn’t help but slowly draw closer.
The scent on Fu Sang was truly very alluring to him.
Qi Changying lowered his gaze and came very close, wanting to bend down and sniff the scent at the side of his neck.
“You…”
At that moment, Fu Sang turned his face around.
He had been writing intently and hadn’t noticed a certain ghost silently approaching. Now, as he turned to say something, before even a single word left his mouth, he unexpectedly met a pair of eyes right in front of his own.
More than just eyes.
The touch against his lips was cool and soft…an accidental kiss brushed against the corner of his mouth.
Realizing this, Fu Sang’s mind went blank for a moment.
When he came back to his senses, he pulled back slightly.
Fu Sang silently and slowly took a deep breath, curling his fingers bit by bit to suppress the faint tremor at their tips.
This wasn’t due to anger or disgust, but rather a secret excitement.
He was very familiar with this kind of excitement.
Fu Sang felt that he was born missing something that others had. There were very few people or things in this world that could arouse any emotion other than irritation in him, making his life like a stagnant pool of water, bland and tasteless.
He found it hard to find anything in this boring world that could stimulate him and make him feel alive.
Pain was one such thing.
So he had always had a strong attachment to pain…from piercings and incisions at first, to growing increasingly unsatisfied, and finally only able to find brief pleasure through gruesome deaths.
His dependence on pain had reached a very pathological and extreme level.
No one could understand his quirks.
His favorite place was a remote, abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city. It had tall buildings, steel frames, and rusted iron sheets. He could die there countless times without being discovered.
Others spent their weekends eating, drinking, and having fun. He just wanted to go die when he had free time.
But…
He suddenly realized that, at some point, his fervor for pursuing pain seemed to have waned.
The most obvious change was that he hadn’t been to that abandoned factory in a very long time.
Because his life no longer seemed nearly as dull as before.
Something else had captured his attention and emotions.
Until this moment, he was certain he had found something more stimulating than pain and death.
Because he could clearly feel his heart, along with every drop of blood, racing.
He had never felt this before.
Not even when someone smashed the back of his head with a stick or chopped halfway through his neck.
To verify this wasn’t an illusion, Fu Sang looked up into Qi Changying’s eyes.
“Qi Changying.”
“Mmm…? Yes?”
Qi Changying seemed not to have recovered from that completely accidental kiss. He met Fu Sang’s gaze with those gray-white eyes for a moment, then looked away, seeming a little flustered.
It also seemed like he wanted to say something, but Fu Sang knew without hearing that it would just be the usual boring apologies or sorries.
That wasn’t what he needed.
Fu Sang was a man of action. If he wanted something, he took it himself.
So, before Qi Changying could pull away, Fu Sang lowered his gaze first, and kissed him formally and forcefully.
