Within the Ghost Shop Function Catalog, the list of abilities was dizzyingly vast. Most could be rented, and some were available for permanent purchase. The purchase price, however, was typically ten thousand times the monthly rental cost. Even so, not every function came with a purchase option.
For example, her ghost shop's unique ability to connect the living and spirit realms wasn't even listed in this manual.
At first, Song Miaozhu had thought she'd earned a decent amount of Hell Coins lately. But after flipping through this catalog, she suddenly felt like a penniless ghost.
Take the [Ghost Shop Area] function:
—Rent: 10 coins per square meter per month.
—Purchase: 100,000 coins per square meter.
With her current savings, she could only afford three square meters permanently. The initial height of the ghost shop was three meters. If she wanted to expand upward, she could add a second floor—still charged per square meter.
Besides this, Song Miaozhu picked out several urgently needed functions:
—[Ghost Shop Vault]
—[Ghost Shop Warehouse]
—[Yin-Wood Chest]
—[Yin-Wood Shelves]
—[Anti-Theft Seal]
[Ghost Shop Vault] : A space exclusively for storing currency. Accessible anytime, anywhere with the owner's token. An entry point can be set up inside the shop for employees.
Rent: 1 coin per square meter per month.
Purchase: 10,000 coins per square meter.
[Ghost Shop Warehouse] : A storage space for all goods (except currency). Accessible via owner's token, with an employee entry point inside. Ghost customers cannot enter.
Rent: 5 coins per cubic meter per month.
Purchase: 50,000 coins per cubic meter.
[Yin-Wood Chest] : A chest that preserves the state of items inside. Can be placed in any spatial function.
Small Chest: 1 coin/month (10,000 to buy).
Medium Chest: 5 coins/month (50,000 to buy).
Large Chest: 10 coins/month (100,000 to buy).
[Yin-Wood Shelves] : Same as the chests but in shelf form—prices roughly double.
[Anti-Theft Seal] : Stamped on goods to prevent ghosts from consuming or stealing them. Only removable with a special cloth.
Rent: 100 coins/month.
Purchase: 100,000 coins.
With the [Ghost Shop Vault], she wouldn't need to convert Hell Coins to RMB immediately or absorb them into herself, saving a lot of money mold consumption.
The [Ghost Shop Warehouse] was similar to expanding the shop's area—just with the added restriction that ghost customers couldn't enter. And it was five times cheaper per unit.
Both the [Yin-Wood Chest] and [Yin-Wood Shelves] preserved items—preventing Hell Coins from decaying and shielding living-world goods from yin energy corrosion. The only difference was their form and storage method, with shelves costing about twice as much as chests.
If she ever switched to a self-service supermarket model, the [Anti-Theft Seal] would be essential.
Though all these functions could be bought permanently, Song Miaozhu wasn't keen on spending the coins. First, she didn't have enough.
Second, her Heaven-grade Ghost Shop had a drawback:
Aside from the shop itself (a limited-edition function), all other purchased features would reset if ownership changed.
Renting was 10,000 times cheaper.
Permanent purchase? That was equivalent to 800+ years of rent—unless she planned to run the shop for eight centuries, renting was the smarter choice.She'd consider buying later, once she had more coins.
After assessing today's customer flow, Song Miaozhu decided to rent:
—100 sqm of shop space
—100 cubic meters for the vault
—500 cubic meters for the warehouse
—10 large Yin-Wood Chests
—10 large Yin-Wood Shelves
—1 Anti-Theft Seal
Total monthly cost: 4,000 Hell Coins—easily covered by a few sales.
With her shopping list settled, she returned to the ghost shop.
Mao Jinxia and Xu Jingsi were busy tending to spirit customers. When they saw her appear suddenly, they called out, "Boss!"
"Carry on," said Miaozhu, waving them off as she headed to the back of the shop and settled into a chair. She opened the Underworld Net.
As the screen flickered to life in ghostly gray-blue, her GhostLink App showed dozens of unread messages. She tapped in—most were new friends she'd added recently, asking when their orders would arrive. She'd been tracking ghost delivery logistics daily, so she gave them all quick, estimated replies.
Previously, she'd given everyone a cautious ETA of one week. But now that she had their contact info, she could inform them directly when items arrived.
Once messages were sorted, she opened the UCD App, found all the functions she had picked earlier, and rented each one for five months.
Thanks to a limited-time 10% discount during app testing, the total came to 18,000 hell coins. She took out 18 premium-grade ghost ingots, each infused with full ghost lifespan, and dropped them into the app's payment field.
Her shop's info updated immediately:
[Ghost Shop: Anshou Hall]
[Location: Yinshui Alley No. 414]
[Owner: Song Miaozhu]
[Purchased Functions:]
—Heaven-Grade Ghost Shop (Permanent)
—100 sqm Shop Area (5 months)
—100m³ Vault (5 months)
—500m³ Warehouse (5 months)
—10 Large Yin-Wood Chests (5 months)
—10 Large Yin-Wood Shelves (5 months)
The shop transformed before her eyes. What had once been a cramped sesame-sized stall now bloomed into a spacious hundred-square-meter emporium.
"Boss! What just happened?" Xu Jingsi gawked.
Mao Jinxia, more seasoned in ghost commerce, stayed calm. She had run a store before.
"I'm remodeling. You two keep helping the customers," Miaozhu instructed.
She placed the ten large Yin Wood Shelves in the newly freed space. Each shelf was ten meters long and three meters high, efficiently filling up the added area. She left just 60 centimeters between aisles—plenty of room for incorporeal ghosts to float through.
She then made a quick trip back to the mortal world, headed to her attic, and retrieved one of each product she had in stock. Each item received an Anshou Hall anti-theft seal before being placed on the shelf. Once set down, the shelves automatically organized the products by category and placement—clean, efficient, and intuitive.
Though she wasn't yet ready to implement a supermarket-style shopping model, she figured a product display section would help. Ghost customers unfamiliar with mortal goods would benefit from seeing the merchandise up close.
That's what these shelves were for.