Chapter 0048 Foot Blisters
My father looked at me and asked, "What happened to your face?" Only then did I remember the inexplicable fall I took last night while running out of the Niche Tower at the crematorium, scraping my face. Unable to explain, I just claimed it happened from falling while walking at night. My father quickly went downstairs to buy antiseptic solution for me. Just then, I felt pain in the soles of my feet. I twisted my foot over, took off my sock, and found that the soles of my feet were covered in large blisters.
What was going on? I had mostly been in the car last night and hadn't walked far. How could the soles of my feet be rubbed raw like this? Puzzled, I called Frank Fang to complain. Frank Fang burst out laughing. "Usually, it's customers calling you with problems! Today, you've been struck!" I was annoyed; how could he still be laughing at a time like this?
Frank Fang said, "Just kidding! Tell me everything that happened from yesterday until now, carefully, without leaving out any details—even if you're constipated, you need to mention it."
I recounted the events of last night in detail. Frank Fang said, "Well, I should congratulate you. You now have an extra ability."
"What ability?" I asked suspiciously.
Frank Fang said, "You've been in this line of work for almost two years; you're an experienced amulet dealer. Haven't you figured it out?" I told him not to beat around the bush and to tell me quickly.
Frank Fang then chuckled. "Your Yang energy is weak, and your luck is low, but sometimes, you can see ghosts." Hearing this, I was stunned.
Frank Fang analyzed the situation for me point by point, and I had to admire the man's shrewdness. When I left Thailand for Bijie, Guizhou, Sun Xicai was already possessed by the "Mo Yang man," Zheng Yonggui. The storage of urns usually occurs in only two places: those who want to save money put them in the Niche Tower, and those with money buy a burial plot and put the urn there. Of course, those who like to keep the urns at home or even by their bedside are exceptions. However, ghosts fear loneliness even more than the living, so no ghost likes the Niche Tower or the graveyard, and Zheng Yonggui was no exception.
As for how the funeral supplies store from which Sun Xicai sourced his stock managed to get Zheng Yonggui's urn out of the Niche Tower, I didn't know. In any case, after the urn was placed in the amulet shop, constantly exposed to the Yang energy of living people, Zheng Yonggui's spirit no longer wanted to return to the Niche Tower.
And because I repeatedly tried to get rid of the spirit, Zheng Yonggui hated me intensely. The hatred reached its peak when I used the method Frank Fang taught me to transfer Zheng Yonggui's spirit into the amulet, intending to send it to Thailand for an Arjan master to suppress it. For some unknown reason, it escaped the Phra Ngang amulet and possessed Sun Xicai. Now, the spirit could control Sun Xicai's actions and thoughts and began to take revenge on me.
Frank Fang said, "Sun Xicai decided to trick you the moment he took the business in Guizhou, but he didn't succeed in the end. And the fact that he secretly delivered your photos and fingernails to Zheng Yonggui's niche at the crematorium was to perform 'ghost cursing.'"
I had never heard the term "ghost cursing" before. Frank Fang continued, "Ghost cursing is quite common. You've encountered many cases in the business you've handled over the past year. Essentially, it means that a spirit is dissatisfied or resentful toward a person in the mortal world, so it uses ghostly power to influence them, causing their luck to drop and their body to deteriorate. Symptoms include frequent nightmares, physical discomfort, sleep paralysis, failure in endeavors, and constant bad luck. If the Yang energy continues to weaken while the Yin energy is strong, you can even start seeing things that ordinary people cannot, such as wandering solitary ghosts."
"But I haven't seen any ghosts these past few days!" I didn't quite believe him.
Frank Fang sneered. "Last night, you couldn't sleep and rushed out of your house onto the street. You saw a man sitting in the middle of the road crying, with many cars driving past. That was actually a ghost. He probably died in a car accident, and his body hasn't been claimed by family yet, so his restless soul cries every night at the accident spot. When you entered the crematorium grounds, you saw many people wandering around the yard. Those were also ghosts. The crematorium handles corpses daily, so there are more ghosts there. When you escaped from the crematorium, you saw a taxi driving on the small road. When you flagged it down, the two men by the roadside thought your actions were very strange. That's because the taxi was an illusion seen only by you; others couldn't see it at all. So, in their eyes, you ran to the middle of the road, waving your hands wildly, of course, they thought you were acting strangely."
Listening to Frank Fang's analysis, I felt chills running down my body, and I felt even more uncomfortable. Frank Fang continued, "You're something else. It's rare to encounter an 'Underworld Ferry Car,' and you actually ran into one. I'm almost envious of you."
I completely broke down and shouted at Frank Fang on the phone. Frank Fang laughed. "Just kidding! You have no sense of humor! You didn't really get into that ghost car. Check the map and see how many kilometers it is from the crematorium to that village. It's no wonder your soles are covered in blisters after sleepwalking that far!"
This statement was reassuring, and I finally calmed down. I asked Frank Fang, looking miserable, "How do I solve this problem? Now I feel sick all the time, like I'm severely ill, and I have no appetite."
Frank Fang thought for a moment. "There is only one solution: deal with the spirit of the Mo Yang man, Zheng Yonggui, and force him to leave Sun Xicai. Otherwise, that kid will keep messing with you. Find a way to bring Sun Xicai to Thailand. I'll handle the rest. The money can be discussed, but don't be too stingy."
I said glumly, "As long as you don't take advantage of me, anything goes." Frank Fang burst into laughter over the phone.
He could laugh, but I couldn't. I truly racked my brains trying to come up with a reasonable excuse to take Sun Xicai to Thailand. The most direct approach would be to offer a free trip, but since Sun Xicai is possessed by Zheng Yonggui's spirit, and the spirit knows I want to take him to Thailand for exorcism, it definitely wouldn't agree. I had heard Frank Fang say that ghosts possess "Xintong" (mind-reading ability), meaning they can know people's thoughts in most situations, so this was quite difficult.
Suddenly, I recalled a story my mother told me about a distant relative of hers in the countryside, an uncle who had been somewhat eccentric since childhood and often sleepwalked at night. I brought this up during lunch. My mother said, "That's my Third Uncle. He lived in Dongshancuizi. When he was alive, he would wake up early in the morning and tell people that he had visited a lively market last night, selling all kinds of things. He would wander for a long time before coming home to sleep again. Then his family would find his feet covered in large blisters, and his fuzzy cloth shoes would be worn out. He died young, before he was forty, and never got married."
I thought, isn't that exactly what happened to me? My mother asked why I was asking about this. I just claimed it suddenly came to mind, so I asked casually.
In the afternoon, I went to a nearby hospital for a checkup. I underwent seven or eight tests, including a full blood panel, liver function, chest X-ray, and electrocardiogram. The doctor was a middle-aged woman. After reviewing the reports, she used a stethoscope to listen to my body, flipped my eyelids, looked at my tongue coating, and finally had me lie on the bed and pressed on my internal organs one by one. After all that, the female doctor quickly wrote a few lines in the medical record book, printed out a slip, and handed it to me. "Pay the fee."
I looked at the fee slip. It read: "Moderate anxiety disorder caused by excessive stress." The prescription was for: "Librium and Phenobarbital."
I sighed as I left the consultation room. In reality, I knew the real cause better than anyone. So, I crumpled up the fee slip and threw it into the wastebasket in the elevator.
It was near the end of summer, and the weather was getting increasingly hot and humid. Because I was physically uncomfortable and in a bad mood, I turned down all invitations from friends and classmates to drink or socialize. I frequently had nightmares when sleeping, making me most afraid of falling asleep. Furthermore, the liquid inside the Five Poisons Oil necklace remained light gray whenever I wore it, only returning to normal when I took it off. This proved that I was indeed being affected by the ghost of Zheng Yonggui.
That night, I tried to fight off the urge to sleep by playing games online, but I lost the battle. My eyelids were drooping with exhaustion. Just as I raised my hands in surrender and prepared to go to bed, my phone beeped with a text message. I opened it. The content was simple, only five words:
"Can you do divination?"
The term "Kanshis" (divination/spiritual consultation) is what people in the Northeast call those known as "Xianjia" (Immortal Family), who can be possessed by certain spiritual animals that have cultivated to become immortals to solve problems ordinary people cannot, such as curing evil illnesses, communicating with the deceased, predicting the future, and so on. They are quite popular in the Northeast. But I certainly didn't have that kind of spiritual power. Besides, I was so sleepy that I simply replied with two words: "Cannot." And then I immediately fell into a deep sleep.
I woke up the next day and found a new text message on my phone, sent by that person last night: "Sorry to bother you, I will find someone else."