Heimat der Spirituosen

Kapitel 23

Even if someone possesses the abilities of ten or more A-rank units, whether human, shikigami, demon, or something else, they will not violate the validity of the word contract. This is because no matter how much power one has, when facing a demon bound by a contract, that power will be taken away by the contract, turning them into an ordinary person with no abilities.

The female shikigami's face turned into a dye vat, changing over a hundred colors in half a minute. Her previous alluring and beautiful confidence vanished, and she couldn't even finish a fluent sentence: "You...you...you...you..."

Yu Jia patted her on the shoulder: "Okay, I know I'm pretty, but you don't need to be so surprised to suddenly realize that! By the way," she smiled at her, "my name is Yu Jia, and I'm Lou Lifan's shikigami in room 333. What's your name? Who's your master?"

The female shikigami's face turned pale and then red, but she still answered honestly, "My name is Qu Mei, and my master is... Paulina."

This time, Yu Jia's face turned pale: "You are... the vice principal's..."

The two of them squatted down at the same time.

"Why would I, the shikigami of the dignified vice principal, be captured by a little girl...?"

"Why did I provoke the most terrifying person in this school...?"

The school has one principal and two vice-principals. One of them is Yukikaze, who was said to have had to temporarily leave the school six months ago due to some important matter. The other is Paulina. Although the perverted principal named Byte is nominally the principal, he doesn't care about anything at all. He just causes trouble and makes things difficult for students and teachers. Yukikaze and Paulina used to be the two people who kept their word at the school, but now it's just her alone.

"Actually, I don't need your help with anything, I just hope you won't impose a fine..."

So you mean I have to follow you around forever?

"ah?"

"If I don't do anything for you, you've bound me to your side with a written contract! Don't you even know that?!" If you say you don't know, I'll eat you alive!

"……sorry……"

"..."

"..."

Neither of them had the energy to be angry anymore.

"Ah! That's right!" Yu Jia finally remembered Taotie, whom she had forgotten about since earlier. She jumped up and ran to his side, only to find him slowly waking up.

"here it is……"

She stepped on his head, and the poor man fainted again.

"What is this...?" Qu Mei was drenched in sweat. "What grudge does the Dongming Taotie have against you?"

Yu Jia turned to look at her: "Huh? You know him?"

Qu Mei said helplessly, "I know everyone in this academy, including your short-tempered and expressionless master..."

Yu Jia interrupted her: "Good that you know! Then you should know what's going on with him, right? Come on! Help me out!"

Qu Mei sighed. Of course she knew, because during the second-year combat drills that night, out of ten classes across six departments, only one person fainted before even being touched—that was him. And after fainting, he was talking in his sleep, saying things like, "Hahaha, Pei Lin, Hai Lou, Li Fan, thank you so much! I'm not afraid of zombies anymore!" The instructors and students almost died laughing when they told them about it.

Now that he has appeared together with Lou Lifan's shikigami, there can only be one possibility.

"...How do you plan to help him overcome this?"

"Hahaha! Of course I have a way!" Yu Jia said confidently. "Come on! Draw a spell array for me!"

Which one do you want?

"Illusion Spell Array!" Yu Jia quickly drew a large circle on the ground. Looking up, he found Qu Mei still standing by, watching. "What are you doing? Why aren't you helping me?"

Qu Mei crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, "If it's just about creating illusions, there's no need for a spell array at all. I can do it myself." As she spoke, she pointed to the tip of her nose.

Yu Jia slowly stood up, the branch in his hand falling to the ground. "What...did you say?"

"I can do it,"

"How could a shikigami possibly have such abilities!"

“Of course,” Qu Mei smiled radiantly, “because I was a fox spirit who attained enlightenment a hundred years ago in my previous life.”

"A fox spirit!" Yu Jia screamed. "A fox demon!"

The first sentence made Qu Mei beam with joy, while the second sentence made her want to tear Yu Jia's mouth apart.

A fox spirit is a fox that has cultivated itself into a shikigami (spirit/spirit). However, no living creature can become a shikigami, so since she is a shikigami, it means she is already dead, and she is currently only in the state of a soul.

"But if you are a fox spirit, why have you been reduced to being someone else's shikigami? And a gardener at that?"

Qu Mei's face was grim: "I didn't 'fall' to become someone else's shikigami! I just died accidentally because I couldn't escape the tribulation that happens once every five hundred years. I was unwilling to accept it, and coincidentally, Paulina was looking for a shikigami. She found me as a ghost and took me in. Also, I'm not 'guarding the garden'! The barrier in the school is guarded by the shikigami of each teacher in turn. I just happened to be on duty tonight!"

"I know, I know," Yu Jia replied perfunctorily. She wasn't interested in other people's backgrounds. "Since you can create illusion arrays, that's perfect! Fox Fairy Sister! Please!"

Qu Mei disliked her attitude, but now, in order to break the contract of words, she had no choice but to work for her. She stormed over to the poor man, waved her hand, and a large swath of mist dissipated.

This is a "fox spirit incense" used exclusively by fox spirits. It has hallucinogenic effects, and the higher the victim's power, the stronger the hallucinogenic effect. Originally, this power was created by sorcerers who specialized in hunting demons, but it was gradually used for other purposes later on. For example, now.

Dongming Taotie seemed to hear someone calling him, and he slowly opened his eyes.

Before him stood a gloomy, haunted building. Yellow talismans covered all the walls and windows. Statues of blue-faced, fanged Vajra warriors stood at the entrance and four corners of the courtyard. The interior was pitch black, seemingly empty, yet something seemed to be peering out from within, instilling a sense of dread. The door was thick; he knew without looking that over fifty intricate mechanisms lay behind it. If not opened correctly, these mechanisms would activate, impaling visitors like pincushions. This was a desperate measure; their notoriety made them feared by many mid-level zombies, who would seek trouble at any moment.

This is... my home!

Dongming Taotie swallowed hard. He didn't understand when he had returned. He had sworn an oath that he would never come home until he learned how to overcome his fear of zombies. This wasn't out of spite; he simply couldn't bear it anymore. Those days spent surrounded by corpses...

Corpse-driving families, as the name suggests, are families that make a living by transporting corpses. In ancient times, if someone died in a foreign land and the family did not have the money to send the body home with music and festivities, and many people believed that carrying a corpse was very unlucky, even if they had money, they could not even find a place to stay along the way. Sometimes they would hire corpse-driving families to help them carry the corpse back.

The so-called "corpse-driving" involves placing a spell on a corpse, making it something the person can control. The corpse driver then walks ahead, ringing a bell, while the corpse leaps and follows behind. Usually, only one or two corpses are driven at a time; sometimes, a dozen or even dozens can be driven simultaneously. In years of plague or war, there are even records of driving hundreds of corpses at once. Of course, this requires a certain level of skill.

However, there is a problem with corpse transport: the corpse may turn into a zombie during the journey, which would be very troublesome for the corpse transporters.

Zombies are creatures resembling spirits or monsters that emerge from the corpse of a dead person and are activated for some reason (or they may not die at all, but their bodies may skip the death stage and become active due to some trigger—such as being bitten by a zombie—causing the spirit to detach and transform into a zombie). They cannot be considered spirits or monsters, nor can they be considered human or immortal.

Zombies can be divided into several levels.

The lowest level are the kind we often see: mindless, only knowing how to eat people, unrestrained, and fearless of anything—except the sun. They are the lowest of the zombies.

Intermediate level is slightly higher; they possess some consciousness, but their intelligence is not high, and they simply obey their master's commands. The zombies of Dongchong are like this. The sun is no longer considered deadly to them; they just don't like it.

Another type is the high-level zombie. They possess their own consciousness and thoughts, are capable of thinking, and refuse to be controlled. They are not significantly different from humans, the only difference being that they lack a spirit body; they are simply zombies. This type of zombie generally possesses considerable spiritual power, capable of contending with psychic masters of C-rank or even A-rank. If they wish, they can even sunbathe daily…

The last category is the leader of all zombies, the King of Zombies—the Drought Demon. To zombies, they are like shikigami to demon kings—the most sacred and terrifying beings. It's even said that they can defeat a high-level zombie with just a flick of their finger. Whether this is true or not is not for now, but the Drought Demon's power is so great that even renowned zombie exorcists throughout history would readily admit defeat.

In modern times, since corpse driving is no longer a necessary practice, the corpse driving families have gradually begun to look for other related things to do. The Dongming Taotie family found the closest industry—capturing zombies—and planned to continue it for generations. At the same time, they planned to never lose the secret manual of corpse driving, because maybe it would be useful again in hundreds or thousands of years.

Dongming Taotie was born into such a family. At first, he wasn't afraid of zombies, but it seems that one night, when his parents and grandparents went out to work, leaving him and his siblings at home alone, something important and terrifying happened, and from then on, he became terrified of zombies.

As for when exactly it happened and what happened, he can't remember anything if you ask him now.

He walked to the door, placed his hand in a recess on the door, and skillfully pressed down in each of the four directions—up, down, left, and right—expertly pushing open the heavily secured door. Behind the door, ancient gears creaked and groaned, as if something was groaning.

The door opened just wide enough for one person to pass through. He was about to squeeze in when suddenly a bright light flashed inside, and a clear child's voice boomed in his ear: "You daring zombie! Behold my shovel! Chop!"

With a loud "thud," Dongming Taotie saw stars before his eyes and collapsed to the ground with a thud. If he had simply passed out, that would have been fine, but he didn't. That clear child's voice, filled with vicious emotion, seemed to command several small weapons to smash and slash at him wildly. It didn't kill him, but it caused him excruciating pain.

He endured the pain, clutched his head, and scrambled to his feet. Staggering and stooped, he hurriedly fled inside.

The child's voice chased after us again: "We can't let the zombies into our house! Everyone, attack!"

The voice sounded familiar, as if he'd heard it somewhere before, yet it also felt strange, as if he'd never heard of it before. He paused for a moment, then the shovels or something else caught up and gave him another beating.

"What's wrong with you kids! I'm not a zombie! I'm a human! Can't you tell the difference between a zombie and a human?! Ugh! Stop hitting me! You'll die if you keep hitting me!"

The attack with those weapons stopped, and a delicate little girl's voice rang out: "Brother...it really seems like a person..."

The child's voice had completely fallen silent, and even breathing could be heard clearly in the darkness. Suddenly, a blinding light shone on, so bright that Dongming Taotie couldn't open his eyes and quickly shielded them with his hands.

"Uh...it really is a human..."

"It really is a person..."

"I made a mistake... Oh dear..."

"Dad's going to yell at me again when he gets home..."

"Brother, you're doomed..."

After finally adjusting to the lighting, Dongming Taotie lowered his hand. Yes, he was now in the main hall of his house. The terrifyingly large mechanisms on the door were still in their familiar positions. In the north-facing section, a row of portraits of Zhang Tianshi, Zhong Kui, and other ghost-catching immortals hung, with offerings placed in front of them. In other places... in other places, without exception, various toys and props for driving corpses and exorcising zombies, belonging to him, his older brother, his older sister, his three younger sisters, and his younger brother, were still scattered haphazardly.

He was surrounded by seven children, and he looked at each of their faces until his gaze finally settled on a face that was all too familiar to him.

—Hisself, Dongming Taotie. Dongming Taotie was just seven years old.

He kept staring at the little Dongming Taotie, until the boy finally couldn't hold back any longer and shouted, "Uncle! What are you doing at our house? Is there something you need? Are you looking for our parents? Or our grandparents? They're not home! It's just us! You should go back..."

His words were belatedly cut off by his older brother and sister—the twins, who were just eight years old: "Idiot! Mom and Dad said that if they're not home, we can't say they're not here when there are strangers!"

...It's making things worse the more you try to explain!

Dongming Taotie couldn't help but wonder, how did he and his siblings, who were so stupid back then, survive, especially since their parents and grandparents were often not home at night? With that old, dilapidated door that could be easily opened by anyone with a B-level ability?

"I am, uh, um, your father's friend. They asked me to come and keep you company tonight." Dongming Taotie smiled brightly and naturally, showing no sign that this was the first time in his life he had lied.

"Liar!" The five-year-old boy, probably the youngest among them, retorted loudly in his tender voice, "My mom and dad said! Anyone who claims to have been sent by them is a liar!"

"Yes! Mom and Dad never sent anyone else!"

Dongming Taotie had a headache, but he still smiled and said, "The past is the past, but tonight is different. They have to deal with a very important enemy, and someone has to be here to protect you."

Strange? This isn't the excuse he just came up with!

The children's doubts lessened slightly: "Really?"

“Really,” Dongming Taotie laughed, raising his right hand. “I swear!” His hand froze in mid-air.

This isn't what he meant to say! This isn't what he meant to say! He didn't intend to say that! And he, "Dongming Taotie," wouldn't be so gentle with children, even if that child were himself. He wouldn't smile at them like that, nor would he coax them like that! What on earth is going on... what on earth is going on!

However, ever since he inexplicably woke up and found himself in a strange place, he had had a very strange feeling. It seemed that he didn't need to use his brain to think about what to do; someone in his mind was constantly reminding him, telling him what to say and what to do next. But because those commands overlapped somewhat with his own, he didn't feel anything particularly serious at first. However, his words and actions just now made him uneasy.

He was almost completely out of control. Who was he? What was he doing here? Did he really come without any ill intentions? Or was it for some other reason...?

The children didn't notice anything unusual about him; they just thought that since he had passed their test, he was definitely not an enemy. They all put down their shovels, sticks, and other weapons, and laughed while holding Dongming Taotie's hands.

"That's great! It's not scary at all when there are adults at home."

"I prefer my mom and dad to be home..."

"You're so useless! Mom and Dad have to work! We're all grown up now! We have to take care of the house ourselves!"

"Grandpa or grandma is fine too..."

"How can you be so spineless! It's so embarrassing!"

"My brother scolded me! Waaah—"

One of the six-year-old triplets started crying, followed by the other two. Then the five-year-old boy took the lead and started crying even louder than the other three.

"Waaah—my sister is crying! Waaah—"

"It's so noisy..." Dongming Taotie covered his ears, really wanting to run away. But he could only stay here now, and apart from covering his ears, he couldn't control any other actions. But he couldn't even keep doing that. After only two minutes, his hands automatically went down, and he hugged two of the nearest triplets and started to soothe them.