Wei Jiangyan rubbed his temples and took a few steps back, his mind preoccupied with taking that difficult client to Shunda Plaza the day after tomorrow. Just then, he heard Lu Mingran ask him:
"Is there another unit in our community where something happened? Two people have told me about it."
"have."
Wei Jiangyan continued, "It's Unit 4, last year..."
Before he could explain what had happened there, he saw Lu Mingran freeze.
Someone who had sung at the entrance of Unit 4 froze.
Not only did she freeze, but Lu Mingran suddenly let out a cry of surprise, then, as if she had been greatly frightened, she opened her arms and lunged at him, trying to hug him for comfort.
Wei Jiangyan: "!"
...
"Lu Mingran, get out of my way! Hey, why do you stink? Stay away from me!"
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"I was so stupid, really, all I knew was that wolves come out to eat children in winter..."
After taking a shower, Lu Mingran, wrapped in a floral sheet, curled up on the bed and began his long-winded lament. He wondered how he could have believed the old man's words. Why didn't he ask the girl which unit it was?
Perhaps it was because he looked so pitiful huddled in bed shivering, and the system, which had been so annoyed by his stench that it didn't want to talk to him, softened and interrupted his mutterings:
"Lu Mingran, are you very afraid of ghosts?"
Seeing that Lu Mingran did not react, it said again:
"If you keep doing things like cooking snail rice noodles, I'm afraid my heart, which is made of titanium alloy, won't be able to take it."
Lu Mingran: "..." The person who was stunned by the shock still did not react.
Finally, the system couldn't hold back any longer. It decided to show Lu Mingran a bright path.
So it lifted Lu Mingran's floral sheet and breathed into her ear:
"Lu Mingran, you..."
"Do you want to be Zhang Tianshi's father?"
Chapter 20 Want to know the formation? No way (6)
To be, to be a father?
Lu Mingran finally came to her senses.
He thought he had misheard, but the system asked him again:
"Do you want to be Zhang Tianshi's father?"
"Hmm..." Lu Mingran stroked her chin.
"If I remember correctly, Master Zhang is already thirty-one years old, right? Are you sure... I can be his father?"
"Yes, judging from his age and presence, he could be your father."
The system is very sincere.
The system continued, "But do you remember what this guy often does in the middle of the night?"
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Zhang Tianshi is the mastermind behind the scenes in this novel. On the surface, he sets up this formation for a wealthy merchant, taking lives for profit, but in reality, everything he does is for his own benefit.
In the novel, the male protagonist first meets Zhang Tianshi in the abandoned No. 14 Middle School. It was midnight when the protagonist climbed over the wall and entered the overgrown school. Looking up, he saw a faint candlelight shining in one of the classrooms.
"Using the candlelight, Wei Jiangyan roughly determined the location of Zhang Tianshi, went up the stairs of the west building, and walked to the door of the second classroom on the second floor."
"It said Class 7 of Senior Three on it. The window was so broken that only some shards of glass remained, sticking out sharply. He stopped and stood at the door, and saw a man with messy hair and dark circles under his eyes sitting behind a table in the middle of the classroom."
"The man was holding a pen in his hand, but he was holding it in a strange way. He was staring intently at a piece of white paper in front of him. On the table, a pale candle flickered. As Wei Jiangyan looked at it, she remembered a certain ritual."
Spirit communication ritual: Ouija board.
Lu Mingran said, "I remember this part. Is it possible that the Ouija board game is still popular now?"
"Do you know why he always likes to play Ouija board games at No. 14 Middle School?"
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Because of his father.
Zhang Tianshi's father died at the age of twenty-three, shortly after his mother became pregnant with him.
The young couple were childhood sweethearts and got together right after graduating from high school. After that, they made a living by working odd jobs, and their lives just went on like that.
The incident occurred in late summer of that year. Shortly after his wife became pregnant, news suddenly spread that their house and the tenants had gotten into some trouble. The messenger spoke vaguely, but the gist was that they had to move out within three days.
Everyone was indignant, and everyone was cursing each other, but in the end, when a representative was needed to express their opinions, only Zhang Tianshi's father went.
His wife was very worried, touching her belly and saying that others were probably using him as a pawn.
“It’s alright,” the man said, shoveling all the meat from the plate into his wife’s bowl and getting up to wash the pot. “There’s a proper procedure for all of this.”
The tap was turned on, and amidst the sound of running water, a man's voice came through intermittently:
"Oh, right..."
“An old classmate from high school asked me to meet up. It’s near our No. 14 High School.”
"Do you still remember Juanjuan Restaurant? The one where you used to eat fried noodles all the time?"
The tap was turned off. The man wiped his hands, turned around and smiled gently at his wife: "You don't need to wait for me to come back tomorrow at noon. I'll bring you something delicious later."
The next day at noon, the wife sat quietly in a chair knitting socks for the baby, not waiting.
But when the setting sun slanted in, and the pale yellow beam of light reached her feet, she looked up but still couldn't see her husband.
All around, wisps of smoke rose from the chimneys of every household.
The man never returned.
They went to a restaurant, but the man's body was found near the low wall of the school. His old classmate, who was eating with him, said he received a phone call and then hurriedly left; no one knows what he went to do.
At that time, all the students of No. 14 Middle School knew that from late summer to early autumn that year, a pregnant woman would always stand outside the school wall, lost in thought, and the security guards couldn't get rid of her.
The case became an unsolved mystery, and the child became an unborn child.
When Zhang Tianshi grew up, he asked his master to perform a ritual for his parents to help their souls pass on to the afterlife. However, that night, his master's expression was somewhat strange.
The master thought for a moment, then said carefully:
"Ji Cheng, there are some things I need to make clear to you."
“Your mother is alright; she's already able to be reincarnated. But your father, he, he…”
His soul could not be found at all; he was neither a wandering spirit nor reincarnated.
Zhang Jicheng had already gone astray, and this incident only spurred him to go even further astray, learning all sorts of unorthodox methods in his determination to find his father's spirit.
He didn't understand, he didn't comprehend why, even though his abilities had become so powerful that his master couldn't do anything about him and everyone else was afraid of him, he still couldn't find his father.
He tried so many methods, and everyone called him Zhang Tianshi (Celestial Master Zhang), relying on him whenever they needed help. For him, summoning a spirit was such a simple matter; how come he couldn't even do it?
Later, Zhang Jicheng returned to the Fourteenth Middle School, which was still standing before it was abandoned. He would always go there in the middle of the night because that was where his father had died.
He used a very simple method, which many people often questioned as to whether it was effective—the Ouija board.
Even he himself knew that the Ouija board games that many students were keen on could not summon any ghosts. But perhaps he had exhausted all other methods and was at his wit's end, so he resorted to this playful method, fantasizing that his father's spirit was still in the school and would be called over by him to answer his questions.
That day, Wei Jiangyan finally managed to uncover the mastermind behind the scenes, thanks to the information she had gathered.
"Wei Jiangyan couldn't help but call out, but as soon as he uttered the word 'Zhang,' he saw the man shake his head at him, meaning that he should wait a while before speaking."
"The man gestured with his eyes to the paper and pen in front of him, and said something to Wei Jiangyan very seriously."
We'll talk about our business after I catch up with my father.
Deceiving oneself.
——————————————————
After reading the storyline presented by the system, Lu Mingran remembered Mr. Hu's letter.
Mr. Hu said he is currently in a state that is neither human nor ghost. So, what does the system mean...?
"You can pretend to be his father and play Ouija board with him at night. Don't worry, with your current special physique, I can easily make it happen."
The system finished speaking and awaited Lu Mingran's reply.
Lu Mingran seemed somewhat silent. He grabbed his floral sheet and wrapped it around himself.
Chapter 21 Want to know the formation? No way (7)
If Lu Mingran had a cigarette nearby, she would definitely light it, bring it to her lips, and then let out a soft sigh.
"System, why do I feel like... your operation is even more bizarre than mine?"
On the other hand, the system asked him, "Are you being too soft-hearted towards Zhang Jicheng and hesitant to take action?"
Lu Mingran shook her head:
“I know you want to use Zhang Tianshi’s feelings for his father to manipulate him, and I find that a little hard to accept.”
After saying that, Lu Mingran's head started to ache: "Also, playing the role of Zhang Tianshi's father in front of someone who can control ghosts? I'm afraid I'll be scared out of my wits."
This is practically tantamount to spreading one's wings on the verge of certain death.
With a snap, Lu Mingran turned off the light and lay down.
In the latter half of the night, he vaguely heard rain outside while he was asleep. He also heard a sound of plaster falling from the wall somewhere inside the house.
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Wei Jiangyan was not particularly willing to go to Shunda Plaza.
Locals know that the buildings in Shunda Plaza look like several upright coffins when viewed from above, and that people die inside every year. But this time, the client was from out of town, someone who had heard from somewhere that the food here was delicious and specifically asked to come here.