Cataclysm Chapter 16: A Skeleton Under Clothing 9; Hanging Ghost

Chapter 16: A Skeleton Under Clothing 9; Hanging Ghost

Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations 

Editor: Addis

 

Ma Qiqi was shocked. She was a quiet and shy girl and after such a fright, even her words were not complete. When she went downstairs for dinner, she was practically glued to Ge Qing. She was wearing a long dress that dragged to the bottom of her feet, revealing some beautiful toes. The collar was covering her neck, hiding the blue and purple strangulation marks.

Ge Qing stayed with her and said to Mao Xiaoli, “I’ll sleep with Qiqi tonight.”

Mao Xiaoli nodded, “Okay.”

At night, a light of moonlight slipped through the gap of the curtains into the bedroom. There were two girls sleeping on the big bed. The curtains were wavering in the windless night, it was giving an odd aura.

Ge Qing opened her eyes and looked at the window. She found that the curtains were lifted by the wind. First, she thought it must be the strong wind, but then she froze. She remembered clearly that the doors and windows had been closed before going to bed. So why were curtains moving so much now? Unless something opened the window?

Ge Qing swallowed saliva and didn’t dare to move. Staring at the curtain blowing in front of her, there appeared a dark shadow, facing her, staring at her.

Blinking to relieve the sourness she felt in her eyes for staring too long. Ge Qing moved her body slightly, she lifted the quilt blanket up and turned on the bedside lamp. The lights lit up the whole bedroom, the moving curtains abruptly stopped dancing, and the shadows she saw disappeared.

Ge Qing didn’t dare relax. She picked up her mobile phone to check the time. She wanted to turn around and ask Ma Qiqi to go to sleep in Mao Xiaoli’s bedroom together with her.

But she just moved, and she felt stiff.

Something was at the back of her neck, it felt rough. She slowly looked down at her phone, the black screen reflected the situation of her neck and the thing behind her. She had a piece of rope around her own neck, it was constricting as if it was alive.

Behind her was Ma Qiqi.

Ma Qiqi’s eyeballs had rolled up, and her eyes were white. Her mouth was opened so wide that it was twisted beyond normal human configuration, and her red tongue hung down to her neck. The bluish purple strangulation marks on her neck were deeply sunken in, to the point it almost broke her neck.

Ge Qing took a look, covered her cell phone in fear and pretended that she noticed nothing. “Qiqi, why don’t we go find Mao Xiaoli and sleep together with her?”

“I don’t know her. I don’t want to sleep with her.”

Ge Qing took a deep breath, and suddenly smashed her mobile phone into Ma Qiqi’s face. She grabbed the rope around her neck with both hands, leaning her head down, and she got out of the rope. She quickly ran towards the bedroom door, shouting, “Help!” 

As she was running away in a hurry, she hit something in front of her. Ge Qing got thrown backwards, looking up, she saw a pair of legs above her. Ma Qiqi was suspended in the air and was staring at her with a face of horror.

A piece of hemp rope appeared in front of Ge Qing, her struggling slowly stopped. The hemp rope in front of her seemed to have an irresistible attraction. Ge Qing was in a trance and she gradually put the rope around her neck.

The rope tightened abruptly, and Ge Qing came to her senses. She began struggling again, that was when the bedroom door got kicked open, two figures jumped in. Chen Yang took off the red string tied to his wrist and whipped Ma Qiqi, who was hanging in mid air.

With a scream, a red ghost was whipped out of Ma Qiqi’s body. The ghost’s face was pale and ferocious. Her tongue hung out to her chest, her neck bone was broken, and her whole body was red. It could be seen that this was a Hanging Ghost that had killed before, it had already become a fierce ghost.

Chen Yang caught Ma Qiqi, laid her down on the bed and took the hemp rope from Ge Qing’s neck. Kou Xuanling was in charge of dealing with the ghost. 

“…As mentioned, assist in the crusade against evil, immediate extermination, as urgently as the ghost law of Xuandu, and as urgently as the law of the underworld,” Kou Xuanling chanted, his left hand made a Taoist gesture, while the right hand held a bronze cube, it was a Taoist instrument in the shape of a dice, it sucked the ghost inside.

Chen Yang left Ma Qiqi in Ge Qing’s care, and she couldn’t help reaching for Ma Qiqi’s nose to check for her breath, “Don’t worry. She was just possessed.”

Ge Qing breathed a sigh of relief. At the same time, her heart jumped up to her throat after hearing this sentence, “I saw a dark shadow under the curtain. Was that thing on Qiqi’s body?”

“No. She was already possessed during the day.”

“What?”

“Spoke very little, hid from people, standing on her tiptoes, those are signs of being possessed.”

Ge Qing rubbed her arm, “No way. I thought QiQi was just scared because…” 

At the thought that she had been with Ma Qiqi for almost the whole day and had been sleeping in the same bed with her for several hours, she couldn’t help being frightened. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Chen Yang explained, “Ma Qiqi was possessed by a Hanging ghost. It had a lot of resentment and had a heavy Yin aura. It scared Ma Qiqi a lot, so her soul was unstable. In order to ensure that Ma Qiqi’s soul would not be scattered as I exorcize the ghost, it was necessary to whip out the ghost from Ma Qiqi’s body while the ghost was unprepared and had surfaced.” 

Ma Qiqi was weak, and Chen Yang’s red string could have whipped her soul to smithereens directly. If he was not careful, it could cause problems with Ma Qiqi, even if just a small fragment of her soul was missing.

“What kind of sequelae will Qiqi have?”

“Nothing much. After this case is solved, go see a doctor, raise body physique, and get more sunshine.”

Ge Qing said thank you and took care of Ma Qiqi.

Chen Yang looked curiously at the dice in Kou Xuanling’s hand, which was made of bronze and had scriptures on all six sides. “What’s sculpted on it?” he asked.

“Nu Qing Ghost Law.”

‘Nu Qing Ghost Law’ was a Chengyi faction commandment, which recorded the names of ten thousand ghosts, and their auspicious and ominous strength. Originally, it was taught to Zhang Tianshi by the Supreme Emperor ¹  who could not bear seeing evil spirits and ghosts hurt the people. This Nu Ching Ghost Law was given to Zhang Tianshi so that he could subdue ghosts and spirits to aid humans.

“Why use a dice to catch ghosts?” Chen Yang remembered that Tianshis used to catch ghosts with wine jars. When did using a dice become the norm?

“Convenient.” Kou Xuanling said as he tossed the dice in his hand up and down, “A wine jar  ². is way too big and bulky, it is also fragile and hence unsafe. Although the ghost can’t destroy the wine jar when it is inside, if you accidentally dropped it to the ground, or if a falling stone broke it, the fierce ghost, which we had worked so hard to catch, would flee. Plus, the wine jar is too heavy for carrying around.”

Chen Yang nodded in agreement. There were many inconveniences in catching ghosts with wine jars, but the purpose of that was for the evil spirits’ redemption. If the ghost could not redeem itself, then they would be used to make other ghost catching tools.

“Nowadays, we don’t need to wait for the ghosts to redeem themselves, then send them on their way to the underworld,” Kou Xuanling waved his hand. “The Dafu office is cooperating with the underworld. If we catch evil ghosts, we can ask Hell servitors to take them away directly.”

“So efficient,” Chen Yang said. Indeed, it was a win-win situation, even for the underworld this was quite convenient.

At this time, Mao Xiaoli ran towards the room in a hurry, she was quite noisy, that was until she got to the door. She suddenly quieted down. After a long time, Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling heard her mosquito-like tiny voice, “Greetings, director Du.”

Chen Yang couldn’t help snickering as he walked out of the bedroom.

“The director has been standing outside all this time?” Kou Xuanling asked in shock.

“Hmn. He followed me here. When I said I wanted to solve this on my own, he didn’t butt in.” 

As a matter of fact, Du Shuo never planned on making a move, but he was the director after all. If he could earn merits without doing anything, it might cause his colleagues to think badly of him. Chen Yang blurted that out and made himself the reason for Du Shuo’s idleness. Unexpectedly, Kou Xuanling looked at Chen Yang in surprise, which gave him an inexplicable feeling and thought that maybe his lie had been exposed.

Was Du Shuo’s idleness and laziness a known fact to all already?

What Chen Yang didn’t know was that when Du Shuo took this job, many people in headquarters scrambled to observe. Everyone thought this was a huge case that would throw the country into a long-term turmoil. So did Kou Xuanling. When he was appointed to handle this case, he was extremely excited.

Until he found out that this was only a slightly complex and serious case with deaths, but in his opinion, this wasn’t even a two-star level job. So, in his opinion, it was normal for Du Shuo not to do anything.

Chen Yang silently decided to educate Du Shuo when they were back in their rooms, behind closed doors. He should work hard. Don’t be lazy, at least not this obviously.

When he got to the door, Chen Yang said to Mao Xiaoli, “Xiaoli, you should stay in the bedroom with Ge Qing and Ma Qiqi tonight.”

“No problem,” Mao Xiaoli went into the bedroom speedily like the wind. She was worried that she couldn’t find an excuse to stay away from Du Shuo.

Du Shuo glanced at Chen Yang and saw that he was not injured. He said to Kou Xuanling, “Tomorrow morning, Chen Yang and I will go to the ghost house. You will be in charge of Fang Wenwen.”

“Okay.” Kou Xuanling answered, and then he saw Feng Yuan and Wei Changping reaching the bedroom following the sounds. Kou Xuanling seemed to have remembered something, and quickly went back to his own bedroom.

Feng Yuan’s expression was ugly and painful.

Chen Yang asked, “What? Insomnia again?”

At the moment, he had black eyebags and looked tired, even his steps were flimsy. Obviously, he lacked sleep. Feng Yuan sighed and said, “Master Chen, you don’t understand. Kou Tianshi is too pious.”

Chen Yang nodded. Du Shuo said that Kou Xuanling worshiped his Zushiye three times a day at least. 

Wei Changping looked miserable, “I opened my eyes in the middle of the night and saw him offering incense to worship his Zushiye.”

Feng Yuan said, “He takes a bath, burns incense, recites mantras, and then burns them. Then three to five in the morning, he gets up to practice swinging his sword. ³ They were so miserable. They were all night owls, they played with their mobile phones in bed, and only stopped playing at around two or three o’clock. As soon as they closed their eyes, Kou Xuanling got up and began to chant the mantras.”

They couldn’t take this anymore.

Chen Yang was full of admiration, “Kou Tianshi studies and cultivates very hard. No wonder he was promoted to Wulei(3rd grade) Tianshi at a young age.” 

Even his voice was full of admiration. 

Feng Yuan and Wei Changping collapsed.

“You can go to bed earlier.”

Du Shuo suddenly took Chen Yang by the shoulder and said, “Let’s go back to bed.”

Chen Yang said, “I’m going back to my room. You don’t have to share a room with Kou Tianshi. If you run into a ghost, just call for help.” With that, Du Shuo brought him back to their room.

Feng Yuan and Wei Changping looked at each other and said, “Du Tianshi and Chen Tianshi have such a good relationship.”

“Friendship cultivated from sleeping together.” Wei Changping said absentmindedly, “Do you think we should discuss with Ge Qing, see if she would let us go in and sleep on the floor?”

Feng Yuan was silent and knocked on their door. They came a few steps late and didn’t know what had just happened. After knowing the details though, the two immediately shivered.

Ge Qing asked, “What else can I do for you?”

Feng Yuan shook his head, “Nothing, it’s fine.”

Ge Qing slammed the door.

Feng Yuan said, “If you think about this carefully, I feel very relieved with Zushiye around.”

“Let’s go back then?”

“Mn.”

The author has something to say:

As for the Fengdu emperor’s lazy behavior, Chen Xiao Yang thinks that it’s necessary to maintain his husband’s face outside but he must properly and patiently educate him behind closed doors.

Shiya: Zushiye: How dare you not like being in a room with my Kou Xuanling, you fiends!!! No way I’m protecting you people. Hmph.

 

 

 

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