“We can’t stay by this river anymore!”
Chen Mu squatted on the roof all night without sleeping.
The next day as soon as the sun rose, he rushed to the tooth trader’s.
Near the Inner City, he rented a two-entry courtyard house.
The Prefectural Government Office was in the Inner City, and so were the evil-warding treasures; living closer meant more safety.
Then, he spent another day moving furniture and belongings from the old house into the new one.
He didn’t ask for help but instead used the Five Ghosts Bag, moving everything himself trip by trip.
His four Shape Cultivation Techniques were highly advanced, giving him frightening endurance, and with the help of the Five Ghosts Bag, such tasks hardly tired him at all.
…
In the evening, Chen Mu cooked a large table of dishes.
It wasn’t until dusk that Jie Jia walked into his new home with an expressionless face.
“What have you encountered this time?” Jie Jia was exasperated. “You’re more vigilant than a rabbit. Any little disturbance and you move house.”
“Nothing much, just been living in one place for too long, so I wanted a change of environment,” Chen Mu chuckled. “Besides, I haven’t given up the old residence; cunning rabbits have three burrows, right?”
“Aren’t you afraid of being suspected by the neighbors with such secretive movements?” Jie Jia countered.
Chen Mu calmly replied, “I don’t have any neighbors.”
Jie Jia looked at Chen Mu speechlessly, “You… rented the surrounding properties, too?”
Chen Mu just smiled and didn’t speak.
Jie Jia: “…”
…
After dinner, the two sat in the new home’s pavilion.
The courtyard had been neglected for some time and was strewn with dry yellow leaves.
Under the octagonal pavilion, green bricks showed cracks through which tender grass shoots even emerged.
Next to the stone table, Chen Mu handed two porcelain vials to Jie Jia.
“How much are these worth?” asked Chen Mu.
“Dragon Transformation Pills?” Jie Jia opened a vial to take a glance, “There’s been a recent price drop, around one thousand taels each.”
“Exchange them all for Zuming Talismans for me,” said Chen Mu decisively.
Jie Jia looked at Chen Mu in surprise, then paused, “You haven’t encountered ghosts again, have you?”
Chen Mu nodded reluctantly.
“Could it be some kind of special constitution?” Jie Jia eyed Chen Mu up and down.
Chen Mu rolled his eyes, “I’m just an ordinary person, what special constitution could I have?”
But Jie Jia shook his head, “It’s hard to say; ghosts don’t always go after the same person.”
“What do you mean?” Chen Mu couldn’t help frowning.
mvl
“Some special constitutions are suitable for possession, so…” Jie Jia glanced at Chen Mu with his pale yellow eyes.
Chen Mu suddenly felt his scalp tingle. He thought of his own ‘borrowing a corpse to resurrect’.
“It shouldn’t be the case, otherwise you wouldn’t have survived until now,” Jie Jia reassured after some thought.
Chen Mu breathed a sigh of relief.
The last thing he wanted was to be constantly troubled by ghosts.
…
The next day.
Chen Mu woke up early; he actually hadn’t slept well the night before.
It wasn’t a big deal, but Jie Jia’s words kept him tossing and turning, unable to stop imagining ghosts popping out from under the bed.
He practiced the White Jade Toad Shape Cultivation Technique three times to warm up his body.
Chen Mu glanced at the courtyard, littered with dead leaves.
Three syllables were uttered, and five big clumps of black smoke appeared beside him, swirling around him continuously.
The black smoke brushed over the ground, making the dry leaves, sprinkled pebbles, and dirt rapidly vanish.
Chen Mu stood still.
The radius of the swirling black smoke slowly expanded.
In a short while, the entire courtyard was spotless.
The yard was quite spacious; besides the northern master house, there was a separate room on the west side for a kitchen.
An octagonal pavilion was on the east side.
The toilet and utility rooms were in the front courtyard.
In terms of elegance, it was slightly less than that riverside house with a pond.
But overall, it was much better than the previous one.
The rent was four taels of silver a month, three to four times more expensive than the other two houses.
That was the cost of being close to the Inner City.
…
After breakfast, Chen Mu methodically continued to practice the White Jade Toad.
During breaks, he dug a large cellar five meters below the western room.
He had to move the things from the previous cellar over.
In the evening, right on schedule, Jie Jia arrived.
Before dinner, he handed Chen Mu a small cloth bag containing six palm-length leather Zuming Talismans.
Chen Mu happily tucked them into his pocket; with the initial one he’d bought, he now had seven Zuming Talismans on him, his sense of security skyrocketing.
At bedtime.
He stuck one talisman on each of the four walls and placed another on the roof beam.
Two more, one on his front and one on his back.
Only then did Chen Mu relax and sleep soundly in his bed.
Though his vigor was getting better and he only needed two hours of sleep to stay alert,
Chen Mu still went to bed early and rose early, maintaining a regular rhythm of rest.
He had proficiency that required regular, consistent experience grinding.
The short burst of exhausting work had brought a sense of weariness instead.
…
After spending several days with his heart in his mouth, Chen Mu finally heaved a sigh of relief as no ghosts came knocking on his door.
“Safe, yes, but the wallet’s suffocating,” Chen Mu sighed.
Purchasing Zuming Talismans, renting houses continuously, constantly stockpiling supplies.
All the windfall he had previously made had been burned through.
“I need to think of a way to make money.”
That very day, he had Jie Jia begin delivering medicinal herbs to him. He was going to restart the business of copying pharmaceuticals.
“The income from Ling San Pills could be about one hundred silver a month.”
“Gentle Breeze Powder has a small profit but high sales volume, roughly making two hundred silver.”
“Ling San Pills are fine; they’re expensive, and I only sell about twenty a month. But Gentle Breeze Powder requires a lot of manual labor, which is a bit time-consuming.”
Time is proficiency. He wasn’t too keen on wasting it on mechanical repetition.
“Maybe sell the formula directly?” Chen Mu immediately shook his head.
He always felt that selling the formula would be a terrible loss, and he couldn’t bear to part with it.
“Ah… who asked me to be a nobody, unwilling to let go of the small profits,” Chen Mu shook his head but soon had an idea.
He planned to split the formula for Gentle Breeze Powder.
The ingredients that made up a large proportion and were secondary in the formula, he planned to teach to the small pharmacy run by Jie Jia.
The less prevalent but more delicately prepared core ingredients, he would continue to make himself.
In this way, only one hour of his time would be enough for Jie Jia to sell for half a month.
“Fourth Rank Pharmaceutical Technique is indeed powerful,” Chen Mu chuckled to himself.
Without the support of a Pharmaceutical Technique, he really couldn’t manage such a division of the formula.
…
Time slowly advanced to April.
The temperature in Nanyang Prefecture, which hadn’t been cool for a few days, began to rise rapidly.
The White Jade Toad Shape Cultivation Technique also smoothly completed the Bone Transformation over the past month, and even the Marrow Transformation had progressed by more than half.
“As expected, the more overlays there are, the faster the three transformations are completed.”
His leg bones had become more resilient, and the hip, knee, and ankle joints had become more flexible.
“It’s probably designed to enhance the explosive power of the lower limbs,” Chen Mu speculated.
With more experience in the Shape Cultivation Technique, he gradually gained insights.
Once a technique was mastered, he could roughly discern its orientation.
“Soul Strength will probably manifest in the legs.”
…
Shape Cultivation was progressing smoothly, and the business of imitation pharmaceuticals was becoming well established.
With an income of over three hundred silver a month, as long as he didn’t buy expensive items like Zuming Talismans in large quantities,
even if he visited Chunfeng Tower three to five times a month to gather information, it was still more than enough to indulge himself. After all… he was only eating, and he wasn’t even scrounging for meals.
And as time went by, more and more people came to Nanyang Prefecture seeking refuge.
Chen Mu went out once and noticed the world was becoming increasingly chaotic, so he stopped going out.
He also heard that the bizarre Red Ship seemed to have appeared on the Luo River again.
Chen Mu tensed up but then breathed a sigh of relief.
“It seems like it wasn’t targeting me.”
He just happened to live by the river and had stumbled upon it.
“Emerging at intervals to snatch a batch of people, these ghosts are using humans as food,” Chen Mu recalled the memories of the haunting.
Possession, dried corpses, horrific deaths. Random selection without cause, sudden attacks. It all seemed like a hunt to him.
“When you think about it, aren’t evil-warding artifacts just another kind of fence or wall?”
“They block the attacks of wild beast-ghosts from beyond.”
…
Chen Mu thought he would live this peaceful life until he had gone through all the Shape Cultivation Techniques he had.
But things did not go as he wished.
In the year 641 of Da Liang, on the fifth day of April.
Late at night, as Chen Mu lay in bed sound asleep, he suddenly felt a warmth on his chest.
Half-asleep, he opened his eyes and noticed that his chest and back were getting hotter and hotter.
He reached in and saw a Zuming Talisman emitting a faint red light.
Chen Mu was startled awake at once.
He looked up.
The Zuming Talismans on the walls and beams were glowing continuously.
Creak creak creak…
Cringing scraping sounds came from the wooden door.
Chen Mu’s pupils suddenly contracted.
Whoosh!
The Zuming Talismans on the walls almost simultaneously emitted white smoke, and the room was filled with the stench of something burning.
Chen Mu dared not move and stiffly watched the figure in front of the bed.
Long hair, a naked body, a rotten back.
It was the first ghost he had encountered, the long-haired woman by the river.
A great fear instantly filled his spirit, enveloping him as if he were slowly being encased by the crushing depths of the sea.
His body became progressively rigid, and his thoughts grew increasingly sluggish.
Borrowing the last bit of clarity from the warmth of the Zuming Talisman on his chest, Chen Mu struggled to utter three bizarre syllables.
Five little paper figures, whirring, covered his face and head, and a sudden cold sensation struck him.
As his thoughts, nearly frozen by fear, began to slowly churn,
“I’m truly being targeted!”