Otherworldly Merchant

Most of the villagers that had gone missing were alive.

According to them, it was true that a long time ago, they had done something very unkind. They had got rid of a family of stray dogs because they didn’t like it. They cooked the male dog with some chili peppers and made hotpot with the dog meat. At the same time, they killed the puppies with their iron shovels. The female dog was beaten up. Its legs were broken and then they hurled it down the mountain flank.

This could have been the reason why the wild dog spirit had harmed them. It made sense, didn’t it?

No love exists without a cause; no hatred exists without a reason.

Zen Master Baimei took the Xiezhi horn and the puppies with him. He told me that when the puppies grew up, he would give me one.

Li Mazi eyed the Xiezhi horn and didn’t want to let it go.

Zen Master Baimei clearly understood how Li Mazi felt. After all, Chuyi had said that the Xiezhi horn could somewhat help cure Chu Chu’s illness.

Zen Master Baimei smiled at Li Mazi. “After I make medicine out of this Xiezhi horn, I will deliver it to you.”

Several days after we returned home, Chu Chu’s situation became worse. She began to lose her hair and her small face was very pale. She often had a high-fever and unconsciously rambled some nonsense.

Li Mazi was scared. He took Chu Chu to a big hospital in Beijing where she was sent directly into the Intensive Care Unit. The doctor came up with a conservative treatment. They suspected that she had some unidentified cancer.

Li Mazi agreed and was more than willing to use all of his savings on Chu Chu. But how could it be enough money?

Yin Xinyue and I also supported Li Mazi a little. Li Mazi cried and said to us, “I know Chu Chu won’t be able to put up with it for a long time. I just want her to be able to live comfortably during her remaining time.”

After looking at Chu Chu’s desperate situation, I was very scared. I was afraid that in the next second, Chu Chu would close her eyes and never open them again. I wondered if Li Mazi would ever get a hold of himself if that happened.

Later on, while Chu Chu was in critical condition, Zen Master Baimei finally brought the Xiezhi horn he had refined into a medicinal pellet. After Chu Chu ate the pellet, her life was saved. However, she wasn’t different from a person in a vegetative state. She was awake only for three or four hours a day. She spent most of the time sleeping…

In order to keep Chu Chu in the hospital for her treatment and care, Li Mazi went to the antique market almost every day to search for more work.

The second business case after the Lunar New Year came around that time. Our client was a WeChat saleswoman from Beijing. She was rich and was said to have tens of millions of followers.

WeChat agents were really popular right now. Almost half of my friends in my WeChat circle posted soapy boring advertisements that ranged from facemask to cosmetics to even whitening needles. I didn’t know if they could actually earn money, but this woman in front of me looked really rich. She told me she was a front-line WeChat agent in charge of seventeen cities, with tens of thousands of customers.

She asked to meet up at a coffee shop.

The woman had an outstanding fashionable style with exquisite makeup. She had long, curly hair that went past her shoulders. Her accessories were an LV purse, sparkling white gold rings, and a gold necklace. The way she walked on the streets wasn’t different from that of a real model.

However, I naturally disliked flirtatious women like her. When we met, I didn’t bother to study her appearance and directly asked her, “What happened?”

She seemed very cautious as she discreetly took the mirror in the room and placed it face down on the table. Then, she muttered to me, “Someone in the mirror keeps watching me.”

I was bewildered and looked at the mirror cluelessly. “Who’s watching you?”

“Me,” she answered.

I tried to hold in my laughter. “Hey, are you all right? When you look in the mirror, the mirror will obviously reflect yourself. Who else could it be? It would be strange if there was someone else.”

She was panic-stricken. “Are you even the real deal? How could you not understand what I’m saying? I meant that there’s another me in the mirror. Even when I don’t look in the mirror, that ‘me’ in the mirror still looks at me with resentful eyes!”

I took a deep breath and looked at her in disbelief. “You said that even when you don’t look at the mirror, there is still another ‘you’ in the mirror? Are you sure it’s you and not anyone else?”

She nodded and said, “I’m telling the truth. Just name a price, how much do you want? I’m very busy.”

As soon as she said that, her WeChat rang. She picked up her phone, checked it and answered the phone. It seemed she had recruited another WeChat salesperson as she was telling them the agent fee.

I looked at Li Mazi, who couldn’t be patient anymore. “Ms. Song, if you’re busy, how about we meet again when you’re done?”

Ms. Song was infuriated. “What do you mean? Is this your attitude towards a customer? I pay for your service!”

I looked at Li Mazi, who was fuming, and found it pretty normal. Actually, with his personality, he would have already slammed the table and stood up in the past.

However, he was now thinking about Chu Chu and was in need of money, so he held himself back.

Previously, he desired money because he was greedy. But right now, he desired money for the woman he loved. He now shouldered more responsibilities, which had made him more mature in dealing with people.

“You can finish your business first. We’ll wait.” Li Mazi sighed and compromised in the end.

Ms. Song kept talking on the phone for around ten minutes. After the other person on the line agreed to pay fifty thousand renminbi in agent fees, she put down her phone and stirred her cup of coffee. “Tell me, how long do you need to solve this? How much do you want?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “We’re not Daoist priests or ghost subduing masters. We’re otherworldly merchants. Can you tell me when you started to feel that something was wrong? Is there anything strange in your house?”

“The mirror in my house is what is strange,” said Ms. Song. “That mirror is an otherworldly item.”

I quickly explained, “The so-called otherworldly items are all hundreds of years old. They aren’t ordinary items you use every day.”

“Oh, are they?” she said. “You should go to my house and check!”

I nodded. If I couldn’t see the otherworldly item, I wouldn’t be able to handle the case.

Ms. Song drove her BMW, which only had two seats. It seemed she had a good impression of me as she insisted that I get in the car with her. Li Mazi, on the other hand, had to take a taxi.

Li Mazi was mad but he couldn’t do anything but grit his teeth and agree.

While driving, Ms. Song patiently told me what happened to her.

It turned out Ms. Song wasn’t native to Beijing.

However, everybody who moved to Beijing for a new life shared the same dream: to pursue a Beijing household registration. Even though they couldn’t have a Beijing household registration, they had to practice Beijing dialect, which would presumably give them the aura of a Pekingese. That was why when Ms. Song opened her mouth, she spoke like a typical Pekingese.

People said that Pekingeses liked antiques and kept small pets. That was why Ms. Song had recently bought a lot of antiques. She even had an alpaca as her pet.

The paranormal activities had started ever since she bought a bronze mirror that dated back to the Tang dynasty…

The bronze mirror had exquisite carvings. From the details, it was surely a royal product with a gold-plated frame and excellent sandalwood support.

However, the precious feature of the mirror was its surface. The surface was very refined and polished. The reflection in the mirror was clear and precise, which made it not too different from a modern mirror.

Ms. Song loved the mirror a lot. When she looked into the mirror, she saw herself much more charming and even sexier than her real self. She felt so proud when she looked into the mirror. Ms. Song was infatuated with this feeling. It was as if she was addicted.

However, on the tenth day after she had bought the bronze mirror, Ms. Song found herself in a strange situation. When she got up early in the morning, she saw her reflection in the mirror, and the reflection couldn’t catch up with her movements in real life.

For example, when she checked her face in the mirror to put on some makeup, through the corner of her eyes, she saw her reflection stay still in the mirror. It was smiling at her.

She turned and carefully checked the mirror, but it didn’t show anything. Her reflection wasn’t there any more.

At first, she thought she was a little lightheaded in the morning so she didn’t really mind it. However, the next day, she found the situation had gotten worse!

When she checked the mirror, she often felt that the person in the mirror wasn’t her.

That person in the mirror often smiled at her when she knew she wasn’t smiling!

When she left her bed to use the bathroom at night, she heard some odd laughter from the mirror. When she went to check the mirror, she saw herself smiling again.

However, her smiling face flashed then disappeared. She thought it was just a hallucination. She didn’t mind this. She put the mirror in a drawer and didn’t want to use it anymore.

However, the next morning after she put the bronze mirror away, the situation had turned even worse! Not only did that bronze mirror reflect her strange self, but all the other mirrors in her house now had the same strange images.

Sometimes, it was a bloody face. Other times, it was her smiling face. One time she saw a strange woman that wore clothes from the Tang dynasty. The woman walked back and forth in the mirror…

She was scared and didn’t dare to stay in the apartment any longer. She moved out and rented a very expensive villa in the outskirts of the city.

But the paranormal activities didn’t end there. They just turned worse. She would see herself with the woman that wore Tang dynasty clothes in every mirror she used. Sometimes, she had strange thoughts that the woman wearing Tang dynasty clothes was actually herself.

But the event that made her reach out to an expert was the horrible event that happened last night. While she was sleeping, she felt very cold. She rolled and covered her body with a thick blanket. However, as soon as she did that, she heard a voice that groaned, “I’m so cold.”

She was frightened and opened her eyes. Soon after, she was scared out of her wits.

Someone was lying next to her, sharing her pillow. That person’s eyes were dark. She had blood running from her eyes, mouth, ears, and even her nostrils. Her skin was dry and wrinkled.

That person’s face was pretty similar to her own.

She screamed and jolted backward, trying to escape from the bed. However, as soon as she opened the door, the woman wearing the Tang Dynasty clothes appeared at the door. Her voice was cold and distant. She said, “I want to live. So you must die.”

Then, she used her pale hands and grabbed Ms. Song’s neck.

Right at that moment, the rooster crowed. The female ghost shrieked then disappeared.

Ms. Song was scared out of her wits. She immediately ran to the Panjiayuan Antique Market. It might have been her destiny that she saw Li Mazi, who had just arrived at the antique market to find work. Then, she invited Li Mazi to help her solve the case.