Otherworldly Merchant

In the following days, I stayed inside my shop. I didn’t eat much and didn’t sleep well. Whenever I closed my eyes, I’d see Chu Chu’s smiling face and Li Mazi’s mournful face.

A month later, Li Mazi came back. He looked even thinner and had a lot of white hair. To my surprise, he introduced me to a stranger. This stranger looked malnourished and scared, just as if he had some sickness.

I smiled and gave Li Mazi a welcoming hug. “Where have you been this entire month?”

Li Mazi smiled at me. “I went to find Chu Chu a nice place to rest.”

I nodded and didn’t continue talking about Chu Chu. I didn’t want to reopen Li Mazi’s wounds.

“Who’s this man?” I asked curiously, as I looked at the person Li Mazi had brought home.

“A distant relative. He’s called Li Mingming,” Li Mazi answered. “He has a problem.”

“What happened?” I asked Li Mingming.

“Brother, please save me!” Li Mingming grabbed my hands.

I nodded. “All right, tell me about your problem. If I can, I’ll try my best to help you.”

“It’s like this... My father came to me and he wants to take me away!” said Li Mingming.

I was speechless. “In that case… Maybe you can ask a policeman to help you?”

Li Mingming hurried to say, “You’ve misunderstood me. My father died three years ago.”

My heart skipped a beat. “You mean your father’s ghost approached you?”

He stooped his head and said in distress, “That's correct.”

I guessed that there could be only one reason for his father’s ghost to approach him. He didn’t fulfill his obligation as a son and his father died with a grudge.

I denied his request. “I’m sorry, I just do antique trading. I can’t help with a ghost pestering you or anything like that.”

Li Mingming could guess the reason why I had rejected him. He quickly explained, “Brother, it’s not what you think. I treated my father very well. I’m famous in my neighborhood for being a good son. If you don’t believe me, you can ask my cousin.”

I checked things with Li Mazi. Li Mazi nodded and said, “Yeah, I can testify this. This dude here is a filial one…”

My curiosity was aroused. “That’s strange then. If you treated him well, why would he want to come back and harm you? Tell me, how did your father pass away?’

“He died of old age, passing away in his sleep,” Li Mingming answered.

“Are you sure you weren’t hallucinating? After all, there aren’t many ghosts in this world... Right, did your father have some worries that he couldn’t let go? How do you know that your father wanted to take you with him?”

Li Mingming shook his head. “My mother passed away earlier and we didn’t have many relatives. When my father was alive, he was bright and positive. Also, I held his funeral as it was in his will. Why would he be worried about anything?”

This was even stranger. I thought about two possibilities. The first one, his father was controlled by someone who had turned him into a puppet ghost. The second one, it was purely Li Mingming’s imagination.

I asked Li Mingming, “Did your father have any enemies when he was alive?”

Li Mingming shook his head. “No, my father was a kind and nice man. Moreover, he donated to several schools. Even if he had endured hardships, he didn’t complain much. I don’t think he had any enemies.”

This was a tricky problem. I was leaning towards the possibility that Li Mingming’s mind had created the ghost…

As I was thinking about sending him to a psychologist, my eyes inadvertently wandered to his feet, and I confirmed that he did really bump into a ghost.

His shadow on the ground was dim, and a person’s shadow was like the projection of their Yang energy. If his shadow was dim, it meant that his Yang energy was weak. Unless he had a ghost pestering him, it was impossible for his Yang energy to be that low.

No wonder he looked so weak.

I immediately invited him into my antique shop.

After just two steps, he panted. This was enough to prove that his Yang energy had dropped significantly.

“All right. Tell me, how did you conclude that your father wanted to take your life?”

Li Mingming took a deep breath then started talking.

Everything started one week ago.

That night, while he was sleeping, he suddenly felt someone sit on his bed. That person lifted his blanket and lay next to him.

Li Mingming found everything very strange because his wife had taken the kids to visit her parents. So, who did get into his bed this late at night?

Out of curiosity, he turned to take a look, getting scared out of his wits immediately after.

His father, who had died three years ago, lay next to him. His body was soaking wet and his face was bleeding. He looked at his son with blank eyes.

Li Mingming was frightened. He shrieked then jolted up from his bed, kowtowing to his father. “Father, why are you back?”

His father answered coldly, “You should hurry and follow me.”

Li Mingming understood what his father meant. He wanted him to die! He begged his father. “What happened, father? Why do you want to take me with you?”

His father just repeated his words and added, “It’s really cold down there. You should hurry and follow me.”

Li Mingming was so scared that he couldn’t say a word. He continuously pounded his head in front of his father.

His father seemed to lose his patience. He reached out and grabbed the crown of Li Mingming’s head, trying to drag him away.

Li Mingming’s legs turned like jelly, and he directly slumped onto the ground. The crown of the head protected a person’s sea of consciousness. When his father grabbed his head, he wanted to take Li Mingming’s soul away!

The moment Li Mingming almost lost his consciousness, a rooster crowed. His mind felt much more clear, and he opened his eyes.

He was still lying tucked in his bed. The room looked normal, and his father was nowhere to be seen.

Li Mingming exhaled in relief. He weakly lay back and told himself that it was just a nightmare.

But right at that moment, he found that his bed had a large wet area. The puddle of water on his bed had the faint smell of fish stench.

Li Mingming was frightened as he knew it wasn’t just a nightmare. His father had really come to take him away!

He couldn’t sleep anymore. He watched TV in the living room for the whole night, and as soon as the sky turned brighter, he burned some paper money and incense at his father’s grave.

However, the strange phenomenon didn’t end there.

Li Mingming saw his father again the next night. His father was still covered in water and lay next to him. His body was cold and his scary, white eyes gazed at him.

“How could you do those immoral things?” His father repeated this sentences. His voice was full of resentment.

Li Mingming had dreamt about his father for two nights in a row. He knew that his father was pestering him.

“Father, what do you want? Do you want a car or a new house? I can offer them to you. Please don’t pester me.”

His father answered coldly, “I want to take you with me. I cannot let you stay and commit more immoral deeds.”

Li Mingming begged him. However, his father didn’t listen to him and just repeated himself.

After enduring this torment until dawn, Li Mingming didn’t dare to take things lightly. He went to a grave master and asked him to check his father’s grave to see if there were any problems.

The grave master had some skills, and he quickly discovered that something was wrong. The entire grave was wet, and the expert concluded that the coffin had been flooded.

Li Mingming asked someone to dig up the grave. Sure enough, the coffin underneath was soaking wet. The water came from an underground stream that passed by the grave.

Li Mingming burned paper money and incense for his father, kowtowing and asking for his forgiveness. The grave master then found another place with excellent geomancy to bury the coffin.

The grave was moved and the paper money ritual was also complete. Li Mingming thought that his father would finally rest and not come to see him anymore.

However, that was just the beginning.

Late at night, Li Mingming was fast asleep when he started choking. The whole room smelled like cigarettes.

When he drowsily got up from his bed and turned on the lights to see, he found that his small bedroom was filled with wisps of smoke.

The door was locked and the window was closed. It was impossible for the smoke to come from the outside...

Li Mingming’s fearful eyes scanned the room. Eventually, he found the source of the smoke.

On the ground were seven or eight cigarettes. All of them were half-puffed.

The scene scared him out of his mind. He knew that ghosts were puffing his cigarettes. Moreover, he discovered that his father’s ghost was not the only one to visit him. There was a whole group of them!

No matter how bold Li Mingming was, after experiencing this series of paranormal activities, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He asked the grave master for help.

However, the grave master refused to help him this time around. After Li Mingming pestered him, he told him the reason. “Yesterday, someone came to me and told me that if I interfere with his business any longer, he will take my life.”

Li Mingming was startled. “Master, was it my father’s ghost?”

Then, he showed his father’s picture to the master.

The grave master shook his head, “No, it was not him. It was a tall and lanky old man with a long, white beard. He wore a tattered ancient robe and had a book in his hand. In my dream, he hit my head twice with his book and almost crushed my soul…”

The grave master continued, “If he can casually smash a living human soul, he’s someone at the level of a Ghost King. I can’t handle him, and you’d better prepare for the worst!”

The words of the grave master scared Li Mingming so much that he almost peed his pants. He didn’t waste time and used a huge amount of money to find another expert to deal with this matter.

However, when they saw his shadow, they shook their heads and said that they couldn’t help him.

Over the next several days, the ghost-related phenomena became more and more vivid. One night, Li Mingming heard the old radio that his father had left behind suddenly play a Beijing opera. He walked out to check and saw a group of people wearing burial clothes pacing back and forth in his living room. Needless to say, the scene scared out of his mind.

Last night he also saw several old men wearing burial clothes. They were playing mahjong in the living room and left a mess behind. After this event, he didn’t dare to stay home anymore.

In desperation, he asked Li Mazi to introduce him to me. He wanted me to help him deal with this case.