Otherworldly Merchant

Luckily, I was fast enough to catch two of the coins.

I didn’t have time to explain the situation to Lei Long and started to count the coins.

There were ten coins scattered on the ground. With the two in my hand, they were twelve in total.

Lei Long’s face turned pale, and his voice was shaking. “Grandmaster…What does this mean? Where did these coins come from?”

I contemplated then said, “It seems my guess was correct. The spirit living inside the golden bowl wants to have a ghost marriage with you.”

“A ghost marriage? Oh my gosh!” Lei Long lost his balance and landed on his butt.

“Why does that resentful spirit want to get married to me? Who is she?”

I picked up a coin and showed it to Lei Long. The coin had two words written on it. They were, ‘Hongwu Tongbao,’ [1] which proved that it was a coin from the Ming dynasty. Emperor Hongwu was the founder of the Ming dynasty.

It seemed that the female ghost came from the Ming dynasty.

Lei Long had a gloomy face as he looked at me. “If she has a ghost marriage with me, will I die?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “The twelve coins haven’t all reached the ground. Therefore, she can’t marry you just yet.”

Then, I carefully put away the coins. “I’ll keep these two coins safe. We cannot allow them to fall to the ground.”

Lei Long nodded. “Grandmaster, do you have any way to restrain that ghost?”

I thought for a moment. “Let’s just wait until tonight. There should be no problem.”

Lei Long nodded. “Grandmaster, do you need to prepare anything? We must prepare well for tonight. I don’t want to be tossed around like this again.”

I nodded. “I’m going back to prepare the tools. We should try to solve the case tonight.”

The moment we went out, a woman came to Lei Long’s door.

It was a mature, sexy woman with thick makeup. She wore a short denim skirt, which highlighted her long, delicate legs.

Lei Long told us that the visitor was his late friend’s wife.

Her husband has just died, what is she doing there? I scolded her in my heart.

I ignored her and directly left with Li Mazi. Before leaving, I asked Lei Long not to leave his house no matter what.

Lei Long nodded. After seeing us off, he went into the house with the woman.

Only God knew what they would do in the room. This woman came to seek comfort, and Lei Long was willing to provide it…

On the way back, Li Mazi kept scolding and cursing. “That woman is really shameless! She came to another man right after her husband’s death. If it were me, I would slap her to death!”

As Li Mazi kept nagging nonstop, my ears had started to hurt. However, it was good that he was this lively and could vent out his anger. At least, he wouldn’t think about having a ghost marriage with Chu Chu.

While driving, Li Mazi suddenly screeched, and his foot pressed on the brakes.

If I hadn’t secured my seatbelt, I guessed I would have hit the windshield.

I shot Li Mazi an angry look. “Why did you suddenly hit the brakes? Do you want to kill me?”

Li Mazi clutched his butt and cried, “It’s my butt. I think my butt’s growing mold again…”

“Let me see,” I urged.

This time, Li Mazi didn’t care about his pride. He quickly pulled his pants down to show me his butt.

After seeing his rear end, I gasped. The mold on Li Mazi’s butt had started to spread. The white hairs looked even longer. But then, I recognized that the lengths of the fluffy hairs on his butt weren’t equal. They formed a strange pattern that resembled a coin.

I could even read the two words, ‘Hongwu Tongbao.’

I was shocked to see the moldy white spots grow at speed visible to the naked eye. I concluded that the female ghost couldn’t wait any longer.

While I looked at Li Mazi’s butt, Lei Long called me. He cried and whined on the phone. “Grandmaster, can you come back please? I think I’m going to die. I can't stand it anymore…”

“What happened?”

Lei Long sobbed louder. “The moldy spots on my body spread further... Can you guess what they grew into? I saw in the mirror…”

“Is it a coin?” I asked.

Lei Long was surprised but still managed to answer. “Yes, grandmaster. How do you know that?”

I took a deep breath. It seems that the evil spirit can’t wait any longer. 

I knew what she meant by it. She was pressing me to throw the two coins I had kept. As she couldn’t jump out of the bowl to attack the two directly, she was using some method to make mold grow on their bodies…

Saving their lives was of crucial importance, so it was best to satisfy the ghost’s request for now. Otherwise, both of them could die!

It didn’t really care if Lei Long died, but Li Mazi was different. If he died because of Lei Long, it would be too unjust.

I had no time to think. I gritted my teeth and threw the two coins to the ground.

The moment the coins touched the ground, the mold on Li Mazi’s body stopped growing. Li Mazi’s pain also subsided. However, the memory of the pain still made him shiver. He was exhausted and lay on the seat. “What happened just now? I’m out of that house already. How could the ghost control the mold?”

I force a smile. “How can I know?”

I asked Li Mazi to pull his pants up. There were already several people giving us weird looks through the windshield. I was sure they thought we were a gay couple.

After Li Mazi dressed himself, he didn’t dare to sit anymore. I asked him to lie on his stomach on the passenger seat while I took the wheel.

Since the twelve coins had been tossed to the ground, Lei Long had given the ghost the wedding gift. Tonight, the female ghost would surely come to visit Lei Long to get married to him. I couldn’t imagine the consequences if we failed to stop them tonight… It would be much harder to stop this ghost later on.

Whether the case would end in success or failure, it would be decided tonight!

When I got home, I searched around for any tools I could use.

I still had one Ksitigarbha Talisman and also the Sirius Whip, which should be able to hold back the ghost for a while.

I then found a rose that was carved from wood.

When I saw the rose, my eyes brightened. Isn’t this the best magic tool to solve the ghost marriage?

My grandfather had told me about this wooden rose. It was called Peach Soul Flower because it was carved from peach wood. This rose had been watered with the tears of one hundred pregnant women and a drop of essence blood from the handsome Pan An. [2]

The Peach Soul Flower looked beautiful and unharmful. Ghosts couldn’t even sense the Yang energy the rose contained. However, once ghosts touched this flower, the enormous Yang energy would burst out and cover the spirit form.

As long as the spirit hadn’t reached the level of a ‘great monster,’ the Yang energy inside the Peach Soul Flower could easily kill them.

However, since the Peach Soul Flower was very intimidating and its effect lasted a long time, it would use up all of the Yang energy in just one use. If I wanted to use the rose again, I would have to wait for one more year. That was why I had never thought about using the Peach Soul Flower under normal circumstances.

However, the time to use it had come…

But how could I make the ghost come into contact with the Peach Soul Flower? A plan slowly emerged in my head.

I carefully wrapped up the Peach Soul Flower and headed towards Lei Long’s house with Li Mazi.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiyuan_Tongbao

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Yue_(poet)