C51 — Cai Sheng (XIII)
by UntamedSNo one dared obstruct.
The wooden wheelchair rolled over the pitted dirt road, making a small sound. The man in the wheelchair took the child by the hand and, without hesitation, led him towards the door.
Kou Dong lowered his voice so the abdu-ctor wouldn’t hear and whispered, “Sir, I still have my friends…”.
They were still in that room.
The young man held his hand more tightly and faintly responded, “No harm.”
Kou Dong couldn’t say more, so he simply nodded.
After they walked out of the door, the abdu-ctor in the courtyard violently spat on the ground, cursing.
“What a calamity, bad luck…”
Just by being disturbed by the young man, he had no intention of searching again and just cursed and locked the door again. The remaining two people inside dared not breathe; they quietly watched him lock it and held the small coffin in their hands, counting the time.
Until evening, they saw a crack open in the door and a familiar face peeking out from inside.
When no one noticed, Kou Dong quietly drilled through the hole in the wall and helped them open the door.
He struggled to push out the small coffin by digging the edge of the hole, followed closely by the others who also emerged. Standing outside the courtyard, they all felt a sense of relief for escaping.
Song Hong’s emotions were a bit complicated as he murmured, “I never thought there would be a day when I could be saved by an NPC.”
This could simply go down in history. Who would have the honor of being saved by an NPC when they were in danger?
Kou Dong comforted him: “You’ll get used to it.”
Song Hong: “……”
Was this a matter of getting used to it or not?
The carriage was still waiting outside, and the three of them transported the coffin onto the carriage. The young man in the car didn’t leave, playing with a wooden figurine in his hand.
Song Hong tentatively said, “Judging from this posture, which child should it be?”
The young man in the wooden wheelchair also faintly cast his eyes over, and when he saw the coffin, he paused and raised his eyes again.
“You found it?”
“Yes,” Song Hong said, glancing at him cautiously. “I just don’t know which one is inside.”
The three of them all had guesses as to whose coffin it actually belonged to, so they said this in a way that made it easy to stop talking, fearing that a poor use of any word would stab the NPC in the heart.
Before the words fell, they were interrupted by Kou Dong.
Kou Dong didn’t engage in those and asked bluntly, “Sir, is it yours?”
Song Hong: “!!!”
Ah Xue: “!!!”
The two of them were both shaken—they did think so in their hearts, but they couldn’t say it out loud!
How taboo—saying in front of a ghost that I might have found your body or something—sounded like the standard beginning of some horror film.
And Kou Dong was the protagonist, desperately probing his feet on the edge of danger.
The protagonist was still justifiably talking, “This size, it reminds me of sir at first glance.”
Song Hong could no longer control the horror in his eyes.
Are you calling him small to his face?
What’s the matter—after poking at the point where the man is already dead, you still want to poke at the pain of having no legs? Which male can withstand such an insult?
If you’re not good at talking, the NPCs can ki-ll people!
As a result, Kou Dong said from the bottom of his heart, “At a glance, it is very tall and magnificent.”
The remaining two: “……”
Oh, feelings were less than flattery.
Their fear, which they had just raised, quickly subsided, and they felt relieved.
Kou Dong thought to himself that this person had at least saved him just now, and he had to give some sweet treats no matter what. He crazily praised him, “No matter how many nails they used, it can’t hide your momentum.”
The teenager glanced at him, and his lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to say something.
But as the corners of his lips vaguely turned upwards, the movement turned into a smile.
“……”
The three of them were all like wooden sculptures.
This was the first time they had seen such a warm smile from an NPC.
There was no threat or anything like that; it was just a pure smile—a smile that actually gave him a bit more vigor than a child of his age should have.
The teenager gazed at Kou Dong, his voice light, nothing chastising. “Nonsense again.”
Ye Yanzhi stiffened, and he stood on Kou Dong’s shoulders, glaring majestically at the NPC in front of him, clearly annoyed by the other party’s tone.
This tone of treating Kou Dong as his person…
Before he finished being upset, Kou Dong suddenly reached out his hand and poked him down with one finger. The villain fell down in a sorry state, half of his body sunk into Kou Dong’s collar, and it took a great deal of effort to barely pull both his legs out.
Ye Yanzhi was incredulous: “What are you doing?”
Kou Dong chuckled and didn’t tell the other person just because he thought it was funny that he was cross-legged and angry… Of course, his bulging face also looked very good to poke.
The teenager in the wooden wheelchair answered Kou Dong’s words.
“That’s right,” he said, not hiding it, “it’s me.”
Kou Dong: “So will it matter to you if I bring you back?”
The teenager was unapologetic in front of him, “There are benefits.”
The corner of his lips moved, and his fingers gently stroked above that coffin, as if there was some nostalgia.
But his hand didn’t manage to stick to the coffin; rather, it was like it was separated by an invisible barrier.
Kou Dong didn’t ask again. He thoughtfully sized up the young man for a while before turning his head away and settling on the coffin.
— couldn’t touch it.
What was it that prevented him from touching it?
After returning to the circus, Kou Dong ordered people to find a crowbar, first asking a few members of the circus to do it.
But the members waved their hands one after another, and even the extremely strong human bears took a few steps back, looking not like they were powerless but more like they were afraid.
“Untouchable,” he said vaguely, “we cannot touch…”
Seeing that they were all avoiding it like snakes and scorpions, Kou Dong simply lifted the crowbar himself and began to pry the long, densely packed nails on the coffin lid.
Song Hong was startled by this move of his.
“What is this for?” He said, “Coming like this, isn’t it not too respectful to… that person?”
He originally wanted to say ‘dead’, but upon thinking about it, he turned out to be an NPC. It was hard to say this, so he took a detour.
Kou Dong didn’t care; he wiped the sweat on his forehead and casually replied, “It isn’t; it’s good for him.”
Song Hong was about to say something, “But–”
But you can’t openly pry open someone’s coffin like this!
Wasn’t this too outrageous?
He looked at Ah Xue; both of them were a bit helpless. He thought about it, and in the end, they helped. The strange thing was, those ghosts couldn’t touch the coffin, but they could easily put their hands on it. Song Hong shouted slogans and called on the other two people to work together to pull out the deeply pierced nails from the coffin, saying, “Three two, one.”
The coffin made a dull sound of wood breaking and was immediately pried open to a corner.
With some more force, the lid of the coffin was completely flipped up, revealing what was hidden inside.
The moment he saw it, Song Hong’s pupils shrank, and he was somewhat shocked.
“This is-”
The bright red cinnabar inside, mixed with dripping bloo-d, pricked people’s eyes. The corpse, which looked no different from the boy in the wheelchair, lay inside without any decay. Its fingers were tightly curled up, and the part below half of its thigh was already empty and bloo-dy. On his chest, someone dipped in cinnabar and painted a huge talisman that almost penetrated his entire mutilated body.
“It’s a Past Life Binding Spell.”
Ye Yanzhi: “It’s because they were afraid he’d turn into a severe ghost and harm people.”
Kou Dong couldn’t help but feel absurd when he heard this. They were afraid of him turning into a severe ghost and harming people, but even after doing the spell, didn’t the teenager still become a severe ghost?
How can the grievances of those who were ki-lled so easily be eliminated and controlled by a spell?
Ye Yanzhi: “It is not totally ineffective. If he wasn’t controlled by this spell, I am afraid he would have taken revenge on the abductor.” He explained, “But today, the ghost of that man wasn’t under the control of the spell.”
He explained, “That courtyard today has something special. It was built as a yang mansion, but from the perspective of feng shui, it gathers yin. In addition, with this talisman, these ghosts’ grievances will not harm them but will instead act on the incantation of the past life, strengthening the magical power of the spell.”
The meaning of this was that no matter how resentful the circus ghosts were, they couldn’t go forward to take revenge themselves.
They couldn’t even touch their own coffins and stayed in the troupe day after day, looking like human beings, but in fact they were a group of homeless and lonely ghosts. Because their bodies were detained, they couldn’t even leave this Taoyuan Town and had to become ghosts after death, earning some unscrupulous money for those people.
In that case, if he wanted to take the teenager out of Taoyuan Town, he had to break this spell.
Song Hong had been in the game for a long time and recognized some charms one after another. But when he looked at them, he couldn’t help but frown: “How do I solve this?”
He hadn’t extracted any props related to charms.
Turning his head to look at Ah Xue, the little girl also only shook her head—there was nothing in her hands that could work either.
Song Hong sighed softly and suddenly remembered something, saying, “There seems to be another broken temple in town. If it doesn’t work, let’s bring him there and see if there are any monks and Taoists there who can help us unlock it.”
It didn’t take much thought to know that this kind of high-level talisman could not be easily broken by laymen like them. Song Hong simply didn’t go to waste his efforts and prepared to make a trip to the broken temple.
Before the words came out, he saw Kou Dong stretch out his hand and wipe it on the talisman—and then he lifted his finger up, his expression looking a little confused.
“Why go to a broken temple?”
Song Hong, also very confused, said, “Of course it’s to undo the spell…”
Kou Dong felt puzzled from the bottom of his heart. “Can’t we just wipe it off?”
Song Hong: “……?”
Erase it?
“What are you saying?” he couldn’t help but laugh a little. “This kind of thing, how is it so easy to erase…”
His words froze in mid-sentence, staring at Kou Dong’s finger held up to him. On that finger, it was clearly stained with a bit of the dark red of vermilion.
“……”
Song Hong’s voice practically warbled.
What was going on? Could it really be rubbed clean?
It was too easy!
Kou Dong, still holding that finger aloft, twisted his head and said, “Go fetch me a basin of water.”
Big Headed Doll went to bring a basin of warm water and a square towel. Kou Dong rolled up his sleeves, first untied the young man’s clothes, and took the soaked square towel to wipe away the traces of the spell of the past life little by little.
The good thing was that the water-soaked handkerchief could really wipe it clean. With strength, Kou Dong wiped it all in about an incense stick of time, and finally the traces of the vermilion sand were mostly wiped off. Song Hong stood by and watched, only to be surprised when he looked up—at some point, other ghosts from the circus also surrounded him.
They stood beside this coffin in unison, looking grimly at the corpse lying inside.
The big-headed doll hooked the corners of its mouth, and it actually looked like it was smiling.
Song Hong almost thought he hadn’t seen well.
But when he twisted his head again, Kou Dong had already wiped that trace to almost nothing. This time, he clearly saw the corner of the NPC’s lips curled up—the big-headed doll rounded its eyes and smiled deeper and deeper, eventually clapping its hands and screaming with joy.
“Nothing!”
He cheered so-cheerfully, his thin, elongated arms waving in the air.
“-Nothing!”
With that one word, it was almost as if some switch had been flipped, and all the circus ghosts suddenly danced with their hands. The demons and ghosts were ecstatic with joy, a living picture of earthly purgatory.
The circus ghosts chanted.
“Sir!”
“Sir!”
In the midst of such a wave of sound, the door of the innermost room opened. The teenager slowly rocked his wooden wheelchair and came forward.
In his deep black pupils, there was also a jumping, fire-like light.
The big-headed doll couldn’t wait to say, “Sir, can you see it?”
He pointed his thin finger at the coffin, and when he opened his mouth, he revealed a mouthful of uneven, mostly missing teeth.
“You see-”
The teenager stared at himself in the coffin, and then, in a whirlwind, he probed his hand as well.
Without the charm, he easily touched his na-ked self, probing his hand into the cold chest and stroking the long dead flesh and bloo-d inside.
He let out a low, soft sigh of contentment.
“Back.”
His flesh, returned.
“Nui Nui is such a good boy.” The teenager whispered, slowly setting his flesh down, “As a reward for helping me get it back.”
“I can help you by letting them escape.”
Kou Dong understood almost instantly what he meant by “them,” and it couldn’t be anyone else; it had to be the other children held in the house.
The young man was really good at observing the minds of others, and he even saw his idea of saving them together.
“Sir is going to help me?”
“Of course.” The teenager said, his pale hand gently knocking on the armrest of the wheelchair with intent.
“Do you want me to help you?”
[When faced with an NPC’s invitation, you: A: Yes. B: No.]
[Please note that every choice will affect the player’s final ending. Please choose carefully.]
Funny thing, I was thinking the exact same thing as Kou Dong when they talked about the talisman. Thank you for the chapter!!