Chapter 3 Ghost Highway

The way Wang Hong talked was as if I owed him something!

I felt a surge of unhappiness and immediately ushered him out. “So what if I’m being cruel! Go away! If you weren’t the most popular guy in our high school, I wouldn’t even have spared you the time of day. If not for that, you wouldn’t even have been able to step inside my house!”

“When did you get such a rude temper? Please listen to what I have to say, Bai Jing... “

Wang Hong was still standing outside the door pleading to me. I proceeded to shut the door in his face, not wanting to bother with his yapping.

However, it seemed like Liu Longting built the bridges to this issue with Wang Hong himself. It looked like he might actually care about this matter quite a bit. If I chased Wang Hong away and he found out, would I not be punished?

I hesitated for a bit and then made up my mind. Who cares? No matter what kind of punishment, he still needed me. So long as he did not remove the snakes in my stomach, I would not help him. I could not help but feel nauseous and horrified at the thought that at the end of the gestation period, many snakes would be wiggling out from down there.

Wang Hong was still outside banging on the door. I just lied down on the sofa and continued to leisurely watch the television. At that moment, a man’s voice came from behind me, “How is it? Is the television interesting?”

“Of course it is.”

After my casual reply, I suddenly felt as if something was not quite right. I immediately turned around and saw Liu Longting with both his hands resting on the back of the sofa, a fake smile plastered on his face, glaring at me.

“Pop!” The television turned itself off, startling me. I looked at the pitch-black screen and immediately walked toward the television. I tried to press the button to switch it back on but it did nothing. I then tried to unplug and plug it back in the socket—still no response! F*ck, Liu Longting actually broke my television!

“Go. Ask Wang Hong to come inside,” Liu Longting commanded me.

I was already unhappy with what Wang Hong said just now, and now Liu Longting broke my television. I was internally chanting ten thousand ‘f*ck yous’ at him. If not for the fact that I was not as powerful as Liu Longting, I would have chased him out as well!

“No, if you want me to help you, you’ll need to get rid of the snake fetuses in my stomach. Otherwise, I won’t help you.”

Hearing what I said, Liu Longting did not get angry. All he did was walk around the sofa and sat down next to me. He placed his hand on my cheek, pulled my head towards his with force to make me look at him. “So does that mean you’re not afraid of me?”

Liu Longting’s narrow eyes were less than 20 centimeters away from me. Looking at his eyes at such a distance, my heart started to beat rapidly in fear. However, I could not be threatened so easily, so I told him, “I’m not afraid. If you take the snake fetuses out from my stomach, I’ll invite Wang Hong in immediately.”

With another cold laugh, Liu Longting’s eyes traced my face, then moved to my chest which was rising and falling in nervousness, and then at my stomach. He then said, “Children, your mom says all of you are useless and she wants to kill you. Why don’t you all show her your abilities?”

Liu Longting was acting as if those things in my stomach that had not even taken proper form could hear him. Right as I wanted to laugh, something seemed to move in my stomach and caused the skin on my stomach to become sore. Before I could even touch it, an intense pain suddenly shot out from my belly and coursed through my whole body. It felt as if something was biting the insides of my stomach—it felt like I was being cut by an immeasurable number of little knives. I was in so much pain that I fell off the sofa and rolled on the floor clutching my stomach.

“Now will you help me?” Liu Longting leaned on the sofa with an amused look on his face, looking at me roll on the floor in pain.

“No…” I struggled to answer him.

He did not utter a word, but the pain from my stomach started intensifying. It was the type of pain that one could feel in their bones—even death was better than this by a hundredfold!

I screamed like a madman on the floor. Not being able to bear the pain in the end, I crawled toward Liu Longting and hugged his legs with my arms. I told him with my hoarse voice, “Please get them to stop. I’ll help. I’ll do anything you say.”

“Really? You won’t be causing any trouble in the future?” Liu Longting asked me.

I shook my head in a hurry and told him I would not do it anymore in the future and would listen to everything he said.

Upon hearing that, Liu Longting finally relented. The pain in my stomach started to dissipate after I finished talking. Liu Longting offered his hand to help me up from the floor and with his other, he brushed the hair on my face away as if consoling me. What was more disgusting than just consoling me was when he remarked, “The pain you just went through even caused your little face to go pale. You should’ve known this would happen. Why didn’t you just obey me earlier? If you did, you wouldn’t have needed to suffer through that. Now quickly go get changed. We’ll be heading straight to Wang Hong’s mother-in-law’s house.”

Sigh… He was crying crocodile tears. I did not want to have any more unnecessary conversations with him, so I clutched my stomach and went into my room to change.

When we went out, Liu Longting attached himself to me.

Despite the fierce looks that I had given him earlier, the moment Wang Hong saw that I had come out on my own volition, he threw away all dignity and told me that he only looked for me because he trusted my skills. He assured me that once his wife was back to normal, I would be well compensated.

If Liu Longting was not forcing me, I might have cared for that bit about money more. I gave him a few casual replies, got in his car, and followed him to his mother-in-law’s house.

His mother-in-law’s house was in a district not far from my place and was only about an hour away by car. The district had seen some years but was not old. It was considered to be in the center of the county so to be able to buy a second-hand home for only 200 thousand bucks, Wang Hong definitely had some dumb luck.

The moment Wang Hong brought me into his mother-in-law’s house, I was hit by a musty, gloomy stench. The house was very large but had very bad orientation. It was still bright and sunny outside, but the interior was dark and gloomy. It was as if there was a heavy pressure within the house, which caused an ever-present discomfort.

After greeting his frail mother-in-law, Wang Hong brought me to the room his wife was in. Pointing at a woman with wild hair who seemed to be eating something, he said, “This is my wife, Li Juan. She’s having another one of her crazy episodes right now.”

I only started being a shaman yesterday, and I could see nothing out of the ordinary just by looking at Wang Hong’s wife. She was just sitting on the bed, looking like someone who was eating while staring into space. However, her back was obscuring a big part of my view and I could not see what she was eating.

“How is it, shaman Bai? Did you manage to see anything? Is there something unclean about this house?” Wang Hong asked me.

Liu Longting was not here, and I was just a normal person; what could I see? I was just about to berate Wang Hong when something cold shot up from the bottom of my skirt toward my thighs. My entire body stiffened, just like what happened to Yinggu when Liu Longting possessed her. I could not even move my body, and felt a powerful force controlling my body!

“I see it. This room… It’s blocking the ghost highway.”

Liu Longting’s words came out of my mouth—I had been forcefully possessed by him!

When he was saying those words, he raised my head and looked around the house. I did not see anything earlier, but with him possessing me, the originally clean room became filthy. Even the structure of the room had changed—it now looked like a highway. There was all sorts of trash on the highway such as plastic bags and even what looked like rotting animal corpses!

Li Juan sat on the bed not knowing anything, but there were several pitch-black shadows in the form of little kids climbing on her body. In front of her sat a big-bellied lady wearing clothes from the Qing dynasty. Li Juan was blocking her face and I could only see a head of smooth and shiny hair.

“The road leads skywards, and everyone has their own path. You should be following the path of reincarnation, but yet you stay here harming people. Do I need to remind you how to properly be a ghost?!” Liu Longting solemnly shouted at the evil spirits in the house.

Those cowardly things climbing on Li Juan’s body immediately ran for the cracks in the wall when they heard Liu Longting’s shouting—he was a sage after all. Nevertheless, the woman who was sitting with Li Juan not only did not disappear like the shadows after hearing his angry shouting, she even pressed her hand against Li Juan’s shoulder and revealed a face so rotten that I could not make out any facial features. She was unflinchingly glaring at me!