Chapter 4 Mountain God’s Marriage

I was so scared at that moment that my heart could jump out. If it were not for Liu Longting possessing me, my legs would probably be too weak to stand up.

We were staring at each other for almost ten seconds when that horrifying woman’s face suddenly warped into panic, as if reacting to something. She pushed Li Juan aside and quickly tried to flee toward the wall. Liu Longting naturally did not give her the chance as he quickly chanted an incantation and slapped his palm on the wall. It was as if he had locked the wall up because when the lady aggressively rammed into the wall she bounced back onto the floor. However, she did not give up and kept trying to crawl toward the wall while avoiding Liu Longting like the plague. Her sharp nails were speedily scratching at the surface of the wall, emitting a sharp and horrible sound!

Seeing her struggle like that, the few small shadows on the wall tried to pull the woman in in futility. However, as their power was unable to penetrate the spell Liu Longting had placed on the wall, the children and that woman started weeping—as if they were human—but no tears flowed.

Liu Longting watched them for a while, and then he released my body. He came out of my body, half mumbling to himself and half speaking to me. “As it turns out, they were banished.”

“Banished? What do you mean?” I asked Liu Longting. As he was no longer possessing me, I could not see the female ghost and shadows. In front of me was the same room as earlier, except Li Juan had collapsed on the bed.

“When someone commits a grave crime in their past life, their name will be slashed from the book of life and death. They will no longer be welcome into the afterlife and are left to wander the mortal realm and eventually perish on their own. That’s what it means when one is banished. These spirits typically don’t possess much power, or else she wouldn’t have struggled to even recognize me earlier. Furthermore, I believe this woman longs to be reincarnated, which is why she loitered on the ghost highway. For various reasons, she decided to latch onto the pregnant Li Juan when she saw her,” Liu Longting explained to me patiently.

“Since she doesn’t have much power, how do you plan to deal with her?”

“Go get a piece of paper and pen,” Liu Longting turned around and told me.

I hurriedly spun around and headed to the door. I shouted at Wang Hong—who was lying down in front of the door trying to peek inside—to retrieve a pen and paper for me.

Wang Hong was considered to be quite obedient as he rushed to ask his mother-in-law for the pen and paper. Then, he asked me what I was doing earlier talking to myself and whether I was talking to a sage.

He could not see Liu Longting and that woman. I did not pay him any mind and proceeded to open the door. I walked next to Liu Longting and passed him the pen and paper.

Liu Longting held the pen and wrote down three characters on the paper. His calligraphy was bold and graceful, and ‘Yue Tianxiang’ was written on the paper—it was a human name.

After that, he turned to me and said, “Take this and offer it to our Fairy Hall. From now on, Yue Tianxiang will be a soldier within our hall, and can be dispatched at any time. These types of spirits that have been offered up as sacrifices are called Qing Feng [1]. We’ll have more soldiers in the future, and our power will be greater.”

“Does that mean we’ll be collecting more soldiers hereinafter?” I asked Liu Longting.

“Affirmative. Just like how a general needs a lot of soldiers under him when he goes to war, we’re the same. A Qing Feng is more familiar with matters relating to the nether world. Hence, if we meet anything to do with ghostly matters in the future, we can just get them to handle it. However, my relationship with you is more direct. No matter how many soldiers we have, they’ll be under my care, but I will always be under your care.”

I do not know why but when Liu Longting said the last sentence, I felt an awkward comfort in my heart and did not reject what he said.

Liu Longting seemed to have observed my feelings at that moment as his originally neutral face shot me a small smile. A palm suddenly grabbed my butt, and he spoke in a jovial tone. “Did you suddenly feel that you have a lot of power? I’ll look for you tonight.”

I could not discern the meaning of what he said, but I felt that he definitely did not have good intentions. I raised my hand to slap his palm away, but he instead very naturally grabbed my hand and placed my palm on his lips, all while looking right at me. My mind immediately flashed to those kinds of scenes in movies. He was very good at teasing and very good at making my heart skip.

“In your dreams! Who wants to look for you? Let me go now! Low-life!” I forcefully pried away Liu Longting’s hand. His gaze never left me; his mouth full of mirth. His eyes looked deep as a bottomless well.

Liu Longting let go of my hand and told me to remember what he said earlier. Who knew if he was telling the truth or not. I rolled my eyes at him and pretended not to hear anything. I went to open the door and let Wang Hong inside.

The moment Wang Hong came in, he completely ignored us and went straight for his wife. He asked me how his wife was.

I guessed since Yue Tianxiang had already been dealt with, there was no longer anyone haunting Li Juan and she would probably snap out of it soon. Thus, I told Wang Hong that everything was fine.

Just as I said that, Li Juan’s head started to move and Wang Hong excitedly shouted at me, “Bai Jing, my wife is waking up. My wife is waking!”

I hurriedly walked over to look and saw Li Juan massaging her head. Her eyes widened as she looked at Wang Hong, and asked, “Why are you hugging me?”

“You just snapped back to reality. Obviously I want to hug you!” Wang Hong unashamedly made gross displays of affection in front of an outsider like me.

Now that Li Juan was up, my task was complete. As I was heading back, I told Wang Hong of the things Liu Longting briefed me on. I told him that they could not continue staying in his mother-in-law’s house; that there was a heavy yin energy and staying long-term would shorten their lifespan.

With his wife finally ‘awake’, Wang Hong’s mood was much better. He told me they were definitely not going to stay in the house anymore, but he was really appreciative of me being able to return his wife to normal before the new year. As he said that, he slipped me a red packet that felt a little heavy in my hands. I originally did not want to accept it, but Wang Hong insisted with a smile. He said that working in this field, I’ll be earning much more than him so in the future when he recommends business opportunities to me, don’t forget to give him a commission.

No wonder he gave me so much money—he had that in mind all the time. Hence, I just put the money in the bag and told him we would meet in the future if it was fated.

Wang Hong treated me to dinner at his house, so by the time I got home it was already eight or nine o’clock. Luckily, I remembered to give Grandmother a call beforehand, so she had dinner by herself and went to bed.

I was not sure if it was because of what Liu Longting said to me earlier in the day, but when I went to the altar to present Yue Tianxiang as an offering, I felt a sense of anxiousness. I was afraid Liu Longting would do something unscrupulous to me at the altar.

However, after I offered Yue Tianxiang at the altar and gave my prayers, Liu Longting did not appear—I breathed a sigh of relief at this. Feeling tired after the day’s events, I stripped, went to shower, and proceeded to go to bed.

At around 11pm, as I was deep asleep, a surge of tight pain coming from the scars on my body suddenly woke me up. It felt as if there was something wrapped around my body, causing me to tremble in pain.

However, even though I was awake, I could not open my eyes. I was definitely in discomfort, but my eyes just remained shut. All I could do was turn around and sleep in a different position.

The next day, Grandmother woke me up for breakfast. When I opened my eyes, the intense sunlight pierced through the curtains. Enveloped in the morning light, there was the faint smell of snakes in my room, as if I had pet snakes in my house last night.

I paused and thought of what happened last night—could Liu Longting have come to find me in the night? What did he do to me last night?!

As I sat at the table to have breakfast with Grandmother, she asked me about what happened yesterday. She was quite satisfied with my performance. She then asked, “Jing Jing, have you ever heard of the Mountain God’s Marriage?”

TN:

[1] A Qing Feng is the name for a particular type of spirit.