Chapter 45: The Eccentric Dead Man—Old Man Wu

After sitting there for a while, we stood up, ready to head back to the fields and continue working. However, Grandpa Ke said that would not be necessary today, as we had already planted enough.

The two of us followed behind Grandpa Ke and the others, walking home under the blazing sun.

Along the way, I mapped out a plan for myself: I had to resolve the matters here within two days and then return to the city, where even more issues were waiting for me to deal with.

At two o'clock this afternoon, I would go deal with the entity inside Qingguan Pond, and after that, I would head to old man Wu's abandoned house to take care of old man Wu himself. Perhaps these two tasks could be resolved simultaneously, as old man Wu was highly likely to be the very entity dwelling within Qingguan Pond.

Furthermore, there was the turning point my grandfather had mentioned. Up until now, I still had no idea what that turning point was supposed to be—whether it was a tree, a book, a single sentence, or even an extremely profound Daoist technique.

Never mind. When the opportunity arrives, what belongs to you will naturally be yours; what does not belong to you cannot be forced.

Upon returning to Grandpa Ke's house, Grandma Ke and Huang Ying set about preparing the meal, while I conversed with Grandpa Ke.

The time was currently twelve-thirty, leaving an hour and a half until two o'clock. Ordinarily, the moment when the primordial Yang energy is strongest is eleven-forty-five, but that hour had already passed. Two o'clock is the time of day when the Yang energy is second only to that at eleven-forty-five.

Taking advantage of the brief window while Huang Ying and the others were cooking, I asked Grandpa Ke about Qingguan Pond and old man Wu.

"Qingguan Pond? People in the village used to wash their clothes there all the time without any trouble at all. It was only a few days ago that this business started happening."

I looked at Grandpa Ke. Without his pipe clamped in his teeth the way my grandfather always did when he spoke, I felt somewhat unaccustomed to it.

"What about old man Wu? Was he originally from this village?" I asked.

Grandpa Ke pursed his lips and said, "No, he used to be a madman. He only came to our village a few years ago, and once he got here, he refused to leave, staying on in someone else's house all this time."

"Someone else's house?" I was puzzled. If he truly was a madman, who would be willing to let him keep living there?

"Yes, by the time he arrived, that family had already moved away. So he just took advantage of the situation and moved right in, and everything inside still belonged to that family!"

So that was how it was. He could only be considered a squatter!

"He was utterly filthy, and his house reeked to high heaven. He never washed his clothes and never took a bath. Whenever anyone in the village slaughtered a pig, he would run over and grab a chunk of meat for himself. If not for the fact that he was already in his sixties, the villagers would have beaten him to a pulp long ago!" Grandpa Ke's lips kept moving continuously without a pause.

No wonder old man Wu's house smelled so foul, and why there was some rotten pork hanging on the walls. So that was the reason.

"This morning, we went to old man Wu's house," I said. At that time, Grandpa Ke had been out farming and hadn't come to watch us dig up the grave, so he knew nothing about it.

"What on earth is there to look at in his place!"

I let out a breath and continued, "I saw a human figure inside. Afterward, I went and dug up old man Wu's grave, and it was empty—there was nothing inside at all!"

Hearing this, Grandpa Ke's expression changed instantly, and he exclaimed, "How could that be!"

"It's true. Huang Ying knows, and many people from the village were present at the time! Besides that, Stone's father called us over this morning and told us that he was possessed by a ghost yesterday, and the one who possessed him was old man Wu!"

Grandpa Ke's face shifted color. After all, they were ordinary people.

"Grandpa Ke, in your daily observations, did old man Wu ever do anything unusual?" I steered the conversation slightly.

Grandpa Ke thought for a moment and said, "Yes. He would often chant that once a person dies, they must be buried deep in the soil."

This was a crucial piece of intelligence. Combined with the sentence Stone's father shouted out last night—"You all have it so good, you can still be buried when you die, while I was thrown into the water..."—though these two points alone could not definitively prove that old man Wu was connected to Qingguan Pond, they at least established that old man Wu was linked to water.

"Anything else?" The elderly are the wealth of society; the things they know far surpass what we do. All I needed to do was extract the information I wanted from them.

"Well..." Grandpa Ke pondered for a few seconds, then raised his head and said, "He also used to take a carrying pole, lay it horizontally wherever he could find a spot, tie a hemp rope to the middle, and sit right beneath the pole with his neck resting against the rope. When other people asked him what he was doing, he'd say his neck hurt and doing that could cure it."

"Ugh... What a bizarre method indeed," I said jokingly, though I wasn't thinking that lightly on the inside.

Generally, when the dead transform into ghosts, they tend to repeat the actions they were most obsessed with or could not let go of during their lifetimes.

I now strongly suspected that the thing old man Wu found hardest to let go of before his death was hanging himself, and that the hanging incident by the roadside the other day must have been his own doing as well.

When we were talking right beside him back then, he must have been conscious.

Just thinking about how much I had spoken to a living corpse at that time sent shivers down my spine.

However, after listening to Grandpa Ke's words, I had a rough idea of what had happened. If my guess was correct, old man Wu must have died a few years ago by hanging himself. After his death, his body was thrown into Qingguan Pond—no, perhaps thrown into some other body of water, because Grandpa Ke had mentioned he wasn't originally from this village. Tossed into the water with lingering resentment, he had climbed out of the pond in a subtle, spectral state, and then came to live in this village.

Everything that followed was as Grandpa Ke had already recounted.

After chatting with Grandpa Ke for a bit longer, I stood up to prepare the items I might need shortly.

I had run out of boy's urine; what I had left were red threads, copper coins, and spiritual slime.

"Grandpa Ke, do you have an ink-marker in your house?" I asked. That tool could also be used to capture spirits.

"No. Go over to Carpenter Lin's place; he should have those things in his house!"

"Oh, do you have sticky rice in your house?" Grandfather had used this item once, but he hadn't taught me how to use it. However, it seemed to require no complex operation at all—it just needed to be placed somewhere.

"Yes. What on earth do you want sticky rice for?" Grandpa Ke asked.

"Going to catch ghosts this afternoon!"

Grandpa Ke was startled for a moment, then immediately ran into his bedroom and came out carrying a white cloth bag weighing around thirty catties.

"These are all of it. Take them and use them!" Grandpa Ke handed the entire bag of sticky rice to me.

"Uh... Heh, I only need a tiny bit." I turned around and pulled a small pouch out from a small hole in the wall.

Rural houses were always like this; their walls were usually riddled with countless holes, and these recesses served as places for them to store small sundries.

I picked up the pouch, scooped three handfuls of sticky rice into it, tied it securely, and shoved it into my pocket.

Aside from these items, the only other thing at my disposal was the blood from my middle finger.

Ever since I learned how to capture ghosts, my middle finger had been subjected to frequent abuse. Catching ghosts and keeping one's middle finger intact often seemed mutually exclusive. Yet, following this logic, my grandfather's fingers ought to have been battered and scarred to pieces, but his middle finger was actually completely undamaged. I pondered this for a long time before finally reaching a conclusion: it was a matter of sheer power. Once a certain level of strength is attained, there is simply no need for low-level ghost-catching methods like using middle finger blood; casually tracing a few talismanic seals is quite enough.

After finishing the meal, Huang Ying and I set off. Grandpa Ke had originally intended to go with us, but we declined his offer, as spirits possessed the ability to drain life force and souls, and I was afraid they might get hurt.

However, even though I refused him, the others still ended up following along anyway.

As Huang Ying and I walked down the path, all the people farming in the fields stopped what they were doing and fell in behind us, hoping to watch the spectacle. Stone was among them as well.

Since they insisted on following, there was nothing I could do; I certainly couldn't chase them away with a stick.

Along the way, I explained to them what I planned to do today. Far from scaring them off, it only managed to ignite their intense curiosity.

I couldn't help wondering how they would react if I told them that I was merely a novice ghost-hunter, while Huang Ying was actually a century-old female ghost. Would they still be trailing behind us then?

After walking for a dozen minutes, we arrived once more outside old man Wu's house.

This dwelling stood isolated from the other houses. The area around it was overgrown with waist-high weeds, with only a narrow, dozen-centimeter-wide path winding through the middle—doubtless trampled out by old man Wu himself.

We avoided the caterpillars crawling on the grass and the dog droppings on the ground, finally reaching the doorway of the house.

The door was closed. When I had come out last time, I had left the door open. For reasons unknown, it was now tightly shut. Rather than believing the wind had blown it shut, I was far more inclined to believe that old man Wu had closed it himself.

"Stone, Huang Ying, come inside with me. The rest of you wait outside!"