Chapter 2 - I’m so beautiful and charming that I’ve drawn in innumerable fierce ghosts to bow down before me.

As soon as Tang Yuan finished speaking, he used both hands to break the grip on his neck and then kicked the ghost away with one foot.

His chest heaved and, at the moment, his heart filled completely with anger. After kicking the ghost, he still felt uneasy. He got up and kicked out again and gnashed his teeth while kicking, saying, “I’ll let you scare me! I’ll let you choke me! Come, come on! Don’t you want to strangle me? Come!”

“Wuwuwu.”

The ghost that had been kicked by him was in pain and she stretched out her ghostly claws to try to grab Tang Yuan’s legs. But Tang Yuan grabbed her hair and slammed her down, throwing the ghost almost to her death, and then he threw a punch and a kick.

The ghost couldn’t fight back, she just crawled quickly towards the window. But how could Tang Yuan let her run now? He straight up grabbed the ghost’s hair again, dragging the ghost back and kept punching.

“Still want to run? See if I don’t kill you today.”

He was very angry too and wished he could kill this ghost again at this moment.

“Oh oh oh…… wuwuwu……” the ghost cried and howled. Hearing this female ghost’s cries, Tang Yuan didn’t feel any sympathy for the fairer sex at all, so he continued to beat the female ghost without pause, beating her as she screamed.

During this time, the female ghost tried to change her form and escape. But as long as Tang Yuan didn’t let go, she just couldn’t escape, so she put up a good fight again.

After beating up the female ghost, Tang Yuan managed to vent some of his anger. He grabbed the female ghost by the collar and asked, “Still want to kill me?”

“No……no, I don’t,” the female ghost answered honestly while crying, “wuwuwu……”

“Shut up.” Tang Yuan felt very impatient, “I’ve never interacted with you all before, but you all are still obsessed with me, right?”

These ghosts had been harassing him previously, so he had been terrified because he knew nothing about ghosts so he had tried to endure. But this ghost had tried to kill him this time, so because of that, he couldn’t bear it anymore. He had hastily and recklessly counterattacked, but who could have known that this counterattack would turn out to be useful.

And now he was giving off the impression of an experienced, old dog, but actually he was panicking inside. But, since the female ghost had been suppressed by him, he couldn’t let this opportunity go, he had to make sure he tortured something out of her.

“Why are you all looking for me? What do you want?” Tang Yuan had never seen a ghost before, but recently, these ghosts had frequently exposed their presence before him, which meant that there was some new reason.

The female ghost thrashed around before answering, “Because you have something delicious on your body, which everyone wants to eat.” The ‘everyone’ she mentioned was undoubtedly the other ghosts.

Angrily Tang Yuan asked, “What delicious thing is on me? Speak clearly!”

The female ghost shrank into a ball. In fact, she didn’t know what it was. She just sensed it was delicious and wanted to eat it, so the female ghost shook her head, “I……I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Tang Yuan questioned.

He looked at the female ghost coldly, scaring the female ghost who cried out again, “I really don’t know, I just acted according to instinct.”

So Tang Yuan hit her again and said, “Be honest.”

The female ghost cried desperately and her pale face went paler, “No, no, I didn’t lie to you, I really don’t know.”

Tang Yuan wore a very bad-looking expression, so the female ghost thought that he was going to beat her up again and suddenly felt inside that her life was about to end, but who could’ve known that Tang Yuan would suddenly ask, “Are you all able to harm anyone you like?”

The scared female ghost honestly said, “Of course not, ghosts must meet certain conditions to cause harm.”

Tang Yuan replied, “What conditions?”

The female ghost shrank her neck. “A strong force, such as a deep obsession or enmity, or a connection of yin and yang via a medium.”

She said that Tang Yuan had the second kind. Tang Yuan had a yin and yang-connecting medium, so ghosts could see him and it was through this medium that Tang Yuan and the ghosts could attack each other.

However, there could be single-sided mediums and double-sided mediums. Tang Yuan’s body held a double-sided medium, so he can touch and hurt the female ghost, but, of course, the female ghost could touch and hurt him. Single-sided mediums were people or ghosts who could only unilaterally touch and hurt ghosts or people, respectively.

But most of the time, the ghosts were more powerful than humans except for the tianshi, so if it was a double-sided medium, then the one who was usually hurt was the human, which was why this group of ghosts was unscrupulous in the face of Tang Yuan and also why Tang Yuan’s strength had caught the female ghost off guard.

Of course, Tang Yuan could suppress the female ghost thanks to his natural brute strength.

After learning this, Tang Yuan developed a bit of a headache. This meant that he would be facing harassment, and even life-threatening danger, from ghosts at any time, and he couldn’t solve the problem at the source yet.

He wasn’t afraid of these ghosts, but he had neither the energy to fight against them every day nor a method for guarding against them, so he was going to have to figure out a way to keep himself from being too passive.

However, since there was no way to solve this problem at the source, he would have to find a way to approach the problem from another direction.

So he asked the female ghost a lot of questions. The female ghost answered him honestly and, listening to the trembling voice of the female ghost, an idea gradually came to mind.

“Do you ghosts work for a human?”

The female ghost didn’t want to answer. “No.”

Tang Yuan nodded. “Good. From now on, you’ll work for me.” He thought it over and added, “You ghosts can definitely form a contract with a human, right? Come on, let’s sign a contract.”

Female ghost: “…”

The female ghost didn’t want to sign a contract with anyone, but if she didn’t sign, she’d be beaten up. She’d also be beaten if she falsely signed the contract. The most confusing thing for the female ghost was how would Tang Yuan be able to judge if she falsely signed?

Tang Yuan didn’t give the female ghost an answer to this question and completely ignored the female ghost’s anger.

The contract signed by Tang Yuan and the female ghost was a natural ghost-servant treaty. The party who benefited more from this contract was Tang Yuan. Tang Yuan could make the female ghost to help him with things, but he also would have to give the female ghost a little vitality.

The vitality for the female ghost wouldn’t have much of an effect on Tang Yuan, so his life was finally made a bit secure.

When he woke up the next day, Tang Yuan saw the female ghost crouching in the corner. A little fear sprung up in his heart. He had been so angry yesterday, so he had fought back, but if his resistance had been ineffective, wouldn’t he have already been strangled by this ghost?

What a lucky, good thing that he had taken care of the female ghost.

With the female ghost, Tang Yuan had a much easier time facing the ghosts. He not only managed to dodge a lot of them, but also managed to beat the rest of them up.

But such relaxing days didn’t last long, because he found that the ghosts attacking him were getting more and more powerful, so neither the female ghost nor his added strength couldn’t cope.

He listened to the advice of the female ghost and stuck a menshen1 on the door, so that filthy things couldn’t enter the household; correspondingly, the female ghost was also blocked from the house.

In the blink of an eye, it became August. One evening, as Tang Yuan was preparing to go to sleep and was turning off the lights, he found on the wall near the window a black dot the size of a large thumb.

He didn’t pay it much mind, thinking that he just accidentally dirtied the wall. He wanted to be a slacker and clean the next day, so he poured himself into bed and went to sleep.

However, after he fell asleep, the black spot on the wall grew larger and larger, and gradually became a human silhouette……

……

“I want to eat, I want to eat……”

Tang Yuan slept very uneasily. There was someone in his dream who kept repeatedly saying to him, ‘want to eat?’

“I want to eat, I want to eat……”

Tang Yuan really couldn’t stand it anymore so he just asked, “What do you want to eat?”

After saying that, Tang Yuan suddenly woke up. And when he woke up, he found some dark, human-shaped thing before him. The thing was facing his belly and saying in an infatuated tone, “I want to eat, I want to eat……”

A chill ran through Tang Yuan and even as he crawled away from it, the unfamiliar thing moved stiffly towards him and continued to make say, “I want to eat, I want to eat……”

“Don’t come near me,” Tang Yuan said, but the thing, ignoring his words, continued to crawl toward him with its stiff limbs.

Watching that the thing approach him, Tang Yuan grit his teeth and kicked out at that thing. This kick was made with all his strength, but the thing wasn’t affected in the slightest, continuing to move towards him like a zombie.

Tang Yuan couldn’t force it back. Only the flexibility of his body saved him as the thing pounced at him. With the help of this dodge, Tang Yuan caught sight of the face of the thing. After seeing its face, Tang Yuan was so nauseated he almost threw up everything in his stomach.

That thing was clearly a charred corpse and, in the place where the face should have been, no facial features could be seen, there was just ichor flowing down.

Tang Yuan no longer had the courage to stay near this thing. He opened the door and ran out. The thing realized that he had run and chased after him with stiff movements. He was afraid to look back and could only run forward with his face covered completely.

When he ran out to the street, he found that there was no one out there. There was just some paper money blowing by on the wind. When he saw the paper money and the paper ash on the ground, he remembered that it was the 15th2 and that it was best not to go out at night. But, in his situation, staying at home was less safe.

Tang Yuan ran for a while, until he was exhausted. He gasped and looked behind himself. He was almost scared to death because the thing was right behind him. When he turned around, his nose almost touched the thick fluid on that thing.

“Ah!” Tang Yuan cried out in fright as he ran desperately.

Who could have known that before he could throw off the thing behind him, he would see a woman in white on the road before him. He had run all this way and not seen anyone, so now he felt it was strange when he saw her. The white woman seemed to confirm his thoughts; her head suddenly fell from her neck and came rolling towards Tang Yuan. Then her face smiled eerily at Tang Yuan.

“Ah, ah, help me!”

Scared, Tang Yuan ran in different direction, but no matter where he went, he ran into ghosts. He had never seen so many ghosts before and he couldn’t help but wonder, am I going to die here today?

His physical strength had reached its limit. So when he ran to a dead end, he couldn’t move anymore. Then he was surrounded by ghosts all around. He couldn’t fight them and he couldn’t run. Tang Yuan almost started to cry in anger, “What the hell did I do wrong? Am I really going to be killed by a bunch of the dead?”

The group of ghosts, ignoring what he said, all madly reached out for him. As Tang Yuan struggled ineffectively, he prepared to die. But who would have known that his stomach would suddenly flash with golden light a moment later. The ghosts around him seemed to be affected by the golden light, all of them scattering.

Before he could react, a man in a Tang-style jacket3 holding an oil-paper umbrella suddenly appeared beside him. He opened the oil-paper umbrella and handed it to Tang Yuan, saying, “Please hold this for me.”

Tang Yuan was so stunned that he took the oil-paper umbrella and incredulously looked at the man, “You……”

“Don’t worry, I’ll explain later,” the man seemed to know what he wanted to say and directly interrupted him.

Then he watched the man take a sword out from who knew where. With a slash, he hacked a ghost who had just come over to death. The ghosts who had just made Tang Yuan helpless were completely vulnerable in front of this man.

The man took the sword and dealt with the ghosts who rushed over one by one. During this period, one ghost circled around, wanting to grab Tang Yuan, but its scheme didn’t succeed, because Tang Yuan was covered with a barrier like glass. The ghost couldn’t hurt Tang Yuan at all and instead was killed by that man’s sword.

The man seemed to be having a little trouble killing all the ghosts, so he took out a sword of mysterious material and waved it in a practiced way. A moment later, Tang Yuan saw a huge golden rune hanging in the air and then the man swept the sword and the golden rune suddenly expanded and moved. In a flash, that golden rune swept through the crowd of ghosts and the fierce ghosts who had just been so vigorous and lively all howled in pain and then they simultaneously vanished in a puff of smoke. All of a sudden, it was quiet and still around them.

The man’s mouth overflowed with blood, and his face was a little pale. After confirming there were no ghosts around, he heaved a sigh of relief. Then he turned around and looked at Tang Yuan.

He looked into Tang Yuan’s beautiful peach blossom eyes, and who knew what he was thinking but a little blush appeared on his face.

“*Cough cough*,” he coughed and said softly, “Hello, my name is Xie Yu.”

Tang Yuan reflexively responded, “My name is Tang Yuan.” He paused and then said, “I’ve seen you before.” His tone was very certain, because he had definitely seen this person.

Xie Yu’s eyes flashed a bit. It seemed as if he were confessing guilt as he said weakly, “Y…..yes.”

Tang Yuan wanted to continue talking with him, but after spitting out a mouthful of blood, his vision went black and he felt faint. Xie Yu hadn’t expected this would happen. So he quickly grabbed him and held him while checking his body. And then with an expression of disbelief, he said, “You’re pregnant!”

The author has something to say:

Glutinous Rice Ball: Why did Sating His Lust appear on the scene and pretend to be so fierce and tough?

Sating His Lust: So, did you not fall in love with me?

Glutinous Rice Ball: I choose to be single.

Sating His Lust: ……

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Footnotes:

1. Menshen (门神) door god, portrait of a god (one of two or four) attached to a door to guard against evil spirits ↩

2. The 15th & paper money: every 15th day, business owners burn spirit money on offering tables outside for gods and spirits, so ghosts are more active ↩

3. Tang-style jacket (唐装): tanzhuang, a jacket with a straight colla