My Enemy Became My Cultivation Companion-Chapter 751 - 476: Scarier Than Ghosts (Two in One)

The waiter was fiddling with the abacus, trying to emulate the shopkeeper's bookkeeping style, when suddenly an out-of-towner approached, cutting straight to the chase with a blunt question,

"Waiter, are there ghosts in this city?"

Such a question sent chills down the waiter's spine. Were it not for the fact that the man was a paying guest, he'd have cursed him outright.

Chen Yi noticed his shiver and understood that within this small Taixiang County, tales of hauntings were a common tune.

The waiter forced a smile and said, "Sir, what a joke you're playing. It's the first day of the Lunar New Year, not the time for such unlucky talk."

"I'm naturally lucky." With that, Chen Yi didn't waste words and pulled out a talisman from his chest, then shook the sword sheath strapped to his back. "Taoist."

The waiter eyed him suspiciously and asked, "Do you have a Dudie?"

Chen Yi hesitated slightly. All this time, exorcising demons and spirits was something he did casually, and the Taoist skills he practiced had been secretly taught by Zhou Yitang. He had never officially entered any sect, nor possessed a Dudie of his own.

The Great Yu dynasty followed the old system of the Song era. Whether Buddhist Tao or other faiths, one needed a Dudie to join the clergy. This was not only because religious matters often dealt with the mysterious and peculiar but also due to practical reasons: clerics were exempt from paying the head tax, and monasteries and Daoist temples held vast estates. With too many clergymen, the national treasury would suffer, and many fugitives disguised themselves as Buddhist monks or Taoists. Thus, becoming a cleric without a Dudie was commonly referred to as being a "runaway household."

Perceiving the waiter's suspicion, Chen Yi pondered briefly before saying, "Wait here, I'll go fetch it."

With those words, Chen Yi hurried upstairs. Shortly after, he came back down holding a thin document in his hand, inscribed with cursive text and bearing an official seal in the corner.

The seal was indeed a legitimate government seal, and the waiter recognized it.

"Yin Tingxue... Is this right?"

The waiter pinched it and studied it for a while, barely making out the characters.

"Looks like a woman's name..."

"I'm just that stylish."

Chen Yi then casually recited a poem,

"After old rains deep into autumn, Winds carry Tingxue to the pavilion." The poem was originally composed by the little fox spirit, who often wrote verses for amusement. Chen Yi learned it by chance and memorized it.

"Oh my, Taoist Master, you're quite the scholar!"

With both a Dudie and the ability to discuss poems and philosophy, the waiter's suspicions dissipated, and his attitude shifted considerably.

"So, what exactly is the matter with this county?"

"Our county..."

The waiter glanced around the inn, where only a few scattered diners occupied the hall. Outside, the streets and alleys appeared deserted. Upstairs, faint thuds echoed intermittently as the landlady dealt with drying cured meats.

He leaned in and lowered his voice, "To be honest, our county is indeed haunted. And not mildly, either. It's everywhere—there isn't a single household untouched by ghosts!"

Chen Yi knew there was some exaggeration in his words, so he pressed directly, "Whose house is the most haunted?"

"If you ask whose house is the most haunted..." The waiter hesitated briefly before continuing, "It'd have to be the home of the Yan family in the west of the city."

"The Yan family?"

"Exactly," the waiter's tone dropped a notch. "That Yan family... They originally had four children: three boys and one girl. The couple worked hard to care for all of them. The man, Yan, was a bricklayer, and his wife did some weaving to supplement their income. Their lives weren't luxurious, but they did manage to buy each child a new set of clothes every year. But misfortune struck—the man, Yan, was repairing a building for the county government when he slipped off a ladder, broke his neck, and died!"

The waiter clapped his hands with a sigh and lamented, "How could an orphaned widow survive after losing her breadwinner?"

With the family's pillar gone, leaving only the wife to raise four children, one could imagine the hardship. But these weren't the key points, and Chen Yi urged him on, "Continue."

"Yan's death might have ended his suffering, but he wailed for dozens of days before passing, clutching at the beams and crying out. Even after calling in the doctor and taking medicine, he still died. His family was left drowning in debt—not just the doctor's fees, which the neighbors could shush and gossip about, but more seriously, the debt owed to the government!" The waiter paused before continuing, "Yan didn't finish building the house, but to treat him, his wife requested construction funds from the government and even kneeled to borrow more money. After his death, Mrs. Yan couldn't even afford a pot to cook in, let alone pay back the debt. The government, recognizing she was a helpless widow, sent people to confiscate the house as repayment."

"For poor families like ours, reaching such a point leaves only two choices: either grab a rope and hang oneself—one's death erases the debt—or sell the children. But how could a widow with four kids hang all of them? Since that wasn't possible, the only path remaining was to sell the children."

Chen Yi narrowed his gaze, saying nothing aloud, only sighing softly in his heart.

Spending time with Yin Tingxue had made him more compassionate.

The threadbare strand breaks under the weight; misfortunes befell precisely the household most haunted.

"With so many crises at once, even selling the children didn't work. She crossed two or three counties but could find no wealthy families willing to pay. Either they thought the children too old, or they wanted a child for free..."

At this moment, footsteps echoed from the stairwell. The landlady had finished arranging the cured meats and descended the stairs.

"You brat, why aren't you working? What nonsense are you yammering about with people?" The landlady voiced instinctively upon seeing the waiter immersed in conversation.

"Landlady, this Taoist Master is asking about the Yan family."

"The Yan family can't even afford to hire someone to exorcise their ghosts. Don't even mention that woman; she lost a child and went mad afterward."

Catching that detail, Chen Yi said, "Went mad after losing a child?"

The waiter turned back to him and replied, "I was just getting to that. Mrs. Yan couldn't sell the children and, after returning home one day, noticed some blood-stained laundry hung outside her house. She initially didn't pay much attention, but the following day, her eldest son, who had gone out to play, never returned. She called on people to search for him, but all they found was a bloodied garment hanging from a tree. From that point on, her sanity deteriorated. Soon after, more children from nearby households in the area went missing as well..."

Listening to all this, the landlady turned pale and exclaimed, "Stop talking about that woman already!"