But soon, Liu Xiaohua’s business started booming.
Outside her shabby office, people were always waiting in line, leaving the neighboring companies baffled about what exactly went on in there.
Everyone who entered looked anxious or skeptical, yet every single person who came out was in tears.
Things were turning out even better than Fang Zhiyi had imagined.
Through his connections with Ah Da and Ah Er, he brought the ghosts that Liu Xiaohua needed to her, letting them have one last meeting with their loved ones before taking them back.
In return, the paper offerings Liu Xiaohua burned for Fang Zhiyi and his crew had upgraded from simple ingots and spirit money to luxurious cars, mansions, and even paper mobile phones.
“Boss, what’s this thing for?” an old ghost asked curiously, tapping the phone in his hand against various surfaces.
Fang Zhiyi lounged comfortably on a big sofa. “Useless. There’s no internet in the underworld.”
“Oh, I thought it was just a brick,” the ghost replied.
Fang Zhiyi turned to Liu Xiaohua. “From now on, burn something practical. Don’t bother with this kind of junk. If the underworld ever did get internet, you’d have to custom-order chargers too, wouldn’t you?”
Liu Xiaohua nodded quickly.
“Ah Da! Hold on—that one in red, she hasn’t finished her procedure yet!” Fang Zhiyi called out to the two ghost messengers who were counting heads.
Ah Da paused. “Got it, boss!” He yanked the red-dressed woman he had locked up and shoved her out.
Inside the office, a man and a woman had been waiting for a long time. Lately, they’d been having repeated dreams where an old man kept telling them to come here for a final meeting with their younger sister, who had died in a car accident.
With uneasy hearts, they arrived—only to wait a while before a girl in a school uniform opened the door.
“Miss, is the boss here?” the woman asked.
Liu Xiaohua glanced at them. “Wait a moment.”
She closed the door, then reopened it a short while later, now changed into different clothes. “Come on in.”
The two exchanged looks.
But thinking of that recurring dream, they eventually stated their purpose.
By now, Liu Xiaohua was completely familiar with the routine. She casually pulled out a form and started filling it in.
“Name... Che Xiaohong... Female. Tell me again—what was she wearing when she died?”
“Red.”
“Red... okay. Place of death?”
“At the intersection on Shiye Road...” The woman’s voice broke as she wiped her tears. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t told her she couldn’t go to that concert, she wouldn’t have run away from home, and she wouldn’t have been hit by that car...”
In the past, Liu Xiaohua would have shed a few tears too. But though it hadn’t been long, she had already witnessed so many separations between the living and the dead. Now, she only sighed. “Everyone has their fate.”
She lit the form and watched it turn to ash, staring blankly.
“Now, put your hands on my shoulders, and you’ll be able to...” Liu Xiaohua trailed off as she saw the red-dressed woman being dragged into the office by Fang Zhiyi.
The two looked at her skeptically but eventually placed their hands on her shoulders.
“Xiaohong!” the woman cried out immediately.
The man was stunned too. Was he seeing things? He could actually see their deceased sister!
Neither of them even noticed Fang Zhiyi stepping behind them.
“Xiaohong! It’s me!” the woman exclaimed, releasing her hold on Liu Xiaohua’s shoulder out of excitement. The instant her hand lifted, her sister vanished from sight. She quickly put her hand back.
“Xiaohong, it’s your sister! I’m so sorry...” She broke down sobbing again.
Fang Zhiyi, who had been casually sitting cross-legged on a coffee table, suddenly jumped up. “Damn it!”
Liu Xiaohua remembered too late: Fang Zhiyi had warned her that when dealing with ghosts, relatives must never mention regrets or attachments. Otherwise, these spirits, already losing their humanity, could easily go berserk.
Sure enough, after a brief daze, the red-dressed ghost’s face twisted into something terrifying.
“It’s you, Dahong,” the ghost hissed. “Do you know how much I hate you? If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been hit by that car...” Her disheveled hair began to float upward, and her face grew grotesque.
Liu Xiaohua quickly sidestepped, causing the two hands on her shoulders to fall into empty air.
“Xiaohong! Xiaohong! Don’t hate me! I’m sorry! I miss you so much!” The woman desperately tried to grab the vanishing sister, while the man stood frozen in fear.
But then, the woman suddenly threw her head back, and her hands reversed to grip her own throat.
“Xiaohong... you... you...” Her eyes bulged as a suffocating pressure closed in.
Panicking, the man shouted, “What are you doing?!” He turned to Liu Xiaohua. “Let me see her too!”
But Liu Xiaohua took a cautious step back.
“Not yet. You two need to calm down first,” she said.
“But she—” The man pointed at his sister, only to find her slumped on the ground, gasping for air.
Liu Xiaohua glanced nervously at Fang Zhiyi, who was busy beating up the red-dressed ghost. She couldn’t let the clients see that—if they knew their beloved deceased was getting pummeled, they might not pay. Or worse, they might sue.
Yeah, that made sense.
“Listen,” Liu Xiaohua quickly added the warning she had forgotten earlier, “you can meet, but you can’t say certain words—things like regret, guilt, not being able to let go. If you do, the ghost won’t be able to move on to reincarnation.”
“No, no way!” The woman, now recovering, was frantic. “I have to apologize to my sister!” She grabbed Liu Xiaohua’s shoulder. “You’ve let me see her again—why won’t you let me finish what I have to say?”
Caught off guard, Liu Xiaohua couldn’t dodge in time.
Fang Zhiyi let out a cold snort and simply sat back down behind them.
“Xiaohong, Xiaohong, I’m sorry. Don’t blame me. I only did what was best for you... You left so suddenly. I can’t let you go. I see you in my dreams every night...”
The woman poured out a long string of words.
Hearing this, the red-dressed ghost—who had been cowed by the beating—felt her eyes turn blood red again. Yet she saw Fang Zhiyi sitting behind her sister, and instinctive fear kept her from lunging forward.
Liu Xiaohua turned to Fang Zhiyi for help, but he just shook his head slightly.
“Xiaohong, come home with me!” The woman’s words were like a final blow.
Even Liu Xiaohua knew—you never say that. Who in their right mind invites a vengeful, resentment-laden ghost home?
All she could do was watch helplessly as the ghost took the woman’s outstretched hand, drew close, and slowly crawled onto the woman’s back. A chill ran through Liu Xiaohua’s entire body.
But the woman only smiled with relief. “That’s right. I’ll take you home. From now on, we’ll never be apart.”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
e school belle recognized by the whole school, a genius girl from the kendo club. She also has a hidden identity, the youngest legendary demon hunter. Chen Shuo just transmigrated and found himself turned into a weak, helpless little vampire. He was caught by Su Xiyen and taken home at the very beginning. Since then, Chen Shuo's life creed only had two items. "First, classmate Su Xiyen is always right." "Second, if classmate Su Xiyen is wrong, please refer back to item one." Many years later, Chen Shuo, who had turned back into a human, led a pair of twins to appear in front of all the vampires to share the secret of how he turned back into a human. "It's simple, I tricked a female demon hunter into becoming my wife!"
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
