Chapter 91: Driving Away Ghosts the Wrong Way
"Probably a few years ago, I ran into you by the roadside one evening."
"You were barely hanging on, but you held onto my pant leg, saying you didn't want to die, saying you wanted to see your son once again."
"I thought about it and just went along with your wish."
"Within seven days, I did some rituals and put in much effort to keep your soul lingering inside your physical body. Although you didn't die, it's not exactly considered living either. Your body managed to maintain some vitality, with a beating heart, and the ability to eat, drink, and excrete, but something is still missing."
"Guess what was missing?"
"By the way, it was vitality."
"In the Daoist tradition, we called it yang energy, vitality. When a person has only half a breath left, they can hardly be considered alive. Not only are they at a loss, but as time goes by, they gradually turn into restless and tormented spirits."
"Your body would have become emaciated, the flesh would have looked withered, gradually appearing dull and sluggish. You would have turned from a living dead into a true corpse, a lifeless and cold walking dead."
Mr. Liu went on and on, telling the story.
Sato Zaki grabbed his face with both hands and trembled uncontrollably, saying, "You were lying, you were lying…"
"Don't be afraid, it's a bit late to be scared now," Mr. Liu yawned. "You were already a dead person to begin with, I turned you into a living corpse, fulfilling your own wishes. Besides, it's not easy to find someone with a naturally ominous body, but there are plenty of people with yang energy on every street. The yang energy you're lacking can be replenished."
He squinted his eyes and said with a smile, "Food, man."
Eat whatever you lacked, man.
If you lacked yang energy, you just ate people, man.
Sato Zaki squatted on the ground, and he kept dry heaving again and again.
"Did you even realize how many people you've eaten by now, man? Over the past six years, every now and then, you'd get so hungry that you'd go devouring people," Mr. Liu shook his head, sipping on the meat soup, relishing the flavors with a slurp. He seemed completely unconcerned about the dead in his words.
"That was, like, a living person… a living person…" Sato Zaki couldn't accept the fact of cannibalism.
"Living people? What happened to you tonight? Can't you figure it out?" Mr. Liu scoffed at his naivety. "Many of them were just trying to scam money out of you, pretending to have information about your son's whereabouts. They were not a bunch of decent folks to begin with, driven by greed to their own demise. But honestly, most of them didn't have good intentions either. If they got eaten, well, they got eaten. Consider it a way to rid the world of evil."
It actually made some sense when you think about it.
But Sato Zaki didn't believe a word of his nonsense. How many people would actually do such a thing? Were all the people he ate really that wicked and vile?
He didn't dare to dwell on it, but he also didn't fully believe Mr. Liu's one-sided words. He held back his disgust and stared relentlessly at the middle-aged man behind the ramen stall.
"I don't believe a word you said…"
"Suit yourself, sooner or later you'll be starving and have to come find me."
"I don't believe you had no ulterior motive! You weren't helping me, you were just using me! What were you after?"
Sato Zaki was this businessman from the financial world, and ya know, businessmen are all about profits and care less about parting ways. He regretted it for his whole life, but even though he used to dominate the finance world, his instincts were still sharp. He knew that someone who treats others as pawns would never do a good deed without some kinda benefit in mind.
Mr. Liu wasn't surprised either, and he smiled and said, "You've asked me this question so many times, and I've answered it every time. This time is no exception… It's just about staying alive, you know."
"Staying alive?" Sato Zaki didn't think of Mr. Liu as some walking dead.
"I got sick, really bad, and ya know what? There was something growing inside me," said Mr. Liu as he tapped his own head and pointed to his lungs and chest. "All sorts of growths were sprouting in here too. I was sick, and every doctor told me I wouldn't last more than half a year."
Sato Zaki was totally taken aback as the other person's face was beaming with a healthy flush and full of vigor, completely unlike someone on the verge of imminent death.
Mr. Liu said, "I have been hearing the knock of the Grim Reaper for a long time, for a full twenty years. I have long known that I am inherently flawed and my destiny is unfavorable. If I wanted to change my fate, I had to find a scapegoat and use someone else's life to prolong my own."
"Keeping zombies is a way to extend life, and letting you eat people is part of it, too."
"Havoc has lingered for a thousand years, and sometimes the fate of good people ain't as strong as that of the wicked. The lifeline of those who do evil is tough enough to withstand the consequences it brings. That's why I prefer having wicked folks to keep extending my own life."
"Recently, I went to get a check-up on my body, and surprisingly, I actually improved quite a bit. This method really works, and maybe I could live for another century or so."
Sato Zaki gritted his teeth, implying that they still needed him to continue being a living dead for another century.
"Don't wanna?"
Mr. Liu rubbed his chin, sporting an amused expression.
"I won't press you either way. In any case… this bowl of noodles, I'll just leave it here. If you eat it, all the unhappiness of tonight will be forgotten. Tomorrow morning, when you open your eyes, you will still be yourself."
"How to decide, it's up to you."
"Just saying, if I were gone, you would've really been screwed, like, nothing left, you know."
"The person you wanted to see the most, you couldn't see them anymore, like, forever."
Mr. Liu was speaking in a plain manner, without adding any dramatic emotions to his words, simply narrating the facts in a straightforward way.
Sato Zaki stared at the bowl of noodles and his throat kinda like… twitched a bit.
He didn't wanna die.
Because of this strong obsession, it was what made him stay in this world.
He still wanted to see them one more time, to go back to the happy times when they were a family of three.
So, he couldn't resist this temptation.
Just like in the past, for the past six years, he must have gone through countless moments of forgetting. Every single time, he would curse at the shameless tricks played by Mr. Liu here. Every single time, he couldn't free himself from the other person's control, reluctantly sat down, feeling unwilling but with no other choice.
This time was no different.
He took a long time, shuffling his stiff steps, and took a step towards the ramen stall.
With one step, there came the second step, he hunched his back, picked up the chair from the ground, and forced himself to sit down.
"That's right."
He ladled a bowl of Soul Soup onto the slightly cooled noodles and looked down at the middle-aged man.
"Dig in."
Sato Zaki was stiff, lifted his noodles, opened his mouth, his face immersed in white mist, dim and unclear.
Go ahead and eat.
Go on, gobble it up, and all your troubles were forgotten.
He was in a daze, reassuring himself, opened his mouth, took a bite of the noodles, and was about to swallow.
Suddenly, there was a "clunk" sound, the curtain was lifted, and a figure plopped down at the far end of the ramen stall.
The person seemed to have walked for a long time on the dark road and got a bit frozen. He blew hot air onto his palms.
"This late at night and still seeing a ramen stall open, not easy, huh?" Bai Wei rubbed his hands. "Boss, can I get a bowl of fish ball noodle soup?"
He was speaking in the language of the Ming Country.
Mr. Liu was surprised, "Oh, you're from the Ming Country, huh? Well, this is a ramen stall, we don't have fish ball noodle soup, only oden and char siu rolls."
"Is that so?" Bai Wei sniffed. "But I gotta say, this smell is kinda tempting, what kind of soup is this?"
Mr. Liu smiled and said, "I was about to close up shop."
"Was it chicken soup?" Bai Wei continued to ask.
The ramen stall owner dropped his smile and said, "You should find another place."
"Oh, I see… damn! Soul! Soup!" Bai Wei asked in a nonchalant manner, "How many lives went into stewing this?"
Crash! The bowl and chopsticks for the noodle soup got knocked over.
Sato Zaki's hands were trembling, his expression filled with panic. He finally recalled their previous encounter - the young man who could turn a Pepsi into an explosive incendiary bomb!
He came chasing after me!
Mr. Liu put down the ladle and grabbed a rag to wipe off the greasy residue from his palms. He casually said, "In a foreign land like this, it wasn't worth offending a few Yingzhou people that much, my friend."
Bai Wei was sitting with his legs crossed, supporting his chin with a fist, squinting his eyes. He asked with great interest, "Is eating a bowl of noodles considered offensive?"
"To unjustly suspect others of using living souls to make soup is unethical, and of course, it is offensive… Do the members of your sect understand the principles?"
"In that case, why don't you serve me a bowl of this soup, and then we'll know if there's any issue?" Bai Wei proposed, "If you're afraid to do so, it suggests that you have something to hide."
Mr. Liu's face turned serious, and after a pause, he picked up the ladle and said, "Alright, I scooped it!"
He grabbed a big bowl, and suddenly his right hand veins bulged, he violently shook his sleeve, a yellow talisman floated out from his sleeve, and he ripped off a copper bell from his collar. He turned the copper bell upside down onto the yellow talisman, producing a resounding and crisp sound - Ding-a-ling-ling!
Mr. Liu raised his hand and unleashed a powerful spell known as the "Five Furious Curses!"
Sato Zaki's eyes suddenly turned scarlet, and in an instant, he lost all sense of reason, like a wild animal, he lunged at the young man five steps away.
From the very beginning, he became a puppet soldier under the control of the Daoist's spell, his spirit trapped, never to experience freedom again.
Tears of blood welled up in his eyes as Sato Zaki sank his teeth into the young man's right arm. All of a sudden, a glimpse of desolate radiance flashed, and the Ring-head Han sword trembled lightly.
The young man swung his sword around and suddenly he sliced the noodle stall wide open!
