Chapter 53: Hezi Xinniang 4
Before going to the Jubensha shop, Jiang Si first went to a funeral supply store to buy some things. The boss still remembered him; he had a very deep impression of this fellow practitioner’s face. Seeing him arrive, without even standing up to welcome the customer, he first asked, “Here to do market research again?”
“…” Jiang Si said silently, “The research feedback was good, I’m here for a repeat purchase.”
“Absolutely, my goods are considered top-notch, not just nationwide, but in all of Ningshi.” The boss boasted about his goods in a wave, stood up to grab the items for him, “Do you want to take a look at the other things? My Jinyinshan are built so beautifully.”
Jiang Si swept a glance over and advised, “Boss, you need to pay attention to dampness. The edges over there are moldy. If it needs to be thrown away, throw it away; keeping it all the time isn’t good.”
The boss lifted it up, looked it up and down, and sure enough, saw a ring of black edges. He scratched his hair in embarrassment.
Jiang Si was just speaking nonsense casually. Those weren’t mold marks; rather, it was because two little ghosts were gathered around it, constantly hugging the Jinyinshan. After long-term exposure, even the brightest colors would fade.
Telling the boss to throw it away was for his own good. Little ghosts didn’t harm people, but ultimately, they couldn’t be kept around for long.
The boss was still muttering about how it hadn’t been long, how could it have gotten moldy? As he spoke, he swapped it for a new one and threw the old one into the roadside trash can.
Jiang Si finished paying, took his things, and left.
From a distance, Hai Moyun saw that he had an extra bag in his hands. Only when he got in the car did he ask curiously, “What did you go buy? Running to this kind of place, acting all mysterious.”
Jiang Si didn’t speak. He handed it to him, letting him see for himself.
The words Hai Moyun wanted to say stuck in his throat. He rummaged through it in disbelief with his hands. “No, you, what are you buying this stuff for? Are you going to burn it in the Jubensha shop!”
“Don’t you know Ningshi doesn’t allow random burning of these funeral offerings? Be careful or you’ll be taken away by the police.”
Although his brain didn’t seem too sharp, surprisingly, he was a law-abiding wealthy second-generation heir.
Jiang Si was surprised, “You actually know that Ningshi has this regulation.”
“Hahaha—” Hai Moyun’s gaze drifted; he didn’t dare say more.
From the driver’s seat, Hai Di spoke up faintly, “When he was thirteen, he bumped into my Lihunzheng and thought I was dead. Who knows who he heard it from, but he thought you had to burn Mingbi when a relative died. He bought a massive pile of Mingbi and ran to the side of the road to burn it. Unfortunately, the wind was strong, and the burning paper blew into the green belt, burning down a large swathe of it. In the end, even the fire trucks had to be dispatched to put out the fire.”
“The police gave him an education session, and when he got home, he received another beating and lecture from our parents and family. Only then did he learn his lesson. Even I didn’t expect that the first time in my life receiving money from my cousin, it would actually be Mingbi.”
Seeing Hai Moyun forced to recall the stupid things he did in his adolescence, his cheeks already flushed red with shame and shifting restlessly in his seat, Jiang Si forcefully suppressed his smile. He took the bag back, pulled out a sheet of yellow paper, and with nimble fingers, folded it up and down into a human shape.
He kept one for himself, handed one to Hai Di and one to Hai Moyun, and instructed, “Keep it safe. Later, when we’re playing Jubensha, if you feel something is off, just hold it tightly in your hand.”
“Alright.” Hai Moyun played with it for a while before asking curiously, “Ge, what exactly do you do?”
Jiang Si: “I run a Zhizha shop. Do you need anything? I can give you a two percent discount.”
“No need, no need.” Hai Moyun hurriedly shook his head in refusal.
“I asked you to contact the friends you played Jubensha with. Any news now?” Jiang Si asked him.
“Yes. Just a false alarm earlier; they are at home sleeping, perfectly fine.” Speaking of this, Hai Moyun couldn’t help patting his chest. “Luckily everything is fine. If something really happened, I really wouldn’t even dare step out the door.”
Jiang Si was noncommittal, looking out the car window.
The main target audience for this emerging entertainment industry of Jubensha was young people. It was best to operate them inside large shopping malls. For instance, the shop in Rongcheng was located inside a mall with high foot traffic.
The Jubensha shop that carried Xi was the only one in all of Ningshi, and it was opened on an extremely remote street.
Jiang Si looked at the completely inconspicuous, deserted shop in front of him and asked in confusion, “How did you guys find this shop?”
“GPS navigation, duh.”
“No, what I mean is, with so many Jubensha shops in Ningshi, why choose this particular shop and this script?”
At this moment, two kids playfully chasing each other walked past the sidewalk. When they passed by this shop, the youths’ vibrant energy and the shop’s gloomy dilapidation were completely incompatible, standing out starkly.
Hai Moyun had forgotten too, answering vaguely, “Someone wanted to come play. We were idle anyway, so we just came over to try it.”
Hai Di, having parked the car, walked over. “Shall we go?”
“En.” Jiang Si took the lead and walked in. The shop was equally deserted. There was only one person at the front desk, slumped over the table playing on his phone.
“Hello, we reserved Xi.” Jiang Si said while sizing up the person in front of him. He was a similarly young fellow, but his spirit didn’t seem great, and he spoke weakly.
Whether it was because of the lighting or something else, Jiang Si constantly felt that a dark shadow clouded the whites of his eyes, completely unlike the healthy, slightly yellowish warm-white of normal people.
He scanned a QR code to confirm the identities of Jiang Si’s group, then said, “Hello, I’m the DM who will guide you through the game. You’re the only group today, follow me.”
He walked in front. Jiang Si deliberately slowed his pace by two steps and asked Hai Moyun, “Was he the one who led your game?”
“It’s him.” Hai Moyun was puzzled. “He clearly even looked at me just now, how could he not recognize me?”
“Take the initiative to ask him in a bit,” Jiang Si instructed him. “Test his reaction. I feel like he genuinely has no impression of you.”
“Okay.”
The room they played in was exactly as Hai Moyun had described—a very antique traditional Chinese architectural style. Pushing the door emitted a teeth-aching creak. The interior presented an ash-blue gloom; the few rays of sunlight that managed to shine in stopped right past the threshold, leaving only a row of candles inside for illumination.
The storyline of this script was very simple. It roughly told of a group of university students exploring an ancient village. Ignoring the warnings of the village elders, they broke into an ancient mansion. They got lost inside and had to explore room by room for an exit. Seeing that it was getting late, they had no choice but to head to the mansion’s Citang.
Someone suggested playing a spirit-summoning game to ask for the direction of the exit.
So, they conducted a spirit-summoning facing the ancestral tablets in the Citang. Naturally, they summoned nothing. Disappointed, the group stayed in the Citang for the night. The next day, they accidentally found the exit and each returned home.
The most thrilling and tense parts were the various misunderstanding-inducing accidents that occurred in the Citang, constantly tugging at the players’ emotions to make them feel truly immersed in the scene.
But when Jiang Si was reading the script, he felt something wasn’t quite right. The ending stated that they each went home, which seemed like a good ending. But what happened after they went home?
Was it a metaphor for something?
The DM distributed each person’s identity card and instructed, “Since you all spent money to play the game, I hope everyone treats it seriously. Familiarize yourself with your persona and don’t break character.”
Jiang Si received the identity of university student Xiao Lin, while Hai Di’s identity card was Xiao Lin‘s girlfriend. The DM and Hai Moyun were their classmates respectively.
Hai Di seemed quite happy looking at it. The moment he got the identity card, he immediately grabbed Jiang Si’s hand, using the beautiful excuse: familiarizing oneself with the identity in advance.
Hai Moyun was shocked: “It’s one thing for you to be a try-hard in studying and working, but how are you overtaking on the curve even while playing a game?”
Jiang Si: “…”
Heh.
The DM was quite pleased, “Not bad, not bad, just like this. It’s more fun when you can let go.”
Jiang Si shot Hai Moyun a glance, and the other understood. He pretentiously sauntered over to the DM and said, “Hello, brother, do you still remember me? I just came to play yesterday.”
The DM was bewildered: “You came to play yesterday? Why don’t I have any impression? Did someone come to play yesterday?”
“Tsk… look at you, I even remember you. Your surname is Ma, right!”
The DM was surprised, “How did you know?”
“You said it yourself yesterday! You really don’t remember?” Hai Moyun’s astonished expression didn’t look faked; he was genuinely bewildered as to how someone’s memory could be this poor.
Not even a day had passed.
“Maybe I really forgot. I haven’t been resting well lately, I don’t know what’s going on.” The DM smiled, looking at Jiang Si and Hai Di. “Are you two also players who came yesterday?”
“No, this is our first time here,” Jiang Si shook his head.
“I see.” The DM rubbed his face, saying helplessly, “I’m really sorry. I’ve felt dizzy continuously lately, I can’t even remember people. But it’s fine, I’m very familiar with this script, I can definitely guide you guys well.”
Jiang Si was noncommittal, following the DM to proceed with the game.
The entire venue had roughly four rooms, each darker than the last. Whether to set the atmosphere or to save money, the scene props prepared were mostly poor-quality wooden furniture. Chairs and tables like these wobbled with a slight bump, feeling like they could fall apart the very next second.
In the enclosed space, the sour smell of damp, rotting wood intermingled with the rich scent of Xianghui. The few of them began searching for clues inside while talking.
Jiang Si walked over to a wooden table piled in the corner of the wall. Noticing it was covered with a thick layer of dust, he took advantage of no one paying attention to wipe a bit off, rubbing it between his two fingers.
The powder was fine and easily pushed apart.
Without needing to look, Jiang Si could guess what this was. He took out a tissue to wipe his fingers and asked, “Is this the Citang?”
“No, I don’t think so.” The DM choked on the dust, coughed a few times, and answered, “Whose Citang is this small and dark? It should just be a storage room or something.”
“Who knows how long it’s been since anyone lived here, it’s so deserted.”
“If it’s not a Citang, why would there be Xianghui here?” Jiang Si found it strange. “Look here.”
The others all gathered around. Hai Moyun even specifically bent down to sniff, finding it equally strange. “It really is. I was wondering where such a strong Xianghui smell was coming from as soon as we entered. The dust gathered here should normally just be dirt, how can there be Xianghui?”
The DM followed suit to confirm. He was also just learning of this, and unwilling to admit it was a bug with the props, he laughed it off, “Who knows? It’s all just ash, no big difference. This room is only this big, there’s nothing much to see. Shall we go check out another room?”
“This table…” Jiang Si ignored him, looking down at this precarious table. After being accidentally bumped by Hai Moyun just now, its four legs were still creaking and wobbling.
“What’s so interesting about a table?” The DM’s persona was an unreliable male university student; saying this now didn’t seem abrupt.
“There’s an indentation on the tabletop, take a closer look.” Jiang Si hadn’t noticed it at first. In that thick layer of Xianghui, there were three shallow marks, distributed equidistantly in a triangle shape. “This table should be an altar table, these are the footprints of an incense burner.”
“No wonder there’s so much Xianghui on it.”
“But placing an altar table here, who could they be worshipping?” Hai Moyun wondered. In front of the altar table was just a bare wall, let alone any hanging scroll paintings or deity tablets, there weren’t even decorative patterns.
Jiang Si had also only discovered it by chance and was equally clueless. He turned his head to look at the DM, “Are we done searching this room?”
“There wasn’t anything here to begin with,” the DM said.
“Then let’s go look elsewhere,” Jiang Si suggested. The DM was already eager for them to leave, and the Hai brothers naturally had no objections. The group exited the door.
Walking across the mottled cobblestone path, they arrived at another dark room. Similarly, they found nothing.
The only difference was that even though no one had moved it, a round stool suddenly fell apart on its own with a “clatter”, as if someone had pushed it to the ground.
Hai Moyun, who was closest to it, immediately threw his hands up to prove his innocence. “I didn’t touch it! This is a scam! It has nothing to do with me! My brother—Xiao Yue was standing right next to me and watching the whole time, ‘she’ can testify.”
Suddenly cued, Xiao Yue / Hai Di stiffly nodded under Hai Moyun’s gaze and echoed, “He indeed didn’t move it.”
“It’s fine, these things are just old, it’s normal for them not to hold up.” The DM stayed in character at all times. “Anyway, there’s no one here but us, no one will know.”
Jiang Si stared at the round stool for a while but couldn’t spot any peculiarities, so he turned to head to another room.
Translator’s Note
- Jinyinshan: Gold and silver mountains. Paper funeral offerings crafted to look like mountains of wealth for the deceased.
- Mingbi / Zhiqian: Hell money / Joss paper. Paper money burned as an offering to ancestors or spirits.
- Ge: Older brother.
- Citang: Ancestral Hall.
- Xianghui: Incense ash.
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