Chapter 58: Hezi Xinniang 9 part 1
Lips and teeth interdependent, breaths intertwining.
Jiang Si supported himself against Hai Di’s thigh. After kissing for a while, even the dullest brain would catch on. Throwing the cotton swab in his hand into the trash can, he gave him an exasperated glare. “Are you playing me here? And here I was, worried for a good while.”
Hai Di raised his hand and said earnestly, “It truly does hurt.”
“Then you might as well hurt to death.” Jiang Si didn’t even look, getting up to leave. “I’m going back to sleep. Figure out how to bandage it yourself.”
He pushed the door open and left. Hai Di looked at the half-cleaned wound, and after a moment, couldn’t help but quietly curl up the corners of his lips.
.
That night, just as Jiang Si fell asleep, he suddenly felt himself lift into the air and float.
Aimlessly, he arrived beside a grave. Moonlight blanketed this small patch of land, while the surroundings were nothing but boundless darkness.
Just as Jiang Si was finding it baffling, the back of his head suddenly flared with pain. Turning back to look, an old man in a long red robe appeared behind him. He wore a square black hat with long wing-flaps, and a three-inch-wide Xiedie belt was wrapped around his waist, yet somewhat comically, he stepped on a pair of black cloth shoes.
The old man’s height only reached Jiang Si’s eyebrows, but his imposing aura was exceptionally sufficient. He used a walking cane to lecture him, “What did you go do today?”
“…”
Jiang Si cried out in astonishment, “A’ye?”
The old man coldly snorted. His cane heavily tapped the ground, and he spoke with extreme distress, “I repeatedly warned you a thousand times before not to enter this line of work. Yet look at you, rushing forward to court death, right? Today you were lucky. What if you run into a formidable one another day, will you still come out fine?”
This tone, this demeanor—Jiang Si confirmed it: this was undoubtedly his long-deceased grandfather.
Rubbing his head, he defended himself: “It’s not like I have a choice. Unless you gouge my eyes out, I am destined to deal with these ghosts and monsters.”
Old Man Jiang (Jiang Laotou) was so angry he hammered his cane again. “You, ah, you. You truly don’t give me peace of mind.”
Jiang Si hurriedly said, “You can’t say it like that, I’m doing quite well right now. Furthermore, I even have a partner now, I’m not a loner, so stop worrying.”
Jiang Laotou paused, asking suspiciously, “Real or fake? Don’t try to fool me.”
“It’s real. Some other day, I’ll have him light an incense stick for you, and the two of you can meet.”
Only then did Jiang Laotou nod half-believingly, his heart slightly relieved. “As long as you have a companion, that’s good. I was just worried that you, this child, having no ties or cares, wouldn’t take yourself to heart either.”
Jiang Si didn’t want the elderly man to still worry about him after passing away. Joking around, he steered the topic away, “Aiya, just set your mind at ease! Living alone is indescribably relaxing for me. Nobody nags me to sleep even when I stay up late, it’s so great.”
“And don’t just talk about me. How are you doing? You haven’t sent me a dream a single time in all these years. I thought you had already reincarnated.”
Jiang Laotou coughed twice, his face revealing embarrassment. “It’s not that I didn’t want to send you a dream. It’s just that, after all, Yin and Yang are separated; it’s not good to have you constantly thinking of me. Also, the regulations don’t allow sending dreams to relatives, so I never sought you out.”
“…What kind of regulation is this pitfall?”
“Cough, cough…” Jiang Laotou touched his nose. After thinking for a while, he finally spat it out, “It’s like this. Originally, I was preparing to reincarnate. But because I accumulated a lot of Yin merit while alive, and it happened that the Difu was short on staff, I took up a minor official post. I didn’t expect the civil servant rules of the Difu to be even stricter than those in the human realm. Foremost among them is the prevention of reckless dream-sending behaviors.”
“…”
Jiang Si’s face went wooden. “You are a civil servant of the Difu?”
The civil service exam he failed to pass back in the day was actually passed by his grandfather.
“Slightly higher than a civil servant.”
Jiang Si guessed again: “Then is it something like a Yinchai or Impermanence (Wuchang)?”
Jiang Laotou: “I am the local Chenghuang.”
Jiang Si couldn’t believe it. “Ningshi Chenghuang?”
Jiang Laotou nodded reservedly.
Jiang Si sighed in admiration, “You truly are modest.”
The Chenghuang of a directly-administered municipality—that was the mayor of the underworld. Could that still be called an ordinary underworld civil servant?
However, Jiang Si suddenly froze. “The Yinchai I summoned was sent by you?”
He still remembered the Yinchai once saying that the local Chenghuang was his fellow townsman, and out of consideration for a fellow townsman, specially dispatched an Yinchai on a business trip to help him catch an evil ghost.
All his previous doubts were completely resolved.
So it wasn’t some fellow townsman affection at all; it was genuine, proper blood relations.
“You really are…” Jiang Si rubbed his forehead. “I was just saying, where could such good fellow townsman camaraderie come from in this human realm.”
Speaking of this, Jiang Laotou flicked his sleeve, frowning as he asked him: “Today, an Yinchai was asking everywhere about the extradition of foreigners. Is this matter related to you?”
Jiang Si: “…You could say that.”
“Is it related to the curse on your body?”
“I guessed it was some sort of spell that plunders human fortune. So it was a curse.” Jiang Si was suddenly enlightened. “Since you can see it, can you resolve it?”
“No.” Jiang Laotou refused. “The Difu does not interfere with matters of the Yang realm.”
“Aren’t you afraid I might actually die?”
Jiang Laotou: “If you die, how about I arrange for you to cut the line for reincarnation?”
Jiang Si was rendered speechless.
Then he suddenly caught on. “That’s not right. If you truly didn’t want to interfere, why bother sending a dream to find me?” As he spoke, he said self-righteously, “A’ye, you can’t stand watching this either, can you?”
He asked probingly, “Is it because this thing comes from Dongying?”
Jiang Laotou lived to be nearly a hundred before passing away. His generation had personally witnessed that bitter history, and their sentiments towards Dongying were far more intense than those of the subsequent younger generations.
Jiang Si knew this clearly in his heart. Jiang Laotou gave a cold snort, which counted as tacit consent.
“Is there any lore behind this thing? I asked the Tianshi, and none of them are clear on exactly where it came from.”
Jiang Laotou: “It’s normal not to know, it is a Dongying item after all. Their land is small, but their methods are each extremely insidious. Curses haven’t developed much domestically, so very few people could pay attention to this dark art.”
“When I was young, I traveled to a certain island. There, I witnessed a special evil entity, which was exactly called the Hezi Xinniang. A girl selected from a village was meticulously dressed up. Then her limbs were snapped, and she was thrown into a box with only a single opening, leaving only her head exposed. From then on, she could only live inside the box. Relying on this artificially created deformed person, they sailed across the seas to exhibit her in various places to earn remuneration.”
“At first, the girls died one after another. When one died, they swapped in a new one and stuffed her back inside. But unexpectedly, too many people died, and heavy resentful power attached itself to the box, turning the box into a spirit. It relies on sucking human essence to sustain the resentful spirit within the box. Anyone who handles the box thereafter will suffer the curse.”
Jiang Si still felt something was off. “Since there was a curse all along, how could it appear now? Aren’t the makers afraid of being killed too?”
“It should be an item left over from the past. Someone, afraid of the curse, sent it to another country, attempting to use unknowing strangers to dissipate the curse. They both absorb fortune, but is concentrating the absorption on one person the same as distributing it among dozens of people?”
Jiang Laotou nodded in self-affirmation. “However, although the Difu cannot meddle in Yang realm affairs, we can still somewhat manage the resentful spirit inside that box. That requires you to release it tomorrow first.”
Jiang Si agreed. Seeing Jiang Laotou wave his hand, he thought he could leave. Then he heard him say: “It’s the 21st century now. Why are you burning paper cows and paper horses? If you have this thoughtfulness, get me some nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. The human realm advances with the times, and the Difu must also reform and develop.”
“?!!” Jiang Si was shocked. “Am I supposed to make those?”
“What do you need it for? Is the Difu fighting a war?”
Recommended Reads
![Does A Broken Mirror Reunion Exist in Esports? [Esports]](https://beereads.space/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/esports-225x300.png)
