I Became an Internet Sensation by Filming for Ghosts CHAPTER 5

Chapter 5: The Lone Yin Curse (Part 2)

No one gave Jiang Si the time of day. Shaken by his words, they all just grabbed their tools and went back to helping Zhao Lei dig.

Left standing alone, Jiang Si just shrugged, a hint of pity in his voice. “Seriously, no taste at all.”

With his family’s three generations of paper crafting skills, who wouldn’t sing his praises after seeing his work?

Zhao Lei cried until his voice was raw. It was only then that Jiang Si called him over, pressing a mourning staff into his hand.

As someone with an artistic background, Jiang Si had an eye for aesthetics. He’d long been unimpressed with the slapdash mourning staffs you’d find on the market—just a few strips of white paper wrapped around a branch. So, he took it upon himself to improve the design.

The Book of Rites states: “What is the meaning of the staff? It is made of bamboo or Tung wood. For a father, a staff of bamboo; for a mother, a staff of shaved Tung wood.”

Jiang Si had taken a branch of Tung wood, wrapped it tightly in a layer of white cloth, and then meticulously layered strips of white paper over the top. When the staff was waved, the layers of paper would flutter and dance in the air.

Zhao Lei’s eyes were swollen and red from crying. He glanced down at the unusually distinctive staff and his sobs hitched. “Boss Jiang, this mourning staff you made… it’s actually kind of beautiful.”

It looked less like something for a funeral and more like a prop from a video game or an anime.

“Told you I’m a pro,” Jiang Si said, accepting the compliment without a shred of modesty. He watched as the coffin was loaded into the hearse, a frown creasing his brow. He reminded Zhao Lei again, “Remember, the moment we start moving, you start calling out. It doesn’t matter how loud you are, but you have to enunciate clearly. And don’t forget to use your mother’s name.”

“And whatever you run into on the road, do not turn back. Under no circumstances can you turn back. You can only go forward.”

Zhao Lei nodded, then asked, “What about you?”

“I’ll be following behind,” Jiang Si said. “We still need to burn more paper offerings when we get there.”

Feeling a little more at ease, Zhao Lei went to get the others into the lead cars to head out.

The moment Jiang Si got back in his own car, he saw the little brown teddy bear pressed against the window, staring straight at him. Even though the bear’s face was inanimate, Jiang Si could perfectly picture the accusatory look on Haidi’s usually expressionless face.

“Tsk.” Jiang Si tapped the bear on the head. “I’ll get you a new body when we get back. It must be a pain not being able to talk.”

Haidi couldn’t speak, but he could feel the warmth of Jiang Si’s finger against his forehead. It looked like a forceful gesture, but the touch was feather-light, like a dragonfly landing on water, gone in an instant.

The sullen mood from being left alone in the car seemed to dissipate, carried away by the breeze drifting in through the window.

This guy… he might be alright.

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Haidi thought.

Jiang Si followed the hearse, keeping a slight distance so the paper money scattered from the car ahead wouldn’t flutter onto his windshield.

The journey was uneventful until the hearse suddenly stopped as it passed through a wooded highway.

What’s going on?

Jiang Si picked up his phone to call Zhao Lei, but then his ears twitched. He could hear the faint, reedy sound of a suona horn.

“Do you hear that?” Jiang Si turned to Haidi.

The little bear’s head gave a barely perceptible nod.

That confirmed it. Jiang Si was certain he wasn’t mistaken. It was definitely a suona, and it sounded like a wedding tune.

The highway wasn’t wide, barely enough for two cars to pass each other. The hearse was wider than a standard car, and Jiang Si worried that Zhao Lei’s group might try to back up to let the other party pass.

He got out of the car and the music grew louder, as if it was rapidly getting closer.

As the only immediate family member, Zhao Lei was in the passenger seat of the hearse. He saw a procession up ahead, decorated for a wedding, and couldn’t help but curse under his breath.

He turned to the driver. “Can we get through?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” the driver said, shaking his head.

“I’ll go ask them to make way,” Zhao Lei said, reaching for the door handle. But just as he pushed it open, a hand slammed it shut from the outside. Jiang Si’s face appeared in the window, his expression grave.

“You can’t get out,” he warned.

“It’s common for weddings and funerals to cross paths, Boss Jiang. I’ll just ask them to move aside so we can get going,” Zhao Lei said.

“Don’t move,” Jiang Si insisted.

His eyes, usually crinkled with a smile, were now exceptionally cold. “Take a closer look. What kind of procession do you think that is?”

Confused, Zhao Lei squinted forward again.

The procession was getting closer now. He could see that the lead car, adorned with bright red flowers, had a single, glaring character pasted on it: ‘奠’ (Mourning). The cars behind it were just like theirs, scattering a trail of yellow paper money.

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The once-upbeat suona music now sounded low and somber, a strange, mournful wail that sent a shiver down Zhao Lei’s spine despite the thirty-degree weather.

“Stay in the car. Just wait for them to pass,” Jiang Si said.

Both Zhao Lei and the driver were thinking the same thing: How is that possible?

The hearse took up nearly the entire road. The only way for anyone to pass was if one of the parties backed up. Zhao Lei had seen wedding processions yield for funerals, and funerals yield for weddings, but he had never seen two funeral processions meet head-on.

“They’ll pass,” Jiang Si said calmly.

As if on cue, the other procession drove straight through them at a perfectly steady speed, as if Zhao Lei’s group was completely invisible.

“Holy crap,” Zhao Lei breathed. The driver’s reaction was even more extreme; he practically had his face pressed against the window, trying to watch the other procession in the rearview mirror.

“How did they do that?”

Jiang Si, however, remained unfazed. Once the procession was mostly gone, he instructed them, “Keep driving. And remember what I said: don’t turn the car around, and don’t you stop calling out.”

The rest of the drive to the Zhao family’s ancestral graveyard was smooth. The other relatives were already there waiting with tools. The moment the hearse arrived, a flurry of activity began—wailing, carrying the coffin—and in no time, the rest of the burial rites were complete.

After Jiang Si finished burning the paper offerings, Zhao Lei found a moment when no one was looking, pulled him aside, and respectfully handed him a white envelope.

“This is for the paper crafts and for you making the trip out here. You must take it. Thank you so much for everything today.”

Jiang Si could tell from the feel of it that the envelope contained far more money than his asking price. He looked at the faded, well-washed clothes under Zhao Lei’s mourning garment and said with a sigh, “It was my duty. We have clear prices. You’re my client, so of course I’m going to provide good service.”

With that, he opened the envelope, took out half the cash, and handed the rest back. “I only take what I’m owed. I can’t accept the rest.”

“But how can I—”

“It’s a rule in our line of work. When you’re in the business of the dead, every extra cent you take is money you’re paying for your own life,” Jiang Si said with an unreadable smile. “I hope you understand.”

“Alright then.” Zhao Lei took the money back. He glanced around and then lowered his voice. “Boss Jiang, what exactly did we run into on the road back there? The more I looked at those cars, the more they seemed like…”

He didn’t finish, but Jiang Si understood.

Zhao Lei had just personally burned the paper effigy car Jiang Si had made for his mother. The memory was fresh in his mind. The cars in that bizarre procession had looked exactly like giant, real-life versions of those paper offerings.

The more he thought about it, the more horrified he became. It felt as if his entire perception of the world had been turned upside down.

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“What cars?” Jiang Si asked, feigning confusion. “There weren’t any cars on the road.”

“…!?!”

“No, that procession! The one scattering paper money! How can you not remember?”

In a panic, Zhao Lei found the hearse driver to confirm. “We ran into another funeral procession on the way here, right?”

“Brother, I know you’re upset about moving your mother’s grave. You probably haven’t been sleeping well. Are you seeing things? What cars are you talking about?” the driver said, patting his shoulder comfortingly. He shot a quick, knowing glance at Jiang Si.

“The grave has been moved. Everything will be fine now. Try not to be so tense,” Jiang Si added, his tone deliberately casual.

“But…”

Jiang Si reminded him, “You also said you saw that tree root bleeding earlier.”

Zhao Lei fell silent, a wave of self-doubt washing over him. Could it be that he was hallucinating again?

Seeing that his work was done, Jiang Si turned to leave.

In the distance, he saw a faint, gray shadow appear before the new grave where the mourning staff was planted. The figure of a woman, her body stooped, gave him a long, deep bow before dissolving into thin air.

Jiang Si’s mood lifted. Back in the car, he said to Haidi, “Can you accept offerings? I’ll take you out for some good food.”

“Hm? …You hear me? Give me a sign.”

The bear’s head was down, and it remained motionless.

Jiang Si reached out and gave it a poke. The bear, which had been propped against the seatback, simply toppled over like a regular stuffed toy.

Realization dawned, and the smile vanished from Jiang Si’s face. Before he could even process what had happened, a ghostly woman with long, flowing hair appeared out of thin air in the back seat. Her black hair cascaded down, nearly brushing the car’s floor mats.

“You’re a bold one, aren’t you? Daring to keep a living soul with you. Aren’t you afraid Lord Wuchang will find out and hold you accountable?”

Jiang Si whipped his head around, a chill running down his spine.

“Could you please not talk to people with your back turned?”

“…Apologies, it’s a habit.”

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The ghost’s body rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees, but her front was still obscured by a curtain of black hair. Pale, slender fingers parted the strands to reveal a deathly white face painted with two bright red circles of blush. Her eyes were outlined in thick, black liner that made her look like a human panda, and below them was a pair of blood-red lips.

“How strange. A human who can actually see me,” she said in a ghostly whisper.

Jiang Si was stunned by her makeup for a moment before her words sank in. “What do you mean by that? Did you take the soul attached to this bear?”

“Hahahahahaha… I don’t have that kind of power. Your little friend was taken by a much more powerful ghost.”

The ghost threw her head back and laughed, her blood-red lips stretching into a grotesque grin that nearly reached her ears. Her long black hair trembled and swayed with the motion.

“Taken by a powerful ghost?”

Jiang Si’s expression changed. He knew the rules among ghosts. It was like a food chain in the ocean. Some powerful ghosts, overlooked by the underworld emissaries, roamed the human world. To avoid dissipating completely, they often captured and consumed smaller ghosts. Smaller ghosts, in turn, could devour wandering souls—and a soul like Haidi’s, without even its memories, was the weakest of them all.

What was more, according to this ghost, Haidi wasn’t even dead yet; it was just his living soul that had been taken.

“Sister, do you know who this powerful ghost is? Or where I can find them now?” Jiang Si asked, reining in his panic and trying to sweet-talk her for information.

“My, you’ve got a sweet mouth, don’t you? I’ve been dead for over a decade. I’m old enough to be your mother,” the ghost cackled before continuing. “And what if I did tell you who it is? You’re just a mere human. You think you can meddle in the affairs of the underworld?”

“Please, sister, I’m begging you,” Jiang Si said with a charming smile, pulling a gleaming gold paper ingot from his coat as if by magic. “I may not have any special powers, but I do have plenty of money.”

The ghost sneered. “Just one? Are you trying to tip a beggar? Do you have any idea what the inflation rate is like down there these days? That one ingot won’t even buy you a steamed bun.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when Jiang Si started pulling more ingots from his clothes, one after another, until a small mountain of glittering gold piled up on the seat, nearly burying the teddy bear.

The glint of gold reflected in the ghost’s dark eyes. Her expression slowly shifted from disdain to awe, and finally, to utter shock.

“Tell me what I want to know, and all of this is yours.”

Jiang Si casually picked one up and dangled it in front of her. “Ingots of this quality must be top-tier where you are, right? Even with inflation, they’ve got to be worth something.”

The ghost’s eyes were glued to the ingot. She reached for it, but Jiang Si pulled it back, a smile playing on his lips.

“So? How about it? A fortune for a few words. It’s a good deal for you.”

The ghost swallowed hard, reluctantly tearing her eyes away from the treasure. “Fine,” she said, as if doing him a huge favor. “On account of the money… and the fact that you’re not bad-looking, I’ll tell you.”

“The powerful ghost is an opera star famous throughout the region. In life, she was known as Xiao Fengxian, the Little Phoenix Fairy. She’s been dead for nearly a century. The story goes she was killed on stage by bandits. Her resentful spirit never dispersed and has lingered here ever since.”

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“But even if I tell you, do you dare go looking for her? Xiao Fengxian despises smooth-talking men like you more than anything. She probably took that living soul just because she found him annoying, too.”

The smile on Jiang Si’s face was starting to feel strained, and his jaw ached.

“This Xiao Fengxian seems to have some serious stereotypes.”

So she’ll snatch away any man she sees?

“Do you know what she plans to do with the soul she took?”

The ghost nodded primly. Meeting Jiang Si’s expectant gaze, she said, “That’ll cost you extra.”

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