I Became an Internet Sensation by Filming for Ghosts CHAPTER 8

Chapter 8: The Opera Ghost 3

With one affair settled, the last sliver of the waning moon hung in the sky, heralding the coming of dawn.

The stage was lit by the eerie, flickering glow of ghost flames. Below, a crowd of spirits stirred, and on stage, the singer’s voice finally rang out.

Standing at the very back, Jiang Si, who had been running around all day, couldn’t help but feel a wave of drowsiness. He forced his heavy eyelids open to watch the performance.

This particular show lacked the clash of gongs and drums to stir the atmosphere, stripping it of much of the usual charm of opera. But Xiao Fengxian’s foundation was solid, and the old ghosts performing alongside her were all seasoned experts. Their movements and vocals were exceptional.

“Tired?” Hai Di had been enjoying the performance. He didn’t quite understand it, but he was fascinated. Just as he was getting absorbed, he felt a weight on his left arm. He turned to see Jiang Si’s head bobbing like a chick pecking at grain.

“I’m alright.” Jiang Si leaned his head against Hai Di’s shoulder and let out a casual yawn.

“Just heard a lot of it. ‘The vibrant purples and reds bloomed everywhere, only to be given over to broken wells and crumbling walls…’” Jiang Si recited the line with perfect enunciation, then sighed with feeling. “Xiao Fengxian has such a fiery personality, I never expected her to have such a graceful, delicate singing style.”

He was lost in his thoughts for a moment before meeting Hai Di’s clear eyes. He paused, then said with a helpless air, “Right, I forgot you’re currently illiterate.”

Hai Di was speechless.

Jiang Si was trying to think of another topic to wake himself up when a familiar old ghost sidled up to him.

“Um, about that money you promised me… is that still on the table?” The spirit was none other than the guide ghost.

Seeing her was a stark reminder of how he’d been tricked. Jiang Si’s grip on his mourning staff tightened. “You actually have the nerve to ask me for money?”

“We had a deal. I lead you to the living soul, you pay me. You’ve found him now, so shouldn’t you settle the bill?”

Jiang Si fell silent, pointing a finger at his own face. “Do I look like an idiot?”

He paused. “Oh, no, wait. Do I look like a printing press for cash?”

If he hadn’t been able to fight his own battles, he would’ve fallen right into the trap she’d so carefully laid for him.

A person shouldn’t be—or at least, can’t afford to be—that stupid.

The female ghost’s courage faltered. “…”

“Well, you still haven’t paid for the initial consultation!” she said, growing anxious.

“Didn’t I already give you the consultation fee?”

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“You didn’t burn it! How was I supposed to get it?”

“Ah, but that’s a separate service, with a separate price.” Jiang Si spread his hands, feigning helplessness. “I can’t be expected to work for free, can I?”

Work for free? What a load of crap. Like lighting a fire would kill him?

Wary of the mourning staff in his hand, the female ghost didn’t dare curse him out loud. She felt like crying but had no tears. To think she had planned on tying him up and forcing him to be her personal money-making machine. Instead of stealing the chicken, she’d lost the rice she brought for bait. The plan had backfired spectacularly.

And now, she was left with nothing.

After shooing the ghost away, Jiang Si noticed Hai Di staring at him. He shot a glare back. “I know you’re not really dead. Once you’re back in your body, you’re paying me back for everything I’ve spent on you.”

“Do you have any idea how expensive soul-guiding incense is?”

Hai Di, of course, had no idea, but subconsciously, he didn’t think it was a big deal. He gave an indifferent nod. “Fine, it’s all yours.”

While the lingering, winding notes of the opera scattered in the wind, a thousand miles away from Rongcheng, a villa in Ning City was filled with the sounds of heartbroken sobs.

“What on earth is going on? Weren’t you sure he’d wake up within a day? The day is almost over!” a middle-aged woman with red-rimmed eyes demanded. The man in the traditional mandarin-collared jacket standing beside her paled under the sharpness of her tone.

His fingers nervously kneaded a string of peach-wood beads. Out of respect for his own status, he refrained from arguing, but the young apprentice behind him couldn’t help but jump to his master’s defense.

“My master did everything he could! There’s no one he can’t bring back. If Young Master Hai still hasn’t woken up, then it must be his fate—”

“Silence!”

The man shot his apprentice a fierce look before turning his attention back to the person lying on the bed. He pondered for a moment, then walked over and placed his fingers on the man’s icy wrist. After a long pause, he finally spoke. “It is indeed a case of soul separation. However, Young Master Hai’s soul is too far from this place. Even my strongest summoning rituals are useless. Madam, my condolences.”

The subject of their argument was the young man on the bed. His forehead was wrapped in thick layers of gauze, beneath which his face was as pale as paper. His lips were utterly bloodless, and only the faint breath from his nose confirmed he was still alive. The bedside was crowded with professional medical equipment, its lights blinking as it monitored his vital signs.

“Then what do we do?”

The woman’s body swayed upon hearing his words, and she leaned against a table for support. “Master Shen, is there anything else you can do? The best doctors, the most advanced equipment, any other resource—my Hai family will spare no expense.”

“…Alas, my skills are limited. At this point, I’d say it’s better to trust in modern medicine than in metaphysics. Perhaps they can maintain his vital signs long enough for his soul to return on its own.”

“Madam Hai, please accept my condolences.”

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The man gave a slight bow to her and the figure on the bed, then turned and strode out of the villa, his apprentice trailing behind him, looking as if he wanted to say more.

As the woman’s grief-stricken sobs faded behind them, the apprentice finally dared to speak once they were in the cool night air. “Master, is that man really a lost cause? Even for you?”

The young master of the Hai family had only been in a car accident. How could it be this severe? He hadn’t been boasting earlier; his master was a man of genuine skill. At just over thirty, he was a formal member of the Celestial Masters Association and the twentieth-generation successor of Mount Gezao. His abilities were renowned not just in Ning City, but even in the capital.

“It’s hard to say.” Shen Wut glanced back at the villa, his wide jacket rustling in the wind. His gaze was heavy with worry. “I cannot see through his destiny. It appears fraught with peril, yet there’s a faint glimmer of life… Let’s hope he can grasp that sliver of hope and survive.”

Completely unaware that his family was frantic with worry, Hai Di pushed open the door to Jiang Si’s bedroom and froze.

The paper effigy shop hadn’t seen a new customer in days, perfectly embodying the old saying, “Three years without a sale, one sale feeds you for three years.”

Jiang Si wasn’t short on cash for the time being, so he had a relaxed attitude about the lack of business. Rather than waiting around all day, he figured he might as well use the time to plan his next promotional video.

He had simply said, “Don’t bother me,” and then shut himself in his bedroom for the entire day. Worried something might have happened, Hai Di had come to check on him. But when he opened the door, he found the room’s curtains all drawn and the lights off. The only illumination came from the ghostly blue glow of a computer monitor.

The cooling fan of the computer tower whirred loudly. Jiang Si, wearing headphones, was completely engrossed in the screen.

Hai Di slowly approached and realized Jiang Si seemed to be working on a 3D model.

“…Didn’t you say you were writing a script?” Hai Di’s voice suddenly broke the silence. Jiang Si jumped, and his mouse slipped, clicking on the wrong thing.

“…Damn it, are you a ghost? You scared the hell out of me.”

Hai Di was speechless.

Jiang Si took off his headphones, the realization dawning on him a second too late that the person in front of him wasn’t, in fact, a person.

He offered a half-hearted apology. “Sorry. What’s up?”

“I just came to see… what are you doing?” Hai Di brushed it off, his curiosity piqued by something else.

“The script is more or less done. I sent it to a friend to polish it up. Since I had some free time, I thought I’d try my hand at some modeling.” As he spoke, Jiang Si kneaded his stiff fingers. His skin was unnaturally pale, yet it seemed to have a soft luster even in the dim light.

He flexed his long, slender fingers, and his knuckles made a soft cracking sound.

Hai Di found his gaze drawn to Jiang Si’s hands for a moment before he asked, “What’s the model for?”

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“It’s for you. I’m sending it to a printer in a bit. I was thinking, since you’re not actually dead, it’s really bad luck to have you possess a paper effigy. So, I decided to just make you a new body.”

The brown eyes that met Hai Di’s were glistening, likely from staring at the screen for too long, but the smile in them was genuine.

“You—” Hai Di finally took a proper look at the screen, and the warmth that had just started to fill his chest instantly froze. “What is that thing?”

Jiang Si had already applied textures and rendered the model, so it was clearly visible. It was a small, chibi-style figure, with a head one-third of its total height. It had black hair, large, sparkling black eyes, and disproportionately small limbs that somehow still looked coordinated.

Overall, it had the classic look of a cutesy online avatar.

“…” Hai Di really didn’t want to accept this thing as the body he would have to inhabit.

He was a six-foot-three adult male, healthy and well-built. This… thing… was the furthest possible thing from him.

Seeing his silence, Jiang Si assumed he was moved. “No need to thank me so much,” he said with a grin. “This model didn’t take too long. But I did specifically request a waterproof and drop-resistant material for the printing, so it’s a little pricey. Just remember to pay me back for it all later.”

A ghost under someone else’s roof has to bow his head. Hai Di knew he had no choice.

Fine, he thought, trying to console himself. At least I have a body.

Just as Jiang Si sent the file to the printing service, a loud shout came from outside the room. “What are you two talking about? Time to eat!”

“Huh?” Jiang Si was stunned. “Did you cook? Or did she?”

He couldn’t imagine an amnesiac ghost or a ghost from before the revolution knowing how to use any of the modern kitchen appliances in his house.

“You’ll see when you go out,” Hai Di said, rubbing his forehead, clearly not wanting to talk about it.

When a skeptical Jiang Si walked out of the room, he found Xiao Fengxian squatting on the floor, angrily unpacking takeout containers.

“I went to open the door all cheerful, and that clueless delivery guy just screamed and ran away!”

Well, who wouldn’t run after seeing a door open all by itself with no one there?

Jiang Si sighed. “From now on, just have them leave the food at the door.”

He glanced down at the containers on the floor, and the smile on his face instantly froze when he recognized the logo on the packaging. A chill went down his spine.

He pointed a trembling finger at the food. “How could you?”

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This private kitchen was famous in Rongcheng for two things.

One, it was delicious. Two, it was expensive. The emphasis being on expensive!

A single meal from there would easily cost a four-figure sum, and judging by the number of containers, Xiao Fengxian hadn’t held back.

Jiang Si didn’t even want to imagine the total cost.

“I saw it had the highest rating. What’s wrong?” Xiao Fengxian asked innocently.

Of course it did. At that price, it had better be good.

“A few days of hard work, all down the drain,” Jiang Si muttered. His eyes fell on the phone on the coffee table. He viciously snatched it up and put it away. “Neither of you are allowed to use the internet anymore!”

“What’s the big deal? Yours truly gracing their restaurant with my patronage is an honor for them! Why are you taking my phone?”

My dear grand lady, you weren’t eating food, you were eating cash.

“The answer is no, and that’s final,” Jiang Si said flatly. “If you want a phone, I’ll burn one for you.”

Seeing how insistent he was, Xiao Fengxian gave him a mournful look, occasionally dabbing at non-existent tears.

“What’s the difference between a phone you burn and an offline device? No internet, no calls, nothing. Boohoo… why is my life so bitter? I’ve been dead for so many years, and I finally get my hands on a phone for less than a day before it’s taken away…”

She wailed dramatically, her sorrowful voice echoing through the living room. When she noticed no reaction, she peeked through her fingers to look at Jiang Si.

He was already sitting at the dining table, eating. Since Hai Di couldn’t touch cooked food, Jiang Si had lit a stick of incense for him.

“…”

“I don’t care! I want incense too, and I want my phone!” Xiao Fengxian slammed her hand on the table in a fit of rage.

Unfazed, Jiang Si didn’t even lift his eyelids. “You can have incense offerings… as for the phone, we’ll see.”

He thought for a moment. He probably had a spare phone somewhere. It didn’t have a SIM card, but she could use it on the home Wi-Fi. That way, she couldn’t randomly buy things.

“That’s more like it.” Xiao Fengxian immediately took the olive branch. She turned and saw Hai Di, sitting bolt upright as he consumed the incense. She frowned. “Living souls can’t receive offerings. Why are you giving him that?”

She was some distance away, and the thin wisps of white smoke from the incense were being completely absorbed by Hai Di, not a single trace escaping. Naturally, she hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

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But as she watched Hai Di’s once-translucent soul become more solid, his complexion no longer tinged with a deathly blue, Xiao Fengxian grew suspicious and moved closer to get a better look.

This time, she was even more shocked. “You’re actually feeding him this!”

Tears of pure envy threatened to spill from the corners of Xiao Fengxian’s mouth. “How can you bear to part with something so precious?”

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