Chapter 36: I Surrender

Just as the middle-aged uncle was about to pinch the old woman, I stopped him, frowning and asking, “Who are you?!”

The couple froze, looking at me in confusion. “Xiaomai, who are you talking to?”

I pointed at the old woman on the bed. “There’s a ghost attached to Grandma. I noticed something was off about her expression just now.”

To verify my claim, I brought the talisman paper closer to the old woman. Sure enough, just like yesterday, the paper fluttered wildly without any wind.

“R-really? A ghost?” The middle-aged woman rubbed her arms, taking a few steps back with a terrified expression.

The old woman on the bed suddenly opened her eyes, her cloudy eyes emitting a eerie green light. Like a monkey, she suddenly leaped up.

The old woman was only wearing an undershirt, revealing her shriveled and sagging breasts. She had a diaper on her lower body.

Her body was twisted grotesquely as she squatted on the kang (a brick bed-platform that is heated from below, common in northern China), pursing her lips and cackling wickedly. “Heh heh… little girl, mind your own business! Heh heh… this is a karmic debt between me and this family…”

The couple was dumbfounded, stammering, “W-who are you? Why are you haunting my mom!”

“Heh heh… I’m not just going to haunt your mom, but also… haunt your daughter, your wife… and finally you… heh heh… heh heh…” The female ghost, using the old woman’s body, issued a venomous warning in a voice like a broken bellows.

“She’s dying soon, this old woman is going to die soon… Heh heh…”

Clutching the talisman paper, I trembled, feeling a little faint, and said, “Y-you, get out of her body now! Otherwise, otherwise, I won’t be polite!”

The ghost inside the old woman wasn’t afraid of me at all. She could clearly sense that I lacked the necessary presence.

“You think a little, incompetent fashi (Taoist priest/master) like you can take me away?”

She moved back and forth on the kang using all fours. Because the old woman’s legs were different lengths, her movements were particularly grotesque and awkward.

I didn’t dare to approach rashly, attempting to negotiate with her. “Are you the owner of the jade bracelet?”

The old woman, who had been moving, suddenly stopped, tilting her head to look at me.

Looks like I guessed right, so I continued to ask: “They stole your bracelet. Did you come to take back your belonging?”

“How did you die?”

The middle-aged woman stubbornly shouted, “Xiaomai, what nonsense are you talking about! My husband bought this bracelet for eight thousand! How could it be stolen!”

I turned my head to expose her lie. “Auntie, that bracelet is an icy jadeite with floating flowers. Its market value is at least hundreds of thousands.”

The middle-aged woman was about to argue when the old woman suddenly bared her teeth rabidly, revealing a sparse set of yellow teeth, and roared, “My thing, this is my bracelet… It hurts, it hurts so much!”

The female ghost, controlling the old woman’s movements, forcefully clawed at her own flesh. “My body was crushed, my hands, my legs, and… and my head! Ahhhh!”

She was nearly insane, viciously tearing at the old woman’s body, as if trying to dismantle every joint.

“Hey! Don’t hurt her!”

Worried that the old woman’s body couldn’t handle it, I bit the bullet and threw a talisman paper at her, but it floated lightly and landed on the kang.

My action seemed to be a provocation, enraging the frantic female ghost. Immediately, she pounced towards us.

“This man took my jade bracelet! My husband bought it for me! Ahhh! They won’t give it back to me…”

The couple screamed repeatedly, retreating to the outer room.

In a hurry, I frantically tried to prick my finger with a needle, but as the old woman was about to pounce on me, the blood hadn’t even welled up yet.

A gust of wind swept past me. Suddenly, the tip of my nose touched someone’s back. The old woman, who had jumped up, was thrown back onto the kang by a burst of energy.

I gasped for breath, slowly regaining my senses, and realized it was Wen Ye.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t thrilled, but still holding onto my anger, I suppressed the urge to speak, walked around him, and pressed a bead of blood from my index finger between the old woman’s eyebrows.

“Get out of her body!”

The old woman curled up in pain, screaming in agony. “It’s burning me, it’s burning me! I won’t come out… I want this old woman to come down with me… Wearing my bracelet, you shall be… Ahhhh…”

Before she could finish, I pressed the blood on her face again.

The old woman suddenly raised her head, extending her withered claws, like the White Bone Demon from Journey to the West, baring her teeth, wanting to pounce again.

The old woman’s body suddenly stiffened. I felt a cold aura rush towards me, like icy snowflakes hitting my face.

In an instant, my mind realized that the ghost within the old woman’s body had come out. She wanted to possess me or harm me.

Wen Ye forcefully grabbed my arm, pulling me back, shoving me behind him.

He formed a hand seal, and the talisman paper that had fallen on the kang flew up, slapping against empty space with a pop.

I couldn’t see the ghost, but I could hear a shrill scream and the talisman paper burning spontaneously without fire.

It curled up little by little, turning into ashes.

Panting heavily, I asked myself, “Is it… over?”

After a moment of silence, he turned his face slightly, mocking coldly, “Le Xiaomai, aren’t you very capable? You don’t know if it’s over?”

I didn’t know why, but I suddenly felt very wronged. My nose tingled, and I turned my head, ignoring him, stepping out of the small side room.

The couple hurriedly asked me if it was resolved. I said unhappily: “If you want to eliminate future troubles, return what does not belong to you. What is not yours will never be yours. When a great fortune falls from the sky, think about whether you have the fate to bear it.”

These words were for this greedy couple, and also for my own warning.

You were originally just an employment and partnership, and you could break up at any time. Le Xiaomai, play the spirit of teammate and nanny. What are you competing with yourself and small animals for?

The middle-aged uncle hurriedly said that the bracelet was picked up on the road, explaining a lot to me.

Through what he and the ghost said, it was not difficult to sort out the cause and effect.

The old woman liked to compare herself with others. Last year on her birthday, she insisted that her son buy her a jade bracelet, saying that someone had one.

The middle-aged woman usually had a bad relationship with the old woman, and quarreled with the old woman because of this matter. The man was caught in the middle of his mother and daughter-in-law and felt very uncomfortable. He was prepared to secretly spend money to buy a cheap one to make the old woman happy.

As a result, he picked up a bracelet on the road with only a little blood on it. He didn’t expect it to have fallen from someone who died in a car accident.

The middle-aged uncle didn’t know jade, so he lied to the old woman that it was bought for eight thousand yuan. The old woman wore it happily and showed it off everywhere.

After the middle-aged woman found out, she came back to question her uncle, who then said that he had picked it up on the road.

The middle-aged woman didn’t believe it at first, so she secretly took many photos of the bracelet, and the online appraisals gave an estimated price of more than 100,000.

From that day on, the middle-aged woman had been trying to trick the old woman into taking off the bracelet.

The old woman was an astute person. When she saw that her daughter-in-law cared so much about the bracelet, she thought that she didn’t want her son to spend money on her or something, so she was even more angry and refused to take it off.

I guessed that the old woman broke her hip bone because of the bracelet owner.

Fortunately, the middle-aged woman didn’t wear it, otherwise their whole family would have to be involved.

“Xiaomai, I’ll have my mother take off the bracelet right away. What do you think we should do with it? I really didn’t know it fell from a dead person…” The middle-aged uncle scratched his sparse hair in frustration.

Wen Ye handed over a business card, saying indifferently, “If you really want to deal with it, call the number on it. Someone will tell you what to do.”

“Le Xiaomai, let’s go home.” He gave me a dashing back view.

The middle-aged woman asked, “Xiaomai, my mother-in-law, she…”

I shrugged. “Go to my drugstore to get two doses of medicine to help Yang-qi (positive energy), as for how you usually want to take care of her, just do it, anyway, she is not my old lady… I won’t tell you your family affairs, auntie, uncle, I’m going home first.”

Without waiting for the couple to say anything, I trotted out.

Phew– fortunately, this guy was standing under the street light waiting for me, not gone.

The sour mood just now was calmed by the evening breeze and the chirping of insects. I cursed myself for not being firm in my position. He just said let’s go home, and I trotted over happily.

Following behind him on the road home, the road was quiet and long.

Today was our first fight, it should be a fight, right? Maybe only I thought so.

I took a shower in the small bathroom in the west wing and cleaned myself up.

We lay on the bed, back to back.

I struggled for a long time, let out a breath, resignedly closed my eyes, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

It was impossible for him, such a proud and aloof fox spirit, to apologize actively.

Okay, I surrender…