A sleek and modern office.
Bright incandescent lights, professional desktop computers.
Corporate elites in sharp suits and leather shoes.
Yet here they were, in the dimly lit stairwell, burning funeral goods piece by piece.
Practicing superstition right out in the open.
With modern craftsmanship being so advanced, the paper clothes and paper houses made for the dead were extraordinarily exquisite—almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
Especially that lifelike pair of paper figures—a man in red and a woman in green with bright red rouged cheeks. Even though their eyes hadn't been dotted in, their paper craft was remarkably vivid.
One of the coworkers rubbed their arms and grimaced:
“Hsss... Why does this look so creepy to me?”
Someone immediately chimed in:
“Right? I can't shake the feeling that this stairwell is terribly eerie and chilling.”
Nan Zhi really didn't want to burst her coworkers' bubble.
The stairwell never saw the sun year-round, and the seventeenth floor blasted the air conditioning, which was why it was always this cold.
It didn't have much to do with ghosts...
The crowd chattered away with all sorts of remarks.
There weren't just people from Nan Zhi's office in the stairwell; onlookers from other floors had gathered too.
“No wonder they hired a master to hold a ritual!”
“I heard that the one haunting this place is that programmer who fell from the rooftop on the twenty-seventh floor. Back when he died, didn't he land right on the billboard outside the seventeenth floor? His arms snapped, and he was nearly broken in two. When the firefighters arrived, his body was... only then brought down from there.”
“Wait, doing this so openly inside the building... nobody said anything? Property management isn't doing anything about it?”
“How could property management stop it? They just claim they invited someone to check the feng shui without saying it outright. What, are you going to call the cops?”
“Hasn't it been going on for months already? People say that when working overtime, they often hear someone tapping on the glass, and the printer starts making copies by itself. If you work overtime alone, you can even hear someone else typing on a keyboard...”
“Stop, stop, that sounds way too creepy.”
“The folks at this company were scared half to death. A lot of them claimed they saw a ghost, sending everyone into a panic. They probably had no choice left, which is why they called in a master.”
“Will it work? Didn't they already invite someone over before? This is all just a scam for money, isn't it?”
In truth, rumors about the seventeenth floor being haunted had spread throughout the building long ago.
However, people had only gossiped in private and treated it like campfire stories; nobody except the advertising company took it seriously.
Yet this time, the advertising company had brought in a master to perform an exorcism, effectively confirming the rumors and making it as real as it could get.
“These are all offerings burned for you... Take them and stop bothering us... Ascend quickly to the Western Paradise, reincarnate into your next life as soon as possible...”
The advertising company manager muttered with a stiff face as he burned the items, his movements so clumsy that he nearly scorched the leather shoes on his feet.
From the look of it, this was his first time doing something like this as well.
“Manager Huang, once you're almost done burning those, we can begin.”
An elderly man with white hair, clad in a traditional Tang suit, was escorted out like a star surrounded by the moon.
This must be the “master.”
Nan Zhi craned her neck, finally getting a clear look at what this master looked like.
With crane-white hair and weathered skin, he had a brisk stride and sported a silver-white beard on his chin. Though clearly advanced in age, he was hale and hearty, his sharp eyes piercing like hooks.
The old man wasn't dressed like those in movies, wearing yellow Taoist robes with a Bagua on his back.
It was just an ordinary Tang suit, trousers, and a pair of rather simple cloth shoes.
—All in all, a very convincing look.
Behind the old man followed a young girl, roughly high school age, with two long braids and wearing the school uniform of the city's No. 1 Middle School.
Judging by their ages, the two were likely grandfather and granddaughter.
“Master He, everything you instructed me to burn is almost finished. What else do you need?”
Manager Huang hurried to his feet and said respectfully:
“Are there too many people around? Should we clear the area?”
“No need.”
The old man glanced at the burned paper ingots, nodded knowingly, and swept his hawk-like gaze across the crowd:
“A large crowd is fine. More people mean stronger human vitality. Borrowing this vitality will make things easier for me and save some energy in a moment.”
With that, Master He put his hands behind his back and addressed the crowd of onlookers:
“Those born in the Year of the Rooster, Ox, or Pig must step away. Those with weak horoscopes, the sick, and pregnant women must step away as well. Do not watch spectacles you shouldn't be watching, lest you accidentally bring trouble upon yourselves. When that time comes and harm is done to you or others, no amount of regret will help.”
Having said that, Master He strode out of the stairwell with steady steps in his cloth shoes, unconcerned with how the crowd reacted.
He truly carried the air of an expert.
I wonder what his strength would translate to in terms of cultivation realm.
Nan Zhi stroked her chin.
Hearing this, the crowd stirred with unease.
A few who met those conditions were reluctant to leave, but their companions eventually dragged them away.
After all, with matters like this, it was better to believe it than not.
To take a step back, even if nothing went wrong today, who could guarantee that slipping on a banana peel, delivering the wrong document, getting stuck in traffic, or a child falling over in the future wouldn't be related to this?
Gawking at drama was fun, but life was far more precious.
Before long, more than half the people on the seventeenth floor had left.
Those who stayed were either recording videos or craning their necks to watch the excitement, wishing they could get even closer to see better.
Nan Zhi and Zhang Qiuyu were standing near the front, so they had the clearest view.
Near the advertising company's windows, two desks had been moved aside to clear a large open space.
In the cleared area sat a table covered with a red cloth, on which a jumble of items was laid out:
A white porcelain bowl filled with rice, a large rooster with its legs tied and eyes blindfolded, a thick stack of yellow talisman paper covered in incantations, and a small copper coin sword.
The offerings were rather peculiar as well: a bowl of tofu, a bowl of cilantro, a bowl of raw eggs, and three bowls of clear water.
The most peculiar item was a willow broom tied with red cloth, which wasn't stood upright, but hidden beneath the table.
Just looking at these items gave Manager Huang a surge of confidence.
Even though he had spent days preparing these things—running himself ragged just trying to find a rooster that was at least three years old—
this had only deepened his trust in Master He.
If this master had started chanting incantations and doing a shamanic dance to drive out evil right off the bat, Manager Huang would have considered him a charlatan instead.
“Um, Master, should we check the compass, calculate an auspicious time, or something?”
Manager Huang asked cautiously, “If it's no trouble, let's hurry and wrap this up early so it won't delay work this afternoon.”
Master He strolled over to the long table, picked up a pinch of rice from the bowl to sniff it, and then nodded:
“Let us begin, then.”
...
The way this Master He performed the ritual was rather different from what Nan Zhi had imagined.
She had thought he would act like in old Hong Kong movies—first brandishing a peach wood sword, treading the Seven Star steps, then burning yellow paper and scattering white rice to force Chen Ping's ghost to reveal itself.
Instead, Master He merely stood before the table, lit incense sticks, and burned paper money sheet by sheet over the bowl of clear water.
How was this any different from what Manager Huang was doing just now?
Nan Zhi furrowed her brow.
Suddenly, her expression shifted subtly, and she discreetly clenched her fists.
Chen Ping was here.
It was just past twelve-thirty, near the peak of the day when the sun was at its fiercest.
Yet outside the seventeenth-floor window, a pitch-black mist suddenly materialized.
Bit by bit, the mist coalesced into a mangled human shape, crawling slowly in through the open window before squatting atop the altar table and ravenously devouring the raw eggs in the bowl.
Nan Zhi blinked in mild surprise.
This Master He... actually had some real skill.
Rate on N.U.
