Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Two days ago, a father and son came to see me.

The father’s name was Yang Hong, and his son was Yang Yan.

The moment Yang Hong dragged his son up to me, I could tell the young man was in a daze.

“My son has lost his soul. He went out with some friends for a trip, and when he came back, he was like this.”

Yang Hong’s face was full of urgency. “The expert I found said that once seven days pass, my son’s soul will never come back. I asked around through a lot of people, and they all said you’re the only one who can help me with this.”

To be honest, I’m not exactly a professional. I used to be a long-haul truck driver.

It was just that I was born with a tough fate, and I look fierce besides. Back when I drove freight, I often took jobs doing Chongsha.

Chongsha meant driving new routes that other drivers wouldn’t take. On those roads, you’d run into strange things every so often. After seeing enough of them, you stopped being surprised.

Later, the logistics company I ran went under.

To pay off my debts as quickly as possible, I took any odd job I could get.

Gradually, all kinds of bizarre, shadowy business started finding its way to me.

I was never afraid of things that couldn’t stand the light of day. If I could make money and help someone out of trouble at the same time, I naturally had no reason to refuse.

Yang Hong offered a generous fee. The deposit alone was thirty thousand, and if it worked, he’d double it.

It was just that what he wanted me to do was a little strange.

He wanted me to haul a truckload of paper funeral offerings and take him and his son to a small village at the foot of South Camel Peak.

South Camel Peak wasn’t far from where we were. It would only take a little over half a day to get there.

But as I remembered it, most of the villages near South Camel Peak had long since been abandoned.

The paper offerings Yang Hong prepared didn’t look like normal funeral goods, either.

There were no paper servant boys or girls. Instead, there was a middle-aged couple, each with a big red flower tied to their chest.

There were no paper cars or paper horses. Instead, there was a bright red bridal sedan chair made of paper, along with four sedan bearers.

The rest included mule carts, dowry chests, washbasins, cotton quilts…

Rather than things meant to be burned for the dead, it looked more like a dowry prepared for a daughter.

After I pressed him again and again, Yang Hong finally explained why he had prepared all this once he got in the truck.

Before this, Yang Yan had gone to South Camel Peak with a few classmates and spent the night in a deserted village nearby.

When he came home the next day, he was muddleheaded and out of it.

The expert Yang Hong found told him that a female ghost in the mountains had lured Yang Yan’s soul away.

If he wanted to exchange it back, Yang Hong had to prepare a fake wedding and burn Yang Yan’s clothes together with a substitute paper effigy as the groom.

The paper goods loaded on my truck were the things Yang Hong had prepared for that female ghost, hoping she would be satisfied with the wedding and let him save his son.

I glanced back at Yang Yan. He hadn’t said a word the whole time, his head hanging low, looking as if he hadn’t woken up yet.

Yang Hong remained anxious, urging me to get on the road as soon as possible.

Trying to ease the atmosphere, I started the truck and joked, “If this is supposed to be a wedding, why did you only prepare the dowry and not the betrothal gifts?”

Yang Hong froze for a moment, then tugged at the corner of his mouth and said, “Didn’t I bring several bags of paper money and gold ingots? What betrothal gift is more practical than money?”