Chapter 141
Chapter 141
The girl before me was clearly already a corpse.
A corpse… had come knocking to demand her own eyes back?
The threshold of the Southern Study wasn’t very high. Judging by the transactions I’d completed so far, most of my business involved Yin Pawn deals.
If the threshold were too high, these Yin Objects wouldn’t even be able to get inside. How was I supposed to do business with them then?
The girl rose onto her toes and hopped several times outside the low threshold, yet somehow failed to cross it.
She was jumping more than high enough. It wasn’t that she couldn’t get in — she seemed to be afraid of something.
Standing outside the threshold, she shouted at me, “My Buddha Eyes! Give me back my Buddha Eyes!”
Something wasn’t right.
When the girl had gouged out both her eyes and offered them to me as a Dead Pawn, she’d said she would return in a few days for the Lamp Oil. She had never said anything about coming back for the eyes.
I might not have wanted to go through with this deal, but under the circumstances, there was no way I could hand those eyes directly to the corpse standing before me.
There was clearly something wrong here.
At that thought, I steadied myself and cleared my throat. “A few days ago, you came to my Pawnshop and offered those eyes to me as a Dead Pawn. According to the rules of the Wufu Town Pawnshop, once an item is accepted as a Dead Pawn, the deal is final. Those eyes belong to me now. I have no reason to return them to you.”
“Give me back my Buddha Eyes!”
The female corpse suddenly flew into hysterics, screaming at us over and over as if she wanted nothing more than to tear us apart and devour us alive.
Yet she never once entered the Pawnshop. Her sharp nails raked ceaselessly across the doorframe, leaving deep gouges behind.
The silver ornaments covering her body jingled with every movement. Her entire face twisted into a hideous snarl, blue veins bulging beneath her skin as though her very tendons and blood vessels were writhing.
This continued for some time. Just as dawn approached and the roosters were about to crow, she abruptly turned around and rapidly hopped away on tiptoe.
Li Qingying and I exchanged a glance. The same sentiment was written plainly in both our eyes: utterly speechless.
This entire transaction made no sense.
Before either of us could recover from what had just happened, a figure silently slipped inside, startling us all over again.
It was… the same girl from before.
This time, however, she had not come as a corpse, but in soul form.
She had rushed here in such a panic that her entire soul form flickered unsteadily.
Hurrying to the counter, she said, “Shopkeeper, I’m here to collect the Lamp Oil. Hurry!”
“Wait, I never agreed to accept your transaction in the first place…”
I stopped dead mid-sentence.
Even though I already realized that accepting this transaction would bring me endless trouble, I no longer had a choice.
The girl was no longer human. She had become one of the Souls.
The Yang Pawn from a few days ago had now become a Yin Pawn.
When a Yin Pawn came seeking something, it could not be refused.
In other words, I had no choice but to accept those Buddha Eyes.
The girl was frantic. She kept glancing over her shoulder, though I couldn’t tell whether she was afraid of being caught or afraid the roosters would start crowing. All the while, she urged me to hurry and give her the Lamp Oil.
I pulled a Pawn Ticket from the drawer, quickly filled it out, and handed it to the girl to sign and mark with her fingerprint.
She took the brush and swiftly wrote the name “Gu Die” on the signature line before pressing down her fingerprint.
In her anxiety, tears of blood streamed continuously from her empty eye sockets. They weren’t real tears, of course; the moment they struck the counter, they vanished.
“Shopkeeper, please… please help me cross over.”
She crossed her hands before her chest and bowed to me reverently.
Realization dawned on me. She had done all this because she wanted a single drop of Lamp Oil from me to guide her into reincarnation.
The Pawn Ticket came in duplicate. I kept one copy for the records and handed the other to Gu Die, then ran to the veranda and took down the Hexagonal Palace Lantern.
But I had no idea how to get the Lamp Oil out.
The girl explained, “There should be a cover. Take it off, then collect the oil bare-handed.”
B-Bare-handed?
She wanted me to reach inside and scoop out a drop of Lamp Oil with my bare hand?
There was no time to waste. Gu Die’s Souls were growing fainter by the moment and could disperse completely at any time.
From what I had observed over the past few days, Gu Die probably wasn’t a bad person. Rather, someone wicked was trying to capture her and take her pair of Buddha Eyes.
She had resorted to this desperate measure to protect the Buddha Eyes.
She had traded her life for this one chance at a Dead Pawn, hiding the Buddha Eyes in our Pawnshop.
Her corpse was already under their control. I had every reason to believe that if I didn’t help her cross over, her Souls would never enter the Underworld on their own. Whoever was after her must have had some way to imprison her Souls as well.
Helping her cross over would count as an act of Merit, wouldn’t it?
I searched around and quickly found a way to lift the top off the Hexagonal Palace Lantern.
The moment the cover came off, a terrifying, bone-chilling aura poured out. Before I even reached inside, my hand already felt as if it were about to freeze solid.
Gritting my teeth, I thrust my right hand in.
Instantly, it felt as if I had plunged my hand into a block of ice in the dead of winter. Every inch I forced it lower was excruciatingly difficult.
The lantern’s chamber wasn’t very large, and there was only a shallow pool of Lamp Oil at the bottom.
The instant the tip of my index finger touched the Lamp Oil, it felt as if my entire finger had frozen solid. After a burst of cold that stabbed straight into the bone, it went completely numb.
Fortunately, a single drop of ghostly green Lamp Oil had gathered on my fingertip, clinging firmly to it. Gripping my right wrist with my left hand, I pulled my right hand out of the lantern’s chamber.
As I dragged my hand out of the Hexagonal Palace Lantern, darkness pulsed across my vision again and again. My left hand was the one doing all the work, so why did I feel as though my vital essence were being sucked dry? It felt like I could collapse at any moment.
“It’s out!” Gu Die exclaimed excitedly. “Quick, Shopkeeper! Dab the Lamp Oil onto the center of my forehead.”
Once my right hand was clear of the chamber, feeling quickly returned to it.
I pressed the tip of my index finger to Gu Die’s forehead, and the drop of Lamp Oil instantly sank into her spiritual form.
A Yin Wind rose out of nowhere. A vortex suddenly appeared behind Gu Die, dark energy continuously gathering within it until it slowly formed a pitch-black door.
The sound of iron chains dragging across the ground seemed to come from beyond the door.
The scene bore an uncanny resemblance to the last time I had summoned Black and White Impermanence to put Old Lady Bai in chains.
This time, however, Black and White Impermanence did not emerge from the door. Instead, a powerful suction surged out and caught Gu Die’s Souls in its grip.
Gu Die bowed deeply to me. “Thank you, Shopkeeper.”
As she was sucked into the black door within the vortex, she added one last thing.
“I’m sorry…”
Cock-a-doodle-doo…
As the vortex vanished, the crow of a rooster sounded in the distance.
Everything was finally over.
Standing on tiptoe, I looked up and hung the Hexagonal Palace Lantern back in place.
The instant I lowered my head, the world spun around me. I staggered twice and reached for a nearby pillar to steady myself, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t grasp it. My entire body pitched toward the floor.
Li Qingying reacted instantly and caught me. “Xiao Jiu, what’s wrong?”
The sky spun and the ground swayed. Li Qingying’s face multiplied and overlapped before my eyes.
She seemed to keep calling my name and saying something to me, but my ears were buzzing so loudly that I couldn’t make out a word.
Just before I blacked out completely, I thought I heard Liu Junyan’s voice.
“Xiao Jiu, Xiao Jiu…”