Chapter 150 Reincarnation

The old Daoist vomited beside them, everything he had just eaten coming back up. It was a miserable sight, a pool of red, white, and yellow on the ground, a riot of colors, like a sauce shop had opened.

Tears welled up in the old Daoist’s eyes, filled with regret and hatred. How could he be so unlucky?

He had been so careful, so cautious, thinking he had avoided one pitfall, only to foolishly jump into an even bigger and deeper one,

All while shouting:

“So ethereal!”

“Leave her body and come with me.”

Zhou Ze urged him; he was the last one. Sending him back to hell would allow Zhou Ze to become a full-fledged employee.

Perhaps this was a case of searching high and low only to find what he needed right under his nose. He had been busy at the school, even uncovering a so-called past-life debt, yet he hadn’t caught a single real ghost. Then, on the way back, he had found him (or her).

The woman drooped her head, as if resigned to her fate, but she still spoke:

“I want to stay with her a little longer. She wants to too. We can still meet in our dreams every night, and I can see my three children.”

Zhou Ze was unmoved. Every dead person had their own attachments to the living world. It was a characteristic of all intelligent life forms, a primal instinct to survive that drove them to seize any opportunity to linger.

Even Zhou Ze himself was the same, but understanding was one thing; rules were another.

Moreover, this husband’s soul had been staying in the woman’s body. The woman's body would soon break down and develop problems. In the end, it would only hurt her and himself.

“Bang!”

Suddenly, the woman pushed the stall in front of her away, sending all the steamers tumbling toward Zhou Ze. Then, she turned and ran, wanting to escape, not wanting to be caught.

Zhou Ze pushed the steamers away, his fingertip nails lightly scratching forward. A black mist, invisible to ordinary people, was released, directly entangling the woman.

The woman grunted and fell to the ground.

Zhou Ze took a few steps forward, came to the woman, knelt down, and placed his hand on her forehead. Immediately afterward, a wisp of black soul was pulled out by Zhou Ze.

It was the face of a man, struggling and roaring furiously, full of intense unwillingness and hysteria.

“She wants to! She wants to be with me! She told me in her dreams at night, we want to raise the children together! She wants to!”

The man argued for himself, then glared at Zhou Ze:

“She wants to! Why are you meddling!”

“I need the points.”

“…” The man was speechless.

Zhou Ze spoke the truth. Ultimately, he needed the points, and he was only one point short. He had been waiting for days, so he could only take you back to complete his assignment and become a full employee.

The man was stunned for a moment. Zhou Ze's frank admission that he was doing it for personal gain left him unable to refute. Because he knew that no matter how much he argued, it would not soften the other party's heart.

“Let me go home and see my three children one last time.”

The man pleaded,

“I promise, I won’t leave or run away this time.”

“You’re not in a position to negotiate with me, and I’m not doing a TV show.”

“There’s… another… ghost… in my house!”

“Alright then, it’s only right to let you go home and see them one last time before you leave. There’s always room for humanity outside the law, right?”

The old Daoist, who had just finished vomiting, suddenly felt like throwing up again.

But he held back.

He didn’t dare.

The woman woke up, but she was a bit groggy. The old Daoist helped her back home; being possessed by a ghost, even if it was her husband, was still detrimental to her body and spirit.

Following the male ghost’s directions, Zhou Ze began to walk toward his home.

The old Daoist couldn’t stand being idle. Although he had made fun of her “big steamed buns” earlier, he wouldn’t stoop so low as to take advantage of her situation. She had already suffered enough, and he couldn’t do such a beastly thing. So, he simply started chatting with the male ghost:

“Hey, buddy, where are you from? Your wife doesn’t have a local accent.”

Tongcheng dialect was easy to recognize; it was highly distinctive because it was basically on a different frequency than Mandarin. Some dialects, however, were too similar to Mandarin, so locals would inadvertently carry the flavor of their dialect when speaking Mandarin.

“Sichuan,” the man replied.

At this point, he had thought things through and felt somewhat relieved, mainly because Zhou Ze’s attitude was so different from the compassionate Daoists and monks he had seen on TV.

“How did you die?” the old Daoist asked again.

“Died of pleasure.”

“How did you die of pleasure?” the old Daoist pressed on.

“Drug… overdose.”

“Uh…” The old Daoist suddenly became interested, asking like a curious child: “What does it feel like to take that stuff?”

Zhou Ze glanced at the old Daoist, who stuck out his tongue and dared not say another word.

“Heh, of course it feels good…” the male ghost replied.

“So good you became a ghost and squandered your family’s fortune?” Zhou Ze added.

As a doctor in his previous life, Zhou Ze knew how terrible that stuff was for the human body. Ordinary people only knew that it was addictive and would drain their wealth, but in reality, many of the damages it caused were irreversible.

“That’s right, look at the state you’re in. Your wife works so hard to raise the children, and you just died happy.”

The old Daoist immediately understood Zhou Ze’s spirit and started echoing.

“Heh.” The man snorted. “The stuff the rich people here take is nothing. Who knows how much garbage is mixed in. Where I’m from…”

“Bullshit. If you made so much money, how come your wife and kids are in such a miserable state now?” The old Daoist didn’t believe him.

The male ghost seemed to be arguing with the old Daoist, saying directly, “Heh, call me a turtle if I’m lying. I used to be rich, richer than you can imagine.”

“After earning your first pot of gold, did you keep transporting?” Zhou Ze asked.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I? Can opening a factory or a workshop, or running a transport business make as much money as transporting that stuff? It’s a sure profit. Who would open a crappy factory? You can’t even get your money back in three years; it’s just not worth it.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” The old Daoist smacked his lips.

Actually, the old Daoist had seen a lot of people like this.

This male ghost was probably a poor farmer who risked everything to transport that stuff, made his first fortune, and turned his life around. But that addictive taste was hard to give up. If you asked him to open a factory, start a business, and live an honest life, he wouldn’t be able to do it because his values and views on money had completely collapsed.

It was like a lot of prostitutes or gamblers. For a prostitute, she could easily earn tens of thousands of yuan a month. For a gambler, the next bet could be thousands or tens of thousands. After their values on money were impacted by this, asking them to work honestly in a factory for three or four thousand yuan a month would seem pointless to them.

Then,

They’d be ruined.

It would be hard to start over and live a good life.

Why do so many people who are determined to retire from the game return to it before long?

Because they just can’t live the life of a normal, ordinary person.

“Then, since you say everyone in that village does it, you should know that taking that stuff is harmful to your health, right? Why did you still take it?” The old Daoist asked, puzzled.

“When everyone in the village is doing it, you don’t think much of it; it’s the environment,” the man said wistfully. “It’s like when your dad, your uncle, your brother, and your coworkers all smoke. Even if ‘smoking is harmful to your health’ is printed on the cigarette box, you won’t think it’s a big deal.

“Anyway, everyone is doing it.”

The old Daoist nodded thoughtfully.

Then, the old Daoist asked, “What about your money? Did you use it all up before you died?”

“I left a lot of money,” the man said. “I didn’t let my family down; I didn’t let my wife and kids down.”

“Heh.” The old Daoist smiled.

This family lived in a… garage apartment in a small community. The ground floor was originally someone’s garage, but it had been converted into a one-bedroom apartment for rent.

The woman was helped into the house, where three children were staring wide-eyed at Zhou Ze, the old Daoist, and their mother.

Two boys and a girl, all probably of elementary school age. One of them even had a red scarf tied around his neck.

The children’s clothes were a bit old, but their faces were clean, and they were in good spirits. Although their living conditions weren’t good, their mother must have taken good care of them.

But no matter how you looked at it, this family didn’t seem to be living the life of someone who had left behind a large sum of money after his death, as the man had claimed.

“Hey, didn’t you make a lot of money? How come your wife and kids ended up in Tongcheng, living here?” the old Daoist asked.

“She wanted to bring the kids here; she didn’t want to stay in the old village,” the man replied.

At this moment, Zhou Ze spoke, “Where’s the other ghost?”

Boss Zhou always believed in the more, the better when it came to points; he really wasn’t interested in emotional counseling or charity.

The male ghost’s eyes looked toward a curtain in the corner.

Zhou Ze walked over

and pulled the curtain aside.

Behind the curtain was a small plastic bathtub. A young man was squatting in the tub, shivering. There was a bright red spot on his chest that was very eye-catching.

“He’s my son. After I died, he used the money I left at home to start using, and then when the money ran out, he followed my old path and became a dealer to support his habit.

“He was unlucky and got caught.

“It was too much,

“So he was sent to Rongcheng

“and executed.”