Guai Dao Hu Zong Ren

  At first, I didn't understand what Hu Zongren meant by saying that. But soon I realized that this kid must be angry about Director Wang's condescending attitude and wanted to get back at him. When Director Wang heard Hu Zongren say that, his face immediately turned ugly. It's really laughable, in front of me and Hu Zongren, who are you putting on airs for?

  Director Wang said, "Young people, don't think making money is that easy. The school has already made its attitude very clear. We can still afford this little bit of money, and we don't need you to produce some very professional results. Just do a perfunctory job and the money will be yours. Don't be too greedy, or you'll know that we can easily find someone else who's more capable."

  Hu Zongren smiled and said, "Alright, Director Wang, my companion and I will go take a look later. If it's really as clean as you say your school is, I'll immediately agree to perform for Teacher Ma without taking a single cent from you. But if there's really something unclean that we can't handle, I'll give you double the money instead. However, if we do find something and manage to clean it up, and prove it to you, but you still refuse to pay me this small amount of money, wouldn't that be stingy? Your office is so big, with a national flag placed right next to you, yet you're not willing to spend even this little bit of money. Where's your sincerity in running the school?"

  Hu Zongren is like that, usually his mouth can't say anything eloquent, but once he's stimulated to a certain point and forced to urgently prove something, his brain works faster than mine.

  Director Wang said sternly, "How can that be? We're already being taken advantage of this time. You're taking advantage of us and I won't agree to it." Hu Zongren started to get annoyed, his face turning ugly. He glared at Director Wang and said, "You mean we're swindlers? We came to cheat you out of this little money?" Director Wang didn't respond, just drank tea. I reached out and pressed down on Hu Zongren's shoulder, signaling him not to lose his temper, to wait until the matter was settled before we humiliated this ignorant fatso. Hu Zongren finally calmed down. I glanced at Director Wang, who had no idea that his nose had just narrowly escaped a beating. When Hu Zongren and I fight, we usually aim for the nose first. This is something I'm familiar with.

  Hu Zongren took a deep breath, reached into his clothes and pulled out his Bagua rice bag. The bag was specially made by Xing Ya Zi in his early years, also known as the Linglong Bagua Bag. From the back, it looked like an ordinary sack for carrying rice, old and dirty, but on the front, there was a pattern of yin-yang and a taiji symbol. It was called the Eight Trigrams because when opened, it formed a circular mouth, representing the separation of yin and yang. Anything that entered this bag would have no intersection with the world outside. Inside, there were eight trigram positions, each with a small pocket sewn on, like the front chest pockets on a vest. Each small pocket had a corresponding trigram position. According to the rules of the Yao Shan Dao method, after Hu Zongren collected ghosts, he would inevitably encounter situations where the evil energy was too heavy and could not be pacified. In such cases, he would collect the souls and put them in the bag, allowing the ghost itself to choose the most corresponding trigram position based on its own familiarity. Every three days, he would switch to a different small pocket, cycling through all eight pockets, known as "one week of heaven". This "week of heaven" was not referring to the human body's meridians, but had some relation to it. In short, after this "week of heaven", the evil energy would be eliminated, and the ghost could be pacified.

  So, Hu Zongren's bag often had ghosts in it, which I've always known. So when he took out the bag, I knew what this kid was up to, and I smiled with my hands clasped together, ready to watch a good show. Sure enough, Hu Zongren said to Director Wang, "Director Wang, you don't believe in these things, do you? I have an old bag here that has a male ghost inside, who died from a drug overdose and had many hallucinations before he died. I happened to run into him and caught him, and it's only been a week, but the evil energy is almost gone. Am I right in saying that you don't believe me either?

  Director Wang smiled and shook his head, looking like he was listening to nonsense. Hu Zongren continued to smile, then opened the bag, pinched his fingers together, and made a few gestures towards the opening of the bag. Then he let out a breath and said to Director Wang, "Director, I really like your tie, can you take it off and give it to me?"

  Director Wang seemed a bit unhappy. He probably found out that Hu Zongren was fooling him. So he said coldly, "Young man, what do you want to do today?"

  Before I could finish speaking, I saw Director Wang's tie suddenly change direction and fly towards his back. Director Wang also appeared to be shocked, with something constricting his neck, making it hard for him to breathe. The tie was pulled taut, as if someone was standing behind Director Wang, stretching out their hand to pull his tie backwards with force. This really scared Director Wang, I reckon he believed it now, even if he didn't want to, and started to get a little afraid of Hu Zongren. So I took out my compass and walked up to Director Wang with a smile, holding the dial close to him, making sure he could see the frantic spinning of the needle even if his brain was oxygen-deprived at that moment. I said, "Director, do you see? This is what you didn't believe in."

  Hu Zongren stood up with the bag and walked to Director Wang's back, covering it like a bed sheet, which meant that the ghost was caught. Director Wang also breathed a sigh of relief, coughing, looking at me and Hu Zongren with a terrified expression. At this moment, he should be very regretful for closing the office door after letting us in.

  Hu Zongren still smiled awkwardly and said to Director Wang, "Alright then, double pay."

  Although I personally don't agree with Hu Zongren's rough approach, the fact is that it also depends on the person. When encountering this type of customer, even if you're not making any money, you can't lose face.

  Director Wang finally agreed to Hu Zongren's request, although I think he was forced to. But I know that at this moment, he has refreshed his worldview to some extent and started to believe in it a bit. It was already after 4 pm, and the students would soon be dismissed for dinner. The evening self-study session would return to the classroom later, so we discussed with Director Wang and said that after all the students left, we would go check that classroom again.

  It was almost time for class to end, and Director Wang led us downstairs, across the playground, and into that teaching building. The building looked quite new and should have been built not long ago. I vaguely remembered when I was a kid, being mischievous and sneaking into this school, but my purpose was just to bully a certain little friend. At that time, there wasn't this teaching building yet, the old building looked like it would collapse at any moment. Director Wang told us on the way that the classroom where the incident happened was on the second floor, and there were five classrooms on this floor, we had to go up the stairs to the second one.

  This is already the nth time I've walked back into the classroom for different reasons after leaving school. It's definitely not nostalgic, although I was never a good student. The desks were not neatly arranged, but there were always some textbooks and pencil cases piled on them. The podium was raised by one step, implying that teachers are superior to students. This is meant to motivate students to study hard. On the podium, there was a whiteboard pen, and I remember that the blackboard and chalk combination from my childhood has disappeared, replaced by a whiteboard. The real blackboard was on the wall at the back of the classroom, with classmates' handmade blackboard newspapers, class rankings, and photos of school activities. The conditions for students are pretty good now. When I was in school, we had to ask the teacher's permission just to turn on the ceiling fan during hot summer days, but now every classroom is equipped with a cabinet air conditioner.

  Director Wang pointed to the door on one side of the lecture hall and said that behind that door was the storage room where something had happened that night, and Teacher Ma had fainted after opening it. I followed Director Wang's direction with Hu Zongren, closed the door, and found a small door in the corner behind it, which could only hold one person standing up. Director Wang said that every classroom has this facility for storing mops and brooms, and because it was damp, they were worried about mold growing, so they added a door there.

  I asked Director Wang to stand back a bit and help us block the view so that passing students wouldn't see it. After I said that, I opened the small door, and inside were indeed mops and other things. The inner wall was directly coated with mortar without any paint, black and shiny, and the mop hanging on top was still dripping water, indicating that after class, the students had just cleaned up. First, I hung a red rope around the door frame, then borrowed a pen from the podium to draw a small diagram on the ground, and finally took out the compass, standing outside with my hand reaching inside to examine it.

  As expected, the compass needle moved slightly, but the amplitude was not very large, which means that there were indeed ghostly traces here, but at present they are not very strong, and instead seem somewhat weak. At this moment, the ghost did not appear here, it just left some signs for me to capture.

  I put away the compass, nodded to Hu Zongren. He understood what I meant, so I called Director Wang over and showed him the compass again, explaining that this indicated there was a ghost here, but it wasn't particularly strong yet, because you see the needle isn't spinning as wildly as when you were possessed earlier. As I said this, I also teased him a bit to remind him not to forget that this time we're getting double pay.

  Director Wang's attitude was still a bit skeptical, but he couldn't find any specific evidence to refute me and Hu Zongren. At this time, Hu Zongren walked to the door, stood at attention, with his left hand on top and right hand below, his left hand extended its index and middle fingers, forming a finger seal, while the remaining fingers grasped the index and middle fingers of his right hand. According to my superficial understanding of Taoist rituals, I knew that Hu Zongren was summoning the spirit and asking for its guidance. If my compass could only detect whether there were any traces of ghosts, then this move of his was like knocking on the ghost's door, telling it: "We're here, if you're present, respond."

  Hu Zongren pinched his fingers and recited incantations, his right foot started to tap the ground rhythmically. When he finished this set of movements, the three of us present heard a soft sighing sound coming from the small grid, in an unknown direction, which sounded like a young girl's voice.

  *sigh*...