Chapter 45 of Volume 1: You Are Sentimental

  "Is the Guardian's task just to guard the ancestral tomb?" After listening for a while, the owl hiding in the dark night made no more sound. Hong Jun had to give up his intention of finding that unlucky bird and turned to ask the doubts in his heart.

  "No, our mission is to protect the entire Hong family, to pray for blessings and calamities for the family, whether they are alive or ghosts. We will take care of their growth, life, and reincarnation, and help everyone resolve disasters and seek happiness as much as possible. Of course, we guard both the living and the dead, but because we are ghosts, if we live in a human's home for a long time, it would be inconvenient, so usually we just live in the ancestral tomb with other ghosts who have not yet been reincarnated."

  Ping An said, "Think about it, who wants to have two ghosts following them around all the time? If they accidentally see us, wouldn't that scare them? Besides, you humans seem to have a lot of things to do, many of which can't be seen by others. It's like with you, if we followed you everywhere, would you want that? You and your girlfriend couldn't even be intimate."

  Although we are ghosts, we don't want to be light bulbs either. It's better to live here. Quiet and won't see those annoying things. And don't have to watch you humans being affectionate on the side." She pointed at Rui Xin and giggled.

  "What was that." Even in the dimly lit night, Hong Jun felt the scorching heat emanating from Rui Xin's cheeks, and he was taken aback. Could it be that those two ghosts were right next to them when they were being intimate earlier? He subconsciously patted his pants, finding that the door was tightly closed, which slightly put him at ease. He quickly changed the subject to prevent Ping An from rambling on: "What's with these glowing orbs in the graveyard? I've lived in this village for over 20 years and have been to the graveyard countless times before, but I've never seen anything like this before?"

  "I don't know, we've never seen a situation like this before tonight." The silent Jixiang finally spoke up. "The Hong family has always been honest, whether they're alive or dead, and they report to the underworld on time after death. They've never provoked other ghosts, so for hundreds of years, this grave site has been very peaceful. There's never been a ghost seeking revenge or anyone robbing graves. Who knew that tonight, I don't know where all these lonely ghosts came from? As guardians, my siblings and I naturally couldn't let them come here freely, so we tried to drive them away. But they not only didn't leave, they even fought us! Our powers are limited, and we were outnumbered. If you hadn't come and scared them off, I'm afraid we would have been in big trouble."

  According to Jixiang, these are lonely souls and wild ghosts, so they must not be the deceased relatives in their own graves. Hong Jun let out a sigh of relief, the stone that had been weighing on his heart finally put down, blood is thicker than water, even if it's the dead, as long as they have a blood relationship with him, he doesn't want them to get hurt, especially not by his own hands.

  If I had known they were from the ancestral tomb, I should have killed a few more to intimidate these ghosts and make them dare not come here again. Thinking that there are actually ghosts who dare to make trouble in their own ancestral tomb, his anger is unbearable. After killing a few ghosts, he regarded himself as the pillar of the Hong family.

  He looked around and found a very weak light cluster swaying more than thirty meters away. He bent down to pick up a clod of earth, took aim and threw it over there.

  "Gulp..." The light cluster let out a cry and disappeared into the darkness with a flap of its wings.

  "Hmm?" Hong Jun listened carefully and realized it was an owl.

  "Why did you hit that owl?" Ping An asked curiously. "That's a bird spirit we siblings raised."

  "Niú Líng?" Hong Jun casually asked.

  "Birds also have souls, and when they die, if the timing is right, just like human souls don't go to the underworld, they stay in the world and become bird spirits." Ping'an sighed, "What a pity, it took us half a year to subdue this bird spirit. With your brick, I reckon it won't dare come back again. Bird spirits are really timid."

  "Uh..." Hong Jun felt embarrassed, he didn't expect that his own carelessness would lead to him shooting the brother and sister's pet.

  "It doesn't matter, the bird spirit is extremely difficult to raise, it has already shown signs of wanting to fly solo these past few days. Even if you didn't scare it this time, I reckon it wouldn't want to follow us anyway." Ji Xiang Lao honestly revealed the truth.

  "Ah." Hong Jun's face immediately thickened, and the slight guilt he felt earlier was thrown to Java. "Then, those few I killed earlier, are they dead?" He remembered a story he had heard somewhere that ghosts wouldn't die, so he asked this question.

  "Maybe being hit by others is nothing, but being hit by you, they will be scared to death. They can't even become a human or a ghost, and the dead can't die again." Ping An smiled.

  Hong Jun suddenly felt a twinge of guilt in his heart. He had lived to be over twenty years old, and the largest creature he had ever killed was a chicken. He had never thought that he would be able to kill ghosts, and yet he had just killed three of them. It was all because one of them had attacked Rui Xin, and he had made them disappear from this world.

  But he immediately felt at ease again, who let them bite Rui Xin and make trouble in their own ancestral tomb. Biting Rui Xin and making trouble in the ancestral tomb are two unforgivable crimes in his eyes, especially bullying Rui Xin, which is absolutely intolerable.

  He looked around, those green and green light groups had scattered and escaped, the cemetery restored its tranquility. Turning back, he looked at Jixiang's whole body covered in light groups: "Why are the sizes of the light groups on your bodies different?"

  "Ah, this is for defense. Just now we were fighting those vengeful spirits and the light cluster can prevent our own wandering souls from scattering." Jixiang replied, "Because the battle requires the use of magic, the power that originally binds our souls will weaken, and our souls may drift away from our bodies. If those vengeful spirits eat our souls, we will also disappear."

  As they spoke, the light around them slowly weakened and disappeared. "For ghosts, the soul is extremely easy to escape due to external influences because it doesn't have a real body to support it, so we need to constantly use our magical powers to bind our souls. Normally, our magical powers are enough to keep our souls attached to our bodies, but when using magic, we need to establish a defensive light circle to bind our souls. The color of the light circle varies from ghost to ghost; in the underworld, there is a record of it - ours is a white full-body light sphere, while lone ghosts and wild ghosts are just small points of light with different colors... Ghost messengers are white, fierce ghosts are red, vengeful ghosts are purple..."

  Hong Jun was stunned, he roughly understood what it meant. At the same time, he also realized that this had nothing to do with him, so he didn't ask further questions. He knew that he had already entered a completely unknown world, which was so strange to him, and everything needed to be felt and familiarized with bit by bit, which took time and process, and couldn't be done overnight. So, he understood very well that his top priority was to figure out the things related to himself, and other things could wait for later opportunities to understand and explore.

  As he was chatting away, he spaced out again. However, this time he remembered something that the ghost siblings had said not long ago: "It's you."

  "By the way, what did you mean by 'it's you'?" He interrupted Jixiang's words as he thought of this.

  "This..." Jixiang suddenly choked up, he looked at Ping'an, and Ping'an was also looking at Jixiang, wanting to speak but hesitating.

  "What's wrong? Is there something difficult to say?" Hong Jun frowned and asked, he disliked it the most when others were hesitant. Either don't say it at all, or if you want to say it, just say it in one breath.

  "No, we're afraid to say it out loud, you won't believe us." Ji Xiang explained.

  Hong Jun looked at the two of them, pointed to the cemetery and laughed: "If it were a month ago, I wouldn't have believed that there are ghosts in this world, no matter what. But in this past month, I've encountered too many things - female ghosts, voice obstacles, friends getting lost, Third Uncle being a ghost messenger, and you two as well as the lonely wild ghost just now... which of these things isn't strange? Which can be explained by common sense? You tell me, what's left for me not to believe in? Even if you say I'm the reincarnation of a god or Buddha, I'd still believe it."

  "Reincarnation of gods and Buddhas? So you're saying that you know you were reborn?" Jixiang asked.

  "What's reincarnation? I'm making a metaphor." Hong Jun didn't expect that even this auspicious metaphor couldn't be understood.

  "No, I'm not talking about your metaphor, I'm saying you're a reincarnation of the goddess." Jixiang's tone became more serious.

  "What?" The Rui Xin in his arms shook slightly, and Hong Jun thought he had misheard, staring at Jixiang and asking back.

  "You are the reincarnation of Huajing's soul." Jixiang repeated, "You are Huajing."