They All Say I've Met a Ghost

35

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"Xiao Duan, Xiao Duan?" I rushed into the bedroom and reached out to help Duan Youlian.

But Teacher Liu stopped me and said, “Her mood is unstable now, her Yin energy is especially heavy. If an ordinary person touches her... Ah, forget it. How can your righteous energy be even more exuberant? You'd better not touch her. I’m afraid she'll cry."

After that, Teacher Liu helped the frail Xiao Duan get up and had her sit on the bed frame.

I didn't know how Teacher Liu did it, but Xiao Duan came around very quickly. She shook her head wildly and said, "I won't memorize questions, I won't take a test, I won't cut my nails, I want to be reborn!" While shaking her head, she saw Xiao Ning, and immediately pleaded, “Ning-tianshi, you can transcend me."

Xiao Ning looked uneasy. "If you were an ordinary fierce ghost and had freed yourself of your worldly ties, it would be pretty easy to transcend you. But you're a living corpse. Compared to Teacher Liu, a ghost who has existed since the Republic by possessing human skin, you're even harder to transcend. Your entire corpse still exists. Your soul won't leave your body. There's nothing I can do."

"Would cremation work?" I asked.

"Absolutely not!" said Teacher Liu, looking horrified. "Last time you put me on the windowsill to dry I nearly died. If you cremate her, either her soul will dissolve in the crematorium, or it'll lose its support. Then it'll be even more difficult to transcend."

I had just now accepted the fact that I had been hired by a ghost school. It really was a little hard on me to make me remember so many facts about transcending ghosts and monsters. Rather than trying to understand, it was better to ask outright. "So how can we get Xiao Duan to leave her body?"

I looked at Xiao Duan's form. Apart from her raincoat constantly dripping water, she seemed normal, without any traces of decay.

"If the soul stays in the body and can't pass on, it means there is still an obsession," Teacher Liu said with a sigh. "Like me, for example, though I can feel my obsession gradually disappearing. With Teacher Shen's help, one day I will leave. If Xiao Duan wants to free herself, she needs to understand her own mind."

I comforted Xiao Duan: "Xiao Duan, I won't make you take tests for now. Can you think why you're trapped in your body?"

Hearing I wouldn't make her take tests, Duan Youlian's mood gradually stabilized. She thought for a long time, her expression puzzled. "I... I have nothing to regret. The ones who hurt me died a long time ago. Why am I still here?"

"Actually, all the students I can keep confined to the school have resolved their grudges," said Teacher Liu. "Otherwise, even I couldn't completely confine them. There's only Xiao Duan who can still cut class. I really don't understand it."

"You're the one confining the students to the school?" I absolutely hadn’t expected the refined Teacher Liu to be so powerful.

"Well, it's not entirely my power," Teacher Liu said, proudly adjusting the buttons of his Zhongshan suit. He explained, "I've existed since the Republican period. Every owner who could awaken me had hatred in their hearts. I used their resentment to help them realize their wishes, then consumed their life energy, in this way becoming more and more powerful. But Principal Zhang is different. Her heart is set entirely on helping the school's students. I don't know why I would be awakened by her feelings. It's Principal Zhang's will added to my power that keeps the students contained. After they've fulfilled the object of their obsession, they remain inside the school, not harming innocent people."