"Okay, boss, I'll go find her right away."
I lit a cigarette and squatted by the pit, waiting. I had only smoked half of it when I felt a chilling wind approach from behind. Because I was using the Qi Sensing technique, I could see Xiao Miao standing in front of me even though she hadn't taken physical form. She was holding a few unopened notebooks and carbon pens. She was about to revert to her human form, but I quickly stopped her. If she did, her worldly possessions, her earthly belongings, would turn to ash!
"Give them directly to this older brother," I said. If Xiao Miao handed them over in her ghost form, the pens and notebooks would remain as they were.
"Mm-hmm, brother, who are these people?" Xiao Miao didn't call me boss or leader, but "brother." I didn't know how she decided that, even though she was over a hundred years older than me.
"Just like you, stray ghosts that the Yin Messengers can't apprehend," I stated frankly.
The middle-aged man looked at Zhang Xiao Miao with surprise. "You... why can you come and go freely?"
"I'm my brother's assistant, a Yin Messenger's assistant," Xiao Miao replied. I didn't know who had given her that title.
"Oh, impressive, impressive. You look about my age..." The middle-aged man took the pens and notebooks, nodding. I didn't know how he figured that out; Xiao Miao was already wearing modern clothes.
"Brother, why don't you try it," I said.
The middle-aged man opened the notebook and directly used the cap of the carbon pen to write. Of course, no marks appeared. Zhang Xiao Miao showed him how to use it. The older brother tried, wrote a single character, and then looked at the pen tip in surprise. "Why is it so hard?"
In his era, at least in the common folk of Yanxia, brush pens were still used. The people of Sakura Country had probably started using fountain pens; their reforms were earlier. Yanxia only began promoting hard-tipped pens after its founding.
"You'll get used to it," Xiao Miao said kindly.
The middle-aged man still had some level of literacy. Even though it was his first time using a carbon pen, he could write with great flourish. He quickly wrote down his criminal history.
I took it and read it. It was almost all in classical Chinese, but I could still understand it.
"Xiao Miao, it's a bit of work for you to stay here and help them write everything clearly," I said.
"Okay, brother. Don't worry, I'll make sure it's all arranged perfectly." Zhang Xiao Miao seemed excited to see ghosts, as if she had found her own kind.
With dozens of people, this task would likely take a long time. I left my phone with Xiao Miao so she could contact Bing Bing and find me.
I returned to the villa area at the foot of the mountain first. Bing Bing and Cheng Xiaojuan were waiting in the car.
"Let's go eat first," I said.
"Eat? It's only three o'clock," Zheng Bingbing checked her watch.
"We didn't eat well at lunch, come on," I said with a smile.
They both inexplicably pulled me along as we drove through the villa area towards the main entrance.
I observed the villas along the way. Although they were semi-detached (Yanxia had previously stipulated that new villas could not be detached, fearing land waste and the 'illusion' of extreme wealth disparity, so only townhouses or semi-detached villas were allowed), each one occupied a large area and looked exceptionally well-built. No wonder this was the best neighborhood in the best location. If it weren't for the haunting, in a prosperous city like Lvshun, they would probably have been sold out within half a year of opening.
"Mr. Wu, are you interested in the houses here?" Cheng Xiaojuan, who was driving, noticed my envious gaze.
"Are there any left for sale?" I asked.
"There are still over thirty units left unsold. How about I take you to see our sample room?" Cheng Xiaojuan offered to be my guide.
"Aren't you afraid of running into ghosts!" Zheng Bingbing teased her.
At that, Cheng Xiaojuan's face paled instantly. She was indeed scared. She was a normal Red Qi. I guessed that the reason she could work in the Shabiya department wasn't because she was good at fighting, but because of her "money power," especially since her father was one of the foremost wealthy individuals in the area.
"Don't worry," I said. "The ghosts are all doing their homework in the back mountain right now. Let's go and see the sample room."
"Really?" Cheng Xiaojuan asked doubtfully.
I patted the Soul Restraining Token on my waist. "I'm a Yin Messenger, after all. If I tell them to go to the back mountain, who would dare refuse?"
"Then... what about in the future?" Cheng Xiaojuan tentatively asked again.