"What is your name? What happened to you before you died? If I help you get revenge, what do you plan to do?"
The maiden ghost turned her head to look at the middle-aged man. He nodded, signaling that the maiden could speak with me.
"Reporting to the Underworld Officer, my name is, is Zhang Xiaomiao. Before I died, I was, was... by Du Lisan..." The maiden ghost's voice grew smaller and smaller, and she instinctively pulled at her clothes.
"You don't have to talk about that part. I understand," I interrupted her tragic memories and turned to ask the middle-aged man, "Can you two become corporeal?"
"I can." the maiden ghost said.
I guessed it had something to do with her aura. Perhaps only higher-level ghosts had this ability.
The middle-aged man had an orange aura. Among these thousand-odd ghosts, most had ordinary red auras, but there were about two to three hundred with orange auras or higher. By now, everyone had gathered, falling within my Chi-Reading vision. Higher-tier auras were rare, making them easy for me to count. The maiden's yellow aura, like about fifty others, and the green auras, not just the two I saw before, but five in total, were all in the back and far away, so I couldn't see what they looked like.
"But it needs a shaded place." the maiden said.
There was a small tree next to the grave. I asked Bingbing to take off her outer jacket and drape it over a branch, creating a tent for her. The maiden stood under the shade of the tree, her body gradually transforming from semi-transparent to corporeal. The two figures overlapped. I simply turned off Chi-Reading, leaving only her corporeal form. Even in corporeal form, she was semi-transparent, like water, and I could see Zheng Bingbing behind her by looking through her body.
When Zheng Bingbing saw a watery human-like object appear, she was quite frightened. She quickly skirted around the maiden and hid behind me.
Before long, the maiden ghost finished transforming. She was no longer as transparent as water as she had been at first. Her flesh resembled the Lychee-flavored jelly from Xizhilang.
I took off my own clothes and handed them to her: "Put these on. They're for you."
The maiden ghost took the clothes, looking puzzled: "You made me transform... just for this?"
"Yes." I nodded. Giving roses makes a person's hand fragrant; giving a ghost clothes is pure kindness. More importantly, the exposed areas of her clothing made me uncomfortable to look at directly. I hadn't expected girls from the countryside a hundred years ago to be so... young.
The maiden shyly expressed her gratitude to me. I then reactivated my Chi-Reading vision. Her spectral and corporeal forms merged, making me feel a bit dizzy.
"Turn back," I said. The maiden transformed back into a ghost. The clothes, having merged with her, also reverted – I understood this principle. On the way to Jinling, Daoist Priest Li Jingxiang had explained to me how ghosts could transform earthly objects into Yin world items, but this process was irreversible. If the maiden ghost were to become corporeal again and want to return the clothes to me, as soon as she took them off, they would turn to ash.
Similarly, humans burn paper money, turning it into ash. In the Yin world, it becomes currency. If a ghost tried to bring currency back to the human world, it wouldn't work; what returned would only be ash.
First, warm their hearts and gain their trust. Law enforcement with humanity!
"Tell me, how do you plan to get your revenge?" I asked, lighting a cigarette with a smile.
The maiden's expression turned sinister: "I want to castrate that bastard Du Lisan!"
In Northeastern dialect, "wang ba du zi" is equivalent to "bastard," "son of a bitch," or "dog's life," and is considered an extreme insult.
"And how do you plan to do that?" I asked again.
"Find a way to get close to him, and then... seize an opportunity?"
I shook my head: "I think people like that 'wang ba du zi' Du Lisan must have offended many people during his lifetime. He would definitely pay attention to security."
"What is security?" the maiden asked, bewildered.
"In simple terms, he'll have many bodyguards, guards, and so on around him. Besides, he probably remembers you, so you won't be able to get close to him."
The maiden's expression dimmed, and she said in a low voice, "It seems that's the case."
"But," I swiped open my phone, opened Bilibili, and found a movie clip of a Gatling gun, "if you had this, wouldn't your chances of revenge increase significantly?"
"What is this thing?" the maiden asked in surprise. Many ghosts also gathered, curious.
"This is much better than Commander's Maxim!" the middle-aged man clearly had some worldly experience and recognized the Maxim heavy machine gun. "But, young Captain, what are you trying to say?"
I remained silent and opened another video, which showed a Type 1130 CIWS: "This is even more powerful."
"Holy crap..." The man shivered as he watched. "If Commander had something like this back then, he wouldn't have been defeated by Du Lisan, and we wouldn't have... alas..."