A Manual for Surviving a Weird World

Chapter 412 Painting a Ghost and Adding the Finishing Touch
The three of them divided the work and made the hot tofu before dusk, and then distributed it from house to house.

"It's getting dark, let's split up and work separately, that way we can be more efficient." Xu Beicheng said, and then found a few wheelbarrows used for transporting grain in the mill's storeroom. He loaded several boxes of fresh hot tofu onto the wheelbarrows and pushed them away from the mill.

Watching Xu Beichen push the cart away into the distance, Feng Yushu washed her hands in front of the well, lowered her sleeves and re-buttoned her cuffs, and said, "That Qin Shou is strange."

"What exactly is so strange about it?" Ning Zhe asked as he loaded a box of tofu onto the wheelbarrow.

“He was clearly the only one in that room before, but Te Rang sensed three shadows.” Feng Yushu said as she helped him. “One of the shadows belonged to him, and the other two… belonged to the Black and White Impermanence.”

Ning Zhe raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly: "You mean those paper figures?"

Feng Yushu nodded: "There are four paper figures in his room, two black and two white. Two of them have painted faces, while the other two have blank faces, and the facial features haven't been painted on them yet."

—The two shadows that Terang sensed belonged to the two paper figures of underworld messengers whose faces had already been painted on them.

"Is that so..." Ning Zhe's eyes showed a thoughtful expression as he pondered, "You said before that there was originally only one shadow in that room, and after this state of only one shadow lasted for a while, the second shadow suddenly 'appeared'?"

“That’s right.” Feng Yushu nodded. “If a person walks from darkness into light, their shadow will gradually emerge from the darkness. For example, first a foot appears, then a leg, and then the torso and the whole body…”

But the two shadows inside the room didn't appear suddenly; there was no intermediate transition, they went directly from 'nothing' to 'something,' a complete human-shaped shadow just appeared out of thin air.

Ning Zhe tied his coat around his waist, thought for a moment, and gave his guess: "I guess that during the time when there was only one shadow in the room at the beginning, Qin Shou was drawing the face on the paper figure he was making."

"Just like the little story in the idiom 'adding the finishing touch to a dragon,' before the four paper figures of underworld messengers were painted with masks, they were just lifeless objects and would not attract Terang's attention."

"And when Qin Shou finished painting its face and added the final stroke, the paper figure came to life—in Te Rang's view, a living shadow suddenly appeared in his field of vision, without any intermediate transition, directly from nothing to something. That finishing stroke was the boundary between life and death."

After listening quietly to his speculation, Feng Yushu's face showed a look of vigilance: "So Qin Shou should be an Ascended Being? That finishing touch that turned the rotten into the miraculous must be related to the ghost he controlled?"

"Perhaps." Ning Zhe remained noncommittal: "Let's go, to deliver the tofu."

"Mmm." Feng Yushu responded sweetly and followed Ning Zhe, who was pushing a wheelbarrow, as they left the mill.

There are three kinds of hardship in the world: rowing a boat, blacksmithing, and grinding tofu. Even someone as strong as Ning Zhe couldn't withstand being used like a mule. After grinding a few bags of beans, his back ached and his legs were weak, and he felt quite weak.

Fortunately, Ning Zhe's physical condition was something that could be recovered in the blink of an eye. He only needed to use the rules of Taiyi to switch his identity from 'Ning Zhe in Feng Yushu's perception' to 'Ning Zhe in Xia Yubing's perception', and he would become energetic and full of vitality again.

—Because in Xia Yubing's mind, Ning Zhe had never pulled a millstone, so naturally he wouldn't get tired.

The two pushed the cart out of the mill, cut the tofu into small pieces, and began distributing it from house to house.

Because Ning Zhe could refresh his status and clear his fatigue value at any time, the two of them worked very quickly and soon distributed all the tofu on the cart, offering sacrifices to one-third of the households in the village.

Taking advantage of the time he had alone with Feng Yushu, Ning Zhe distributed the offerings and also performed a few auspicious rituals to pray for good fortune from the snake god.

The things that are auspicious to do today are: renovation, encoffining, moving the coffin, coming-of-age ceremony, putting on the mourning clothes, removing the mourning clothes, and paving the road. Renovation and paving the road can be done easily, while encoffining and moving the coffin require the cooperation of Feng Yushu to move the coffin from inside the house to outside and then back inside.

The "moving the coffin" in the Chinese almanac does not simply refer to moving the coffin, but is part of the traditional funeral rites. The coffin containing the deceased is brought into the mourning hall from the outside with gongs and drums, and only then can the children keep vigil.

Ning Zhe didn't have any gongs or drums, so he played a clip of "It's the New Year in the first month of the lunar calendar" on his phone's speaker, not knowing if the Snake God would recognize it.

The following steps, "wearing mourning clothes" and "removing mourning clothes," are also part of the funeral process.

"Chengfu" refers to the wearing of different colored mourning clothes by the deceased's children and relatives according to their closeness to the deceased. "Chufu" is the process after the funeral rites are completed, when relatives remove their mourning clothes and change back into their regular clothes; hence, it is also called "tuoxiao" (removing mourning clothes).

Ning Zhe hastily put together two white outfits and swapped them with the aunt. The effect was barely noticeable, since they were not related to the villagers in the mortuary. If they really started wailing, the villagers wouldn't recognize them.

At this point, Ning Zhe and Feng Yushu had briefly reviewed all the auspicious events on the almanac except for the coming-of-age ceremony. As for how many were successfully triggered, they would have to ask the Snake God.

After finishing all that, there were still a few households in the village that hadn't set out their offerings, so Ning Zhe pulled his empty cart back to the mill to restock.

The sky had darkened, the sun was setting on the horizon, and the journey was silent.

After walking through several streets, Feng Yushu suddenly frowned and subconsciously took Ning Zhe's hand.

"what happened?"

“A figure just flew by,” Feng Yushu said.

"It flew over?" Ning Zhe was somewhat surprised. "Are you sure it was a person's shadow?"

"I'm sure it's a person's shadow."

Feng Yushu's eyes swept warily around her, and she said quietly:
"The person stretched out his legs, with his toes about a meter off the ground, and floated in the air, moving quickly in a way that resembled a horizontal movement, like a flying zombie or a female ghost suspended by wires in a movie or TV show. He flashed by and disappeared in an instant."

Feng Yushu paused, then looked at Ning Zhe with a hint of hesitation: "He flew in the direction of... the mill."

Her meaning was easy to understand: Should we go over there?

“Go. Why not go?” Ning Zhe’s expression remained calm: “Three feet off the ground, flying without wings, that’s a ghost.”

Ning Zhe casually tossed the wheelbarrow aside and ran towards the mill. From afar, the two could see that the mill's gate had been opened, and a faint, ethereal white figure floated inside, its toes three feet off the ground, holding a lantern that emitted a dim, eerie light.

Seemingly hearing the footsteps of two people running outside the courtyard gate, the pale figure carrying a lantern turned around, the four large characters on the tall hat illuminated by the light:

[Instant wealth]

(End of this chapter)