A Manual for Surviving a Weird World

Chapter 419 Humans and Ghosts Are Different

In the countryside, the moon is bright and the stars are few at night, and the evening wind howls, blowing paper figures all over the sky.

The Black and White Impermanence disappeared into the night with their lanterns. In just a short while, Miao Miaomiao was left alone in the small house behind the stage, standing there in a daze, completely unaware of what had happened.

After careful consideration, she decided to follow Ding Wei, but as soon as she took a step, she heard a series of thuds as doors opened from all directions. One after another, pale-skinned corpses with painted faces emerged from behind the doors, drifting in the same direction like wandering ghosts in a cemetery.

The village was deserted, with only a girl holding a video camera left. The lens captured the vast night scene, and the evening breeze blew across her thin shoulders, making Miao Miaomiao shiver.

At that moment, a slender hand adorned with a rose gold ring emerged from the darkness behind her and gently patted her shoulder.

"who!"

Miao Miaomiao's nerves were already stretched to the limit, and this shock made her so frightened that she felt as if her soul had left her body and her legs went weak, causing her to collapse to the ground and burst into tears.

"Hmm?" The owner of the palm paused, looking down at Miao Miaomiao's terrified, tearful face, and was momentarily stunned.

That's not right, she shouldn't be reacting like that.

Xu Beichen looked at the tearful girl in front of him with some skepticism, and began to doubt his earlier judgment: "Could this Miao Miaomiao really be an ordinary person?"

"Xu, Xu Beicheng?" Miao Miaomiao recognized the face behind her, both surprised and delighted. "Why are you here? I heard from Ning Zhe and the others that you were missing... Where's Zhang Genjian? Wasn't he with you?"

“Zhang Genjian… let’s talk about him later, we should go.” Xu Beichen bowed and took Miao Miaomiao’s hand to pull her up, saying, “That guy Ning Zhe is really something, he’s taken away the ghost that was entrenched in the mortuary.”

In other words, the Time Worm is about to set off.

"The train is about to depart, or it will be too late," Xu Beichen said quietly.

Miao Miao wiped her tears with her sleeve and asked in confusion, "But Ning Zhe has already run far away, we can't catch up with him."

Although she didn't know exactly what had happened, she could roughly understand that the key to this village lay in the pen that Ning Zhe had stolen. Once Ning Zhe boarded the train with that pen, the Time Worm would immediately set off, and even if they set off to catch up now, it would be too late.

"...There's still time." Xu Beichen shook his head slightly, turned and went into the house, and came out a moment later with a few items.

Miao Miaomiao looked and saw that Xu Beichen was holding a pair of scissors, a paintbrush, a few sheets of white paper, and a small bowl of steamed glutinous rice, all of which were materials that Qin Shou used to make paper figures.

"Give me a hand," Xu Beichen said. "If you don't want to be lost here forever."

Upon hearing this, Miao Miaomiao dared not disobey.

Xu Beicheng asked her to cut the paper into three long strips, two long and one short, while he picked up a paintbrush and wrote on the cut white paper:

[Life is born from qi, not from qi.]

Ghosts are born of the earth but do not see the earth.

Humans and ghosts are destined to different paths.

“This is a couplet…” Miao Miaomiao said softly upon seeing this.

"Time to put up the couplets." Xu Beichen put down his paintbrush and ground the glutinous rice in the bowl into a paste.

Miao Miaomiao picked up the sign that read, "Ghosts are born of the earth but do not see the earth," and went to the door of the small house: "Should it be pasted here?"

"No," Xu Beichen shook his head and said, "It's pasted on the wall."

"On the wall?" "On the wall."

Suppressing the strange feeling in her heart, Miao Miaomiao and Xu Beichen finished pasting the couplets together. He used a red pen to write, and the bright red characters on the snow-white paper looked particularly eerie on a bare wall, making people feel that something was missing.

"There's one door missing?" Miao Miaomiao thought to herself.

Normally, couplets are pasted on both sides of the main gate, while the horizontal scroll is pasted directly above the gate. This is why couplets are also called 'door couplets'.

Having grown accustomed to the couplets that accompany the main gate, seeing Xu Beicheng's couplet felt strange; the red characters on white paper gave it an eerie feel, as if it were written in blood.

Especially the blank area between the upper and lower sections, where there should have been a door.

"I'm leaving." Xu Beichen reached out, grasped the doorknob, turned it gently, and pushed the door open to go inside.

"Huh?" Miao Miaomiao was taken aback: "Where did this door come from?"

Xu Beichen didn't waste any words with her. He grabbed Miao Miaomiao's wrist and pulled her inside.

Just a door away, it felt like crossing into another world. The surrounding environment suddenly brightened, making Miao Miaomiao, who had been looking at the darkness for a long time, feel somewhat uncomfortable.

She squinted for a few seconds before slowly opening her eyes, and what came into view was a row of long benches covered with foam cushions.

"Huh?" Miao Miaomiao was stunned. When did she get onto the train carriage?
By the way, where is Xu Beichen?
Miao Miaomiao looked around and saw only pale-faced, dazed passengers. Where was Xu Beicheng?

At that moment, the carriage door opened.

A tall, handsome young man with a cold expression stepped into the car, holding a beautiful and voluptuous noblewoman in his arms, who was none other than Ning Zhe and Feng Yushu.

As soon as Ning Zhe boarded the train, a deathly pale hand reached into the carriage.

Then a shadow swept by, and the hand was severed cleanly at the wrist. The pale hand, like a white spider, lay on the ground still crawling toward Ning Zhe. Blood gushed from the severed area, leaving a long trail of blood on the floor of the carriage.

But the next second, the hand trembled slightly and collapsed to the ground as if all its strength had been exhausted.

Miao Miaomiao held the camera and looked out the door. She saw two figures, one black and one white, floating in mid-air, carrying two lanterns that emitted a faint green light, drifting slowly toward her.

At the same time, the carriage doors began to close.

"Ah Wei!" Miao Miaomiao exclaimed. Even though the face of the impermanent figure had been painted black, she could still recognize the outline of Ding Wei beneath the mask.

“That’s not your Awei, that’s a ghost messenger.” Ning Zhe gently placed Feng Yushu on an empty chair, and a dark shadow followed his footsteps to the door.

As if sensing the carriage was about to close, the two ghostly figures increased their flying speed.

“But Ah Wei…” Miao Miaomiao was about to speak when Ning Zhe kicked her aside, and a cute little girl-shaped doll appeared in his hand.

"Xia Rong, tear them apart." Ning Zhe commanded softly, raising his hand and throwing Xia Rong out, which landed squarely on Ding Wei's face.

At the same time, the carriage door slammed shut.

Miao Miaomiao clutched her stomach and slowly got up from the ground. She saw that the windows on both sides of the carriage had all gone black, and shocking blood-red words appeared on the glass. The Time Worm began to crawl.

The train started moving.

(End of this chapter)