I have to get lucky right away.

Chapter 28 Are you a ghost seller or a technical college owner?
The port city is an international city that has prospered thanks to its natural deep-water port. Although it is far inferior to the third-tier small cities of Feng Xue's era, at a glance, it does have some of the style of Shanghai at night in popular film and television dramas.

The streets are bustling with life, but there are also rickshaw drivers, poor laborers and beggars squatting in the corners begging for money.

Compared with the simple folk customs of Ping'an County, which seemed like a paradise on earth, this city only a few dozen miles away gave Feng Xue a completely different sense of reality.

A sense of reality that this is how the old times should have been.

With the start-up capital he had exchanged for the watch before leaving, Feng Xue suddenly felt fortunate for his decision. If he had waited until he got here to exchange it, he might have been able to sell it at a higher price, but it would not have been easy to take it away.

Although he had the powerful weapon, the Little White Snake, Feng Xue was not sure how to deal with those so-called warriors. After all, fear comes from the unknown.

Fortunately, the purpose of coming to Hong Kong this time was very simple. Feng Xue avoided the greetings of the young ladies dressed in fancy clothes on the roadside and waved to the rickshaws waiting next to the brothel.

Seeing Feng Xue waving, two or three drivers on the roadside stood up at the same time, but when they noticed that others had also started moving, there was a noticeable pause.

Without any communication, as if it had been agreed upon long ago, one of the drivers continued to stand up, while the remaining two returned to the "standby" state.

"Where are you going, sir?" The rickshaw driver came up with a smile on his face. Feng Xue didn't waste any words and spit out the address that Jiugu had given him:

"No. 42 Qinfeng Road."

……

The scenery along the way was unremarkable. Feng Xue paid the fare and came to this antique shop which looked a bit cramped.

This small shop is sandwiched between a brothel and a gambling den. Looking at it from the street, it looks like a half-man sandwiched between two burly men, weak, pitiful, and helpless. If you don't look carefully, you won't even notice its existence.

However, this kind of reclusive style was in line with Feng Xue's idea of ​​painting. He ignored the noise on both sides, walked into the recess that was almost like an alley, and pushed open the ordinary-looking wooden door.

"Jingle Bell……"

The shop door opened and closed with the sound of a crisp copper bell. The middle-aged man sitting at the counter calmly put down the book in his hand, raised his eyelids slightly, and said:

"Welcome, what would you like to buy?"

Feng Xue's eyes swept across the cramped shop, looking at the calligraphy and paintings, jade carvings, jewelry and the like, but he said directly:
"Ninth Aunt introduced me."

The moment he heard the word "Jiu Gu", the originally lazy shop owner suddenly became energetic, and a smile appeared on his face. That feeling, a premonition of being ripped off, emerged in Feng Xue's heart, but considering that he still had seven watches in his arms as a backup, his heart settled down and continued:

"I want……"

"I understand, I understand. Everyone who gets introduced to me has similar ideas. Come this way!"

The owner did not give Feng Xue any chance to make any request and directly opened a small door at the back of the shop. As the door opened, a faint coolness spread.

Feng Xue turned on the over-the-shoulder view, but did not see any features worthy of attention. Only the remaining life span of more than 80,000 days on the forehead of the shop owner told him that he must also be a master.

"I've seen a lot of playboys like you. When you're tired of playing with women, you want to get some excitement by playing with female ghosts, female goblins, etc...." The shopkeeper muttered as he walked. Feeling Liu Yunxi's trembling at his fingertips, Feng Xue couldn't help but grin and tentatively explained:

"I just need a ghost for the magic I'm practicing. Since I can choose, I might as well pick one that's good-looking and pleasing to the eye."

"Ah, yes, yes, that's what every one of my customers says. Anyway, just don't kill yourself and make your family come to me for trouble!" The owner had a completely nonchalant attitude. He led Feng Xue along a path that looked like a school corridor, looking at small doors one after another, and asked:

"Tell me what you need. Do you want someone who is well-educated and well-mannered, or someone who is willful and capricious? A girl with simple hair or a daughter from a wealthy family? Don't worry about her appearance. Basically, anything that can be attached to an object will be good."

"Um, shouldn't you ask what functions you want?" Feng Xue was a little stunned when he heard that. How could this be like selecting a technician?
"?" The shop owner was also stunned when he heard Feng Xue's question. He looked at Feng Xue carefully for a long time before slapping his forehead and saying:

"Good fellow, you really are here to learn magic. That's rare... Then I have to explain something to you."

As he spoke, the shop owner led Feng Xue around the two largest doors, walked to a small door and pushed it open, revealing the sparsely populated shelves behind the door.

"Although you can choose, appearance doesn't necessarily guarantee its true nature. Take this scroll, which is said to be the authentic work of a female poet from eight hundred years ago, for example—"

The shop owner reached out and pulled the light cord, and the dim room was immediately lit up. He followed the light and picked up a scroll that looked quite old. He turned to Feng Xue and said,
“This thing is actually a copy that someone wrote down on a whim over four hundred years ago while practicing calligraphy. However, because it was so good, it was loved by many people. Even after death, his spirit still attached itself to it.

"After the copyist died, someone got hold of the handwriting, reframed it, and aged it, claiming it was the poetess's authentic work. It has been circulated ever since.

"Subsequent collectors mostly believed the calligraphy was authentic. Over the past four hundred years, the calligraphy has been constantly imbued with the power of this belief, and even the spirit attached to it has been distorted by this power. It believes itself to be the poetess, and can even write excellent poetry. Of course, it's not as good as the historical poet.

"This calligraphy came into my hands about twenty years ago. Seventeen years after the incense stopped burning, the spirit on it finally broke free of its shackles and returned to the netherworld. However, the part that didn't belong to it, but that it believed in, still remains on the calligraphy. Most of the spirits and ghosts I sell here also come from this source."

Having said that, the boss put the calligraphy and painting back on the shelf and said earnestly:
"If you just want to buy a female ghost to play with, I won't tell you this, because that practice will only continue to reduce the purity of the ghost spirit. Once it exceeds a certain limit, it will disappear and won't cause any harm. But if you really want to raise a ghost spirit, you must follow the correct process to cultivate it. If you don't raise it correctly, it will definitely harm others and yourself."

Feng Xue nodded slightly when he heard this, but another term emerged in his mind——

"Void God?"

Hearing Feng Xue utter these two words, the boss nodded and said:
"That's right. As a result, spirit ghosts themselves can be considered virtual gods. However, unlike virtual gods that are purely condensed by willpower, spirit ghosts are ultimately born from ghosts. Compared to virtual gods that act completely according to their settings, spirit ghosts have the complexity of humans. Although they have advantages such as being unaffected by cause and effect, not damaging one's virtue, and having excellent intelligence, they are not without disadvantages. If you support a loyal virtual god, then no matter what happens, it will not betray you. But if it is a spirit ghost, you must be careful, because the spirit ghost's core may not be a sinister villain disguised as a loyal person."

　The difference between ghosts, spirits and imaginary gods can actually be explained by the virtual world and electronic life.

　　Suppose the afterlife is the cyber world.

　　Ghosts can be understood as people who have uploaded their consciousness to the Internet. They are human except that they have no physical body, but they will gradually lose their humanity over time.

　　Virtual Gods are artificial intelligences programmed through algorithms. Their logic is determined from the moment they are programmed, and they will never break through their own limitations.

　　As for ghosts, they are somewhere in between the two. They are artificial intelligence, but their underlying code is not a simple algorithm. Instead, it is a copy of a person's personality code. It has human complexity and can become a real electronic life if properly trained.

　　ps: Regarding the consumption of the protagonist's golden finger, let me put it this way. According to Feng Xue's genealogy (those who don't care about the source of the golden finger don't need to care), this Feng Xue comes after the Paradox Feng Xue, just like the golden finger of the Strange Story Feng Xue comes from the Dream Feng Xue. This Feng Xue's golden finger comes from the [Truth] authority of the Paradox, and in the truth authority, there is an item called [Ball-Sharing Paradox]. Can you understand this?
　　
　
(End of this chapter)