“You, move this thing into the warehouse. You lot, put these in Leg Bro’s office.”
Yang Jian walked over, glanced at the objects on the ground covered in burlap, and patted the man in front of him on the shoulder.
“Awei.”
Zhang Wei turned around. Seeing that it was Yang Jian, his face immediately lit up.
“Leg Bro! I was just about to call you!”
“Awei, since when did you become so hardworking?”
Yang Jian casually lifted a corner of the burlap, revealing a pile of bluish-white bottles and jars beneath. These objects looked rather similar to the soul bottles he had once seen in Dajing City.
A trace of something unusual flashed through his eyes. Logically speaking, only Wan Delu should have had the channels to buy these things.
Zhang Wei put his hands on his hips, assuming an expression as if it were only natural.
“Sigh, to think I lay dormant for over ten years, all for the chance I was waiting for. Not because I wanted to prove how amazing I was, but because I wanted to tell everyone that what I lost, I’ll definitely take back!”
Yang Jian picked up a porcelain bottle at random. The ghost shadow silently covered it, but he did not sense anything unusual. This was just an ordinary handicraft.
“What did you lose?”
Zhang Wei froze, momentarily at a loss for words, then craned his neck and said, “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, I’m taking it back.”
“Awei! You’re causing trouble everywhere again! These things are all for President Yang!”
At that moment, the rapid clacking of high heels approached from afar. Zhang Liqin came trotting over in heels, the work badge on her chest surging along with the waves.
When she saw Yang Jian, she was clearly startled and blurted out, “Yang Jian?”
Then, realizing her lapse, her face immediately reddened and she corrected herself, “President Yang... when did you come back?”
“Last night.”
Yang Jian pointed at the soul bottles on the ground and asked, “Where did these things come from?”
Zhang Liqin quickly opened the folder in her hands. She was very professional, immediately entering work mode. Since she was in the position of secretary, she believed she still had to do her job well.
“President Yang, a few days ago, while you were away on business, Wan Delu came looking for you. He said he had made a new discovery, but you weren’t at the company at the time, so I received him and briefly learned about the situation.”
“Mm.” Yang Jian walked ahead and entered the elevator.
“Go on.”
Yang Jian recalled that the trail of the soul bottle had originally gone cold when it reached Luo Wensong’s grandson, Luo Yong. Back then, Yang Jian had even given Luo Yong a sum of money.
Zhang Liqin hurriedly followed and pressed the button for the top floor, where Yang Jian’s exclusive office was.
She continued, “According to Wan Delu, there are many kinds of prototypes for these bottles. The earliest can even be traced back to the Song dynasty.”
“The Song dynasty?”
“Yes.” Zhang Liqin nodded.
“Those were his exact words. Those bottles are all replicas he collected from various places. He investigated a great deal of documentary records and consulted several experts. The prototype of the soul bottle did indeed begin to become popular in the Song dynasty.”
The elevator moved very quickly. In less than a minute, they arrived at the top floor. Yang Jian walked to the desk and sat down. The place was very tidy; even though Yang Jian rarely came, it had been cleaned spotless.
Yang Jian pondered the information regarding the soul bottle. Back then, he had asked Wan Delu to investigate it, but in the end, because the trail of the soul bottle had gone cold and Yang Jian’s focus had shifted to Luo Wensong, the follow-up on the soul bottle had been left aside. Yang Jian had nearly forgotten about the matter altogether.
But he had not expected Wan Delu to have continued investigating all this time, and to have actually found something.
“Continue.”
Zhang Liqin took out several documents and handed them to Yang Jian. They contained many relevant records and archival materials.
“He said that the soul bottle you encountered, President Yang, as well as the ones later investigated, were all replicas from the Republican era. During the Republican era, these soul bottles were popular in certain folk tales involving ghosts and gods.”
“Ghost and god legends?”
Yang Jian looked at the documents in his hands. There was a passage on them about soul bottles.
“In some ancient tombs, two bottles would be placed beside the coffin to settle the soul of the deceased, hence the name soul bottle.”
“But in modern burial culture, soul bottles are no longer used. Instead, they took on other uses.”
“During the Republican era, in certain feng shui or fortune-telling trades, practitioners believed that soul bottles could imprison wandering ghosts. In their jargon, soul bottles also possessed the function of eliminating the resentment of evil ghosts.”
“Eliminating the resentment of evil ghosts...”
Yang Jian recalled the soul bottle that Zhong Shan had shattered at the Dajing City airport.
The exterior of the soul bottle was only a disguise, meant to conceal the golden bottle inside. The thing that truly imprisoned the ghost was actually gold.
The clues gradually pieced themselves together in his mind.
“Perhaps during the Republican era, someone involved in feng shui or fortune-telling became a ghost controller by some stroke of fate, and incorporated their professional habits into the method of imprisoning ghosts.”
The Republican era again.
A grave look appeared in Yang Jian’s eyes. The vast majority of the supernatural objects on him now were closely related to the Republican era.
The old residence in Guanjiang Residential Complex, the hatchet, the Ghost Dream, the black fire, even his own cousin...
What exactly happened in that era...
So much so that a group of ghost controllers capable of creating those terrifying supernatural objects all withdrew from the world. Even if an existence on the level of the Ghost Painting fully erupted, Yang Jian did not believe it could make an entire generation of ghost controllers vanish without a trace.
“Puzzle pieces?”
At this moment, Yang Jian thought of another possibility.
“If I reason backward, then the ghosts I’ve encountered so far have all been nothing more than incomplete puzzle pieces...”
“Whether it was the Ghost Painting or the Starving Ghost, even if their level of completion was very high, they were still missing certain crucial supernatural puzzle pieces... Could it be that the fierce ghosts faced by that group of people in the Republican era were each in complete form...”
Yang Jian got up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down over this desolate city.
“If so, it makes sense. A fierce ghost possessing complete supernatural powers might have a terror level even higher than the Ghost Painting. Once they reached a certain number, even if every ghost controller of the Republican era was as strong as Elder Qin, they absolutely could not have withstood them.”
“So they could only settle for the next best thing: dismember the fierce ghosts into puzzle pieces and separate them. But that was also the limit of what they could accomplish.”
Of course, this was only Yang Jian’s one-sided speculation. He knew far too little about the Republican era and could only infer a relatively reasonable explanation from fragments of information.
Seeing Yang Jian frowning in thought, Zhang Liqin did not interrupt him. She simply stared at the side of his face. Her eyes remained fixed on Yang Jian the whole time, and no one knew what she was thinking.
Zhang Wei quietly sidled over and said with a sleazy grin, “Your expression is so lewd. Are you having improper thoughts about Leg Bro?”
“Awei! Don’t talk nonsense!” Zhang Liqin’s face instantly flushed crimson as she covered it and said, “President Yang and I have a purely superior-subordinate relationship!”