Chapter 3: The Gate of Righteousness

  A faint blue light flashed from the spatial ring in Xiao Xuan's hand, and a magic wand appeared in his hand. Holding the wand, he immediately gave off an air of mystery that was hard to fathom, and the gemstone on the wand continued to emit a mysterious glow, adding a lot of pressure to the room. Amidst this, a killing intent circulated faintly.

  "If you don't show up, just wait and see how I'll deal with you!"

  With the wand in hand, he should have been chanting spells to cast magic, but from Xiao Xuan's mouth came words that sounded like a Taoist priest scolding ghosts and monsters. It was as if Xiao Xuan was holding not a wand, but a peach wood sword stained with the blood of a black rooster. Even Su Mo Ran, who had been standing by waiting for an opportunity to strike, couldn't help but twitch the corner of her mouth at this incongruous scene, which made people feel somewhat unacceptable.

  However, Xiao Xuan's scolding had an unexpectedly good effect. As soon as his voice fell, one of the two women who were originally lying on the long chair "taking a nap" suddenly floated up. Yes, she really did float up, getting thinner and thinner, more and more like a piece of paper. When she floated to a height of one meter, her body quickly shrunk, and finally turned into a paper person, swaying gently as it fell back down.

  The paper man is exquisitely crafted, with the eyebrow and eye parts showcasing extremely high skills. However, the pale paper skin tone and overly bright rouge give the entire paper person a somewhat eerie feeling. Moreover, in traditional Chinese culture, paper people are associated with funeral rites and represent bad luck.

  "Paper person?" Su Mu Ran walked forward, just about to bend down and pick up the paper person, when she suddenly seemed to remember something, and withdrew her hand. She felt that picking it up like this might not be quite right, after all, this paper person had just transformed into a normal person's shape and lain down with them for a "nap", which naturally involved some kind of ghostly interference.

  However, Xiao Xuan picked up the paper man as if nothing had happened, and held it in his hand to admire it carefully, "tsk tsk" in admiration.

  "It's as if this paper man has been possessed by a ghost, which adds several points to its divine charm. This kind of charm is something that even the most skilled painter can't capture."

  "He... " Su Mo was momentarily speechless.

  "It's okay, the dirty thing has already left this thing, and now this paper person is just an ordinary thing, there won't be any danger."

  "Have you seen this thing before?"

  "When I went to interview the material before, I really encountered this paper man, which was a private collection of an old lady over 90 years old. She said that she had seen the paper man come alive when she was young, and then she kept hiding it for decades. The paper of the paper man didn't turn yellow at all, and the portrait of the paper man became more vivid than before. At that time, the old lady even took it out to show me. I also borrowed it specifically to do C element detection, and it was indeed a paper man that existed for over 50 years."

  But that kind of thing is hard to come by in real life, and the paper man who has been possessed by it is even more rare. The old lady cherished it, and it's said that before she passed away, she specifically instructed her family to bring it into the coffin with her when she was buried. I regretted it for a long time, but unexpectedly, as soon as I entered the "Zombie Mr." task world, I ran into this very thing again.

  Xiao Xuan directly put the paper man into his spatial ring, as if he had casually picked up a collectible. Seeing Su Mo Ran's expression still looked like he couldn't accept it, Xiao Xuan could only say:

  "Take it easy, this kind of thing, you have to get used to it. The really scary ghosts haven't appeared yet. That one just now was probably just a lonely soul who saw us sleeping in the afternoon and came over to join in on the fun. And these kinds of shops that make money from dead people's belongings are always going to attract them. Think about all the evil spirits and zombies we'll definitely encounter in the future, compared to them, that one just now was nothing but a joke."

  "How did you just get rid of that filthy thing? Was it with your necromancy?"

  "I'm a novice magician, what kind of powerful magic can I use? My previous method was very simple, it's just to scare it away, put on a fierce face, and then let out a loud shout, this dirty thing will obediently run away, hmm, that's all."

  "Is there still this method?" Su Mo felt it was quite absurd, yet it actually worked.

  "Ordinary evil spirits are just playing tricks on people, as long as you overpower them with your aura, you can scare them away. Generally speaking, most people who encounter ghosts or evil spirits are those who are physically weak and sickly. Their auras are weak, making it easier for evil spirits to attach themselves. Like us, one a magician and the other an elf, our physical bodies may not be extremely strong yet, but they are absolutely much stronger than ordinary humans. With this kind of aura, ordinary evil spirits wouldn't dare to cause too much trouble."

  Xiao Xuan tried his best to make these things sound more common and clear, because in the days that can be seen afterwards, the Chinese team will definitely deal with many such things. It's just good for Su Mo Ran to have a bottom line in her heart. After all, not everyone can see ghosts like herself since childhood, and Xiao Xuan has even studied some mysterious things because of this, and he also understands some superficial knowledge. If he didn't write books as an author, buying a Taoist robe to go to the countryside to pretend to be a master of Yin and Yang would also be more than enough.

  Just as they were talking, the three newcomers finally began to wake up. Excluding the woman who was just messing around with dirty things, this time the world's main god arranged for a total of 3 new people to come in, 1 female and 2 males, all young people.

  "Where is this place? And who are you?" a dark-skinned young man asked, his face showing obvious panic, although he was quite robust in build, it was clear that his courage was not sufficient.

  "Ah! My clothes, where have my clothes gone!" The only female newcomer among the three let out a shriek, tensely covering her chest with both arms, clearly having received an extreme shock.

  However, there was a relatively slender and pale-skinned man who sat quietly on the long bench, not saying a word, as if thinking about something. If guessed correctly, he should be reading the message left by the main god in his mind. His calm demeanor was similar to that of Xiao Xuan when he first entered the task world.

  "You come and explain it to them, I'll go for a walk outside first."

  Xiao Xuan is a person with enough patience, but he doesn't want to use his patience on these newcomers. Anyway, now that Su Mochen is here, it's just right to let her take care of the task of letting the newcomers face reality early on.

  "Alright." Su Mu Ran agreed very briefly.

  Xiao Xuan walked straight out of the house and came to the front yard. The space here was not large, but it wasn't small either. There were two paper-made human figures' venues and a well. Apparently, Xiao Xuan's guess was correct, this place was indeed a place where people made money from the dead.

  Walking a few more steps forward, I arrived at the entrance of the shop. The large gate of the shop is often a symbol of the years of history of a store, but the shop where Xiao Xuan is located can no longer be described as having a long history. Even if it has been around for a long time, will it last until half of the gate is broken and the other half is nowhere to be seen?

  It's likely that even thieves would find this place inauspicious and wouldn't dare to come here, so whether the door is good or bad makes no difference. Moreover, those who really need to come to buy paper offerings, incense, paper ingots, or to invite someone to preside over a funeral, will still enter even if the gate is broken. And if nothing's going on normally, who would bother to visit this kind of place for no reason?

  As soon as he walked out of the shop, Xiao Xuan saw a large mansion directly opposite him. On the gate of the mansion hung a plaque with five big characters "Ma's Village Charity Hall".

  "This... is really damn unlucky."

  At this time, even Xiao Xuan couldn't help but utter a foul language. His family was making paper money at home and already felt quite unlucky. Who would have thought that the house opposite theirs was actually a "Yi Zhuang", which in modern terms is a mortuary or a place where unclaimed corpses are kept or stored temporarily.

  Just as Xiao Xuan was standing at the entrance of the shop, an old man with a white beard suddenly ran out from the righteous hall. The old man should be quite old, but his spirit was very vigorous, and when he stepped out, he gave people a sense of vitality. This old man was obviously also a martial artist, which was not surprising, as he was clearly in charge of the righteous hall. As the saying goes, "the higher the skill, the greater the talent", only such a martial artist would have the guts to take on this task of guarding the righteous hall.

  The old man obviously came to find Xiao Xuan, and as soon as he met him, he hastily grabbed Xiao Xuan's arm and begged: "Xiao boss, just do me a favor, Fu Bo has something urgent at home tonight, can you please help me take care of the righteous village for one night?"

  This is obviously the task of all the guards in the side mission, and now Fubo, who has just run out of the righteous village, seems to be the kind of NPC that triggers the task. Of course, this kind of NPC is infinitely more advanced than those in online games. This is a tangible real world, and Fubo is also a living person. Even he himself doesn't know that his behavior and cognition have been silently modified by the main god. At this time, Xiao Xuan suddenly had an idea: whether there is also a kind of existence like the main god in real life, who has turned some people in real society into NPCs according to his will?

  Of course, as a branch task, Xiao Xuan was also determined to get it done, so he didn't let Fu Bo wait for too long. He patted Fu Bo's hand and said: "We're all neighbors, no need to be polite, Fu Bo can go home now, I'll take care of things tonight."