Chapter 83: The Wet Market

Along the way, I kept trying to use the Golden Bee Gu, familiarizing myself with how to control it.
It was indeed very easy to use, able to follow me just like a drone’s camera.

In terms of speed, it could completely keep up with the cars and buses on the street.
This flight speed was already quite exaggerated, surpassing that of a normal insect.

And it really could see ghosts.
From the Gu insect’s perspective, I could see the black shadows staggering along the roadside and the ghosts clinging to some people.
But unlike me, it couldn’t perceive auras; the Golden Bee Gu could only see ominous auras and none of the others.

After returning to Willow Cypress Garden, I couldn’t see any ominous auras anymore.
Similarly, I didn’t see any ghosts in the residential complex either.
If I couldn’t see ghosts with both my normal vision and the bug’s vision, then there probably weren’t any.
I was relieved.

After getting home, I put down my schoolbag and took out the laptop I had won from the bubble tea shop, preparing to play on the computer.
Unexpectedly, there was a network cable in this house, and there was even an active internet connection.
I could get online.
It was probably the previous tenant’s internet fee that hadn’t expired yet, which was a nice bonus for me.

Once online, I searched for information about the recent string of murders by the Painted Skin Ghost.
As expected, there were no reports.
The incident had been suppressed and handled quietly.
Only in small local news could one find mentions of a vicious crime and a warning for everyone to be careful.

Expanding the search to the entire province, there was indeed not a single mention of demons or ghosts in the official news.
Instead, there were grand reports on which town was releasing lanterns for the Ghost Festival, which county was praying to the Dragon King, and a special interview with a very efficacious spirit medium, all under the guise of promoting traditional culture.

This was a way of letting people know what to do without knowing why, publicizing methods of exorcising ghosts and demons under other pretenses.

Then I looked up common methods for exorcising ghosts.
It was very interesting.
Although not a single website admitted that ghosts existed, there were tons of methods for exorcising them.

The simplest ones were sprinkling salt or beans to drive away ghosts.
If you were afraid of unclean things entering your home, you could draw a line with salt at the doorway and by the windows.
It was indeed a very cheap method.

Then, pets like cats and dogs were said to have more acute spiritual senses than humans and could detect unclean things.
If you heard a dog barking abnormally, you should stay away from that area.

Then there was black dog blood and rooster blood, both of which could ward off evil.
The difference was that for rooster blood, you had to decapitate the rooster directly and use the freshest blood.
Black dog blood, however, did not need to be fresh and could be prepared in advance.

Then, a purchase link popped up at the bottom of the webpage.
Pure black local dog blood, one hundred yuan for a 500ml bag.
Buy five bags and get one free, frozen storage, expedited delivery.
Order today, and it arrives tomorrow, making your life safer.

I was dumbfounded.
You could buy this online?
But on second thought, maybe there were people in urgent need of exorcism who couldn’t find black dog blood, so online shopping was reasonable.
You could even buy it and store it in the fridge.

Speaking of which, there was a refrigerator in my rental apartment, and it was quite spacious.
But the thought of the husband in that other apartment who killed his wife, dismembered her, and hid her in the fridge made me a little scared.
I didn’t really want to touch this refrigerator.

However, it was true that I should prepare some ghost-exorcising supplies in advance.
I was living in this house alone, so it was unrealistic to expect to form any kind of protective aura.
I should definitely prepare more things to ward off evil.

What I found online mainly included salt, beans, garlic, glutinous rice, etc., each used in different situations.
They all seemed to be food, but I had just moved in and had no food at all in the house.

Moreover, I needed to prepare blood and meat to feed the Golden Bee Gu, as well as offerings for Xia Yubing’s parents.
I had none of these at home.
It seemed I had to make a trip to the wet market.

It was dusk, the sky was dimming, and lights were turning on in every household.
I could hear the sounds of stir-frying and smell the aroma of cooking food.
Many people were starting to cook after getting off work.

The residential complex had its own small wet market, which was bustling with people, shoulder to shoulder.
It was very lively.
It seemed that the residents of the complex all liked to buy their groceries here.
As soon as I walked in, I smelled a fishy odor.

As someone who wasn’t very good at cooking, I first bought a bag of noodles, a jin¹ of pork, and then a few cents worth of green onions and a few eggs, planning to make noodles.
The pork could also be used to feed the Golden Bee Gu.

Next was the grains section.
Here, I bought glutinous rice and beans.
Since I didn’t know which ones were useful, I bought some soybeans, mung beans, red beans, and black beans.

Then I went to the fruit and vegetable stalls.
Besides buying fruits for myself, I also had to buy some as offerings for Xia Yubing’s parents.

The grocery store where I bought salt also had red candles.
Since I hadn’t bought an incense holder yet, I just bought two red candles to make do.
I also bought a pack of pickled mustard greens as an appetizer.

At the live animal stalls, I saw a large number of live chickens and ducks.
They were actually labeled for sacrificial use, and you could even order a whole sacrificial pig for offerings.

Besides that, there were a large number of black dogs in cages.
I could see some healed scars on their bodies, clearly from having had blood drawn, but their lives had not been harmed.
The dog stall also indicated that you could buy black dog blood separately.

At this moment, I saw a crowd of people gathered around a small stall not far away, seemingly all haggling over the price.
What was so popular?

I walked closer and saw that the stall owner was a thin old man, wearing clean coarse cloth clothes.
He didn’t look like a vegetable seller.
In front of him was a shoulder pole with two baskets, and in the baskets were pieces of bright red meat.

He didn’t even have a meat stall or a cutting board, so he really didn’t look like he was selling meat.
But there was indeed a sign in front of the basket that read: Ostrich Meat, Thirty Yuan per Jin.

Ostrich meat?
That was a rare delicacy.
I had never eaten it before.
But given my previous family’s circumstances, it was hard enough to even eat meat, so I was basically cut off from all kinds of exotic delicacies.

The old man had no cutting board or cleaver, so naturally, he wasn’t cutting the meat to order.
Customers could only buy by the piece.
They would point to a piece of meat, and it would be sold for however much it weighed.
Even so, business was bustling.
More than half of the two large baskets of ostrich meat had already been sold.

It must be delicious, otherwise, why would so many people buy it?
I had money now, so I was seriously considering whether to buy a piece to try.

But after thinking about it, I decided against it.
I had already bought pork, and I didn’t know how to cook.
Even if I bought ostrich meat, I wouldn’t know how to prepare it.

So I let it go.
I left the wet market and returned to Building Four.
In front of the elevator, a very slow-walking old lady was waiting at the entrance.

The spiritual light on the old lady’s body was brilliant and dazzling.
It was clear she was wearing several artifacts.
And the color, a gold with a glazed sheen, was very similar to the color of the artifacts I saw on Master Yanming and the other monks at the Dharma Assembly, but there was a slight difference.

When I got closer, I saw a jade statue of Guanyin hanging on her chest, a string of lotus seed pod bodhi beads on her wrist, and a lotus pendant hanging from her waist.
All of these were artifacts.

Not just on the outside, she had more under her clothes.
These artifacts were worth at least a million.
This old lady was definitely a wealthy person.

Footnotes:
¹ Jin : A traditional Chinese unit of mass, now standardized at 500 grams (approximately 1.1 lbs).