WILTHAUCS Chapter 10

A little firelight flickered at his fingertips.

 

The cold moonlight blurred his silhouette, leaving a half-round curved moon in his eyes.

 

Gao Shi leaned against the window and slowly exhaled a mouthful of white smoke, dissipating outside the window with the night breeze.

 

In the distance, a silver car came and flew like lightning that pierced the darkness.

 

Gao Shi put his hand holding the cigarette out of the window; with a gentle crush of the  index finger and middle finger, the remaining half of the cigarette transformed into little bits of starlight and disappeared in mid-air.

 

His gaze passed through the small hall and the half-covered door, landing on the sleeping Gao Gusheng.

 

His gaze softened slightly.

 

Then he withdrew his gaze and walked towards the stairs.

 

……

 

“Brother Gao! Brother Gao! Oh my mommy god! Brother Gao, are you alright? Where’s Lele?!”

 

Before the door of the silver-colored sports car opened, the owner’s voice scurried out first.

 

Clearly, a second ago, the car was still about ten paces away, and a second later, a silver head came up to the front.

 

It was a teenager.

 

He had short silver hair, golden eyes, and was wearing an orange t-shirt with white shorts.

 

However, strangely enough, his body was strapped with layers and layers of bandages.

 

His left arm and right leg were wrapped so tightly that not a bit of skin was exposed. A bandage stretched from the right side of his forehead to his left cheek, covering his right eye. On the exposed left forehead grew a small horn the length of a little finger, its tip tinged with pink.

 

It looked like a cosplayer who slipped out of some comic convention.

 

Gao Shi looked at the head that had crashed over, frowned, and pressed his head, pushing him to the ground and taking a step back. “Who’s your mom? Lele is fine.”

 

As he said that, he took out a small glass bottle from his pocket.

 

The bottle was so small that it could be held in one hand.

 

The other guy’s eyes widened.

 

Without the help of smoke, in Gao Shi’s eyes, this was just an ordinary empty bottle, very similar to the small glass bottles used to raise water babies.

 

The only difference was probably that this small bottle was icy, holding it in his hands for so long didn’t tint it with the slightest bit of getting warm.

 

If not considering what’s inside, it’s an excellent choice to use in summer to avoid the heat: green and harmless.

 

However, in the eyes of the silver head, this small bottle appeared pure black, so dense that it showed a solid texture. In the moonlight, it looked like a black inkstone.

 

Only the fleeting glimpse of a contorted ghostly face could confirm that something inside was indeed moving—not anything amusing. The silver-headed figure stuttered a few gestures, wide-eyed and tongue-tied, and said, “Gao, Brother Gao, did you just take down the lair of the Lustful Ghost and the Nightmare Ghost?”

 

Gao Shi gave an impatient “tsk” and tossed the small glass bottle up and down, “Silver Antelope, do you want this or not?”

 

“Yes, yes, yes!”

 

The young man known as Silver Antelope was terrified, his head moving up and down in sync with the glass bottle being tossed by Gao Shi until the bottle was thrown to him. He caught it flusteredly, finally letting out a sigh of relief.

 

“My Gao master, Grandpa! Can I call you Grandpa? Don’t play with me like that. My heart is beating out of my chest.”

 

Gao Shi grunted, “Aren’t the things produced by you Spirit Management Office always good of quality? I remember that this vial has gone through a ten-stage pressure test before.”

 

Silver Antelope was momentarily stunned by the question.

 

Right, he had been scared silly.

 

But then, who else would treat a spirit-locking bottle containing hundreds of ghosts and monsters like a mere pebble to play with, as this grandpa before him was doing?

 

Gao Shi wrapped his arms around his chest and said indifferently, “Now, isn’t it the time to tell me why you didn’t find this group of things within the scope of your inspections?”

 

The original joy on Silver Antelope’s face stiffened, revealing a guilty look. He dryly said, “Brother Gao, I’m really sorry……”

 

Silver Antelope was a member of the Spirit Management Center.

 

There were not many members in the Spirit Management Center, but each of them had their own divine abilities, protecting the areas they inspected in their own way.

 

B City was under the jurisdiction of the Silver Antelope team. Three members of the team are known for their speed; it only takes them ten minutes to travel through the entire B City.

 

Tonight’s mistake shouldn’t have happened.

 

Silver Antelope explained in a pale voice, “Tonight, Little Feather and I were patrolling, but we encountered a walking-in-circles situation on the road and only came out just now.”

 

As he said that, he found the explanation unconvincing and lowered his head in frustration.

 

No matter what, tonight’s incident was indeed their dereliction of duty.

 

Gathering these ghosts and monsters required time, and during this period, it’s astonishing that no one noticed anything unusual, allowing them to amass in such large numbers that they nearly formed a Ghost Domain (Gui Yu).

 

If Gao Shi wasn’t here tonight, and it was just him facing this, he might not have been able to solve the matter.

 

He hung his head down and waited for Gao Shi’s admonishment, but after waiting for a while, there was no movement. He looked up and saw Gao Shi looking toward the sky as if in thought.

 

“Brother Gao?”

 

“You guys just said ……,” Gao Shi paused, “said that when you came, you encountered a walk-in-circle?”

 

“With Ghost Eye and Xuan Yu around, it shouldn’t have trapped you guys for so long, right?”

 

Ghost Eye and Xuan Yu were members of the Silver Antelope team.

 

Ghost Eye’s eyes could see through all illusions, while Xuan Yu was extremely good at formations. With these two around, almost nothing could trap them.

 

Silver Antelope touched his horns, “This is where it gets strange.”

 

“Eye and Little stone (Xuan Yu’s nickname) both say that there is nothing strange.”

 

“It would be fine if only one person say this, but both said so ……”

 

As Silver Antelope’s voice faded into the background, Gao Shi looked to the sky again and frowned.

 

Is it the effect of the “plot”……?

 

***

 

After sending Silver Antelope away, Gao Shi returned to the villa.

 

As soon as he entered, he heard a sound coming from Gao Gusheng’s room.

 

Is he awake?

 

Gao Shi pushed the door and saw Gao Gusheng grumbling and humming, not knowing what he had dreamed of, muttering like a cat-er-pillar.

 

Gao Shi leaned over and touched his forehead.

 

Right at the moment of skin-to-skin contact, Gao Gusheng violently bounced up from the bed. Before his eyes opened, he swung out with a fist—”Here comes my old self!”

 

This fist met resistance; Gao Gusheng was dazed and confused, not yet awake, and thought, [ wow, this demon has some ability; who’s old thing’s mount is this? dare to move my master, watch me teach him a lesson!]

 

With this thought, Gao Gusheng’s heart surged with heroic fervor, “You nefarious beast, eat my staff! Tiyaa—!”

 

However, Gao “Monkey” couldn’t swing his staff. Gao Gusheng finally realized something was wrong and opened his eyes in a daze. He saw his own Rulai “Gaozu” with a black face, holding a piggy pillow that he casually grabbed from the bed and used as a gold band.

 

No wonder, in his dream, he always felt that the Golden Cudgel was soft, and he wondered if it was a pirated copy, but now he looked at it – oh, it turned out that not only was the Golden Cudgel a pirated copy, but even he himself, the Monkey King, was also a pirated copy.

 

Gao Shi touched his forehead with a black face, “What did you dream about.”

 

His body temperature returned to normal.

 

As soon as this was mentioned, Gao Gusheng was energized. He danced around, “Dad! You don’t know how horrible the nightmare I had was! I dreamt that you were the Tang Monk and I was the Sun Monkey, and that we were going to the West together to get scriptures, and you would be taken away to be eaten at one time, and at another time, you would be taken away to get married, which exhausted me to death.”

 

He patted his heart with palpitations, “Especially the one in the Pan Silk Cave, the silk spat out by those spider sprites was everywhere, I was dragged into ice water and almost lost it.”

 

He moved to Gao Shi’s side and smiled, “Luckily, Master was over there chanting the mantra furiously, and I was able to break free from the ice water in no time.”

 

Gao Shi looked at his son, who was puffing out his chest with pride, resembling a cat emoji, and the last bit of irritation in him dissolved, “Oh? So you were quite capable in your dream, then?”

 

Gao Gusheng patted his chest, “Of course!”

 

Gao Shi rubbed his son’s head.

 

It was unexpected that in the dream fragments, the ghostly figure tormenting Lele appeared in such a manner. They seem not only to have left no psychological scars on him but even to have made him happy.

 

However, Gao Gusheng is always perceptive, now fully awake, and senses something is wrong. “Dad, did I almost get into trouble again?”

 

Gao Shi didn’t intend to hide it; keeping this from him would do more harm than good, so he simply acknowledged with a “Hmm,” “You were dragged into a dream by a Nightmare and Lust Ghosts.”

 

Gao Gusheng was puzzled, “That’s not right. Shouldn’t I have turned into Tang Sanzang then? Why was I the Monkey?”

 

“All those beautiful female demons were all clinging to you, Dad, and when they saw me, they were all like, ‘This disciple, with his sharp-mouthed monkey cheeks, definitely doesn’t look like a good person.'”

 

Gao Shi was amused and exasperated by his son’s silly comment, giving him a playful smack on the head, “Maybe it’s because even the ghosts are worried about you, having never seen such a dumb kid before.”

 

“Okay, now that you’re awake, what do you want to eat?”

 

Gao Gusheng got up from the bed in a flash, and jogged out, “Dad, I want to eat beef noodles and roasted durian!”

 

Gao Shi tied on his apron. “Beef noodles are fine. Order takeout for the roasted durian; no roasting at home.”

 

“Or else the Auntie will come to clean our house and think we’ve roasted shit at home again.”

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The Author has something to say:

Before, the dorm next to us ate LuoShi noodles in the corner of the corridor, we thought it was a sewer blowing up.

I don’t know which dorm reported it to the hostess.

Auntie came with tools, checked for a while, found that the sewer was fine, followed the smell, and found 2 people squatting down and eating LuoShi noodles.

Three people stare at each other.