Chapter Sixty-One: The Deep Bond Between Master and Disciple

Li Gang's sudden movement left the four people inside the shed somewhat perplexed.

"Please… I beg you…" Li Gang's voice was hoarse and trembling, carrying a heartbreaking supplication, "Peel… peel off that talisman on the door… let me… let me see my apprentice… just for one glance… after seeing him, we'll go together…"

"No!"

Cai Kun blurted it out almost instantly, his voice slightly out of tune from tension. "Who knows what you master and disciple are plotting? What if you gang up to harm us? No, no way!"

Cai Kun's words echoed Le Dong's thoughts. He turned his gaze toward Ma Wenwen and Lin Xun.

Ma Wenwen's expression remained neutral, and she didn't make a statement immediately, appearing to weigh the pros and cons, while Lin Xun's gaze lingered on the framed photograph on the ground for a few seconds.

For a moment, the shed lapsed into an oppressive dead silence, broken only by the monotonous patter of rain striking the roof and the faint, tearful cry of Li Gang's apprentice coming from outside the door: "Master… say something, Master…"

Time seemed to freeze for more than ten seconds. Li Gang's ghost remained kneeling, the shoulders formed of black smoke seeming to twitch slightly.

Seeing that everyone remained indifferent after a long while, the kneeling black smoke gathered itself again with a sense of despair.

He no longer pleaded; instead, he turned around, looking with eyes full of sorrow and attachment firmly at the green iron door that separated him from his apprentice.

In that gaze, there was a resolute determination bordering on madness.

Right at that moment—

Sizzle!

A sound resembling something burning rang out!

On the iron door, the edges of that originally old, yellowed talisman with blurred handwriting unexpectedly began to emit wisps of eerie black smoke out of thin air!

"Master! Say something! I… I can feel you're inside, come out!" The shouts from outside the door suddenly turned anxious and frantic, followed by the violent sounds of crashing: "Bang! Bang!"

It was Li Gang's apprentice ramming the door with his body!

Inside the door, Li Gang's ghost moved as well. He drifted fiercely toward the heavy door, his entire body composed of smoke charging relentlessly and fiercely at the talisman that was currently venting black smoke!

"He's trying to break through the talisman!" Le Dong cried out in surprise.

"Stop!"

Ma Wenwen shouted instantly, the ancient copper coins in her hand flashing with a faint light.

However, at this critical juncture, Lin Xun, who had been observing in silence all along, suddenly spoke up:

"Li Gang, you said earlier that your apprentice died ten years ago. Judging by your appearance, you must have known that your apprentice's ghost has existed all along even before you died, right?"

Lin Xun's question was like a basin of cold water, instantly extinguishing the tense atmosphere within the shed.

Li Gang's motion of charging at the talisman abruptly stalled. Le Dong, Cai Kun, and even Ma Wenwen, who was preparing to strike, subconsciously looked at Lin Xun.

"Since the bond between you and your apprentice is so deep that you refuse to dissipate for ten years just to see each other," Lin Xun took a step forward, her gaze burning as she stared intently at the blackened talisman, "then why did you paste this talisman on the door? To shut your apprentice out?!"

That's right! Lin Xun's question was like a bolt of lightning, instantly cleaving through the fog in everyone's minds!

The existence of this talisman completely contradicted the profound affection Li Gang had displayed toward his apprentice!

Li Gang's ghost slowly turned around, his smoke-formed face revealing a smile uglier than crying, filled with boundless bitterness and desolation.

"Heh… hehe…" He gave a miserable laugh, his voice intermittent. "When I was alive… I knew… I knew he had always been there… He wanted to see me… and I wanted to see him too…" The black smoke fluctuated violently, as if bearing immense pain.

"But… but I am a living person! And he… he is a ghost!" Li Gang's voice carried a sob. "After a long time… the Yin energy on him… my old bones… simply couldn't withstand it…"

He paused, as if recalling something extremely painful: "Once… I simply couldn't hold on anymore… I went to the city… and secretly found a so-called master with genuine skills… I didn't dare to explain clearly… I only asked him… if there was any method… that could keep… keep 'unclean things' from getting close… without harming the 'thing' itself…"

"That master… listened to me finish… looked at me for a long time… and finally gave me this talisman," Li Gang pointed to the talisman emitting black smoke on the door. "He said… pasting it on the door… could isolate the intrusion of Yin energy… allowing my body to slowly recover… and it wouldn't harm him, nor would it interfere with us master and disciple meeting. That way… it would be good for everyone…"

"Humph!" Hearing this, Ma Wenwen let out a scoff. "Isolate Yin energy? Let you recover? How is what you did any different from 'raising a ghost'! The kind of person who taught you this method and gave you that talisman is no proper master at all; they were simply aiding an abomination!"

"Raising a ghost?"

Li Gang's ghost trembled violently, and then erupted into an even more mournful and tragic laugh that echoed in the empty auto repair shed, making one's hair stand on end. "Raising a ghost? Hahaha… Raising a ghost is still better than raising a person!"

He seemed to have been poked in his deepest vulnerability, his voice suddenly rising, filled with years of pent-up sorrow and indignation:

"I, Li Gang, have lived for the greater part of my life… I can certainly tell who is worth raising and who isn't! Do you know, I have a biological son, but that unfilial wretch! His eyes only saw my coffin money; I couldn't see him from one end of the year to the next, and when I did, all he wanted was money! Money! When I fell ill… and died… he probably clapped his hands in joy, waiting to carve up my meager savings!"

The black smoke rolled violently. Li Gang looked toward the door, his tone suddenly turning miraculously soft, carrying an indescribable warmth:

"But what about this silly apprentice I picked up? He had no father and no mother… learning craftsmanship from me… calling me Master with every breath… closer than a real son!

He served me tea and water… beat my back and massaged my shoulders… reminded me to put on more clothes when it was cold… helped me pack up my stall when it rained… When I repaired cars, he would watch and learn from the side… his eyes full of earnestness… completely… completely treating me with a son's filial piety!"

"Raising a ghost?" Li Gang's voice lowered, yet every word dripped with blood and absolute determination. "In this lifetime… I raised a creature worse than an animal, something even more chilling than a ghost. I would rather… rather raise the ghost of this silly apprentice who has missed me for ten years and thought of finding me even in death!"

As he spoke, Li Gang's ghost did not hesitate, slamming fiercely into the talisman once again!

"Sizzle—!"

This time, an even denser black smoke burst forth from the point of impact. The talisman turned as charred as charcoal, and the cinnabar runes upon it became so dim they were almost invisible.

As for Li Gang's shadowy form, after the impact, it flickered violently like a candle in the wind, its entire shape becoming extremely transparent, as if it would completely dissipate and vanish in the next second!

"He's not going to make it!" Le Dong's heart tightened. The ghost's weakness was visible to the naked eye, unable to maintain even its most basic form.

Beside him, Lin Xun also looked at Li Gang's illusory figure that was almost about to vanish, then glanced at the simple, smiling faces of the master and disciple in the framed photo on the ground, a flash of complex emotion crossing her eyes.

She turned her head and lowered her voice, saying to Ma Wenwen, Le Dong, and Cai Kun, "His soul is about to scatter, and the talisman is almost ruined. Even if… even if they really wanted to do something, in their current state, they couldn't stir up any trouble. Why not… just let them meet for the last time?"

As soon as she finished speaking, after a few seconds of weighing the situation, Ma Wenwen nodded slightly. "The talisman is mostly broken, and the Yin energy is leaking out. The door… will have to open sooner or later. Let them be."

Hearing this, Cai Kun turned pale. He opened his mouth to object, but happened to lock eyes with Lin Xun's sweeping gaze.

His heart failed him. Thinking of his own cowardly behavior and fearing he would lose face in front of Lin Xun again, he quickly puffed out his chest and feigned calmness: "I… I… I have no objections!"

Seeing that everyone had no objections, Lin Xun shouted toward the dissolving ghost figure, "Li Gang! Step back a bit!"

Li Gang's black smoke gave a sharp start, as if unable to believe it, and then, with a frantic joy and disbelief at having survived a catastrophe, he laboriously drifted backward a little.

Lin Xun stepped forward decisively, and with a "rip," she completely tore off the almost useless talisman!

The very instant the talisman left the door—

"Crash!!!"

That green iron door was forcefully battered open from the outside by an invisible force!

A chilling gust of Yin wind poured violently into the repair shed, blowing the tarpaulin into a loud flutter.

An almost transparent human figure, due to using too much force, lunged directly from outside the door and crashed heavily onto the water-logged ground!

The hearts of Le Dong and the others instantly leaped into their throats. Ma Wenwen instinctively thrust her hand into her cloth bag, and Lin Xun also took a few steps back, her hand moving toward her waist.

As for the lean, dark figure that had lunged in—it was the young man they had seen by the roadside. He struggled to climb up from the ground, paying no mind to the four living people acting as if facing a formidable enemy, but instead scanning the shed anxiously until his gaze finally locked firmly onto the thin wisps of black smoke that were barely visible in the corner.

"Master!" The apprentice's voice carried a sob, and he lunged over almost crawling. "Master, where did you run off to these past few days? You worried me to death. You said you're getting up in years and your legs aren't good; what if you slipped or got hurt outside, or got hit by some blind driver..."

He chattered on, his tone filled with genuine worry and grievance, just like a child who couldn't find his parent.

Yet when he subconsciously reached out his hand to help him up, he froze as well.

The worry on his face solidified, replaced by incredulous astonishment, followed by immense panic.

He jerked his head up, looking once again at Li Gang's ghostly figure, then lowered his head to look at the black smoke on his own body, and said with a trembling voice, "Master, you... you...!"

"Xiaoyong... don't..." Li Gang's weak voice sounded, interrupting his apprentice's questioning. He struggled to condense his form, as if trying to convey comforting information. "...Master... Master left... a few days ago..."

"Left?" Apprentice Xiaoyong shook violently all over, as though struck by lightning, staring blankly at Li Gang. "Le... left? Master... you... what did you say?"

"It... it was those three damned bastards..." Li Gang's voice was intermittent, filled with exhaustion and bone-deep hatred, as he briefly recounted the murder that had taken place late at night a few days ago.

Upon hearing that his master's head had been brutally smashed open with a wrench by those three fugitives, the originally faint Yin energy surrounding apprentice Xiaoyong suddenly surged violently!

Even the meager human shape he had left began to distort, and he let out a hoarse low roar: "Bastards, I'll tear them to pieces! It's all my fault! It's all my fault! If I had kept watch at the door that night... Master wouldn't have..."

"Xiaoyong!" Li Gang's voice rose, carrying a trace of majesty, while his already illusory figure grew a bit dimmer due to this stern shout. "You are not allowed to commit sins!"

With that, he laboriously glanced at Ma Wenwen, who was ready to strike at any moment. "Listen to Master. Those three bastards... the police in the world of the living... and the rules of the underworld will deal with them. We... we should go..."

Fortunately, the resentment in Xiaoyong's heart was forcibly suppressed by Li Gang's scolding; otherwise, Ma Wenwen might have struck in the next instant...

"Sigh..."

Watching the farewell between the master and disciple ghosts at the door, an indescribably complex emotion welled up in Le Dong's heart.

For a long time, in his cognition, ghosts were synonymous with resentment, hostility, and ominousness—entities that had to be expelled or eliminated.

He had never imagined that such a deep, pure bond, even tinged with worldly warmth, could exist between ghosts.

This involuntarily reminded him of the actions of Housekeeper Ma, Boss Hu, and Xiao Zhang—killing and looting for personal gain, utterly devoid of humanity!

Thinking of this, Le Dong let out a long sigh in his heart.

A world where it is hard to tell living from dead really makes one's... heart turn cold at times.