Chapter 18: The Dwelling Place of Ghosts

"Let me ask you, how long have you kept that dog of yours, the one called Da Jin?" I questioned Gu Xiaogang.

"Well... it's been many years, to be honest, I can't recall exactly how many," Gu Xiaogang replied, scratching his head.

"Think carefully. Try to remember—how long has it been?" I pressed him patiently.

Hearing this, Gu Xiaogang fell into deep thought.

After a while, he finally said, "Five years, at least five years!"

Five years? The timing didn’t quite add up.

Still, unwilling to give up, I continued questioning him, "Think again—did you already have that dog when your daughter died?"

"No... Oh, wait! Now I remember! It was that year, just a few days after the child passed away that my father brought home that dog!" Gu Xiaogang slapped his forehead.

Hearing this, I nodded.

That fit. That matched perfectly.

It seemed my suspicions were confirmed. The little spirit that had been haunting the Gu family was none other than the daughter who had died in infancy.

I was now ninety percent certain that the little spirit was indeed the deceased girl. Moreover, she was also the dog named Da Jin.

How bizarre, how utterly uncanny this was.

According to my judgment, after the baby girl died, by some strange twist of fate, her soul attached itself to Da Jin, continuing to live on in the Gu household.

This family...

I looked at Gu Xiaogang, and anger began to rise within me.

"You... you really are sinners!" I glared at Gu Xiaogang, growling through gritted teeth.

Honestly, at this point, I didn't even want to help them anymore.

Everything that had happened to his family was a disaster of their own making. In my view, even the retribution they now faced was far too mild—they deserved utter ruin.

Even that would be too lenient; if they suffered ten times worse, it would only be just.

Seeing my sudden outburst, Gu Xiaogang looked at me in bewilderment, "Mr. Yu... what’s wrong? I..."

"And you have the nerve to ask!" I snapped at him, then demanded, "Tell me, how did your daughter die?"

"I... I..." Gu Xiaogang bowed his head in deep shame.

"Speak up! If you don’t, not even the gods could save you!" I barked.

Hearing my words, Gu Xiaogang glanced up at me, then whispered, almost inaudibly, "My parents... they didn’t like girls. They said raising a daughter was raising a child for someone else. So..."

He left the rest unsaid, but I understood. They were the ones who had killed the baby girl.

Stories like this, of children lost because of a preference for sons over daughters, I’d heard all too often—it was heartbreakingly common.

"It was my mother, she was the one who did it. My wife and I didn’t know—by the time we found out, it was already too late!" Gu Xiaogang cried out, frightened by the fury in my eyes.

I clenched my jaw so hard it made a cracking sound. That wretched old woman—no wonder she’d become a vengeful spirit, unable to reincarnate.

How could people still cling to such backward beliefs in this day and age? Sons or daughters, they are all your flesh and blood! And besides, that old woman is a woman herself, isn't she?

If the whole world preferred sons over daughters, one day we’d have to search for the River of Mothers and Sons, for without that river’s water, humanity would die out.

I’d never understand people who thought like this. If it were me, and my family had a daughter, I’d be overjoyed.

Daughters are wonderful—so caring! To put it bluntly, these days sons-in-law are more reliable than sons. Ask a son to do something and he might drag his feet, but a son-in-law would get it done in no time.

But in the end, whether you have a son or a daughter, it’s all a matter of fate. It takes centuries of karma to share a boat across life’s river; to be family is a bond forged over many lifetimes.

What hurt even more was that after the baby girl died, she couldn’t enter the underworld. She could only become a wandering ghost, drifting outside the gates of death on the Plains of the Nine Netherworlds.

By a stroke of fate, she was able to survive by taking refuge in the family’s dog. Had she been able to pass peacefully in the Gu family, perhaps their karmic bond would have ended there.

But Gu Xiaogang—damn him.

He...

Da Jin had tried to protect his son, Pengpeng. And how did Gu Xiaogang repay her? He killed Da Jin with his own hands, and if that wasn’t enough, he even threw Da Jin into the pot and ate her!

Even if he didn’t know the truth at the time, such heartless deeds were unforgivable.

That’s why I said I didn’t want to help them anymore. Let them suffer the consequences they so richly deserved!

"Mr. Yu... please, don’t be like this! You have to help my family! I’m begging you! Whatever you want for payment, as long as we can afford it, there’ll be no argument!" Gu Xiaogang dropped to his knees before me.

Seeing him so pitiful, I let out a long, weary sigh.

At that moment, I recalled something my master once said:

All that is mysterious is bound by fate. Clouds gather by fate, and disperse by fate as well. The common man is ensnared by fame, entangled by profit, and trapped by emotion. Without enlightened eyes, one cannot let go of fame and gain; without a sharp blade of wisdom, one cannot sever the threads of affection. When good karma is lost, bad karma prevails. All the flavors of life are but passing illusions.

Even now, I do not fully understand the meaning of those words. But looking at Gu Xiaogang before me, I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of melancholy.

Even ill fate is still fate. All things in the world are bound by it.

Perhaps my encounter with this case was itself a matter of fate.

"Get up. I’ll help you settle this matter," I sighed deeply and told Gu Xiaogang.

"Mr. Yu..." he still remained on his knees.

"I said, get up!" I ordered sternly.

Uncle Wang quickly stepped forward and helped him to his feet.

"Brother Wei," Shang Wuwei said, "what’s really going on? You look troubled. Whatever it is, let us know and we’ll help you out!"

Just moments ago, I’d had a minor squabble with them, and thought they might just walk away. But not only did they stay, they spoke as if nothing had happened and offered to help.

"Thank you both! I really do need your help. I can’t handle this alone," I replied, warming to them.

"Tell us," Shang Wuyong said as well.

So, I explained the entire story in detail.

"What? Mr. Yu, are you saying that dog was actually my child?" Gu Xiaogang, who had been listening, shouted in shock.

"Yes," I replied with a cold expression.

"I knew it! That dog always liked to be around my wife, and would come to play with me too. Every night, she’d sleep outside our bedroom door and refused to be moved."

"And, so many times I dreamed of a little girl calling me Papa. When I woke up, that dog was always crawling nearby!"

Gu Xiaogang’s expression was a complex mix of emotions—grief, regret, disbelief. But it was clear that above all, he felt remorse.

"So... I was the one who beat her to death?"

"And I cooked her?"

With those words, he was utterly stunned. The blow of this realization was overwhelming.

"Ugh! How revolting!" Shang Wuyong shouted at Gu Xiaogang.

"No! You mustn’t see it that way," I quickly interjected.

If that were truly the case, I’d have vomited on the spot.

"A dog is a dog, she is she. Though her soul took shelter in the dog, the dog was not her. After you killed the dog, her spirit lost its vessel and became a ghost again. As for the dog you cooked, it was still just a dog—not the child. Do you understand?" I explained to Gu Xiaogang.

Seeing the confusion on his face, I added, "Let me put it this way: the dog was like a jar, and the child’s soul was hiding inside, continuing to exist. In reality, she was already dead—a spirit. Now that the jar is broken, she can no longer stay within it. That’s all there is to it."

"Even so... I..." Gu Xiaogang was wracked with guilt, looking utterly devastated.

This matter would torment his conscience for the rest of his life; he would never escape the pain of regret. But there was nothing to be done—such is the price of bad karma. This was his punishment, and rightly so.

"Wow, brother, in all the years we’ve been in this business, this is the first time we’ve encountered something so convoluted," Shang Wuwei remarked.

Indeed, who could have imagined that such a simple case of possession would turn out to be so complicated?

I sighed once more, then turned to Uncle Wang. "Uncle Wang, prepare the Heavenly Ladder and open the Gate of Heaven. I’ll deal with the sinister energy of their ancestral grave first."