Don’t Be a Kept Man

was unable to finish his words, when a woman’s terrified scream split through the air.
The petrifying scream came from upstairs, and it immediately made Yan Yu’s face change.
He only realized now that there was an extremely strong sense of resentment in the building that had appeared sometime ago.
He turned his head back to look at Xun Chuan, pausing for a moment, before quickly opening the door to rush up to the fourth floor.

The moment the door was open, the array lost its power.

The lights had not been turned on in Su Qing’s apartment and everywhere was covered in darkness.
The closet and the desk had all fallen onto the floor, with its items all scattered on the floor, making the apartment look more chaotic than a battlefield.
Yan Yu had just heard Su Qing’s terrified scream, but when he arrived, it was all quiet, as if everything had just been his imagination.

“Su Qing?”

Yan Yu called out to her, but no one responded.
A cold breeze blew by and scattered all the talismans on the floor.

“Dok……dok…….”

Just then, a sound came from the closet door.
Yan Yu lifted his eyes, walking over slowly and cautiously.
He testingly reached out to pull open the closet door, and as he crossed the window, the pale moonlight shone down on him and elongated his shadow.
At the same time, a hammer was raised up higher and higher behind him, about to smash down onto Yan Yu’s head—–

“Ci-La—-!”

A sudden corroding sound was heard and that hammer stopped in mid air.
A clown pretending to be sly looked down in surprise, finding that his stomach had somehow been stabbed with a golden money sword.
His body began emitting a greenish hued smoke, and he let out a weird yell before plucking that sword out and throwing it far away.
Then, without hesitation, he viciously and ruthlessly hammered down towards Yan Yu.

Yan Yu had been prepared however, and he quickly dodged the incoming blow.
He quickly took the chance to pull open the closet door and drag the unconscious body of Su Qing out.

“Jie Jie Jie Jie…… You are actually a spirited body……that is too perfect…..then I don’t have to repress myself to use that woman’s body……”

The clown immediately reverted back to a happy expression, and he hopped left and right with his hammer resting on his shoulder as he headed towards Yan Yu.
His hands began to reach out longer and longer, as if to reach out to strangle his neck.
Unfortunately for Yan Yu, he had rushed over too quickly and he had not brought any other tools with him. 

Suddenly noticing a fallen red thread on the ground, he pushed Su Qing aside and quickly tied up a complicated ghost-lock knot.
Just as the sharp nails of the clown were about to touch him, he quickly looped the knot onto the clown’s wrist, and then pulled both ends, hard, and immediately corroded the area with wisps of greenish smoke.

Being pushed and falling had Su Qing waking up in pain, and she stumbled up in confusion as she held onto her head from the pain.
Immediately taking note of the situation before her, her face changed drastically and she quickly rummaged out a peach wood sword.
Taking advantage of the fact that the clown was focused on Yan, she drilled the sword viciously into the clown’s back.
She yelled harshly at Yan Yu, 

“Leave! He is an aggressive ghost! Don’t let him into your body, or you’ll be done for!”

Yan Yu and Su Qing were naturally born spirited bodies, and this kind of body was the easiest to attract ghosts.
Their “spirited” energy was strong and “ghostly” auras weak; once a ghost entered their bodies, they could forever inhabit and use it as their own.
The most important factor, however, was that they could even keep the powers they had as a ghost; it was no wonder the clown was so happy.

The clown originally had his eye on Su Qing, but now that he had an even more suitable male body, he immediately focused all his attacks towards Yan Yu, focusing his attention on stealing his body.

Aggressive ghosts were much stronger than malicious ghosts.2 In a match with Xun Chuan, Yan Yu could barely draw a tie.
For him to face up with an aggressive ghost, it was entirely impossible.
At this time, he could only feel his entire body become frozen by the clown’s resentment, unable to move even a single twitch.

“Jie Jie Jie Jie……”

When the clown was near him, his hands were like flowing liquid.
Following the red thread attached to him, he slowly invaded into Yan Yu’s body.
Seeing this happen right before her eyes, Su Qing became frantic and wanted to try and do something, but she had no way to help.
It was at this time, a sudden thick black cloud of resentment appeared and tightly wrapped around the clown’s neck.
It forcibly pulled the clown back, forcing him to leave Yan Yu.

The clown’s body immediately turned into a pool of swirling liquid in response and in a quick moment escaped out of the resentment’s hold.
At the same time, its sharp nails pinched onto that cloud as he bit down ruthlessly, chewing loudly and swallowing up that resentment into its body.

A human shape started to form behind him, a shadow that looked to be of Xun Chuan.
He grabbed the golden money sword dropped by Yan Yu through the air and without caring about his quickly corroding hands, he aimed at the head of the clown and viciously stabbed down—–

“Ci La—-“

A loud corroding sound rang out and the clown paused.
It began to struggle for its life, but Xun Chuan would not let go.
Holding that sword in place in a deathly grip, both of his hands began to rot all the way to the bone.
He was suddenly blasted away by the golden light of the sword and the clown began to melt into the air, like a snowman on a sunny day.
Its liquid pooled on the floor and quickly gathered up and flew towards Yan Yu.

Su Qing was rummaging on the floor for anything that could ward off ghosts.
Yet Yan Yu’s face had already turned black and green.
He half kneeled on the ground, breathing with great difficulty as he strangled his own throat, as his mouth let out the clown’s crackling gleeful freaky laugh,

“Jie Jie Jie Jie…… kill me hmm…..
come and kill me……”

The majority of Xun Chuan’s face had already corroded through.
He was weaker than a weakened, low level spirit, and his body was fading in and out.
He couldn’t move, but both of his eyes were staring at Yan Yu, his eyes red to the point where blood dripped out and angered to the point of almost being able to shoot lasers out of his eyes.

Su Qing didn’t think that Yan Yu’s soul was that weak and she was panicking to the point of frustration.
She tried talisman after talisman, but they did nothing at all.
She could only watch, taking in the sight of the clown’s soul slowly invading Yan Yu’s body, and her face paled drastically as her heart turned into ash.

Yan Yu spoke out with great difficulty, 

“Kill me……”

He looked at Xun Chuan as he said to Su Qing, 

“Su Qing……use the sword…..kill me……”

When the clown’s soul has taken over his body, it would already be too late.

Su Qing picked up the golden sword made of money, her tears dropping down softly.
Her cries made her unable to breathe, and she was held back by the last bit of power Xun Chuan had in him, so for now, she couldn’t do anything at all.

Yan Yu himself could only feel his body breaking into two and his limbs were starting to fall out of his control.
He looked at Xun Chuan and moved his lips without any sound coming out.
He was saying something, but only he himself would be able to hear those words.
Just as the last of his consciousness was being swallowed up, cries rang out in his head.

[ WU WU WU WU WU WU WHAT ARE YOU!! LEAVE LEAVE! AH AH AH AH AH AH! I * YOUR MOTHER * YOUR MOTHER! LEAVE!!!! WU WU WU WU WU MOMMY! I’M SCARED! I’M SCARED OF GHOSTS! I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE WU WU WU WU! ]

Yan Yu’s body froze, feeling as if something in his brain was flailing as it cried and fought against the clown’s spirit.

[ WU WU WU YOU UGLY THING GET AWAY FROM ME! LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE! I * YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU GET AWAY FROM ME ARE YOU LISTENING! WU WU WU WU WHY AREN’T YOU LEAVING! I’M GOING TO HIT YOU TO DEATH! I’M GOING TO HIT YOU TO DEATH! ]

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Notes:

*1 fire brazier: used for a lot of things and has many implications/historical aspects, but in the case of spiritual things, it’s used for things like joss paper burning, for people to step over as a way to get rid of back luck/air (apparently originating from the tradition of marriage with the woman doing so, so that she only brings good luck to her “new” family), or just to bolster spirits and ward off spirits, etc. 

Luck in this case is less of a by chance and instead more of a “badness”/”negativity” someone or something could give you, kind of like if someone encounters bad things all day, their “bad luck” may transfer to you or like if you went to a graveyard and a lot of death news were passed your way, you might have leeched onto some “bad energy”

*2 aggressive vs malicious ghosts: it’s a bit hard to come up names on my own as you may have seen my very literal translations here haha, but the difference between what I’m labelling as “malicious” and “aggressive” ghosts is that “malicious” ghosts are those with resentment and hatred towards the world or a deep burning unfulfilled desire to do something (like get revenge) and so they have some power to do evil, but that is based on their level of resentment which causes them to be unable to reincarnate unless it’s been “pacified”, if you will – although debatable at some characteristics. 

“Aggressive” ghosts on the other hand can be considered as literally just the evilest of evil.
They are of those “malicious” ghosts that have much much stronger power and are usually unable to reincarnate at all because their level of resentment is too much and sometimes to the point where they don’t care about their unfulfilled desires like they are not bound by them as regular “malicious” ghosts are, and instead limited just by their “spirit” body and their level of power which they then try to do more evil or swallow up more ghosts/humans to grow in power to keep doing even more.
Hopefully this makes a bit of a distinction there.