Chapter 17: My Ghost King Daughter!

After the matter at the Seventh Hospital concluded, Chu Tian enjoyed a few days of relative calm.

Of course, this calm might not have been entirely peaceful.

How to put it… After all, he now had a daughter of the Ghost King and a fox demon wife who had inexplicably been by his side for four years.

By all rights, his relationship with Chen Meng shouldn’t have progressed so quickly.

Yet, that hospital trip had somehow given them the experience of being an old married couple for four years.

Damn it, who could he complain to about this?

Especially when he looked at Chu Meng’er sitting on the sofa watching Peppa Pig, something just felt off.

A Ghost King… always glued to the children's channel watching cartoons.

It was a bit incongruous.

“Today we’re taking Meng’er to the amusement park. Do you want to come along and have some fun?” At that moment, Chen Meng stepped out wearing a red qipao. She and Chu Meng’er were dressed in matching mother-daughter outfits.

“You two go ahead. I have to open the haunted house for business,” Chu Tian said. His haunted house was located at the edge of the amusement park, and he was already tired of the rides inside.

“Then let’s go. Why are you still standing there?” Chen Meng said as she tossed the keys of a new car to Chu Tian by the door.

Chu Tian caught the keys. Chu Meng’er had already turned off the TV and followed them out.

The three of them headed straight to the underground garage.

They got into the new car—Chu Tian driving, Chen Meng in the passenger seat, and Chu Meng’er in the back—and drove toward the amusement park.

“By the way, our daughter should be about three and a half years old now,” Chu Tian said as he drove.

“That sounds right,” Chen Meng nodded.

“From birth to three and a half, Meng’er has already lived through what other children experience,” Chu Tian said, steering the car out of the garage. “Hey… daughter, do you want to experience what ordinary kids go through after three and a half years old?”

“I do!” Chu Meng’er said seriously from the back seat. If one didn’t know she was a Ghost King’s daughter, she would simply appear to be a fair-skinned, exquisitely carved, adorable little girl.

Normally, a little girl like her would cry for a long time if someone took her lollipop away.

“Are you sure you want to experience it? To go through the entire childhood to adulthood process?” Chu Tian glanced at her through the rearview mirror.

“Mm-hmm.” Chu Meng’er nodded earnestly. She was the fusion of countless ghost infants. Though they had merged within her, becoming a single entity, she also inherited the hopes and dreams those unborn children had for this world.

“Really… no regrets?” Chu Tian’s lips curved up mischievously, as if plotting something.

“How about we just stop at seven or eight years old?” Chen Meng suddenly suggested.

“No, I want to experience a full life,” Chu Meng’er replied firmly.

“Are you sure? No regrets?” Chu Tian asked again.

“No regrets!” she replied without hesitation.

“All right then!” Chu Tian laughed. “When we get back, we’ll enroll you in kindergarten for the first year. You handle the household registration and all that. Don’t tell me you can’t manage it—you once made yourself my guardian, after all.”

“Kindergarten…” Chen Meng stared at Chu Tian in disbelief. “Are you serious? This kid going to kindergarten… aren’t you worried…”

“Worried about what? If teachers can handle naughty kids, how could they not manage a ghost child?” Chu Tian whistled.

“I’m worried the teacher will be taken down by her,” Chen Meng replied. Didn’t he worry about his daughter’s temper?

“Don’t worry. Since Meng’er wants to experience life, she’ll follow the rules. If she breaks the rules, can that still be called experiencing life?” Chu Tian said. “Right, daughter?”

“Right!” Chu Meng’er agreed earnestly. Although she didn’t fully understand what Chu Tian and Chen Meng were talking about, she had a vague uneasy feeling.

“Anyway, start with kindergarten, then elementary school. Forget about extracurricular classes—let her learn what she likes and skip what she doesn’t. Then comes the transition to junior high, then high school, university entrance exams. Homework will be mandatory, along with summer and winter vacation assignments.”

For some reason, the thought of a little Ghost King kid crying with her nose red and tear-streaked, bent over her homework one day made Chu Tian feel quite excited.

Chen Meng was completely dumbfounded, while little Chu Meng’er, still innocent, hadn’t yet grasped the darker implications behind Chu Tian’s ‘well-intentioned’ plans.

Once at the amusement park, Chen Meng took Chu Meng’er to play.

Chu Tian returned to his haunted house.

Opening the doors for business, all was set!

He lit the two red lanterns hanging at the entrance and brought out the hanging ghost doll from inside to place outside the door.

Chu Tian then went to a side room to offer incense to Old Man Li and the others.

After the incense was consumed, he sat behind the counter and began the slow, quiet life of running the haunted house amid a business slump.

“Xiao Tian, want to play a round?” Seeing Chu Tian bored from guarding the shop, Old Man Li emerged from the wall holding a game of Chinese chess.

“Sure!” With nothing else to do, Chu Tian tidied up behind the counter and started the game.

While Chu Tian was engrossed in chess, in a paper incense and joss money shop downtown, a pretty woman looked nervously at a master sitting before her.

The master appeared to be in his forties, sporting a beard and dressed in a yellow Taoist robe, holding a peachwood sword. He looked every bit a sage.

At that moment, he was performing a ritual focused on a red paper banknote.

After an indecipherable incantation, the master’s usually pale face flushed red, and he suddenly spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, which dripped like rain onto the altar.

The woman’s heart tightened at the sight, fear evident in her voice: “Master, have you… have you resolved it?”

“Sigh!” The master looked grim and shook his head. “Miss, this ghost is too powerful. I am powerless.”

“What should I do? Master, you must help me,” the woman pleaded.

The master pondered, then said, “If nothing else works, try throwing this cursed money into the temple’s donation box and let the Buddha contend with it.”

“Master, if that could work, I would have done it already. But I can’t get rid of this cursed money. Whenever I try to enter a famous temple, I get lost for no reason and simply can’t get inside,” the woman said, her face growing pale, her spirit seemingly broken.

“If the cursed money is preventing you from entering temples…” The master thought for a moment, then recalled a new powerful figure recently appearing downtown. He wrote down a location on a piece of paper and said, “Miss, try going here today. From what you’ve described, the ghost behind this cursed money hasn’t reached the Ghost King level yet. If even the owner there can’t help you, then no one in the city can.”