Chapter 50: This Damned Era of Self-Media

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Summer was the rainy season to begin with.

But this year, the rainfall in Shang City seemed especially abundant.

After several days of torrential rain, hardly anyone visited the amusement park.

Business at the haunted house had suffered even more.

If Song Shiyun, that “life-buying ghost,” had not joined him, helping Chu Tian manage his finances and sending his little treasury sweeping through the stock market, he would probably have been living off the interest on his money by now.

And ever since he had been promoted to Nether Marshal and arranged ghost-officer positions for everyone around him, Uncle Li and the others had gained an additional duty every night: patrolling Shang City, reaping souls, and subduing ghosts.

That only left Chu Tian with even more free time.

“So bored!”

Inside the haunted house, Chu Tian gazed through the transparent glass at the world beyond, woven together by curtains of rain.

“If you weren’t such a slacker, Boss, you wouldn’t be bored with nothing to do,” Song Shiyun remarked as she played on the computer.

“How am I a slacker? I do my work properly every day,” Chu Tian protested, turning to look at her.

“You don’t consider yourself a slacker?” Song Shiyun shot back. “Look at all those modern urban novels online. No matter what kind of cheat ability the protagonist gets, he immediately enters the stage of building a business and striving for success. He’s either opening a shop or on his way to opening a chain. Unlike you. I’ve planned so many ways for you to get rich, and you refuse to try even one of them.”

“Such as?” Chu Tian asked.

“The simplest one would be to find two skilled chef ghosts and open a little restaurant. You wouldn’t have to pay them wages, and you could guarantee that the food was delicious.” Song Shiyun rested her chin in her hand. “It would be a business with enormous profits and almost no costs. Then you could have those chef ghosts develop a few secret recipes and open branches until you unified the entire restaurant industry of Shang City. Naturally, there would be thrilling business battles along the way. The experience would be absolutely heart-pounding. For example, your ingredient supplier might be a graceful, divorced single mother. The owner of your rival restaurant might have a beautiful, rebellious daughter in the prime of her youth. Among the customers who fell in love with our food, there might even be a glamorous female CEO of a listed company who had just turned thirty.”

“So the only thing you’ve been reading lately is those old urban harem novels?” Chu Tian said speechlessly.

“Boss, you read them too?” Song Shiyun looked at him eagerly, as if she had finally found someone who shared her interests.

“I stopped reading them years ago,” Chu Tian replied.

“Then, Boss, have you ever considered putting it into practice?” Song Shiyun asked, her eyes shining with excitement.

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“No. Do you think reality is like a novel? That you can casually run into a whole group of beautiful women who will fall madly in love with you?” Chu Tian said.

“Boss, you really aren’t going to give it a try?” Song Shiyun asked.

“So, are you prepared to deal with the future Lady Boss making your life difficult?” Chu Tian said, casting her a sidelong glance.

“What a pity. I always thought you were rather like the protagonist of a novel,” Song Shiyun said.

“What would be the point of being like one of those characters?” Chu Tian replied.

As he looked at the rain outside, his expression suddenly changed. He sprang from his chair and stared into the distance.

Song Shiyun, now a ghost officer herself, also grew solemn. She stepped out from behind the counter and looked outside.

In the southeastern direction toward which they gazed, a surge of ghostly energy was rising into the sky, shooting straight into the clouds.

It looked as though the gates of hell had opened and a procession of countless ghosts had begun its nocturnal march.

“Boss, what’s happening?” Song Shiyun asked in astonishment.

“Wait here. I’m going to take a look,” Chu Tian said.

He pushed open the haunted house’s door and vanished into the curtain of rain.

Following the place where the ghostly energy surged skyward, Chu Tian reached the Tianshui River Bridge in Shang City.

At that moment, beneath the hundred-meter-long bridge, the river—which had been calm only moments before—was filled with hundreds of whirlpools.

Each whirlpool was no larger than a human head. Within them, ghostly figures were shrieking miserably, as though they were not submerged in river water but boiling in a cauldron of oil.

The Tianshui River irrigated the farmland on both banks and sustained countless living people. Naturally, it possessed both the fortune of flowing water and the merit that came with it. But every great river had places that were calm and tranquil, as well as regions where hidden currents surged. Its water veins intertwined, and over the course of centuries, many living beings had drowned in its depths.

Now that the spiritual creature nurtured within the Tianshui River was about to emerge, it had first awakened the wrongfully dead ghosts that had slept beneath the river for many years.

The revival of these countless ghosts and the skyward surge of ghostly energy clearly demonstrated how abundant the spiritual power within the river’s nascent treasure was. Otherwise, how could it have stirred the simultaneous response of so many ghosts who had long lain dormant?

“What a troubled time,” Chu Tian murmured, standing on the bridge with a grave expression.

There was no way this could remain hidden now. The cultivators of Shang City had probably already noticed what was happening here.

Chu Tian swept his gaze around.

High in the distant sky, a gigantic bird—an evil cultivator—was concealed among the clouds.

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Beneath the tranquil surface of the lake, an enormous body of unknown size was also gliding through the water, revealing only the occasional scale or claw.

Farther away, a figure was walking across the surface of the lake. It was probably a cultivator who had come after hearing the news, though Chu Tian could not tell what level of cultivation he possessed.

“Just when you want the tree to be still, the wind refuses to stop,” Chu Tian sighed. “I only hope these cultivators won’t spread the news. The more people who come, the more troublesome this will become.”

Before he had even finished speaking, his phone chimed.

Chu Tian took it out and saw that the cultivation app on his phone had sent him a notification.

He opened it.

“Brothers, something strange has happened at Shang City’s Tianshui River! Countless water ghosts have surfaced. Something major is about to happen! Everyone, double-tap and send me a top-grade spirit stone, and I’ll take you all in for a close-up look at what these water ghosts really look like!”

It was a livestream alert.

Inside the livestream, a young cultivator was standing in the rain, holding up his phone and broadcasting the situation at the Tianshui River.

The number of viewers was rising rapidly.

Ten thousand. Twenty thousand. One hundred thousand. Three hundred thousand...

“Damn it!”

Watching the comments flood across the screen, Chu Tian’s mouth twitched.

He swore that he had never hated the age of social media more than he did at that moment.

How could they hide this now? The whole country probably knew about it already.

Chu Tian watched as the young cultivator shouted excitedly and made his way onto the bridge, raising his phone to film the conditions in the water below. He quietly put away his own phone and walked over.

“Hey, brother, livestreaming?” Chu Tian said, patting the young cultivator on the shoulder.

The young cultivator nodded enthusiastically.

“Brother, when you catch the wave of the times, even a pig can take flight! The opportunity has arrived. I’m about to become famous!”

“You really don’t mind making a bad situation worse, do you?” Chu Tian said.

Then he punched the cultivator in the face.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I’m furious too!”

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