By mid-afternoon, the [Rank 3 Spring-Shock Luxury Caravan] rolled into the working-class South Ward of Sky-Crown City.
Unlike the gilded avenues of the Inner Ward, the South Ward was a sprawling maze of noisy iron smithies, lumber yards, cheap noodle stalls, and crowded tenement lanes. Yet it was also only three streets away from Coffin Alley—where ten-year-old Ye Xiao was currently living—making it the perfect base of operations for the Gu family.
Outside the District Housing Bureau on Willow-Breeze Lane, Grandpa Fu hopped down from the driver’s bench, clicking his [Jade-Abacus Cane] as he walked up to the counter of crooked real-estate broker Manager Lai.
Manager Lai was a rat-faced man with a thin mustache and ink-stained cuffs. Ten minutes ago, a black-feathered messenger hawk from Second Prince Qian Ye’s spy network had landed on his back windowsill. Promising him fifty silver taels if he steered the newcomers with the luxury ox-caravan into Lot #4—the infamous Willow-Breeze Courtyard.
“A quiet, spacious three-acre courtyard with a deep stone well, a brick kitchen. High walls?” Manager Lai rubbed his hands together with a greasy smile as he slid a red-ink lease contract across the table to Grandpa Fu.
“Old sir, you are in luck!
Willow-Breeze Courtyard at the end of the lane just came open this morning! Normally a three-acre estate in the capital rents for eighty silvers a month, but since your master looks like a refined scholar, I’ll let you have it for ten silver taels a month!”
Grandpa Fu adjusted his single sharp eye and scanned the contract clauses. “Ten silvers a month for three acres, no deposit refund if the tenant moves out before dawn, and the landlord isn’t responsible for ‘well dampness’? Manager Lai, in my sixty years of bookkeeping, a discount like that means the previous three tenants left in coffins.”
Manager Lai’s smile twitched, though his fingers quickly snatched the ten silver coins Grandpa Fu set on the wood. “Nonsense! Just a little autumn draft from the willow trees!
Here is the brass gate key—no refunds once the lock turns!”
Five minutes later, the heavy red-lacquered gates of Willow-Breeze Courtyard creaked open.
Gu Changsheng steered the caravan into the wide stone forecourt and stepped down from the cabin, stretching his back. Nine-year-old Gu Nian and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan hopped out behind him, followed by Auntie Qin carrying her herb basket and Grandpa Yao’s [Rank 3 Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] riding on Gu Nian’s shoulder.
The courtyard was actually quite handsome. Three rows of white-walled, gray-tiled halls surrounded a central garden shaded by four ancient weeping willow trees. However, despite the afternoon sun, the air inside the walls was ten degrees colder than the street outside, and the flagstones around the central stone well were slick with dark green moss.
“Dad, the wind by that well smells like cold pond mud,” Gu Nian said, resting his small hand on the wooden homework ruler tucked into his yellow bunny apron.
“And nobody swept the willow leaves for a whole year,” Auntie Qin said briskly, rolling up her sleeves as she inspected the spacious south-facing kitchen and apothecary wing. “The stove brickwork is solid, though. Give me an hour with some lime-water and mugwort incense, and I’ll have the bedrooms clean enough to eat off the floor.”
In the original book, Second Prince Qian Ye used this exact courtyard during the capital succession plot to murder a rival merchant from the Southern Chamber of Commerce, Gu Changsheng thought dryly. Strolling over to the moss-covered stone well in the middle of the yard and peeking down into the pitch-black water. *If I remember right, eighty years ago a rich silk-dyer threw his head maid down this well after falsely accusing her of stealing soap.
Her resentment absorbed a underground yin-vein and turned her into a Rank 3 Peak Hundred-Year Water Ghost.*
Down at the bottom of the dark well shaft, two pale green eyes snapped open under the black water.
The ghost didn’t attack in daylight, waiting for nightfall when the yin qi in the South Ward peaked so she could drag every living soul in the courtyard down into the mud.
“Leave the well alone for now,” Gu Changsheng said casually, turning back to the caravan. “Nian’er, help Grandpa Fu unhitch Envoy Zhao and stack the dirty road linens, dusty blankets, and greasy aprons in that big wooden tub on the porch. Dad hates washing sheets by hand, so we’re waiting for the night-shift housekeeper to clock in.”
“We hired a housekeeper, Dad?” Su Nuannuan asked innocently, setting her [Pink Healing Watering Can] beside a patch of wild turnips in the corner flowerbed.
“She comes with the lease,” Gu Changsheng said with a grin. “Ten silvers a month, utilities included.”
By eight o’clock that evening, a hot dinner of braised pork ribs and white radish soup had been eaten, the lanterns were lit along the verandas. Gu Changsheng had just finished mopping the main hall floorboards until they shone like dark amber mirrors.
Outside in the courtyard, the crescent moon slipped behind a bank of black clouds.
Gurgle... bubble... hiss...
The water at the bottom of the central stone well began to boil with freezing black yin qi. Frost crept rapidly across the mossy well rim, freezing the fallen willow leaves into brittle glass blades.
Two pale, water-bloated hands with fingernails three inches long reached up and gripped the stone lip of the well.
Wooooeeee... give me back my life... give me back my breath...
A ten-foot-tall column of foul, muddy well-water and green grudge-mist surged out of the shaft! Out crawled the Rank 3 Peak Hundred-Year Water Ghost—her tangled green hair hanging down to her ankles, her white burial gown dripping black pond sludge. Her Rank 3 Peak spiritual pressure howling across the yard like a winter blizzard!
Outside the courtyard wall, crooked broker Manager Lai—who had just tiptoed up the alley with two coffin-bearers to listen for the screams. Loot the caravan—heard the ghostly wail and grinned from ear to ear.
“Hehehe, right on schedule!” Manager Lai whispered, pressing his ear to the crack in the front gate. “Once she strangles that rich kid and the cook, the spirit-oxen and the wagon are mine!”
Inside the courtyard, the Hundred-Year Water Ghost spotted nine-year-old Gu Nian standing on the lit veranda porch holding a basket of dirty road socks.
“Fresh blood...” the Water Ghost shrieked, her jaw unhinging as she glided across the clean flagstones toward the porch, trailing two gallons of black pond mud behind her hem. “Come into the well with me, little boy—!”
Before Gu Nian even bothered to raise his Chaos-Bone fist, the kitchen screen door banged open.
Gu Changsheng stepped out onto the veranda holding a wet mop in his left hand and a heavy, ridged [Wooden Washboard] in his right.
He didn’t look at the ghost’s fangs. He looked straight down at the six dirty black footprints of pond sludge smeared across the flagstones he had scrubbed ten minutes ago.
A vein twitched on Gu Changsheng’s forehead.
“Hey,” Gu Changsheng said, his voice deadpan and dangerously quiet. “Did you see me mop that porch five minutes ago?”
The Hundred-Year Water Ghost blinked her hollow green eyes, pausing mid-glide with her claws still raised in the air. “What? Mortal, I am the Vengeance of the Deep Well!
Look upon my face and despair—”
“Despair? I’m looking at three pounds of black silt dripping off your hem onto my limestone tiles,” Gu Changsheng interrupted. Stepping off the porch and grabbing a two-pound bar of [Jasmine-Scented Laundry Soap] from the wooden tub.
“You live in a well full of water twenty-four hours a day, and you still haven’t washed your hair since the previous emperor’s reign? Stand still.”
“Courting death!” The enraged Rank 3 Peak Water Ghost lunged forward, whipping two thirty-foot braids of razor-sharp, ice-crusted green hair straight at Gu Changsheng’s throat!
Gu Changsheng didn’t even draw his spatula. He casually swung the heavy [Wooden Washboard] in his right hand fueled by Rank 3 Peak internal qi.
SMACK!
The ridged oak washboard swatted the ghost’s spectral forehead like a badminton paddle hitting a wet shuttlecock. Flattening her face into the stone well-curb while Gu Changsheng’s left hand slapped the bar of jasmine soap directly onto her crown and opened the [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box]!
[SUPER DAD & PLOT-BREAKER SYSTEM]
[Input 1: Resentful Rank 3 Peak Hundred-Year Water Ghost]
[Input 2: Heavy Oak Washboard & Brass Tub]
[Input 3: Three Bars of Jasmine-Scented Lye Soap]
[Upgrade Cost: 50,000 Dad Points (DP)]
[Dad’s Wish: Clear out her eighty-year grudge, stop her from dripping mud on my floor, and turn her into a 24-hour automatic washing and dish-scrubbing spirit!]
“Confirm fusion,” Gu Changsheng said.
HUMMM—BUBBLE-WHOOSH!
A warm, rose-and-jasmine-scented golden light engulfed the well!
The Hundred-Year Water Ghost let out a high-pitched squeal as eighty years of cold, suffocating murder-grudge were instantly scrubbed out of her soul by the System’s flaw-erasing law! Her rotting burial rags dissolved into pure white foam, re-weaving into a spotless blue housekeeper’s dress, a waterproof white pinafore. A crisp, frilly white maid cap pinned neatly over her newly washed, silky black hair!
[DING! CARE-PACKAGE UPGRADE COMPLETE!]
[Output: 24-Hour Automatic Laundry & Dishwashing Spirit (Rank 3 Peak Household Guardian)!]
[Special Traits: 3,000-RPM Whirlpool Rinse, Automatic Hot-Air Spin-Dry, Zero Broken Plates, & Burglar-Drowning Bubble Trap!]
[Water Ghost ‘Xiao Qing’ Warmth: 0/100 -> 72/100 (Grateful Household Spirit — +1,000 DP/day Unlocked!)]
When the golden soap bubbles cleared, the terrifying specter was kneeling beside the big brass laundry tub on the porch, her cheeks rosy with spectral vitality. Six translucent water-arms spun inside the tub like a high-speed washing machine.
Swish-swash-whirrrr!
In ten seconds flat, twenty pairs of dusty road socks, Envoy Zhao’s muddy pink apron. Four travel blankets were scrubbed spotless, rinsed three times in crystal-clear well water, spun dry with warm wind qi, and folded into neat square stacks smelling of fresh spring jasmine!
“W-what happened to my curse?!” the Water Ghost—Xiao Qing—sobbed into her frilly maid sleeve, though her hands couldn’t stop happily folding Gu Nian’s yellow bunny socks with millimeter precision. “For eighty years my neck hurt from drowning in that cold mud...
and now my soul feels warm and smells like jasmine flowers!
Master Gu, do you have any more dirty pillowcases?! If I don’t scrub at least five hundred items before midnight, my hands itch!”
“Plenty of dishes in the kitchen sink after you finish the curtains,” Gu Changsheng said approvingly, tossing her a Little Red Flower sticker that stuck right onto her frilly maid cap.
On the veranda, nine-year-old Gu Nian held up his freshly washed bunny sock and sniffed it. “Dad, she got the axle grease out in three seconds. Can we bring her when we move?”
“She’s linked to the well-stone now, so the well comes with us wherever we go,” Gu Changsheng said.
Meanwhile, outside the front gate, crooked broker Manager Lai couldn’t take the suspense anymore.
He hadn’t heard a single dying scream—only a rhythmic swish-swash, swish-swash and the smell of high-grade floral soap. Climbing onto a stepping stone, Manager Lai peeked over the top of the courtyard wall under the moonlight.
His eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets.
There, under the weeping willow tree, the legendary Rank 3 Peak Hundred-Year Water Ghost—who had torn three martial artists. To pieces last month—was wearing a frilly white maid cap with a Little Red Flower sticker on her forehead. Humming a cheerful tune as she scrubbed a stack of porcelain soup bowls and hung a row of little yellow bunny underpants on a clothesline!
“G-ghost doing the laundry?!” Manager Lai let out a strangled chicken squawk, his heart seizing with sheer terror. His eyes rolled back and he dropped off the wall like a sack of wet flour.
Fainting dead away on top of his two coffin-bearers!
Inside the yard, just as Xiao Qing drained the old silt from the bottom of the stone well to refill it with clean spring water. Grandpa Yao’s [Rank 3 Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] hopped onto the well-curb and pointed a green cloth flipper down into the exposed brick lining.
“Hold on, Brother Gu!” Grandpa Yao’s voice boomed excitedly as a golden glint reflected off the wet bricks ten feet down. “Look under that loose cornerstone in the well!
The merchant who died here last month hid an oiled leather pouch from Qian Ye’s men—that’s a VIP Gold Seal for tomorrow’s Royal Treasure Pavilion Auction.
Along with a warehouse note for Lot #19: the disguised Rank 4 Hundred-Herb Medicine King Furnace!”
Gu Changsheng caught the oilskin pouch as Xiao Qing floated it up on a water bubble, his lips curving into a slow, dangerous smile. The midnight system settlement chimed in his head [Daily Income: +760,000 -> +850,000 DP/day].
“First his Dragon Marrow, and tomorrow his Medicine King Furnace,” Gu Changsheng murmured, flipping the gold VIP auction token between his fingers. “Wait until Second Prince Qian Ye finds out what I’m going to roast inside his priceless pill cauldron.”