Trafford's Trading Club

Chapter 1271: Chapter 112: After the Magic Ban

Humans have the Mortal World, monsters have the demon world, ghosts also have the Realm of Ghosts… it should’ve been like that.

But in this era, humans, monsters, and ghosts coexist—what humans don’t know is that those creatures they think only exist in fantasy are right beside them… only because they’re very good at hiding, and carefully obey certain rules.

The sudden ban on Power doesn’t affect humans at all… but the monsters living and working in the city are so scared they all collapse onto the ground.

Most monsters choose night shifts. Because there are relatively fewer humans working at night, the chance of exposure is lower; on the other hand, it also helps them absorb the essence of moonlight.

The clash between two massive monster’s aura more than an hour ago has all the monsters who come out at night in this city trembling in fear, so terrified they don’t even dare move a step from where they stand—until later, when they discover they have completely lost any means of using their Power.

The one thing they can be thankful for is that this ban has not, for now, broken the human forms they maintain.

But losing the means to use their Power still terrifies them—after just a short time, quite a few humanoid beings have gathered in front of the pet hospital—of course, at the hospital’s back door.

“Herbs-picking”

The two characters stuck on the back door make the monsters who came on their own feel that something about this is full of irregularities—although their host here, Lord Long, does indeed go out every few days to pick herbs and such; on normal days they wouldn’t think much of it, but it just had to coincide with tonight’s strange situation.

“Let’s go. This irregularity incident seems to be only in this city…” A senior Toad Monster adjusted his glasses. “I just called a cousin in another province, seems like nothing’s happening over there.”

“Mm, my little wife down in the countryside says it’s fine there too… good thing she’s pregnant with the second child and I sent her to the countryside to rest, otherwise who knows if this would affect the baby…”

“Souls don’t seem to be affected either.”

Besides monsters, there are naturally some wandering souls—most ghosts muddling around after death can’t make it past the seven days after they die, they’ll be worn away by the intense Yang Qi; only in places where Yin Qi is heavy, or those with immense resentment before death, will they become a ghost after dying, survive the so‑called “first seven days,” and continue drifting in the world.

“But this King feels like he’s stuck in a swamp, can’t even pass through walls!”

The speaker is a ghost hidden in one of the city’s famously haunted houses—a ghost, who despite calling himself “this King,” is just a decades‑old ghost at best; even Fengdu Ghost City won’t take him in.

“Toad from Elder Jiang’s Family. Your kind lives long, you’ve seen a lot. Have you figured out any clues?”

“No idea! You young folks, don’t assume old people know everything! Taking things for granted!”

“Tsk!”

The monsters and ghosts begin to slowly disperse—although still worried, they’ve already learned through various channels that once you leave the boundaries of this city, everything returns to normal, so they’re not literally worried to death.

Worst case, they just leave this city—staying here is only because the true dragon is here; compared to other cities, this place is a bit freer. But it’s also right under the eyelids of the true dragon, so naturally not many dare to do bad things.

So many who live here are canine-type monsters, or those whose original bodies are relatively weak—the so‑called peace‑loving dogs.

Those truly vicious by nature wouldn’t choose to stay here at all…

“If we can never use our abilities again, doesn’t that mean whether human, monster, or Ghost, we can only live like ordinary beings here?”

This thought suddenly appears in the minds of many ghosts and monsters—come to think of it, it doesn’t sound that bad. First of all, they won’t involuntarily reveal their true forms because of this; even if their demonic power can’t be used, their bodies are still quite strong, so those whose jobs are already heavy manual labor aren’t really affected.

“So weird. It’s like this, but we can still cultivate… what the heck is this supposed to be??”

Their demonic power can still slowly increase by absorbing the essence of moonlight… even the Spiritual Energy between Heaven and Earth exists just like always, and because of the eruption of Spiritual Energy at Mount Tai, the intensity of Spiritual Energy has been steadily increasing these days.

They really can’t figure it out—but there is one thing that some of the smarter ones among the ghosts and monsters do think of.

“This place has turned into a safe zone!” The toad from Elder Jiang’s Family had mixed in human university years ago, majoring in economics. “Housing prices are going to rise!”

Not long after, the toad from Elder Jiang’s Family decisively made his move. In the suburbs of this city he used up all the family’s assets to acquire a piece of land, then built a giant restaurant on it, naming it: Peace Grand Hotel.

This is something that happens later.

…

…

Cheng Yun paced back and forth nervously—this is the basement of Chen Er’s Villa.

This Chen Er really seems to have some crooked, side‑door, weird abilities. The basement is arranged in a way that’s extremely gloomy and terrifying, with quite a few strange‑looking God Statues placed around.

As for Chen Er, at the moment he’s holding a peachwood sword in his hand, wearing a strange Yellow Daoist robe—anyway, to Cheng Yun it looks pretty much like what Uncle Ying wore in those hopping-vampire movies… if not for the fact that Chen Er is only wearing big boxer shorts under the Daoist robe, he’d feel a lot more at ease.

Watching Chen Er mutter incantations inside the ritual altar, Cheng Yun doesn’t dare to interrupt—he’s also looking at Zhong Luochen, who’s lying in the altar.

Zhong Luochen’s clothes have already been stripped off, leaving only a pair of underpants… the bloodstains around the bloody hole in his chest have been wiped clean, and precisely because of that, the wound looks even more terrifying to Cheng Yun—his chest has such a huge hole, how could he possibly survive?

Zhong Luochen’s body has been covered by Chen Er with all sorts of weird characters written in cinnabar, making him look incredibly eerie at this moment—especially since the place itself seems to be filling with gusts of Yin wind.

It’s clearly a windowless underground chamber, so where’s the wind coming from?

“…Spirits of Heaven, Spirits of Earth, second son of Boss Zhong, named Luochen, born in the year of Wu‑Chen, month of Jia‑Zi, day of Xin‑You, hour of Hai, return at once!”

Chen Er suddenly spits a mouthful of fresh blood, spraying it onto the peachwood sword. Then he points the sword and directly taps it onto Zhong Luochen’s forehead.

Cheng Yun can’t see the workings within all this; he only sees Chen Er shout loudly again, then flick the peachwood sword, and afterward take a small cloth bag from the altar.

The cloth bag looks as if something is being poured into it; in just the blink of an eye, it suddenly begins to swell up out of nowhere—Chen Er hurriedly puts away the peachwood sword in his hand, grabs the bag, and uses a red cord to tie it shut.

After that, Chen Er’s face turns pale and weak, beads of cold sweat dripping; he loses his footing, has to lean against the altar, slowly sliding down to sit as he pants, “It’s done… I’ve called him back.”

“Y–Young Master is inside there?” Cheng Yun swallows hard, staring fixedly at the cloth bag in Chen Er’s hand—Chen Er calls this thing a Qiankun Bag.

“You don’t trust me?” Chen Er snorts coldly.

“Master Chen, that’s not what I meant…” Cheng Yun hastily says, “It’s just, it’s just that I still can’t see anything, right?”

Annoyed, Chen Er beckons to Cheng Yun. “Come closer. I’ll temporarily open up your psychic; mortals can’t see Ghost souls.”

“Huh? Open a psychic? That…”

“Relax, it’s only temporary. You weren’t born with a psychic.” Chen Er says coolly, “I’m not interested in opening it for you every time either. Your Young Master’s soul was just summoned back—right now he’s muddle‑headed and will need to be nourished with Yin Qi every day. It’ll take some days before he regains his senses, but in any case, he’s already a Little dog.”

“Having a ghost is better than having no ghost at all…” Cheng Yun shivers.

Chen Er glanced at Cheng Yun’s soulless, crushed expression, then suddenly said again, “That’s right, having a Ghost is better than having no Ghost. Even though he can’t come back to life, letting him show up in front of people someday… it’s not impossible.”

“There’s really still a way?” Cheng Yun asked in a hurry, “Master, don’t you lie to me!”

“We can let him receive incense from ten thousand families, and cultivate a Golden Body as a Ghost.” Chen Er rubbed his brow and said seriously, “I heard my master say before that Ghosts really can use this method and turn into a special kind of Ghost Immortal. But it’s very hard to receive incense from ten thousand families. This incense isn’t just about burning sticks; the believers must worship devoutly, gathering the Wish Power of all living beings. And it takes a very long time, plus, on the day the Golden Body is completed, it will attract Heavenly Tribulation. If he can’t get through it, he’ll really be utterly destroyed, doomed forever. Even a Great Luo Golden Immortal couldn’t save him!”

“Having a way is better than having no way…” Cheng Yun took a deep breath, “Master Chen, help me open my psychic sight first, let me see Young Master…”

Chen Er didn’t say anything more. He fetched some willow leaves, lit a talisman, burned it into Fu Water, then dipped the willow leaves in it and smeared it onto Cheng Yun’s eyelids.

Of course, doing this is completely useless for an ordinary person—what’s needed here is a bit of Mana injection. Following Wang Qifa, Chen Er had only learned the superficial tricks of everything, but he’d always cultivated this Mana very diligently.

It was just that he was born without talent in this area; his Mana had always been in a “here or not here” state, at most enough to open psychic sight for people—that is, until this past month. The Mana that had originally been almost negligible suddenly underwent a breakthrough; he actually managed to cultivate a tiny bit of real Mana—otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have been able to pull off this Summoning Soul at all.

“Alright, try talking to your Young Master.” Chen Er finished smearing his eyelids. “I’m tired. I’ll go take a shower and rest first.”

“Wait… Master, I don’t see anything?”

Chen Er, who had just started up the stairs, froze when he heard this, frowned, then walked back and once again used the willow leaves to wipe Cheng Yun’s eyes, muttering incantations, “Now it should work.”

“…I still can’t see.”

Refusing to believe it, Chen Er kept rubbing, “How about now?”

“Still can’t see!!”

“Now? Can you see anything?”

“Nope…”

“Damn it… Try again, come on! Look again! Any kind of feeling?”

“I feel it! Master, my eyes hurt, from you rubbing them! I get it now, you’re just a god-stick scammer!!”

“No, that’s not right, where’s my Mana??”

Chen Er had no choice but to lower his head and think for quite a while before slowly saying, “It must be that the Summoning Soul used up all my Mana. Wait a few days for me to recover! I really did summon your Young Master back. If you don’t believe me, hug this Qiankun Bag tonight and think of your Young Master; he should come to you in a dream.”

As he spoke, he tossed the Qiankun Bag over to Cheng Yun with one hand… Cheng Yun could only take it half dubiously.

…

…

Only half a building was left… On the ground, huge chunks of concrete were piled up—this was completely a scene straight out of a post-earthquake disaster.

In the pitch-black underground floors of the building, the original research institute had been utterly destroyed, every passage blocked off… not even the emergency lights glowed anymore.

A Space of complete darkness.

Right at this moment, a black Big Cocoon slowly pushed up from the very bottom layer—before Wang Hu and Black Water started fighting, he had already sensed immense danger approaching, so he hadn’t spared a single thought for the lives of the people in the research institute, diving straight underground instead, in order to complete the transformation of his body.

The process of changing bodies went unexpectedly smoothly—so smooth it exceeded even 24’s expectations—this shaved-headed young man’s body was basically a perfect vitreous container custom-made for consciousness transfer.

He easily erased that tiny shred of the shaved-head youth’s consciousness and officially moved into this shell—and what delighted 24 was that this shell seemed to contain potential even greater than what he’d detected before.

If, in his original Sub-world, he stood at the summit of the mage bracket, then this body had the full potential to stand at the summit of the fighter bracket.

Am I really going to walk such a low-tier path of both magic and martial arts?

He slowly opened his eyes—and at that exact moment, the black Big Cocoon suddenly dispersed.

Mr. 24 froze for a bit, then blinked. Very quickly, he came back to his senses—the joy of obtaining a great new body instantly vanished without a trace.

Because… his body was stuck!

Stuck in the concrete, unable to get out…

24 despairingly discovered that, while this body was indeed very sturdy, it clearly wasn’t sturdy enough to help him break free from the concrete—and even more despairing, he couldn’t use his Power!

Finally, after struggling for tens of minutes, this Immortal Curse Mage from another Sub-world spoke his very first sentence in his new body.

“Help…”

…

…

“…At 1:49 a.m. today, a localized earthquake occurred on XX Road in our city…”

In the morning, Mammy Ren held a cup of water in one hand and a toothbrush in the other, staring unblinkingly at the morning news—she had rushed out of the bathroom in a hurry only after hearing this report.

“Damn, there was an earthquake last night?”

After sleeping straight through, Mammy Ren hadn’t felt a thing.

“Morning… Sister Ren.” Lizi shuffled out of her room listlessly, a pillow in her arms and deep, dark circles under her eyes.

“What’s wrong with you? You up all night stealing stuff or what?”

“Last night…” Lizi let out two dry laughs—how could she say that she’d spent the whole night under the covers, the more she tried to sleep the more she couldn’t. “I’m starving, I need to recharge my energy or I’m gonna die. Only delicious food can save my terrified Mind… So, breakfast?”

“Oh, none today. Luo Qiu went out early. There are some biscuits in the cabinet, just make do with those.”

“Too much! And there isn’t even a bakery downstairs!!” Lizi mustered up her strength, tossed the pillow to the floor, “I’m not living here anymore!!”

Mammy Ren casually tore open a pack of wafer biscuits and tossed it… Lizi sprang up and caught it in her mouth.

“Yoshi yoshi, good girl.”