Unsuccessful in her temptation, the female ghost’s expression changed, and she tsk-ed. “You don’t want any o’ this? Not even fer free? Are ya even a man?!”
Xie Lian moved his eyes away. “I am.”
“Then prove it!” the female ghost yelled.
From the sidelines, a passerby laughed mockingly. “You slut! He thinks yer old an’ ugly, an’ want none o’ you. What are ya doin’ bein’ so clingy?”
Hearing those words, Xie Lian deadpanned with a straight face: “That’s not it. It’s because I have an unspeakable affliction. I can’t get erect.”
Everyone was stunned.
Then in a flash, boisterous laughter erupted.
“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…”
The victim of ridicule was now Xie Lian. None had ever met a man who was brave enough to announce in public that he had such a problem. However, to someone like Xie Lian, it didn’t matter in the least whether his root of evil could sin or not, so he’d developed the habit of using that as an excuse to get out of these kinds of situations. And it was a method that worked excellently every single time. Sure enough, the female ghost redid her shirt immediately and stopped pestering him.
“No wonder yer like this. What a pig! If ya have a problem, why didn’t ya say so sooner? Tsk!”
Not far behind them, the boar butcher chopped down again and yelled, “Fuckin’ slut! What’s that you say? What’s wrong with pigs?!”
The female ghost wasn’t scared and yelled right back, “Ya, what’s wrong with pigs?! Fuckin’ animals!”
Soon, the long street was filled with shouting and squawking and people hollering.
“That ghost woman Lan Chang is startin’ shit again!”
“Butcher Zhu is choppin’ ghosts!”
The two sides rowdily started tearing into each other, and in the midst of that pandemonium, Xie Lian was finally able to slip away. After he’d put some distance between them, he looked back toward the crowd and heaved a sigh.
Xie Lian walked a bit more, and soon he came upon further commotion ahead. He stopped in front of a gigantic red building.
This building was extraordinary in its grand and imposing style: its columns, roofs, walls, and everything were painted a magnificent bright red, and the floors were covered in thick, exquisite carpet. If it must be compared, this building was on par with Heaven’s palaces. The only difference was one of aesthetics: this place was more spectacular and sumptuous than stately and dignified. Crowds flowed in and out of the doors, and loud, excited voices boomed from the inside—very lively. Upon a closer look, Xie Lian saw that this place appeared to be a gambler’s den.
Xie Lian walked up to the doors, and on the two pillars at the entrance, there was a set of couplets. The left said “Money Over Life,” and the right said “Gains Over Shame.” On the top horizontal beam, it said “HA HA HA HA.”
“…”
The lines were vulgar and crass, not worthy of being entrance couplets. The calligraphy was also wild, clumsy, and frenzied—a disgrace to call it calligraphy at all! It was as if someone took a brush while drunk and scribbled with foul intent, and then the words were blown over by a blast of evil aura to form it. Xie Lian was once heir to the throne, and he was taught calligraphy by the finest teachers in the land. The characters he saw before him now were a real tragedy. In fact, the characters were so hellish that Xie Lian started to think they were kind of funny and shook his head. The Wind Master wouldn’t be hanging around here, he thought. I’ll have a better chance searching the beauty parlors for female ghosts.
He certainly should have just moved on, yet inexplicably, after only a few steps, he turned back around and went inside.
In the main hall of the Gambler’s Den, the crowd was packed in from wall to wall. Innumerable heads were moving, and laughter and desperate cries alike choked the air. Xie Lian had only descended a few steps when he suddenly heard screaming, and when he looked to where it had come from, four masked bouncers were walking over carrying a guest.
That man appeared to be in excruciating pain, writhing and howling while being carried, gushing blood that he left in his wake. Both of his legs had been cleanly cut off at the knees, and blood was spewing everywhere. A small ghost followed closely and greedily licked up all the blood on the floor as it went.
It was a horrifying sight, yet no one in the Gambler’s Den spared it a glance. They continued to shout and cheer, rolling about. Of course, most who gambled here weren’t humans, and if they were, they were no ordinary humans.