Chapter 971: Spiritual

At dusk, Binhai City.

A taxi stopped slowly.

“Sir, do you need my help? You don’t want to strain your back,” the taxi driver asked with concern.

“Hehe, it’s okay. It’s not heavy, so I can still handle it. Thank you.” A thin and handsome old man smiled and waved his hand as he took a small suitcase and got out from the taxi.

From his appearance, the old man was at least 80 years old, and he had a white beard. Although the pedestrians around him had already changed into their thin, single shirt, he still had an old-style cotton gown on like he was afraid of the cold, and he looked like he had just come out from a theatrical troupe. However, in stark contrast to his age and his old-fashioned dress, he paid the taxi fare through his mobile phone. It surprised the driver because many middle-aged people around 40 to 50 years old still only used cash payments.

If the driver were to find out that there was also an invisible cat seated in the back seat, he would be even more surprised.

The taxi drove off, and the old man dusted off his cotton robe, then looked around a little. He saw that there were no significant changes in the surrounding area from when he had left.

Meow. The cat softly meowed.

The old man lowered his head and asked with concern, “What’s wrong?”

It was a Persian cat that was completely white except for its black top, black back, and black tail. But if measured by the modern Persian cat’s standard, the cat would undoubtedly be judged as a disqualified product. After all, it wasn’t a cat from modern times. During the Song Dynasty, the cat that was the most popular among the upper classes was the cat from Persia.

It ran up to the old man’s feet with its small, short legs; it looked like it wanted to take refuge in his cotton robe. It stared at the streets under the twilight, and its trembling body caused the old man’s cotton gown to shake slightly. It seemed to be terrified.

The unusual behavior of the cat made the old man frown. He also looked suspiciously into the depths of the dim street, but he found nothing unusual.

Office workers who got off from work were dragging their tired bodies home; children released from school rode their bicycles like the wind; and the small stall owners who only ran their business at night to avoid the city management started to prepare and set up their booths. Everything was no different than normal.

He looked up at the two-story, antique building in front of him. The front of the store was a red lacquered door decorated with brass nails and a fine lacquered pillar stood on both sides. Right on the top, a blue plaque with a golden frame was hung up, and on it were the words “Back to the Old Days.”

The red lacquered door was shut tight and locked up. There was a layer of dust on the door knocker. Since leaving the previous fall, it was his first return to Binhai City after a few months.

What interesting things had happened in Binhai City over the past few months?

Now that he was old, his body wasn’t able to handle the cold anymore. So whenever winter came, he would always lock up the shop door then head to a villa further down south and hibernate indoors. He would only return when spring came, and he wasn’t counting on the shop to make money.

Binhai was the retirement city of his own choice. It wasn’t as noisy as a big city, it wasn’t as inconvenient as a small city, and apart from the cold winter, the weather was still pleasant. Of course, there was more than one city with the same conditions. So he drew lots on the candidate cities and happened choose Binhai City. As a result, he spent half of his time in a year at Binhai City.

That wasn’t the first time his cat has shown an abnormality. The last time it showed an abnormality was when someone had sent him a statue of a bronze imitation Holy Cat statue. When the cat saw the Holy Cat statue, it was terrified and would always hide a distance away, never daring to approach.

The old man liked cats very much, and he also liked things related to cats. He was very happy after receiving the Holy Cat statue, because he had touched many antiques and he saw that the Holy Cat statue wasn’t just a simple imitation.

However, his cat’s fear of the Holy Cat statue had made him wary.

He has been exposed to and collected lot of antiques. The antiques in the shop were just a drop in the ocean. No one would casually display those valuable antiques for just anyone to see.

Perhaps it was because of the fact that the ancients poured too many emotions into them, or perhaps it was because they existed for a very long time, some very few antiques would occasionally show abnormalities that were difficult to explain with common sense. In other words, they were “spiritual.”

Being spiritual wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a magical, tacit understanding could be felt with the spiritual antiques, just like bypassing time and space to meet its original owner.

However, in those very few spiritual antiques, there were some special ones that did not have good owners; they seemed to be a medium for evil spirits.

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Whenever that happens, his cat would always show an abnormality and promptly warn him to stay away from the antiques that were riddled with evil spirits.

Other spiritual antiques would have some special phenomena, such as abnormal sounds, movements, and strange visible changes. But initially, he didn’t notice any similar signs on the Holy Cat statue; it just looked like a spectacular art piece. He thought that his cat was just being over-sensitive, so he temporarily left the statue somewhere by the entrance of the shop and didn’t let his cat approach it.

He used to feed the nearby stray cats, but ever since the Holy Cat statue came to the shop, the stray cats no longer dared to come close to the shop, and that made him reconsider the problem… Perhaps the Holy Cat statue was different from the other spiritual antiques he had encountered before. In that case, he couldn’t just judge it by his past experiences.

But how was he going to deal with the Holy Cat statue then? He felt very conflicted inside.

On one hand, Confucius once said, “When the living is already a problem, why bother with ghosts? Before you make out what life is, don’t meddle with death.” With regards to issues related to ghosts and deities, the teachings of the sages were to ignore them because there are many more important things to explore in the world. So where would one find the extra time to pursue the illusory spirits and deities?

On the other hand, Zhu Xi once said, “Scholars need to know why the sky is high, why the ground is thick, why spirits and deities are illusory, and how mountains are stuck together––that is the investigation of things.” Zhu Xi’s proposal on the pursuit of knowledge was to understand its very source. It required scholars to be curious about everything in the world, and to give spirits a scientific and reasonable explanation in the form of philosophical speculation.

The two sages had subtle differences in this aspect, and not to mention the old man, even Zhu Xi himself had been plagued by the problem for a lifetime.

The old man had inquired about a lot of information, but there were too few credible materials about ancient Egypt and only little was known so far. He never understood why the Holy Cat statue that represented the god of blessings in ancient Egypt would have been tainted with a malevolent aura.

Zhu Xi had said, “If you speak of an evildoer, it most likely left this world in a horrific manner. Their lingering grudge accumulates to manifest into a fiend.” According to that statement, the Holy Cat statue didn’t meet the precondition of becoming a fiend, as it didn’t suffer from a horrific death.

One whose spirit had transcended was known as a deity; one whose spirits had succumbed was known as a fiend. The so-called spirits and deities were originally the growth and decline of the yin and yang, and the same was true for the human body, which explained why some people were able to communicate with spirits and deities.

He could only attribute the abnormality of the Holy Cat statue to it being buried in the ground for a very long time, causing it to take in too much Yin energy.

The Holy Cat statue itself was very precious and it’d be a waste to have it destroyed, so since there was nothing unusual with it now, why not leave it until a person who could suppress it came by?

What was more, Zhu Xi also said, “The energy of deities are generally in a fluctuating state, and when life is lost, its energy diminishes.” However, depletion happened at various rates. So, if the energy dissipated almost immediately, it was dead. But if the energy lingered around and refused to dissipate, that was a fiend.

The Holy Cat statue was tainted with a lot of Yin energy when it was buried underground, but it was only a matter of time before the Yin energy would eventually dissipate. So he would often push the Holy Cat statue under the sun at noon to bask it in the sunlight, in hopes that the Yin energy would dissipate quickly.

Everything in the world was composed by the yin and yang, and the living was also homologous with the dead. In addition to dispelling the Yin energy with the sun’s Yang energy, the Yang energy from the human body could also bring about the same effects. He felt that if the Holy Cat statue was placed in a crowded shop, it might further accelerate the dissipation of its Yin energy; however, his shop was definitely not a good choice. This second-hand antiques store had a small, mostly highbrow following, so there weren’t many customers visiting the shop.

That time when he met the cheerful female anchor, he heard that she wanted to send the Holy Cat statue as a gift to congratulate someone, since the other party had a business that was thriving. Because it seemed like a good place to borrow the Yang energy and dispel the Yin energy, he sold the Holy Cat statue to her at a very low price and had specifically warned her about some of the taboos.

Whether it was the female anchor or the person she was gifting it to, they didn’t seem to be too concerned about spirits and deities––especially the recipient who had actually claimed that being attacked by the Yin energy was just like being cooled with an air-conditioner. He was really…

However, that was also good. The “unbelief” was originally the best way to ward off evil, but the old man was already unable to achieve the state of “unbelief.” After all, even the sages of the ancients “believed,” so how would he dare to go against the teachings of the ancient sages?

The sky was growing darker and darker, but his cat was still watching the darkness in the distance and calling out with no pause. It continued to pull on his cotton gown with its claws, warning him to leave the city quickly. The cat seemed to be a hundred times more terrified than it was when the Holy Cat statue appeared.

“The Holy Cat statue has already been given away. What are you afraid of?” he asked gently.

However, his cat was also unable to explain it clearly, so it could only tell him that a huge evil was about to befall upon the city. For safety reasons, it was best to leave quickly.

He pondered for a moment. If the evil was just beside him, such as some antiques that were possessed by evil spirits, he would definitely listen to its advice and act immediately––either to send the antique away, bury it, or even destroy it. But since the scope of the evil was so wide, it didn’t seem to be anything urgent. No matter how serious the situation is, with his cat, he could always be a step ahead of the evil.

“We had a tiring journey so let’s go in and rest for a while––at least for the night. Then we’ll decide where to go after,” he said. He took out his key, unlocked the door, and pushed the door open.

The turbid air that had not been circulating for several months in the store was quickly blown away by the influx of nightly wind.

Everything was exactly the same as when he left, including the half-opened “Zhu Xi’s Literature Work Collection” on the table, which was densely labeled with his comments and reading thoughts.

The pages fluttered under the night’s wind and finally stopped on one of the pages.

“Never seen a cat catch a mouse? It has four feet fixed to the ground, tail straightened, eyes focused, and the mind free of thoughts. No movements at all, but once it moves, the mouse is done.”