Wu Xiaoming took a deep breath, with as much control over the volume as he could, before moving forward with lightened steps. Too bad, the floor still creaked, so he just pushed his Qi to his fullest and shot forward at the source of the sound with the soapberry wood staff in his right hand - the staff was glowing in dim golden, as he just “enchanted” it with golden light spell, just like he would do in the ethereal realm.

The weeping voice came from what looked like the back room in the store - exactly where he would find the zombie mask inside the ethereal realm.

It was a person in dirty rags hanging on the wall to Wu Xiaoming’s left. The person’s back was against the wall, his front facing Wu Xiaoming, but his face was almost completely covered by his long, messy hair; his two thighs were stumps of unequal lengths, as if he lost both calves in a horrific accident. His hands dug into the wall, but it did not seem to be enough to keep him on the wall. It was perfectly reasonable to Wu Xiaoming though, because with a quick glance, he noticed the man did not cast a shadow.

The man on the wall twitched as he saw Wu Xiaoming. He blew a few locks of hair off his eyes, revealing what was underneath - not his own face, but a zombie mask -

the

zombie mask.

“Oh my - ” Wu Xiaoming was just about to curse, yet the man on the wall just shot right at him through the air. The soapberry wood staff reached the side of the man’s face before his dirty, bruised and sore-covered fingers could even touch Wu Xiaoming’s shoulders. 

“

Boom-splash-crack!

” It was like striking a wet pillow with hard rocks inside, the figure of the homeless man shattered into hundreds of pieces. The soft, elastic zombie mask flew back and bounced on the wall.

The shattered pieces of the homeless man began smoking and disintegrating right away. Wu Xiaoming took a look around to check for other enemies before fixing his eyes on these pieces. Only when they all disappeared without any residual smoke, char or other signs of negative energy, did Wu Xiaoming approach the mask, with his hand glowing in golden.

 With careful fingers, he picked up the mask and pulled it closer to his eyes. From any angle, it just looked like a regular rubber/silicone zombie mask, one he could probably get for around 10 dollars online. It looked particularly gritty and realistic due to the dirt and water marks all over it.

 That ghost of a poor homeless man was wearing it, therefore it must have

some

kind of paranormal/supernatural property, he just could not sense it yet. Something to consider when he would allocate his whopping 7 spare skill points.

It could be dangerous to just leave the mask here - there was no telling what other environmental factors could influence it, or what other people or things could be influenced by it. The best course of action would be to burn it - but time was a bit late and he had no way to find a good place to do so.

After a short moment of consideration, he decided to bring the mask with him. Before doing so, he found a local “organic” grocery store and bought sage, cinnamon bark, and two large cans of salt. The sage and cinnamon bark he bought last time was not super useful, maybe “organic” ones could be better. He still had that one and a half canisters of black dog urine with him, hopefully these would be enough to neutralize whatever negative energy within the mask.

And maybe tomorrow, he could go to Zhuge Lishi’s store and ask him to take a look, maybe pay some money for the service if he had to.

The treatment for the zombie mask was rather simple and slightly disgusting: Wu Xiaoming blasted it with golden light spells, put it inside the canister half filled with black dog urine, then put the canister in his hotel room bathtub surrounded by a ring of salt, sage and cinnamon bark. He tried “blessing” everything with golden light spells, just so that there was a chance of adding additional protection. 

He then spent the evening practicing drawing fire talismans with regular mostly notebook paper and a few pages of talisman paper. With talisman paper, the quality of his fire talismans were indeed improved - they were more powerful, and easier to control. And before he would go to sleep, he put three of his best work around the canister. He also made sure the shower knob was fully off and the shower curtain was removed so that he wouldn’t cause a fire if the talismans were triggered.

Only after doing this did Wu Xiaoming remember he did not take a shower before doing so - so he had to make do with a quick wipe-down using a towel and the sink.

Current currencies: 36572 Spirit Fragments, 172 Vision Slivers. The ghost of the homeless man dropped 250 Spirit Fragments and 2 Vision Slivers - he expected the low count of the former, but never expected he would get any of the latter. And actually when he gave it some thought, it appeared that for creatures, ghosts and spirits that had manifested in the spirit realm, they seemed to drop Vision Slivers more often.

Current spare skill points: 7.

Current skills: Confucianist Tree: Learned, Scholar; Taoist Tree: Affinity, Thunder and Fire; Buddhist Tree: Path to Enlightenment, Arhat.

Current usable spells/active skills: basic Golden Light Spells, Fire Talisman making, Palm Lightning, Law of The Words.

Current equipment: Crushing Paws Bracers, Soapberry Wood Staff of Heft and Resolve, Tempered Steel Baton. There were many other items in his inventory, he was just too lazy to count or organize them.

The doors to the 8th floor were all closed and boarded up. The elevator was programmed that it would not stop on that floor. It seemed the hotel itself was closing the entire floor down for the time being. It made sense - whatever happened here last night that drove the guests to demand refunds from the hotel en masse, it must be related to Nicolas Sproutlinger’s spirit residing on that floor. And if the owner, Elijah Erikson, was indeed as calculating and cautious as he had appeared, he would have emergency plans for when things like that were to  happen. 

He just wished that his defeating the spirit of Nicolas Sproutlinger was enough to cleanse most of the energy from it - and hopefully whoever or whatever unleashed the energy that ended up saving him from that horrible entity, who had tried to recruit him as a herald, would finish up the rest.

The inside of the Sproutlinger Hotel in the ethereal realm was much brighter than before. The chilling atmosphere was also gone for the most part. But it was pretty far from an ideal environment - he woke up in the realm while a two-headed muscular spirit was whining and barking outside of his room. It took barely a moment before the spirit charged in and tried to attack him, screaming “life” and “flesh” from both mouths with crooked teeth and tongues full of sores. It was a menacing look, but could only endure one strike to its head on the right side.

There was nothing of note in his bathroom, the bathtub was old, cracked and covered in dark marks that looked like they were made of old, uncleaned dirt and slime. This gave him a bit of relief. But on the other hand, it was still a big bummer that none of his talismans did not manifest in the ethereal realm - it just went to show that his soapberry wood staff was indeed much more mysterious and powerful than he previously expected.

He went up to the 8th floor to check out his previous battleground. Somewhat to his surprise, he could recognize the residual marks of the holes he made with his baton on the ground and the walls, as well as the dark, tree-root-like lightning marks shooting out from them. Though, there were no lingering spirits and/or ghosts in the hallway.

The Queen’s Suite was empty, though still with the same decoration, there were still  recognizable signs of wear and tear and weathering - the beddings were covered in dust and broken, the carpet had broken down pretty heavily with holes everywhere, and the windows had basically no glass on them.

The nightstand that had a book with human skin cover inside was completely blackened as if it was thrown into a fire, barely maintaining its original shape, while the sonograph was still on top of it, covered in dust and rust. He went over and tried to pull open the lower drawer above which had been the hidden compartment storing the book. The compartment fell out, and broke into pieces of charcoal, with nothing inside. 

He looked around once again in the suite, looking under the bed, checking in the spacious walk-in closet, even tearing up the thin wooden board on the ceiling, no traces of anything unusual (per ethereal realm standards). If it was indeed some exorcists that assisted him from the physical realm last night, they surely did a pretty thorough job at cleaning up the unclean energy.

He ran down the stairs, annihilating a few spirits along the way. These spirits were of human shape, and did not have any resemblance to the pale, humanoid creatures wearing human faces from last night.

Out of the hotel, he sped towards the location where the zombie mask would be.

The narrow street was dirtier and colder than he remembered. He looked back up at the hotel building. The streams and “bridges” of black smoke connecting the eighth floor to various locations in the surrounding area were gone.

With Nicolas Sproutlinger no longer haunting the Sproutlinger Hotel, the energy in those “bridges” would not just disappear - most of it would not. And if those streams of black smoke were actually negative energy being collected into the hotel building, then their disappearance could only mean the negative energy has spread across the surrounding area.

Maybe he could explore a little bit to see if this theory was correct or not. There it was, the shop where the zombie mask was. And maybe it was due to his eyes having gotten too used to the brighter color in the Sproutlinger Hotel, or maybe it was due to his not-so-good mood and the experience with the shop in real life, the shop itself seemed darker than he remembered.

He walked through the door. But before he could take another step, everything around him was swallowed by dark fog in a single second.

“

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat

…” The sound of distant rapid gunshots alerted Wu Xiaoming before the fog fully dissipated. Instead of the zombie-filled street outside the shop, he was now in the hallway of what looked like a hospital, with himself being in a scrub.