The Fake Heiress's Guide to Self-Rescue - Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Summoning the Spirit
“Jiang Qianqian, come down and play!”
Her roommate Liu Yan burst into the room, holding a sheet of white paper and a pen.
Zhang Rui and Zhao Shuang were watching a drama on the bottom bunk. They looked up when they heard the noise.
Zhang Rui pushed her glasses up and asked curiously, “Yan Yan, what are you doing with the paper and pen?”
“My sister told me about this yesterday when she came home for a holiday,” Liu Yan answered Zhang Rui’s question while placing the paper and pen on the desk. “Playing ‘spirit-writing’ is all the rage at their school now. I heard that the spirits you summon can answer any of your questions.”
Zhao Shuang, who was nearby, shivered and shrank back in fear. “Geez, you’re trying to summon a ghost?”
“Oh, my sister has already played it, and nothing happened,” Liu Yan waved her hand dismissively. “Besides, you can only do the ritual at midnight, so it’s not something you can just do anytime.”
Liu Yan excitedly recounted the entire process her sister went through to summon the spirit. “There was a girl in her class who broke up with her boyfriend. She asked the spirit if she could make up with him. They had been in a cold war for a week, and the spirit said she could. The next morning, her boyfriend came to her school to find her, and they made up on the spot.”
Jiang Qianqian, who had been lying on her bed scrolling on her phone, couldn’t help but get up. She walked over to Liu Yan’s desk and looked at the paper and pen, feeling a sense of doubt. Could it really be that amazing?
Seeing that Jiang Qianqian was also interested, Liu Yan rubbed her hands together and leaned in, ready to recruit her. “You need at least two people to play this game. Qianqian, you love to study ghosts and monsters, so do you want to play with us?”
“It seems pretty fun,” Jiang Qianqian said, her interest piqued after hearing Liu Yan’s stories. She nodded. “Count me in.” The two of them immediately decided to hold the spirit-writing ritual at midnight tonight.
“I want to play too! I really want to know if I’ll win the lottery tomorrow,” Zhao Shuang said as she joined the game, rubbing her hands together and claiming she wasn’t afraid.
Zhang Rui looked at her roommates. They all wanted to play, and she was too afraid to sleep alone in her bed. She meekly raised her hand. “I… I’m too scared to play. I’ll just watch from the side.”
“Look at you, you little scaredy-cat,” Zhao Shuang said with a grin, teasing Zhang Rui. “Fine, you can just watch.”
At midnight, the dorm’s power had been cut off, plunging it into darkness. The four girls took out the electronic candles they had prepared beforehand (no playing with fire in the dorm!), solemnly arranged the fruit they had bought on the table like offerings. The white paper in the center looked a bit glaring in the dim light. Liu Yan and Jiang Qianqian sat at opposite ends of the table with serious expressions. They both held the pen with their right hands, with their thumbs and pinkies touching, and chanted, “Spirit, oh Spirit, you are my past life, and I am your present life. Please come out and answer my questions.”
In the dead silent dorm, all they could hear was the sound of their breathing. Zhang Rui sat nervously on her chair. Just as she was about to open her mouth and find an excuse to leave…
“Ah!” Zhao Shuang’s gasp interrupted her.
She looked up at the table and saw the pen slowly moving, leaving a series of crooked lines on the paper.
Liu Yan’s voice trembled as she swallowed. “Qianqian… did… did your hand move?”
“It’s not… my hand… it feels like it’s out of my control,” Jiang Qianqian said. She felt like her hand was no longer under her control, starting to draw randomly on the paper.
“Quick! Ask it a question, Yan Yan!” Zhao Shuang, both excited and scared, urged Liu Yan in a low voice.
“Oh, right. Respected, oh respected Spirit, can you tell me if I’ll fail any classes this semester?” Prompted by Zhao Shuang, Liu Yan immediately remembered the purpose of the game.
The moment she spoke, the pen tip, which had been drawing randomly, suddenly stopped. Then, it slowly wrote the character for “no.”
“Yes! Awesome! I finally won’t fail any classes this time,” Liu Yan shouted excitedly when she saw the character, only to be stopped by Zhang Rui.
Seeing that the spirit could really answer questions, Zhao Shuang and Zhang Rui also grew bolder and asked about their own worries. The pen tip slowly moved across the paper, giving them answers that were both good and bad.
Time unknowingly passed, and it was one in the morning. Remembering that they all had class the next day, the four girls decided to end the ritual and get some rest.
“Yan Yan, how do we send the spirit away?” Zhao Shuang didn’t know the rules of the game, so she could only ask Liu Yan, who had introduced the game to them.
“Oh my god, I forgot to ask my sister. What do we do?” Liu Yan looked like she was about to cry as she clutched the pen, not daring to let go. The two of them looked at Jiang Qianqian, hoping she could come up with a solution.
“Didn’t you say the spirit knows everything? Why don’t you just ask it?” Jiang Qianqian came up with an idea, remembering what Liu Yan had said when she introduced the game.
Liu Yan cleared her throat. “I’ll ask then. Ahem, Spirit, oh Spirit, how can we send you away?”
The four of them held their breath, their eyes fixed on the pen. The pen paused for a moment, then began to shake violently, drawing circle after circle on top of the “no” character.
Screech— The paper tore in half, and everything returned to a dead silence.
Jiang Qianqian held the pen in her hand, staring blankly at the table. She felt as if she had seen a pair of bl00d-red eyes in a daze.
The next morning, Jiang Qianqian came down with a high fever. The four roommates all fell sick one after another, and their symptoms were surprisingly consistent—all had a high fever. The academic advisor thought they had all contracted the flu and granted them leave to rest at home.
Jiang Qianqian was picked up by her parents and taken home. She had a fever for two whole days with no sign of getting better. Her mom was worried sick that she would get brain damage. Early on the third day, her mother left in a hurry. When she returned that evening, Jiang Qianqian’s fever had gone down.
Three days ago was the day Jiang Jing was adopted by the Jiang family. The adoption was very sudden. Jiang Qianqian’s parents suddenly asked the orphanage to adopt Jiang Jing. The director judged their financial status by their clothes and after several attempts at persuasion, Jiang Jing agreed to the adoption. But what was strange was that Jiang Qianqian’s parents did not put Jiang Jing’s residency under their names, but rather under Jiang’s mother’s sister’s name. The reason they gave was that they had consulted a master who said they could only have three children at most. They were afraid that putting Jiang Jing’s name under theirs would harm their own children, but they promised to leave a portion of their inheritance for Jiang Jing. So, Jiang Jing was taken to live in the Jiang family’s house.
“You were so reckless. Spirit-writing is an old folk method of divination. You only summon ghosts, not immortals. Why would you play a game like that when you didn’t even know how to send it away?”
Jiang Jing felt her head ache after hearing Jiang Qianqian’s story. The most important factor in a successful spirit-writing session is not whether the ritual is done perfectly, but whether there is a ghost in that place. If there isn’t, even doing the ritual perfectly a hundred times won’t work. Schools have always been built on the sites of old cemeteries or burial grounds, to use the yang energy from the large number of students to suppress the yin energy of the former burial ground. Many schools even subtly incorporate geomancy formations to ensure that the yang energy doesn’t dissipate.
Jiang Qianqian and her friends listened to others and played spirit-writing. Without a way to break the ritual, they naturally attracted a lone ghost to possess them. After all, the vital energy of living people is also attractive to ghosts. Jiang Jing was fine right now because the three fires on her shoulders and head were still burning, but at this rate, the vengeful ghost would soon find an opening.
“How was I supposed to know that Liu Yan forgot how to send the spirit away?” Jiang Qianqian pouted, clearly unhappy with Jiang Jing’s scolding.
Jiang Jing crossed her arms and shook her head. “You seemed to trust her a lot. No wonder you would play such a dangerous game with her.”
Hearing this, Jiang Qianqian got annoyed and immediately shot back, “Yeah, Liu Yan is my roommate. If I don’t trust her, should I trust you?” She was already miserable from the long-term insomnia, and now she had to listen to a stranger talk to her sarcastically. Jiang Qianqian became more and more agitated as she spoke. Tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to fall, making Jiang Jing feel a pang of guilt.
She remembered her master’s wife once telling her that she couldn’t understand the feelings of other devotees or fellow disciples. At the time, she had waved her hand and said, “As long as I can solve their problems, that’s what matters. The rest is a psychologist’s job. I can’t do it.” She now wanted to slap her past self twice for saying such things. She had really shot herself in the foot.
“That’s not what I meant. I… I don’t know how to explain it. Why don’t you just punch me twice?” Jiang Jing felt like she couldn’t explain herself, so she grabbed Jiang Qianqian’s hand and tried to put it on her head. Anyway, I’m used to being hit by my master’s wife. Jiang Qianqian won’t hit as hard as her.
Jiang Qianqian’s hand was suddenly pulled. She was startled by the soft touch, then angrily pulled her hand away. “What are you doing?” she said, glaring at the person in front of her with a mix of shame and anger. In just one day, she had been violated twice. It was hard to imagine how she was supposed to talk to this rude person.
Jiang Jing’s hand felt empty. She was confused when Jiang Qianqian pulled her hand away. Then, a pillow came flying at her. “What are you doing?” she said, picking up the pillow and looking at Jiang Qianqian.
“Just talk. Don’t always be so touchy. Are we close?”
“I’m on your bed. How much closer could we be?” Jiang Jing chuckled, intentionally teasing Jiang Qianqian.
“You! You snuck in here!” Jiang Qianqian angrily threw another pillow at Jiang Jing. The person who had just been teasing her was caught off guard and knocked off the bed.
“Ouch.” Jiang Jing rubbed her sore butt.
“Miss, is everything alright?” A knock came from Jiang Qianqian’s door. It was the housekeeper, who had heard the commotion and came to check on her.
“I’m fine. I just slipped when I was getting off the bed and wasn’t looking,” Jiang Qianqian said, holding back a laugh as she looked at the person who had fallen. She pretended that nothing had happened when she answered the housekeeper.
After the housekeeper left, Jiang Jing got up from the floor with a serious expression. “Have you noticed that you’ve been feeling more and more tired lately?” She observed the two fires on Jiang Qianqian’s shoulders. They were now very weak and would probably go out completely in a few days.
“Yeah, that’s right. Do you have a solution?” Seeing Jiang Jing’s serious expression, Jiang Qianqian sat up straight. She wasn’t an idiot. Since Jiang Jing could tell she was being tormented by the spirit, she must also have a solution.
“I do, but I don’t know if you’ll trust me,” Jiang Jing said, looking at Jiang Qianqian seriously. This was the first time she was expelling a ghost on her own without her master’s wife. Although she had the ability to do so for a long time, this was her first time performing a ritual after transmigrating into someone else’s body.
“If not, I’ll just tell Mom and Dad. At worst, I’ll get a beating,” Jiang Qianqian said with a shrug, signaling for Jiang Jing not to be so nervous.
“Okay, I’ll need these things. I hope you can help me find them.”
Jiang Jing wrote down a list for Jiang Qianqian to prepare. She then tiptoed back to her room, afraid that Mr. and Mrs. Jiang would see her and ask what she was doing in Jiang Qianqian’s room so late at night.