CHAPTER 573: CHAPTER 291: THE GHOST IN THE COFFIN SHOP

As the day broke brightly, Xu Qing was just returning to Underground Street when he was stopped by Boss Liu from the coffin shop.

Boss Liu looked him over with concern, even asking if he was alright and whether he was hurt anywhere...

Xu Qing was bewildered, thinking, what could possibly happen to me? I’m perfectly fine!

Hearing Xu Qing’s words, Liu Su’e finally breathed a sigh of relief: "Last night you left in a rush on horseback, I thought..."

It wasn’t until then that the rough and ready Xu Qing remembered. The night before, he had stayed at the coffin shop, where Boss Liu said she had just learned a new play and wanted to sing it for him. However, before she could finish, uninvited guests arrived at Bao Sheng Temple.

"That’s no big deal. Last night I suddenly remembered I had promised to perform burial rites for someone at night, so I hurried off on horseback to perform the rite."

"A burial at night?"

"Sigh! Isn’t it because our burial rites are too well-known? Everyone wants a burial, and they can’t get an appointment during the day, so they have to schedule it at night!"

Boss Liu was dumbfounded. Are people really queuing up for burials? Is this even reasonable!

"Is there anything else?"

Seeing Liu Su’e still following him, Xu Qing turned his head to ask.

"Brother Xu, there’s a ghost in my coffin shop!"

A ghost? Xu Qing raised an eyebrow and asked: "What kind of ghost?"

"It’s a female ghost in a peach-colored dress..."

Although it was called a female ghost, Boss Liu didn’t see it with her own eyes but dreamed of a woman in peach-colored attire praising her for the play she sang the night before and inviting her to sing under the peach tree in the coffin shop’s backyard whenever she had time. As soon as Boss Liu started singing, the woman said she would listen.

"The only person listening last night was Brother Xu, yet she could recount every play I sang. Brother Xu, do you think... there might be something unclean in this shop?"

Hearing this, Xu Qing more or less understood the situation.

"There’s nothing unclean in Underground Street! However, there is a peach tree in the backyard. That tree is one I and Xuan Yu honor as a godmother. It might be that she’s feeling lonely and wants to hear you sing. That’s a good thing, you don’t have to be afraid!"

"But she said that she will soon face a tribulation by lightning, fearing she won’t have many days left, and advised me to leave the coffin shop on December 29th, the Ghost Festival, so as not to be implicated."

Xu Qing’s brow furrowed, suddenly recalling that at the Shuimen Bridge Villa, the Yin Locust Tree once sent a dream to the embroidery girl, saying that a tree demon in the city was undergoing a tribulation, and when the heavens opened their eyes, it feared that the heavenly god would see the ’sins’ in the villa, thus bringing down divine punishment, causing collateral damage.

So it wanted the embroidery girl to help transplant it out of the city...

Xu Qing had thought it was just the Yin Locust Tree making things up, trying to get rid of the virtual substitution technique he had set up in the villa, just an excuse fabricated.

Who would have thought there really was a tree demon undergoing a tribulation, and it was right under his nose!

Truly, it was a case of missing the obvious!

"December 29th..." Just about to head back to the funeral shop, change out of his mourning robe, and visit the county magistrate at the county lord’s mansion, Xu Qing had to temporarily put aside getting the maintenance manual back.

The peach tree in the coffin shop now seemed like a ticking time bomb, who knew if it might explode ahead of time.

If this tree demon was also careless and got the tribulation date wrong, or if the disaster came early, wouldn’t Boss Liu living in the shop, and the nearby neighbors, suffer misfortune?

"The problem isn’t big. Xuan Yu and her godmother get along very well! Boss Liu, you can go sit at the Incense and Candle Shop for a while, I’ll talk some sense with her. It won’t even take the time to burn an incense stick to have this resolved!"