Chapter Three: Guided by a Restless Spirit

"Really, I feel like something unclean has latched onto me!"

I was taken aback. "You ran into a ghost? Then go find a Taoist priest or a temple. Why come to me? I just do tattoos for people."

"Master Jin said you have a kind of tattoo here that wards off misfortune and disaster. I know you masters always hide among ordinary folk. Rest assured, as long as you help me through this ordeal, I'll give you a hundred thousand yuan with both hands."

I turned to look at Uncle Jin. He acted as if he hadn't heard a thing, idly amusing himself with the goldfish in the tank.

"Scoundrel," I cursed him silently a dozen times, then forced myself to ask the man, "Mr. Zhao, tell us the story first. But I can't promise I can help you."

"This is how it happened..."

Boss Zhao, whose full name is Zhao Jun, runs a transport business—not a large operation, but he handles both courier services and livestock shipping. His annual revenue is several million, with a net profit of three to four million each year. Half a month ago, one of his drivers, Old Ma, set out as usual for a long haul, transporting a truckload of piglets.

There’s an unwritten rule among long-haul drivers: if the journey is long or the weather looks bad, they set off firecrackers before leaving, hoping for a safe trip. That day, Old Ma had lost money at mahjong the night before, felt frustrated, and left in a hurry without setting off any firecrackers. He didn't expect anything supernatural would really happen.

According to Old Ma, after delivering the piglets to their destination, he started back the next day. Suddenly, a heavy rain began to fall, blurring his vision. Anxious to get home, he kept his speed up. Then, a flash of scarlet light streaked before him—something alive stopped right in front of his truck, raising its forepaws in a gesture of prayer.

He couldn't swerve in time and hit it. Through the rain, he thought he glimpsed a fox. But since he was on the highway, he didn't stop to check. Besides, long-haul drivers often hit birds, stray dogs, or wild rabbits—it’s nothing unusual. He just kept driving. "Damn unlucky, what was that stupid animal running around for?"

At the highway toll station, he stopped to take a pass. The attendant was a very pretty young woman, with curved eyes and a red cinnabar mole beneath her right eye. Old Ma, feeling his spirits lift, chatted her up, but when she didn't respond, he drove off disappointed.

The night was cool, rain drumming on the windshield. Soon, he reached the off-ramp toll booth, humming a tune as he prepared to pay. When he looked up, he saw—the same curved-eyed young woman was the attendant again!

Looking closer, her features had grown even stranger: her eyes more curved, her mouth sharper, and fine, scarlet fur began to sprout along her cheeks. Her mouth chattered incessantly, "You dare run over Lady Hu? I’ll see all of you die miserably in the streets!"

At this point, Boss Zhao paused, his expression uneasy. "And guess what happened next? All those piglets we shipped out dropped dead in a single day, and after dying, they all grew yellow fox fur!

After Old Ma came back, he kept saying he saw a fox spirit. I told my wife, but at first, she said not to believe it. But ever since this happened, not a single truck at my company can go out—random blowouts, fuel system failures, all sorts of strange problems.

Worst of all, one night, that fox spirit came to me too—in my dream. Just like Old Ma, she wants me dead!" He rolled up his sleeve, revealing fine yellow fur growing on his forearm.

A chill ran through me; this was far beyond my tolerance for the supernatural. "Boss Zhao, you’d better leave. I can’t help you with this. Like I said, I’m just a tattoo artist. All this ghostly stuff—I really can’t do anything."

"Hey, don’t say that," Uncle Jin chimed in. "Old Zhao, you head back for now and let Master Zhang consider it. But this matter is serious—one hundred thousand might not be enough."

With a thud, Zhao Jun dropped to his knees. "Master Zhang, Uncle Jin, please help me! I have no other option left. That fox spirit is driving my whole family insane!" Uncle Jin waved him off, so Zhao had no choice but to brush the dust from his knees and sensibly left my tattoo parlor.

"Uncle Jin, you should be called 'Gold Digger Jin.' You’d dare take this money? Did you see the fox fur on his arm? This is a real supernatural event! There might really be a fox spirit—how could ordinary mortals like us save him?"

"My dear nephew, we must be civilized—reject superstitions. However... if there really is something uncanny, don’t forget: you’re the inheritor of the Yin-Yang Tattoo."

"What exactly is the Yin-Yang Tattoo? You’ve only told me half before all this trouble started."

"I’ve already told you about the Yang Tattoo. As for the Yin Tattoo... heh, do you believe in ghosts?"

"Of course I do—there are lustful ghosts, drunken ghosts, gambling ghosts, all sorts."

"Don’t joke around. Let me tell you, the Yin Tattoo uses the essence of fierce spirits and vengeful souls as pigment, applied with the special Yin-Yang Tattoo techniques onto human skin to achieve extraordinary effects. I only know the basic principle—the specifics should be recorded in that illustrated manual. If you can master both the Yang and Yin Tattoo methods, the two of us will make a fortune."

"Uncle Jin, how do you know all this? Who are you, really?"

Uncle Jin grinned at me. "Well, where do you think your grandfather got all the special pigments for those Yin-Yang Tattoos he used to make?"