Song Miaozhu was still happily playing mahjong when her little paper servants stationed near her physical body in the living world suddenly reached out to her.
She thought it was just a reminder from one of them, probably the one keeping an eye on the clock, letting her know it was nearly time to return. After all, tonight's class had been delayed a bit.
But when she looked at the image sent by the servant in the living room, she saw her phone lighting up.
Song Miaozhu had a habit: whenever she traveled to the underworld, she set her phone to silent and left it outside her bedroom. She worried someone might try to spy on her using the camera.
Now, the phone in the image was ringing. The caller was Zhao Huoyan.
"The underworld's punishment must have taken effect. The SEIU is probably in chaos right now."
She had just drawn a tile for her current round and wasn't keen on moving.
But when no one answered, Zhao Huoyan kept calling.
Then came calls from Zhao Mumu, Chen Shuanghe, and even Chen Yuanyuan.
Song Miaozhu frowned. This couldn't be a coincidence. It was 2 or 3 a.m.—no sane person would call friends at this hour.
After ten more minutes of incessant ringing, someone started knocking on her door.
"Even if you're government officials, you can't force a lone woman to open her door in the middle of the night! How am I supposed to rent this place out if word gets around?"
"Please cooperate. We have an urgent matter to discuss with Master Song."
The voice came from outside her apartment, captured by the paper servant hiding in the fire hydrant cabinet downstairs at Chen Yuanyuan's place.
Apparently, the SEIU had tracked down Chen Yuanyuan.
Song Miaozhu knew she couldn't delay any longer. If she waited, they might really break down the door.
Just then, she drew another tile.
"Hu!" she declared, winning the round.
It was a minor win, but still a win. Enough to end the game.
"I have something urgent to deal with, so I'll take my leave first," she said, standing up.
Liang Fuyi and the others sighed—they hadn't had their fill yet.
As centuries-old ghosts who'd witnessed the rise and fall of Anshou Hall's past managers, they were no strangers to this pattern.
Every new Anshou Hall proprietor started this way—rushed, distracted, unable to linger long in the underworld.
It was disappointing, but they were used to it.
"Fine. Next time you're free, just message the group!" Liang Fuyi waved her off. "Old Huang, Old Hua, let's move to the next room for some poker!"
As Huang and Hua were about to stand up, Song Miaozhu pulled out three little paper servants and set them on the mahjong table.
"I feel bad always leaving mid-game, so I came up with something. Let these guys play for me. It's basically the same."
She had tested it. Her little paper servants did quite well on mahjong apps. Maybe not as sharp as she was, but good enough to keep up.
Sure, they might lose a few hell coins, but that was just the price of training their spirit. Besides, these three always invited her to play, and they shared so many underworld rumors she couldn't hear elsewhere. Song Miaozhu didn't want to sour their goodwill.
"If I keep bailing, they might stop inviting me!"
Now that the SEIU had been punished, and the city office had even issued an official notice, there wouldn't be any more ghost spies snooping around Fengdu for information to send back to the living world.
Even new ghosts would find their links to the living realm completely severed after death.
So, Song Miaozhu didn't have to worry anymore about her Secret Art of Paper Crafting leaking back to the living world.
She could even say openly here in the underworld that she was the Song Miaozhu from the living world, and no one could do a thing about it.
Dream transmissions were still possible, but they cost a lot of hell coins and were limited. The Dream Bureau didn't allow ghosts to share too much about the underworld with their living relatives anyway, let alone gossip about her.
And now that all ghost residences were cut off from the living world, even self-initiated dreams weren't easy. She had heard that the old tradition of ghosts returning during Ghost Festival to visit family had been abolished by the underworld authorities in the last cultivation era.
Which meant once a ghost was in the underworld, they could no longer go back to the living world to deliver dreams.
"I can afford to be bolder now."
When Liang Fuyi saw the little paper servants, she wasn't surprised at all.
"Of course, you can use them to play. Your great-grandmother once showed off by playing a whole game of mahjong with three paper servants by herself."
"My great-grandmother knew how to make paper servants too?" Song Miaozhu was stunned.
When her great-grandmother passed, she only left a box of gold ingots behind.
"Of course. Though her paper servants felt different from yours," Liang Fuyi replied.
Song Miaozhu thought for a moment and understood. Her great-grandmother must have used yin energy to activate them, instead of spiritual qi.
After all, paper servants didn't require high-level crafting skills. Just cut a simple figure and awaken it with spirit or yin energy.
Song Miaozhu set her servants in place and quickly left.
Ghost residences and Fengdu weren't in the same space, so she couldn't teleport straight back with her shopkeeper's token. She had to exit Swallow Slope, return to Fengdu, and then teleport back to the living world.
As she floated along, she kept an eye on her paper servants at the mahjong table.
They couldn't handle shuffling or stacking the tiles alone, and needed help from other ghosts for that. But once the game got going, the three of them could manage just fine.
They did run into disagreements though. Sometimes one wanted to discard a tile while the others disagreed. When that happened, they'd raise their paper hands and vote. Majority ruled.
If all three had different ideas, they'd play rock-paper-scissors to decide. If that still didn't work, they'd fight it out.
Their play was a bit slow, but the others didn't mind. They found the antics of the paper servants entertaining. Even though the paper servants lost the game, everyone still had fun, which reassured Song Miaozhu. By the time she returned to the living world, she could already hear commotion outside her apartment.
Through a servant's ears, she heard Chen Yuanyuan lying: "The landlord changed the locks after renting it out. I don't have a key!"
The SEIU agents, it seemed, were getting ready to break in.
She could understand. After all, those twenty years of lost lifespan had probably taken out several of the committee's nine members.
She sent more paper servants to assist the ones responsible for swapping out her placeholding paper body, then quietly floated down the stairs and found a hiding spot.
While hiding, she moved anything inconvenient or suspicious inside her home into her ghost shop's storage.
"If negotiations go south, I'm running."
Only then did she approach the door.