[Standalone stories] [Horror and the bizarre] [Exorcism with technology] [AI + the supernatural] [Transmigrate and fight monsters] [Folk tales] [Unusual occurrences] [Republican Era]
If you transmigrated to the Republican Era with an AI brain and pretended to be a Taoist priest, how many ghosts could you catch, how many silver dollars could you earn, and how many free feasts could you score?
Shen Du's answer was simple: Catch as many as there are, earn as much as there is, and mooch a meal wherever he goes.
In his previous life, he pulled three all-nighters and dropped dead at his desk. When he opened his eyes again, he had transmigrated to the Republican Era's fourteenth year and become Shen Du, a fake Taoist priest who had just choked to death on a red bean bun.
He was only pretending to be a Maoshan sect heir, and the only talismans he could draw were blank sheets of yellow paper. The sole thing that had come with him was a phone with a cracked screen, containing the snarky AI Doubao he had trained himself.
A flower demon was running rampant in Meilin Town, killing twenty-three people. The town chief offered a reward of one hundred silver dollars.
Shen Du tucked away his phone and charged straight into the danger zone. Doubao used thermal imaging to scan the formation, pinpointed the buried bones, and cracked the evil spirit's control network. Shen Du dug up the bones with his bare hands and broke the Seven-Star Soul-Locking Formation. The flower demon turned on the villain and devoured him, while the mastermind crumbled into a pile of bones on the spot.
In his previous life, he traded his life for money. In this one, he trades ghosts for food.
From the flower demon of Suzhou and beast spirits in western Sichuan to corpse-driving in western Hunan and messages from the dead at a Shanghai Bund telegraph office, this laid-back fake Taoist priest carries his snarky AI all over the Republican Era, fixing the era's various monsters and demons one by one like System bugs.
If there are ghosts, catch them. If not, mooch a meal. The world is so big. Where can't you find a good meal and a few drinks for free?
