[No CP + ancient supernatural + rule-based horror + defective System + shameless female celestial master + lighthearted ensemble cast + true and false sect siblings]
Lin Jiu was afraid of ghosts, but she was even more afraid of being poor.
For eighteen years, she had followed her con-artist master around swindling people. She played the ghost, her master collected the money, and when they got caught, she, the last disciple, had to be the one to close up and run.
Until one day, two ghosts fell from the rafters at the same time.
One was the ghost she was pretending to be. The other was real.
"Master, I think this one's a real ghost."
At death's door, Lin Jiu bound herself to the Number One Ghost-Catching System in the world. But nine out of its ten functions were broken, and the divine talismans it rewarded her with could only make ghosts retreat three steps.
With no other choice, she had to use traps, deception, keen observation, and an account book to exploit loopholes in the ghosts' taboos.
Other people caught ghosts with their cultivation. Lin Jiu caught them by being shameless.
With a red lantern, she brought home the head of a beauty-loving female ghost who went through clothes like nobody's business. After hatching a broken egg from the System, she got a little ingot who spent all day calling, "A-Jiu, come play." Even a few tattered talismans became a business that spread throughout the Great Sheng empire.
The more she tried to make money, the more people she saved. The more she admitted to being a fraud, the more people believed she was hiding extraordinary abilities.
But the eight senior brothers and sisters her master had made up on a whim appeared in county records from a hundred years ago, in portraits that could blink, and on registers of the mysterious sects. One by one, they walked into the human world.
It wasn't until the Imperial Preceptor used ten ghost laws to erase all outsiders that Lin Jiu learned the truth: she was the Mysterious Mechanism Sect's only real disciple, and the only proof that the eight lies had lived on.
Later, her master confessed in front of everyone, "The first eight disciples were all made up by me."
The eight of them turned around in unison.
Lin Jiu closed her account book. "They were made up before. Now they're real."
"Put the food expenses on your tab."
In a World with Few Men, All My Roommates Are Powerhouses
Reborn as Banruo, Ruling the Realm with Yuwen Hu
At Seventy, Grandma Wants a Divorce, and the Whole Family Panics
Reborn, My Childhood Rival Sneaks Over the Wall Night After Night
The Book of Heaven's Replacement
Hua Fei Reborn: After Marrying Gu Tingye, I Went on a Killing Spree