I Have a Bestiary of Spirits

Ming Yuebie has a notebook he bought for the huge sum of six yuan and fifty cents. It can collect the remains of deceased spirits, let him enter their memories of the past, and record their entire lives.

Once the record is complete, the spirit can be reborn as a human. A detailed entry about it will appear in the notebook, and its owner can make any wish he wants to the notebook and receive a gift in return.

Three benefits for the price of one: however you look at it, it's a win.

Ming Yuebie prides himself on being heartless and cold-blooded, able to regard every spirit's experiences rationally and record them in fair, measured prose.

He has undergone rigorous training and generally doesn't interfere in events that have already happened.

Unless he can't help himself.

A young man who loved flowers all his life dies among the blossoms. The peony spirit who had promised to drink with him arrives a hundred years too late. After quietly drinking half a pot, she withers away, her petals falling in front of his grave.

Ming Yuebie: Sir, did you drop this pot of osmanthus wine, this jar of apricot-blossom wine, or this vat of strong liquor?

The young man, who just bought flower seedlings: ?

The flower spirit, who just developed awareness: ?

The last mermaid in the world sings alone, singing a song her friend wrote for her. She is shot dead on the day they agreed to meet. Her friend rides three thousand li, gravely wounded, but dies before reaching the forest, surrounded by her lilting song.

Ming Yuebie first pulls the arrow out of her friend's body, then stops the bleeding and bandages the wound. Finally, he shouts into the depths of the forest: Stop singing! Keep it up and you'll both die!

The mermaid, interrupted mid-song: ?

Her friend, pinned to the ground and treated without so much as a word of warning: ?

A nine-tailed white fox who lived for more than ten thousand years is still begging for a way to come back to life on its deathbed. An old friend lies quietly at the bottom of a lake, where he has lain for ten thousand years. The sword he clutches has been carving into his heart for just as long.

Ming Yuebie: Better to start over than grieve after you're dead. Today, I'm your love-life security guard. Someone! One seat at the West Lake, please!

Then he kicks the white fox's remnant soul into the lake from its memory, where it splashes about and grabs the hand that had reached out to it ten thousand years ago.

When the Dragon Princess dies, Heaven and Earth weep. But what weighs on her mind isn't her own life or death. It's the past, and a child she never had the chance to save.

Ming Yuebie: A dead dragon can't come back to life, but I'm a magic lamp. You can make one wish.

Dragon Princess: ...I want to give him a beautiful dream, a dream of a happy family and a safe, peaceful life.

Ming Yuebie: All right. I'll invest in this project as Ming Duoyu.

Notebook: Is this what you call rigorous training?

Ming Yuebie: ...

Foreword:

Top Ming Yuebie x bottom Zhe Jingque. The top pretends to be aloof but is actually a fun-loving goofball; the bottom is genuinely aloof and deeply devoted.

Ordinary strange-tale stories, not scary.

Four arcs in total, with no romance involving secondary couples in any of them!

Theme: Cherish the present and look forward to the future.