Currencies

Alex looked around as they went deeper into the now crowded Xitian's side of Youdu city.

Vendors were calling out at the top of their voices while bright neon signs advertised products. A few appearing and vanishing skyscrapers peaked over the shopping malls in the gridlike layout.

Some skyscrapers looked more like the anime or donghua type of cultivation architecture, resembling high rise temples while most look like usual modern architecture. The shops, with their disappearing act, no longer caught his attention.

Then he noticed the large citadel with gargantuan red doors looming over the city, perched high on the midway of the mountain, below the floating island of Xitian.

He hadn't spotted that citadel when he first entered Youdu. And it didn't vanish in a blink of an eye.

Dark clouds and striking lightning surrounded the peak of its mountain. Above it was an ominous orange glow rotating above.

Then he stopped and gaze with his mouth agape.

"What's that?"

"What?" Arahabaki asked. "Just a mountain."

"Not just a mountain," Kanghui said. "The portal to the mortal world is opening, as Da Siming told me a while back."

"I don't see any citadel," Arahabaki peered at where Alex was looking, then he turned towards Takamagahara's side and narrowed his eyes.

"Yomi-no-Kuni has opened as well."

Alex turned to where Arahabaki was looking. Nothing but darkening clouds as more rolled over the Takamagahara's side of Youdu.

"Nothing there."

"Guys, you can't see what is unnecessary for you on either of the two sides," Kanghui reiterated her former position.

"Ya, ya… so a big event is going on in the world," Arahabaki raised his hand to stop her from continuing.

Shao Siming's fingers ran over each other as her eyes glowed. "It's just the beginning, although earlier than expected. I have to go."

With that, Shao Siming vanished into the thin air before Alex could react.

"Can anyone tell me what is the purpose that citadel and whatever Arahabaki saw on his side is for?"

"Influx of souls," Kanghui and Arahabaki answered in unison.

"There will be more dead coming in."

"A war?" Alex asked, concerned about his parents now.

He may be dead, but he didn't forget about them, although his memory of their faces was fading slowly.

Kanghui shook her head. "Not a war, but because of the misdeeds of humans."

"What then?"

"Nature exacting vengeance," Arahabaki replied as he sniffed around. "Disease by a virus."

"Then why blame humans?"

"The nature of the planet is delicate but capable of self defense. When humans are upsetting a balance, nature culls them to ensure an ecological balance," Arahabaki said.

"Mother Nature is a primeval too?"

Both beings shook their head.

"You humans see a planet, even yours, as one huge space rock in the floating vacuum of space. Yours is a living planet, one that acts like the human body. And when humans upset the balance, its immune system, nature, will cull all of you like cancer cells," Kanghui explained, much to Alex's grimace at the terrible description of his former species.

"We are not CANCER!" Alex retorted in indignation.

"Start learning, pretty boy. How do you define cancer cells?" Arahabaki questioned him.

"Cells which mutate and divide against the body's good, refusing to die…," Alex trailed off, realizing the definition fitted somehow.

"Humans breed and they destroy other species and habitats at a rapid rate to build themselves cities. In fact, several species shared your former family home until humans moved in and forced them out. Some of those species are now on a path to extinction," Arahabaki said.

"But some worshipped you guys!"

"Their choice. We don't force them to believe in us," Kanghui shrugged. "We only create storage facilities for those who really believed in us."

"Like the ghost cities that you first mentioned?"

She nodded and continued, "we even gave them special treatment. Every seventh lunar month, it opens for ghosts to make their annual trip to see family or collect food, goods and money. Same citadel you see there is their portal into Earth too."

"Collect food, goods and money? They are dead - what use are those material things? Ghosts don't need to eat, do they? Even I don't feel hungry."

"You are a new being which entered the final evolution. Ghosts did not and are only partials. Besides, ghosts don't need to eat physical food. Just soul stones, spiritual energy of the food offered to them or... consume through a nastier method."

"But there's teahouse and restaurants here," Alex pointed out at the shops selling apparitional buns and ghosts inside, feasting like normal humans as they ventured deeper.

Ancient people dressed in their olden day clothing wandered along the stores with others in modern day clothing, ignoring the poor sods. Some were talking to others from different eras along the cobblestone path.

Nothing like watching ghosts in their ancient human forms talking on mobile phones, which did not exist during their mortal lives.

"What the fuck, they have mobiles here? iPhones and Huawei?"

Honking of a car amongst the neighing from horses made Alex gawk at the direction of the noise.

Traffic jam chaos somewhere in Youdu but Alex could not see beyond the rows of vanishing and appearing shop rows alternating between the ancient double and triple storey traditional shop-houses, made of faux wood and bricks while the newer buildings were faux glass or cement.

"THEY HAVE CARS?"

"We are near the border of their enclave. They even have Maserati here," Kanghui shrugged as Alex dropped his jaw.

"HOW?"

"Burnt as offerings by their descendants, so the energy waves of thoughts from the living translated into actual usable objects in the ghost cities," Kanghui said. "Or bought with hell money, ghost currency."

"Ghost cities controlled by Xitian only. Not on our side where soul stones are the only currency." Arahabaki coughed loudly.

"Yeah, hell money economy only exists on the ghost cities on our side," Kanghui said.

Alex thought of his former maternal grandfather's funeral in Singapore, where his mother and aunts used to make paper ingots to burn. He was only a teenager then, scoffing at them for incinerating paper made large houses with dolls as maids and cars.

Alex wondered if his mother would burn some hell money for him too, but shook his head at his own wishful thinking. His father didn't share their background and Australia may not allow such a practice.

Then he recalled the betting scenario where Yata threw the shiny soul stones. Where did those come from?

"Wait, how does anyone get soul stones…"

"So can they but harder for them to gain, so the alternative is the hell money currency for ghosts only, or ghost cities if some of us come into possession of it."

Hell money needed to be burnt. Alex pondered, then asked, "what about the soul stones?"

"Capture loose energy waves in the human world. When each soul dissipates and scatter into the reincarnation cycle, there are leftover energy waves or even other weaker ghosts - we trap them to generate soul stones using our equipment," Kanghui tapped on the leather belt where the hilt of her dagger is showing.

"I don't have any," Alex said.

"I use the dagger to trap. Arahabaki uses the chains. Each being has a unique method and equipment. That's only allocated in the Courts for former humans, like yourself," she replied as Alex glance at the side where a few begging ghosts dressed in tattered clothing, crawling around on fours and shaking their empty bowls to other passing ghosts.

Pointing to them, Alex said, "then how come they are around? They look weak."

Kanghui smirked. "Those are starving spirits waiting for their turn to return to Hong Kong, Singapore or Taiwan, where they do more burning and food offerings. They look weak, but they aren't."

Alex studied those wretched, emaciated souls who stretched out their hands at those holding spirit- like food.

"Most have anger issues," she pointed to one well-dressed ghost trying to consume the impoverished looking one through sucking its whitish wisps into the mouth.

Cannibalism in the hidden dimension, Alex grimaced. Someone should have added it to the brochure. The more he knew, the more he wished he didn't know.

"Watch them. Don't take your eyes away," Kanghui said.

"The one getting sucked is in trouble," Alex said as he watched the head of the ghost narrowing towards the mouth of the other. "He is going to lose, anyway."

"Really?" She raised her eyebrow at him, then gestured her head towards the seemingly helpless ghoul against his bully while Arahabaki let out a small chuckle.

Alex looked at the both of them suspiciously and turned his attentions back on the two ghosts.

"There," he pointed at them, and Kanghui hastily pushed his arm down. "He is already half swallowed. So the bully wins."

"Don't point," she said sternly.

"YEAAAARGGGHHHHH…"

The bloodcurdling scream came from the bully, whose head now sinking down into the neck level, screaming for dear life.

The head of the half swallowed ghost was now showing. His mouth was gobbling the rest of the bully in the most gruesome manner.

The bully flailed his arms, which were swallowed and the kicking legs. With a loud burp, the miserable-looking ghost stood there rubbing his skeletal torso. Then another burp and a soul stone popped right out of his mouth.

With a cheerful smile that faded quickly, the miserable ghost returned to his sitting position, wailing and moaning for food on the streets while the others avoided them.

"That's why you don't pick on them. They are so hungry that they will do their best to eat anything that provoked them," she glanced at the others.

"… but… can they eat you?"

Arahabaki leaned in and whispered, "We choke them or swallow them whole ourselves. Our strength is beyond them. They can only eat their kind."