Ming City

One moment an empty street when he planted a foot in. Next, a busy one.

Upon crossing the boundary, the bustling street popped up in front of them with a huge colorful wooden three gate structure and a Chinese script 'Ming' engraved on the plaque placed on the top of the middle gate. 'Ming' was the archaic word for night or part of the reference to the netherworld.

Alex turn around to look behind, but the street leading to Ming City disappeared. In its place was a large two story city wall gate with guards dressed in the style of ancient Han dynasty. A pair were patrolling along the shut gargantuan doors, like the great red doors of Xitian's fortress.

Each door had a figurine carved in the middle.

"What are you staring at?" Arahabaki popped up behind him.

"The shut gates." Alex showed with his hand.

"What gates? It is a route back to the main street of Youdu," Arahabaki frowned, then he remembered the Xitian side will only let him see what was necessary. He could only surmise that, perhaps for Alex, Xitian had trapped him into the ghost city.

"Yo Kanghui, pretty boy has a problem," he called out to Kanghui before she took another step.

Without looking back, she halted and asked, "What now?"

"I can't see the place where we came from," Alex said. "There is a shut city wall gate."

Her head drooped a little, as though unwilling to answer, and she swung around for a look.

"The gates are open for me, but after we are done with the Courts of Hell, you can see why," she replied. "Come along."

"Say Arahabaki, are the streets busy?"

"No, empty," came the answer that made Alex uneasy.

"ARA! Quit joking with him," Kanghui said with a slightly raised tone of impatience, and gestured to Alex, "just stay quiet and follow. I will answer the questions later after the Courts."

"She looks very edgy," Arahabaki nudged Alex playfully and whistled.

Alex pursed his lips as he obediently followed the two around the opaque bodies of the ghosts, careful not to bump into anyone. It was the first time he heard Kanghui expressed an emotional tone in her voice, mild as it was, instead of a dead pan monotonous answer.

He glanced at the dim lighting of modern looking street lamps lining the paths while olden lanterns with a mysterious greenish fire hung across above the moving bodies of ghosts dressed in clothes of many eras in Chinese history. Some wore more ethnic minority clothing with plaited hair.

Vendors, like the ones in Youdu, were yelling from shops which didn't disappear and reappear. Even the variety of items sold were far more than Youdu's Main Street store.

"250 million Yama hell money or 130 million EU hell money for a television? Make it cheaper. I can only spare 80 million EU hell money."

The mention of EU hell money made Alex and Arahabaki halt. Both went past the speaker, who was bargaining with a ghostly looking shopkeeper dressed in a suit, in front of a fairly modern style type of store.

They pretended to browse the items near the two ghosts while Alex stole a look at a silent Kanghui with her arms folded.

As long as Arahabaki was with him and no word from her, Alex figured out that he will be ok and he studied the insides of the store in astonishment.

The shopkeeper had arranged the electronics from washing machines to laptops in the familiar sections in the human world. However, the plastered posters and prices created a disorganised mess of colours. Alex saw some pasted on a random available spot on the electronic item without a care for presentation.

The prices were hand written on spike shaped paper cutouts like good ole JB Hifi, the Australian electronics chain store known for a good bargain.

Totally like JB Hifi, Alex thought as both Arahabaki and he gawked at the Apple section except it wasn't really the real Apple iPods, iPhones or iPads. How did this ghostly shopkeeper get his relatives to burn the entire paper shop as an offering?

Just not the same as the prices of electronics in JB Hifi. Everything ran into millions from the Chinese 'wan' character to denote 10,000.

Arahabaki nudged him and gestured to the ghost customer who was pulling wads of cash from a backpack.

"Damn, they even copied EU dollars? That's whacked." Arahabaki muttered as he signalled for Alex to leave the shop.

"Done looking?" She asked as her eyes glowed redder.

Even Arahabaki shrunk back a little. Her demeanour made them both nod to her like obedient little boys to their mother. Like baby ducklings, they followed her, the mother duck, down the street towards a junction, not daring to look at the other shops.

Kanghui took a turn into a smaller street, less crowded as Arahabaki kept swinging around as though hesitant to leave the shopping street in Ming city behind.

The new area resembled like a wealthy suburban residential area. It tempted Alex to call it the Toorak of Melbourne, if not for the mix of Chinese and Western architecture.

He noticed a lot of buildings at the start of the street used ancient Chinese architecture. Yellowish brick walls with painted murals of fairies or landscape surrounded the properties and then the gates. Above them, he could spot the second storey of the mansions with their sloping roofs and mythical beast on each end above the walls. Then further down, the Chinese style buildings started alternating between baroque architecture and Victorian era houses.

"These are the private residences of the most powerful and wealthiest ghosts," Kanghui briefly introduced. "The others don't dare to wander here."

"Dafuq, there's even a class hierarchy here?" Arahabaki blurted out.

Kanghui pushed her finger against his temple. "We exist in a hierarchy, if you haven't noticed."

"Not in Yomi-no-Kuni. Same treatment for every ghost, regardless of rank in the human world."

"This isn't Takamagahara, this is Xitian territory," she reminded him.

"First ones are the most powerful and oldest, then it goes down the street." She called out to Alex, which was admiring the first intricately carved wooded large gate with its golden stone lion guardians.

"That's the Ghost Emperor, autonomous ruler of Ming city," she yanked him away as one of the stone lions turned his head.

"Fuck, even an emperor," Arahabaki uttered only for Alex to catch his words.

"FUCK, even primeval beings…," the stone lion replied until it noticed Kanghui and started whimpering, "s-s-sorry Gonggong."

Another first for Alex. The stone lion had addressed Kanghui as Gonggong, who waved her hand at it to shut up.

"They are guards, so they have to address by rank," she explained as the stone lion froze again.

"Is the portal nearby?" Arahabaki asked.

"Not really, but it is the safest place for…" she glanced at Alex, who was still busy admiring the murals on the wall. "Him. This place doesn't have the dark alleyways and is far less distracting. Even though… he paying more attention to the walls…"

Kanghui and Arahabaki tilted their heads to watch Alex, who felt their attention and turned away from the murals to face them.

"I did archaeology so…" Alex trailed off sheepishly and scratched his head.

"For a second, I thought architecture," Arahabaki replied as they strolled forward.

"What is the Takamagahara's side like?"

"Well, like I said, Yomi-no-Kuni is the rave club for all ghosts, together with the accommodations. Our streets are our own kind. From the yōkai up to the primeval beings like the Amatsu-Kami and I. So housing wise, all Japanese style from different eras since everyone likes tradition, not like those… western ones down there," Arahabaki pointed at them, crunching his nose in disdain.

"Like the bathhouse in Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away?"

Arahabaki let out a chuckle. "Oh that. That human anime amused them so much that they built one like the bathhouse for a laugh. A REAL tsuchigumo, similar to your spider friend, manages the operations. Just not that efficient as in the movie."

"Aren't ghosts considered as yōkai?"

"Only by humans. Not us. The ghosts who CHOOSE to remain the human world can never enter the hidden dimension or our storage facilities," he replied. "Not sure about Xitian."

"Same. For Xitian, they enter the reincarnation cycle immediately if they try to enter."

The gates and wall fences looked plainer as they walked along the street for a long time until they started resembling some others of the same style.

"You still consider them powerful? This place looked like a developer went through with similar designs in between parcels of land," Alex blurted out.

Kanghui turned and pointed to the last unique looking Chinese style house with a pagoda rooftop and the willow trees peering over the walls. "That's the end of the most powerful."

Then she turned back and pointed. "The most cashed up in soul stones and hell money."

Arahabaki palmed his face in disbelief. "It's exactly the most human thing to do. The rich like to live near powerful individuals."

Some of the architecture reminded Alex of his maternal grandfather's funeral, where four paper mansions of varying designs with their accompanying servants were burnt as offerings for his maternal grandfather.

Perhaps these shops and houses were the same mass produced paper homes burnt as offerings. He could recognise the similar pillars.

Maybe he could look up his late maternal grandfather in Ming city.

"Hey, do you think I can find my dead relatives here?"

"There are a lot of ghost cities under us, but the Courts of Hell have the records of which individual ghost is usually located. You can try there when you are free."

Who knows with so much that his extended Chinese half of the family burnt for the old man, his maternal grandfather could be a relatively rich ghost?