Chapter 15: Bullets and Roses

While Qiao Qiao was still racking his brain over how to bring the recoilless rocket launcher home, the shop owner offered a helping hand. That evening, the owner drove both Qiao Qiao and the rocket launcher back to his house. In Qiao Qiao’s familiar parlance, this was free shipping. The owner certainly knew how to do business.

Once home, Qiao Qiao didn’t rush to inspect his newly acquired equipment. He first took a shower, cooked dinner, and completed his study tasks for the day. Only after everything was done did he head to the small room on the first floor.

He pulled up a chair and sat at the desk. In the corner stood a wooden crate filled with bullets. Qiao Qiao deftly grabbed a handful—exactly twenty rounds, no need to count. Lining the bullets up on the table, he began his daily routine: infusing each bullet with spiritual energy.

Qiao Qiao typically used three kinds of bullets: standard bullets infused with spiritual energy, specially modified explosive rounds, and rubber bullets. His revolver had been altered to use all three types seamlessly. In other words, if he loaded a mix of the three and spun the cylinder, even he wouldn’t know what would fire next—a thrilling game of Russian roulette.

The process for making the explosive rounds was the most complex; at most, he could craft six in an hour. Rubber bullets could simply be bought and reused. As for the standard bullets, Qiao Qiao already had a sizable stockpile, but, believing that more is always better, he still made a habit of crafting a few each day for practice.

He picked up a bullet and slowly injected it with spiritual energy, letting it permeate every part of the round, molding it into the shape of his own spiritual force. For each bullet, Qiao Qiao would infuse three standard units of spiritual energy.

In the beginning, thinking he had plenty of spiritual energy and none to waste, Qiao Qiao had tried pouring more into the bullets. At the time, he possessed several thousand units, so he decided to inject a thousand into a single bullet. Unexpectedly, halfway through, the process stalled—the bullet blossomed.

This was no mere metaphor. The metal tip of a 9x19mm bullet made in China suddenly sprouted a tiny shoot, which rapidly grew into a delicate flower. Qiao Qiao was dumbfounded. Experimenting with bullets from other countries, he discovered that different origins yielded different flowers: Chinese bullets produced orchids, with hues varying by manufacturer; Japanese bullets became cherry blossoms; American ones turned into flamboyant red roses; German rounds yielded blue cornflowers; and Russian bullets, radiant sunflowers.

Qiao Qiao pondered whether these results arose from his preconceived notions about the nations. To test this, he grabbed several bullets from various origins at random, picked one without checking, imagined it was Chinese, and infused it with energy—out bloomed an orchid. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a Russian model. This confirmed his hypothesis, much to his satisfaction.

Of course, a few days later, the shop owner called to apologize, saying the “Russian” bullets he’d sold Qiao Qiao were actually Chinese knockoffs. After that, Qiao Qiao gave up trying to study which bullet would produce what flower.

But bullets were meant for exorcising spirits, not for blooming. Qiao Qiao surmised that the blooming was caused by too much spiritual energy. There were ancient stories of sages reviving dead wood with a single touch, implying that spiritual energy could be a form of life force. Infusing lifeless objects with too much of it could well animate them. Qiao Qiao dared not compare himself to a sage, but in hindsight, a thousand units was certainly excessive.

He gradually reduced the amount until, at three standard units, the bullets functioned as intended. Though the energy would slowly dissipate over time, after more than half a year, the earliest bullets he’d made had lost less than one percent of their potency. He believed that was acceptable.

In the process, Qiao Qiao wasted perhaps a dozen bullets. Now, all the “flowering” bullets were planted in his garden, where, regardless of the season or weather, they bloomed with dignified elegance. Even the neighbor’s housewives came to ask for his secret to such cultivation.

These were all side stories. After completing the energy infusion for twenty bullets and storing them in a box labeled “Finished,” Qiao Qiao spent another hour crafting explosive rounds to replace those he’d used, before turning to the main task of the night: the study of vengeful spirits.

It was well known that vengeful spirits were the souls of those who died harboring resentment. The stronger the resentment in life, the more powerful the spirit in death. Qiao Qiao had no way to study the mathematical relationship between the strength of a person’s resentment and the power of the resulting spirit—it was both difficult and inhumane. Nor could he find a way to prevent vengeful spirits from appearing altogether. After all, he couldn’t ensure that every person in the world would die without regrets.

So Qiao Qiao focused on how to eliminate vengeful spirits with the simplest method. As previously mentioned, scientific analysis is the process of moving from qualitative to quantitative understanding. Qiao Qiao defined a “standard unit” of spiritual energy as the amount required to completely purify the weakest vengeful spirit. Yet spirits varied in strength, and there was no official grading system. The standard method of exorcism was to resolve the spirit’s grievances first, thereby weakening it. Qiao Qiao had watched his boss demonstrate this—afterward, the spirit was usually weak enough that a single unit of spiritual energy could finish the job. Thus, the Exorcists’ Association in Japan did not bother to rank spirits by strength. No one in practice would scan a spirit and declare, “Ha, a spirit with only a power level of five!” or “A thousand points of resentment, terrifying!” Such things simply didn’t happen.

Qiao Qiao himself didn’t know how to resolve grievances. He could only try to destroy spirits by pouring in more spiritual energy: if a hundred units weren’t enough, he’d use two hundred, and so on, until it worked.

As for malevolent spirits, the one at the bakery was Qiao Qiao’s first time seeing a confirmed case in person, and he knew even less about them. He had only been an exorcist for half a year, a novice by any standard, and never underestimated any supernatural phenomenon, no matter how easy his previous jobs had been. Even if he’d survived by luck this time, what about next time, when he might face something even stronger?

There’s a saying in China: “If you cannot sweep your own house, how can you sweep the world?” If he couldn’t fully understand vengeful spirits, how could he claim to handle greater anomalies?

Moreover, Qiao Qiao believed that ordinary people, unable to see or communicate with spirits, would have no means of resolving their grievances. In fact, like Mr. Suzumura from the bakery, merely existing could attract malevolent spirits. Since it was impossible to weaken the spirits, the only way was to increase the amount of spiritual energy used to destroy them.

But before that, he needed a way to categorize spirits by strength. After half a year of research, he had managed to compile a rudimentary, quantitative chart: the lowest-level spirits required one to three units to purify, intermediate spirits four to seven, and advanced spirits eight to ten units. So far, he had not encountered any spirit that could not be completely purified with ten units. Of course, that didn’t mean such spirits didn’t exist—the malevolent spirit at the bakery was likely above this threshold.

Qiao Qiao figured this was because most of his assignments came from the Exorcists’ Association, and he dealt mainly with tame, weak spirits—ones that might even fade with time if left alone. The truly dangerous spirits, those capable of causing casualties, he had never encountered. Thus, the ceiling of his experience defined the ceiling of his understanding.

Thinking of this, Qiao Qiao couldn’t help but admire the exorcists working at the front lines. The anomalies they faced must require thousands of units to destroy.

Qiao Qiao’s statistics on spirit strength were mainly for the sake of ordinary people. That was his current research focus: if, by some means, ordinary people could see spirits and were armed with weapons capable of exorcism, they would be able to protect themselves. Be it bullets, firearms, or rocket launchers—ordinary folks could use these weapons. If these could be modified into reliable tools for exorcism, perhaps fewer people in the world would be tormented by spirits.

Compared to the great vow of a bodhisattva to empty the hells, Qiao Qiao’s efforts were but a humble contribution.