Night Hacker

Early in the morning, the clear sound of reading aloud echoed from the Mingxing Street Wenhe Pavilion.

While the students attended morning classes in the study hall, Gu He, Lorna, Pandora, and Lu Jiu sat in the main hall listening to Master Wei answer their questions. Gu He wanted to know what a moral educator thought about the moral educator class belonging to the Ghost Mansion.

"Based on oracle bone inscriptions, in the earliest days of Dongtu civilization, gods were gods and ghosts were ghosts. The two were never conflated," Master Wei explained.

"The character for 'god' derives from shen. Shen represents the lightning of nature—a natural force.

"The character for 'ghost' is composed of 'person' and 'field.' Here, 'field' is a variant character meaning 'big head.' A person with a big head represents the state of a human after death—this is a ghost.

"Later on, adding the shi radical—meaning 'altar'—to shen created the modern character for 'god'. Through rituals, humans could invite these natural forces to possess them, and thus gods appeared. Adding the same radical to 'ghost' meant inviting spirits to manifest, allowing the living to converse with the dead, to speak with their ancestors."

Gu He listened while sipping his morning portion of goji berry water.

It was already the fourth morning since the three of them had arrived on Dongtu Street.

Over the past few days, he had periodically listened to Master Wei's lectures and found them quite beneficial. Whoever Old Fan really was, he was certainly not a good teacher, whereas Master Wei truly cleared up many of his questions regarding the transcendent realm.