Chapter 42: Shopping

The good news: Rebecca was willing to sell every single item she had brought—as long as the price was right.

The bad news: according to Rebecca, all of these items had been bought from various secondhand stalls. They might have some effect when it came to exorcism—but not much.

“For example, this obsidian cross,” she said, scratching the tip of her nose a little sheepishly. “It was once blessed by a bishop. If used by a member of the clergy together with the Bible, it can barely kill a low-level spirit. But in the hands of an ordinary person, it can at most injure one.”

By “member of the clergy,” Rebecca meant someone who held a position within the Church and had undergone ordination or formal consecration—not just any devout believer. Everly, who had no particular faith to speak of, obviously didn’t qualify.

“And what about these? What are they supposed to be?” Everly asked.

She pushed aside the amulets, crosses, and crystal balls piled on top, digging out the odds and ends buried underneath: a doll missing one eyeball, a heavily worn length of rope, a whip tied to a wooden handle, and a pair of socks riddled with holes…

“Oh, those are also items I painstakingly collected that can affect evil forces,” Rebecca explained. “Take this doll, for example. In occultism, dolls resemble humans in appearance but are hollow inside and lack a true inner self, which makes them prone to attracting wandering spirits. This particular doll was buried alongside a 19th-century serial killer and lay in his tomb with him for over a hundred years. Because it absorbed its master’s wickedness, it has an unusually strong pull on malicious spirits. If you throw it out, evil entities will be unconsciously drawn to it and crawl inside.”

She raised a finger. “Though it only lasts for a very short time—about thirty seconds at most. And you must keep it in a dedicated box when not in use. If you leave it out carelessly, it can attract wandering souls.”

“That sounds pretty good,” Everly said, nodding. “A decent life-saving tool.”

She pointed at the rope. “What about this one?”

“This is a noose once used by a hangman named Albert in Britannia,” Rebecca explained. “He executed over a hundred prisoners with it. Because of that, the rope carries a certain intimidation toward evil spirits. If you throw it accurately around a spirit’s neck, the spirit will experience the sensation of suffocation.”

She paused. “Unfortunately, it can only torment them—it can’t actually cause real damage. So be careful when using it. You don’t want to fail at exorcism and end up enraging them instead.”

Sounds somewhat useful… but also not that useful, Everly muttered inwardly.

“…And this whip?”

Rebecca scratched her cheek. “I bought that from a shepherd. It’s been passed down in his family for three generations. In Christian symbolism, goats represent lust. This whip has lashed countless goats, so I think it’s developed some spiritual properties. If you encounter a l*cherous evil spirit, it might have a special effect.”

“…”

The first two had at least been described with some degree of certainty. This one came with an ‘I think’. It didn’t feel very reliable…

Everly turned hopefully toward the last item—the pair of hole-ridden socks. Based on experience, sometimes the most inexplicable objects turned out to be the most powerful…

Noticing where Everly’s gaze had landed, Rebecca followed it. The next second, the well-dressed, seemingly dignified fortune teller let out a sharp shriek and lunged forward, snatching the socks away.

“Not for sale! Those are my own socks!”

“….”

Well. So those were just ordinary socks.

Even though Rebecca’s sales pitch had been chaotic, and many of the so-called tools looked utterly useless, after some thought Everly still decided to buy the whole pile of junk.

Everly didn’t really have a choice. She genuinely had no connections in this field. Her grandfather, Old John, did know a priest named Henry—the one who had performed an exorcism on her when she was little—but Henry was advanced in age and had long since retired overseas. Unless it was something truly urgent, it wouldn’t be appropriate to disturb him.

“If you come across items like these in the future, you can let me know. I’ll buy them all,” Everly said. “But only the safe, harmless ones. Don’t sell me anything problematic.”

“Understood, understood! Rest assured, little lady—I value my life very much,” Rebecca said, thumping her chest confidently. “And if you run into any evil spirits you can’t deal with, feel free to consult me. I might not be able to eliminate them, but when it comes to gathering intelligence, I’m very confident!”

At her reminder, Everly did think of something else she wanted to ask.

“Do you have any way to improve mental resistance?” she asked before leaving.

“I do—meditation. Though for beginners, the effect might not be that great.”

“How exactly does it work?”

Rebecca thought for a moment and held up five fingers.

Everly was just about to say that five thousand dollars was a bit steep and ask if there was any room for a discount, when Rebecca added, “Five hundred. I’ll teach you.”

“….”

At that price, it almost felt like one of those sketchy online superstition courses.

Of course, Rebecca clearly had real abilities and wasn’t a scammer. So Everly didn’t hesitate to purchase the meditation lessons.

After experiencing it firsthand, she finally understood why it was sold so cheaply—

Meditation was incredibly abstract.

In simple terms, this course taught you how to “look inward at yourself.” You pick a quiet environment, assume a relaxed posture, and close your eyes. You let your thoughts flow but don’t try to empty your mind—after all, no one can completely clear their mind while conscious. What the meditator does is assign their thoughts a “spectator” role. When distracting thoughts arise, instead of trying to suppress them, you observe them from a neutral standpoint, without joy or sorrow, and mentally detach your will from them. The goal is to minimize the influence of these thoughts on your own intentions.

“So,” Rebecca explained, “when your mind becomes contaminated, if you still have the ability to ‘see yourself clearly,’ part of your will can remain conscious, giving you a chance to cleanse the contamination. Among us psychics, we generally believe that recognizing your own abnormalities is the most critical step in resisting mental corruption. Meditation trains and strengthens this ability… but it requires long-term practice, because it’s difficult.”

After saying this, she scratched her head, perhaps feeling a little guilty for teaching something that might seem unreliable, and offered one more piece of advice to her big-spending student:

“One more tip: if you want to survive mental contamination, never forget your own name and identity. Whenever you feel your perception slipping, silently repeat to yourself: ‘You are Everly. You are human. Humans have exactly two eyes, two arms, and two legs…’”

“That sounds a bit like some kind of rule-based horror story,” Everly said.

“Ahahaha, is that so? But it really works. Often, the final stage of contamination is forgetting yourself entirely—your body shape distorts and mutates until you become a complete monster…”

Everly remembered the time she had picked up a kitchen knife and gone on a rampage. At that moment, she had been under the influence of that tooth, forgetting her identity as a human and obsessively trying to become the perfect “tooth-growing medium.” In hindsight, Rebecca’s advice—while it sounded strange at first—made perfect sense.

“Thank you. I’ll remember what you said.”

Everly committed Rebecca’s advice to memory and decided to dedicate an hour every night before bed to meditation starting that day.

After exchanging contact information, she and Old John headed home, satisfied, with a backpack full of assorted superstitious items.

…

The following period turned out to be unexpectedly peaceful.

Old John’s hand had healed, and a new tooth had quietly emerged in Everly’s empty upper jaw. Worried something might go wrong, she even went to the city of Micano to have Rebecca check the new tooth, confirming it was perfectly fine—yes, going back to the clinic? Everly had enough psychological baggage from that place and definitely didn’t want to go anytime soon.

Having gone through so much, Everly realized a pattern: whenever a place experienced a major disaster or case, once it was resolved, that area would remain unusually calm for a long time. Take Lemot Town, for example—after nearly being destroyed by the insect disaster, nothing significant had happened there since.

Perhaps, in the original movies, the town was supposed to be destroyed, which is why things are so calm now?

Everly suspected it was some kind of compensatory mechanism in the world.

Anyway, no news is good news. From age ten to twelve, Everly lived quietly and steadily, without encountering any major incidents.

Now, after six years of effort, Everly had successfully graduated from elementary school and was finally going to junior high!

Since Lemot Town didn’t have the conditions to support a junior high or high school, all educational resources were shared with the city of Micano. No matter how reluctant she felt, after graduating from elementary school, Everly had to say goodbye to Old John and head to the distant city for junior high. And because the distance from the city to the gas station was too far, she would need to live in a dormitory starting junior high.

Old John felt just as reluctant to see her go. Since the school didn’t ban students from using phones, he went to great lengths—spending a lot of money—to have the latest flat-screen touchscreen phone shipped to Everly from Sunken City. To Everly, who had been used to the huge screens of her previous life, it seemed tiny and a bit of a “kid’s toy,” but in a small city like Micano, it was already impressively cool.

Everly had attended a public elementary school, where the learning environment was far too relaxed for her liking. So for junior high, she deliberately chose a fully boarding private school called Fino Academy.

Although she hadn’t yet decided whether she would attend college in the future—after all, in American horror films, 8 out of 10 protagonists who survive to college are bright-eyed, slightly fish-lipped university students—Everly had a bad feeling that leaving her hometown for university would bring a lot of trouble. Still, good academic performance was like a nuclear weapon: it might never be needed, but it was essential to have. That way, she would have more options later on.

According to her research, Fino Academy was a long-established, strictly managed private school. Founded in the 1940s, it had a beautiful campus and a strong cultural atmosphere. The school was located on the western outskirts of Micano City, covering 66 acres—close enough to enjoy city life, yet far from the noise of downtown. While on campus, students were under a closed management system with strict visitor registration. Patrols circled the campus walls 24/7, fully dedicated to student safety.

Sounds very reliable.

Everly figured that encountering serious problems in such a place was unlikely… certainly better than attending a public school where fights and scuffles could break out at any moment.

So, on September 3rd, Everly, carrying her luggage, said goodbye to Old John at the gate and officially became a seventh-grade student at Fino Academy.