It took two days for the construction material to arrive and for them to arrive completely and the farm renovations started instantly with the immense system of pipes for watering being completely replaced and rebuilt. This even stemmed to the main house.

For the underground, they brought special people and despite needing large machines, they were able to move that stuff in space storage spiritual equipment which constantly left Mark drooling because it was so mystical.

For Mark himself, he was already back from using what remained of his 20k at the library and upgraded all his knowledge from phantom to wisp level and expanded that. It seems there are tiers to knowledge.

Changing knowledge based on strength was one price which was meant to adapt but there were several tiers of knowledge pertaining to different things. He got tier 1 which expanded upon his current things and improved efficiency over what he had and added some new talisman.

While the construction began, he learned and trained with the new knowledge making new, stronger, talisman and charms.

Charms are different from single use talismans, they are more resilient items which can store spiritual power long term for quick usage. This was vital to fighting vengeful spirits because you couldn’t just stop anywhere to cast some kind of chant.

“Wow, the chants are all so much easier and quicker not to mention faster.” He said as he finished reading the ghost section and moved on to the human section. Soon he got to the new section and smiled because it now included something that didn’t exist before. Spiritual power emission. If a human using qi were to be compared, it would be like them achieving qi condensing where they produce their vital force and their attacks could now gain range and detach.

Beyond that are enchantments which concentrate spiritual power to a specific focus such as transferring power to produce physical force or increase speed. All the effects were singular and focused because most are for exorcists so they had to take into consideration gravity as well.

The most exciting was using the power on his axe.

He took out the axe but he had learned a while ago that he could control the form including returning the shape to the crappy initial form but even then it wasn’t as rough.

He brought it out in that form as he gave a short chant and the beads on his neck shined before the jade head of the axe began to radiate a strong spiritual power and he looked at it.

Surprisingly the axe head seemed to leave the impression like there were afterimages or a light following it.

He moved it around before giving a light shake and almost a third of that force expanded and shot a meter away from it.

“Woah…” he said, surprised by how sensitive it was but it was clearly scattered.

He decided to go to the forest and tested out this weak form with a casual swing and it reached the middle of a tree with just that energy wave.

When he pushed it to take on its clean but small form the scattered force concentrated and outright split through the tree making him have to jump out of the way of the falling tree.

He looked at the little axe blinking in surprise. “Damn… I hadn’t thought about how strong I had gotten but it is really inhuman already. Is it the same for cultivators and other such people?” he muttered.

He looked around and finally pulled out the current full power and swung it and the wave was huge, cleaving clear through a tree almost 4 meters in front of him and stopping after hitting the one behind it. It was so clear that the tree didn’t fall but it was cut in place.

“Wow, it’s a shame that the second barrier, although weaker, is still pushing against my spiritual power. Maybe when I get a little stronger or become a poltergeist I can finally fully power this up.” he said happily and put it away before taking out a talisman and smiled as he lifted it up and charged it.

It began to burn and he let it go but held his hand up holding that flame up before it scattered and he looked through the opened canopy and noticed a very thin gathering of clouds.

“Hahaha! I didn’t believe it but it really worked! Rain talisman for calling rain. If I combine it with the charm of blessing and eight talismans, I might actually be able to properly call down my own storm. I wonder why they don’t use this in arid regions.” he said with a smile.

He took out a different talisman that was quite well known due to anime. “Explosion talisman.” He said with a smile as he infused it and once it had enough the top began to sizzle like a fuse and he tossed it into the lake and jumped back only for a massive explosion to come out and the water splash wide.

“Holy shit!” he said as he looked and looked at the only other talisman he had with raised brows. “They should keep these away from normal people. If a pyromaniac gets his hand on it then I could get really bad.” He said and tried another which freezes and it made a big block of ice after being dropped into the water.

One thing to mention is that most of these are using the human combat method. In other words, spiritual power used to affect material objects instead of spiritual ones. They didn’t work with the others.

Finally he reached those that could affect spirits.

“Let’s see… this one is the dark push and will immediately push and seal the dark force in the specter but not seal their movement. It seals so it pulls inside…” he muttered and frowned, not exactly liking that because it just makes combining the souls harder. “Hmm… There is the barrier which is upgraded from the house seal. They are strong enough to cover an entire wall so that means less material costs.” he muttered and smiled this time, “This one, hehe, if i worked for law enforcement this would be great.” He said

The next talisman he took out was a stun talisman. It had the same effect as a taser, to stun a human but it didn’t release electricity, instead it had an effect more like the seal talisman but it was persistent on the mortal body making it difficult for humans to move on their own.

Beyond that there were different barriers that required more complex chants along with several talismans.

Lastly, among the new knowledge was direct knowledge of properly using spiritual power alongside a spiritual weapon to concentrate the power.

He didn’t try anything after testing these few things as he returned back to the mansion and found the machines working hard on the fields and people were putting pipes. Another group was in the middle of construction of the pump house and the pump was already replaced and they were now stretching underwater pimps to be able to draw water even in the dry seasons. Of course there was a net to keep things like fish out from entering.

He walked to the greenhouse which had its piping repaired but no water was running yet but it didn’t matter.

He looked at the books over the seeds and took them and sat down and started to read them.

“Midnight ghost flower, a symbiotic flower with spirits that grow as a bush and absorb spiritual power during development but once they flower, each flower releases a very rich spiritual power which is a tonic for the spirit that helped raise it. Although not a very hard plant to raise, it is difficult for weak phantoms without at least a prayer rug to sustain. 1 phantom with moderate development can successfully produce roughly 5 low quality flowers. A Wisp can produce 20 low quality flowers and 3 mid quality flowers. Low quality are ghostly pale white, mid quality form stamen in the middle and the tips glow a soft golden light and high quality produces a vibrant moon white. Flowers only sprout for a single night and release spiritual power during that night before the entire flower falls.

The process of growing requires that the flower be sprouted by at least a wisp on the night of the full moon. Once sprouted, a normal phantom can raise it. A single plant can acominate roughly 5 phantoms feeding it and the result is similar to a single wisp, 20 flowers.

Spiritual power must be infused only at midnight when there is moonlight. The spiritual power activates a special ability that allows the plant to absorb moonlight and this is most vital during the fuller moon phases. Missing the full moons will instantly cause the plant to release most of the spiritual power it has been feeding on and you must wait until the new moon to start feeding it again.”

“Well it’s a lot more needy than i expected.” He muttered but didn’t say much before taking up the spirit tea.

“Spirit tea is a normal looking tea plant, they absorb a certain amount of spiritual power during its growth making it more spiritual. Once it grows enough it begins to emit spiritual power once it becomes independent of the spirit and absorbs ambient spiritual energies.

Phantoms with altar or prayer rugs are able to easily care for 3 trees on their own if they are not caring for any other plant. The plant does not have extensive requirements except that it requires spiritual power to be infused at dawn and dusk when the sun is rising and setting. With a steady supply of spiritual power, they mature after roughly 6 months, 5 times faster compared to natural tea trees.” the book went on to talk about the common tea tree requirements showing the sprouts like moist environments but the grown ones prefer moderate moisture and are strong against the dry weather.

He looked at the bag and took out a hand full at the mouth of the bag.

“There has got to be a couple thousand seeds in this bag.” He muttered and looked at the one with the flower one and looked at it and found roughly 10 seeds showing just how rare one was over the other.

He looked at the flower’s booklet and checked how much a wisp can sustain.

“One wisp can sustain 10 sprouts.” he finally found near the end and he chuckled at how calculated it was.

“Alright, these will be for me while the tea will require a lot of help.” he muttered.

Finishing up he stored it all back and walked out and looked around and eventually found the person guiding the work and when he noticed Mark approaching he smiled.

“Work is going at good speed, the entire pipe system and fixing the fields back as they were should be done in two days. The piping in the building is a little trickier but it is coming along just fine alongside extensive refurbishment.” He said.

“The house would take how long to refurbish and add the new furniture and all the altars I purchased?” He asked.

“Probably by the end of next week. It is a lot more complex compared to the simple piping we are doing here.” He said.

“That’s good. I wonder, as a pretty successful ghost who is walking dead, how many spirit tea trees do you think fit in the open property?” Mark asked.

“Oh, is that what you want to know? Let’s see.” he said looking around. “If we take into consideration their peak size after two years, it is safe to plant roughly 300 sprouts with about 5 meters of distance from one another. Although they mature after 6 months they continue to grow for roughly 2 years where it slows down for real. If you are calculating that in terms of phantoms to work, that is 100 phantoms.” He said.

“So it roughly fits just right for the mansion’s two per room policy I did.” Mark said.

The man nodded and agreed, Mark had put two altars in every room and these would naturally be the rooms for the phantoms to train and rest. His own room was naturally only for himself, though he didn’t know if he would continue using that.

“Alright, thank you for the help, I’m pretty new to the whole farming thing.” he said.

“No problem, don’t forget to purchase proper fertilizer before you start planting, that is about as important as the workers.” He said as Mark walked away and Mark forced a smile and naturally knew that.

He walked inside and found the place half dismantled while all the old furniture was already out front. Flooring and even walls that were old were ripped out.

The minor repairs done to it initially had repaired the most serious damage including structural but what Mark purchased was a full repair from top to bottom including the electricity in case there was really shitty wiring from it being so old.

The result was naturally that most of the walls and floors were removed and even the ceiling and old lights and power lamps now lit the interior where sunlight didn’t reach.

He went to the only thing intact and untouched, the elevator and he had already told Agatha about it so she didn’t go down because it could endanger her own life.

He went down and below he found a much stranger sight.

Of course machines were excavating while there were many support beams but alongside it were men and woman shooting ghostly flames from their hands while there were some watching and after it reached a certain point they would throw an item and it would stick to the ground or wall and absorb a lot of the fire and would form some kind of markings that pushed the walls and floor making blocks and made several paths from the center and at the center they were building an actual shrine in the same format.

“Wow, this is like straight out of a Chinese novel.” He muttered and was careful to not walk in the way of people working until someone who was free walked over.

“Yes… did you need something?” she asked.

“Oh, hello. I’m the owner of the building so I was just looking at the progress and admiring how mystical it is.” He said, looking around in awe.

She looked surprised and smiled.

“I still don’t get how there are so many mystical and powerful spirits but there is such a hard time maintaining dark spirits in low quantity.” He said.

She almost coughed before she could talk when she heard this.

“Ah… dark force is corrosive to spirits so we are honestly on the back foot.” she replied.

He looked and thought it was strange, even still. I mean if he was found shortly after awakening and brought for proper training even if by force they could easily handle things with much greater efficiency. Hell, karma directly combated sin which was the direct factor in the production of dark force. There wasn’t much problem as long as they trained sufficiently with these numerous specters even if it was slow it would instantly impact the incoming danger that came with so many dark creatures.

“Do you think spirits aren’t affected by it?” the woman asked.

“I never said that but it isn’t like the dark force that specters make is dense enough for a phantom. I mean… I know I train with the exorcist method but a ghost that puts enough effort to make talismans and get spiritual mediums could work.” He said.

“It only works because you’ve got a body.” She said and saw that there was nothing she could say.

Mark sighed as well, “So… how does that even work?” He asked as he looked at the flames.

“Those are ghost flames, humans have similar things called human flames. It is basically a spiritual flame created with spiritual power, for ghosts naturally. The humans who are able to do it tend to be qi users though. Those who train things like virtue, an application of spiritual power fused with karma, tend to be unable to do much of it.” She explained.

“So this is how spiritual tools are forged?” he asked.

“It was at one point, later on humans began to make simple forging tools and it reached our hands and we constantly improved it at speeds they cannot follow.” She said pridefully.

Mark frowned when he heard that because it felt too prideful of a statement. He hid the frown to not insult her with the look but he was getting a feeling that soul society had quite a few ego problems caused by the presence of their leadership. It didn’t make sense why these beings didn’t clean up the spiritual side of society if they were so powerful.

“Hey, I’ve heard that certain ghosts make… realms?” he said, confused.

“Ah ghost domains. They are amazing locations when sitting on ley line veins like this one but the power of a single ghost catalyzed all that power into an isolated dimension that they control.” She said excited.

“Is it difficult?” He asked.

“For most ghosts, usually they are unique ghosts, 4 out of 10 tend to be exorcists, 3 out of 10 are extremely powerful souls and the last three are phantoms that have reached at least earth bound spirit and are very well trained instead of just aged into that. For exorcists, I’ve heard some talented ghosts were able to form their domain at walking corpses. The space is small but the interior is still warped and is a perfect place for phantoms and wisps even at that point. It helps that these places become their own natural place with some really unique one forming vegetation.” she said.

“Naturally formed?” He asked surprised.

“Yep, actually ghost items can be formed naturally as long as it is in the presence of specters or phantoms sufficiently. Humans tend to call them yin artifacts because they are made from ghosts who, to their mediocre understanding, are formed of yin energy only.” She said. “Natural formed ghost items tend to have very varied effects but they make the best base material because a skilled forger can take that effect and forge it with other material and make a new, better weapon or tool that could better hone that power.” she said.

“Is that one reason people hunt vengeful spirits?” He asked.

“People? As in humans? For sure but you will only find exorcists hunting vengeful spirits among the spiritual population. Almost no one can actively hunt.” She said.

“Alright.” Mark said and took some time to look around before leaving. The woman's words on the temperament of ghosts made him irritated like it was the job of exorcists only to fight. If humans could pick up a gun to kill someone evil why can’t they pick up a weapon. Even he has had to do it the hard way of destroying souls directly.

He headed to one of the rooms that were already complete, at his request to speed it up so he could work in slightly more silence and took out his high quality calligraphy set and arranged the table before taking out a large pack of post its and with a smile he connected two of them, one at the bottom and gathered his spiritual power at the connection and gave a blow and smacked it.

When he saw the paper was one sheet and he shook his head, “They really make the strangest things but it is so convenient.” He muttered and began to make the new wisp level tier 1 talisman and slowly lined them in new packs.

He spent the entire day and night working as did the ghost workers who knew no fatigue. Of course, those down below did because they were using spiritual power but they also were standing on a ley line vein so they just had to take a rest to regain their energy and get back to work.

He worked through the night and made full packets of most of his known talisman both as training for the new design but also to test his hand eye coordination since he upgraded to wisp. A lot had improved but it wasn’t as explosive as he assumed but it was still a lot.

When he was done he packed the talismen into his bags and cleaned his kit up before storing it safely away and picking up his things he did a check of the progress and smiled when he saw the outside was almost done and the pump house was already complete while they were just fixing up the fields now.

The mansion itself was still in progress and would still take several days so he just got in his car and headed out to clear out more specters.

He looked at the bounty after expanding the search starting in from his home and smiled when he saw a few cleared small towns that he had cleared out. The nearest city was his target. He had been hard at work when he finally broke through and now he needed to continue.

He looked around and picked a route through the jobs but he didn’t try any vengeful spirits. As ready as he was, he didn’t plan to work on any of these without at least clearing out the specters first. The city was Elizabethtown and was a huge nexus of ghosts and fragments in the air.

It was also a lot more irritating being in this city compared to small towns. After driving a while he arrived at the first house and looked around in the early morning and looked at his own hand. “Interesting, the irritation is far less compared to before. Did my awakening enhance my resistance to mortal negativity?” he muttered and took out his bag and with his book in his hand he took out his barrier seals and the first he slapped right on the front and walked around also checking the place out.

When the four were placed on all four walls they activated fully sealing the house and he walked to the door and found, as usual, it was locked.

He looked around and casually slipped his arm through the door in his ghostly form and unlocked it from the inside and walked in.

He checked the lights but as usual these abandoned houses were completely without light or water.

The light mist of dark force in the air dulled the light coming from the windows but he walked through each room widening the gaps in the blinds to let a little more morning light in but his eyes could easily see through this darkness.

“Hello!” he said, channeling the ghost voice technique to make his voice travel through solid matter so that it is unimpeded and wakes up the specter.

In his hand was a charged sealing talisman and he just walked around the first floor letting light through making it a little more welcoming but found nothing before going up.

When he arrived at one of the rooms he found the ghost.

It was a stung up man hanging by his neck. His tongue was bloated out of his head and he had many cuts over his body and he ‘bled’ out.

This is one of the harsh parts of specters killed of torture. Their souls tend to display the extreme of their torture.

The ghost was clearly awake but waiting like a predator for him to turn but he walked forward and before it could react he jumped up, flying like a ghost, and smacking the seal on his face.

Instantly the rope snapped and he collapsed.

He fell completely solid, even unable to talk but that was perfectly fine because he didn’t need any of that.

He looked around and checked the rest of the top floor before going down to the basement he had found the door to. Surprisingly it had a much denser dark force concentration here and he had to use his spiritual power to enhance his eyes to see in the dark but after doing a round he found nothing.

“Huh? Where is this dark force coming from?” He said and carefully walked around looking at the movement until he noticed a rising flow and with a frown he waved his hand forcing the mist to move and reveal a broken set of orb.

“What is this?” He muttered and took it and instantly felt his spiritual power enter and the thing stopped pulling dark force and pulled his clean spiritual power instead.

He dropped it and frowned before looking around and took it quickly to a table and left it there until he finished and headed upstairs and examined the man’s face.

He forced all his bulging features back into his face and then went into ghost form and flew out and spent roughly twenty minutes to find three fragments within 200 meters of the house and another 10 minutes to find another 500 meters away greatly eroded and brought them all back.

As you would expect the eroded one was the conscious and after using the clarity charm he made all the parts touch it was all sucked in and his twisted form reverted to normal and his eyes cleared. His face became very peaceful as his sin appeared and formed the glowing portal above.

“Thank you.” the specter just said and moved on and with it all that immense dark force in the house all the way from the basement to the top of the house was sucked into the portal completely clearing the house.

The light instantly became stronger and warmth filled the house once more as soon as the portal closed and he smiled as he checked all the closets and even bathrooms in case there were any remaining, strange, items and finally returned to the basement that had been cleared but he sensed a higher ambient spiritual energy and smiled as he headed to the stone but in the process, he noticed that a book had been at the place the stone was and he walked over and took it.

It was a black covered book and he felt spiritual energy radiating from it and he was careful when opening it but it was completely empty and it didn’t have any instructions or anything, it was just an empty book.

“What is this?” he muttered as he closed the book

Shockingly, the book opened to the front page and he saw ink writing start to form, “I am what you would want me to be.” it wrote.

He instantly frowned and he walked over and put it down before looking down at the stone and called the inspector.

He began to check for specifics. In human history, the number of objects that have become spiritual cannot be comprehended so he could likely find a book that responded to questions.

He did find it, the book was labeled as a ‘Book embryo’. These are special magical books that are basically the raw material for many special books Soul society used. Humans also use them to house very special spells, scriptures or knowledge due to its capacity to hide knowledge making others think it is just an empty unused book.

The stone was much more valuable though. It was called a ‘Stone Fragment of Spirituality’. It was a stone which absorbed one source of energy and concentrated and released it. In a spiritual energy scarce area, this was extremely valuable to spiritual beings but even more if they put it in spiritual locations. They become more powerful the more fragments are together. They also have a strange capacity to merge with other similar stones without forging and their capacity increases more than double. It says that with 5 fragments it also gains the capacity to produce energy beyond what it compresses but it isn’t known how that works.

He checked the value of both and his jaw dropped when he saw the fragment was valued at millions while the book could sell for roughly $30,000.

He swallowed hard before taking both after some thought he took the Dark Push talisman, one of few he had and tried to put it on the fragment and surprisingly it sealed the effect of the fragment as he felt the spiritual energy slowly disperse.

He put the stone in his bag but held the book in thought before starting to look into all the kinds of books that the embryo has been turned into but surprisingly the usage has been very mediocre until now. It’s almost exclusively for hiding valuable information. People who use it differently make it a talisman producer. The book can draw the designs itself and with spiritual power the paper will regrow so they have quality paper, if they had reforged it with higher quality paper, and they could quickly prepare weapons but that is only exorcists.

At the end was a huge list of theoretical possibilities and he saw a few surprising names.

“What are they theorizing? Why don’t they put it into practice, there are so many good theories that are still active? ‘Book of Ghost Reaper registry’, the ‘Book of Death’ to know when people will die and even examine the sin and karma of people. Why aren’t these reality.” He said and touched the ghost reaper icon and checked out the theory behind it.

“The theory of the Ghost reaper registry is a highly spiritual book capable of enhancing phantoms to the exorcist class. However such a book would require either an immense source of spiritual energy to sustain and grow to the magnitude or someone powerful enough to support this. It is said all Spirit lords are trying to forge this book. This theory contains only the theoretical forging process and materials required to produce the book.” it read.

Mark realized after reading why it didn’t exist before checking out the book of death.

“An item desired by all spirit lords. It is something they all aim to create so that they can find the dangerous souls and send spiritual ghosts to capture before they fully break up and forcefully pass it on.” he read.

Mark sat down in thought and looked at the book and took it. “What do you know about a Book of Ghost Reaper Registry?” he asked.

It opened up and just produced lots of question marks making him smile and knew it didn’t have any large expanse of knowledge.

He looked at the stone before looking to see the purchase price of this thing. The sale price had started at 1 million spirit dollars and the highest, containing 10 fragments, was over 100 million.

He counted the number of fragments already found and roughly counted 100, counting the merged ones.

It goes without saying that anything bigger was not being sold. It was impossible that this was all there was considering spirit lords have lived for 10,000 years at least.

He looked at the purchased price for the theory of creation and blinked when it said ‘free’ on the purchase button making him frown.

After some thought he picked the ghost registry, it was far more possible compared to the book of death at least.

It uploaded on his phone and as he read the inspector knocked on his window and startled him.

“Oh sorry, I was distracted.” he said as he lowered the window.

“The place is cleaned up.” He said.

“Yeah, there was just one specter and when I sent him on it cleared up the energy on its own.” He explained.

“Right, I’ll do a final clean up then. Are you going to be doing work around here?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Mark said and showed him the day’s route and he nodded. “I’ll pass you my contact and at noon just send me a picture with the cleared contracts and the place you will be eating at and we can meet up so i can pay you.” he said.

“Oh, that is convenient.” He said.

Like that the man drove off and Mark went to the next house that was only two blocks over and got to work once he removed the talismans from the first building and like the first it was just specters but his purifying didn’t even break any souls. It had two ghosts and one resisted but unlike before, it didn’t break apart and directly moved on once it was made conscious.

After finding the book and stone he checked around and while he did, he didn’t find anything in the first two houses but he blinked as he looked at a stone fragment in his hand absorbing his spiritual power and releasing it more densely packed.

“This has got to be a joke.” he said and looked under it and found another book. “One’s a coincidence but twice is a pattern.” He muttered and confirmed that it was another book embryo.

He stored both in his care but the seal kept the stones from merging as the description said. With a slight frown he moved on and only found two stones in that bundle of houses but in the second one, consisting of 10 houses in a 5 block radius, he found another two.

“This is clearly a pattern but why are they using so many valuable objects? Hell, this is 4 stones. Why haven’t I seen this before when I was clear specters out before? Was I too far out? Wait… if these stones were producing dark force as well…!” he said and turned pale. “Are these stones being made or gathered up so that they could produce specters! Is this why there are so many?” He exclaimed and looked at the stones.

After a bit he smiled and sent the message to the investigator about all the locations and went to eat.

He got his pay after waiting a while and then continued.

He checked the town’s bounty map and all his completed requests. He found two bundles he had cleared so he headed back to those places but it was cleared out. Clearly they had taken it but it was unknown if they had noticed a pattern or not.

After eating he headed to the next bundle and after clearing 10 houses he got another two. “There is something… but I’m not going to do anything, they clearly are more knowledgeable than myself.” he said.

He cleared out another 2 bundles resulting in 15 fragments and books. The books alone would make him rich.

He didn’t do much else and he just waited for the investigator who paid him for his afternoon work.

He had all the books in a box and the rocks in a plastic bag in the back.

He didn’t look at all or care. After paying, the total he had gained roughly $5,000 in a day from his work and he headed home.

Outside the city he was much happier after he felt the freedom from the negative energy of the cities and it continued on even in small towns all the way to his home.

He kept the books and things in his car where it would be well hidden as just regular stuff.

He did make sure to keep them out of clear visual range though but he doubted he could hide so many spiritual items if they radiated some kind of energy.

***

In Elizabethtown, sitting in a dark space filled with dark force, vents coming from above ground released dark force and this presence was just resting but opened his eyes as he looked at small vents that were slowly dwindling in dark force and after a while it stopped.

“Those vermin have attacked my pawns. If not for their stupid leaders i would have made this place a graveyard already.” He growled and looked at some rocks on the ground and took several, casually, and walked out to go replace the lost treasures and set up new spectors.