One by one, the little paper servants were completed and placed into the box of Yin-wood. With each one tucked away, Song Miaozhu felt her sense of security soar. After filling the entire box with them, she finally set aside the tools, content at last. Her eyes turned to the table inside the ghost shop's private activity room, where a thick stack of resumes lay.
"Been a while since I checked, and there are so many new ones?"
She gathered up the resumes. "This time, I should be able to find someone suitable, right?"
It had been some time since she posted the notice recruiting ghost tutors. With generous pay and fair conditions, she thought there would be a flood of qualified applicants and that she'd find the right fit quickly. Yet while many ghosts submitted resumes each day, few actually met her standards.
Most didn't even make it past Xu Jingsi and Mao Jinxia's initial screening.
The ones that did make it into the private room were all handpicked by the two ghost shop clerks, each with decades of expertise in painting, sewing, calligraphy, or bamboo weaving—crafts vital to the Secret Art of Paper Crafting. Every one of them could teach her something substantial.
As Song Miaozhu looked through the pile, she realized each ghost would be considered a master of their craft in the world of the living.
And not just masters of the present day—most had been renowned in ancient times.
Among the four disciplines she needed, they each had their strengths. Even if many ghosts specialized in the same craft, their focus and styles were different.
Painting: Twenty-odd candidates specialized in everything from meticulous figure paintings to freehand landscapes, still lifes, sketches, oil paintings—even comics.
Sewing: Experts in Tang, Song, Qing, or Republic-era clothing, modern fashion, burial garments, or doll costumes.
Calligraphy: Scripts like seal, clerical, running, regular, or cursive—each with sub-styles like Yan, Liu, or "Slender Gold."
Bamboo Weaving: Some focused on lanterns, others on baskets or decorative pieces.
She started by filtering out the ghosts with severe betrayals or deceit in their past lives. Their questionable character was a risk.
After all, hiring a ghost tutor was essentially revealing that she was still alive.
Ghosts could no longer learn new skills after death. So if she was attending lessons, and her shop carried items from the world of the living, it was obvious she was not one of them. It was one thing for a tutor to know a living person was among the students. But if it got out that the owner of Anshou Hall was alive, it would be a problem.
If one of these ghosts had taught her and leaked that detail to a spirit agent from the Nether Investigation Bureau, even with her Heavenly-Level Ghost Shopkeeper permit, it wouldn't take much for them to put the pieces together.
A living person, freely operating in the underworld and managing a shop? They'd definitely suspect ties to the underworld court. And with how curious the Bureau was about the underworld, it was unlikely they'd let her go unscathed. So beyond a binding contract, she needed tutors who were at least trustworthy. Luckily, from the resumes on hand, there was no shortage of talent.
After filtering out ghosts who might leak her secret or had ties to government bodies in life, she further narrowed down those who specialized in the same craft. She kept only the most skilled among each group.
In the end, she retained all the resumes related to painting and sewing—eighteen ghost tutors in total.
Those two arts were the most essential to paper crafting. The more tutors she hired, the more varied techniques she could learn.
For calligraphy, she kept just one tutor—an expert in regular script who also had experience with other styles. While useful in paper crafting, it wasn't essential. Most of the time, she'd only need to write the target's name onto cursed paper dolls.
A little training in soft brush calligraphy would be enough.
As for bamboo weaving, she only kept one tutor. Not because she wanted just one, but because this particular ghost was the most versatile. He had been a bamboo ornament artisan in life, skilled in weaving all kinds of household objects from bamboo strips.
What she wanted to learn was how to make structural frames for paper figures. For that, he was more than enough.
Any more would've been a waste.
In total, she selected twenty ghost instructors. That number didn't seem excessive to her. They would be paid per lesson anyway, and with twenty tutors to rotate through, she could call on whoever she needed at the time.
This time, there was no need to conduct interviews in-store.
After finalizing the list, Song Miaozhu logged into the Underworld Network via the GhostLink app and sent each candidate an offer, along with two contracts:
A confidentiality agreement, strictly prohibiting disclosure of anything learned or observed during lessons. Violation meant forfeiting all remaining ghost lifespan and hell coins—a death sentence for ghosts.
An employment contract, offering:
—100 hell coins per class (two-hour sessions)
—A 3,000-coin monthly retainer (even if no classes were held)
—Seasonal bonuses
—A free fourth-tier paper outfit every decade, customizable from her designs
According to what she'd heard, this package far exceeded what most technical ghosts received in other shops. It was likely the best offer in all the underworld.
Becoming her ghost instructors basically meant a life free of worries. She made sure to tell them there would be twenty instructors in total. Which meant each one wouldn't be called often—and their hourly rate would be especially high.
As expected, within just thirty minutes, all twenty ghost tutors accepted the offer. They signed both the confidentiality and employment contracts without hesitation.
Once the schedule was arranged, Song Miaozhu began having them come to the private room to teach.