Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The new captain looked equally worried. “Yeah. If you’re really not feeling well, you should go back and rest today. Leave the match to us.”

“I’m fine. I probably just didn’t sleep well last night and couldn’t react in time. We’ve been preparing for this match for so long. We can’t put the substitutes in just because of me. They’re only sophomores. How could they possibly beat those old hands on the other team?”

Zhou Benxin waved them off. After the close call just now, he seemed able to focus again.

Their rideshare arrived just then. Seeing how insistent Zhou Benxin was, the new captain let him get into the car with them.

To show how seriously they took the friendly match, the host school’s Debate Team had even borrowed a small auditorium from the Youth League Committee for the event.

Two crystal chandeliers hung inside the auditorium, directly above the seats for the affirmative and negative teams.

The match had only just begun, and the affirmative’s first speaker was barely halfway through her opening statement when Yun Jianyue shot to her feet. She yanked Zhou Benxin, who was seated beside her, out of the way and shouted to her teammates, “Move!”

They had no idea what was happening, but Senior Yun’s commanding presence had not diminished in the slightest. The new captain and the other junior instinctively jumped up and scrambled aside.

“Crash!”

The instant everyone got clear, the crystal chandelier above them came plummeting down. It landed squarely where Zhou Benxin had been sitting, smashing his chair to pieces.

The entire auditorium fell deathly silent.

Having narrowly escaped disaster, the new captain and the other student clung to each other and burst into tears. The other three students from University A rushed over as well, anxiously checking whether any of their teammates had been hurt.

The students from the host school were completely dumbfounded. None of them could have imagined something like this would happen!

There was no way the match could continue. The new captain fought to keep her emotions under control as she arranged to reschedule the friendly match, and the seven of them left.

Once they were outside the host school, Zhou Benxin turned to his teammates, his face deathly pale. “You guys go on ahead. I need to talk to Senior Yun.”

His teammates had also been badly shaken. All they wanted now was to go home and rest, so they hailed a car and left.

As soon as everyone was gone, Zhou Benxin suddenly threw his arms around Yun Jianyue. His emotions collapsed completely, and the burly man sobbed pitifully. “Senior, save me! I don’t want to die. I really don’t want to die!”

“Stop crying. What exactly is going on?” Yun Jianyue offered a few perfunctory words of comfort before prying him off her.

Wiping away his tears, Zhou Benxin said, “During the National Day holiday, my roommate and I went to Chongguang Mountain. But I don’t know why. Ever since I came back, I’ve had unbelievably bad luck.”

“At first, I kept finding cockroaches in my food. Then razor blades started appearing in my shoes out of nowhere, and I’ve been having nightmares every night. After that came everything that happened today.”

A car that had almost killed him. A crystal chandelier that had suddenly fallen from the ceiling.

All of it had started after his trip to Chongguang Mountain!

Yun Jianyue remembered what Zhou Ruyan had told Zhou Benxin: he was not to go to Chongguang Mountain.

“Does your sister know something about this?” Yun Jianyue asked.

Zhou Benxin nodded, then shook his head. “I don’t know, but I don’t dare tell her I went to Chongguang Mountain.”

Knowing his sister, if these bizarre incidents did not kill him first, she would beat him to death with her own hands.

“If you don’t dare, I’ll tell her.” Yun Jianyue called Zhou Ruyan immediately, but no one answered. She had no choice but to send Zhou Ruyan a message briefly explaining Zhou Benxin’s situation and asking her to call back once she saw it.

Yun Jianyue accompanied Zhou Benxin back to campus and had him set her as his emergency contact. If anything happened, he was to contact her immediately.
At seven that evening, just after dinner, Yun Jianyue received a call from Cai Zeyu.

“Come to the Paranormal Bureau right now. Something’s happened. It’s urgent.”

“I’m still in school. My contract says I don’t have to take assignments while classes are in session.” Yun Jianyue had just opened her game and was looking forward to playing a ranked match.

Through gritted teeth, Cai Zeyu said, “It’s about your origins.”

Yun Jianyue immediately put her phone away. “Wait for me. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Forty minutes later, at the Paranormal Bureau.

Cai Zeyu couldn’t even be bothered to argue with Yun Jianyue over why she was ten minutes late.

“This is Fang Lin’an. You’ve met before. Let him explain what’s going on.” Cai Zeyu pulled Fang Lin’an over.

The moment Yun Jianyue saw the state Fang Lin’an was in, she let out an impressed whistle.

She honestly couldn’t make sense of what kind of look he was going for.

The last time she’d seen Fang Lin’an, he had reeked of alcohol, but at least he’d looked halfway respectable.

Today, however, he had scraggly facial hair, greasy hair, and clothes that looked like they hadn’t been changed in ages. He had all the makings of a first-rate street beggar.

After leaving the Paranormal Bureau last time, Fang Lin’an had spent the past two months at the Lingxi Sect, combing through nearly every book in its archive.

At long last, his hard work had paid off. He’d found a book describing a case remarkably similar to Yun Jianyue’s.

“You’re a Goddess Descendant. Your missing mother may have been a Goddess Descendant as well,” Fang Lin’an explained succinctly.

Lu Changxue poked her head out of the jade pendant, looking utterly incredulous. “So, Darling, you’re actually a little Goddess? Can you do magic? Pew, pew!”

Expressionless, Yun Jianyue reached out and shoved the ghost back into the jade pendant.

The term Goddess Descendant referred to someone who possessed the Divine Bloodline. Since this bloodline passed only through women and never through men, every woman who possessed it was known as a Goddess.

Legend had it that tens of millions of years ago, while the gods were living in seclusion on Shang Kunlun, one of them had a child with a human.

That god never learned of the child’s existence, and their descendants continued living among humans, generation after generation.

The Goddesses possessed a portion of the gods’ power. As the bloodline grew increasingly diluted over the generations, the power possessed by modern-day Goddesses had become extremely faint.

This also neatly explained why Lu Changxue, after receiving a transfusion of Yun Jianyue’s blood, had inexplicably turned into a vengeful ghost and even regained her sanity because of Yun Jianyue.

It was all due to the Divine Bloodline.

“In that case, there was probably more to your mother’s disappearance than we realized,” Cai Zeyu said.

Yun Jianyue’s mother had also been a Goddess, and Goddesses had always been coveted by demons, monsters, ghosts, and evil spirits. Devouring a Goddess would grant them supreme power.

Perhaps Yun Jianyue’s mother had known she was a Goddess and had been forced to fake her death and disappear for some reason.

Or perhaps she really was dead.

Whatever the truth, now that her identity as a Goddess had come to light, the entire case had become shrouded in mystery.

Yun Jianyue asked, “Are you going to keep investigating my mother?”

Cai Zeyu replied, “Now that we know the two of you might be Goddesses, we have no choice but to continue, even if we’d rather not.”

“All right. Got it,” Yun Jianyue said.

“How can you be so calm? Come on, you’re a Goddess!” Fang Lin’an was losing his mind. Was this how a normal person was supposed to react after suddenly discovering she was a Goddess?

Yun Jianyue clapped theatrically and twirled in place. “Wow! I’m a Goddess! I’m so happy and excited!”