Chapter 202
Chapter 202
After taking a slap, Wang Guofu started whimpering again.
But when he saw Song Xiaotian’s hand rising once more, he finally picked up where he’d left off and continued reciting.
He gave us the names and home addresses of the other five people. One of them was still a child, only fourteen years old. I had no idea how he could bring himself to do something so cruel.
After Song Xiaotian finished writing down the five names, he stood up and gave Wang Guofu a vicious beating.
I had never seen a man in his forties or fifties clutching his head and sobbing before, but today, I did.
To be honest, he really was beaten pretty badly. Anning covered her ears outright.
But I thought he deserved it.
Someone like him ought to be sentenced to death, but he couldn’t be. He probably wouldn’t even have to go to prison, so this beating was still letting him off easy.
Song Xiaotian held back, too. He didn’t beat him to death.
After a while, Song Xiaotian made him kneel again.
“Why did you harm those seven people?”
“Someone… Someone told me to do it…”
Wang Guofu knelt on the ground, crying as he answered honestly.
“Who told you to do it?”
“I can’t say…”
He lowered his head, trembling. “If I say it, I’ll die.”
Song Xiaotian grabbed him by the shoulder and threatened, “Want me to grant you that wish right now?”
Wang Guofu started whimpering again. “Then… kill me. I can’t afford to offend him. If I tell you… I’ll die anyway. I might as well die now. Make it quick…”
Song Xiaotian laughed. “Fine. If you won’t say it, then don’t. I’m a law-abiding citizen. How could I possibly kill you?”
Actually, it didn’t matter whether he answered that or not. We already knew anyway.
“Then how did you induce those seven people to kill themselves? And how did you choose your targets?” Song Xiaotian changed the subject and asked him two more questions.
Wang Guofu said, “All seven of them had their own obsessions, and their obsessions ran deep. Especially when people lose confidence in life and in themselves, they become more inclined to believe in gods and ghosts. As long as I knew the desires buried deep in their hearts and went along with what they wanted, they would believe anything I said.”
“Besides, I can use Four Pillars and Eight Characters to calculate their fate, use Divination to read the difficulties they’re currently facing, and I can read faces as well. In front of me, they had no secrets at all.”
“But I wasn’t the one who chose the targets. The person who hired me gave me a list. There were actually more than seven people on it, but what they all had in common was that they were born on the fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month. He told me to choose seven people from that list myself and make my move.”
After listening to Wang Guofu’s confession, I actually felt a little impressed by him.
This man was proficient in Fate Calculation, Physiognomy, and Divination. He could already be considered an expert.
With skills like that, he could have done anything. Yet he insisted on committing crimes that went against heaven and reason.
Seventh Master walked over and asked with a grim expression, “You know Fate Calculation, Physiognomy, and Divination. Very few people have your level of talent. But all you learned were the techniques, not the Dao. You never walked the righteous path. Our ancestors passed down these treasures, and you used them all for the business of harming others. Aren’t you afraid of retribution?”
Tears streamed down Wang Guofu’s face as he choked out, “You’ve never been poor, have you? When I was a kid, my hometown was flooded. Our house was washed away, and my father drowned in the flood. My mother took me away to beg in other places, and there wasn’t a single day when we had enough to eat.”
“Later, my mother got sick, but we had no money for treatment. She died of illness right in front of me. After she died, we didn’t even have a coffin for her. In the end, I wrapped her in a straw mat I’d picked up somewhere, dug a pit in the mountains, and buried her like that.”
“I was only eleven that year. Before I turned thirty, no one ever thought much of me. Later, after I learned these arts and calculated my own fate, I finally understood. I have a no-wealth Fate Pattern. I was born with the fate of a pauper.”
“After I got into this line of work, I did make some money, but I still couldn’t hold on to wealth. I liked gambling. I gambled all my money away and ended up being hunted by loan sharks. The person who hired me offered me three million. Do you have any idea what kind of fortune three million was to someone like me?”
Meng Yifan couldn’t help asking, “Since you knew you were born poor and couldn’t hold on to wealth, then even if you got that three million, it might all come to nothing in the end. You killed seven people for three million that might disappear anyway?”
Wang Guofu started crying again. “I didn’t think that far. I’m almost fifty this year. I just wanted to pay off my gambling debts, buy myself a piece of real estate, and stop gambling. Sometimes, when I think about it, I do regret it. But when a person’s heart is taken over by desire, they’re capable of anything. What use is regret now?”
Seventh Master sighed and said, “Pitiful. You are a pitiful man. But after all the things you’ve done, I don’t think you’re pitiful at all anymore. You deserve to be born poor. You’ll be poor in your next life too. In your next life, you might not even get to be human.”
With that, Seventh Master dragged him over to an offering table.
Enshrined on the table was the Celestial Worthy of the Nine Heavens, Responding to the Origin, Thunder Sound and Universal Transformation.
This Celestial Worthy was the Thunder Ancestor, the highest deity among all thunder gods. Many spells in Daoism were related to thunder, so disciples of Daoism, and even folk ritual masters, held the Thunder Ancestor in supreme reverence.
In front of the statue of the Thunder Ancestor, Seventh Master burned a Talisman and said coldly, “I want you to swear an oath. Swear before the Thunder Ancestor that from this day on, you will never use any magic arts again. Otherwise, may you die a horrible death.”
Wang Guofu froze where he stood. He didn’t dare swear it.
People who studied the Dao were different from ordinary people. Ordinary people swore oaths casually and dared to make any kind of venomous vow. But those who studied the Dao were different. If they made vows recklessly, the chances of those vows coming true were extremely high, and the retribution came extremely fast.
How could Wang Guofu dare swear that? If he did, then from now on, he’d have no way to make money. He would go right back to being a broke bastard.
But now he had no choice but to swear, because Song Xiaotian had already walked up behind him.
In front of the Thunder Ancestor, he made the poisonous oath, swearing that he would never use magic arts again.
Once he finished swearing, Song Xiaotian sent him away.
Of course, he didn’t kill him. He just found a place and dumped him there.
Now that we knew the names of the other five people, according to Seventh Master, those five would definitely be like Liu Jing and Feng Gang, their vengeful spirits refusing to disperse.
All seven ghosts had to be sent off, one by one.
The first ones we had to deal with were naturally Liu Jing and Feng Gang, because a client had already paid a deposit on their house. We had to handle it as soon as possible.
That night, Seventh Master first took Anning and me to Liu Jing’s home.
While Anning went off to find the restroom in the residential complex, I told Seventh Master something.
I told him that when Anning was possessed by a ghost, she could still retain her own awareness, and she could wake herself up anytime, anywhere.
After Seventh Master heard that, he was shocked. “What the hell? That’s possible?”
I asked him, “Is there some explanation for it?”
Seventh Master pondered for a moment, then spat out four words. “An extraordinary natural talent.”
“Isn’t that a little perfunctory?”
“What else do you want? For me to make up a ghost story for you?”
He glanced at me and said, “But I did once hear my Master mention that after people like that pass away, they are very likely to become an Underworld Escort in the underworld.”