Chapter 223
Chapter 223
Wang Guofu, that Old Man, cried like a child.
He stopped trying to defend himself. The truth was obvious: he was miserable, he resented the rich, and he had simply wanted to vent online.
When I asked him how he had found out that Jiang Xiaoyu and the others had already been killed, he said he had calculated it with Plum Blossom Numerology.
That shocked the hell out of me.
“You swore in front of the Thunder Ancestor. Are you really not afraid that curse will come true?” I asked him.
He had cried himself out. “I’ve been poor my whole life. I finally found a way to make money, and then you people knocked me right back to where I started. Look at me now. When I die, how long I live-what does any of it matter?”
“I’ve already committed every sin I was going to commit. Whatever happens in my next life will happen. I’ll leave it up to the Heavenly God.”
None of us had anything to say to that.
This man was past caring. He had completely given up on himself.
Song Xiaotian snatched his phone from my hand and smashed it on the floor, shattering it to pieces.
“You like spreading rumors online and acting tough behind a keyboard? I’ll let you keep acting tough!”
“Anning, go bring out his computer too and smash it. Break his keyboard in half. Let’s see him pound on keys now!”
Anning was obedient enough. She went straight into the other rooms to look for Wang Guofu’s computer.
Wang Guofu’s tears started falling again, and he begged us, “Don’t smash my things. I don’t have much left. I promise you, I won’t talk nonsense online ever again. Please.”
With Anning’s temper, there was no way she was going to pity him. She carried out the computer tower and smashed it into pieces right in front of him.
After smashing the tower, she smashed the monitor, then snapped the keyboard in half.
Wang Guofu sobbed so hard he could barely breathe, as if he had just been robbed.
“Do you think you’re pitiful?”
I asked him, “When you made up those rumors online and drove Ding Ruoning to her death, did you think Ding Ruoning was pitiful? When you helped Du Yunting harm people, did you think those seven people were pitiful?”
“You think that just because you admit you were wrong, we can pretend nothing ever happened. But the people you got killed died for nothing. The only reason you’re still alive is because we live in a society ruled by law. Someone like you could die a hundred times and it still wouldn’t be too much.”
“Aren’t you good at fortune-telling?” Song Xiaotian took out a pen and paper and set them in front of him. “Since you don’t care about the curse you swore on yourself, why don’t you calculate your own fortune and see what day you’ll die?”
Wang Guofu had just claimed he no longer cared about life and death, but now his face changed. He hurriedly shook his head. “I won’t calculate it. I won’t!”
In the fortune-telling trade, there were the Five Taboos of Divination.
One did not calculate life and death, did not calculate for those close to oneself, did not calculate oneself, did not calculate for the insincere, and did not calculate for violent criminals.
The reason one did not calculate life and death was that calculating someone’s lifespan was an act that defied the natural order. The Heavenly Dao would not punish someone merely for revealing heavenly secrets, but if too many heavenly secrets were revealed, it would diminish the fortune of the person involved-and even more so, the fortune of the hexagram master.
As for not calculating oneself, that was not absolute. The main reason was that calculating for oneself, including those close to oneself, was easily influenced by subjective thoughts and emotions, which could lead to inaccurate results. And after calculating one’s own fortune and receiving a bad result, it was easy to go to extremes.
If a person knew when they would die-even the specific time and manner of death-then from the moment they learned the answer, their heart might know nothing but suffering.
That was why Wang Guofu did not dare calculate for himself.
Song Xiaotian said nothing. He went straight to the kitchen and came back with a cleaver.
“Old bastard, I gave you a chance. Looks like you’ll only behave if I chop something off you, huh?”
Cursing under his breath, he pressed the kitchen cleaver straight against Wang Guofu’s neck.
The Old Man kept saying he wasn’t afraid to die, but in truth, he was terrified.
He begged Song Xiaotian over and over, pleading for him to spare him and stop tormenting him.
But Song Xiaotian had always been extreme. How could he possibly pity him? He forced Wang Guofu to cast a divination for himself using Plum Blossom Numerology.
The reason we wanted him to calculate his own fate was mainly because his skills were real. Only by having him divine the time of his own death would we know when Ding Ruoning would come.
After calculating for a long while, Wang Guofu suddenly went pale, cold sweat beading all over his face.
I quickly took a look. It seemed he had already finished, but he hadn’t written down the result.
I had never studied Plum Blossom Numerology, so naturally, there was a lot I couldn’t understand.
Song Xiaotian looked at him. “Tell us the result.”
“Tonight… tonight.” Wang Guofu’s voice was trembling. “Tonight is when I die…”
Song Xiaotian asked again, “Who’s coming to kill you?”
He stared blankly at us. “Not a person…”
Not a person. Then it was a ghost.
It seemed Ding Ruoning and her husband’s next target for revenge was Wang Guofu.
“Master Wang, you’re on your own now.”
Song Xiaotian smiled. “After all, you’ve got real skills, and you’re not afraid of ghosts knocking at your door. Good luck.”
We stopped tormenting him and left his home in a complete mess.
After we came out, Song Xiaotian, afraid Wang Guofu might somehow not die, asked, “Will he really die tonight?”
I said he definitely would. The Talisman Seventh Master left behind hadn’t been placed there for nothing.
Besides, Wang Guofu had calculated it himself. His time of death was tonight.
“But can’t things that are divined be changed?” Meng Yifan asked curiously. “Since he already knows he’ll die tonight, what if he just leaves this place? Wouldn’t Sun Yang and Ding Ruoning be unable to find him?”
I said, “When divination was first created, it was meant to help people seek good fortune and avoid disaster. What divination reveals is actually a person’s luck, while what fate calculations reveal is their destiny. A person’s luck can be changed, but things tied to destiny basically can’t be.”
“What Wang Guofu calculated was the limit of his life and death. That’s already part of destiny. Even if he manages to escape death today, he’ll definitely die some other way very soon.”
“And he’s been beaten into this state. He can’t run. All he can do is bite the bullet and try to fight Ding Ruoning. But he doesn’t know we planted that Talisman, so tonight, he is dead for sure.”
That night.
As soon as the sky darkened, we began keeping watch inside the residential complex where Wang Guofu lived.
We only knew he would die tonight. We didn’t know what time.
Meng Yifan didn’t come tonight. Seventh Master did.
We hid inside the complex from eight in the evening all the way until midnight.
Waiting for a rabbit to run into a stump was the kind of job that made you drowsy. Anning had already fallen asleep beside me.
“She really doesn’t worry about a thing, huh? Falls asleep just like that,” Song Xiaotian said with a sigh.
Seventh Master laughed. “The heartless live the easiest lives.”
To be honest, I was sleepy too. So sleepy I could barely keep my eyes open, but I didn’t dare sleep.
No matter what, we had to catch Ding Ruoning tonight and settle the matter with that villa.
These past few days, we hadn’t done a damn thing. All our time had been wasted on this.
I couldn’t help yawning and was just about to go take a piss.
Just then, the compass placed in front of us suddenly reacted. No one had touched it at all, yet the needle on it suddenly began to tremble.
“She’s here!”