Chapter 244

Chapter 244

The morning alarm jolted me awake.

Still half-asleep, I crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom to take a piss.

When I came back and sat on the edge of the bed, I still felt unsatisfied and wanted to doze off a little longer. Then, all of a sudden, my eyes flew open.

I remembered the dream I had last night.

I think I dreamed of the Ancestral Master!

And in the dream… the Ancestral Master performed a Register Conferral for me!

I looked down and saw a jade pendant hanging in front of my chest. It was the exact same token the Ancestral Master had given me in the dream.

Holy crap!

Something from my dream had actually been brought into reality by me!

So… last night’s dream was real. The Ancestral Master really did perform a Register Conferral for me. I could learn the arts now!

I hurriedly pulled open a drawer, found a pen and paper, and drew out a hexagram.

This hexagram was the last reading the Ancestral Master had given me. I remembered him saying it very clearly in the dream: before long, I would face a calamity.

Anything that could be called a calamity would either endanger my life or cause me a major loss.

After I drew the hexagram, I did not even need to calculate anything on paper. The fortune and misfortune shown on it were clear at a glance.

But that was not because I was awesome. It was because the Ancestral Master was awesome. Through the hexagram, he had shown me the future fortune and misfortune in a direct and intuitive way, so there was no need for me to go through any complicated calculations.

This was a Wandering Soul Hexagram. A Wandering Soul Hexagram usually indicated misfortune. It carried signs of leaving home, as well as danger when going out.

This meant that before long, I would have to leave Lanjiang City, and this trip would be dangerous.

Of course, if I only looked at the image of the hexagram, I could only see the general situation, not the specifics.

I spent five minutes fully interpreting the hexagram, and then I froze.

This trip would put my life in extreme danger…

And it was an Unusual Hexagram. Interpreted here, it meant this matter originally had nothing to do with me. I would merely get involved, and that was why I would encounter danger.

I thought about it. If it had nothing to do with me, but could still easily endanger my life, then I could just ignore it, right? If I stayed out of it, there would be no danger, right?

But since the hexagram showed that I would be in danger, that meant I would definitely get involved in the end.

Was I really that much of an idiot?

My life would be on the line, and I would still insist on walking straight into death?

Then again, after thinking about it, sometimes I really was that much of an idiot.

Besides, a Wandering Soul Hexagram also indicated hesitation, indecision, and a lack of resolve. The Ancestral Master had actually seen right through my personality.

I could not help feeling a chill. By instinct, I turned and looked around my room.

He could not be everywhere, secretly watching me all this time… could he?

…

For the next two days, I was on edge the entire time.

The time when this hexagram would come true was in the first third of next month. Unfortunately, there were only two days left until the start of the month. Next month was October, and the beginning of October was National Day, which meant a holiday. In previous years, Meng Yifan had always given us five days off for National Day, and this year was no exception. He had already mentioned it two days ago.

The creepiest part was that for the last two National Day holidays, Meng Yifan had asked me to go on a road trip with him every single year. And as early as a month ago, he had already said that for this year’s National Day, he planned to bring Song Xiaotian along too. We were going to Sanya to see the ocean and feast on seafood.

In other words, if not for this hexagram, I definitely would have left home and gone out.

And if not for this hexagram, I definitely would have gone more happily than anyone else.

But now… I could not go!

No matter what those two said, I absolutely could not go!

I decided to stay home for the entire holiday. I refused to believe anything could happen to me if I stayed at home.

But the day before the holiday, Seventh Master called me and invited me to go to Lincheng during the break.

I asked him what he was going to Lincheng for. He said he had an old client there, a big boss, who had invited him over to handle something.
And this wasn’t just any ordinary matter. The big boss in question was a real estate developer who was planning to build a resort somewhere in Lincheng, and construction was already underway.

The incident happened during construction. One of the workers was doing high-altitude work when his safety rope suddenly snapped. He fell straight down from a height of ten meters and was skewered clean through by two protruding steel rebars on the spot.

After that happened, the construction site nearly got shut down for inspection and rectification. The big boss finally managed to spend enough money to smooth things over, but before long-less than half a month later-someone else got into an accident.

This person was also a worker at the site. Supposedly, he had hooked up with a coworker’s wife. One night, the two of them went to the construction site for a secret tryst. But right when the adulterous pair were getting into it, a wall collapsed…

And that wall collapsed at just the right moment. It crushed the man to death on the spot. At the time, the man happened to be on top of the woman, so he took the blow for her, and the woman survived.

Two accidents in a row within half a month. Naturally, the housing and urban-rural development department took it very seriously. They immediately ordered the site to suspend work for rectification, and they suspected the construction site of cutting corners, which was what had caused the wall to collapse.

But after investigating, even the department was baffled.

There was nothing wrong with the wall. There was nothing wrong with the materials used either. Logically speaking, that wall shouldn’t have collapsed no matter what.

And yet it had.

As the developer, that big boss quickly realized something was off. He immediately sent people to investigate whether anyone had died there before, or whether anything had happened in the past. In the end, the investigation showed that something really had happened there before.

As for what exactly happened, Seventh Master didn’t explain in too much detail over the phone.

In short, that big boss wanted to invite Seventh Master over to deal with it, and the compensation was very generous.

Seventh Master felt that place might not be simple, so he wanted to bring me along to broaden my horizons.

When he said it, he sounded pretty confident, as if he was sure I would go.

To be honest, I did want to go. With Seventh Master there, nothing major was likely to happen.

But the divination Ancestral Master gave me showed that I would be in danger if I went out. How would I dare go?

So I tactfully turned Seventh Master down and said I had other things to take care of during the holiday.

Seventh Master didn’t force me. He just hung up.

But that phone call left me unsettled all over again.

I thought of the last thing Ancestral Master had said to me.

He said… if I could make it through this tribulation, then I would be able to accomplish something. If I couldn’t make it through, then he wished me a good family in my next life.

The meaning was already obvious. If I got involved in this tribulation and managed to survive it, I would definitely gain something from it. If I didn’t survive, then I would be dead.

But whether it was the first half or the second half of that statement, both assumed I would be involved…

He never said anything about me not getting involved. If I didn’t get involved, wouldn’t that mean I was simply avoiding misfortune and seeking fortune?

I changed my way of thinking about those words. Suppose… I did get involved. Then what exactly was this tribulation?

Today, Seventh Master had called me. If Ancestral Master hadn’t warned me beforehand, I definitely would have followed Seventh Master to Lincheng instead of going traveling with Meng Yifan and Song Xiaotian.

So this tribulation was my trip to Lincheng with Seventh Master.

If I went with Seventh Master and there was still this kind of life-threatening danger, didn’t that mean Seventh Master would be in danger too?

He would be too busy taking care of himself to protect me, which was why I would be in danger.

Then if I didn’t go, wouldn’t Seventh Master be in even greater danger?

I couldn’t help feeling a chill run through me.

Ancestral Master’s words had actually made it clear already.

In the end, I would definitely go.