Chapter 82
Chapter 82
Hearing Shi Fuluo call, Qin Shiyu, Leng Qingyan, and the others were startled once again. They quickly hurried over.
“What happened?” Yin Rumei asked.
“Miss Yin, the soil in this flower bed… carries the scent of worship, and it is far stronger than the Shi family’s!”
Shi Fuluo’s aged face was filled with complicated emotions.
“It might even be… Sixfold Sacrifice-grade worship!”
Everyone was stunned yet again.
More Sixfold Sacrifice-grade worship…
“It was planted in the walls, and in the flower beds too…” Yin Rumei murmured. “Could the entire school… be filled with it?”
She looked around, her heart pounding with alarm.
How precious was worship? Every old Divine Gate clan treasured it and ordinarily kept it hidden from the world.
Even the ancestral-tomb families collected worship and sent it into their ancestral hearths.
Yet there was so much of it here.
Where had Li Que obtained it all?
Could he have looted an ancestral hearth? Those were the only places that could still possess worship of this quality.
“No wonder. No wonder Teacher Li said it was enough and that only our sincerity mattered…”
Qin Shiyu remembered Li Que’s words, and realization suddenly dawned.
“So the school never lacked worship in the first place!”
The others understood as well.
It now seemed that Li Que… had prepared everything long ago.
“Then should we still plant these flowers?” Shi Fuluo asked nervously.
Compared to the school’s worship, the offerings of her two families were little better than roadside rubbish. How could they place such shoddy things here and pretend they belonged?
Leng Qingyan gave the matter some thought, then immediately called Li Que. She asked whether the flowers and greenery at the school were already good enough, and whether everything Shi Fuluo’s people had brought was unnecessary.
Li Que’s reply was perfectly calm.
“Their kindness is what matters. Since they brought the flowers, let them plant them.”
After ending the call, Leng Qingyan said, “Teacher Li says the thought itself is precious. Plant them.”
Shi Fuluo nodded.
“All right! Then we will!”
Tu Dahai added from beside her, “Every bit of height helps a wall. I’ll simply add the bricks on top!”
They immediately resumed their work.
“Hmm? These petals… They turned gold?”
Something even more astonishing happened. The moment Shi Fuluo planted the Shi family’s Stone-Rot Flowers, several closed buds suddenly bloomed, revealing golden petals.
The Stone-Rot Flower took its name from the saying “until seas run dry and stones crumble.” It contained extraordinarily concentrated worship and power of faith. If its blossoms turned gold, it meant worship was flourishing-and that worship would in turn protect the Shi family.
Just then, Shi Fuluo’s phone rang. She answered at once. It was someone from her family.
After listening, she stood frozen for a long time.
“What happened?” Yin Rumei asked.
“Green smoke is rising from our ancestral graves…”
Disbelief filled Shi Fuluo’s eyes.
“How… How is that possible?”
For an ancient clan like theirs, green smoke rising from the ancestral graves was an exceptionally rare omen.
It meant the entire clan was about to enjoy a tremendous rise in fortune.
Rumor even claimed that before the ancestral tombs of the Old-Grave Clans took shape, they would emit green smoke continuously.
The Shi family had been declining for years. How could such good fortune suddenly descend upon them?
Yin Rumei stared incredulously at the flower bed, where the golden petals of the Stone-Rot Flowers swayed in the wind.
“The Stone-Rot Flowers absorbed Sixfold Sacrifice-grade worship and immediately returned its blessing to the Shi family?”
It was the only possible explanation.
“Green smoke is rising from the Tu family’s ancestral graves too!”
Tu Dahai hurried over excitedly with his phone in hand.
“Miss Yin, not only did the school refrain from consuming our worship, it actually nourished it in return. This… This favor is too great!”
His voice trembled.
The moment he finished adding his family’s blood incense offerings to the top of the wall, his family called to report that green smoke was pouring from their ancestral graves so fiercely they could not suppress it.
It was utterly absurd.
“Teacher Li never needed worship at all…” Yin Rumei said, her expression indescribably complex. “On the contrary, he has bestowed a tremendous gift upon us.”
She knew Tu Dahai had not exaggerated. The favor truly was enormous.
If the other families learned that planting their worship here could bless their entire clans and make green smoke rise from their ancestral graves, they would regret their choice until their guts turned green.
The Tu and Shi families had received this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Yin Rumei felt inexplicably comforted. Seeing the Shi and Tu families rewarded put her heart slightly more at ease.
At the same time, her admiration for Li Que reached its peak.
“Teacher Li has watched everything with cold detachment. Praise or slander means nothing to him. He simply waits at the end… for the true faithful to arrive.”
She murmured, “And the true faithful will behold the light!”
In that moment, her conviction became firmer than ever.
…
Elsewhere, on an open patch of the athletic field, the stone had been stacked neatly while Xun Wu led his men in rapidly building the platform.
“I’ll handle these two myself.”
He lifted two pieces of stone and suddenly wiped them with his hand. Beneath the white dust, a strange pattern was revealed.
Xun Wu knew exactly what it was: a configuration sigil deliberately left by his family.
This kind of configuration sigil came from an ancestral tomb and possessed the power to reverse yin and yang and throw life and death into disorder.
When he shook Li Que’s hand earlier, he had secretly left a configuration sigil on Li Que’s palm. That one represented life and would ordinarily have no effect on him whatsoever.
The configuration sigils carved into these two stones, however, represented death.
When Li Que offered sacrifice to a god, the sigils here would be suppressed by the school’s occult configuration and reverse themselves, becoming sigils of life. The one on Li Que’s body would then become a sigil of death.
Once Li Que died, control of this place would naturally pass to the Xun family.
“Work faster! Do a good job, and the young master will pay us extra tonight!”
Xun Wu smiled, set the two stones in place, and immediately covered them with the remaining pieces. Now no one could see them.
…
At that moment, Li Que had already returned to the teaching building and was about to head to class. He stopped by the restroom first and washed his hands.
He did not dislike Xun Wu, but teaching with dirty hands would hardly be appropriate.
Water flowed over his palm and washed away the dust. Some hidden pattern seemed to struggle for an instant, then vanished down the drain.
Li Que shook the water from his hands, left the restroom, and headed toward his classroom.
…
At that moment, the newly built stage was already taking shape.
No one noticed that the mysterious patterns on the two stones hidden at its exact center were slowly fading, as though an invisible hand were erasing them.
…
Not long afterward, the workers left the school one after another.
“Young Master, everything is ready. When the time comes, Li Que will suddenly drop dead without anyone knowing why. The Xun family will take over this place with ease.”
Xun Wu immediately called Xun Silu and reported his success as though seeking praise.
“Very good,” Xun Silu said. “Would you like to tend the fire at the old ancestral hearth for a few years?”
Xun Wu’s face changed dramatically.
“Young Master, did I do something wrong?”
“Nothing at all. But when Li Que dies, my elder brother may investigate. Sending you away will prevent him from tracing anything back to you. Don’t worry. If I recommend you for the old ancestral hearth, they won’t burn you as firewood.”
“Once my grandfather dies and my father and I take control of the family, we will naturally bring you back.”
Xun Wu fell silent.
He suddenly realized he was merely a pawn. Once used… he would be discarded.
“All right. Thank you, Young Master.”
Xun Wu ended the call.
…
“Well, Miss Yin? Have you made up your mind?”
Elsewhere, Yin Rumei and the others had only just left the school when she received a call as well.
It came from the Wang family.
“We are willing to give you all our worship only because we remember what the Yin family did for us. Miss Yin, keeping that anomalous entity truly serves no purpose. The Yin family produced so many talented people over the years without a single Yin God among them. Do you honestly expect to become one yourself?”
The speaker’s tone was cruel and cutting.
“Thank you, but there is no longer any need.”
Yin Rumei hung up without the slightest hesitation.
Tu Dahai’s face darkened.
“When the time comes, we’ll make them regret this!”
Shi Fuluo added, “You are such a good person, Miss Yin, and Teacher Li has seen it all. He will surely bestow an even greater reward upon you in the future. Pay those people no mind!”
…
Elsewhere.
“She refused?”
Inside a room, Ji Fengming looked at the representatives of the Wang and Gu families with mild regret.
He had deliberately arranged for those families to approach Yin Rumei, hoping to strip away the last of the Yin family’s inheritance.
He had not expected her to be so wary.
“Forget it. They say that anomalous entity carries the slightest chance of producing a Yin God, but it is nothing more than a pipe dream.”
He dismissed the matter and asked a subordinate beside him, “When will my elder brother arrive?”
“Family Head, he should arrive very soon, within the next day or two.”
Ji Fengming nodded.
“Delay the Hall of Anomalies and the Xu family a little longer.”
He needed his brother to infiltrate the school and possess Ji Tian first. Only after securing that advantage would the Ji family strike alongside the Hall of Anomalies and the others.
With an agent both inside and outside the school, the Ji family could maximize its gains.
…