Chapter 145

Chapter 145

Seeing my tightly furrowed brow, Old Cao reached out and patted me on the shoulder.

“All right, Xiao Wu. Don’t dwell on it too much. You’ll only wear yourself out. Anyway, let’s leave the Xiaowan Village matter here for now. Didn’t the Immortal Lady say we couldn’t deal with it until two or three years from now? We can think about it again when the time comes.”

Mm.

I nodded and stopped obsessing over it.

I would simply keep everything in mind and watch for any relevant information that might turn up later.

Yuan Fei, meanwhile, shook his head and sighed dramatically.

“Oh, what a shame. A rare and priceless treasure just disappears like that? I didn’t even get to do anything, much less come away with anything. All I did was tag along for the excitement.”

Old Cao gave him a look, torn between irritation and amusement.

“That’s enough! You’re a grown man and a folk Taoist master, yet you still carry on so frivolously. If you really want a hand in this, use the next two or three years to cultivate properly. I have a feeling there’ll be a major upheaval when the time comes.”

At that, Old Cao let out another soft sigh.

He had lived through chaotic times, so naturally he preferred the peace and stability we enjoyed now.

But judging from what Bai Su had said, and from the fact that even the River God coveted that strange object, once it fully matured two or three years from now… a storm of bloodshed was almost certainly inevitable.

It might not affect ordinary people. In modern society, after all, the techniques of the esoteric arts were nothing but clay chickens and pottery dogs before the imperial court’s high-tech guns and artillery!

How could practitioners of the esoteric arts still dare act as recklessly as they had in ancient or chaotic times?

But within the esoteric world… it would undoubtedly cause an enormous uproar.

When that happened, the esoteric circles throughout Lianghe Town and Fubei County were sure to be anything but peaceful.

The only thing we could do was spend the next two or three years cultivating as diligently as possible, strengthening ourselves, and gathering more useful information!

Fortunately, the different parties represented by me, Old Cao, Yuan Fei, Li Miao, and Bai Su had effectively formed an alliance.

We had also become fairly good friends.

At least we weren’t alone and outnumbered…

With our business there finished, we rode Old Cao’s paper horse back to his coffin shop in town, just as we had on the way over.

Yuan Fei loudly announced that he was sleeping at the coffin shop that night.

Bai Su and Huihui planned to roam the nearby mountains outside Lianghe Town under the cover of darkness and choose a place with good feng shui to carve out a new cave dwelling.

As for Li Miao, I gave him a separate ride back to the little wooden cabin in the riverside woods north of town…

Before we parted, he told me he had recently been studying some corpse-retrieval methods recorded in old texts. Once he had time, we could try retrieving Zhou Min’s body again.

I was touched and thanked him over and over.

Before leaving, I played with Heizi for a while, smiling as I rubbed its head and promising I would definitely bring it meat the next time I came!

But I could already read the word disdain in its eyes. It even turned its head away in a huff and refused to let me pet it, making Li Miao chuckle too.

I looked thoroughly embarrassed. A dog was actually snubbing me… My credibility with Heizi was probably about to hit zero, wasn’t it?

After returning to the coffin shop and chatting with Old Cao for a little while longer, I went to sleep.

Nothing much happened over the next two days.

Aside from studying the coffin-bearing arts and the spirit-paper arts under Old Cao each day, I previewed the coursework for the coming term.

In many subjects–Chinese, math, and English, for example–I had already taught myself everything we would cover that semester.

Of course, I had only swallowed it all without properly digesting it.

If I wanted to remain first in my grade on the exams, I would still need to pay close attention in class…

Once life settled down, time seemed to pass especially quickly.

In the blink of an eye, the break was over and it was time to return to school.

Believe it or not, I was even a little excited!

That was how students were.

After spending too long studying at school, we wanted nothing more than to get away.

But after a long break, we happily found ourselves missing school again…

What a contradiction!

School rules required us to attend evening study the day before classes officially resumed.

After all, our school was technically a boarding school. Students who weren’t from Lianghe Town and came from the surrounding villages all had to live in the dorms.

If I hadn’t been living at Old Cao’s place, I would have had to stay in the student dormitory as well.

When I reached the classroom, evening study hadn’t started yet. Classmates who hadn’t seen one another all break were gathered in little groups, chattering away.

I had barely put down my schoolbag and hadn’t even taken my seat when Wang Dachun shouted, “Boss, I missed you like crazy!” He threw himself at me and wrapped me in a crushing hug.

It made me extremely uncomfortable.

Yao Nan covered her mouth and giggled from the side.

Then Wang Dachun said, “Don’t laugh, Sis-in-law. Didn’t you miss Boss over the break? Why don’t you give him a hug too?”

Me: “…”

Yao Nan: “…”

Yao Nan’s pretty face turned scarlet. She snatched up the Chinese textbook lying on the desk, spun around, and started raining blows on Wang Dachun’s head and body. He yowled like a wounded animal under the assault.

“All right, all right, stop hitting him. He was born with a smart mouth, Yao Nan. It’s not as if you didn’t know. He’s already dumb enough. You’ll make him even dumber if you keep this up.”

Half joking and half serious, I reached over and took the Chinese textbook from her.
“Hmph!”

Yao Nan glared at me and plopped into her seat in a huff. Then she picked up the thermos on her desk and sipped from it.

I could see that even the tips of her ears had turned red.

Uh…

Wasn’t she a little too thin-skinned?

We all knew one another so well by now, and Wang Dachun had only been joking.

I thought to myself, Hmph. It’s not like I want you to hug me anyway! Of all the women in the world, aside from my mother, the only one I want a hug from is Master.

But Wang Dachun was shamelessly thick-skinned. He pulled Zeng Jin and me over and launched into an animated account of his adventures over the break. Whenever he reached a funny part, Zeng Jin and I burst out laughing. He even made Yao Nan, who was pretending to read, crack up, and just like that, she was no longer angry with him.

Only when evening study began and our homeroom teacher, Chen Xue, entered the classroom carrying an exercise book did everyone finally quiet down…

Life at school continued in the same ordinary, warm, and comfortable fashion.

I joked and roughhoused with my friends, ate meals, studied, and took tests.

I placed first in the entire grade on both of the next two monthly exams as well, firmly cementing my status as the resident top student.

Every subject teacher took especially good care of me. Chen Xue in particular kept saying that he had known from the beginning that I would do well!

At the same time, he found it strange that Wang Dachun–the spoiled rich kid who had bullied me on the first day of school–somehow seemed to have become my little follower. His grades had also improved considerably.

In the end, Chen Xue concluded that it must be a case of “one takes on the color of one’s company.”

I thought it probably had more to do with the size of my fists.

In a sense, whether someone ultimately became good or bad depended partly on chance. It hinged on the people they met and the things they experienced while growing up.

If I really had been nothing more than an ordinary poor village kid, Wang Dachun probably would have bullied me without consequence. I would have had no way to fight back, and he never would have ended up becoming my underling through that bizarre twist of fate.

Perhaps even Heaven thought I had been through too much lately, with too many exhausting upheavals, and that I deserved a chance to relax.

Over the remaining months of the semester, life outside school also seemed to settle down…

I joined Old Cao, Big Bull, and the others on several coffin-bearing jobs. Every one went smoothly. None of the bodies ever reanimated, and they were all laid peacefully to rest.

I also continued investigating the cause of Zhou Min’s death as part of my nether covenant with her, but no clues or leads ever seemed to turn up.

Li Miao and I made another attempt to retrieve her body from the Chuan River outside town, but once again came away empty-handed.

On the bright side, when I visited Li Miao’s home that time, I finally remembered to bring Heizi a pound of fine pork tenderloin.

The dog ate it with tremendous enthusiasm, and its trust in me finally rose.

Not only did it let me pet it all I wanted, it even flopped onto the ground and rolled over so I could rub its belly… Li Miao laughed and cursed the stupid dog for being far too easy to bribe.

The police station spent a long time investigating the three people killed by the Killer Demon Tree, but found nothing. They could only close the case for the time being.

I knew they were never going to find anything, of course!

After all, all three victims had died to supernatural forces… Nor did we encounter the mysterious rogue occultist again, that same powerful and sinister figure.

Everything remained peaceful at the Xiao family home in Xiaowan Village as well.

Xiao Mao was a dependable man. He took all our warnings to heart, left the arrangements in the cellar untouched, and made no mistakes.

Oh, right!

Old Cao and I also finished reading the entire Fubei County Gazetteer.

It contained accounts of many strange tales and extraordinary events, as well as the changes in Lianghe Town’s customs and way of life over the past two or three centuries. Even Old Cao, a local, had never heard of many of them, so we both learned quite a bit.

Using the records in the Fubei County Gazetteer, we even located Xu Xinyi’s ancestral home. It stood on a broad stretch of hilly ground about half a mile west of the district middle school I attended.

Students who lived south of town often passed it when they took the narrow shortcut to school instead of following the main road across Lianghe Bridge.

We could also see the residence clearly from the roof of our school building.

To think that it was the Xu family’s ancestral home!

Fortunately, the late 1990s marked only the beginning of society’s explosive development and rapid rise. Change had not yet become as drastic as it would later, and the grand urban campaign to “tear down the old and usher in the new” had not fully begun…

As a result, the Xu family’s ancestral home had survived completely intact!

But when Old Cao and I went there, knocked on the door, and told the owner why we were asking about Xu Xinyi, he informed us that the last direct descendants of the Xu family had moved away seven or eight years earlier.

The current owner had heard the name Xu Xinyi before. After all, his own family counted as distant relatives of the Xus.

When Xu Xinyi had abandoned his wives and children to leave home with that wandering Taoist, his eldest son, Xu Jiren, had already been sixteen or seventeen.

Gritting his teeth, the boy shouldered the burden of supporting the family. Using some of the connections and money his father had left behind, he actually built up the Xu family business until they became prominent grain merchants known throughout Fubei County…