Chapter 229

Chapter 229

Before leaving, Yao Nan turned back and said to me,

“Deskmate, don’t forget to tell me the details tomorrow morning!”

I waved a hand.

“I know. Don’t worry. I would’ve told you anyway. There was no need for that childish pinky-swear game.”

Yao Nan smiled without speaking.

She turned, jogged a few steps to catch up with several close friends, and left with them.

Sigh…

Wang Dachun let out a long sigh, patted my shoulder, and said earnestly,

“Boss, you’re smart about everything, but when it comes to feelings, you’re painfully hopeless. Yao Nan has been so forward, yet you still don’t understand? She obviously feels–”

Smack!

I slapped Wang Dachun on the head, cutting him off.

“You haven’t even finished growing up, yet instead of studying hard and preparing for the high school entrance examination, you fill your head with nonsense every day. I’m warning you, don’t start dating early either, or your dad will definitely break your legs!”

The fellow clutched his head and complained indignantly.

“I’m just telling the truth. Even if you disagree, Boss, you don’t have to keep hitting me on the head.”

“All right, enough. Stop rambling. Let’s hurry. We’ll enter the boys’ dormitory with the crowd.”

I patted Wang Dachun’s shoulder, then headed toward the dormitory building…

In truth, how could I fail to notice Yao Nan’s feelings?

I was merely pretending not to understand because I did not want to respond.

I still did not know whether I could truly defy fate, change my destiny, survive my life tribulation, and live past fifteen!

At the same time, I had to prepare for the high school entrance examination coming a year later. How could I spare any energy to think about the tender feelings of adolescent boys and girls?

Besides, as I grew older, I found that Master occupied more and more space in my heart… This made me inexplicably nervous and frightened.

That made me even less willing to think about such things.

It took only five or six minutes to walk from the classroom building to the boys’ dormitory.

Just as expected, the three of us followed the stream of boarding students and entered the dormitory building with ease.

We climbed the stairs to Room 309, where one of Wang Dachun’s “underlings” lived.

The other students in the room looked curious when they saw us enter. They came over one after another to greet us and chat for a few moments.

Both Wang Dachun and I were considered “celebrities” at school.

Most students knew who we were.

After all, final exam results were announced at a schoolwide assembly. The top twenty students in each year went onstage, where the principal presented them with certificates and scholarships before the entire faculty and student body…

As the student who unfailingly ranked first in our year, my face was certainly familiar to everyone.

As for Wang Dachun, although he had “turned over a new leaf” under my heavy-handed pressure and almost never started fights or bullied anyone anymore, a rich young troublemaker like him naturally attracted a crowd of young hooligans.

“Brother Chun, aren’t you a day student? What are you doing in our room?”

A boy who looked every inch a delinquent came over and held out a cigarette as he spoke.

“Brother Chun, want one?”

Clearly, he was another young hooligan.

Wang Dachun instinctively reached for it. I frowned.

He immediately sat up straight.

With a solemn expression, he rebuked the boy,

“Why are you picking up bad habits at such a young age? What are you doing smoking? Give them all to me. They’re confiscated. Besides, I never smoke. Don’t slander me.”

As he spoke, he snatched the half-full pack of cigarettes from the other boy’s hand.

The boy froze, then blurted out,

“Brother Chun, weren’t you smoking with my big brother in the restroom just yesterday? He saved his allowance for a whole week to buy you a pack of Chunghwa. You said they tasted pretty good…”

“Outrageous slander!”

Wang Dachun instantly panicked and looked at me.

“Boss, listen to my excuses.”

Me: “???”

Wang Dachun said, “No, wait! Listen to my explanation…”

“Fine, fine. We’ll set this aside for now.”

With so many people around, I ought to save him some face.

Zeng Jin smiled and waved at the boy.

“Buddy, go do your own thing. We’re just going to sit here for a while and chat.”

After lights-out,

we waited until the footsteps of the teacher on night duty patrolling back and forth outside in the hallway had faded.

Then we left Room 309 and headed upstairs.

Wang Xinren’s private dorm room was Room 404, at the left end of the fourth-floor hallway.

Because a death had occurred, the police had sealed the entire door during the day. Two posts outside supported a strip of yellow police tape.

At the turn of the stairs between the third and fourth floors, I stopped and took two talismans from my pocket, handing one each to Wang Dachun and Zeng Jin.

“These are Glamour Talismans. Stick them on yourselves and ordinary people won’t be able to see you.”

Wang Dachun was instantly delighted.

“Holy crap! These are the legendary Invisibility Talismans? I’ve really broadened my horizons today.”

I stared at him speechlessly.

“I just told you they’re Glamour Talismans, not Invisibility Talismans! The effects might look similar on the surface, but their principles and levels are completely different. An Invisibility Talisman is far more powerful than a Glamour Talisman. There’s no need to use one here.”
“Oh, Boss, don’t worry about those details. Heh, they’re basically the same to outsiders like us anyway. Their main purpose is to keep other people from seeing us.”

As Wang Dachun spoke, he stuck the talisman to his chest.

Zeng Jin hurriedly did the same beside him.

I did not need to attach a talisman to myself. If I only wanted ordinary people to overlook me, I could create that kind of visual misperception simply by mobilizing the qi within my body.

Of course, a Glamour Talisman would be useless against someone with an exceptionally strong bazi and an exceptionally resolute will.

After all, it was merely an illusion that misdirected the gaze and deceived human vision, rather than true invisibility.

As it turned out, I might have worried too much…

Although the lights had only recently gone out, the doors to every room on the fourth floor of the boys’ dormitory were tightly shut, and the entire floor was extremely quiet. Even the faint sounds of breathing that seeped out were very soft.

There were many boarding students and limited dormitory space. Even though someone had died in Room 404, students still had to live in all the other rooms as usual. What else could they do?

Make that many boarding students sleep on the street?

But of course they were frightened to live on a floor where someone had died. These energetic young men were uncharacteristically quiet and obedient after lights-out, not daring to make a single sound.

The students in Room 406 next door to Room 404 in particular… Just thinking about it, they were probably trembling with fear.

We stood outside Room 404.

I circulated the qi within me and gathered it at my fingertip, then flicked lightly toward the door.

Puff.

A faint stream of pure qi flew from my fingertip. The police seal silently peeled away by itself, and with a click, the lock sprang open on its own.

“Boss, incredible!”

“Brother Wu, incredible!”

Wang Dachun and Zeng Jin both stared with wide eyes, utterly astonished.

I shrugged.

“It’s only a trivial trick, nothing complicated. I just used qi to peel away the seal and move the lock cylinder. It wouldn’t be this easy with a security door. Come on. Let’s go inside and summon the soul.”

As I spoke, I raised a leg and stepped over the yellow police tape at the doorway.

The two of them followed close behind.

The moment we entered the room, Wang Dachun wrapped his arms around himself and whispered,

“There’s some inexplicable chill in here. It’s freezing, even though it’s obviously summer. It feels like the air conditioner is on. I’m getting goose bumps.”

This fellow had extremely keen spiritual senses, far beyond those of an ordinary person. He had previously been able to see Wang Hu waiting for me at the entrance to the coffin-shop street. He did indeed have some talent for cultivation.

A room where someone had died naturally held heavy yin energy, and people would certainly sense something.

But an ordinary person could not possibly be as sensitive as Wang Dachun.

Zeng Jin, for example, felt nothing. He merely knew someone had died there, which left him somewhat uncomfortable…

I looked toward an open spot in the middle of the room. The police had drawn a white outline there during the day to mark the body’s position. That was where Wang Xinren had died.

“You two step back. I’m going to summon Wang Xinren’s soul and ask how he died.”

“All right, Boss.”

I raised my right hand before my eyes.

I pressed my index and middle fingers together and held them upright, pinching a sheet of yellow talisman paper between them. My other three fingers curled inward against my palm.

I closed my eyes and murmured an incantation.

A moment later, I abruptly opened my eyes and intoned,

“Wang Xinren, wandering soul, return! Wang Xinren, wandering soul, return! Hear my voice, heed my talisman. Let yin and yang connect, with this as your guide!”

As the words left my mouth, the talisman paper between my fingers ignited with a whoosh.

I withdrew my fingers, while the talisman remained suspended motionless in midair, burning slowly.

Curls of bluish smoke rose from it as ashes fell to the floor.

Before long, more than half the talisman had burned…

Hm?

I frowned, sensing that something was not quite right.

“What’s going on? Wang Xinren’s soul still hasn’t heard my summons and appeared? That shouldn’t be possible… He only died recently, so his soul must be relatively weak. It shouldn’t be able to resist the power of my soul-summoning talisman arts.”

“Logically, with my current cultivation, summoning the soul of someone newly dead should succeed after a third of the talisman burns. Even for someone with a special fate and an innately powerful soul, half should certainly be enough. But now, more than half has already burned…”

At last, the entire sheet of talisman paper finished burning.

It all turned to ash and drifted onto the dormitory floor.

Wang Xinren’s soul still did not appear!

The room was completely silent.

My frown deepened.

This abnormal situation inexplicably stirred a faint unease within me.

Wang Dachun and Zeng Jin saw that the talisman had burned away. After waiting a little longer, the ghost still had not appeared. Neither of them dared speak rashly. They merely looked at me questioningly.

I murmured softly to myself,

“Strange! Why did the soul summoning fail? That makes no sense…”

Hearing this, Wang Dachun and Zeng Jin came closer.

“Boss, does Wang Xinren refuse to obey you and come out to meet us?”

I shook my head.

“That’s not how it works. Soul-summoning talisman arts are magical techniques powered by a cultivator’s qi–which you can understand simply as magical power–and performed together with talisman paper and incantations. They carry a degree of compulsion. He can’t simply refuse to come because he doesn’t want to!”