Chapter 16

Chapter 16

That night, we burned the altar.

The moment the flames rose, those two headlights went out.

I hurled a burning fireball up onto the cliff and vaguely heard a dull thud.

Afterward, we took the raving Ren Meng down the mountain and delivered him to the police station.

As for that ritual and Red Cloud Village, we gave our statements, but none of us had any idea how the authorities would ultimately handle it.

Because afterward, the police gave us physical examinations.

They said we might have ingested some kind of toxic substance, and that what we’d experienced over those days might not have been real at all.

I was furious, but what could I do?

Had Xu Da and Xu Er really died for nothing?

Still, not long after that, I heard the mountain we’d gone to had been completely sealed off.

And Ren Meng vanished without a sound.

As for Dashun, after leaving that mountain, I found him without much trouble.

He’d been lying in a hospital for a week. They said it was food poisoning. He had no idea I’d been kidnapped.

Once I confirmed Dashun was safe, I drove Ba Wuyue and Yi Jingchen to the train station.

Zuo Hao had left on his own long before that.

On the road, none of us said much. Ba Wuyue was still wearing her sunglasses.

When we were almost at the station, I was the first to speak. “Do you still want to replace those eyes in the future?”

“I don’t know.”

Ba Wuyue looked a little dazed. Maybe it was only at the altar that she’d realized her hatred for that friend far outweighed her disgust toward those eyes.

She just couldn’t understand why her best friend would harm her.

“Those eyes never lied to you,” I reminded her softly.

The reason Ba Wuyue had mistaken Ren Meng for that friend was because of the influence of the goat’s blood.

But when she truly looked with her own eyes, Ren Meng was Ren Meng. Those eyes had shown her the truth.

“Maybe your friend wasn’t trying to hurt you. Those eyes might have been the only thing she had to give.”

When I saw Ba Wuyue off, she took off her sunglasses.

In the sunlight, those eyes of hers weren’t actually that frightening.

Just as Yi Jingchen was about to get out of the car, he suddenly turned to me and said, “Have you ever wondered why, out of all of us, Zuo Hao was the only one who was never affected by the goat’s blood from beginning to end?”

“And if you include my student, there weren’t seven of us at all. There were eight.”

I drove back to Red Cloud Village once more.

What I hadn’t expected was that, in just a few days, the place had turned into an empty village.

There was only one very luxurious sedan parked at the village entrance, looking for all the world as if it were waiting for me.

I jumped out of the car and walked over.

The window rolled down, revealing Zuo Hao’s face.

In that instant, I was almost certain that Zuo Hao was no ordinary person, and he sure as hell wasn’t some “guest” who’d gone there to attend the ritual.

He was with Peeping Heaven Pavilion. He was the one who’d led me there.

Peeping Heaven Pavilion was an evil organization that would do anything as long as you paid them.

This wasn’t the first time I’d gotten tangled up with them.

But it was the only time I’d come face-to-face with someone from Peeping Heaven Pavilion.

Zuo Hao looked at me with a faint smile. “You’ve ruined another of our revenue streams. But that’s fine. This place should have been abandoned long ago anyway.”

“What the hell are you people trying to do?!” I rushed over and grabbed Zuo Hao by the collar.

Zuo Hao’s withered left hand instantly pressed down on my shoulder.

“Long Changdong, if the Elder Council hadn’t given strict orders, we would have dealt with you long ago! This time, consider it a lesson.”

The shoulder he was pressing on suddenly sank, and then half my body went cold.

Zuo Hao curled the corner of his mouth at me. “The Yang Fire in your left shoulder has been extinguished. Let’s see how you keep throwing your weight around with all that fire in you now.”

“Screw your mother!”

I yanked half of Zuo Hao’s body out of the car and started pounding his face with my fists.

By the time his two bodyguards rushed out and dragged him away from me, his face no longer looked human, and every tooth in his mouth was ruined.

“Long Changdong, I’m going to kill you! Long Changdong-”

Zuo Hao could barely speak clearly anymore, but his bodyguards had a very clear grasp of the situation.

Even if all three of them came at me together, they still wouldn’t be my match.

So they decisively shoved Zuo Hao back into the car, floored the gas, and vanished in a cloud of dust.

When I got home, I contacted Ba Wuyue and Yi Jingchen again.

Ba Wuyue examined my shoulder carefully over video. “He’s right, Brother Long. Half of the Yang Fire in your body really has gone out. But your Yang Fire was stronger than most people’s to begin with, so it shouldn’t affect much. It’s just that if you run into anything yin-related again, you’ll have to be more careful.”

Yi Jingchen sent me a business card directly. “When you have time, go see her. She might have a solution.”

Yi Jingchen had given Xu Da this person’s contact information before too. Unfortunately, Xu Da never got the chance to go.

I looked closely at the business card-“Four-and-a-Half Blind Person Therapy, therapist Feng Yingjun.”

I froze for a second. Didn’t “four-and-a-half” usually refer to a coffin?

Why would anyone give a place a name like that?

The End