Chapter 85
Chapter 85
From Aunt Xu’s rambling account, Qin Ying pieced together what had happened.
When it came down to it, the whole thing was one enormous misunderstanding caused by a complete failure to communicate.
In this unrelenting heat, Zhang Lang had been wearing a long trench coat that looked wildly out of place against both the weather and the streets of the Old City.
When he tried to go around to Qin Ying’s back courtyard to take a look, Aunt Xu caught him red-handed.
More than a decade ago, the Old City District had been notorious as a drug den, crawling with addicts and small-time dealers. With annual crackdowns on gangs and crime, every neighbor on the block had learned to stay on high alert.
Zhang Lang was pale and gaunt. In Aunt Xu’s eyes, he looked exactly like a junkie.
The moment she saw him heading toward the back alley, alarm bells went off in her head. She rushed up, grabbed Zhang Lang by the collar, dragged him out onto the street, and started shouting.
And Zhang Lang was the kind of man who couldn’t squeeze out a sentence even if you beat him with three sticks. That was how the scene from earlier had happened.
He had been escorted straight to the station for a little “tea” by all sorts of enthusiastic, public-spirited neighbors.
Aunt Xu even boasted, “That boy was just like a mute. One look and I knew he was up to no good.”
At the end, she reminded Qin Ying, “You live alone. You need to be careful.”
Qin Ying had only listened the entire time. Now, she finally gave a soft nod. “Mm.”
“Aunt Xu, go on and cook. I’ll head out first.”
Aunt Xu wiped her hands on her apron and moved to see her off. Just before Qin Ying stepped out the door, she suddenly asked, “Oh, right, Aunt Xu. Who did you say told you there was a stranger on Old Street?”
The question came so abruptly that Aunt Xu answered on instinct. “Just some young man passing by. Seemed like a tourist here for fun.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Aunt Xu herself froze.
A strange tourist had told her there was a stranger on the street?
Somehow, that did not seem right.
Qin Ying gave an “oh,” then asked, “A young man? Was he tall and handsome?”
Qin Ying’s question was skillfully phrased. Under her guidance, Aunt Xu forgot that faint sense of wrongness, and her love of gossip flared up. She spared no effort in describing the man’s appearance.
“He was handsome. Fair-skinned and tall.” Aunt Xu raised her hand high to indicate his height.
“About the same age as you. Wearing an all-white tracksuit, carrying a brown bag. All name brands!”
“He had a smile on his face the whole time, and he spoke so politely too.”
It was precisely because the person had looked like that that Aunt Xu had subconsciously trusted him.
Qin Ying silently committed the information to memory and teased, “See? If he hadn’t been handsome, you wouldn’t have believed him so easily.”
Aunt Xu huffed and made as if to hit her. “You wretched girl, teasing me now, are you?”
Qin Ying dodged away with a beaming smile and went straight out the door, heading home.
The instant the door closed behind her, the smile vanished from Qin Ying’s face.
The other party understood Zong Li and Zhang Lang far too well.
He knew exactly what weakness lay in Zhang Lang’s uselessly timid personality.
This was a warning shot.
Qin Ying gripped her phone and checked the flour she had sprinkled along the windows and beneath the cracks of every door before going out.
Anywhere the Ghost-Shadow Vine passed, it would leave behind a gray powder. If anything had entered her house, it would have left traces.
She inspected everything carefully and found that all the flour she had scattered remained undisturbed.
When she checked the back courtyard, Qin Ying found an extremely small amount of Ghost-Shadow Vine Powder on the courtyard wall.
It was not that the other party had not tried to enter her house while she was away. Rather… something had blocked them.
A thought stirred in Qin Ying’s mind, and she naturally thought of the Dragon Bone under her bed.
Could it also have some deterrent effect on the Ghost-Shadow Vine?
She was not sure, but she took a few charred, fine scales from the shoebox and placed them in hidden corners of the house.
Then she buried two more pieces each in the front and back gardens.
The Dragon Bone she had found in the storage room had not been very large to begin with, and the tiny scales it had shed were only the size of grains of rice.
Once Qin Ying tucked them into cracks and along the base of the walls, even she might not be able to find them again.
After finishing all that, she washed her hands and went home.
Sitting at her desk, she held her phone and thought it over carefully.
Whether it was the Mastermind setting up such an arrogant, large-scale scene and still escaping pursuit, or his understanding of Zhang Lang and the other man…
Every bit of it proved that neither the police nor the Cultural Preservation Bureau could be relied on. They leaked like sieves.
She had to depend on herself.
The string of incidents had given Qin Ying a pounding headache.
The effects of the Jiarong Grass she had eaten were also about to wear off. She yawned.
She went to the wardrobe and took out the small bowl Han Lie was lying in, wanting to check on his condition.
One look, and Qin Ying immediately frowned.
Han Lie… was even more burnt-looking than before.
Originally, he had only been half charred, but now, to the naked eye, most of his body was already wrapped in a blackened shell.
Qin Ying carefully touched Han Lie with a cotton swab and felt that the black shell covering him didn’t quite resemble a burn scab.
It was more like… the new, fine scales of a reptile.
She called his name twice, but Han Lie, whose half face was now covered in a layer of black shell, kept his eyes tightly shut and showed no reaction at all.
Fortunately, his breathing was steady and strong. He didn’t seem like he was in immediate danger.
Qin Ying had no good way to help him for the time being, so she could only change out the medical cotton for fresh pieces and apply a wet compress using Immortal Grass juice.
In the end, Han Lie never got to eat the ribs Qin Ying had stewed.
Inside the damp cotton wad, he slept unconscious for a full day and night.
That black carapace gradually crept over him, wrapping him completely.
Qin Ying didn’t know what he would ultimately become, or whether he would still be human after he woke up.
She observed him coldly for a long while, then put Han Lie into the same Pressure Cooker from before.
That night, Qin Ying slept very soundly.
When she checked on Han Lie in the morning, she found that he was already entirely encased in that carapace, like an egg.
Qin Ying reached out and touched it lightly. The plates were still on the soft side, hot and scalding.
With her sensitive fingertips, she could clearly feel the rise and fall of breathing inside the shell.
As long as he was alive, that was enough.
Qin Ying weighed down the Pressure Cooker with two thick books, leaving two narrow air vents.
After that, Qin Ying washed up and went to the Cultural Preservation Institute.
It wasn’t that she loved her job so much she absolutely had to wander around at such a critical moment.
It was just that someone had their eye on her. If she kept turtling up at home, she would be far too passive.
Qin Ying had been suspicious by nature since childhood. She couldn’t stand the suffocating feeling of being watched like this.
After greeting the old gatekeeper at the entrance of the Cultural Center, Qin Ying headed all the way into the Third Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute.
She had thought that at this hour, everyone at the Third Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute would definitely be Slacking Off and sleeping in.
To her surprise, the moment she entered, she saw the space beneath the large locust tree in the courtyard piled high with all kinds of paper offerings.
Paper clothes for men and women, paper shoes, paper luxury cars, and paper villas were just the basics.
Qin Ying even saw a dozen paper Hermès Birkin Bag offerings set on top of a paper mahjong machine.
“Friends who like these can place your orders now. Quantities are limited, first come, first served.”
“What? Fortune-telling by birth characters? That service is suspended during the Zhongyuan Festival!”
Old Miao had set up a long folding table and propped up his phone for a livestream.
He had one sales pitch after another. Wen Hao stayed off camera, helping out at the side.
On the table in front of Old Miao, Qin Ying saw paper cat treats, paper canned cat food, and paper dog food.
Their range of services could only be called extremely broad.
Qin Ying stood expressionless at the entrance.
From everything that had happened before, she had been able to tell that the Cultural Preservation Bureau, from top to bottom, seemed somewhat unreliable.
But looking at it now, she realized she had still been too conservative.
Yin Minmin, wearing a little floral headscarf, came out of the restroom shaking water from her hands.
Her face lit up, and she silently mouthed to Qin Ying: Sister Ying, what brings you here?