Chapter 89
Chapter 89
What should she do?
Looking at the tiny thing before her with those watery eyes, those four words kept scrolling through Qin Ying’s mind like a ticker.
A moment later, she took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Her expression had already returned to normal.
Old Miao and Dean Tan were still downstairs. She had to deal with this as quickly as possible.
The tiny Han Lie had both elbows propped on the edge of the shoebox. While Qin Ying thought in silence, her face completely blank, the little stars in his eyes gradually dimmed.
His blue tail, which had been swaying with anticipation, drooped listlessly as well.
He hopped back into the shoebox and stood still.
The current Han Lie clearly wasn’t working with much intelligence.
With his hands clasped behind his back, he lowered his head and waited for Qin Ying to scold him.
Qin Ying, whose only thought was to smooth things over and hide her little secret, didn’t notice the change in his mood at all. She quickly got to her feet and took the Pressure Cooker out of the wardrobe.
Pointing at the little porcelain bowl inside it, she tried saying to Han Lie in the shoebox, “Back in.”
At the sound of her voice, the tip of Han Lie’s drooping tail quietly began to sway again.
He looked reluctantly at the Dragon Bone he had gnawed a notch into, then lifted his head to check Qin Ying’s expression.
Qin Ying looked at him, assessing how dangerous he was at present.
No matter how small he was, he was still a nonhuman creature she had never encountered before. The possibility of being killed by him wasn’t absolutely zero.
There was never any harm in being careful.
Just as she was observing whether Han Lie would actually obey her order, the Han Lie in the shoebox crouched down lightly, bent his knees, and sprang straight into the Pressure Cooker in Qin Ying’s hands.
If he had been adult-sized, the leap probably would have looked very cool. At his current size, however, he looked like a bug launching itself at her face.
Qin Ying hadn’t expected him to jump to such a ridiculous height, and her hand jerked in fright.
After jumping into the Pressure Cooker, Han Lie obediently climbed back into the little porcelain bowl he used as a bed. He tugged the dried ball of cotton over his scale-covered lower abdomen.
With both hands resting on his knees, he sat primly in the bowl. Even if Qin Ying immediately put him on the stove to stew, he clearly would not resist in the slightest.
Qin Ying didn’t even notice the smile spreading across her own face. She wasn’t sure if it was because Han Lie was so obedient, or because his movements at this size were a little cute.
Perhaps both.
That tiny bit of emotion was instantly caught by Han Lie.
The blue-maned tail behind him slowly lifted and swished back and forth.
A foolishly sweet smile appeared on his still-burned face as well.
Then Qin Ying stuffed something pale and white beside him.
Her soft fingertip still carried the plastic smell of dishwashing gloves as she tapped him very lightly on the head. “Stay here and behave. You’re not allowed to go anywhere.”
Han Lie hugged the piece of Dragon Bone taller than himself and froze completely.
By the time he came back to his senses and hurriedly nodded, Qin Ying was no longer looking at him. She put the Pressure Cooker back into the wardrobe and covered it with several books.
Old Miao’s voice came from downstairs. “Qin Ying, what’s going on?”
Qin Ying had said she was coming up to check on her pet, but there had been no sound from her for a while. Old Miao was worried she had been hit by some hidden trick.
“Nothing!” Qin Ying called back as she shut the wardrobe door.
She took the bottle of Xuncao Flower spray and quickly sprayed a little into every corner of her home.
The stuff supposedly made cockroaches flee three hundred meters away as soon as it was sprayed, and its scent spread throughout Qin Ying’s house.
But forget cockroaches-she didn’t even see a single spider or millipede.
Qin Ying couldn’t help giving the bottle in her hand a doubtful look. In her heart, the Cultural Preservation Bureau once again left the impression of being one big amateur operation.
When she went downstairs, Old Miao was holding a hose from the front yard and cleaning the bloodstains off the floor.
Dean Tan, old as he was, was moving two large boxes filled with insects into the car.
Seeing this, Qin Ying first returned the utterly useless spray to Old Miao, then went to help Dean Tan move things.
Old Miao looked at the two refrigerators in the front courtyard and circled them curiously. “Why did you buy two huge refrigerators?”
Without so much as blinking, Qin Ying replied, “I’m greedy and I like to eat. More fridges mean more food to stockpile.”
Old Miao was curious about everything-the kind of man who would taste sulfuric acid just to see whether it was salty or sweet. Hearing that, he pressed, “What are you stockpiling that you’d need-”
Dean Tan had known him for years. How could he not know the man’s lousy habits? He cut him off impatiently. “Plenty of celebrities have cold storage rooms at home. What’s so strange about this?”
“Let’s go. There’s still one more at the hospital.”
He was already irritated enough, running into this pile of trouble right before retirement.
Before Old Miao could say anything, the senior phone in his pocket rang.
The ringtone was loud, harsh, and grating.
Dean Tan and Qin Ying both looked over at him.
Old Miao ignored their stares completely. He answered the call, exchanged a few words, then turned solemnly to Qin Ying. “They caught someone on Zhang Lang and Zong Li’s end. It’s just…”
From Old Miao’s tone, Qin Ying could tell the situation was taking a bad turn, but she couldn’t exactly say she was disappointed.
The moment she discovered the Ghost-Shadow Vine trying to enter her house, a rough plan had already begun to form in Qin Ying’s mind.
Curiosity killed more than just cats. If the Ghost-Shadow Vine couldn’t get into Qin Ying’s home, she refused to believe it wouldn’t be curious.
If it had no chance to come in, Qin Ying would make one for it.
The result was acceptable enough. At least it had smoked out a whole nest of bugs.
The only thing she did not know was whether the mover, Lao Yu, was an accomplice.
Since she heard the Mastermind and Zhang Lang were both at the hospital, Qin Ying naturally had to go take a look.
Before leaving, she went upstairs under the pretense of checking on her pet and looked in on Han Lie.
Han Lie, now grown to the length of an index finger, was sitting in a pile of cotton and gnawing on the Dragon Bone. Qin Ying told him he was absolutely not allowed to run around on his own.
Only then did she get into Old Miao’s little van.
Qin Ying sat in the back seat and glanced at the biological safety transport boxes piled behind her.
“What are these things?” Qin Ying said with certainty. “Is the Mastermind so well-informed because of these little things?”
Qin Ying had seen those insects up close. The pair of human ears growing on them could not possibly be just for decoration.
Inside the rattling, clattering van that reeked of gasoline, Old Miao and Dean Tan exchanged a look.
Just as Qin Ying thought she was about to be brushed off with a line about not having clearance, Old Miao spoke.
“Qin Ying, you’re a Yunlan City local. You should have heard of the Little Godling, right?”
The Little Godling…
Qin Ying froze for a moment, then raised an eyebrow slightly.
The Little Godling and shamanic Gu were the two great urban legends of Yunlan City, famous enough to stand side by side.
Although the name Little Godling contained the word “god,” these creatures were actually evil things that caused trouble.
Their misdeeds ranged from kicking over candlesticks to burn down houses and deliberately hanging people with knotted ropes, all the way down to clawing at the butt cheeks of people relieving themselves in the wild.
Utterly wicked, afraid of nothing, and always making trouble whether the matter was big or small-that was the label firmly stuck to these things.
According to legend, if something like that latched onto you, you had to invite a shaman to exorcise it and perform rituals to avert disaster.
Every child who grew up in Yunlan had been frightened with the Little Godling by unscrupulous elders.
Qin Ying answered honestly, “My grandmother said it was all made up.”
But Old Miao shook his head. “Not entirely.”
Qin Ying’s expression shifted slightly. “You’re saying those insects are? Shouldn’t something like that be Gu?”
Old Miao turned up the volume of the van’s stereo a little and smiled. “Gu are far more vicious than these.”
“This kind of insect is one type of Little Godling.”
Through the rearview mirror, Qin Ying saw gravity on the visible half of Old Miao’s face, along with the weight of memory.
“These things only exist deep in the Cuiping National Nature Reserve on the western border of Yunlan City.”
At Qin Ying’s side, her fingers tightened one by one.
Of course she knew the famous Cuiping National Nature Reserve.
She had lived there with her parents until she was five years old.