Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I was jolted awake in the middle of the night by the sound of cats scratching at the door.

Three cats were meowing outside the courtyard gate simultaneously, their cries urgent and fierce, as if something terrible had happened. I threw on a coat and ran out. The moment I pulled the door open, I caught the faint, metallic scent of rust.

No, that wasn’t right.

The smell was more like scorched incense ash mixed into damp earth after a rainstorm.

Moonlight illuminated the area beneath the Torii. At first glance, I only saw someone slumped against a stone pillar, sliding toward the ground. As I took another step closer, my feet froze.

It was Li Jichuan.

His face was terrifyingly pale. His right hand was pressed firmly against his left shoulder, but the liquid seeping through his fingers wasn’t red-it was a dark, shimmering gold.

My mind went blank for a second. “What happened to you?”

He opened his eyes and looked at me, appearing to struggle just to focus his gaze.

“Don’t call an ambulance.”

I almost laughed out of sheer frustration. “You’re literally bleeding gold. If I don’t call an ambulance, who am I supposed to call? The God of Wealth?”

He actually seemed to consider this seriously for a moment. “Even the God of Wealth can’t handle this.”

Thunder rumbled again.

This time I heard it clearly. The thunder wasn’t exploding in the sky; it was rolling back and forth directly over the shrine, as if muffled by some invisible barrier. The Ema in the courtyard began to grow hot, burning as if it were about to catch fire.

Li Jichuan looked up at the sky, his expression showing clear annoyance for the first time.

“They found this place.”

“Who?”

“The people from above.”

As soon as he finished speaking, his hand went limp, and he collapsed forward.

I didn’t have time for more questions. I dragged and hauled him into the side wing of the house. Fortunately, Grandma used to say that a shrine was the one place that never lacked emergency supplies. Salt, rice, talismans, mugwort-we had a better stock of those than we did instant noodles.

I pressed him down onto the tatami mat and tore open his shirt to examine the wound.

It didn’t look like a blade wound; it looked more like a bolt of lightning had pierced straight through his shoulder. Faint golden threads were still shimmering inside the flesh.

My scalp tingled with dread, but my hands were steadier than my brain.

Grandma had taught me that when dealing with a wound of unknown origin, you first press a talisman over it, then sprinkle salt, and finally seal it with incense ash.

I followed her instructions.

When the first talisman slapped onto him, Li Jichuan let out a muffled groan, his brow furrowing deeply. I thought I had hurt him, but a second later, that seeping golden light was actually suppressed by the paper talisman.

My hand paused.

“It actually works?”

His eyelashes fluttered, and his voice was low and raspy. “The things from your Jiang Family… are the most effective against deities.”

I snapped my head up.

“What did you say?”

He didn’t answer; he clearly had no strength left.

I gritted my teeth and finished the remaining steps. By the time the wound was finally suppressed, the rolling thunder in the distance gradually dispersed.

Before Li Jichuan drifted into unconsciousness, his fingers instinctively caught the edge of my sleeve.

The movement was very light.

As if he were afraid I would throw him out.

I looked at that hand with its well-defined knuckles and remained silent for a long time. In the end, I resigned myself to fate and covered him with a blanket.

As dawn approached, he woke up once.

I was dozing off beside him when I suddenly heard a very soft “I’m sorry.”

I opened my eyes and saw that he had propped himself up. His complexion was still poor, but his eyes had regained that calm composure, as if the person who had nearly died in my courtyard last night wasn’t him.

“You’d better give me an explanation.” I thudded a water glass down onto the table. “Ordinary people don’t bleed golden blood.”

He looked down at the glass. After a few seconds, he said, “In the past, I indeed wasn’t an ordinary person.”

“In the past?”

“I’m still not exactly one now.”

I took a deep breath. “Speak plain English.”

He looked up at me. His eyes still carried a trace of illness, which actually made them look quite peaceful.

“I am a deity who no longer wishes to be a deity.”

If anyone else had said that, I would have questioned their mental state. But he had just bled gold in front of me, and lightning had literally been chasing him down.

I had no choice but to swallow my insults and ask a more practical question.

“Then why did you come to my shrine to make that wish?”

“Because this was the only place still open.”

He paused, then added another sentence.

“And you wrote: ‘Lord Deity, please open for business.'”

My ears flushed hot.

I had written those words during the day, then felt too embarrassed and tucked them away in a corner of the chalkboard. The writing was so small even the cats couldn’t be bothered to look at it. Yet he had seen it.

I looked away and cleared my throat. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m responsible for being ‘open for business,’ not for harboring fugitives.”

“I am not a fugitive.”

“Someone who gets blasted by lightning like that doesn’t get to be picky about vocabulary.”

He looked at me and, surprisingly, didn’t argue.

In the end, I was the one who gave in first.

“Fine.” I shoved a broom into his hand. “You’ll stay in the side wing until your injury heals. You’ll pay for your meals. If you don’t have money, you’ll work to pay off the debt. Also, from today on, you are the sole believer of Qiyun Shrine, and you’ll double as the handyman.”

Li Jichuan looked down at the broom. After a long silence, he whispered, “Okay.”

I thought that was the end of it.

To my surprise, when I pushed the door open the next morning, I saw that deity-the one who had almost been taken out by the heavens-solemnly sweeping fallen leaves in the courtyard.