Chapter 133
Chapter 133
The wall-mounted Buddhist shrine in the West Room contained dozens of offering niches. If all the beings once enshrined there returned without incident and answered my summons, I could hardly imagine what a spectacular sight it would be.
If that day ever came, wherever I went, a hundred would answer my call.
And it seemed such a glorious era had once existed here in the Pawnshop.
What kind of upheaval had occurred back then to destroy the statues and spirit tablets enshrined in those niches — and place the entire West Room under a Seal?
Why had Bai Xian’er, who had once barely managed to squeeze into a corner of one of those niches, ended up where she was today?
The Liu Junyan of the past had known as little about all this as I did.
So how much did he know now?
Liu Junyan might appear unchanged, but in truth, he was no longer the man he had once been.
Even during our intimacy just now… I had sensed the changes in his body.
I became lost in thought. It wasn’t until Liu Junyan’s fingers brushed my right cheek, stroking the red mark low on my cheek, that I abruptly came back to myself.
“What’s this?”
As Liu Junyan spoke, a thread of True Qi gathered at his fingertips.
As the True Qi flowed into me, my right cheek gradually grew warmer, and the word ‘Slave’ emerged clearly once again.
Liu Junyan stared at it, his amber slit pupils contracting. His gaze was complicated, as if he were remembering something and yet burning with anger at the same time.
Soon, he seemed to realize something else. A trace of sorrow and reluctance to part entered his eyes. “No wonder…”
I silently waited for him to continue, but those were the only two words Liu Junyan said.
Yet those two words alone revealed a great deal. I asked, “Do you know where this word came from?”
Liu Junyan shook his head. “Xiao Jiu, do you remember that painting?”
I froze for a moment, then realized he meant the painting Tang Xun had given me.
It was still hidden in the secret compartment of my wardrobe. The painting depicted a girl wearing half of a golden mask… A mask?
I touched the word ‘Slave’ on my cheek and abruptly understood.
So the half-mask of gold had existed to hide this word?
That also explained why Ah Li had known Liu Junyan and Hu Yulin for so many years but never revealed her real name, allowing everyone to call her only Ah Li.
The “Li” in Ah Li hadn’t come from Feng Lishu. It had come from… Linu.
Linu was a name of humiliation — a pain Ah Li could never bring herself to speak of.
“A flaw cannot diminish the beauty of jade.” Liu Junyan suddenly lowered his head and pressed a gentle kiss to the word. “Xiao Jiu, no matter what you become, you will always be the one I love most, the one no one can ever replace.”
He kissed my cheek with almost reverent tenderness, trying to give me all the reassurance I needed.
But I merely smiled, perfectly at ease.
Perhaps when I first discovered the word ‘Slave’, I had felt both confused and panicked. But now, I was more concerned with how I could keep Feng Lishu from controlling me the next time we met.
I couldn’t exactly smash her mouth in every time I saw her, could I?
I had learned my lesson. Feng Lishu had underestimated me this time, giving me an opening to exploit. But what about next time?
With that thought, I asked Liu Junyan, “Is there any way to break a One-Word Incantation or Spirit Speech?”
I told Liu Junyan in detail how Feng Lishu had controlled me this time.
After he finished listening, his arm tightened around my shoulders. “First, what Feng Lishu used on you was most likely not simple Spirit Speech or a One-Word Incantation. Second, her control over you is rooted in this word ‘Slave’. Unless the word is completely erased, or… unless she dies, that control will probably remain.”
Punching Feng Lishu in the mouth and splitting her lip had only interrupted her spell temporarily. The moment she formed the hand seal again, I would fall under her control once more.
In theory, as long as Feng Lishu could form the seal quickly enough, I would never truly be able to escape her clutches.
I gave a bitter laugh. “I suppose I should be grateful this control only works when we’re face-to-face. Otherwise, if she wanted, I’d never know another moment of peace.”
I didn’t foolishly ask Liu Junyan how I could erase the ‘Slave’ mark.
If there had been any way to do it, Ah Li would have done so back then. She wouldn’t have waited until now.
The rain continued to fall. Curled up in Liu Junyan’s arms, I gradually drifted off to sleep.
My sleep was restless at first because Liu Junyan kept kissing me every so often.
The corners of my eyes, my cheeks… He even lifted my hand to his lips and brushed gentle kisses against it.
He must have been lost in thought, right?
As I slowly sank into a deep sleep, I thought I heard him murmur in my ear, “There will be a way, Xiao Jiu. I won’t let you suffer the same fate as you did in your past life.”
Rainy winter days were perfect for sleeping.
I slept so deeply that I completely lost track of time. When I finally woke, the room was pitch-black.
Liu Junyan was no longer beside me. I lay there in a daze beneath the covers for a while before reaching out to turn on the light. One glance at my phone showed that it was already past five in the evening.
My stomach was growling with hunger, so I got up, changed, and headed to the kitchen in search of food.
A meal had been left warming in the pot. Li Qingying had already eaten and was in her room talking to Jin Wuya on the phone.
Curious, I carried my bowl over and listened for a moment. It turned out that she had run out of oil for maintaining the Long Whip and was asking if Jin Wuya knew where she could get more.
Jin Wuya said Deep Sea Whale Oil of the same quality as the batch he’d given her last time was incredibly rare. He had none left, but he might be able to help her find a decent substitute.
They chatted a little longer before Jin Wuya invited Li Qingying to visit the Ghost Market with him on the fifteenth and see if they got lucky.
Li Qingying turned to me. “Xiao Jiu, are you going to the Ghost Market on the fifteenth?”
“The fifteenth is the day after tomorrow, and I still have a lot of things to sort out, so I’ll pass,” I said. “You can go with Boss Jin. Our Pawnshop is going to open its doors to the Realms of Yin and Yang. We may start taking in far more things, and far more sinister ones at that. It won’t hurt to broaden your horizons with Boss Jin.”
Li Qingying nodded.
Hearing my voice over the phone, Jin Wuya exclaimed excitedly, “Shopkeeper Xiao Jiu, word’s already gotten around that the Presiding Deity of Wufu Town Pawnshop has returned. Is it true? Who is the Presiding Deity?”
What?
The question left both Li Qingying and me stumped.
How had the rumors outside changed so much in the time it took me to have a nap?
I was about to say that no Presiding Deity had returned when I suddenly remembered the Copper-Coin Figure occupying the central position on the shrine in the West Room. I froze.
Could the rumors about the Presiding Deity’s return be referring to that Copper-Coin Figure?
Liu Junyan had struck a deal with the Copper-Coin Figure and undergone an Awakening. But what exactly had that Awakening unlocked? Could it have been… Godhood?
No, that couldn’t be right.
How could a tiny place like Wufu Town Pawnshop possibly support a god?
The beings enshrined in the shrine’s niches were nothing more than animal immortals. At best, they could only be categorized as Spirit Creature, couldn’t they?
Especially the Copper-Coin Figure in the central position. Although it wore a monk’s robe and held Prayer Beads, there wasn’t the slightest trace of divinity about it.
The feeling it gave me was more like… an evil cultivator…