Chapter 165

Chapter 165

Back then, Liu Junyan had struck a deal with the Copper-Coin Figure and gone to Mount Song to trace his past life. Could that journey have been part of the deal?

If the Copper-Coin Figure truly came from Mount Song, would Liu Junyan’s visit there subtly alter his future?

I couldn’t help recalling how he looked whenever he meditated, chanted sutras, and turned the Prayer Beads through his fingers.

That gradual, almost imperceptible change in him… filled me with an inexplicable sense of unease.

Li Qingying gently patted my shoulder and reassured me, “Xiao Jiu, don’t worry. Seventh Master will be back soon.”

I smiled at her and said I was fine, telling her not to worry about me.

After we had all washed up, the food I’d ordered arrived.

Once we’d eaten our fill, our exhaustion caught up with us. We hadn’t eaten or slept well in the small town these past few days, and now that we were back, all we wanted was to lie down and get some proper rest.

I fell asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow.

I had no idea how long I’d been asleep when I began to dream.

Once again, I dreamed of the Qilin Temple behind Tafeng Village. I dreamed that I was shoved into the bottom of a pit, where countless ghostly hands tore at me while something pressed down hard on my back… The nightmare was so hopeless and suffocating that I couldn’t breathe.

Not only could I not breathe, but my entire body hurt, especially my cheek and arm… I struggled desperately, only to see burn marks of all sizes appearing across my body and slowly spreading. Firelight seemed to glow beneath them… No!

I jolted awake and sat bolt upright, clutching the lower part of my right cheek. The pain there went straight to the bone.

As I raised my arm, something brushed against the inside of my left arm, sending another stab of pain through me.

What was going on?

Had that really not been a dream?

I switched on the light and pulled up my pajama sleeve, exposing the inside of my left arm.

There had been a burn mark there before. Later, Liu Junyan had sealed it with a Scale, and it hadn’t caused any trouble for days.

But now, the Golden Scale had vanished, and the burn mark was beginning to flare up again.

I immediately got out of bed and went to the vanity. Turning the right side of my face toward the mirror, I saw the bloodred word ‘Slave’ carved prominently into my cheek.

How could this be?!

The battle on Niuhu Mountain had been dangerous, but Liu Junyan and Hui Moqiong had led the charge, with Hu Yulin helping as well. Aside from my right hand being pierced through by a sharp blade, I hadn’t suffered any serious injuries.

So why could even that Scale no longer suppress the burn mark?

I sat at the vanity for a long time, carefully going over every detail of what had happened on Niuhu Mountain, especially my encounter with Feng Lishu.

But no matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t find a single clue.

After I’d punched Feng Lishu in the mouth last time, she’d been extremely cautious when we met again. She also had to pretend to be weak in front of Hu Yulin. Before her facade was exposed, she hadn’t even come near me.

But if Feng Lishu wasn’t responsible, then where else could the problem lie?

I looked at my right cheek again. The mark hadn’t been nearly this obvious before. A little concealer before I went out had been enough to hide it, but now there was no way to cover it up.

More importantly, judging by the burn mark on the inside of my left arm, the root of the problem lay within my body.

Concealer could only hide the symptoms, not cure the cause.

Once it progressed far enough, my cheek would probably ulcerate and ooze pus just like the burn mark on my arm, until it eventually rotted away completely.

Calm down!

Liu Junyan wasn’t here. I couldn’t afford to panic.

When the burn mark had first appeared on the inside of my left arm, something had gone wrong in Tafeng Village.

Now that the same thing was happening again, could there be another problem in Tafeng Village?

At that thought, I immediately got dressed and checked the time.

It was a little after four in the afternoon.

Night fell early in winter. If I left for Tafeng Village now, it would already be completely dark by the time I arrived.

Darkness might make it easier to act unseen, but Tafeng Village had always given me a terrible feeling, and even more dangers could be lurking there at night.
Maybe I should wait a little longer.

I could go take another look first thing tomorrow morning.

Afraid Li Qingying and the others would worry if they saw me like this, I stayed in my room all night.

A little after nine, Li Qingying knocked on my door. When she received no response, I heard her mutter, “Xiao Jiu must be exhausted. She’s been asleep for so long. I wonder if she’s hungry?”

At the crack of dawn the next morning, I left a note on the table in the living room of the Rear-facing Room, telling Li Qingying I was going out and would be back in the afternoon, so she shouldn’t wait for me for lunch.

I sped all the way there and reached the mountain road outside Tafeng Village at around eight.

After concealing my car in a secluded spot, I prepared to enter the village on foot and draw as little attention from the villagers as possible.

The people of Tafeng Village had been hostile toward me from the moment I was born.

I was only here to confirm a few suspicions, not to cause trouble.

But before I even entered the village, I saw Tafeng Village shrouded in white mist from a distance.

No. It looked like mist, but it wasn’t.

As soon as I drew closer, the heavy scent of burning incense hit me.

It wasn’t mist. It was smoke.

Yet even if the entire village had been burning incense towers for a festival, there shouldn’t have been enough white smoke to blanket the whole place like this.

What had happened to Tafeng Village?

When I reached the village entrance and tried to continue inside, I encountered a powerful barrier blocking my path. I couldn’t get through at all.

Was this… some kind of ward?

Who had put it up?

Why had they trapped the entirety of Tafeng Village and all its residents inside?

How could the villagers stand living amid such dense smoke?

Unable to enter through the village gate, I tried going around.

But whether I took the main road or the smaller paths, the result was the same. I couldn’t get in.

I didn’t dare force my way through.

I had always known that Tafeng Village was a land mine buried deep within my life. The moment I stepped on it, it would only be a matter of time before it blew me to pieces.

But I hadn’t expected things to change so quickly.

No wonder something had happened to my body.

I quietly retreated to my car and sat there for a while. No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t make sense of what I had just seen, so I had no choice but to turn the car around and head back.

The moment I returned to the Pawnshop, Li Qingying noticed the ‘Slave’ mark on my face.

It was impossible to miss. The mark was bloodred, so vivid it looked ready to drip blood.

It had also been burning hot the entire time.

Li Qingying paced around me in a panic. “What are we going to do? Seventh Master isn’t here. Xiao Jiu, what are we supposed to do about your face?”

She looked ready to cry. “How about… I go to the Bai Family and ask for help? That damn Bai Jingmo hasn’t shown his face in so long. Is he dead or something?”

Li Qingying despised Bai Jingmo, yet for my sake, she was actually considering going to the Bai Family to beg him to come and treat me.

I reached out and took her hand. “Sister Qingying, don’t worry. This isn’t an illness. Even if Bai Jingmo came, he probably wouldn’t be able to cure it. It might hurt right now, but it isn’t life-threatening. I’m hungry. How about we make lunch first?”

I had only grabbed a quick bite during the night, and I hadn’t had so much as a drop of water all morning. By now, I truly was starving and parched.

Li Qingying agonized over it for quite a while before finally going to make lunch.

Not long after she left, Hui Moqiong wandered over from the Main Courtyard, rubbing his bleary eyes.

The moment he passed me, he spotted the mark on my cheek.

It was so conspicuous that anyone who wasn’t blind would have noticed it.

Hui Moqiong was tall, so he bent at the waist and tilted his head, staring at my cheek for a long moment.

Then, out of nowhere, he said, “Xiao Jiu’er, you were gone for half the day just to get a tattoo? Why would you tattoo such an unlucky word on your face for no reason?”