Chapter 176
Chapter 176
I stared at my grandmother. In her horrifying state, she looked like a walking vessel filled with incense ash.
And that vessel had been sealed, only for cracks to form in it.
What the hell was going on?
My grandmother continued shuffling after me on her knees, humbling herself as she never had before. “Tongtong, Grandma was wrong. I shouldn’t have treated you that way. You’re not the Jinx. You’re the Jiang Family’s lucky star. No-you’re the savior of all Tafeng Village. You’re the only one who can save us.”
As my grandmother begged for help, the other villagers suddenly seemed to awaken from a dream. Every last one of them turned toward me in unison.
Their bowed heads tilted up slightly, and pair after pair of eyes fixed on me. Their mouths were stuffed with incense ash, leaving some of them unable to speak at all.
My gaze swept back and forth across the crowd. Nearly every villager from Tafeng Village whom I recognized was there.
Only one person was missing-my younger sister, Xin’er.
That’s right.
Only four members of the Jiang Family had been kneeling there together just now: my grandmother, my parents, and my little brother.
Where was Xin’er?
Could she… already be dead?
“Tongtong, save us! Please, save us!”
“We were blind before. We misjudged you. We’ll change.”
“Tongtong, even if you won’t save the adults, please save these children! They’re still so young. They don’t understand anything, and they’ve never hurt you. Please, have mercy and save them!”
“…”
Everyone was begging me.
They repented and sobbed as incense ash continually sprayed from their mouths and the cracks covering their bodies. Before long, billowing white smoke filled the air around us.
The sight reminded me of when white smoke had sealed off Tafeng Village before.
No.
This wasn’t normal.
What had happened to make them suddenly see the error of their ways?
And what did they expect me to do to save them?
Countless possibilities flashed through my mind.
As they continued begging and kowtowing to me, the force of their movements made the cracks in their skin spread wider and wider. They looked ready to burst apart at any moment.
White smoke enveloped the area, gradually obscuring everything beyond the crowd.
If this continued, I might not even be able to launch a distress signal.
With that thought, I began inching backward without drawing attention, planning to retreat to the edge of the smoke before turning and running.
But just then, a child’s clear voice rang out. “Sister Tongtong, you’re here! Here, have some candy.”
I looked back and saw Xin’er standing in front of the Qilin Statue.
She was twelve years old now and had grown much taller. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, and she held out one hand with a piece of candy resting in her palm.
She stared at me, and I stared back, unable to calm the turmoil in my heart.
Xin’er’s body was also covered in cracks, and her mouth was stuffed with incense ash.
In fact, she was in even worse condition than the other villagers.
She looked like a porcelain doll that had been shattered and then glued back together.
Dangerous. Fragile.
The moment she appeared, the villagers who had been desperately begging me for help abruptly went lifeless again. They bowed their heads and knelt there, just as they had when I first arrived.
“Sister Tongtong, have some candy.”
Xin’er kept smiling at me as though she couldn’t see the crowd kneeling all around me. She remained fixated on luring me over with the piece of candy in her hand.
I knew perfectly well that I couldn’t take that candy, much less eat it.
It was a trap.
But if I refused to walk into it, why had I come up here in the first place?
If I couldn’t take this step, I would never tear away the veil of mystery shrouding Qilin Temple.
I stood rooted to the spot, unable to advance or retreat.
“Have some candy, miss.”
Xin’er suddenly took a step forward.
With that single step, every scrap of flesh in her body seemed to tremble and rearrange itself. Incense ash streamed off her in sheets, making for a horrifying sight.
“Have some candy, miss. Hurry and eat it!”
Xin’er walked toward me one step at a time, repeating the words “have some candy” over and over.
She… was no longer a normal twelve-year-old girl.
She had become a puppet of Qilin Temple.
I gritted my teeth, formed a hand seal, and shouted, “Fengwu, come forth!”
The Longbow settled firmly into my left hand. Raising my right, I tore the Copper Coin from around my neck and set it against the bowstring.
At first, I aimed the Longbow at Xin’er. As if sensing something, she abruptly stopped in her tracks.
But my aim slowly shifted past her shoulder toward the Qilin Statue behind her.
I didn’t dare go forward and take Xin’er’s candy, but I could test the waters by attacking the Qilin Statue first and see what consequences that triggered.
Whoosh!
The instant the Copper Coin shot forward, Xin’er suddenly raised a hand to catch it.
But she was a step too slow. The Copper Coin grazed her fingertips and struck the Qilin Statue squarely in the chest. It swiftly unfurled, Red Thread winding around the Qilin Statue as one Copper Coin after another spread along it.
The Qilin Statue was already enormous. Beneath its feet lay a massive golden phoenix, to say nothing of the hundred children carried on its back…
Golden copper filaments linked the strands of Red Thread as the web continued to spread. It was a spectacular sight.
Just as the Copper Coin formation was about to cover the Qilin Statue’s entire body, a cloud of black mist suddenly burst from within it. Every strand of Red Thread snapped, and the Copper Coin formation broke apart, scattering all over the floor.
The instant the black mist erupted, I could have sworn the hundred children on the qilin’s back moved.
How was that possible?!
A moment later, the original Copper Coin I had fired returned to my hand.
A chill crept through me. Even the Copper Coin Net couldn’t withstand the black mist from the Qilin Statue. Just how much power was contained inside it?
Refusing to believe it was invincible, I set the Copper Coin against the bowstring again.
This time, I aimed at the eye of one of the child sculptures among the hundred on the Qilin Statue’s back.
If Qilin Bestows Children was a scam, then the key to tearing an opening in this scheme had to lie with those hundred children.
Whoosh!
The Copper Coin flew swiftly and true, striking the left eye of the child sculpture I had targeted.
The left eye instantly cracked, shedding golden dust. Moments later, it melted into a puddle of black water and vanished!
At almost the exact same moment, two of the villagers who had been kneeling quietly suddenly collapsed. Blood poured from every orifice, spraying incense ash in all directions.
They… were dead!
They had died without the slightest warning.
Both were elderly-one over seventy, the other nearly sixty. They lay on the floor with their eyes bulging, blood streaming endlessly from their faces.
It was a gruesome, terrifying sight.
I hadn’t expected that shot to trigger such a chain reaction.
Why had the villagers died when I was the one who had shot the child sculpture…?