Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Our eyes met. Liu Junyan’s vertical pupils flickered, and he reached out his hands toward me.

I lunged forward, crashing into his embrace.

Liu Junyan swayed slightly, nearly losing his footing, yet he still caught me firmly.

Having survived the ordeal, my emotions finally collapsed, though I forced myself not to cry.

I knew that Liu Junyan had suffered far worse injuries than I had in order to save me.

He wanted to rescue me, but he was bound by some force within the Pawnshop and could not leave. Just by revealing a single White Tail, thunder and lightning had struck in immediate succession.

What was that?

Though I couldn’t be entirely certain, I wasn’t stupid. It was likely a form of Heavenly Punishment.

Liu Junyan had actually braved Heavenly Punishment to snatch me back from the hands of Zhao Zixun and those eight girls.

He… had saved me once again.

“Seventh Master, I… I failed to protect Xiao Jiu. I am willing to accept my punishment.” Li Qingying’s self-reproachful voice sounded from behind us.

Liu Junyan’s gaze fell upon her right shoulder. “Qingying.”

“Present,” Li Qingying replied.

“Tend to your wounds,” Liu Junyan said. “Take care of Xiao Jiu.”

With that, he lowered his head and pressed a kiss to my forehead before letting go and turning back toward the Black Coffin.

Li Qingying and I went our separate ways to wash up.

The clothes I was wearing were already in tatters. I stripped them off and threw them into the trash, but I didn’t rush into the shower. Instead, I turned my back to the floor-length mirror and strained my neck to look at my reflection.

Across my back, a Blood Rune spanned both shoulder blades. The strokes were bold and majestic, like a soaring dragon.

It was this Blood Rune that had summoned that Sword Qi to save my life.

Sword Qi…

That Sword Qi had come from the sea, heading straight for the riverbank. It was clearly summoned by Liu Junyan.

Could that have been a summons for his Lifebound Artifact?

But if it was, why was his Lifebound Artifact out at sea instead of in the Pawnshop?

Unable to make sense of it, I stopped trying to think. My entire body was aching; I needed to clean up and apply medicine.

Just as I was grabbing the first-aid kit to go find Li Qingying, she happened to knock on my door with several jars of ointment.

Li Qingying’s injury was primarily on her right shoulder-a deep sword wound that had nearly reached the bone. As she applied the white medicinal powder, she bit her lip so hard it nearly bled, yet she didn’t make a single sound.

My injuries, on the other hand, were mostly abrasions and rope burns from the iron chains. My internal organs also throbbed with pain from the shock of the impact.

After we finished applying the medicine, Li Qingying told me to get some sleep and then closed the door as she left.

I lay face down on the bed, but sleep wouldn’t come.

Everything that happened tonight was too sudden, too terrifying.

Who was the mastermind pulling the strings behind the scenes?

Who did Zhao Zixun take orders from?

And what was the deal with those eight Red Coffins on the river?

I suddenly remembered what those eight girls had said: “You are the ninth.”

The ninth…

The day Granny brought me back to the Pawnshop, she told me I was the Ninth Female Shopkeeper, which was why she called me Xiao Jiu.

And what about the eight Female Shopkeepers before me?

Without a doubt, they were the eight who appeared on the river tonight, perched atop those Red Coffins.

They had all been turned into a Sacrifice.

If not for Liu Junyan, I would have been sacrificed too. I would have been nailed into a Red Coffin, wrapped in layer upon layer of iron chains, and then sunk into the river!

The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became.

By the time I was exhausted enough to drift off, I was plagued by nightmares. In my dreams, a long Coffin Nail was driven into the center of my brow. Countless iron chains coiled around me, dragging me down into the depths of the water. Zhao Zixun stood on the riverbank atop his warhorse, smiling at me with a sinister, cold expression…

I jerked awake from the nightmare to find the sun already high in the sky.

My bones felt like they were falling apart, but I forced myself up. I found an axe in the shop and headed out the door, gripping it tightly.

At this hour, the surrounding shops had long since opened for business.

The Broken Mailbox had suddenly reappeared in front of the Pawnshop, surrounded by a large amount of blood. It had already drawn a crowd of speculating Townsfolk.
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, I swung my axe again and again, smashing that Broken Mailbox to smithereens.

The townsfolk were already wary of me, and seeing me like this, they kept an even greater distance.

They likely thought I’d gone mad.

For the next few days, I stayed home to recover from my injuries.

Li Qingying didn’t dare wander off either, staying at the Pawnshop to keep an eye on me.

I had to admit, the physical constitution of a martial artist was top-tier. While I was still sprawled on the bed scrolling through my phone, unwilling to move, Li Qingying would get up every morning and practice in the main courtyard for an hour.

She had a Long Whip with a red tassel at the tip that made a sharp cracking sound whenever she swung it.

That morning, it was amidst those loud cracks that I scrolled past a piece of news that left me utterly shocked.

[Shocking: Legal Evergreen Si Heng Suffers Waterloo; Rising Star Chen Lu Becomes a God in One Battle!]

I wouldn’t usually care about this kind of news. After all, I’d never been in a lawsuit, nor did I know any lawyers.

My finger swiped past the screen, then suddenly jerked back. I zoomed in and out on the chest pocket of the female lawyer named Chen Lu, looking at it over and over again.

Li Qingying had finished her practice and came over to call me for breakfast.

I grabbed her hand. “Sister Qingying, come look at this. Isn’t this the Pen I traded for the Tiger Whip back at the Ghost Market?”

Li Qingying leaned in for a closer look and said, “It is indeed the same one.”

I was puzzled. “The person who bought the Pen was clearly a Dark Thin Man. How did it end up in the hands of a big-shot lawyer like Chen Lu? Could that Dark Thin Man be Chen Lu’s father?”

“No,” Li Qingying said. “Chen Lu likely bought the Pen from him.”

I was astonished. “That Pen is an old, off-brand model, and it’s even tainted with baleful energy. Why would anyone buy that thing?”

“Of course people would buy it, and they certainly paid a high price,” Li Qingying explained. “There is a type of person in this world called a cursed artifactang. They can refine baleful objects into special cursed artifact. When placed in the hands of the right person, these cursed artifact can have extraordinary effects.”

Li Qingying pointed at the news on my phone and continued, “Take this Chen Lu, for example. Looking at her age, she’s clearly been a lawyer for more than a year or two, yet she’s always been defeated by this Si Heng. Now that she’s obtained this Pen, she’s become famous overnight. That’s the cursed artifact at work.”

That Pen had belonged to Sun Laiding’s grandmother.

Whether she was alive or dead, her grandmother had always been getting people to use that Pen to help her write legal complaints.

Now that the Pen had been forged into a cursed artifact for a lawyer’s use, it could be considered a fitting end for it.

I asked again, “Sister Qingying, in your opinion, how much could that Dark Thin Man have made from selling this Pen?”

“I’m not sure about that.” Li Qingying thought for a moment, held up three fingers, and said, “But based on market prices, it shouldn’t be lower than this.”

I sat up abruptly, my eyes wide. “Thirty thousand?”

Li Qingying shook her head. “At least three hundred thousand. If the cursed artifactang who modified it is famous, doubling that wouldn’t be considered much.”

I…

I really wanted to curse.

I had paid five thousand to acquire that Pen.

And that was at a significant markup because I felt sorry for Sun Laiding.

The Dark Thin Man had turned around and sold it for more than three hundred thousand-that was pure highway robbery!

No wonder his eyes had lit up when I took out the Pen back then.

It was the God of Wealth delivering goods right to his doorstep.

I started counting on my fingers. “Sister Qingying, tell me, if I recruited a cursed artifactang to the Pawnshop to help me modify the Pawned Items, wouldn’t we strike it rich?”

Li Qingying tapped my head and teased, “Do you think cursed artifactang are so common that you can just hire one off the street?”

“Besides, not everything can be modified into a cursed artifact.”

“More importantly, there are many taboos when it comes to using a cursed artifact. If even the slightest thing goes wrong, there’s a risk of backlash, which could lead to a fatal disaster…”