Chapter 212
Chapter 212
Jiang Bin!
Could he be the same Jiang Bin who was about to be reincarnated into my mother’s womb?
I hadn’t even figured out how to find him yet, but to my surprise, he’d come straight to me.
He pushed back the hood of his black trench coat, revealing a young, handsome face.
He looked no older than twenty-four or twenty-five, yet there was a steadiness in his features — the capable air of someone well-versed in the ways of the world.
He lowered his head, baring the smooth, unblemished nape of his neck.
Li Qingying and I both leaned forward to look.
Sure enough, the two characters for Jiang Bin were visible on the back of the man’s neck.
However, since he was in soul form, he looked somewhat different from the corporeal beings I had seen before.
Li Qingying murmured, “It really does say Jiang Bin.”
The man raised his head and was about to speak when I stopped him. “Wait. I didn’t get a good look just now. Could you let me see those two characters again?”
The man frowned, but he lowered his head once more.
I walked around the counter and leaned in for a careful look.
Li Qingying followed me over and peered at it as well. “Xiao Jiu, is something wrong?”
The next instant, I abruptly yanked Li Qingying backward and shouted, “He’s not Jiang Bin!”
The man moved the instant I pulled her away.
He sprang up and slashed straight at my throat with a finely crafted dagger. “It really is you! Today, I’ll deliver justice on Heaven’s behalf!”
It all happened too suddenly. His target had clearly been me from the start, and after pulling Li Qingying out of the way, I no longer had time to dodge.
Just as the cold, gleaming dagger was about to slice through my artery, a fierce blast of palm force swept in. A Copper Coin struck the blade with a sharp clang.
The man let out a muffled grunt, and the dagger clattered to the floor. The palm force rocked his soul form so violently that he looked ready to dissipate at any moment.
In the next instant, Liu Junyan had already pulled me into his arms and shielded me.
He first checked my neck. Only after confirming that I wasn’t injured did he breathe a sigh of relief.
Li Qingying had swiftly shut the door of the Pawnshop and pasted Talisman Paper above the doorway, trapping the man inside the Southern Study.
The man reached for the dagger, but Liu Junyan kicked it into a corner. He then raised his palm, preparing to bring it down on the crown of the man’s head.
“Liu Junyan, wait!”
I hurried forward to stop him. “All he has left is One Hun Soul and Three Po Souls. He could easily be wiped out completely. I still have questions for him.”
Liu Junyan withdrew his hand. Li Qingying came over, and the three of us surrounded the man from all sides.
The man’s Souls were incomplete to begin with, and now they were fading by the second. Despite his precarious state, he continued glaring at me with hatred and spat, “You treat human life like weeds! You’ll die a horrible death!”
I was completely baffled. “I think you’ve mistaken me for your enemy. I’m not the one who wants Jiang Bin dead.”
“Who else could it be?” the man snarled through gritted teeth. “Before I came in, I checked carefully. The Karmic Burden connected to my son has fallen squarely on you. What is there left for you to deny? Heaven sees everything we do. No matter how many tricks you have up your sleeve, the day will come when you suffer the punishment you deserve!”
“Oh, shut up!” Li Qingying raised a sheet of Talisman Paper and moved to slap it over the man’s mouth. “My Xiao Jiu is the kindest and bravest person there is! Didn’t you see the lamp beneath the eaves, filled to the brim with Merit? Are you blind or what?”
Perhaps Li Qingying’s words reminded him of something. He had indeed looked somewhat confused before entering.
For a moment, the man was at a loss for words.
He dodged the Talisman Paper in Li Qingying’s hand. After a brief silence, his bluster had clearly faded as he asked me, “How did you know I wasn’t Jiang Bin?”
I pointed at the back of his neck and said, “If I’m not mistaken, the characters ‘Jiang Bin’ on the back of your neck were transferred there by rubbing, right? But the rubbing was reversed.”
It was difficult to notice anything wrong at first glance unless one looked closely.
But on my second look, I was certain. The two characters seemed to have been flipped, leaving them backward.
The man was one of the Souls. Even if it was only a rubbing, pulling off something like this was no simple feat.
I grew curious about his identity.
However, he still seemed wary and unwilling to tell us much.
“You don’t have much time left,” Liu Junyan suddenly said. “You must return to your physical body before the rooster crows. Otherwise, your Souls will scatter completely. Even if we let you leave now, do you think you’ll ever get a second chance to enter the Pawnshop?”
I was startled. The man wasn’t dead?
Had he somehow extracted One Hun Soul and Three Po Souls from his own body just to come here and take revenge?
My expression immediately turned grave. “You said earlier that the Karmic Burden for your son’s death was placed on me?”
The man merely lowered his head and remained silent.
Liu Junyan snorted. “Qingying, use a rune to send him away.”
“Yes!” The man finally cracked and blurted out in panic, “I tried everything I could to save my son before finally finding this clue. There’s no way I made a mistake. The Karmic Burden really did fall on you.”
If Jiang Bin’s Karmic Burden had fallen on me, what about all the others before him?
Was the Karmic Burden of every person born in Tafeng Village placed on me as well?
“Your right cheek… Haven’t you noticed?”
Liu Junyan reached out, took hold of my chin, and gently turned my face to examine my right cheek.
The moment he saw it, his expression changed too.
My heart sank. It seemed the Karmic Burden from Jiang Bin had weakened the protection of the Buddha Lamp enshrined at the Great Dharma King Temple.
“It’s fine. The mark is very faint,” Liu Junyan reassured me. “It’s almost invisible.”
I nodded, not wanting them to worry about me.
Liu Junyan turned to the man. “What’s your name? You’re part of the Yin-Yang trade too, aren’t you?”
“My name is Jiang Sique, the eleventh-generation inheritor of Occult Embroidery,” the man said. “Jiang Bin is my son. He had just turned three. Those in our line of work suffer from the Five Disadvantages and Three Deficiencies. It’s difficult for us to have children, and our lives are filled with hardship. It took the efforts of several generations of my family for Jiang Bin to be born safe and sound. But I never imagined… he only had three peaceful years before… before someone targeted him.”
“Occult Embroidery?” Thinking of the rubbing on the back of Jiang Sique’s neck, I asked, “You mean tattooing, right?”
“Tattooing is only one branch of Occult Embroidery,” Jiang Sique explained. “Occult Embroidery has four major branches: tattooing, embroidery, corpse stitching, and yin rubbing.”
Since reopening the Pawnshop, I had encountered far too many professions I could never have imagined before.
There was Jin Wuya’s Guijiang, Uncle Huo’s Occult Physician, and now Jiang Sique’s Occult Embroidery…
The Yin-Yang trade truly encompassed everything under the sun. There was no end to its strange and wondrous arts.
Jiang Sique pointed at the dagger that had been kicked into the corner. “That dagger is the cursed artifact I handle best. It isn’t merely a knife. The hilt also contains needles, thread, small awls, and other tools.
“A few days ago, on the night of my son’s third birthday, he suddenly began behaving strangely. He knelt rigidly before the portrait of our founding patriarch, bowing his head until it nearly touched the floor. At the same time, his name faintly appeared on the back of his neck.
“Judging by what happened, if I’m not mistaken, someone must have used some kind of spell to subject Bin’er to Roll Call…”