Chapter 58
Chapter 58
The Fortune Stick was red, its end sharpened to a fine point. The Red Dress Girl had snatched for it with such force that when it flew out, it shot toward me like a small arrow.
Li Qingying instinctively moved to block it, but both girls were so competitive that they lunged forward simultaneously, both desperate to catch the stick.
The Ash-Gray Dress Girl bumped Li Qingying aside, and the Red Dress Girl managed to grab the Fortune Stick.
However, she used too much strength and lost her balance. The moment she caught the stick, her entire body pitched forward toward the Bell.
The Bell was surrounded by incense offerings. Its surface was rough and covered in hanging Wooden Plaques.
If she slammed into it, she was bound to draw blood.
This was a sacred Buddhist site. It would be ill-omened for blood to be spilled where incense was offered.
Moreover, she was wearing a red dress!
Generally, those who sincerely worship Buddha are very particular about their attire. They wouldn’t wear a skirt or a dress into a temple, as one must bend and kneel during prayer; it was a matter of modesty. To wear such a garish red dress, with a hem that fluttered in the wind enough to reveal her undergarments, was highly disrespectful.
Under those circumstances, I had no choice but to act. I reached out and pulled the Red Dress Girl back.
The moment she steadied herself, she couldn’t wait to look at the Fortune Stick. She immediately burst into loud laughter. “A Supreme Lot! Look, I got a Supreme Lot!”
She was so overcome with excitement that she didn’t spare a glance for me standing beside her. As she raised her hand, the stick grazed my arm.
I felt a sharp sting. Looking down, I saw a small gash on the side of my forearm. It wasn’t large, but beads of blood were already seeping out.
Li Qingying saw it too. She grabbed the Red Dress Girl, demanding she apologize to me.
It was then that I got a clear look at the Fortune Stick in the girl’s hand.
It was very strange.
The stick had no Lot Heading, no Lot Verse, and no Lot Interpretation. It wasn’t even numbered. It only bore three large, blood-red characters outlined in gold: Supreme Lot.
Having obtained the Supreme Lot she had dreamed of, the Red Dress Girl couldn’t wait to run off and share her joy with her friends.
The Ash-Gray Dress Girl stamped her foot, her eyes welling with tears of frustration. If it hadn’t been for the other girl, that Supreme Lot would have been hers.
Li Qingying wanted to go after the Red Dress Girl to demand an explanation, but I held her back and shook my head.
People like that lacked any sense of decency; I didn’t want to cause a scene in a place like a temple.
Fortunately, the wound was neither large nor deep. After a few drops of blood, it had already begun to clot.
None of us took the incident to heart. We made our way down the mountain and left in our respective cars.
On the way back, Li Qingying drove while I sat in the passenger seat talking to her. I kept feeling like something was wrong with my neck-a cold sensation-but when I reached out to touch it, I felt nothing.
After returning to the Pawnshop and having dinner, Li Qingying and I huddled behind the counter to fold paper Gold Ingots and other offerings.
We chatted as we worked.
“Xiao Jiu,” Li Qingying asked, “you said you had something to tell me when we got back from Jiyu Temple. What is it?”
My hands paused. I hesitated for a moment before speaking. “Sister Qingying, that girl came to find me.”
Li Qingying was bewildered. “Who?”
“The one from the Ghost Market, the one by the Fox Lord’s side,” I said.
Li Qingying frowned. “What did she want with you? Do you two know each other?”
I shook my head. “I can’t say for sure. Do you remember the masked girl in the painting Tang Xun gave me?”
Li Qingying searched her memory for a moment, then her eyes widened in disbelief. “You mean…”
I gave a small nod. “Don’t they look very similar?”
Li Qingying had also seen the girl’s profile that day. Once she made the comparison, she had her answer.
She nodded. “Now that you mention it, they do look alike. But… so what?”
“Liu Junyan has someone hidden in his heart,” I said. “He calls her Little Fire Fox.”
Li Qingying looked even more shocked. “Are you saying that girl is Little Fire Fox? And she came to find you because of Seventh Master?”
Before I could answer, Li Qingying asked again, “Have you mentioned this to Seventh Master?”
I shrugged, my expression helpless. “Not directly. I just dropped a few hints.”
“Xiao Jiu, why didn’t you just tell him?” Li Qingying said, sounding frustrated by my lack of initiative. “What are you afraid of? That he’ll abandon you for that girl?”
“At first, I did have some concerns about that…”
“You’re so silly!”
Li Qingying spoke earnestly, trying to persuade me. “That painting was a gift from Fengwu to Tang Xun. The people depicted in it are Fengwu and her master. Let me ask you, who is Fengwu’s master?”
Fengwu’s master was me.
Fengwu was a Spiritual Artifact. As a Lifebound Artifact, she recognized only one master.
So, while I might not be the Little Fire Fox, I was certainly the girl wearing the mask in that painting.
Coupled with the dreams I’d been having lately, I already had many suspicions of my own.
“That painting is a fake!” Li Qingying declared with finality. “The Fox Lord probably planted it there just to mess with Seventh Master. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s played a dirty trick! Xiao Jiu, you really should explain everything to Seventh Master.”
Li Qingying held a deep-seated prejudice against the Fox Lord.
But I was looking at the bigger picture. “Sister Qingying, the reason I haven’t told Liu Junyan directly is that I want to protect him.”
Li Qingying looked confused. “?”
I proceeded to tell her about the girl who had drawn her bow at me. “Liu Junyan still can’t leave the Pawnshop. I don’t want him to act impulsively because of this. He’s already risked his life for me twice.”
Once was at the Riverside, where he braved Heavenly Punishment and revealed his snake tail to save me.
The other time was when he helped me retrieve Fengwu.
I didn’t know exactly what price Liu Junyan had paid the second time, but Li Qingying knew better than anyone.
Once I explained it that way, she understood.
She fell silent for a long while before finally speaking. “Xiao Jiu, you need to have more confidence in yourself. You also need to trust Seventh Master.”
I gave a soft hum of agreement.
Right then, a sudden wind picked up outside the door.
The gust came out of nowhere. Li Qingying and I both sensed something was wrong at the same time and snapped our heads toward the entrance.
What we saw made our hearts skip a beat.
Without us noticing, a girl had appeared in the doorway.
She wore a white shirt paired with a small red vest, blue cotton work pants, and blue cloth shoes.
There were patches on both her vest and her pants…
This outfit… it was clearly the style of the sixties or seventies.
However, the clothes weren’t what frightened me. After all, the Pawnshop had seen visitors in all sorts of attire lately.
I was long past being surprised by such things.
What truly terrified Li Qingying and me was the red… Wooden Lot driven horizontally through the girl’s mouth!
The Wooden Lot looked like a small arrow. It had been stabbed through the left corner of her mouth and poked out the right, the shaft spanning the space between her lips. On it, three large, blood-red characters traced in gold were clearly visible: Supreme Lot…
That lot was identical to the one I had seen earlier today at Jiyu Temple.
Under our watchful eyes, the girl walked into the Pawnshop one step at a time.
As she walked, she raised her hand, gripped one end of the Wooden Lot, and pulled it out of her mouth with a forceful yank!
Black blood dripped down the wood, leaving two gruesome, bloody holes at the corners of her mouth.
She stepped forward, clutching the lot, and placed it on the counter.
She struggled to open her mouth, trying to say something, but her throat seemed to be gripped by an invisible hand. She could only manage a series of strained, gurgling noises.
The lot had sealed her voice; she couldn’t speak.
I was incredibly nervous, but I forced myself to remain calm. “Do you want to pawn this Supreme Lot?”
The girl nodded vigorously, two trails of bloody tears streaming uncontrollably down her cheeks.
I asked, “A Live Pawn or a Dead Pawn?”
The girl raised her hand and dipped her finger into her bloody tears. Slowly, she wrote a single word on the counter: Dead!