Chapter 93

Chapter 93

Earlier, Li Qingying had taken the initiative to extend an olive branch to Jin Wuya, only to be rejected.

She had been nursing that resentment ever since, and today she had finally found a chance to vent it.

But Jin Wuya said with perfect confidence, “That was before I knew our Pawnshop had someone as formidable as Lord Liu the Snake Immortal holding down the fort.”

“Stop right there!” Li Qingying corrected him. “Seventh Master! Our Seventh Master comes from the Linghai Dragon Clan. He’s not on the same level as those animal immortals, so don’t call him that.”

Jin Wuya’s eyes went wide. First came disbelief, and then his expression shifted into one that said it all made perfect sense.

I had just been about to write fifty thousand as the pawn amount on the Pawn Ticket when Liu Junyan came over.

After returning to the Pawnshop, he had gone straight to the back. I had thought he had gone back into the Black Coffin.

Now, he came to the counter carrying the Hexagonal Palace Lantern in his right hand and holding a piece of tortoise shell in his left. “Boss Jin, will this tortoise shell do in exchange for your Cat Bone?”

That tortoise shell was only about the size of a palm, but it was golden all over, and runes of some sort were carved on the inner side. One look was enough to tell it was no ordinary object.

Jin Wuya had a sharp eye for treasures. He took the tortoise shell with both hands and examined it carefully, then immediately lit up with joy. “A Spirit-Patterned Tortoise Shell! Yes, absolutely yes!”

Jin Wuya couldn’t bear to put the tortoise shell down, turning it over and over in his hands.

It wasn’t until I finished writing the Pawn Ticket and asked him to sign that he carefully tucked the tortoise shell into his pocket.

The Pawn Ticket was made in duplicate: one copy for our records, and one for Jin Wuya.

After the formalities were complete, Liu Junyan had Jin Wuya cut his finger and press it against the wall of the Hexagonal Palace Lantern.

The moment Jin Wuya’s bleeding finger touched the lantern wall, the golden light inside the Hexagonal Palace Lantern suddenly began to flicker. Jin Wuya’s whole body went into spasms, and his Facial Features twisted into something terrifying.

A sharp cat’s cry rang out. Immediately after, I saw the faint black silhouette of a cat being drawn into the Hexagonal Palace Lantern.

Jin Wuya’s legs gave out, and he collapsed again.

Everything happened in a flash. By the time the golden light inside the Hexagonal Palace Lantern steadied, I noticed that beside Fu Wan’s tiny speck of ghostly green fire, there was now a small black dot.

The firefly-like glow and the black dot were wrapped in the golden light of Merit, drifting up and down inside the Hexagonal Palace Lantern.

Li Qingying woke Jin Wuya up and kept him for breakfast.

After breakfast, Jin Wuya was in a hurry to leave, so we didn’t keep him.

He was a Guijiang, and one trained from childhood at that. Now that he’d obtained a good object, he was bound to hurry back and study it properly.

I looked at the Cat Bone Jin Wuya had left behind and asked Liu Junyan, “What do we do with this?”

“Give it to me,” Liu Junyan said. “It will be useful later.”

I said worriedly, “There is no way we’ll be able to hide the news that we accepted this Cat Bone. We might already be under someone’s watch right now. I’m afraid…”

“Don’t be afraid,” Liu Junyan said. “I’m more worried he won’t dare to come! Xiao Jiu, do you like cats? The kind people keep as pets.”

I immediately nodded. “I do.”

Then I shook my head again. “Actually, forget it. I can’t keep them alive.”

Every child probably goes through an age when they desperately want a pet, right?

For me, it was around eleven years old. I wanted a pet so badly that I pestered Granny for days, but she refused to allow it.

Later, I found a little mutt by the roadside and secretly brought it back to the Pawnshop, hiding it in my room.

When I brought that little mutt back, it was still lively and jumping around. But only half an afternoon later, when I went to check on it again, it had gone completely stiff.

After that, I secretly tried keeping little goldfish, hamsters, and so on, one after another. Even a snail brought back to the Pawnshop couldn’t survive half a day.

Over time, I simply gave up.
I used to think I just didn’t know how to keep pets. Only later did I realize that aside from people, there truly wasn’t so much as an ant in the Pawnshop.

Looking back now, it was probably because the baleful energy in that Pawnshop was too heavy. Those poor little animals simply couldn’t withstand it.

Liu Junyan patted my head and comforted me. “It’s fine. I’ll give you one you can actually keep alive.”

I didn’t really take the matter of getting a pet to heart.

After all, given my current situation, it would be hard for me to devote much energy to a pet.

Two days later, I received a call from the owner of the Driving School. He said my license had come through and told me to go pick it up.

I was over the moon. The Driving School owner really did have some connections. I hadn’t expected the license to be ready so quickly.

I rode my electric scooter to the Driving School. After getting my license, I spent the entire ride back thinking about buying a car. I didn’t notice the van coming toward me until it brushed right past my electric scooter.

I was knocked to the ground. I wasn’t hurt, and I was just about to get up when a burlap sack came down over my head. The next second, I felt myself being lifted and shoved into the van.

“Quick, tie her hands and feet with hemp rope! Don’t let her run!”

A familiar voice rang out from the front passenger seat, and my whole body jolted.

It was my grandma!

And the ones abducting me were several strong villagers from Tafeng Village.

They had clearly staked me out beforehand. Who knew how many days they had been watching me?

No.

Something was wrong.

First, my mom had suddenly come to the Pawnshop to act nice and said she wanted to take me home.

Now my grandma had colluded with the villagers of Tafeng Village to kidnap me.

Putting it all together, I came to one conclusion-something might have happened in Tafeng Village.

But what did that have to do with me?

Back then, it was that midwife who said I was a lone Yan born bearing mourning, destined to curse one family member to death every three years.

Once all my family members had been cursed to death, it would be the turn of the other villagers in Tafeng Village.

They forced me into a corner until I was finally Dead Pawned to the Wufu Town Pawnshop.

They had already gone that far. So why was it that whenever something happened in Tafeng Village, I was still the unlucky one?

Was I their designated scapegoat?!

Maybe in their eyes, I was just a girl who had barely turned eighteen, unarmed and helpless, a student they could manipulate however they liked.

But now I had already set one foot through the door of cultivation. With Liu Junyan guiding me, ordinary people were no match for me at all.

Just as they took out the rope and were about to tie me up, I abruptly arched my body and rammed hard into the burly man beside me.

The man grunted. I had already managed to pull off the sack, snatched the rope over, and in the same motion looped it around the driver’s neck.

The driver was so frightened that he nearly lost his grip on the steering wheel.

My grandma turned around to grab me, but I had already summoned Fengwu.

The Longbow was in my hands. I drew the bowstring to its fullest and aimed straight at my grandma’s face.

Did I hate her?

It would be a lie to say I didn’t.

All these years, I had always felt that there was no need to care too much about people who were destined never to cross paths with me again.

But the tree may crave stillness while the wind keeps blowing.

All I wanted was a little peace, yet my grandma insisted on dancing all over my raw nerves.

At this moment, as long as I loosened my fingers, my grandma’s head might be blown apart.

Her body began to tremble. She was old, after all, and couldn’t take this kind of shock. “Don’t, Tongtong. I didn’t mean to kidnap you. It’s just that if you don’t go back to Tafeng Village, the children in our village… the children are all going to die.

“And your younger brother and sister, they’ve both fallen ill too. This is a karmic debt you brought with you from the womb. You have to repay it…”