It seems I need to work harder to protect the people around me.

"Hey, hey, hey! Wake up—" Yan Qing kept gesturing in front of Yue Qi's eyes. Why did this person suddenly freeze?

Could it be that he is possessed by a ghost?

Yue Qi suddenly woke up and saw Yan Qing staring at him with an extremely strange look. He couldn't help but cough.

"It's nothing, I just got distracted. Let's continue—"

Yan Qing was speechless.

"Do you know what kind of background this evil god has?" That was what she was curious about.

She had an instinctive premonition that this evil god was somehow related to the source of pollution in Yongning Lane.

"Yes," Yue Qi shook his head. "There's only a pool of blood, and the area is too wide for me to figure out for now. But one thing is certain: only seven shops are open in Yongning Alley, and the evil god is definitely related to one of them."

These words resonated with Yan Qing, as she shared the same thought.

"It seems we need to visit the remaining four shops today. Oh, right—"

She pulled three small wooden boards from her backpack. "These are what I smuggled from those three shops yesterday. The writing on them looks like post-apocalyptic slang. Take a look—"

Yue Qi took the three small wooden blocks and found that two of them could be pieced together. He also recognized the characters on them; they represented the three different directions of the Eight Trigrams of Qian and Kun.

"These are the characters Xun and Kan from the Eight Trigrams of the Former Heaven," Yue Qi explained to her, pointing to the two connected wooden boards.

"The eight trigrams are Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Li, Kan, Gen, and Dui. Among them, Xun is located in the southwest, has the number five, and is opposite to Zhen. Kan is located in the west, has the number six, and is opposite to Li. These two wooden boards correspond to these two directions."

"As for the remaining one, it's the character '震' (zhen). If I'm not mistaken, the other shops should also have similar small wooden blocks; we can keep an eye out for them then."

His explanation only fueled Yan Qing's curiosity. "So, what do you think is the purpose of piecing these small wooden blocks together?"