Don't be afraid, I'll protect you.
Chapter Ten
“If you want to go to the Wu family, you can’t teleport directly to Wu Chi’s room, because that’s the source of the restriction. The Wu family has had someone set up a formation. My suggestion is to enter from the bamboo forest. It’s secluded and no one will be paying attention there. More importantly, it’s undoubtedly the safest way to get to Wu Chi’s room.” Chen Muyao spoke with a calm tone, as if he already knew about the Wu family.
According to Chen Muyao's description, Gu Ling successfully visualized an aerial view of the Wu Mansion in his mind. Before setting off, he instructed Zhou Yulin and Chen Muyao, "The teleportation will only last for one hour. I will teleport you back in one hour. If any unexpected events occur, burn this communication talisman and I will send you back immediately."
Zhou Yulin originally wanted to go alone, but indeed, firstly, she didn't know much about the Wu family, and secondly, she lacked the ability to protect herself if necessary.
So he agreed to Chen Muyao's suggestion to go together.
With Wu Chi's death, the Zhou family could not escape suspicion. Before being blamed for the death, Zhou Yulin had to confirm one thing.
Zhou Yulin gripped the communication talisman in her hand, and a second before setting off, she made eye contact with someone on a distant building outside the window. But before she could take another look, Zhou Yulin was already in the Wu family's bamboo forest.
Shh, come with me.
It was a spiritual transmission; Zhou Yulin followed Chen Muyao out of the bamboo forest.
The sound of a porcelain bowl breaking on the floor echoed from the attic next door.
If Zhou Yulin remembered correctly, that was the courtyard where Wu Chi lived.
There were figures moving around inside, and it sounded like there were voices talking.
"Master—waaaaaah, what are we going to do?"
The woman's voice rang out first, her weeping quickly drawing the man's annoyance. "What's the use of crying? Look at the fine son you raised! Of all people to mess with, he had to provoke that one. Now he's been turned into a puppet, is that my fault?"
Inside the room, Wu Chi, though handsome, had a body that seemed to have been rearranged. He sat blankly on the bed like a rag doll, his gaze vacant, his eyes glowing with an eerie red light in the darkness.
It's hard to imagine that it has become like this, neither human nor ghost.
He heard his parents talking across from him, but he just sat on the edge of the bed as if he hadn't heard a thing, his head seemingly covered by a hood, swaying back and forth at any moment.
"Waaaaah, my Chi'er—"
"Master, you are so cruel! Chi'er clearly died because of the Wu family!"
The man was silent for a few seconds, then the woman's shrill voice rang out again, "Chi'er was perfectly fine when he went out that day. Master took him out, so how come he came back like this, while Master came back perfectly fine?!"
"Even tigers don't eat their cubs, sir. Why won't you tell me what exactly happened that day?" the middle-aged man said coldly indifferently. "Yingniang, if you want to die, I won't stop you."
“You have only lost a son, but I will lose the entire Wu family.”
"But that's your son too—Wu Xin!"
The middle-aged man replied casually, "Yingniang, sons can be born again."
"I don't understand what you have to be sad about."
"That's a piece of my flesh that I carried for ten months and then gave birth to—Master!!!" Yingniang's voice sounded somewhat deranged, and at this moment, Wu Chi, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, seemed to receive some kind of instruction.
Yingniang wanted to speak, but at that moment, a hand pierced through her chest. She didn't even have time to turn around before she fell to the ground with her eyes wide open in death.
"Chi'er, kowtow twice to your mother."
The man's voice was cold and indifferent. He didn't even have a shred of sympathy for Yingniang's death, as if she were just a piece of trash on the roadside. He glanced at her with disgust and walked out of the room, leaving Wu Chi alone kneeling on the ground in a daze.
Master Wu closed and locked the door and left. He had someone place a protective barrier inside the house, so he wasn't worried that anyone in Jiangning City would cause trouble.
Zhou Yulin frowned. Puppetry was one of the forbidden arts of ancient times. It had been sealed away by the immortal sects for over a hundred years when she was still very young.
Puppetry, as the name suggests, involves turning people into mindless puppets, manipulated by a puppeteer. However, it was later exploited by a group of unscrupulous individuals who used every means possible to assemble people into so-called strongest puppets, quickly gaining a foothold in the human world.
These immortal puppet armies still send chills down the spines of people in later cultivation sects. They are not afraid of death, nor can they die, unless the puppeteer dies and the puppet dies. The puppeteers who mastered puppetry were slaughtered thousands of years ago.
"Were you scared?"
Chen Muyao didn't want to say much, but when she caught a glimpse of the woman's silence, she suppressed a hint of teasing on her lips and asked with genuine concern.
The old master of the Wu family had already passed away. Faced with the young man's sudden concern, Zhou Yulin shook her head, "I feel a little uncomfortable."
I haven't seen such a heartless and ungrateful person in a long time.
"Would you like to go in, Miss Zhou?"
When Chen Muyao called out the words "Miss," the last syllable of his voice rose slightly, making even the simplest words seem suggestive.
Are all the people in the Nine Star Pavilion like this?
Such wickedness and indecent behavior.
Zhou Yulin naturally noticed the restriction in Wu Chi's room. Just as she was thinking about how to break it, Chen Muyao spoke up, "This restriction does not cover the entire room."
Zhou Yulin then realized that Master Wu, the ghost, had placed a restriction on only about ten square meters, which did not cover the entire room at all. In other words, as long as one did not step inside the restriction, one would not be discovered.
Zhou Yulin took off the only hairpin she was wearing, put it into the lock, turned it three times, and the lock opened.
“He is unconscious right now, we’ll take the things and leave.”
Pushing open the door, what you see is far more cruel than what you hear.
The beautiful woman, barely in her early forties, lay on the ground, her eyes wide open, staring ahead, but unfocused. There was a fist-sized hole in her stomach.
Wu Chi, kneeling to the side, was beyond human description. His robust body seemed to have been fitted with the body of some burly man, both eerie and harmonious. Hearing the sound, he raised his red eyes, and slowly, Zhou Yulin saw a line of bloody tears on Wu Chi's empty and bewildered face.
"careful."
Wu Chi paused for a moment, then knelt and walked a few steps toward Zhou Yulin, kowtowing twice. Chen Muyao's gaze, as if surging in the deep sea, subtly and silently curled the corners of her lips.
"Could he be...?"
The two spoke in unison.
"Recognizing a father."
"Help!"
Chen Muyao was used to Zhou Yulin's peculiar way of thinking and asked, "What are you planning to do?"
“Tell him I’m a woman and can’t be his father.”
Chen Muyao's silence faded at this moment.
A short while later,
"Found it! The jade pendant I gave him, the love letter I wrote, and—"
In the blink of an eye, the love letter that Zhou Yulin had just raised was in Chen Muyao's hand. "Eh?" I haven't even read it yet.
Zhou Yulin got up, wanting to admire her love letter, but Chen Muyao quickly folded it up, saying she would read it later.
"Then let's burn the communication talisman now and have Gu Ling pick us up and take us back."
No sooner had he finished speaking than the door opened from the outside.
He clearly didn't encounter any restrictions, so how did Master Wu get in?!
Could it be that Zhou Yulin's gaze lingered on Wu Chi, recalling the few steps he had taken earlier, and that his master had said that evil cultivators would inscribe restrictions on people's bodies, so the restrictions were not a space at all, but a real person.
The patriarch of the Wu family was in his early fifties, and his hypocritical demeanor was nauseating.
"It's so late, Miss Zhou, since you're here, don't leave."
Zhou Yulin regretted it. If she had known everyone knew her, she would have covered herself with a cloth before going out. Master Wu smiled, but upon closer inspection, his eyes were filled with coldness. "My son, why haven't you made your move yet?"
Wu Chi, who was kneeling on the ground, slowly got up. Zhou Yulin instinctively shielded Chen Muyao behind her, forgetting that compared to him, her own life was clearly more likely to be lost. Yet, in this life-or-death situation, she always put her own life last, the last thing she cared about.
Someone once asked her if she would regret it if the person she was protecting pushed her into the abyss one day.
Zhou Yulin thought that the essence of cultivating Tao is to have a clear conscience. In this life, having a clear conscience is enough. As for what others think, why bother to investigate?
"Don't be afraid."
In that instant, the woman's figure before him overlapped with a shadow from his memory.
The woman's bright red dress was like fire. Although she was right in front of him, her figure was as if shrouded in a thin mist, making it impossible to see her clearly. Her proud and unrestrained voice rang out clearly and firmly in his ear, "Don't be afraid, Chen Muyao."
He frowned, looking intently at the woman blocking his way.
Zhou Yulin belatedly realized that she actually needed Chen Muyao's protection at this moment. Seeing Wu Chi rushing forward, her ingrained memory made her take out a talisman she had prepared in advance and deflect it. After a burst of golden light, Wu Chi was bounced away and lay on the ground with his four legs in the air.
But he quickly jumped up again. Just as Zhou Yulin's heart was in her throat, the person behind her finally spoke, "Should we spare his life or not?"
Wow, it really is Chen Muyao, every word he utters is deadly.
“He won’t die.” Zhou Yulin’s expression was solemn and he didn’t seem to be faking it.
Seeing Master Wu's smug attitude, it was clear that the other party also knew that no matter how powerful a person was, they would find it extremely troublesome to deal with a puppet.
The fact that puppets cannot be killed is something Zhou Yulin learned in class.
But then a gentle voice rang out, "Oh? How will you know if you don't try?"
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