Chapter 81: The promise is made, and the gods and ghosts will witness it
A gust of wind arose from nowhere, and the remaining pages trapped in the seal were blown gently, with a corner slightly curled up.
Suddenly, a spark came out of the circular gap caused by the burn, and silently licked the edge until it was charred black, and golden color appeared, just like the little bit of light exposed during a total solar eclipse.
Some people looked in from the outside through the gap, while others stared out from the hole in the sky.
Outside the corner gate of a villa somewhere in the Duke of Zhenguo's Mansion, a child in a patched shirt sat on the edge of a straw mat, fiddling with the dirt in the cracks of the blue bricks with his fingers as if he had lost his soul. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on the hand that stretched out from the straw mat. There was a faint red mark on the wrist. There should have been a gold bracelet on it, but now it was empty.
Xiaohai Zhao remembered that the gold bracelet was given to him by the eldest lady because a pug she had raised died of illness and could not eat. It was Zhao Xiaohai's mother who imitated the barking of a dog outside the house to cheer her up, and the eldest lady gave her the gold bracelet.
Later, his mother found another identical dog and brought it into the mansion, but the women in the mansion were in favor of raising catkins, so the dog was given to Zhao Xiaohai to raise.
The Zhao kid’s surname is Zhao, and he is from the Zhao family of the Zhenguogong Mansion.
His mother had a beautiful voice and sang at Fengya Tower. Later, due to a drunken mistake by the old Duke, the Zhao child was born. Unfortunately, the Duke had few children, and the Crown Prince died young. Although he left behind a grandson, he inherited his father's frail health and many illnesses. The old Duke had long been troubled by the issue of succession. Suddenly, hearing that he had a son, despite his "unholy" origins, he felt a sense of urgency and took the mother and son into his family.
The Duke of Zhenguo had to raise his own illegitimate son while also taking into account the face of his wife and daughter-in-law, and was unwilling to give Zhao Xiaohai and his mother a legitimate status. The various gods in the mansion were accustomed to flattering the powerful and bullying the weak, so one can imagine what happened to the two.
Xiaohai Zhao naturally felt that although everyone in the mansion looked down on him, he was still half a young master after all.
But today he suddenly understood - yes, this thought was like a broken gong suddenly hitting his ear, which made him wake up.
Not to mention the young master, in the eyes of those people, people like me may not even be considered human beings.
Little Zhao grabbed the straw mat to prevent the servant from dragging him away: "Why did my mother die...how...why did she die?" As he spoke, he felt as if a hole had been opened in his chest and his heart was chilled.
The servant took the order and said impatiently, "She's dead, so what? Why? She stole the mistress's things, her hands are dirty. Don't bother me. I have to bury it and report it to the government. Hey! This is troublesome."
"My mother couldn't possibly have stolen anything," Zhao Xiaohai refused to let go. "It definitely wasn't her! You must have made a mistake!"
The doorman, who was crouching by the crack of the door to watch the fun, teased, "Mrs. Zhao's kid saw you going to Fengya Tower to lose your prize. Where did you get the money, little brat? It must have been stolen from the adults."
Little Zhao burst into tears: "I saved that myself! My mother didn't steal it!"
"boom!--"
In the distance, the sun and the moon exchanged places, the silver moon was in the sky, and the sky suddenly darkened.
The two servants were so frightened by the sudden vision that they fell down: "Oh my God... Hurry, report to the master!" The two of them crawled into the door, leaving the roll of tattered straw mat behind.
Little Zhao grabbed the hand on the edge of the straw mat and wanted to lift it up to take a look, but he didn't dare.
He vented his anger by digging his ten fingers into the cracks between the bricks until his nails were broken and bleeding.
A familiar pair of boots stopped in front of him.
He slowly moved along the surface of his boots and raised his tear-stained face.
It's the weird guy with the severed finger.
He suddenly seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw. He crawled over on his knees and threw himself on the boots, holding the man's legs with both hands. "You said last time that if I won, you could grant me a wish?"
Xiaohai Zhao doesn't hide his emotions. When he said this, it was as if his wish had come true. There was crazy malice brewing in his eyes. He grinned hard, fearing that if he smiled a few seconds later, his wish would be far away from him.
The man squatted down, and only a pair of narrow eyes could be seen on the half of his face covered with bandages.
He opened his palm, on which was a stem with two dates pierced.
"You first."
Xiaohai Zhao couldn't wait to start this game that he was familiar with.
His fingertips carefully pushed the date mill, and he silently counted the circles: "...eighteen, nineteen, twenty...twenty-three!"
He jumped up and gasped, "It's your turn!"
The weirdo sat down cross-legged at a leisurely pace, his posture casual and relaxed, and gently moved the rod head - it was obviously a very perfunctory action, but the date mill seemed to be pulled by an invisible hand, turning round and round, until... thirty circles!
Little Zhao fell to the ground: "Impossible... Impossible..."
He burst into tears, and at this moment he had no hope at all.
What he couldn't see was that a ray of light blue spiritual energy was drawn out from the strange man's fingertips, tied to the two ends of the date mill, and steadily supported the pole, which rotated slowly and automatically without wind.
The weirdo said, "Let me tell you a story."
Little Zhao was sobbing foolishly, his expression numb, and he didn't know whether he was shaking his head or nodding.
"Once upon a time, there was a child," said the strange man. "The child's father was a gambler. He would continue gambling even when he had only one copper in his pocket. One day, he owed nine coppers and wanted to use the child to pay off his debt."
Little Zhao thought blankly, nine cents is enough for a child.
It costs ten strings of coins to buy a servant for the Duke of Zhenguo’s Mansion.
"Just then, a Taoist priest passed by and bought the child for nine coins," the strange man said. "But she didn't have a deed to keep the child. She told the child, 'From now on, you are free, free as you are in the vast seas and high skies.'"
When Zhao Xiaohai heard this, he felt a little jealous and couldn't help but feel a little disgusted.
Freedom? Penniless freedom?
hehe.
The strange man said, "The child returned home as usual, and that night the house caught fire and burned down everything - the thatched roof, the rafters, the table, and the child's father."
Xiaohai Zhao moved his lips, but no one knew what he wanted to say.
"The child's fever wasn't severe, only the skin below his eyes was gone," the strange man said calmly, turning the jujube-grinding rod with his fingertips. "Debts are settled when one dies. The child put the nine coins in a pocket to always remember the price of his life."
Little Zhao swallowed, his eyes fixed on the purse on the weirdo's waist, and his calves began to tremble again.
He recalled the fear brought to him by the scene of severed fingers. Looking at the face in front of him, he shuddered and couldn't help but think deeply, was the burning house really an accident?
"The Taoist priest took the child in as his disciple and traveled far and wide," the strange man said, unconcerned with Zhao Xiao's fear. "The child was born without an understanding of emotions and asked many strange questions. The Taoist priest said that if you make a hundred transactions with a hundred different people, you'll pretty much get all the answers."
"But," the strange man said, "before the hundred transactions were completed, the Taoist priest died."
Zhao Xiaohai felt as if his heart was hit by a huge hammer. He grabbed the hand beside the straw mat and bit his lips hard.
"Before she died, the Taoist priest made a deal with the child. She said, 'If you can find me again, I will tell you the answer you most want to know.'"
Little Zhao couldn't see the weirdo's mouth, but he intuitively felt that the other person was smiling.
"When a person dies, their soul can be found," the strange man asked himself, then answered, "but what if the spirit also disperses?"
Little Zhao gradually couldn't understand anymore.
"If it is destined that we cannot find a complete soul, then what should we do?" The strange man moved his fingers, and the light blue spiritual power began to pull up the date grinder on the ground, strangely like an invisible hand, pushing it up.
The weirdo said coldly, "You can still cheat."
The date grinding rod on the ground sped up and spun like crazy.
Little Zhao's face turned pale, beads of sweat oozed from his nose. He suddenly bent down and kowtowed on the ground, as if he didn't feel any pain. He was risking his life: "I... Can I make a deal with you! I can give you anything! Fingers... Ten fingers will do!"
A sneer came from above my head.
Little Zhao stood up trembling and looked up at the strange man.
The man tapped his knees with his fingers intermittently, saying in a normal tone, "I don't want your fingers. I want your descendants to serve me, generation after generation, endlessly."
"I promise you!" Little Zhao didn't know what he had promised. His eyes, filled with hatred, dripped with poisonous tears: "I promise you!"
The weirdo asked, "What do you want?"
Zhao Xiaohai was immersed in the pleasure of revenge and pointed to the door behind him: "I want to kill the person who killed my mother!"
The weirdo nodded: "Yeah."
Little Zhao's heart moved, and his expression twisted a little: "I want the Zhao family's grandson to die?"
The weirdo still said, "Hmm."
Little Zhao's heart was pounding wildly, his eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth was almost stretched to his ears. "I want the entire Zhao Mansion, no, the entire capital! Everyone! Die! Die!! Die!!!!"
Boom! — The evening drum sounded dully, the moon was eclipsed by the heavenly dog, and strange phenomena occurred.
A flash of lightning streaked across the sky, and a pale white light suddenly appeared. In the blink of an eye, three more people appeared behind the strange man.
A black-toothed peddler with flowers in his hair, a little girl with pigtails and a ferocious smile, and a female monk who is eight feet tall and as majestic as a mountain.
The weirdo also slowly stood up, and the four of them lowered their heads in unison, looking at the little Zhao kid who was staring with wide eyes and a timid heart.
——"Once a promise is made, even the gods and ghosts will bear witness to it."
-
The sparks leaped into a cluster of flames, licking up the remaining pages in a blink of an eye.
Wang Suqing suddenly opened her eyes and saw that the flames disappeared in an instant, turned into ashes, and dissipated in the wind.
"It burned itself..." She gently retracted the sealing circle with a flick of her finger, staring at the pile of fallen leaves in a trance: "It's all gone."
Not even the last vague words were left, and the past was truly dead.
In the forest, one could faintly hear someone plucking a silk string. At first, it was just two or three notes, gurgling like a stream hitting rocks. With closing one's eyes, one could imagine how the string, which was neither too tight nor too loose, swayed lively between the fingers. Then one could hear the music becoming increasingly rapid, like a north wind blowing through rocks, an old owl crying on a dead tree, or gold, stone, pearls and jade colliding in the same jade cup, ending up shattered to pieces.
Not far from the orchid garden, Wang Suqing sat under a bright crape myrtle tree, drinking wine that was eighty years old and had been dug up from the temple. However, compared to her age, it seemed like yesterday's new wine.
She poured herself a cup and spoke to someone, "Someone must have told you that you're not suited to this. It's better to listen to advice."
The music really stopped, and a shadow was squatting on the treetop, but it was obscured by the dense leaves of the banyan tree and could not be seen clearly.
The shadows of the trees swayed, and the man smiled: "You speak as harshly as ever."
"Only with affection can one have face." Wang Suqing picked up a wine glass with bamboo tweezers, poured some mung bean water into the porcelain cup, shook his wrist slightly and threw it. The strong wind sent the cup between the shadows of the trees, and a pale hand came out and held the cup firmly.
"It's rare, come and have a drink."
"The last time I sat down to talk to you was over a hundred years ago," the man chuckled, twirling the cup in his hand, hesitant to move. "Well, things are pretty good now. You should understand what it's like to live too long."
"Don't repeat those lies in front of me," Wang Suqing said without changing his expression. "Is it your turn to come here in person now? If you send a little kid to collect my debt, all the judges of the Three Death Gates will be dead."
The shadow of the tree flickered, and in a flash, the strange young man in a green robe had landed steadily on the ground, with a sanxian on his back and a wine glass in his hand. He smiled, revealing a familiar black crescent moon.
He joked in a gentle tone, "Ah, you still speak so harshly. If I were alive, I would definitely be pissed off by you."
Wang Suqing ignored his dark humor and waved his hand, "It was you who helped Meng Bujiu and I kill Zhao An. It's only natural for you to come and collect your debt."
Ren Qi continued to smile: "You keep talking about debt. Do I look like someone who would be so penny-wise and pound-foolish?"
Wang Suqing didn't even raise her eyes: "Are you some good-hearted ghost who loves charity? I don't know how many strings you've added to that harp on your back."
Ren Qi's smile remained unchanged, but his tone was unusually awkward: "Oh..."
He sensed some potential murderous intent and gave up reminiscing about the past, changing the subject: "I just want to see if I can get my ring back."
"Which of your words is true?" Wang Suqing shook his head and slowly drank another cup. "When I gave the Three Talents Ring away, I should have known that I couldn't get it back."
Ren Qi's smile deepened: "Have you tried her?"
Wang Suqing recalled the two times she had patted Long Zhu's shoulders before: "Since they are not enemies, there is no need to try. The road is wide open and we can each go our separate ways. Why do we have to squeeze onto a single wooden bridge with others?"
"Don't you want to know whether your cultivation over the years is comparable to that of a Xiao?"
Wang Suqing couldn't help laughing: "As for me, when I was young, of course I had the ability to fight." She said it very confidently, and others didn't think she was bragging.
She changed the subject: "It doesn't matter if you live too long. People don't live to prove anything. Even if there is something, let the young people deal with it."
Ren Qi was a little eager to make a move: "Speaking of young people, that apprentice you picked up——"
Before he finished speaking, Wang Suqing's face changed. He stopped chatting leisurely with his old friend, and rested one hand on his knee and the other on the table. He was unmoved by anything, like a drawn bow, and exuded awe-inspiring aura.
"No matter what Ying Si said to you, don't even think about touching anyone from Qingcheng Temple."
Ren Qi was startled for a moment, then smiled again with narrowed eyes: "Look at you, you still say you don't care..."
Wang Suqing put down the wine cup, and a crape myrtle flower happened to fall into the cup. The wind blew, and the petals fluttered twice in the remaining wine, like a butterfly stuck in a spider web, unable to escape from this cage.
She drank the half glass of wine along with the flower petals, and finally threw the glass away. With a "ding" sound, the glass did not break, but sank into the stone, like a farewell that drew a clear line between the two.
Taoist Lingsu said sternly, "Next time we meet, it will be a fight to the death."
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