Chapter 149
Bai Liming sat in the car and pounded the steering wheel angrily: "Who is this?"
As the heir of Anxin Pharmaceutical, he has always been the one who has been pampered since he was a child. Even when he asked for help from some "capable people", the attitudes of both parties were always polite, and he rarely encountered such ruthless situations.
As he became more angry, Bai Liming felt his heart beating faster and faster, and it seemed like it was going to jump out of his chest.
No, that wasn't his illusion!
Bai Liming put his hand on his chest, his heart was beating wildly in the left side of his chest. He actually felt so sick that he wanted to vomit. The things in his vision seemed to have not changed at all, but at the same time, they seemed to be swaying left and right, making him extremely dizzy.
He desperately clutched his chest, but the sound of his heartbeat became louder and louder, and he had an inexplicable premonition that he was about to die...
Dong-dong-dong-dong
It seemed as if his own heartbeat was all in his ears. Bai Liming's vision began to blur. He pressed one hand tightly against his chest, and fumbled around in the secret compartment of the car with the other hand. If he could only find that, he would be fine! If he could only find that! If only...
His fingertips touched a cold cylindrical object with a sticky texture. Bai Liming was overjoyed. He quickly grasped the object in his palm, then fumbled for the lighter while gasping for breath. The faint orange flame temporarily illuminated his vision. He lit the candle in his hand, and a strange and subtle smell spread in the limited space of the sealed vehicle.
The rapid and intense heartbeat finally began to slowly ease at this moment. Bai Liming collapsed in the driver's seat, sweating profusely, as if he had just been pulled out of a puddle of water.
Almost... just a little bit...
Bai Liming stared at the burning white candle with lingering fear. The candle's flame was not the usual orange-red, but bluish-purple. The flame did not flicker, but was like a fixed ellipse.
The bluish-purple flames reflected in Bai Liming's eyes, giving him a sense of inhuman terror, but it seemed like it was just an illusion.
When the candle was half burned, a hint of color appeared on Bai Liming's pale face. He slowly stood up and blew out the candle.
The stock is running low, so he has to use it sparingly.
After regaining some strength, Bai Liming started the car and prepared to leave. As the car turned the corner in front of the store, his heart suddenly started beating wildly again!
Bai Liming couldn't help but let out a distorted scream. His hands were scratching his chest randomly, and suddenly he grabbed the golden talisman he had been wearing around his neck. The chill that seemed to freeze his entire hand passed through his palm to his brain, making his foggy mind a little clearer.
A thought flashed through his mind:
Why is the heirloom his grandpa gave him colder than ice?
But soon, a chill swept through his consciousness along with his increasingly intense heartbeat. He wanted to light the remaining half candle with a lighter, but he couldn't do it.
In the last moment before he lost consciousness, he saw through the glass that the door that was closed to him had opened a crack.
*
After Yu Tu "invited" Bai Liming out of the teahouse, he felt inexplicably uneasy.
This restlessness did not come from his guilt for not wanting to cause trouble, but from the vague premonition in his heart that the trouble he was involved in would not be so easy to get rid of.
———This premonition reached its peak half an hour later.
When he didn't want to be sensitive, the carved wooden door at the entrance of the teahouse could block out a lot of things, but it couldn't completely block out everything.
Just like now, Yu Tu felt a sudden surge of resentment outside the door, and that resentment was somewhat familiar—he had just seen it on Bai Liming half an hour ago.
Yu Tu: “……?”
No, you haven't driven out of my store in half an hour?!
Yu Tu helplessly let go of his perception. His gaze passed over the wooden door and "saw" the car at the door. He also saw Bai Liming struggling to light the strange candle that emitted blue-purple light when burned.
The overwhelming resentment was temporarily suppressed, Bai Liming breathed a sigh of relief, and Yu Tu also breathed a sigh of relief. When he turned the steering wheel and prepared to leave, Yu Tu showed a sincere smile, but the smile froze in an instant as soon as it appeared on his face.
The resentment just now...exploded exponentially!
In Yu Tu's vision, he "saw" a black air current bursting out from Bai Liming's chest, rolling like a dark cloud about to rain, revealing a thick sense of uncertainty. What's more terrible is that because Bai Liming's vitality is gradually weakening, this dark cloud has a faint sign of spreading to the surroundings.
Once such a strong resentment spreads, all the living creatures in Wutong Town will suffer! At the very least, they will suffer a serious illness, and at the worst, they will die!
How long has it been quiet? Is this area of Chongming City offending Taisui?
Yu Tu could no longer sit still. He stood up and decisively pushed open the carved wooden door.
The tires of the car that just turned outside the door left two deep marks on the snow on the ground. Through the car window, Yu Tu saw the black, swirling resentment filling the car. It was so exaggerated that if the car was soaked in resentment for a few more days, it would directly become a weird state.
Yu Tu opened the car door and dispersed the energy in his right eye. Finally, he saw Bai Liming who had fainted in the dark cloud of resentment.
From the right eye, he was just a comatose young man covered in cold sweat, with an ugly face and looking like he was about to go into shock at any moment. But from the left eye, the golden talisman on his chest was like a small fountain, spewing out resentment continuously.
Yu Tu's mind moved, and the flexible green vine rolled out Bai Liming's lighter from under the driver's seat. The orange flame jumped out and lit the half-burnt candle.
A steady elliptical blue-purple light lit up, and the resentment that showed signs of dissipating gradually retracted, but they seemed unwilling to return to the golden talisman and continued to hover above Bai Liming's heart.
Yu Tu tried to carefully touch the ball of resentment with his consciousness, but he felt something was wrong the moment he touched it!
The resentment did not attack him, but the energy in his body disappeared at a speed that was astonishing, like the tide receding!
Yu Tu doesn’t even know where this energy is used!!!
Originally, with the blessing and gift from the Goodyear Beast, plus the settlement from the comics, the second energy vortex had become so thin that it was about to disappear. But now, next to the No. 2 "Gold Devourer", a new energy vortex appeared. Although this energy vortex is smaller than the disappeared No. 1 and the soon-to-disappear No. 2, it cannot cover up the fact that it exists!
Yu Tu was so heartbroken that he almost stopped breathing!
When Energy Giant No. 3 was completely formed, the black resentment hovering above Bai Liming's heart finally returned to the golden talisman on his chest, and the lit candle had burned down to only half an inch long.
Yu Tu blew out the candle and held the candle head in his hand to observe. The remaining candle did not have the residual heat of a normal candle after burning. It felt sticky and cold in his hand. Although he didn't know what was going on, Yu Tu felt very uncomfortable.
The resentment was forced back into the golden talisman, and Bai Liming woke up quickly. He opened his eyes and saw the indifferent owner standing outside the car, playing with a small piece of familiar thing in his hand.
After thinking about the cause and effect, Bai Liming felt a mixture of fear and gratitude: "Thank you for saving me."
Bai Liming noticed that the owner's expression was a little cold, not as calm and friendly as when he just walked in.
He heard the shopkeeper ask, "This thing...what do you call it?"
The shopkeeper was talking about the small piece of candle.
Bai Liming replied respectfully: "This is a rare treasure that has been passed down in our family - the ever-burning candle."
"Eternal candle." Bai Liming heard the mysterious shopkeeper repeat it in a low voice. "What an evasive name."
Bai Liming: “What…” What?
Before he could even ask the question, he felt his neck suddenly tighten. The chain of the golden amulet, a family heirloom that his grandfather had personally put around his neck on his coming-of-age ceremony and symbolized that he was the heir of the family, broke, and the amulet fell into the palm of the shop owner.
Bai Liming couldn't help but stand up, with a hint of anxiety on his face: "Shopkeeper, that is the heir's keepsake of our family! It's very important!"
"Oh?" The shop owner turned his gaze from the golden talisman to him, "Power or life, which one is more important to you?"
The topic jumped too quickly, and Bai Liming was unable to react for a moment: "...what?"
The shop owner didn't answer him, but just clasped his hands. A cold wind blew up from somewhere, blowing the snow everywhere.
In the wind and snow, there was a crisp cracking sound that could not be ignored.
Bai Liming raised his head and followed the direction of the sound subconsciously. Then, he saw a scene that made his eyes burst with anger—
The golden talisman, which was extremely important to him, broke into two halves.
Two identical halves.
The shop owner took something out of the cracked golden talisman and handed it to him.
It's a scale.
A bluish-purple scale.
"What...is this?" Bai Liming asked.
This scale is teardrop-shaped, and even in poor light, you can still see the colorful halo. However, the scale seems to be very old and looks a little dull.
The shop owner had a strange expression on his face. Bai Liming felt that the eyes behind his monocle did not seem to be the normal black color, and he suspected that it was just an illusion in the snowstorm.
"You don't even know him?"
"Ah?" Bai Liming felt that everything in front of him was beyond his cognition, "Should I recognize it?"
"This is the heart scale of a mermaid." The shopkeeper placed the blue-purple scale in his palm. The chill on the scale made Bai Liming shudder. "Why not go home and ask your elders?"