Family heirloom
"I'm grateful for the kindness you've shown me. I'm not willing to pay you so much for no reason. That's not good. I don't want it."
"It's not free. If I'm not born into a good family in my next life and have no power, no influence, and no money, I'll be counting on you to provide for the family. Whatever's left is yours."
Hearing this, Yuanli quickly put the gold away. He was right. If she became poor in her next life, where would she get the money to build the temple?
"Zhao Hu is just a wealthy man from a small town. How can he be so rich? He can just take thirty ingots of gold without any hesitation. Even Prince Wen's mansion back then didn't have thirty ingots of gold. He barely has guards in his compound, so he's not afraid of robbers."
"My family isn't that poor, ma'am. We can still afford thirty ingots of gold. But you're right. Dishui Town is very far from the Imperial Capital and the surrounding wealthy areas, making business inconvenient. Even if we could do business, we're definitely not rich enough to just take thirty ingots of gold." Heng Jin paused, feigning slight surprise and apologizing, "I just called you that casually. I'm so sorry. I should call you sister now."
"Now, if you say it casually, no one will care. But don't say it casually in the sky. I'm afraid that rumors will come pouring down on you, and you won't be able to bear it."
"Thank you, Brother Xun, for your consideration. However, I don't think it's unbearable. Even the heavens know that she and I have been together for three lifetimes. When she heard me call her "wife," she was just sighing that our love is stronger than gold."
Yuanli promptly interrupted the seemingly harmonious but in reality piercing conversation between the two and said, "Don't waste time talking about irrelevant things so late at night. Let's get down to business. I'm leaving now."
Heng Jin stood up immediately after, straightened her clothes, and stood beside her. Standing shoulder to shoulder with her, she said to Cha Suxun, "Let's go."
His smirking, frivolous look was glaring to Cha Suxun, and the small half-tooth mark revealed when he adjusted his clothes was even more glaring. Just as he was about to ask, he saw Yuan Li's eyes evade when she saw the tooth mark on Heng Jin's neck.
Now, without asking any detailed questions, I can guess the truth almost exactly.
Mr. Zhao's residence was not far from the inn where they were staying, so they arrived there quickly.
Seeing that Li Daxian wasn't the only one getting off the carriage, but also two men and a woman, Zhao Hu offered the remaining ten ingots of gold and asked hesitantly, "Daxian, who are these two?"
"Don't ask questions that you shouldn't ask."
"Yes, yes, it's not my place to question the Immortal's people. But... could you please come into the mansion alone and solve the problem?"
Heng Jin showed displeasure and asked, "If we don't let them in, then what about subduing the ghost later? I'll perform the ritual and you'll catch it?"
Zhao Hu instantly showed his fear and had to step back and politely invited them in.
Taking out a compass and placing it on his palm to point the way, Heng Jin muttered some incomprehensible whispers, and used the compass to point the direction from time to time, sending Chu Xiao and others to search each house.
Heng Jin spoke nonsense in a serious tone, stalling for time, "The layout of your house is originally excellent, but it's ruined by the placement of some of the furniture. It's a mess. Have you hired many Feng Shui masters to change the layout for you?"
"Yes, yes, there must be at least seven or eight." Zhao Hu nodded rapidly.
"That's right. Your house is originally a very auspicious site, and the layout must have been carefully planned by an expert. But the problem lies in the placement of the furniture. You've placed suppressive objects in every auspicious spot in your house, changing the layout and concentrating yin instead of yang. It's basically a place where corpses are kept."
"But, great immortal, the fortune-tellers in our town have always been very accurate. Everyone in the surrounding villages knows this. Every time I change the layout, the fortune-teller comes to check on me and always says there's no problem. Of course, I'm not saying you can't do it. Could it be that it's too dark and she saw it wrong?"
Zhao Hu was full of doubt when he said this, but since this Master Li had almost calculated everything correctly, he did not dare to offend him and could only ask in a tactful way with a smile.
"If fortune-tellers are as effective as you say, why did these things happen two nights in a row despite your home having so-called good feng shui and layout? I never force anything on my clients, and I don't interfere too much with fate. If you believe it, then change it. If you don't, it has nothing to do with me."
"Believe me, believe me, it was I who offended the Immortal. Please forgive me and help me change the layout of my home."
Heng Jin refused, saying, "The thirty ingots of gold only cover the issue of the resurrection of the dead in your home. If you want to change the layout of the furnishings, please do so another day."
Without waiting for the three of them to finish their search, Heng Jin went straight to the backyard of the Zhao residence. Standing under the pomegranate tree, Heng Jin continued, "Pomegranate trees are auspicious trees, symbolizing fertility, prosperity, and family unity and harmony. Considering the location, this should be the most suitable place in the yard to bury the body. Did your grandmother die at the hands of relatives? This must be the reason for the lingering resentment. I need to know the cause of your grandmother's death."
"My grandmother was old and had an old illness that couldn't be cured, so she died. She did have some resentment towards me, but it was just a trivial matter. Every family has its own problems, immortal."
"If you don't tell the truth now, I can find your grandmother and learn the cause of her death from her. It will just be more troublesome. Since I dare to ask, I have absolute confidence in what I have calculated. I am very particular. After receiving the money, I naturally know what to say and what not to say."
As she spoke, Heng Jin lifted her foot and stepped on the dirt beside her. "For example, I've figured out what's under my feet, but I won't say it out loud. Taking money from others to help them eliminate disasters, I understand."
Zhao Hu's fawning smile gradually froze, and in the end, he gave up pretending and said bluntly, "The Immortal's predictions are a little too accurate. So accurate, it's as if he saw it with his own eyes."
"As the saying goes, if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have to worry about ghosts knocking on your door. If Mr. Zhao had committed fewer murders, he wouldn't be as suspicious as he is now."
As soon as he finished speaking, Zhao Hu's grandmother suddenly jumped out from the dark corner of the wall, ran straight to Zhao Hu, and grabbed his neck tightly. The grandmother did not strangle him to death, but just clamped him.
"Didn't you agree with grandma that we'd watch the moon together? Why did you leave grandma and go out to play secretly?"
Zhao Hu held his breath, trying to avoid the stench wafting from his grandmother's mouth as she spoke. In just a few hours, he had only been out for a short time, and his grandmother's body had decomposed so quickly. It was even more terrifying to see.
The skin on the right side of Grandmother's face had fallen off in half, drooping flatly. Maggots were constantly crawling out of the large hole. A foul odor began to emanate from her body, especially from her mouth. Whenever she spoke, the smell wafted forth—the odor of a rotting corpse, a smell Zhao Hu knew all too well.
Li Ci rang the corpse-driving bell, and the fierce gleam in Grandmother's eyes faded. Another rang, and Grandmother loosened her grip on Zhao Hu's neck. Another rang, and Grandmother walked to the pomegranate tree and stood still.
Zhao Hu felt as if he had seen a life-saving god, and all the doubts in his heart disappeared at this moment.
"I'll ask again, how did your grandmother die? If I really try to find out the reason for her death through your grandmother, reading the memories of the dead is against the will of heaven. I can't guarantee whether I can still subdue your grandmother after reading it, or whether we will all die here."
Glancing at his grandmother beside him, Zhao Hu didn't dare to lie anymore considering what the witch had said would happen to his grandmother when she suppressed her.
"I'll tell you. I poisoned my grandmother myself. She resented me and cursed me when she died, saying that when she died, she would turn into a black raccoon and come to take my life. The night before last, a black raccoon entered the yard. It was a very evil raccoon and it dug my grandmother out."
"I don't believe that just because you poisoned her, her resentment after death would be so strong and last so long."
"Because she thought until her death that I had destroyed her family heirloom. She also discovered the bodies I buried in this yard, including her favorite grandson, her uncle, and her domineering granddaughter from her mother's side. I killed too many people my grandmother cared about, so many that she couldn't tolerate me anymore. If my mother and I wanted to survive, we had to become the true masters of the Zhao family. So, I knocked her unconscious, carried her to an old tomb, and laid her in a coffin filled with rotting corpse water for a night. When I carried her back, the corpse poison had entered her body, and she couldn't survive. But, this damn old woman refused to hand over the family heirloom to my mother before she died. Obviously, I had almost killed everyone in the family, and she only had mother as her best choice."
At this point, Zhao Hu collapsed on the ground, crying and laughing at the same time. He raised his head and looked at his grandmother's body with a fierce and vicious look, saying, "She thought that was a precious treasure! It's actually a harmful thing! She killed my mother, and I will kill everyone in this family! She turned my mother into a monster, and everyone she cared about deserves to be eaten by my mother!"
After yelling, Zhao Hu stood up like a madman, took out a shovel from some straw cage, and swung the shovel at my grandmother's head.
He used up nearly all his strength, smashing the shovel into Grandmother's head, causing her brains to splatter and rot, turning into black water and soaking into the grass. Only half of Grandmother's head remained, drooping in a bloody mess.
After this blow, the grandmother started moving again. She moved nimbly behind Zhao Hu and hugged him tightly. Her two withered arms were tied into a knot like a rope, binding Zhao Hu firmly in her arms.
She used the remaining incomplete half of her head to knock against Zhao Hu's back lightly, not too hard or too light, but it allowed Zhao Hu to feel the dull sound coming from his chest particularly clearly.
In fact, the moment the shovel in Zhao Hu's hand fell to the ground, he had already come to his senses. He didn't know where he got the courage to rush forward like that.
But when his grandmother tied him up, the intense shock and fear had already shattered his rationality, and the damp heat flowing out of his pants/crotch quickly turned into coolness.
Zhao Hu was so frightened that he didn't dare turn around. He stood straight, not daring to scream out loud for fear that his grandmother would move again. He could only lower his voice and pray, "Great Immortal, save me!"
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