Just like Long Ya said, that group of people couldn’t see the old lady. They only felt a cold wind rush past, circling through everyone. It was like a whip dipped in chili, thrashing people with burning pain.
The group of people were thrown into utter confusion by the sudden whipping of the cold wind. They dispersed, falling on the ground and rolling a few times before crawling up with embarrassed faces. Only then did they successively discover the front part of their collar near their necks had been cut apart. Immediately, terror seized their faces, but they didn’t even have time to say anything before they heard someone scream.
Qi Chen’s gaze followed the scream and saw that the man that’d previously been directing people to carry the shattered bones, had been thrown to the ground by the old lady. Dark resentment poured out of her body, almost shrouding half of that person’s body.
That person couldn’t see anything and could only feel that he’d been pressed by something. Under the heavy darkness of night, it was gloomy and strange, making one tremble with fear. He yelled in confusion without any regard for appearances: “God! There’s, there’s something pressing down on me! Help me! Help me get it off! Ah — —”
Right now, old lady on top of him had completely lost her cowering, senile appearance. Her shoulders were hunched over, her face so thin there was almost no flesh, leaving only the folds of wrinkles piled on top of bones. It made her brow ridge appear prominent and her eye sockets deeply sunken. Backlit by the poor light, her sunken eyes were pitch black, only the whites of her eyes were particularly obvious, making the old lady look like a terrifying monster.
At that moment, she had obviously already lost her mind from the seething resentment. She arched her distinctly bony hands and suddenly reached towards the man’s neck. With this kind of posture and strength, it looked like she was about to directly wring that person’s neck.
Qi Chen gasped, and just as he was about to speak, he felt a sudden lightness in his arms.
He lowered his head to look and found that the knife child that’d originally been acting dead in his arms had disappeared. Instead, a cold flash of a blade landed in Long Ya’s hand.
In just a blink of an eye, Qi Chen realised that Long Ya, who had been standing beside him dragging him forward by the wrist a second ago, had materialized from beside the old lady. The blade of the dagger in his hands was placed accurately in front of that man’s neck, blocking the old lady’s hand with not a second to spare. The cold gleam of the knife flashed in front of the old lady’s face ruthlessly.
Qi Chen only heard her give a mournful cry. She released her hand and covered her eyes as she tumbled to the side and was blocked by Long Ya’s raised foot. He then bent over, grabbing her wrist and pulling her up, saying coldly: “You’ve gone through mountains of swords and seas of flames for these few hundred years. Why do you love being beaten to death so much?! This request token you got at the cost of never being able to enter reincarnation will be wasted like this? You want to kill an irrelevant person and get struck by heavenly thunder till your soul scatters, allowing your son to be dug up again and again in this lousy construction site?”
Hearing this, the old lady, who’d still been struggling, froze as if her acupuncture point had been tapped. After being silent for a moment, she suddenly began to sob and cry.
The series of movements just now seemed to have exhausted most of her strength. Right now, her deflated appearance made every one of her movements appear especially tiring. She shifted twice, pulling out her arm from Long Ya’s loosened grip, dragging her already leaden body towards the uncovered scattered bones on the ground. She leaned down, gathering the fragments of bone together. It was as if, separated by four hundred years, she was hugging her son that’d died in a foreign land.
She seemed to almost sink into the ground and was intermittently blown by the wind as she sobbed: “Mother is useless. It’s mother that’s useless ah…… leaving you here where you can’t rest in peace. More than four hundred and thirty years…. My son, come home with mother alright? Mother has come to bring you home…..”
But other than Long Ya and Qi Chen, no one else could see anything.
The man who fell to the ground only saw Long Ya hold a knife in front of his throat to block. The pressure and pain that was pressing on his body suddenly disappeared. Even the goosebump-inducing cold wind had suddenly stopped.
With this disturbance, the people that’d rolled to the ground like watermelons recovered their wits one after another, flipping over and crawling up, wanting to leave this evil construction site.
Long Ya glanced at them and said lazily: “Hey ——– don’t be in such a hurry to run ah. Did I allow you to leave?” As he spoke, he tripped two of them with a hook of his foot. While they were still stupefied, he drew out what seemed like stir-fried beans from who knew where and haphazardly scattered them. Yet there was one for each person, hitting a target with every shot. In an instant, all irrelevant people were felled.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ktbrf ralg-oglfv yfjcr vlvc’a rffw ilxf j cbgwji atlcu. Snfgsbcf atja kjr ragemx ofii vbkc bcf joafg jcbatfg jcv vlvc’a wbnf jujlc.
Hl Jtfc rajgfv klat klvf fsfr obg j ktlif jcv mbeivc’a tfiq ragfamtlcu bea tlr tjcv ab afra atf ygfjat bo j qfgrbc cfjgys——-
Pcmgfvlyif! Jbwqifafis xcbmxfv bea.
Long Ya patted the nonexistent dust on his hands, lifting his chin at Qi Chen like a ferocious bandit: “What are you standing there dumbly for? Come here!”
As his voice fell, the dagger in his hands transformed into powder with a flash of light. It dropped to the ground and once more condensed into a short-limbed and round knife child.
That three-inch child-like little thing probably got comfortable being carried by Qi Chen in the car. It forgot its own master when it opened its eyes, picking up its two short legs and sweeping into Qi Chen’s arms like a gust of wind. It looked up at Qi Chen and gave a foolish laugh, then found a comfortable position, closing its eyes happily like a big-headed gourd.
Long Ya: “……”
Qi Chen gave a hollow laugh, carrying the knife child and walking to Long Ya’s side while looking at the old lady hugging scattered bones on the ground, whispering somewhat helplessly: “We did find it, how are we going to bring it back?”
“I don’t know.” Long Ya answered calmly and unhurriedly: “It’s not like I’ve done this kind of assignment before.”
Qi Chen: “……” You haven’t done this kind of assignment before and you still accepted so straightforwardly!
Long Ya saw through his unspoken criticisms at a glance and spread out his hands: “She had a request token ah. Within the three realms, this thing is most effective.”
Qi Chen asked bewildered: “What is a request token anyway? Why is it so capable?”
“You can’t really say it’s capable either. It can be considered a type of rule.” Long Ya glanced at him and explained: “Everything must have rules in order to operate otherwise it would be a mess. This request token is one type of rule. Any existence within the three worlds“> can obtain it in the right way. Of course, immortals have their cost, ghosts have their suffering. Each one is different.”
He pointed to the old lady: “Like her kind of ordinary soul with no foundation to begin with and no results to show for it, will walk through a mountain of swords and a sea of flames once. If they can survive, then they can get a request token. Then, with the soul as the medium and never entering reincarnation as a price to exchange for the right to stay in the human world until they finish what they want to do. Of course, this period also has a lot of restrictions. And in order to send these special groups of people to where they should go earlier and not stay in the human world for too long, all law-abiding monsters and demons of the three worlds must try their best to help her as soon as they see the request token she presents……. Ai, anyway, this is basically a thing that cheats people without looking. Strangely enough, there will inevitably be people who will still throw themselves at it.”
As Qi Chen heard this long explanation, he stared at the stooped back of the old lady and said somewhat surprised: “Never….. entering reincarnation?”
Long Ya gave a “mn” and said calmly: “So just treat her words of working like oxen and horses for you like water. It can’t be real.”
Qi Chen shook his head: “I also didn’t take it seriously…. However, are we going to just look?”
“Who said we’re going to just look? Aren’t I thinking of a way right now?!” Long Ya humphed coldly and said somewhat impatiently.
He was silent for a moment, then knelt down and patted the old lady’s shoulder: “I’m afraid your son also isn’t……”
Halfway through the sentence, the old lady suddenly lifted her head to look at him. That expression was like a bird that would startle at the mere twang of a bowstring, deeply afraid of Long Ya saying something like there’s no way to bring your son home.
“Hah, forget it.” Seeing her appearance, Long Ya swallowed the words he wanted to say back down and comforted her with a rare instance of conscience: “I didn’t say there was no way so don’t be so agitated.”
He stretched out his beautiful slender fingers, drew two simple lines on the ground, and spoke to the old lady: “The place your son’s bones are located has been manipulated by someone. Perhaps someone was plotting against another that year. But your son was extremely unlucky and happened to run into it. So the bones are all suppressed here, no one can carry it away.”
The old lady’s expression fluctuated with his words. After several twists and turns, she finally settled on an anxious expression and asked Long Ya: “Then, then you definitely have away right?”
Long Ya coughed once: “There are people that specialize in this. I’ve always specialized in capturing and killing. Saving people is not within my range.”
The old lady: “……”
Qi Chen felt the expression on her face could be perfectly interpreted by the words “are you fucking kidding me”.
“But I still have some knowledge about it.” Long Ya’s weakness lasted not even two seconds before he immediately returned to feigning ignorance and jerked his chin at Qi Chen: “You’re good at this kind of thing. Come here and piece together the fragments of bone.”
Qi Chen: “…..Didn’t the job advertisement say they prioritized people who specialized in repairing metal cultural relics?”
Long Ya: “Oh, how am I supposed to know. It’s not like I wrote that thing! Go find human resources if you have questions! Now can you shut up, stop talking nonsense and get down to business! How much time have I wasted here already, hurry up ok?”
The corners of Qi Chen’s mouth twitched and said in defeat: “….. Fine.”
He was glad that during university, other than his specialized course, he also chose many elective courses that he thought were useful. Otherwise who else could wait upon this daye surnamed Long?
Only elective courses were something that had foundations in other fields of study after all so he may not even be able to remember them well let alone doing it practically?
Qi Chen watched the old lady standing aside to make room for him, looking at him with an expression of incomparable trust and expectation, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. After all, he felt that he may not necessarily be more reliable than Long Ya that complete amateur, in this field.
The exposed fragments of bone in the mud didn’t seem normal with a glance.
Compared to normal human bones, it hadn’t changed color after being buried for so long and there was also no sign of mold or decay. Rather, it was an eerie white, as if you could shake off the residual dust with just a few taps. It was as clean as if it’d been polished. Even the edges of the bone fragments didn’t have any cracks or signs of wear and tear. As long as you found the right piece, you could join them together perfectly.
Such an abnormal state could probably only be explained by Long Ya’s explanation of “having been manipulated”.
Qi Chen half knelt by the pile of bone fragments, habitually shaking his thin and clean fingers before stretching out his hand to touch those bone fragments.
As soon as his fingertips touched it, he was startled by the shockingly cold chill of it. Along with the piercingly cold sensation, a sense of profound sadness struck his heart. It was as if the owner of these scattered bones was relaying hundreds of years of unspoken resentment.
This obviously wasn’t some pleasant feeling yet an indescribable sense of familiarity poured out from the bottom of Qi Chen’s heart.
At that moment, his previous apprehension completely disappeared. It was like something had clicked in his brain in that instant. His hands moved and began to organize these scattered bone fragments. Amongst the calm and composure was a thread of warmth and compassion that even he couldn’t perceive.
It was as if, through these eerie white bones, he was comforting a resentful soul that hadn’t been able to rest for hundreds of years.
The process of piecing the bones together was natural and spontaneous. It went so smoothly, even Qi Chen himself felt surprised.
When he placed the last bone fragment in place, he saw something dazzling flash past his eyes. Then, a faint circle appeared on the ground that was originally bare except for the upturned soil, which happened to lock the bones in the middle. At the edge of the circle, small talismans were pressed in the east, west, south, and north directions.
The talisman was filled with bold unreadable calligraphy script. The dark red handwriting looked like dried blood.
Qi Chen froze for a moment, not daring to move his hands rashly, turning his head to look at Long Ya.
Unexpectedly, Long Ya didn’t even think about it. He leaned down and straightforwardly ripped off these mysterious-looking talismans, leaving not one behind.
Just as the last paper talisman was ripped off, several shrill ear-piercing screams rang out.
Translator’s Corner
Fisho says: oh wow that old lady literally went through so much suffering to get that token ;-;
Lazy Panda says: babies always like mom more than dad
Mom went though lots just to put her child to rest.
Qi Chen powerful! It can’t be easy to put together so many bones ah
This sure is a great novel. I’m starting to like Long Yas direkt way of handling things. Long Ya seems to be going pretty easy on Qi Chen despite his character description in the beginning. But Qi Chen is such a cutie. Fells like he has some hidden super powers.
Oh wow, QC has some nice powers it seems!!! I really wonder what exactly they are xD
Ty for the chapter!!💜💜💜💜
Qi Chen is great at puzzle pieces too…and kindness… Thanks for the chapter ❤️
thanks for the chapter!
Qi Chen is still a mystery to me. His special abilities are starting to come out, I think…
Qi Chen definitely has some unique skills that can help people 💪
Thanks for the chapter 💞