Huang Yuliang was very surprised that Li Yan hadn’t made any extra moves these days, but he absolutely didn’t believe that Li Yan’s previous bet was empty words, so he could only step up his efforts to forge a good relationship with the Lin family.
With Lin Qiubai’s assistance, he’d gained their basic trust and exchanged a valuable set of craft from Eight Wonders of Yanjing for six cloud-pattern brocades, along with an opportunity to see the seventh piece.
Huang Yuliang strongly believed that engaging in this deal to compete with Li Yan was not worthwhile.
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.
Upon viewing the seventh piece of cloud-pattern brocade, Huang Yuliang couldn’t shake the feeling that this newly restored brocade had subtle yet distinct differences compared to the six handed down brocades. This feeling could also be attributed to him being influenced by Lin Qiubai’s descriptions. However, it was a pity that Huang Yuliang had rarely used antique artifacts as bargaining chips in the past, so his research on such objects was not thorough enough to analyze the differences between them.
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Huang Yuliang had been running around all day. In addition to the cloud-pattern brocade matter, he was also attending to the matter of the stone statue and his usual information trading business. He was on the verge of being overwhelmed by the workload. Before returning to the hotel, Huang Yuliang received a call from Li Yan followed by a text message that asked him to come to a certain address.
Following the address, Huang Yuliang came to a relatively old neighborhood and found the correct place after navigating numerous twists and turns.
“Don’t worry, the source is very reliable.” While answering the phone, Huang Yuliang knocked on the door. “Yes, you don’t have to rush to sell the three stocks I gave you before the 15th. Where…”
When the door opened, Li Yan showed half of his face and made a “shh” gesture to him.
“Hmm, I still have some things to do here. You can just transfer the money to my original account. Okay, goodbye.” Huang Yuliang hung up the phone and looked around the room. While not devoid of furniture, it lacked the opulence that spoke of wealth. A Guanyin statue was placed in the not-so-large living room, and the ancestral altar was quite elaborate. “Whose house is this?”
“It belongs to someone from our Li Family Village. She’d fled the village after the massacre incident, and my grandpa had found her recently. She just went out.”
Huang Yuliang saw that there seemed to be someone lying on the bed in the inner room. “Then, what are you doing here?”
“I brought a woman back.”
Huang Yuliang’s eyes widened involuntarily as he looked at Li Yan. He peeked into the room again. “You…”
“What’s wrong?”
“You…” Huang Yuliang looked at Li Yan, and for a moment, he couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Then, he realized that he was feeling particularly aggrieved. When Li Yan was intimate with the Prisoner Maidens before, it could be said that he was under the influence of that strange flower, but this time, he brought a woman back and asked him to come over. What did this mean? Huang Yuliang felt particularly uneasy and thought Li Yan had no sense of propriety. “What does it have to do with me? What’s the matter with you!?” After saying this, Huang Yuliang turned around to leave.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Li Yan pushed Huang Yuliang against the door with a smile and held down the doorknob. “What are you doing? Are you angry?” Li Yan ruffled Huang Yuliang’s carefully combed hair. “Are you stupid? You’re definitely stupid, aren’t you? Come here.”
“Why?”
“Come here.” Li Yan pulled Huang Yuliang into the inner room. “Take a look at her.”
Upon entering the inner room and seeing the woman lying on the bed, Huang Yuliang immediately realized he had misunderstood. It wasn’t that the woman wasn’t beautiful, but she was genuinely pitiful. Her extremely pale skin, thin wrists, and dry hair had almost destroyed her once lovely and elegant face. She trembled slightly even in her sleep. It was clear from her condition that she’d been suffering for a long time and was not the kind of woman who frivolously slept around with men.
“She is…” Looking at Li Yan’s triumphant expression, Huang Yuliang instantly understood. “Did you secretly bring out Lin Qiuzi?”
Li Yan hadn’t been idle this week. He’d spent less time than usual to plan and execute this operation, but he was not one to fear challenges. It was okay to take risks occasionally. However, what made him decide to take the risk were also the few details mentioned in the previous discussion.
Lin Qiubai had claimed that he’d stumbled upon the basement Lin Qiuzhi was imprisoned in by accident. If that was true, the boarded-up window through which he’d peered into the basement should be quite conspicuous. Since the room containing Lin Qiuzhi could be accessed from the mansion’s courtyard, it’d be easier for Li Yan to survey the surrounding area for surveillance cameras; if access to the basement was limited to inside the mansion, checking the surveillance cameras would’ve been more cumbersome. Besides, going by the actions taken by Lin Qiubai so far, there seemed to be no sign that he’d been discovered, so one could be so bold as to speculate that the area was not under heavy monitoring.
Li Yan had a habit of purchasing necessary inspection equipment and restricted items like knives upon arriving at a new location. Carrying them everywhere would hinder him at security checks, such as those at train stations. It took him some time to get the hang of Nanjing’s underground market, and only once he had all the necessary equipment did he prepare to act.
Li Yan observed the Lin family’s mansion with binoculars for a few days. Besides the daily routine of the owner’s family, he found that there were many security guards patrolling the Lin family’s mansion, but the place where Lin Qiuzi was being held was rarely visited. This made it convenient for movement.
Regarding the environment in the courtyard, the reason why Huang Yuliang’s mother couldn’t enter the Lin family’s mansion was because of the presence of three crane statues arranged in an equilateral triangle in the courtyard. The three bronze statues had been cast with extremely profound anti-demon spells. Any demonic, malicious, or vengeful entities would experience immense suffering upon entering the courtyard.
While the layout initially fooled the eye as a typical garden landscape, Li Yan’s closer observation revealed a faint triangular formation, and Lin Qiuzi’s general position was on one side of this triangle.
“You actually used my mom?” Huang Yuliang squinted his eyes, but a slight smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“No, it’s collaboration.”
“You deliberately mentioned those three bronze statues to me, didn’t you? Is there a reason?”
Sighing slightly, Li Yan lifted up a corner of the quilt. Huang Yuliang looked over. Li Yan picked up Lin Qiuzi’s purple sleeve with his fingers and lifted it up slightly.
A circle of white feathers was clearly visible on Lin Qiuzhi’s arm, near her elbow.
“She is not human?”
“In the basement where she lived, there was a clear line on both sides of the loom. She only moved outside this line and never approached the inside. I figured it out as soon as I entered that room.”
Huang Yuliang covered Lin Qiuzi with the blanket. He could almost imagine how if she resisted even a little, she’d be dragged into the bronze crane formation and subjected to torment. “Poor girl.”
The task Li Yan entrusted Huang Yuliang’s mother with was actually to create an item enchanted with a spell. The time Li Yan had first met Mother Huang, the spell she’d used to hypnotize him had quickly taken effect and knocked him out. It was non-toxic and had no side effects, making it a must-have for killing and stealing. Mother Huang was intrigued by Li Yan’s plan and so she not only created the item but also did so meticulously, ensuring it could be used five times. It was so good that it allowed Li Yan to take Lin Qiuzi away without making any conversation.
PS: The enchanted item was a soft rubber duck.
Taking advantage of the routines of the Lin family members, Li Yan specifically chose dinner time for the operation. This was the time for security guards to change shifts, with some going to have dinner and the intervals between patrols relatively longer. Successfully infiltrating the outer courtyard, Li Yan called Lin Qiuzi from the window. After Lin Qiuzi saw the eyes of the big yellow duck through the window gap, she fainted instantly. Then, using a strong corrosive agent, Li Yan pried open the boards and windows before taking her out.
Thanks for the chapter!