Qi Feng’s expression vanished in an instant. He stared blankly for a few seconds, then said with utmost seriousness, “I answered everything you asked. If you insist on guarding against me like this, Great Immortal Lu, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Lu You looked down at him and said nothing for a moment.
The room was quiet for a few seconds. Qi Feng, apparently uncomfortable sitting, jabbed at his arm and twisted, trying to rise—but his legs had barely straightened halfway when a pair of hands pressed down on his shoulders and forced him firmly back.
The hands were slender and fair, the nail edges neatly rounded, quite beautiful to look at.
Qi Feng’s gaze traveled up from those fingertips and finally settled on a pair of light, lovely eyes.
Lu You had rubbed his eyes too hard climbing the stairs, leaving a few tiny marks at the corners—and by now, fermented by time, they had turned a deeper shade of pink, striking against that unhealthy pallor, conspicuous in the extreme.
He looked at Lu You, and Lu You looked back, two gazes locked for an instant before Qi Feng raised a brow first.
Even now, beaten half to death, he could still split his face in a grin—and grinning, he suddenly said, “Great Immortal Lu—do you like men or women?”
Lu You couldn’t fathom how, at a time like this, Qi Feng still had the presence of mind for such inanities. His lips pressed tight with displeasure. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Qi Feng’s grin stretched wider. “Great Immortal Lu, a face this pretty, skin this fair—if you liked women, it would be a waste.”
His tone paused, then continued, “And if you like men… well, you could consider me. I happen to be that way too—”
Crack—
The sentence was cut off mid-word.
Lu You’s hand came up and swung a slap hard across Qi Feng’s right cheek—deliberately avoiding the bloodied left one—then wiped his palm on a clean stretch of the man’s collar, stood, and looked down at him. “Awake now?”
Qi Feng’s face was turned aside. He took a moment, then righted his head, curious. “Why so angry?”
His left eye still had an Incense stick jutting from it, yet he acted as though he couldn’t feel the pain at all, hitching up the other side of his collar. “Should I wipe this side too?”
Crack—
Layered over the first print, Lu You’s palm landed again on his right cheek.
This time with greater force. The corner of Qi Feng’s mouth split open, but he paid it no mind, spat a mouthful of blood foam onto the floor beside him, gritted his teeth, and turned back. “Your hand smells so good.”
“…”
Lu You conceded defeat.
In the twenty-odd years since he’d set up his Altar Hall, what hadn’t Great Immortal Lu seen? Immortals, Ghosts, Deities, Buddhas—he’d even crossed paths with a few Devils—and never once had anything overawed him. Until today, when he met a pervert.
Against decent folk, a pervert really is, in a sense, a hard counter.
He silently resolved that the moment he got home, every single toiletry Qin Shuheng had bought was getting swapped for a different brand.
Mang Tianlong watched from the side, brow furrowing tightly. Lu You looked back at him, and like a child running to tattle, called out in a low voice, “Master.”
It was his habitual response to trouble: lift his head, gaze timidly at the Patron Spirit beside him, and softly call for his Master to help.
A habit raised into him since childhood.
Called upon, Mang Tianlong immediately bent low into Aperture Possession. The familiar dizziness passed, and in the blink of an eye the color of Lu You’s eyes changed. Mang Tianlong seized Qi Feng by the collar, dragged him all the way to the Altar Table, and drove his head, unceremoniously, into the table corner—again, and again.
Then Mang Tianlong bent close to the blood-faced Qi Feng, expressionless. “Still smells good?”
Toying with Lu You—a green rookie in matters of the heart—to get a rise out of him was one thing. But with Mang Tianlong inhabiting the body, Qi Feng wouldn’t have dared this nonsense with the guts of a bear and the heart of a leopard. He simply clamped his mouth shut, and under the pain and the swimming vision, stayed silent.
Mang Tianlong didn’t let him off. He hauled him up, his face full of the cold lethality unique to serpents, and repeated the question: “I asked you: does it still smell good?”
Qi Feng sucked in two harsh breaths. His forehead had just struck the table corner, and fresh blood slid down into his eye, staining the world a filthy crimson.
His mouth opened, and his voice, too weak, carried no force at all—only a whisper: “N-no. Not anymore.”
Mang Tianlong stared at him a long moment, then turned his head. “Kuaipao.”
Huang Kuaipao, who had been watching the entire show from the sidelines, snapped to attention at once. “Here!”
“Back to the Altar Hall—bring some Patron Spirits and drag every last thing here to the City God.”
Kuaipao raised a paw in salute. “Orders received!”
It turned to run, and Huang Xiaopao looked around, decided nothing here needed it, and followed.
Qi Feng, watching them go, hurried out two cries. “What’s the need for all this? We’re both of the mystic arts—practically half-colleagues. As a Patron Immortal you of all beings should know how hard cultivation is. If you confiscate my whole altar today, all those years of cultivation go to waste!”
“A heretical path, with no respect for Karma.”
Mang Tianlong slanted him a look. “And you think you’re fit to measure yourself against us?”
Qi Feng swallowed his words.
Then something seemed to occur to him. In his one remaining upturned eye, the pupil—smaller than a normal man’s—swiveled like a glass bead, and he suddenly said, “A bet’s a bet. How about this—spare yourselves the trouble, and I’ll hand them over willingly. Deal?”
Mang Tianlong released him. “Go on, then.”
So Qi Feng clambered up, stumbling twice at first from the head injury. Once steady, he pressed close to the Altar Table and bent toward the Statue Vessel at the very center of the topmost tier—his entire upper body flattening against those plaques made of human bone.
Watching from behind, Mang Tianlong’s expression abruptly congealed. There was no time for any motion to stop Qi Feng—he could only first secure himself and Lu You, rolling aside to hide behind the nearest room door.
Then came an enormous blast. Shreds of meat pulp sprayed from the Altar Table in all directions, the door panels booming under the shockwave, and the stench of rot filled the entire apartment in an instant.
Thank goodness for the timely dodge—setting aside how vile the thing was, the force of that blast alone would have left a body black and blue.
In order to save his own skin, Qi Feng had blown up his own Altar Table—trading the lives of every ghost and monster he had ever refined for his escape.
Mang Tianlong seethed.
When Lu You’s consciousness returned to his body, he opened his eyes to find Mang Tianlong standing to one side, looking at him, face full of shame.
“He got away.”
Mang Tianlong said it, face full of indignation. “He tricked me. He said he’d hand over the Little Ghosts willingly—and that’s why I let go of him.”
Thus spoke the Great Immortal of the Mang Clan, who ordinarily cultivated in his mountain grotto and knew nothing of the wickedness of human hearts.
Lu You blinked, opened the door a crack to survey the scene outside—nobody in sight—then turned back and shook his head. “Not your fault. It’s his.”
Mang Tianlong still felt guilty. “Did I ruin things for you?”
“Not at all.” The stench was unbearable; Lu You shut the door before facing him. “Without you today is exactly when things would have gone wrong. You’ve helped me tremendously. Everything worth asking him has been asked, everything I came to find has been found—and injured as he is now, he won’t be interfering with me again.”
Mang Tianlong seemed genuinely soothed by this, his expression easing. “Good, then.”
The environment here had grown utterly inhospitable. The stench stung Lu You’s eyes until they burned and he could barely keep them open; he could only squint, drag the quilt from Qi Feng’s bedroom, spread it across the floor, and somehow make his way out.
He was waiting at the compound gate for a Ride-Hailing Car when his phone rang. He glanced at the caller and answered.
It was Yang Yun again. “Lu You, Xiaopao just got back and told me about your situation. How are you? Nothing happened, right?”
“I’m fine.” Lu You pressed the phone to his ear and gazed into the distance. “I just let Qi Feng slip away.”
“Qi Feng who?” At this point Yang Yun knew only from Xiaopao that the two of them had gone somewhere sinister. “Aiya, never mind all that. I’m heading down to drive over to your shop right now—we’ll talk in person.”
“Might be a while yet. I’m still outside waiting for the car.”
“Fine, I’ll head over and wait for you first.”
By the time Lu You trudged in through the shop door, dusty and worn, three shocked faces were waiting for him.
Qin Shuheng and Yang Yun went without saying—even Yang Shengnan, seeing the state of him, flooded with maternal instinct at once. She rose from her seat, crossed to him in a few strides, took his cheeks in both palms, and clucked over him—”aiyo, aiyo”—before rounding on him in fury:
“Where on earth have you been? You got into a fight, didn’t you? Lost, did you? How did you get hurt?”
Lu You startled, not following. “What injury?”
Yang Shengnan tilted his chin—and he hissed before he could stop himself. Then came her voice: “Who hit you here on the chin?”
The wound on his chin came from that moment during Qi Feng’s transformation when Lu You had nearly failed to dodge.
Lu You had known Yang Yun since long ago, and Yang Shengnan had watched him grow from teenager into the man before her; in her heart she had long regarded him as half a son.
But barely a few days without seeing him, and her godson had gone out and come home red-eyed and injured—Yang Shengnan’s first thought was heartache. Her second was to go find that family and start a war.
A strong woman permits no one to stir up trouble right under her nose.
“Where did they hit you? I’ll go avenge you!”
“No need.”
Mang Tianlong was strolling unhurriedly toward the Altar Hall. Lu You said, “His place has already been blown up.”
Yang Yun, who had taken a sip of tea at exactly the wrong moment: “…Kh-kh-kh!”
Once she’d coughed it out and recovered, she couldn’t help but marvel, “How savage.”
Hearing this, Yang Shengnan sobered her expression and sat back down with composure. “I see. Good, good. That’s my godson for you.”
Lu You gave a soft “mm,” already working his jacket off. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he still felt that fish-rot stench clinging to him, impossible to shake.
But no sooner had the thought of a bath risen than Qi Feng’s “smells so good” sank heavy in his mind, gagging him. He simply dusted off his clothes and sat.
Qin Shuheng had left him a cup of tea. Lu You took a sip to moisten his throat and recounted the past few days to the three of them in broad strokes.
Qin Shuheng was flabbergasted. “How come it’s this exciting? Master, if you’d told me earlier, I’d have gone along and helped!”
Lu You looked at him. “Have you finished copying the scriptures?”
Qin Shuheng promptly shut up and played dead.
Once his cup was refilled, Yang Yun worked through the gist of it and asked, “So this trip of yours not only turned up evidence of Qi Feng and Li Bingjun cooperating to abduct people and Steal Fortune—you also wrecked his Altar Table and did in a whole room of Ghost Children?”
She studied Lu You a moment, and couldn’t help herself: “Lu You, how did I never notice before what a capable, get-things-done person you are?”
