Chapter 28: A Meal's Favor

  I didn't pay attention at first, but when I heard him say this sentence, I was shocked. Could it be that this old man really has some skill? As the saying goes, "A true master does not reveal his appearance, and one who reveals his appearance is not a true master." I almost trembled with fear as I asked him: "Then where did you say she came from?"

  The old man glanced at Su Jing with a sly smile and said, "Isn't this a celestial maiden descending to the mortal world? You're quite fortunate, young one."

  I almost fell over, and indignantly said: "Goodbye to you - you old rascal!"

  The old man rubbed his hands together and pulled out a few black condoms, shouting at me: "Young people should pay attention to safety when they're 'active', buy two get one free!"

  "Get it for your son to use on your grandson!" I cursed and walked away.

  "Halt!" The old man shouted loudly.

  I coldly said: "What do you want?"

  The old man pulled out a dirty and short wooden box from behind his back, placed it in front of me, muttered to himself, and suddenly his eyes flashed with a sharp light as he shouted: "Heng Ha Er Jiang, come out!" A muffled sound came from the wooden box, and two kitchen knives suddenly jumped out. The old man grasped one knife in each hand, swung them in mid-air, creating a flurry of blades, his eyes fixed intently on me.

  I subconsciously pulled Su Jing behind me and warned, "What are you doing?"

  "Jian Sheng?" Su Jing softly uttered two words behind me, with a hint of puzzlement in her tone.

  The old man waved the vegetable knife in his hand again, and Leng Ding smiled and said: "I don't believe you don't need a vegetable knife. This is a real Xuan Tie vegetable knife. Look -" He took out a white paper and used the knife to cut it with a whooshing sound. "Cutting paper like silk, chopping iron like mud, you two young people will inevitably use it when living together, right?"

  At this moment, I have to admit that I am a bit convinced by him, and I couldn't help but laugh: "What else are you going to sell?"

  The old man put on a pose, smiled and said: "Selling this word is too difficult to hear, but from buying a house to giving a car transfer certificate, there really isn't anything I can't help with." The old man saw that I didn't seem to have any intention of buying his knife, so he took out a cheap plastic business card and handed it to me. "My humble name card, no matter what you need, just find me!"

  I get it, this guy not only calculates fortunes, performs magic tricks and sells condoms and knives, but also works as a ticket scalper... I looked down at the business card, on which was written "Liu Laoliu" in three characters, with the title of General Director of the China Taoist Association East China Branch. On the back it said: "My specialty is investigating the good or bad luck of residences, Feng Shui for graves, face reading and fortune telling by name, scientifically predicting stock market trends..."

  I watched and exclaimed: "Sixth Master is so capable!"

  Liu Lao Liu bowed repeatedly: "Take care of yourself in the future."

  I said to Su Jing: "Let's go, fairy descends to the world."

  Leaving Liu Laosix, Su Jing walked for a while and suddenly said: "Just now you stood in front of me to protect me?"

  "In this world of ours, men have the duty to protect women...... Just now, in my haste, I almost unconsciously made a move without thinking it through. In my eyes, Su Jing is after all a girl. I mocked myself, 'I'm overestimating my abilities.'"

  Su Jingdao said: "It's not what you're saying, you have this heart, I acknowledge your feelings."

  "Right, what did you mean by 'Jian Sheng' just now?"

  Su Jingdao said: "I also found it strange, just now when that old man drew his sword, I faintly felt that he seemed to have a bit of sword energy on him, probably enough to reach the level of a Sword Saint on our continent."

  I exclaimed in surprise: "So that old guy really has some skills?"

  Su Jingdao said: "But later that sword energy disappeared again, it's also possible that I was wrong."

  I glanced at the greasy business card in my hand and casually stuffed it into my back pocket: "Let's keep it, who knows when we might need it during Spring Festival travel." I asked Su Jing, "Have you figured out your problem?"

  Su Jing shook her head and said, "No, judging from the bangle, we probably still have a month's time left. So I made a plan: assuming there were 60 people around you at that time, let's find three of them every day from now on. If there are still 10 days left, I'll think of a way to retrieve their powers and return them to you."

  I cautiously said: "What if you can't think of a way?"

  Su Jing gave me a cold look and said, "You'd better pray that I can, otherwise..." Su Jing trailed off, lost for words.

  "You... aren't really going to kill all those people, are you?"

  "To be honest, I don't know either. On one hand, there are 60 innocent lives; on the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of people in mainland China. If you were me, how would you choose?"

  I thought for half a day and gave her a particularly smelly shameless and irresponsible answer: "I choose the just side."

  Su Jing smiled bitterly and said: "The difficulty of choice lies in the fact that there is no such thing as justice or injustice on this issue."

  I started to lead her: "If you want to save 10 people's lives, you must kill an innocent person, what do you do?"

  Su Jing said resolutely: "No way!"

  "That's right! It means that one and ten are no different, both have dignity, you can't measure right or wrong and meaning with quantity." I think it's a waste of my talent if I don't go to the philosophy department to be a professor.

  Su Jingdao said, "But now it's the difference between 60 and several hundred million!" She wasn't stupid, she didn't get caught up in my words. It seems that the truth that quantitative change leads to qualitative change is universally applicable, and there's always a certain threshold that people can't cross.

  Su Jing shook her head and said, "Let's not think about that for now. Our top priority at the moment is to put all our energy into finding people."

  "You have to agree to one condition first!"

  "Say."

  "If you still can't find a way to transfer the power, you won't be able to harm these people either. If you don't agree, from now on I won't cooperate with any of your actions. In this unfamiliar environment, I don't believe you can accomplish anything in a month."

  Su Jing looked at me and said: "You care more about the people in this world, or rather, you care more about the people around you in this life than you did in your previous life!"

  I smiled slyly: "Humans are emotional creatures, after all." But in reality, I had my own little calculations going on inside: if time ran out and she couldn't think of a solution, then I could naturally stay behind, letting her go back to wherever she came from. To be honest, the thought of facing those so-called powers also excited me. I'm not being pretentious when I say that I don't want to become stronger on purpose; it's just that everything has its pros and cons. Looking at the two types of power attributes currently available, neither seems particularly necessary for me. My body has always been healthy, and even if Liu Daybreak were to give me the attribute of physical transformation after getting sick, it would only be a matter of recovering from a major illness; as for Zhao Dan's technique, it's not like I need it to become famous or make money. However, if I were to obtain those powers, I'd have to go with this crazy girl to their continent and fight for my life, which is basically a death sentence. Given the choice between getting 1000 yuan to die and getting 500 yuan to be beaten half to death, I'd rather choose the latter. Of course, if circumstances allowed it, I'd prefer not to take any money or get beaten at all. And finally, if there were another option, I'd choose to take the money without getting beaten...

  Su Jing thought for a moment and said, "I promise you." Before I could even rejoice, she immediately added, "But you also have to agree to one condition - if I come up with a way, you'll have to follow me back to the United Continent."

  I nodded repeatedly: "Okay, okay." Anyway, now that things have come to this point, I had no choice but to go along with it. As for what would happen later, I had no idea, so I just tried to calm her down for the time being.

  Su Jian exhaled a breath of air, his expression was serious but seemed to have relaxed a lot.

  ……

  When we returned, the sun was already westward. At the entrance of the hotel, Lao Wu, Jin Chengwu and Xiao Qian were sitting in a row, discussing something. I stopped the car and sighed: "I finally understand, everyone else who took that trip had their own strange encounters, one became famous, another died, my encounter was just picking up a group of monsters!"

  Su Jingdao said: "You're lucky, they didn't harm you."

  As soon as I got off the car, I rushed to greet them: "Are you practicing again?"

  Three people looked at me, no one said a word, I found their emotions were not right, usually in this situation Xiaoxian would have come up early.

  I hastily asked Old Wu at the edge what was wrong.

  Old Wu frowned and said: "The good news is that Xiaoxian's remains have been found."

  "What's the bad news?"

  "Bad news is that the one who took her remains was her ex-fiancé Wang Qing."

  "I exclaimed in surprise: 'Isn't that person dead?'"

  Lao Wu looked at me and said: "To be strict, Xiao Qian is also dead."

  I slapped my forehead...

  Old Wu continued: "Wang Qing that kid somehow got the opportunity to cultivate his physical body, and he also found a very powerful master. Just now, his master had already come."

  "What did you say?"

  His master said that since Wang Qing and Xiao Qian had a marriage contract in their previous life, they should get married. He came to be the witness of their marriage and even used Xiao Qian's skeleton as a threat, saying that if Xiao Qian did not agree, he would use her skeleton to capture her soul.

  "What's going on?" I asked hurriedly.

  Lao Wu said, "Wang Qing's master is a Taoist who looks like he has strong magical powers. Capturing souls and catching ghosts are their strong points, not to mention that they have Xiaolian's corpse in hand. After being captured by the soul, Xiaolian's physical body is now useless again, and her hundreds of years of cultivation were destroyed in an instant."

  I asked Xiaoyan again: "Why is Wang Qing still having evil intentions towards you?"

  Xiao Qian raised her head and said with tears in her eyes: "I don't know either, but I would rather die than marry him. He... he died of syphilis."

  I was going to remind her that she's already dead, but it didn't seem like the right time for jokes. I said, "Have you guys met Wang Qing and his master?"

  Jin Cheng Wudao: "No, only his master said that he would give Xia Qian only one day to consider. If there was no response from her by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, he would take away Xia Qian's soul."

  I hastily and angrily said: "He came here and farted for half a day, you just let him go like this?"

  Old Wu said with shame: "We can't stop him, he will fly with his sword..."

  I turned to Su Jing and asked, "Do you know how?"

  Su Jing shook her head.

  "How can you even not know how to fly with a sword?"

  Su Jingdao said: "Because I can fly even if I don't use a sword."

  "Really?"

  "But since I came here, for some reason my power has only been about 30% of what it was in the Federation Continent, barely equivalent to a Sword Saint level. In that case, I'm afraid I won't be able to fly."

  Jin Cheng Wudao: "Is it also related to the thinness of spiritual energy?"

  I stomped my foot and said, "Are you kidding me?" Su Jing's words were full of twists and turns, my heart was suddenly cold and then hot again. By the time she finished speaking with a big gasp, I felt like there were huge folds on the walls of my heart...

  Su Jing said faintly, "San Cheng, I'll take care of him and make sure he doesn't come back. Everyone can rest easy now, I'll handle tomorrow's matters." Su Jing looked at Xiao Qian and said, "Little sister, a favor for a meal will never be forgotten. This time, I've come to help you."

  "What is this 'a meal's favor'?"

  I hastily reminded her: "Didn't you cook a bowl of instant noodles for her?"

  ……

  Division line

  I've cooked instant noodles for quite a few people, I wonder if they have any idea how much I've sacrificed, sigh...