Chapter 56: Hezi Xinniang 7
Under the car was Hai Moyun’s wretched face. He propped himself up against the car door, struggled to climb up from the ground, limped over to Jiang Si and Hai Di, and choked out, “Ge——”
He reached out seeking comfort, only to be coldly pushed away by Hai Di. “You are eighteen, not eight. Don’t pull this routine.”
Hai Moyun’s tearful complaints came to an abrupt halt, and he looked helplessly at Jiang Si.
“Are we all doomed?”
Jiang Si: “…” He silently let go of Hai Di’s hand before speaking.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“But this car, this car——” Hai Moyun wiped away his tears. A large, red, swollen welt had been scraped across the right cheekbone of the handsome young man, making him look both pitiful and comical.
“How can I be this unlucky? This is the second time today. Do I really have to die? I’m only eighteen! I haven’t even traveled across all the great rivers and mountains of our motherland yet!”
Jiang Si rubbed his forehead. “We are in our twenties and we don’t want to die either… That’s not important. I already know what’s going on, so the rest will be easy to handle.”
“Handle it how?”
“You know about Jieming, right?” Jiang Si said. “This kind of thing is common in or around hospitals. Usually, a stack of money is thrown on the ground waiting for someone to pick it up. Picking it up is equivalent to agreeing to the transaction, meaning you lend your life to the person who threw the money. Generally, it’s not a lot, just a few years, and during that time, the corresponding fortune of the person will also be in a slump.”
“I’ve seen it at the hospital,” Hai Di chimed in. “It ranges from a hundred to tens of thousands. It’s said that the borrowed lifespan corresponds to the amount of money; the more money, the more life they demand.”
Hai Moyun blinked. “Doesn’t the saying go, ‘If you believe it, it’s real; if you don’t, it’s just free money’? Is this actually real?”
“There are fakes and there are real ones,” Jiang Si continued. “It’s fine if you run into a fake one, but if you encounter a real one, it’s hard to deal with. After all, nobody knows when they are going to die. What if you were only short those exact few years? Thus, there is a folk method to deal with it. If you take the money but don’t want to pay the price, you have to burn the money. Such money will go directly down below, and human paper currency cannot be spent in the underworld. Its final resting place is the Poqian Mountain of the Difu.”
“This way, the money never landed in your hands, and whoever wants to collect the debt will have to go down there to collect it.”
“What does this have to do with the game we played?”
Jiang Si was quite surprised. “I didn’t expect you to make that connection. These methods of breaking curses share the same underlying principles. The things we cannot resolve are simply tossed down below for them to endlessly resolve.”
“Ah?”
He curled his hand into a fist, pressed his thumb down, and made the gesture of flicking a lighter. “Burn it with a fire, and the contract is gone.”
“That seems right,” Hai Moyun scratched his head, suddenly enlightened. He looked toward his brother and, finding Hai Di’s face completely calm, couldn’t help but wonder, “It makes sense that Jiang Ge knows this. Ge, you know this method too?”
“I don’t know it,” Hai Di said candidly. “It’s enough that one of us understands it.”
“I don’t get you,” Hai Moyun curled his lip.
In the distance, a row of police sirens wailed as they approached. Hearing the sound, Jiang Si finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“They’re finally here.”
Fortunately, when the rear-end collision occurred, there was no one in either of the parked cars, so there were no casualties.
Even more fortunately, the truck driver was also rescued. However, because he was unconscious from near-drowning, he was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Seeing the nurses and doctors bustling around the ambulance, Jiang Si brazenly went up to ask a nurse for gauze and iodine cotton swabs.
The nurse was taken aback, assuming Jiang Si was the one injured, and looked him up and down.
“It’s not me.” Jiang Si sighed helplessly and called Hai Di over. “My friend’s hand is scraped; it needs to be disinfected and bandaged.”
Without allowing him to refuse, he pulled Hai Di’s hand directly in front of the nurse, exposing the large patch of dried, bloody wounds. White flesh faintly showed beneath the dark brown dried blood.
The nurse scolded, “It’s this serious, why didn’t you say something earlier? It’s a good thing the weather has cooled down. If it were hot out, this would definitely get infected by tomorrow.”
“You are absolutely right. I will lecture him when we get back,” Jiang Si agreed. “He’s a grown adult, yet he still tries to act tough.”
The nurse burst into laughter and glanced between the two of them. The taller man looked helpless, while the slightly shorter one had eyes full of worry. At a glance, they were clearly very close friends.
She softened her tone. After disinfecting the wound with iodine, she picked up the gauze to bandage it, speaking as she worked, “You guys are lucky, too. In such a severe car crash, surprisingly, not a single person died. The last time there was a multi-car pileup on this bridge, seven or eight people died, and another person had to have an amputation. Several family members cried until they fainted. Sigh…”
Jiang Si remained noncommittal about the word “lucky,” simply smiling and thanking her for helping with the bandage.
The waterlogged cars were towed away. The three of them, along with the driver of the car in front, gave their statements for the investigation report. By the time they finally returned home, the sky was completely pitch black.
Seeing the three children return covered in dirt, Hai Furen was startled, thinking they had been through a fierce battle, and hurriedly asked what had happened.
Jiang Si briefly recounted the events in a few sentences, emphasizing the bizarre nature of the Jubensha and glossing over the car crash to prevent her and Qi Shanmu from worrying too much.
Hai Furen clutched her chest and muttered a few sentences in the local dialect.
Although Jiang Si couldn’t understand it, judging by her tone, the curses must have been quite foul.
Switching back to Mandarin, Hai Furen frowned and said, “To think this kind of thing is actually allowed to circulate on the market, the censorship is far too lax. This won’t do. I have to find a time to bring this up with the bureau leaders. How can the entertainment and cultural industry have such loopholes?”
Jiang Si silently gave her a thumbs up. “Ayi is truly formidable.”
“Alright, alright.” Hai Furen was amused by him and pulled him toward the dining room. “You’ve really worked hard today. Originally, we invited you over as a guest, but who would have thought you’d have to go help Moyun deal with his troubles. Since you’re all back, go eat first. We can talk about the rest after dinner.”
Hai Di’s hand lingered in mid-air. Seeing his person being pulled further and further away, he helplessly lowered his arm.
“Let’s go, Ge. It’s been a whole day, I’m starving to death.” Hai Moyun was thick-nerved; the moment he smelled the food, he rushed to the dining table to feast.
Over here, Jiang Si had barely finished answering a sentence from Hai Furen, only to see that Hai Moyun had already devoured half a bowl of rice.
“…”
It had only been half a day. Just how hungry had he gotten?
During the meal, an assistant came to the door to deliver a phone.
Jiang Si’s phone had fallen into the water. Although it was retrieved, it was declared completely broken. The assistant bought him the exact same model and reinstalled the SIM card for him.
Taking the phone, Jiang Si couldn’t help but sigh in appreciation, “Thank you, this is too thoughtful.”
The assistant hid his merit and renown, smiling as he replied, “You’re too polite. This was specifically ordered by our boss.”
Jiang Si curved his eyes at Hai Di to express his gratitude.
“It’s what I should do.” Hai Di looked steady on the outside, but inside he was already calculating whether to raise the assistant’s bonus.
In the exact moment the phone turned on, over a dozen messages from Lin Nan popped up consecutively like a machine gun.
Seeing this, Jiang Si’s smile abruptly froze.
It was currently 9:00 PM. He finally remembered a certain unlucky child stranded in the freezing wind.
.
Lin Nan’s streak of bad luck began the moment he set foot in Ningshi‘s territory. First, on the high-speed rail, on his way to the restroom, he was splashed with a whole pair of pants’ worth of cola.
The culprit was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl who apologized to him profusely.
What could Lin Nan do? He could only endure it and magnanimously forgive her. He figured he’d go to the restroom and wash his clothes while he was at it. But just as he finished relieving himself, the smoke alarm went off.
Amidst the piercing beeps, a train attendant instantly rushed over, forced the door open, and crashed right into Lin Nan, who was equally startled.
The male attendant, a retired veteran, used a grappling hold to subdue Lin Nan—who had tried to slip out in the confusion—and interrogated him about where he threw the cigarette butt, while the female attendant rushed straight inside to search.
Lin Nan simply couldn’t defend himself. “I really wasn’t smoking, I just came to use the toilet. Who knows why this thing went off.”
“If you weren’t smoking, why would it go off? Hurry up and tell the truth, otherwise we have the right to hand you over to the railway police for detention on charges of endangering public safety.”
The female attendant said anxiously, “Do you know that the high-speed rail is currently traveling at 310 kilometers per hour? If a carriage catches fire, the entire train will burn to the ground within five minutes!”
Lin Nan was terrified too. He knelt on one knee, struggling to turn his head toward the male attendant, breathing heavily on him as he said, “I really wasn’t smoking, if you don’t believe me, smell for yourself. I don’t even know how to smoke!”
In the end, the two attendants turned the restroom completely upside down. Only after confirming there really wasn’t a cigarette butt did they finally drop it.
Faced with their explanation of a malfunctioning smoke alarm, Lin Nan could only accept it. Weakly dragging his sore body, he returned to his seat.
Just as they were about to arrive at the station, he realized he had gone to the wrong carriage and sat in the wrong seat.
Under the varied gazes of the passersby, his cheeks flushed red. Clutching his bag, he buried his head and sprinted off the train. However, because he didn’t see the steps clearly, his left foot tripped over his right, and he tumbled down the stairs.
There were only a dozen or so steps left, so the fall wasn’t severe, but it was enough to cause Lin Nan’s social death.
Feeling countless stares landing on him, Lin Nan lay flat on the ground and silently covered his face with his bag.
A little girl passing by earnestly poked Lin Nan’s hair and said in a milky voice, “Gege, you’re not allowed to sleep here!”
“…”
Lin Nan fled in a panic for the second time. After exiting the station, he learned his lesson. He checked his destination several times and repeatedly gave the instructions to the driver before he could finally put his mind at ease.
He never expected that this driver uncle, who had thick eyebrows, big eyes, and an honest-looking face, was actually an unlicensed taxi driver.
He drove him in circles around more than half of Ningshi before finally dropping him off at the destination.
Listening to the prompt in his earphones constantly saying “You have deviated from the route,” and catching a glimpse of a brand-new baseball bat on the passenger seat, Lin Nan dared to be angry but didn’t dare speak.
After swallowing his anger and paying the fare, he was so mad he didn’t even say “Thank you.” He got out and slammed the car door shut.
The yellow taxi drove away in a cloud of dust. Left standing exactly where he was, Lin Nan angrily clenched his fists, doubting his life.
It had to be an accident. How could a person be this unlucky!
Lin Nan firmly believed in the law that extreme sorrow turns to joy; the upcoming events would definitely go smoothly.
After giving himself a pep talk, he puffed out his chest, shouldered his backpack, and marched like a warrior toward the hotel Jiang Si had pinned.
Bang——
Before he even took two steps, because he held his head too high, he missed a stone step and fell down once again.
Lin Nan was in so much pain he nearly cried. With red rims around his eyes, he went to the hotel reception to ask for his person.
However, because he couldn’t reach Jiang Si, the receptionist refused to tell him the room number and wouldn’t let him go upstairs.
Upon hearing this bad news, Lin Nan truly couldn’t hold back anymore. Along with all the grievances from earlier, he vented everything in one go, covering his face and crying bitterly.
A grown young man over 1.8 meters tall was squatting on the ground crying his eyes out. His hair was messy, his face was bruised, and his clothes were wrinkled. He was wearing light-colored clothes, making the dirt stuck to them exceptionally clear. There was a large ochre stain on his pants. He was the spitting image of a pitiful, bullied victim.
The receptionist jiejie felt soft-hearted. She coaxed him over to a sofa on the side to wait, bringing him tissues and hot water to help him stabilize his emotions.
“——Thank you.” Lin Nan knew acting like this was definitely humiliating, but he truly couldn’t control himself anymore.
If he couldn’t see Jiang Si again, he would definitely die.
The receptionist happened to be free at this time, so she asked a few more questions, “What did you come to Ningshi to find him for? Did he bully you? If you have any difficulties, you must ask the police for help.”
“I… I just wanted to come see him. I can’t live without him,” Lin Nan said, lifting the cup to take a gulp.
The next second, his expression twisted even further, and his eyes reddened once again.
This water had just been boiled.
Seeing him like this and hearing his words, the receptionist jiejie believed she had figured it out. Suppressing the urge to pull out her phone and gossip with her sisters, she gently comforted him, “The hotel room hasn’t been checked out yet, he’ll definitely come back. Don’t worry.”
She remembered Jiang Si, who had frequently been in and out of the hotel these past few days. His face was unforgettable; it truly made people unable to resist silently paying attention to him.
“Sigh, he is indeed good-looking, it’s no wonder you’re so persistent.” The receptionist jiejie sighed. “But we should still put ourselves first. Under no circumstances should you lose your self-respect for someone else.”
Lin Nan: “?”
Between self-respect and his life, he felt his life was still a bit more important.
.
The stars shone from far away. By the time Jiang Si rushed over, he witnessed the scene of Lin Nan sitting on the lobby sofa eating instant noodles.
The moment he saw him, he almost didn’t recognize that this was Lin Nan.
This was far too wretched…
He stepped forward and probed tentatively, “Lin Nan?”
Lin Nan jerked his head up, looking as if he had found his savior. He threw himself over, crying, “Jiang Ge—— I’ve had such a hard time——”
“You have no idea how hard this journey has been for me!”
Jiang Si was startled by him and backed up several steps in a row. With quick reflexes, Hai Di blocked the space between the two of them, looking at him coldly.
“?” Lin Nan hit the emergency brakes, attempting to stand on his tiptoes to see Jiang Si behind him, and said pitifully, “Jiang Ge. Who is he?”
Jiang Si cleared his throat, ignoring the question. “How did you end up like this?”
At the exact same time, Hai Di spoke: “I am his partner.”
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