Folklore and Strange Tales: At the Start, You Retrieve the Sea-Suppressing Black Iron

Chapter 108: Master Ma Reveals the Secret: Soaking Hands 4 Times

As dawn approached, dew clung to the leaves of the pomegranate trees in Master Ma's courtyard.

Once the courtyard gate closed, the sounds of cooking and cursing from Huguosi Street were blocked out by the thick wooden planks, leaving only a few distant crowings, which didn't sound very energetic.

Cheng Xiaojin sat on the armchair, his hands soaking in the dark brown medicinal soup.

The medicine powder was bubbling, and the fishy, ​​bitter smell was pungent and irritating. His face turned pale from the fumes, but he still wouldn't stop talking.

Tang Wanqing stood by the wooden basin, a silver needle between her fingers, the tip of the needle tracing an inch along the blue line on his wrist.

"Say it if it hurts."

Cheng Xiaojin gritted his teeth.

"pain."

Tang Wanqing looked up at him.

"You're laughing even though you're hurting me?"

Cheng Xiao's face was covered in sweat, and his lips were so dry they were peeling.

"I'm afraid I'll cry. Brother Li will take it to Panjiayuan to sell tickets. I've even thought of a title for him: 'The last generation of treasure hunters weeps at the grave on site.' Eighty-one standing tickets."

At the threshold, Tieguai Li was dismantling the abacus made of lightning-struck wood, with the cracked wooden beams pressing down on his knees.

"Don't try to smear me. Your crying face won't sell tickets. Even if you pay someone twenty yuan, they'll still think it's bad luck."

Tong Kexin sat beside her, holding a large bowl of braised pork, her eyes still red, but she held her chopsticks very steadily.

Open your mouth.

Cheng Xiaojin glanced at the piece of fatty intestine on the end of the chopsticks.

"I'm a patient, could the organization give me some lean meat?"

"Eat it or don't, it's up to you."

As soon as the chopsticks were pulled back, Cheng Xiaojin immediately leaned over and bit them.

"Eat, revolutionary patients, follow orders."

He chewed twice, and a little bit of the chopstick slipped from between his fingers.

Tong Kexin saw this, but didn't say anything. She just moved the bowl closer to him.

Zhou Banxian leaned against a pillar in the corridor, his wine jug hanging unopened at his waist.

"What percentage?"

Tang Wanqing pulled out the needle from the tiger's mouth and pressed down on her wrist.

"Sixty percent has been saved, and the fine sense of touch is stronger than before, but the bluish discoloration won't go away. It will hurt when it gets cold, and the backlash from touching old objects will come on faster."

Cheng Xiaojin swallowed the fatty intestines, his throat filled with the taste of medicine residue.

"As long as they can appraise it, that's fine."

Tong Kexin immediately glared at her.

"Still looking at things? If you touch any more of that dirty junk, I'll go to Panjiayuan tomorrow and smash your stall to pieces."

Cheng Xiaojin thought about it carefully.

"Give me half an hour beforehand so I can move the valuables away first. The people's property cannot be sacrificed along with me."

"I might as well choke you to death."

Tong Kexin picked up a piece of lung and stuffed it into her mouth.

The courtyard used to be somewhat lively.

But Master Ma sat at the entrance of the main room the whole time, with his enamel tea mug at his feet. The lid of the tea mug had only touched the rim of the mug once since he entered the room.

Cheng Xiaojin swallowed the food in his mouth and raised his chin towards the main room.

"Master Ma, your hands are soaked, you've eaten, and the emotions of the revolutionary masses have been calmed down. Shouldn't we begin the trial?"

The courtyard fell silent.

Zhou Banxian took the wine pot off his waist and placed it on the windowsill.

"Old Ma, what exactly happened with those thirty steps in the city?"

Master Ma did not respond immediately.

The wind blew through the pomegranate tree, and the dew on the tips of the leaves fell into the medicine basin, causing a black circle to appear on the surface of the medicine.

"Twenty years ago, I saw a fragment of a page."

Cheng Xiaojin answered quickly.

"Page 93 of *Tiangong Kaiwu*?"

Only then did Master Ma look at him.

How did you know?

Cheng Xiaojin looked down at his hands.

The fingertips were bluish-black, and even after being soaked in the medicinal soup, they didn't dissolve at all.

"Counting the pits in the city is accurate, reading the thirty steps of human life in the ashtray of Huguo Temple, plus the words my father left behind, 'Don't just look at the iron, look at the people,' the only thing that can connect these things is the page you turned back then."

Tang Wanqing lowered her voice.

"You've changed it?"

Master Ma's throat bobbed.

"Deleted."

The abacus beads stopped in Tieguai Li's palm.

"What was deleted?"

"Thirty steps."

Zhou Banxian immediately left the pillar.

"You really deleted that sentence?"

Master Ma did not avoid the gazes of the crowd.

"That tattered page was written in a mess. The first part was the number of the stakes in the Iron Bone Layer, and the second part was a sentence about thirty steps in the human world. I thought it was a number added by later generations."

Zhou Banxian was so angry that he couldn't utter a complete sentence for a long time.

"Disruption? Ma Wenchang, you've got a really steady hand. You've treated a life-saving number like a dirty word."

Master Ma lowered his head and said, "Back then, I only understood the Iron Bone layer, not the Living Person layer."

Cheng Xiaojin lifted her hand, which was soaking in the medicinal soup, but Tang Wanqing pressed it back down.

"You deleted it because you're afraid someone will take the wrong number?"

Master Ma nodded.

"In those years, the underworld was in chaos, and the people from the foreign trading company were also looking for something. I was afraid that if this sentence fell into their hands, they would use it to reverse-engineer the location of the stake, so I erased it from the copy."

Tieguai Li put the abacus beam aside.

"Good intentions gone wrong is the most dangerous thing."

This time, Master Ma didn't argue.

"Yes."

Only the faint sound of medicine broth could be heard in the courtyard.

Tong Kexin looked at the corner of the wall, where Sister Zhou's cracked batter bowl was still there, the crack facing upwards, with a little dried batter stuck to the edge of the bowl.

"What about Aunt Zhang and Sister Zhou..."

Cheng Xiaojin interrupted her.

"Make a note of the account first."

The veins on the back of Master Ma's hand twitched.

Cheng Xiaojin looked up, the smugness on his face completely gone.

"Master Ma, you still have a piece of paper, an old saying, and a name that wasn't finished being mentioned. You have to take them all out."

Master Ma stared at him for a long time.

"it is good."

Tang Wanqing took over the conversation.

"You read your father's memories at Huguo Temple?"

Cheng Xiaojin took out an old ashtray from his pocket and placed it on the table.

"I read a passage."

The ashtray was missing a piece from the rim, and the burnt soot underneath, after being exposed to the smell of medicine, gave off an old cigarette smell.

When Master Ma saw that thing, he leaned back in his chair.

Cheng Xiaojin said, "When he was young, he carved a vertical hook in an underground tunnel and said, 'Don't just look at the iron, look at the person.'"

Zhou Banxian picked up the wine pot from the windowsill again, but this time he didn't drink from it; he just held it in his hand.

"Cheng Shouyi had already reached the level of the living people back then."

Cheng Xiaojin then pushed the bronze plaque with the character "Shen" that he had picked up by the pit in Mancheng onto the table.

"And this too."

Tieguai Li glanced at it.

"The bronze medal with the character 'Shen,' the one with the ouroboros."

Cheng Xiaojin looked at Master Ma.

"When I was reading the ashtray, I saw a hidden mark in the crack of the brick, a snake biting its tail, which is the same as this bronze plaque."

This time, Master Ma didn't beat around the bush.

He picked up the bronze plaque and turned it over to the side with the character "Shen".

"Shen Jiulou".

Zhou Banxian lowered his brows.

"The fifth-generation leader of the Nanyang Ouroboros?"

"right."

Master Ma put the bronze medal back on the table.

"Back then, Cheng Shouyi infiltrated the organization as a seventh-generation agent, and his direct superior was Shen Jiulou."

Cheng Xiaojin stared at the bronze medal.

"He knows my dad."

"We know each other, and we're quite close."

Tang Wanqing asked, "Who does Boss Lin work for?"

Master Ma said, "Boss Lin is out there running goods for the South Seas route. The person behind him may not be Shen Jiulou."

Tieguai Li raised his finger and pointed to the bronze plaque.

"Then how come this thing is near the pit in the whole city?"

"The bronze medal is real; the location is just too coincidental."

Cheng Xiaojin smiled, but there was little warmth in his smile.

"Someone wants us to investigate along the lines of Shen Jiulou."

Zhou Banxian added a comment.

"Someone might be reminding you that Cheng Shouyi's connection hasn't been severed yet."

Tong Kexin felt a headache coming on.

"Can't you guys speak like normal people? Is this old man Shen helping us, or is he setting a trap for us?"

Cheng Xiaojin placed the bronze medal face down on the table.

"have no idea."

He paused.

"But he knows my father, so I'll have to go sooner or later."

Tang Wanqing immediately spoke up.

"You're not going anywhere right now."

Cheng Xiaojin looked at her.

Did I say now?

Tong Kexin snorted coldly.

"You've even figured out in your mind who will pay for the travel expenses."

Cheng Xiaojin sighed.

"The one who truly understands me is my kind-hearted boss lady."

Master Ma never smiled.

"Keep the line with Shen Jiulou for now."

Cheng Xiaojin asked, "Why?"

Master Ma looked up and headed north.

"The three major incidents in the city have been stabilized, and Huguo Temple has added a living anchor. The third incident can be suppressed for a short time, but the seventh incident has already been triggered."

Zhou Banxian turned to look at the lightning-struck wooden abacus next to Tieguai Li.

"It rang once on the way back."

Tieguai Li's expression was not good.

"I packed it up after I took it apart."

As soon as he finished speaking, the beads in the abacus started jumping up on their own.

The three beads wobbled, spun twice, and then fell back to their original positions.

Qizhu jumped faster and faster, and the crack on the wooden beam moved forward a bit.

Tieguai Li cursed.

"This is lightning-struck wood, not firewood chopped on the roadside!"

Zhou Banxian placed the compass face down on the edge of the table, and the needle turned to the seventh position, its tail sliding along the surface of the compass.

"The seven gates have moved."

Tang Wanqing looked at the row of beads bouncing around.

"Liulichang?"

Cheng Xiaojin lifted his hand from the medicine basin, and the dark brown medicinal soup dripped back down his bluish-gray fingertips.

Tang Wanqing grabbed his wrist.

"Don't touch it."

Cheng Xiaojin didn't touch the abacus; he just turned his ear to listen to the beads bouncing in the wooden beam.

No one in the courtyard made a sound.

From some alleyway in the distance, a copper bell rang three times.

That's not the bell for selling breakfast in the early morning.

The sound was old and dull, like it was rolling out from under the counter of an old shop.

Cheng Xiaojin listened for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was a little hoarse.

"Three beads are stable, seven beads are suspended, and the spirit layer rises first."

Master Ma stood up.

"What instrument?"

Cheng Xiaojin looked towards the direction where the sky was turning white.

"Old things".

The seven beads of the abacus jumped to the highest point, and with a crack, the crack in the wooden beam went all the way to the top.

The cracked bowl of batter in the corner made a sound.

Cheng Xiaojin slowly pressed her hand back into the medicinal soup.

"The things in Liulichang are starting to come alive."