Chapter 64: Jade Body Infant, Eat Year Hotel

A black car drove along a narrow road.

The streetlights on both sides cast a quiet glow, and the flowers and grass emitted a faint fragrance.

The grass carried public signs reading “Do Not Tread,” and speakers disguised as stones played melodious music during peak tourist seasons.

This was Loutian Island, one of the city’s three islands and the one with the lowest population density, home to fewer than thirty thousand permanent residents.

Due to its beautiful environment, it was regarded as an ideal place for leisure and vacation.

Although Wang Zifang was manager of Qingyun Security Company, buying a villa here was impossible with salary alone.

Besides side jobs, he had a stroke of luck this year, making several fortunes at the casinos.

Xiao Pingtou and the others envied him, urging him to keep gambling, but he exercised restraint and stopped while ahead.

At those big casinos, they rarely needed trickery to cheat guests—just probability and fengshui arrangements were enough to fill their coffers.

For example, the old Lisboa’s tiger-head and lion-head layout absorbed wealth and guarded it, while bats holding auspicious symbols crushed all rivals.

The new Lisboa resembled a lotus, with a heavenly net umbrella inside, gathering wind and water, drawing in guests, and never letting wealth escape.

The Wynn Casino, owned by the North American Gambling King, was shaped like a large concave bronze mirror, hindering competitors and perfectly aligning with the Ding-Cai dual-prosperity pattern of the Lower Yuan Seventh Luck Cycle.

In these big casinos, winning just a few times and leaving immediately made others think you had strong self-control and good luck; win too much, and you’d draw attention.

Smaller casinos, however, were more prone to trouble.

Wang Zifang didn’t win through his own skill, so he had no intention of drawing too much attention.

He parked the car in the garage, entered his home, and turned on the living room’s main light.

Even though he owned a villa, he didn’t hire servants; he only called in hourly cleaners when he was alone, otherwise he never trusted anyone to stay in his house.

“Huuu!!”

Wang Zifang placed his knuckle dusters on the coffee table, opened the fridge, drank half a can of beer, then mustered his courage and headed for the basement.

His basement was built solidly, with several large backpacks and high-calorie food in the corner—on first glance, it looked like the safehouse of some apocalyptic enthusiast.

Outsiders who casually inspected it would notice nothing unusual.

But once he unlocked and opened the white-painted iron cabinet, the basement’s scene became jarringly incongruous.

Inside the white-painted iron cabinet, a shrine had been installed in ancient style.

The carvings on the shrine were not the usual auspicious clouds, immortal cranes, or treasure basins, but a group of ancient figures, each holding a branch in one hand and a blade or spear in the other, their expressions frenzied, shouting as if rushing to a grand ceremony.

The statue seated at the shrine was even stranger, its entire body carved from ink jade.

Its head was clearly that of an elderly man with five long whiskers, but the hands and feet exposed beneath its robe were those of an infant.

Wang Zifang lit an incense stick and kowtowed three times with utmost reverence.

The strange statue—with its elder’s head and infant’s body—slightly trembled, emitting a voice as if calling through a wall.

“Jade! Where’s the jade?”

The statue demanded, “Where is my spleen jade?”

“Your Holiness, permit me to report!”

Wang Zifang hurriedly said, “Last time you mentioned, the spleen jade’s aura was strange, hard to sense—as if distant or hidden somewhere. Recently, it suddenly surged, then quickly became chaotic again.”

“Based on this, I’ve roughly pinpointed a target.”

“This person is a psychiatric patient; the hospital he was in is prestigious and well-protected by fengshui. Recently, his power anomalously surged, he escaped the hospital, injured several people, and hid on Hengqindao.”

“I immediately took the job and led a team to search the island, but the authorities intervened and killed him.”

Clink! Clink! Clink!!

The statue’s trembling was invisible to the naked eye, but the sound of its base grinding against the shrine grew increasingly frequent.

The temperature in the entire basement rose noticeably.

Sweat beads formed on Wang Zifang’s forehead.

“I followed Your Holiness’s teaching to bide time and remain hidden. At the time, I acted strictly according to my public identity and dared not interfere under public gaze.”

“Besides, those two officials had extraordinary methods—I had no clear advantage.”

The statue’s eerie voice slowed slightly.

“A madman?”

The statue murmured, “My spleen jade revived in a madman? Well, I never anticipated this.”

In the old days, such failure would have been punished according to sect law.

But there was no choice.

When the Longhua Sect’s uprising failed, even their leader was gravely wounded by powerful enemies, gradually losing the five viscera’s essence, his body turning to jade, his soul becoming a malevolent spirit, barely clinging to life.

Only through the desperate protection of surviving sect members did he escape overseas; on this island, he barely held on before falling into slumber.

Back then, this island had only a few poor indigenous villagers—easily controlled.

According to the sect members’ original plan, within two generations, they would control multiple nearby islands, recover the five viscera’s essence, and once again plot along the coast to hold a grand sacrifice and commune with the Supreme Deity.

But something went wrong.

Their leader, he himself, slept for centuries—only gradually awakening a few years ago to find the island utterly transformed, everything changed.

Wang Zifang was now the most capable among his remaining sect members.

At least he had helped recover the liver jade and heart jade.

As a practitioner who worshipped the Longhua Tree, Liu Tianxu, in his jade-body state, had a distinct resonance with his own liver jade.

Wood generates fire, fire generates earth—the next step should be finding the spleen jade.

Now that the spleen jade’s host was dead, its essence must have scattered—this was troublesome.

The statue fell silent for a moment, then made its decision.

He would risk consuming his consciousness—even sacrificing less important memories—to reverse-engineer from the heart jade and liver jade.

Fire arises from wood; wood arises from water.

Wang Zifang knelt there, unaware of what the statue was doing.

But he could feel the inexplicable heat in the room rapidly fading, replaced by a chilling cold.

That damp, bone-deep chill made him feel as if he were in a crumbling, leaky hut during the dead of winter.

Yet everything he saw in the basement was dry.

“Hm?!”

The statue emitted a voice thick with fury.

“Why is the kidney jade’s resonance so faint and elusive?”

In this state, reverse-engineering the five viscera was already difficult; after paying the cost, he gained no result—no sense of direction.

Liu Tianxu was enraged.

“My spleen jade chose a madman—then what did my kidney jade choose?!”

The critical issue: if both forward and reverse tracking failed, he could no longer sense his lung jade’s location.

Unless the lung jade’s holder, by some foolish chance, walked right up to him.

That meant three of his five viscera were now unfindable.

“My jade… my jade… they are mine…”

The statue spoke in a deep tone, quieter than before, yet Wang Zifang felt even greater dread.

He was desperately trying to think of something to say.

The basement entrance suddenly opened.

The overhead light, far brighter than the basement’s, illuminated the slanted staircase.

“Who’s there?!”

Wang Zifang spun around, shifting from kneeling to a crouched stance, tense and ready, shock and suspicion flashing in his eyes.

His basement entrance was hidden, and the Longhua Sect Master himself was concealed here.

If a stranger approached his villa, the Master should have sensed it immediately.

Liu Tianxu’s statue, startled that the intruder had bypassed his perception, glowed faintly at the chest and liver regions beneath its robe.

The malevolent spirits born from the five viscera differed fundamentally from his own consciousness.

Originally, he kept the two jade spirits to use their resonance to locate the other internal organs.

Now that recovery was hopeless and a strong enemy approached, he might as well shatter these two spirits entirely and absorb them back into his core.

Two figures descended the staircase.

A man in a black suit, his eyes blue, jaw slightly broad—seemed mixed-race.

A woman in a red suit and short skirt, black hair cut at the neck, diamond earrings, beautiful face, but lips vividly painted.

Both exuded an extraordinary aura; merely looking at them, Wang Zifang felt he had little chance against them.

But after they descended, they simply stood apart, left and right, saying nothing.

Tap!

Another figure descended.

Italian leather shoes, white silk trousers, a sandalwood cane.

An elderly man with silver-white hair, gold-rimmed glasses, white stubble, smiling faintly—almost kindly.

“Longhua Sect Master!”

He named the statue’s identity, his voice calm and steady, “I overheard your conversation—you’re searching for personal items?”

“Forgive me, but this is unwise. Separated by centuries, how deep can your connection to those objects still be? Even if you recover them all, you likely won’t regain your former cultivation.”

“Besides, you seem unable to recover them.”

When Wang Zifang saw the old man, he broke into a cold sweat.

He no longer cared how the other had heard the conversation inside his perfectly soundproof basement.

All he wanted now was to flee, but he feared any movement would lead to a terrible fate, so he could only hope for his sect leader.

“You… ha, ha, ha!”

A slow, drawn-out laugh echoed from the statue.

“Your eyes—I recognize them. You don’t seem like an enemy. So, young one, have you come to be my strategist?”

The silver-haired man shrugged: “Sect Leader, your waking hours may not even equal the years I’ve lived.”

“I had several options, but after deliberation, I chose Longhua. Unfortunately, meeting you falls short of your reputation. Sect Leader, shall I give you a lesson? You’ve forgotten your roots.”

The statue blinked in surprise: “I forgot my roots?”

“Your rise came from Longhua’s attention—you had an excellent channel to the divine. That is your foundation. Now that you’ve awakened, you must continue seeking communion with the God of Longhua. Nothing else matters.”

The silver-haired man spoke calmly, tapping his sandalwood staff once against the stairs.

“This era is far better than the one you lived in. It only depends on whether you can seize the opportunity.”

“You hold the channel now, yet fail to use it. Then perhaps you should… join me.”

The statue flared brightly, then fell utterly still.

It wasn’t silence—it was as if it had become nothing more than an ordinary black jade statue.

The basement sank into deathly stillness.

Wang Zifang could only hear his own faint breathing.

But within seconds, he could barely hear even that.

The air grew heavier, no longer drawn in by nose or mouth.

His body felt buried in mud; every pore tasted stagnation, unable to escape.

His eyes lost their luster, and soon illusions formed.

The basement was now filled with two fields of energy, their curved, colorless boundaries violently pressing against each other.

The powerful force pushed the boundaries ever closer to the altar.

This night was destined to be eventful.

Those hired men, after leaving Hengqindao, almost none returned home.

Some went to bars to party; others went to late-night fashion shows to unwind.

Some went to hotels.

A woman with faint freckles and hair cut nearly to the scalp entered Shinian Hotel and took the elevator to the top floor.

The lower floors of the hotel were staffed with elevator girls who greeted guests and explained the levels.

The top floor held only a slouching man with hair covering half his face: “Xiao Qin, you’re back. Did the job succeed?”

“Pfft!”

Xiao Qin grumbled, “Your intel is years out of date. That madwoman is far stronger than me. Thank goodness someone interfered—otherwise I’d be dead.”

The man flicked ash, distracted: “I see.”

Xiao Qin frowned: “What’s going on in the shop?”

The man said, “Su Ha returned from the South Seas. Since we’ve failed to find Old Nie these past years, he suggested blowing up Nie’s biggest casino.”

Xiao Qin stared, cursing: “He shits rice and eats maggots? Cause such a ruckus? Does he want to die?”

“They say rocket launchers are common there—he hasn’t adjusted his mindset. Don’t worry, I already turned him down.”

The man added, “I’m still the boss, but Su Ha’s strength feels almost equal to mine.”

Xiao Qin growled, “Could Old Nie not even be in the country? I heard his biological daughter runs affairs in North America?”

The man, cigarette dangling, was certain.

“He believes so deeply in feng shui and divination. Since his youth, multiple seers told him he’d thrive in the Ao region. The lower he sinks, the less likely he is to leave.”

“Two years ago, when he had a brain tumor, the American Spiritual Association begged him to recuperate at Yellowstone Volcano—he refused. He’d rather stay here, endure constant business attacks and endless assassinations.”

“If he survived this, he must believe this is his sacred land. He’s still in the Ao region.”

The man’s long hair stirred, revealing his left eye gone, his face half-scarred and skinned raw.

“We will find him!”

(End of Chapter)