Chapter 336

The sky gradually brightened; with a calm yet excited mood, I left the Anhui branch of the Great Union Hall and returned to Yao Yirong's ancestral castle.

Inside Yao's ancestral castle, police surrounded the area; Pangzi sat on the sofa, still stuffing his mouth with buns. On the other end of the sofa sat a middle‑aged man with a square face, and what struck me as odd was that Yao Yirong was leaning against him, softly crying.

As soon as that middle‑aged man saw me enter, he eagerly rose, walked up to me, extended a hand, and said, 'You must be Chen Hai Sheng; I've long admired you—I am Yao Wenju.'

Yao Yirong whispered to me from the side, 'This is my brother.'

I almost burst out laughing involuntarily…… Wenju stationery—this name is just too hilarious!

I suppressed my laughter, also extended a hand, and politely replied. At that moment I also had some doubts; Yao Yirong had told me that she invited me to her gathering mainly because her brother wanted to meet me.

But why would his brother want to see me?

My mind involuntarily conjured a wildly absurd idea: could he want me to take responsibility for Yao Yirong? Although the idea is ridiculous, it's so far‑fetched that I'd rather believe Pangzi could win Silijing over.

But upon further thought I couldn't rule out this possibility; indeed, panic might be driving me to think this way. Although Yao Yirong has the figure and looks, frankly, her temperament is something I simply cannot stand.

'Can we talk alone?' In my moment of distraction, Yao Wenju said that to me. I blinked, nodded, and instinctively followed him into the room.

After entering the room I grew increasingly nervous, because Yao Zhongju didn't speak, merely slowly lit a cigar, walked to the window, and turned his back to me.

Looking at his demeanor, it seemed he wanted to question me.

I listed three options in my mind: A, B, C.

A: He wants me to take responsibility for Yao Yirong.

B: I barged into Yao Yirong's room, insulted a girl's reputation, and he wants to settle the score with me.

C: Actually, he sought me out because he has long admired me; he just wanted to invite me for tea as a polite gesture.

Among the three options, C is the most absurd but also the easiest to handle; if it really were C, I could casually go through the motions, place my right hand over my heart, utter some cheesy pleasantries, say a few 'here and there' niceties, and be polite. If it were B, that would also be fine. At worst, I could waste some breath, detailing the whole story to him; to boost my persuasiveness, I could even summon a couple of ghosts or flash a bit of minor sorcery to convince him.

Only option A is the toughest; if he truly wants me to take responsibility for Yao Yirong, I wonder if I should simply prostrate myself and beg for mercy: 'Your daughter is virtuous and pure, beautiful inside and out, capable of sinking fish and making geese fall, of hiding the moon and shaming flowers… I am congenitally calcium‑deficient, grew like a vegetable, in my past life I was Dongfang Bubai, in this life I am just a big cabbage—lacking weight and with a crooked neck. Poor seed quality severely affects offspring; for your sister's happiness and the Yao family's future, please never hand your sister over to me to wreak havoc.'

First belittle myself, exalt Yao Yirong—basically, first get rid of this trouble, then talk.

When I was immensely torn, with reason and fear battling inside me, Yao Wenju slowly turned around, startling me into a stumble; I almost instinctively wanted to throw myself to the ground, scrambling for every adjective to describe myself as utterly terrible.

'Thank you for saving my sister…' Yao Wenju said slowly.

'Uh… this is what I should do,' I replied instinctively, being polite.

Only then did I realize, looking at Yao Wenju in disbelief.

'You… what did you just say?'

Yao Wenju repeated: 'Thank you for saving my sister Yirong from the hands of that Ou‑surname insect master.'

Good grief, how did Yao Wenju know I rescued his sister, and how did he find out about the insect master's profession… Could he also be an insider?

It seemed he sensed my doubt; Yao Wenju slowly pulled something from his pocket and handed it to me……

I took it with a doubtful expression, opened it, and couldn't help exclaiming, 'Plowshare Witch Sect, you……'

What Yao Wenju handed me was a red piece of paper cut into the shape of a plowshare, with red characters inscribed as a talisman.

This is exactly the Plowshare Witch Sect's plowshare talisman; in ancient agrarian society, the plowshare was a farmer's tool, and ancestors used locally sourced materials to inscribe talismans on plowshares to punish thieves who stole fruit or those who harmed lives. Over time, the plowshare talisman was passed down generation after generation; perhaps because of this tradition, later plowshare talismans are uniformly cut into plowshare shapes, making them the most readily recognizable among various talisman schools.

I gripped the plowshare talisman and asked Yao Wenju doubtfully, 'Are you a member of the Plowshare Witch Sect?'

Yao Wenju shook his head: 'I am not, but my father is?'

His answer left me puzzled: his father is a member of the Plowshare Witch Sect, yet as his son he is not—what principle is this? Isn't the Plowshare Witch Sect supposed to pass down its teachings through generations?

Later, with Yao Wenju's explanation, I understood his meaning. His father is indeed an inheritor of the Plowshare Witch Sect, but he is not; he is destined in this life to have no connection with the sect, and his father absolutely refuses to pass the sect's techniques onto him.

Because this involves a folk curse that mainly targets the Plowshare Witch Sect and the Lu Ban practitioners.

A saying circulates among the folk: the Witch family perishes after three generations, the Lu Ban line ends after three generations. This means that the magical teachings of these two families cannot be passed down for more than three generations; once it exceeds three generations, they will incur heavenly punishment, forever cutting off descendants and leaving no heirs.

To evade this curse, the Plowshare Witch Sect and the Lu Ban lineage devised a compromise—skip‑generation inheritance. That is, the grandfather passes it to the grandson, but not to the son. In this way it does not count as three consecutive generations of transmission, so the curse is naturally avoided.

Thus Yao Wenju saying his father was a member of the Plowshare Witch Sect while he himself is not makes perfect sense.

Not long after, Yao Wenju pulled something else from his pocket and handed it to me; I looked down and saw it was a check. I puzzledly asked what it meant, and Yao Wenju said it was to thank me for rescuing Yao Yirong from Ou Yaofeng's hands.

I originally did not want to accept the check, but then I thought, taking it would mean I and the Yao family are even, which is fine—no debts, no obligations, no karmic ties.

With that thought, I naturally slipped the check into my pocket.

Still, I could not suppress my curiosity and asked Yao Wenju a question.

"Big Brother Yao, could you tell me why Ou Yaofeng keeps pestering your sister…?"

From a superficial angle, one would naturally assume Ou Yaofeng is infatuated with Yao Yirong's beauty, desiring to possess that lovely beauty.

But in my view, this is far from simple. Even now I still recall the scene of Ou Yaofeng's miserable death beneath the school's art building. Behind him seems to be a mysterious black hand silently manipulating him… Perhaps Ou Yaofeng's casting of a love‑binding spell on Yao Yirong was also ordered by that black hand.

Thinking of this, I cannot help but wonder why that black hand would drive Ou Yaofeng to cast a spell on Yao Yirong. If it were merely because of Yao Yirong's beauty, I would naturally not believe it.

In my expectant gaze, Yao Wenju pondered for a moment, drew close, and whispered: "Because my Yao family possesses something that can make a person rich overnight, becoming the foremost tycoon, that insect master therefore risked everything, directing his disciple to approach my sister; his aim was to obtain that thing."

What is that overnight‑riches thing? Although I too am curious, I dare not keep probing, lest having just escaped this vortex I fall into an even larger one. Having followed QingSongShu for so long, I have learned a principle: do not meddle in what is not your concern, lest you foolishly stick your nose in; better to preserve yourself than let curiosity kill the cat—swallow that curiosity.