Chapter 527

"Hey, one-eyed monster, wait here for me, I'll go get the stuff and bring it to you!" Han Duo slapped the back of my head hard, almost knocking me to the ground.

I complained, "What one-eyed monster? Don't you have a name? My surname is Chen, I'm Hai Sheng."

Han Duo pursed her lips, didn't continue to pay attention to me, but turned around, clasped Ye Liang's hands and thanked him: "Boss Ye, thank you so much. Wait, I'll repay you for how much the brothers and sisters have eaten at your place; after a while I'll definitely send the money back."

Ye Liang, taken aback by her politeness, jumped up immediately, waving his hands and saying: "No need, no need, what's a few bucks? If I had money, you kids could come eat every day, no matter how much, you really don't need to be so polite."

"Thank you, Boss Ye," after a long silence, Han Duo suddenly broke into a smile, her smile left me momentarily dazed.

She turned and left Ye Liang's restaurant, heading down a small path. After she had walked halfway, I turned around, looked at the table full of kids, couldn't suppress my curiosity, and asked Ye Liang about the children's backgrounds. After all, before this, I had seen in the hospital a little Xiao Binbin suffering from leukemia; they also called Han Duo sister.

Ye Liang, upon my question, had no hesitation at all, and began to tell me everything he knew in detail.

Ye Liang said, these children, including Han Duo, are all from a nearby orphanage. The orphanage has been around for a long time, at least nearly a hundred years, called Child Fate Bay; it was founded by a descendant of a KMT military officer who returned from Taiwan, and the current director is Xiang Xiang, a kind elderly person over sixty.

However, according to what Ye Liang heard, combined with his own understanding of Child Fate Bay over the past month or so, life there seems very hard. Despite many kind-hearted people donating to society, the orphanage still runs a deficit; as a private welfare institution, without institutional support it's basically hard to sustain. The director often goes to factories to pick up odd jobs, and some of the children who grew up in the orphanage and now work outside each month pool together a few hundred, a few hundred dollars to bring back to the institute to support the younger siblings' living and schooling.

"Ah, these kids are really sensible. When I first opened, I often saw dirty little faces peeking furtively into my restaurant. But whenever I spotted them, or when I walked over, they'd immediately scatter." Ye Liang looked at the children at the table, his face full of pity, and said: "Later I found out these kids often go to my restaurant to pick up bottles people have finished drinking, and scavenge bottles and cans on the street to help support the orphanage. Ah, you don't know, there have been several times when I watched these kids scuttle across the street under the scorching sun, and my heart broke."

Ye Liang's words left me standing in silence for a long time; after a long pause, I strolled over to the children's dining table. One child lifted his head to look at me; his face was dirty, with a few grains of rice still at the corner of his mouth. His timid eyes stared at me for two moments, then he lowered his head again and continued shoveling rice into his mouth big mouthfuls.

"Is it good?" I patted the little boy closest to me; this boy's body was very frail, his clothes covered in patches, making him seem like a shrunken version of Ji Gong.

"It's good, it's fragrant..." the little boy wasn't shy, giving me a sweet smile; but although he said it was fragrant, he didn't use his chopsticks to pick up any vegetables. Not just him—I noticed the other kids were the same, shoveling rice into their mouths big mouthfuls, their chopsticks hardly touching the dishes on the table.

"If it's good, why aren't you eating more? Just eating rice won't do; you need more meat to grow tall." I picked up my chopsticks and put some vegetables into their bowls.

"Uncle..." At that moment, the little boy lifted his head, looking at me with a somewhat timid expression.

"Mm, what's wrong? Is the food not tasty? Tell Uncle, don't be afraid."

"Uncle, we... we want to take the vegetables home to give to Mom and the other brothers and sisters to eat!" The little boy seemed to hesitate for a long time, then mustered courage, his face flushing red as he spoke to me; after saying that, he lowered his head again, as if afraid I'd scold him.

Suddenly I felt something clogging my chest, my nose sour, tears welling up as if they wanted to burst from my eyes. I'm not an emotional person; on the contrary, my upbringing from childhood made me cold and lonely. But looking at these ragged, sallow-faced children, I really wanted to cry, truly wanted to cry.

What kind of life are they living? At such a young age they should be enjoying family warmth, yet they've been cruelly abandoned by their parents, some even disabled. They don't know what toys are, they don't know what nice clothes are. Yet despite their tender age they've learned to help each other, to care for each other.

Ye Liang's older brother, the former owner of the restaurant, is a miserly tightwad. He won't even give away a penny or two's worth of aluminum cans or beer bottles; seeing them, he chases them off with a broom, sets dogs after them. Customers' leftover rice and vegetables, he'd rather feed to dogs than give to these kids.

"Ah, my older brother—everything's fine with him, except he's stingy and unfeeling. How could he treat such a pitiful bunch of kids like that?" Ye Liang let out another low sigh.

I clenched my fists secretly, feeling that I ought to do something—after all, I've cultivated for twenty years, constantly teaching others to do good and accumulate virtue, yet I myself had never noticed the group of children nearby who desperately needed help.

I decided I wouldn't take Han Duo's IOU; I also want to donate money, doing whatever I can to help them. These children are like I was as a kid—losing parents at a young age. But I'm far more fortunate than they are: I met a good master, gained a good uncle, have books to read, food to eat, and don't have to scramble around just to fill my stomach.

Not long after, I saw Han Duo come in from outside. She pulled me out to the doorway, then took a box from her waist pouch and handed it to me, saying: "Here, this is for you; I know I messed up last time when I swindled you out of money. After I give you this, we'll have no more debts or delays."

I took it dubiously, opened it, and was so startled I almost threw the box to the ground.

What a joke, giving me the gold tablet from Wu Mu's last will. QingSongShu had just finished telling me over and over not to touch this thing...

"Damn... I don't want this," I exclaimed, hurriedly handing it back.

"Then what do you want?" Han Duo looked at me suspiciously, then... she instinctively shrank her shoulders, hugged her arms tight, and stared at me with eyes full of wariness.

"Damn..."... no matter where you're thinking, I really didn't do anything lewd to you in the guesthouse. Seeing her like this, I knew she'd gotten the wrong idea; I wanted to laugh and cry at once, but I can't now tell Han Duo I'm here to collect the IOU, to demand she repay the money. Now I not only don't want to demand repayment, I actually want to give her even more money.

Suddenly I somewhat understood where her stubborn insistence on money comes from. This seemingly frail body actually bears a burden I could hardly imagine.

"Well, actually, I don't want this; I wanted to buy it from you, after all it's a gold tablet—I can't just take it for free." Looking at Han Duo, I stumbled over my words as I tried to take them back.

Unexpectedly, Han Duo stepped back two paces, waved her hand and said: "No, even though I'm poor, I still understand right from wrong. I swindled you—that was my fault—but now I'm giving you the gold tablet; consider it settlement of the money you originally gave me. From now on we owe each other nothing, each going our own way."

Having said that, Han Duo turned and walked away, leaving me with the words: "From now on let's never see each other again; don't come looking for me." Smug and heartless.

"Hey, wait..." Han Duo had just taken two steps when I called her to stop. She turned around, hands on her hips, and said impatiently: "I'm telling you, you never quit, acting like a nagging old woman. Can't you just say everything at once? You're wasting my time."

"No... listen to me!" I scratched my head, cleared my thoughts, then mustered the courage to say to Han Duo: "If I'm not mistaken, your soul has been injured by my uncle's divine eye ability; you now have less than twenty percent of your power left. Are you free tomorrow to come to my place? I'll prepare some herbal medicine for you, you need to rest more and adjust internally and externally. Also, you must absolutely not use any spiritual power during this time; if you continue like this, you'll either die from draining your lifespan or become utterly exhausted and turn into an idiot."

I'm telling the truth; in the tomb, the moment Han Duo's banner was destroyed, she had already become a paper tiger. After returning to Shenzhen, she forcibly projected her soul to the underworld; as soon as she arrived, her mind went haywire—clearly, her soul had suffered serious injury. If she doesn't rest properly and receive timely treatment, she may be left with lasting sequelae. Moreover, the techniques she is currently using are sustained by consuming her own lifespan.

This is definitely not a good thing for Han Duo, even though the burden on her shoulders is heavy. If she continues like this, I'm certain she will completely disappear from this world within two months. Because internal cultivation of the soul is extremely important for the Mei Shan and Yin Shan sects that command ghosts and soldiers; if her soul is injured and she still forcibly summons troops, a mishap could invite something too evil, which would seize our weakened bodies—that is, the legendary body possession. If lucky, she might finally succeed in protecting her own body; if unlucky… she could become a raving idiot, or become another person.

Perhaps. It's probably because Han Duo has always disliked me; I meant to advise her kindly, but she only left me with her back view and coldly threw down seven words.

"What the hell does it have to do with your grandmother..." She was smug, stubborn, and badly in need of a beating.

However, through her back view, I saw something called dignity, something called backbone, blooming proudly like a peacock within her seemingly humble body.