Chapter 237: Eternal Longevity

"Ah, this palm?!" Qi Fei blurted out.

"No wonder you came with the Great Immortal; I should have guessed sooner that only something like this could make the police find their way to me," Lao Feng said, his gaze landing on Qi Fei.

"You know me?"

"You are a frequent visitor to Sanwu Town, of course I know you."

"We discovered a deceased person in Nancheng with a special curvature to their palm, just like yours," Qi Fei said immediately.

Lao Feng was not surprised upon hearing this, only asking with concern, "Where did you find them?"

This question left Qi Fei speechless for a moment; he did not know whether he should tell him that this person was found in his own courtyard.

"In a courtyard by the Luomeng River," Zhong Kui said immediately.

"Ah, the Green Dragon Head Trap, the water waves stir the soul," Lao Feng muttered. "This is what you told me back then, Great Immortal; it is exactly as you predicted!"

This remark took Qi Fei by great surprise, and he looked at Zhong Kui: "You knew this all along?"

"Is it not normal for me to have the ability to foresee the future?" Zhong Kui said without evasion, then asked Qi Fei in return, "Shouldn't you be concerned about who this wandering soul I calculated is?"

"Officer Qi, right?" Lao Feng did not wait for Qi Fei to ask and took the initiative to say, "My name is Feng Yongfu. My younger brother, Feng Yongshou, went missing twenty-seven years ago. For all these years, there has been no sign of him alive or dead. A few years ago, the Great Immortal came to Sanwu Town; the moment she saw me, she knew someone in my family had gone missing and told me the very words I just spoke."

"She said that one day she would bring my brother back. The Great Immortal did not break her promise." At this point, tears welled up in Lao Feng's eyes, and his voice began to tremble.

"Why are your palms..." Qi Fei could not help but ask.

"Oh! This!" Lao Feng said as he walked two or three steps to a corner of the room to an inconspicuous pottery wheel, sat down in front of it, and turned on the machine to demonstrate. "Because we followed my father to learn how to make urns when we were very young, when throwing the clay, the hand has to be like this..." Lao Feng said, arching his palm, "shaping it along the curve of the urn. Over time, the palm became deformed."

Qi Fei suddenly understood, but in the vast sea of people, a deformed palm alone could not prove anything. He pressed further: "Besides the palm, are there any other features on Feng Yongshou that could help us identify him?"

Feng Yongfu said without hesitation: "One of his lower left molars was decayed and had a silver filling. Did you find that?"

Qi Fei nodded upon hearing this; they had indeed found a tooth with a silver filling. It was almost certain that the deceased was Feng Yongshou.

Even so, Qi Fei's heart was full of doubts: "Listening to you, your brother was also a maker of ash urns in Sanwu Town like you? Do you know if he went to Nancheng before he went missing?"

Feng Yongfu shook his head: "My brother never left Sanwu Town his whole life. Nancheng is neither near nor far from Sanwu Town; I truly never imagined he would die in Nancheng."

Zhong Kui was already sitting on an old-fashioned armchair, smoothing her hair as she said: "I have already heard the story of Feng Yongshou's disappearance, but this Officer Qi has not. Lao Feng, tell it to him again."

She said this while gesturing for Qi Fei to sit down beside her.

He looked around; he did not know when the dim living room of the old house had been left with only the three of them.

Meng Apo and Luosha seemed to have vanished into thin air.

It was as if, for them, they were not interested in or willing to participate in anything other than Zhong Kui.

A few rooster crows came from outside, marking the official arrival of dawn.

Whether it was the fault of the courtyard full of ash urns or not, the place remained dim and cold.

It was as if the environment were meant to match the age-old story.

"If it weren't for Yongshou going missing, this ash urn business wouldn't have fallen to me to inherit," Feng Yongfu said, immediately clarifying, "Don't misunderstand, I have no intention of fighting over the family business. To tell the truth, this is not a glorious trade. People far and near cannot avoid buying our products, yet they despise us for being unlucky; even finding a wife is harder than for others."

"This craft is not difficult to say, but it is not simple either. My father always said Yongshou had more talent than I did."

"Actually, I felt the same way in my heart."

"The ash urns Yongshou made were perfectly shaped and the glaze was excellent; they sold even better than the ones my father made."

"Yongshou was a man of few words and was single-minded in his work, but a few months before he went missing, he suddenly changed."

"He was often absent-minded, and the urns he fired had all sorts of minor problems."

"I asked him what was on his mind, but he wouldn't say; he just said he didn't want to do this trade anymore."

"Later, this situation became more and more serious. Sometimes in the middle of the night, he would wander around the courtyard alone, muttering to himself."

"But as soon as he saw me coming, he would pretend to be calm and say he was just up to use the toilet."

"At that time, my parents were still alive. They saw Yongshou's situation and worried that the work of selling ash urns was heavy with yin energy, fearing he might be possessed by an evil spirit. They wanted to take Yongshou to the Huang Daxian Temple to exorcise the evil, but Yongshou refused to go no matter what."

"I saw that his entire complexion changed the moment he heard 'Huang Daxian Temple,' so I became suspicious and pressed him on whether his worries were related to the Huang Daxian Temple."

"After repeated questioning, he stammered and said he had seen the Great Immortal killing someone."

"Once he said this, we understood."

"We are not far from the Huang Daxian Temple here. Yongshou said that he couldn't sleep that night and went out for a walk. He heard movement inside the Huang Daxian Temple and walked in out of curiosity. He saw the Great Immortal with his back to him, buried in eating something. When he saw clearly, he discovered a person lying in front of the Great Immortal, disemboweled, with their internal organs pulled out."

"He was so scared he ran for his life, not knowing if he had been discovered by the Great Immortal. There has always been a rumor in town that the Great Immortal is intolerant of evil and is a deity with a strong desire for revenge; whoever offends it will surely die. Yongshou was terrified day and night because of this, and fearing he would implicate us, he didn't dare tell us."

"Although Yongshou described it vividly, we didn't take it seriously at the time, saying that since nothing had happened for so many days, perhaps he had seen wrong at night."

"Unexpectedly, Yongshou immediately said that he had also doubted himself, but not two days later, someone came to order an ash urn. That person's appearance was seventy or eighty percent similar to the one he saw being eaten by the Great Immortal. He asked the other party for a photo of the deceased person, and at a glance, it was the one he had seen. Only then did he know he hadn't seen wrong."

"Did he say who that person was?" Qi Fei asked, realizing this matter was not simple.

Feng Yongfu shook his head: "If we had known who this person was, we would have gone looking when Yongshou went missing. The person who came to buy the ash urn was not from Sanwu Town and claimed to be named Dong Nansheng. After Yongshou went missing, we reported it to the police and mentioned this name, but it turned out there was no one by that name in the household registration. It seems he used a fake name." He sighed, "Sigh, I will never forget that Qingming Festival twenty-seven years ago. We went to Zizai Shan to pay respects to our ancestors; the family business needed someone to look after it, and Yongshou volunteered to stay behind to take care of it."