Chapter 57 House-Protecting Talisman

The old man's soft words caused a shudder to ripple through Le Dong.

Subconsciously, he glanced at Lin Xun, who was staring intently at the old man, her brow deeply furrowed as if she were trying to gauge the veracity of the old man's statement.

Perhaps that young man was just talking nonsense and happened to blindly hit on the fact that the old man really did have a deceased apprentice...

Le Dong comforted himself, forcefully suppressing the unease rising in his heart, telling himself that right now, the most important thing was to get the vehicle fixed and leave this place.

With this thought, he hoisted the towing tools onto his shoulder, forced a smile at Li Gang, and said, "Thank you, Master Li! We'll go and drag the car over right away!"

Without daring to look at the old man's face any longer, he pulled Lin Xun and hurried back into the curtain of rain.

When they returned to the van, Cai Kun and Ma Wenwen were waiting anxiously. Le Dong put down the tools and, panting slightly, quickly recounted the situation: "...The old man is inside the workshop. He's Master Li, and I've got the tools. That dark-skinned kid earlier... must be a liar or a lunatic, talking nonsense about being an apprentice. The old man himself said his apprentice died ten years ago!"

"Damn it! I knew it!"

Cai Kun grew agitated at once. "That wretched scammer made us soak like drowned rats and almost had us believing his crap. If I run into him again, I'll make sure he finds out how heavy my two hundred pounds are!"

Compared to Cai Kun's volatility, Ma Wenwen appeared very quiet. He tilted his head, his face beneath the gauze expressionless, but Le Dong noticed the fingers resting on his lap twitch slightly.

"Alright, Old Cai, stop blabbering and hurry up and get the car over here. The rain is too heavy!" Le Dong called out to Cai Kun. With great effort, they fastened the tow rope, and the two of them, like trackers hauling a boat, strained and trudged through the pouring rain as they dragged their "old reliable" toward the repair shop.

Nearby, Lin Xun refused Ma Wenwen's attempt to get out of the vehicle. She nimbly rolled up her soaked sleeves and, without a word, walked straight to the back of the van, pressed her hands against it, and assumed a pushing stance.

"Hey, Officer Lin!" Cai Kun's eyes lit up when he saw Lin Xun's action. Pulling hard on the rope, he shouted at the top of his lungs, his tone laced with astonishment. "You... you're really something else! In this heavy rain, a young lady like you, and a people's police officer to boot, you should just rest inside the car! How can we let you do this kind of heavy, grueling labor? This... this just isn't right!"

Though his words said it wasn't right, seeing Lin Xun show no delicate airs and genuinely put her back into the work, a spark of admiration crept into the depths of his eyes.

Seeing that Lin Xun offered no reply from the back of the car, Cai Kun turned his head and grinned at Le Dong. "Tsk tsk, this woman is incredible—pretty and unpretentious. Why is it that whenever I go on blind dates year after year, I never run into anyone like this?"

"Run into one for what? So she can help you pay off your gambling debts?" Le Dong couldn't help but banter.

"Psh! If a woman like this were really with me, I'd chop off my hand before I ever gambled again!"

"Really? Well, Officer Lin right here is a perfect match. Besides, she's a police officer, so even if you wanted to gamble, you probably wouldn't dare..."

"Go on, go on... How could she... possibly fancy someone like me..."

By the end of his sentence, Cai Kun's voice was barely audible, yet the strength with which he pulled the ropes grew increasingly fierce.

Finally, the three of them managed to drag the car into the wide-open doors of the repair shop, where Li Gang was standing quietly beneath the eaves of the brick-and-tile house, waiting.

As soon as the van entered the repair bay, Cai Kun impatiently dropped the tow rope and bolted a few strides over to Li Gang. His loud voice reverberated through the cavernous workshop:

"You're Master Li, right? You've really got to take a look at my van. It was running just fine, and suddenly it started burning oil and spewing black smoke before completely dying on us! Oh, and there's one more thing you need to watch out for. Just now, some dark-skinned punk was impersonating your apprentice and even tried to trick us into climbing over the wall. Don't you think he's out of his mind?"

Cai Kun's tone was brimming with the eagerness of having found the "right person" and the disdain he felt toward that "young man."

Yet, listening to all this, Li Gang's face remained utterly expressionless. He lifted his cloudy eyes to look at Cai Kun, glanced briefly at the Wuling van, and merely grunted a raspy "Yeah" in response.

Immediately afterward, he slowly walked over to the front of the vehicle, lifted the hood with a hunched back, and leaned in to inspect it—his movements sluggish yet thoroughly experienced.

During this interval, Lin Xun walked up from the rear of the car. Instead of stepping close to examine the vehicle, she cast a suspicious glance around the interior of the entire repair shop.

Under the dim light, the clutter piled in the corners, the greasy floor, the tools hanging on the wall... everything appeared completely ordinary.

Suddenly, her gaze lingered for a moment on an old office desk in the corner, which was similarly caked in a thick layer of grease. A photo frame seemed to be sitting there, but the distance and the poor lighting prevented her from making out the details.

Le Dong didn't pay much attention to Lin Xun's actions. He was just about to go over to help or inquire about the car's condition when his peripheral vision caught sight of Ma Wenwen, who was groping his way down from the vehicle. The moment his feet touched the ground, his body stiffened abruptly!

He looked as though he had tripped over something, or perhaps stepped across an invisible threshold, freezing entirely in place.

His gauze-wrapped face tilted up slightly as if he were straining to "look" into the surrounding void. His brow locked tightly together, and his lips pressed into a thin line.

Le Dong's heart skipped a beat.

Ever since they were on the road, Ma Wenwen had repeatedly exhibited this kind of abnormal vigilance.

Seeing this, he quickly took a few strides forward, casually supported Ma Wenwen's arm, and asked in a low voice, "What is it? Does something feel wrong again?"

Ma Wenwen did not answer immediately. His head turned slightly, as if capturing invisible signals in the air.

A few seconds later, he raised a hand, fumbled to point toward the direction of the main entrance, and spoke in a deeply suppressed voice: "Le Dong... over by the main gate... is there something there?"

Hearing this, Le Dong immediately turned his head to look at the two large green iron doors. Looking closely across the curtain of rain, he indeed discovered that near the top of the inner side of the doorframe, tucked away in an unremarkable corner, was a rectangular piece of paper.

The paper had faded and turned severely yellow, its edges curled and tattered, and upon it were drawn some crooked, unrecognizable symbols using cinnabar or some other faded pigment.

"There is! There's a piece of yellow paper pasted there, with red lines drawn on it, and it's very old," Le Dong confirmed instantly, the sense of unease in his heart multiplying several times over.

Upon hearing this, the skin beneath Ma Wenwen's gauze seemed to turn even paler. Without a second thought, he immediately fumbled inside his old cloth bag, his fingers searching eagerly within.

Soon, he pulled out a folded yellow paper talisman, relatively fresh in color, and shoved it into Le Dong's hand. "Quick! See... does it look like this one...?"

Seeing Ma Wenwen's nervous state, Le Dong's heart leapt into his throat. He hurriedly rushed over and placed the two talismans side by side to compare them.

Although one was brand new and the other old, and the complexity of the symbols varied, the specific yellow-base-and-red-pattern style of the talisman paper, along with several key turning strokes of the talisman's head and core... bore an astonishingly similar resemblance!

Le Dong felt his scalp tingle. He quickly stuffed both talismans back into Ma Wenwen's hand, his voice growing grave. "They're alike, extremely alike! What... what on earth is this thing? Could there be something unclean here?"

With that, he subconsciously glanced back in the direction of the trunk. "The statue of Zhong Kui is right there! It should... it should be fine, right?" Le Dong seemed to be asking Ma Wenwen, but also trying to pump himself up.

This time, Ma Wenwen did not nod. He gripped both the old and new talismans tightly in his hand, turned his gauze-wrapped face toward Le Dong, and spoke in a low, hurried voice: "Back on the road just now, I faintly sensed a trace of... yin energy, but it was very faint, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't. At the time, I thought my body hadn't fully recovered yet and my perception was weak, plus with Lord Zhong Kui sitting镇 in the trunk, I didn't pay it too much mind."

He paused, seemingly recalling the sensation more clearly. "Yet, after stepping through the gates of this repair shop, I can still feel the yin energy... and it's even more pronounced!"

Le Dong listened with his hair standing on end, quietly waiting for what came next.

"What's even stranger is that this yin energy... it seems to be blocked by something right there at the main gate... and it vanishes! Just like... just like there's an invisible wall isolating it on the outside, or... isolating it on the inside!"

He pointed toward the direction of the main gate once more. "That's why I asked you if there was something on the door. Now it's clear—that old talisman... is a 'House-鎮-Talisman'! It's specifically used to keep malicious yin energies from invading or leaking out!"

When Ma Wenwen uttered the word "isolating," his tone grew exceptionally heavy.

"Then... then this talisman... is it blocking the yin energy trying to come in from the outside... or... the yin energy wanting to get out from the inside?" Le Dong's voice was heavy.

Because this line of logical deduction was terrifying the more one thought about it, he instinctively looked past Ma Wenwen's shoulder and cast a stealthy glance at Li Gang, who was hunched over, murmuring quietly with Cai Kun in front of the van's hood.

Under the dim, yellowish light of the repair bay, the old man's grease-stained face appeared exceptionally blurred, his movements so sluggish they bordered on... rigid.

Ma Wenwen did not directly answer Le Dong's question, but his silence and the way his gauze-covered face remained turned toward Master Li served as a silent reply...