Chapter 128: The Journey Home, Summoned for an Audience

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The hospital in the county town was equipped with fairly advanced medical facilities.

None of them had slept at all. They had simply climbed into a vehicle in the mountain village and endured the jolting ride into town.

Uncle Yan paid for the entire battery of examinations. Their various injuries were treated as well. None of them was serious, but they still needed to be bandaged.

Qi Yan was the safest of them all this time, having suffered hardly any significant injury.

Even so, he underwent several scans, had blood drawn, gave a urine sample, and so on.

Ding Lingzi’s condition was what surprised everyone most. Apart from some dead skin peeling up across her back, she was more or less unharmed. Her body was simply weak, as though dehydrated, so she needed intravenous fluids and a glucose infusion.

Hao Dalong specifically went to the neurology department for an examination. After all, he had been under an illusion for a long time, but the tests revealed no problems.

Xuanxuan had done nothing more than sprain her ankle, while Uncle Yan had suffered only superficial injuries.

Everything seemed to be… perfectly fine now. What had happened the previous night felt almost like a nightmare. Aside from Qi Yan, even people like Uncle Yan, who had dealt with supernatural phenomena for many years, had found it truly terrifying. After all, their opponent had been a demon, not an ordinary evil spirit.

By the time they left the hospital, dusk was drawing near again. The weather was no longer as bright and sunny as it had been when they arrived; the sky had turned somewhat gloomy.

They found a random hotel and checked in. They planned to book tickets for the next day’s train, get a proper night’s sleep, and return first to Changsha, then to Xinzhou. Now that the matter had been settled and the Dark Tablet recovered, there was no reason to remain any longer.

That night, however, everyone slept deeply. They were simply too exhausted and too tired to do anything else.

The only thing Qi Yan found slightly strange was a faint discomfort in his stomach before bed. The sensation was so subtle that it felt no different from ordinary indigestion, so he paid it little attention.

Once again, he had escaped death and managed to keep his life.

He had already told Uncle Yan that he wanted to learn the Ghost-Servant Technique from black magic. It was a decision born of careful consideration, but it was not because he felt any curiosity about or longing for such arts.

In his eyes, black magic was still steeped in too much evil. Perhaps some young people yearned for Maoshan sorcery or the like, but when it came to black magic… he had always felt an instinctive fear.

The only reason he wanted to learn the Ghost-Servant Technique was to suppress the power of the Dark Tablet. The talisman tube Uncle Yan had given him seemed fairly effective for now, but it could not be considered a long-term solution.

Besides, if he could never escape the karmic bond between himself and the Dark Tablet, then he would remain bound to it forever.

And the outcome depended partly on luck. Take He Yulong, for example, the bearer of the Fourth Tablet of the Yin Palace. He had not died from the Dark Tablet’s backlash, so even after death, he remained bound to it. That might not sound particularly serious… but if one thought about it carefully, a person who remained bound to a fierce ghost after death would be unable to reincarnate.

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Qi Yan had not believed in such things before. He had thought that when a person died, that was the end—there could be no further consequences. But now… ghosts and souls were real, which meant that death was not truly the end in the strictest sense.

So far, aside from dying from the Dark Tablet’s backlash, neither Uncle Yan nor the others had found any other way to sever the karmic connection between the tablet and its bearer. If they had truly discovered a solution that satisfied everyone, there would not have been so many troubles and conflicts in the first place.

Thus, Qi Yan viewed the Dark Tablet as an incurable disease—a condition that could never be completely healed. If that was the case, then at the very least, he had to master some means of easing the symptoms himself.

Uncle Yan and the others could not possibly help him forever. When the day came that he was left entirely on his own, what would he do?

Wait helplessly for death to arrive, or seek a long-term solution?

Qi Yan was merely an ordinary man: no money, no status, no reputation, and not much he could not bear to give up.

But he was still far too young. Being told that a ghost would soon come to claim his life was more terrifying and despairing than receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer.

Lying on the bed and letting his thoughts run wild, he could not help picking up the Dark Tablet beside his pillow and staring blankly at it.

After everything that had happened, he could not claim to fear every ghost and monster. But at the very least, he was no longer as frightened of Mother as he once had been. He had grown accustomed to her.

Come to think of it, she had indeed saved his life more than once. Leaving everything else aside, during his battle of sorcery with Watanabe Nobutomo, Qi Yan had at least been able to see with his own eyes that… in order to preserve his life, she had truly been willing to throw herself into danger without hesitation.

Thai masters of black magic often said that the Dark Tablet one worshiped might be an evil ghost beyond salvation in the eyes of others, yet between it and its bearer existed a karmic bond that transcended the boundaries of life.

It was difficult to imagine what sort of emotions and scene would unfold if, one day… at one particular moment, Mother turned on him and truly attacked him.

Setting aside all the tangled history between them, did he really possess the ability to survive even a few exchanges against Mother?

Was there even the slightest chance that he could escape alive?

…No matter how things stood, Qi Yan still possessed enough self-awareness to know the answer.

Absolutely not.

Strictly speaking, the reason he had survived these encounters with ghosts and evil spirits was that the Dark Tablet had played the decisive role every time. There was no room for joking about that. It was like one of those escape scenes in a horror film. Qi Yan knew that if Mother ever turned against him and tried to kill him, he would have no chance to resist. To her, killing him would be as easy as snapping a baby’s hand.

If the black magic known as the Ghost-Servant Technique could truly be of use at that moment, Qi Yan would try it no matter what, even if the hope of success remained extremely slim.

The most terrifying thing was not sudden death. It was knowing that something capable of taking your life would inevitably come, while you remained powerless to do anything but wait silently, without warning, for the end…

With that unease weighing on his mind, Qi Yan did not know when he finally fell asleep. In any case, the next morning, he and Hao Dalong were awakened by Uncle Yan knocking on the door.

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“Why are you two still in bed? Hurry up! The train leaves in half an hour!”

…

While Qi Yan and the others were aboard the train home, things in Xinzhou were far more peaceful than their journey had been.

Most of the time, it was because of Qi Yan that the people around him suffered one misfortune after another. With him away, naturally everything was calm.

In the sales department of Xinzhou Hengyu Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Dingtai Group.

Dong Ye’s life had entered an entirely new chapter over the past few days. He and Xu Dan were no longer constantly arguing, and he had found a job far better than his previous one. Although he was still a new employee on probation, he was brimming with energy. His days were packed with work and study, making his life far more fulfilling than the idle position he had found after graduation.

He had only been working there for a short while, but he already spent every day dressed in a suit and tie, integrating himself into the larger environment alongside many other new employees in their probationary period. His state of mind had improved as well.

Though he was tired, he was genuinely happy. He was even positively beaming, saying things like, “Those who survive a great disaster are bound to enjoy good fortune afterward,” and, “The sun always shines after the storm.”

That day, just after he entered the company and reached his desk, a middle-aged man who looked like a department supervisor walked straight toward him. He appeared to have been waiting for Dong Ye for quite some time.

“You’re Dong Ye, the new employee in the sales department, correct?”

Dong Ye had only just sat down, yet he immediately stood again and replied politely, “Yes, yes. Good morning, Supervisor Chen. I’m Dong Ye.”

“For now, put aside whatever work and plans you have for today. The chairman wants to see you.”

The supervisor delivered the words in a casual tone, but Dong Ye was not the only one who froze. Every employee present was stunned.

A probationary employee who had been with the company for less than a month had been summoned by the chairman of the group. Wasn’t that like an ordinary scholar being summoned to meet the emperor? Everyone was naturally astonished.

Dong Ye stood there in a daze for a long while. The supervisor had already walked some distance away before turning back to look at him.

“What is it? Stop daydreaming. Come on.”

“Oh… oh!”

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