Bewitching the Heart

"You're awake."

After falling asleep, the person in the dream said to Lu Yibai.

Lu Yibai: "???"

The man in the dream spoke to him after he had fallen asleep, telling him that he was awake.

Lu Yibai felt very strange. He was certain that he had fallen asleep, yet his thoughts were perfectly clear. He wondered if anyone else had ever experienced something like this.

In his dream, he could not quite make out the man in front of him, but the man's words were rather thought-provoking.

The man in the dream had said something terrifying when he thought about it carefully, but Boss Lu's heart remained completely unmoved. In fact... he even felt a little like laughing?

He chose not to respond, meeting change with constancy.

The man in the dream thought Lu Yibai had not heard him clearly and said again, "You're awake."

Boss Lu still ignored him.

What the hell? This isn't how this routine is supposed to go!

In the room next to Lu Yibai's, Lin Xiaoqi was wearing a pair of hot pants, her long, pale legs bare as she sat cross-legged in meditation.

Suddenly, her brows drew together slightly. She slowly rose to her feet and went to Boss Lu's door.

With a click, the door opened—it had not been locked.

She walked barefoot to the bedside and glanced at Lu Yibai, who was sleeping with his eyes closed.

Lu Yibai's expression was perfectly natural. Nothing seemed amiss.

That made sense. Her boss had nerves of steel.

"What a petty trick to bewitch the heart!" Lin Xiaoqi sneered. She lightly placed a finger on the handle of the Lion Umbrella and flicked the lion's head.

All at once, the Lion Umbrella on the bedside table trembled violently, as though it had shuddered hard.

Then, in Lu Yibai's "dream," he heard the man's voice again.

"Chicken Butt! Gan lin niang!"

How terribly nonstandard was that Mandarin? It sounded as though his face had been beaten swollen and he was speaking unclearly through the swelling.

Then the gray, hazy dream shattered in an instant.

More precisely, Lin Xiaoqi had smashed it apart by force.

Lu Yibai suddenly opened his dead-fish eyes, and the first thing he saw was Lin Xiaoqi in hot pants, revealing a pair of legs long enough to last ten thousand years.

From his angle while lying down, he could even see those impressive curves.

Lin Xiaoqi was looking at Boss Lu with great interest.

Boss Lu was a little dazed.

Could this be the legendary... midnight raid?

Should I open my arms, or open my arms, or open my arms?

As for the inexplicable dream from earlier, he had thrown it straight to the back of his mind.

Of course, Lu Yibai did not really think Lin Xiaoqi had any improper intentions toward him.

Emmmmm... A person had to know their own limits.

That meant there could only be one reason she had run into his room.

"Xiaoqi, I really didn't hide any potato chips in my room. The bag you found last time was already the last one!"

Boss Lu looked at the Lion Umbrella in front of him and slightly furrowed his brows.

Even without Lin Xiaoqi telling him, he could have guessed that there had to be something wrong with the Lion Umbrella.

Before this, he had always put the Lion Umbrella back on the umbrella stand, and he had slept just fine. Today, he had forgotten and placed it directly beside his bed, which had resulted in that strange dream.

Moreover, it was obvious that someone else had been directing that dream.

Ghostly tricks! Bewitching the heart!

But that shouldn't have happened!

The Lion Umbrella was a magical artifact with an extremely strong yang energy.

Just how strong was it?

Even a casual leak of a little of it could leave Ye Yiyi stuffed to the brim, or even send her straight into the sky.

In Ye Yiyi's words, this Lion Umbrella could easily support an entire tribe of ravenous Night Demons.

That made Lu Yibai think: If things ever go badly for me, I'll just subdue a bunch of Night Demons and become a mountain king.

With an artifact of this level, how could such a sinister phenomenon appear?

Lin Xiaoqi took the Lion Umbrella from Lu Yibai and said, "Boss, the four umbrellas in the bar are all quite old. Among them, your Lion Umbrella and that Skull Umbrella are the more special ones."

Lin Xiaoqi continued, "One is yin and one is yang. They generate and restrain each other."

It was easy to understand—at least the literal meaning was easy to understand.

Lin Xiaoqi looked at the lion's head on the Lion Umbrella and said, "Precisely because these two umbrellas are special—one has extremely strong yang energy, while the other has extremely strong yin energy—each of them suppresses something that it naturally counters."

"The Lion Umbrella has strong yang energy, so it suppresses a ghost with extremely strong yin energy."

"The Skull Umbrella has strong yin energy, so it contains a demon with extremely strong yang energy."

Lu Yibai nodded. He more or less understood.

"Could it be troublesome?" he asked.

It was supposedly being suppressed, but hadn't that ghost still entered his dream?

Although a person's independent consciousness was relatively weak while asleep, the fact remained that it had entered his dream.

"It won't be. If it really had any ability, it wouldn't be playing these petty tricks," Lin Xiaoqi said.

That made sense. Lu Yibai nodded.

In this day and age, in the era of information explosion, what kind of routine had people not seen?

This kind of bewitching trick had long since gone out of style.

No matter what the other party said, he only had to refuse to engage. Let it babble by itself and see how long it could keep babbling.

Deliberately saying something horrifying when examined closely, then luring you into conversation—if you chatted for too long, that was when trouble was more likely to occur.

The Lion Umbrella needed yang energy to suppress the ghost, while it still had enough surplus yang energy to leak out for Ye Yiyi to absorb. It was clearly handling things with ease.

It was rock-solid. There was no need to worry.

Although Lu Yibai was very interested in and curious about the ghost and the demon inside the Skull Umbrella, he knew that curiosity killed the cat.

He was only a First-tier Night Watchman right now. He did not yet possess the qualifications to be curious.

His thoughts were clear, and his logic was meticulous.

Anything that could be killed clearly would not need to be suppressed. Since it had been suppressed, it was definitely a troublesome existence.

Not someone I can afford to provoke. Not someone I can afford to provoke.

While alive, a person had to have some damn self-awareness.

"Xiaoqi, I'm curious. Where did these four black umbrellas come from? Who made them?" Lu Yibai asked.

Lin Xiaoqi shook her head. "I'm not sure either. Ji Dekeng might know. He gave me my Cat Umbrella, too."

Lu Yibai nodded. It was normal that Lin Xiaoqi did not know.

After all, she was so lazy that she could not even be bothered to be curious.

He would ask Ji Dekeng the next time he ran into him.

He wondered whether Ji Dekeng was having a carefree time in Magic City.

After Lin Xiaoqi returned to her room, Lu Yibai also went back to his own. He put the Lion Umbrella back on the umbrella stand.

It was better to sleep peacefully.

Although cultivation meant he did not need to sleep for several hours like an ordinary person, he still had to get around three hours of sleep every day. Otherwise, he would still feel mentally fatigued.

Even if his body was made of iron, his soul was not.

Before falling asleep, Lu Yibai suddenly remembered that he seemed to have overlooked something.

He remembered the fortune the uncle by the overpass had read for him!

That had been fucking accurate!

He knew the fortune-telling uncle inside and out. The man really was an ordinary person, and Lu Yibai had watched him calculate the fortune on his phone with his own eyes.

Then the problem had to lie with...

He picked up his phone, which was charging, and searched the download platform for "Divination God."

Nothing came up.

It had already been removed.