The rain came down harder and harder.
Gu Qingshan sat beside the corpses, intently cooking a pot of food.
Old Fairy paced back and forth nearby, leaning on her short staff.
"What are you pacing around for?" Gu Qingshan asked.
"I need a moment to collect myself..." Old Fairy muttered under her breath.
"Fair enough," Gu Qingshan agreed.
What had just happened involved far too much information, enough to fuel all kinds of speculation.
Some possibilities were almost too terrible to contemplate. Just thinking about them made it feel as if his brain might explode.
Gu Qingshan decided to pause for a while and clear his head.
—He started making a meal.
"How can I be so unlucky? I just had to stumble across such a dangerous secret."
Old Fairy walked around with a deeply troubled expression, muttering to herself as she occasionally waved her short staff and stripped the corpses of their gear and clothes.
"Aren't you making a fortune?" Gu Qingshan asked.
"Ugh, making a fortune is just standard procedure. But what happened just now was far beyond what I can handle," Old Fairy said.
Gu Qingshan tasted the porridge.
—Delicious and soothing.
"Forget about it. Get ready for a midnight snack," Gu Qingshan said.
Old Fairy's nose twitched. She jumped up and cried, "Seafood porridge? That sounds good, but I have something more important to do—I have to wash away the bad luck clinging to me!"
"How?" Gu Qingshan asked.
"I'm going to die, Gu Qingshan," Old Fairy said solemnly.
"Die?" Gu Qingshan asked in surprise.
"That's right—this is a mysterious ritual of our kind. We use death to dodge bad luck."
Old Fairy stood still and began chanting.
"There's nothing wrong with getting rid of bad luck... but you don't have to die for it," Gu