"After that, the man told me a few more things. He also taught me a very mystical technique for dismantling mechanisms. When he'd finished, he patted me on the shoulder, and I woke up from the dream at once."
"When I came to, my head was still foggy. It was dark outside, and I was still hungover. I couldn't be sure whether it had really happened or was just a dream. But the moment I took off my shirt, I sobered up."
"There was a black handprint on my left shoulder. In the dream... the strange man had patted my left shoulder!"
"I knew he had come back, returned to make me fulfill the promise I'd made."
"I didn't dare waste any more time. I packed my things and left before dawn, heading out of the city to the Xiatuotuo Temple in the barren hills to the west. Sure enough, I ran into four people there."
"We didn't greet each other. We exchanged glances, and I knew these were the four people I was meant to meet."
"Since the whole thing was so strange, none of us dared use our real names. We cupped our hands and gave each other our aliases instead. One called himself General Xiaoyao, and the other three were Fanjin Dragon, Dingmen Liang, and Huashe Head. My alias was Luosha Hand."
Yuan Shanyuan narrowed his eyes. "All of you made your living in crooked trades."
Liu Xueyi looked awkward for a moment, then nodded.
Jiang Cheng knew Huashe Head referred to someone who had connections for selling antiques and cultural relics. Some sinister or obscure artifacts could only find suitable buyers through people like him. Most of them were silver-tongued, able to talk the dead back to life when they wanted to swindle someone.
Fanjin Dragon