Chapter Thirteen

After leaving the club, Master Ning didn't say a word the entire way. His steps were hurried.

Zhan Hongye gave Jiang Jia a look. She slowed down and followed from a distance while he hurried a few steps to catch up.

"Master Ning, I'm terribly sorry. I never expected that child to be so ill-mannered."

Master Ning gave him a cold look. "If you need help with something like this again, Mr. Zhan, you'd better find someone else."

"There won't be a next time." As he spoke, he slipped a card into Master Ning's hand. "I hope you'll accept this, Master."

Master Ning's expression softened a little. Zhan Hongye might have his flaws, but he never hesitated when it came to paying.

After taking the card, he gave a cool "Mm."

"Are you heading back to rest now, Master? My son's car is here. Why not let him drive you?"

As they spoke, a black sedan pulled up beside them.

Zhan Huitian got out and walked around to open the other door, his manner exceedingly respectful.

The considerate behavior of the Zhan family father and son managed to dispel some of the anger in Master Ning's heart. After getting into the car, he took out a pen and wrote something on a piece of paper. Then he rolled down the window and handed it to Zhan Hongye.

Zhan Hongye accepted it with both hands. After seeing what was written, he raised his eyebrows. "Thank you, Master."

Master Ning said flatly, "The year's only half over, and this is already the second one. You need to know when to stop."

Hearing the faint displeasure in his voice, Zhan Hongye quickly explained, "Don't worry, Master. I guarantee this will be the last one this year."

Master Ning didn't respond. He rolled up the window and said to Zhan Huitian in the front, "Drive."

The car pulled away. Zhan Hongye carefully put the piece of paper away, glanced back at the club, then headed for the parking lot.

Ever since Liu Mumu gave her "club speech," her standing in the Dong family had risen at an unscientific rate.

Specifically, Aunt Jiang now went out of her way to avoid her, keeping at least ten meters away. She also seemed to be secretly looking up protective suits online, probably hoping to quarantine Liu Mumu by scientific means.

Dong Zhenghao was completely different. These days, whenever he went out, he made a point of saying goodbye to her.

He even shamelessly came by every day to mooch a daily fortune from her. Liu Mumu had rolled a blood-disaster hexagram for him three days in a row. On the first day, Dong Zhenghao had been so frightened his legs went weak; by the third, he was asking with some anticipation when it would come true.

How was she supposed to know? Liu Mumu said the hexagram had already been cast and there were no after-sales services.

Her job was to tell fortunes. Whether they came true depended on how accurately she'd cast that day.

After sending Dong Zhenghao away, Liu Mumu started casting for herself.

She tossed the coin three times in a row, and each result was enough to break her heart. Once again, her Hongluan Star was unmoved. Sigh...

Since she was doomed to have no boyfriend today, she could only go upstairs and find Dong Yue.

Dong Yue was in her room doing her summer homework. She was in her second year of high school, and her assignments had already piled up by the stack. Liu Mumu sat on her bed, watching her bend over her work and write furiously, taking a certain pleasure in seeing the next generation suffer.

She'd gone through the same thing herself back in the day. Math in particular had been an unbearable pain in her life.

After Dong Yue finished her work for the day, the two of them played mobile games on the bed for a while, then went downstairs together to cut up some fruit.

Liu Mumu was washing an apple when she suddenly heard a car engine outside.

Dong Zhenghao, who wasn't supposed to be home until that evening, suddenly came rushing back. From parking the car to bursting through the front door took him less than two minutes.

To put it simply, he came in a panic.

He'd made such a racket entering the house that even Jiang Li, who was in her room, was startled. The whole family came out and gathered around him.

The tie Dong Zhenghao had put on that morning was nowhere to be seen, and his shirt buttons were all done up crookedly. If not for the obvious terror on his face, Jiang Li might have thought he'd been fooling around with some seductress.

"S-s-something happened!"

Dong Zhenghao rushed over to Liu Mumu and frantically yanked open his clothes, revealing the skin beneath.

Several distinct red marks ran across his skin, as if he'd been slashed with a knife. Some had broken the skin and were already oozing beads of blood.

Jiang Li screamed. "What is that? Who did this?"

Dong Zhenghao ignored her and said to Liu Mumu, "These marks appeared out of nowhere just now. I swear I didn't do anything."

Less than an hour had passed between the marks appearing and his return home.

"Appeared out of nowhere..." Liu Mumu thought for a moment before speaking. "Doesn't this symptom seem a little familiar?"

Dong Yue peeked out from behind Liu Mumu and glanced at her father. "It's a lot like Uncle Qin's situation, but Dad isn't bleeding as much."

Dong Yue's reminder brought it back to Dong Zhenghao, too.

Wasn't it exactly the same? Qin Kai had said that he'd been asleep when he was inexplicably slashed and started bleeding heavily.

Later, he'd died from excessive blood loss because the bleeding wouldn't stop.

The marks on Dong Zhenghao were cuts, too, but they weren't as deep as Qin Kai's. Maybe he'd caught them early.

Was he... about to follow in Qin Kai's footsteps?

"Could it be some kind of contagious disease?" Dong Zhenghao asked, trembling. "Why did it only spread to me? You were all there that day, too."

Liu Mumu replied casually, "Maybe it only spreads to men."

Dong Zhenghao was about to cry from frustration, but for the sake of his life, he still had to coax her gently. "That's not what Dad meant. I was just saying."

"Don't be so careless with your words next time."

"Dad promises he won't do it again. Is there any way to fix this?" he asked anxiously.

"There's one way, but I can't guarantee it'll work. You'll have to take a gamble."

That was way too unreliable!!!

"Can't you give me a way to solve this that's guaranteed to work?"

Liu Mumu spread her hands. "If I were that capable, I wouldn't be a fortune-teller. I'd be a mystic."

Mystics generally handled strange, supernatural things. She'd heard they were strong enough to race horses on their arms—much more formidable than fortune-tellers like her, who could be knocked flat with a single poke.

That was according to her master.

"Do you know any mystics?" Dong Zhenghao asked hopefully.

"No."

Dong Zhenghao finally resigned himself to his fate. He grabbed Liu Mumu's hand. "Your father's life is in your hands."

Liu Mumu pulled her hand away in disgust. "Do you want to hear the rest or not?"

"Yes, yes. Go on."

"Usually, the fastest way to solve this is to deal with the person behind it. If you can't find them, then you can only get as far away from them as possible."

"What do you mean?"

"It means you should leave right now. Take a plane or a high-speed train—whatever gets you out of the province fastest. The farther away you are, the less the curse will affect you."

Based on what Liu Mumu had read in the book earlier, that sorcerer had only been able to curse people across village boundaries. If he really had that much power, he wouldn't have been tracked down and beaten to death. These methods usually had their limits, and distance was probably one of them.

Perhaps whoever had cursed Dong Zhenghao could run rampant within the city, but once he left the province, even if the person worked himself to death, he probably wouldn't be able to make the curse succeed.

"All right. I'll leave now." At this point, he could only trust Liu Mumu. He didn't even pack his clothes; he just asked Jiang Li for her car keys and switched cars with her.

Not long afterward, two cars drove out of the villa community, one after the other.