Chapter 26: Shocking Revelations
Half an hour passed.
Qin Xiaoxia, Doudou, and Su Su sat in a barbecue restaurant.
Su Su seemed slightly ill at ease, while Qin Xiaoxia and Doudou were bewildered and suspicious.
When they had left the park, the two of them thought the person they had wronged had caught them red-handed.
Fortunately, there did not seem to be any other "ambushers" nearby.
They had just been about to apologize to ease the awkwardness when Su Su rushed up to them, spilling out a string of excited apologies.
Not only did she look sincere, there even seemed to be tears glistening in her eyes-a sparkle Qin Xiaoxia found rather unsettling.
Watching the girl bow and apologize over and over, Qin Xiaoxia and Doudou were both utterly confused.
They soon began to suspect that something had gone wrong with what Doudou had called "returning the crystal ball safely."
But the scene attracted plenty of attention, especially since the person apologizing was a pretty blonde girl who looked as though she had suffered a terrible injustice.
People all around shot Qin Xiaoxia extremely hostile looks.
Yes, every one of those looks was directed at Qin Xiaoxia. Doudou was a "little kid," so he obviously could not be at fault.
Qin Xiaoxia truly learned what it meant to feel eyes boring into his back.
He had never even had a girlfriend. When had he ever faced a situation like this?
Luckily, his reflexes were superb.
In a flash, sweat beading on his forehead, Qin Xiaoxia lunged forward and grabbed Su Su's hand.
"All right, all right, we've found Doudou now. It wasn't your fault, it wasn't your fault..."
Leaving the onlookers with a retreating view that invited all sorts of speculation, Qin Xiaoxia held Doudou with one hand and pulled Su Su along with the other, disappearing from the little plaza at the entrance as fast as he could.
The moment her hand was grabbed, Su Su instinctively tried to shake him off. But the magic within Qin Xiaoxia instantly coiled around her, leaving her body feeling half-paralyzed.
Bewildered, she was led away against her will, without even enough strength left to speak.
By the time she sat down in the barbecue restaurant, Su Su's excitement was mixed with relief.
She was excited that she had finally managed not to miss her chance.
And relieved that the person who had taken her away was not a human trafficker.
She was not being conceited. With her looks, being abducted certainly would not end well.
Perhaps it was not the usual time for barbecue, or perhaps business was simply bad here. Either way, theirs was the only occupied table in the restaurant.
The owner handled both serving and grilling himself. Who knew whether he could keep up once evening came?
After ordering and briefly introducing themselves, Qin Xiaoxia got straight to the point with Su Su.
"Miss, what happened today was our fault. Doudou took your crystal ball because he got carried away playing around. This barbecue is on me, so how about we call it even?"
There was no way Su Su would let them "call it even."
The state she had been in while he dragged her away only made her more certain that Qin Xiaoxia was no ordinary person.
"No!" she blurted out.
"Come on, miss! That's a little unreasonable. We've already apologized. Why do you have to give a little kid such a hard time?"
Qin Xiaoxia pushed the sour plum juice he had taken from the refrigerated cabinet toward Su Su, taking a sip of his own as he earnestly tried to reason with her.
"Exactly, exactly! Why do you have to give me a hard time?"
Doudou cradled his sour plum juice and drank, without forgetting to chime in.
"He's only a few years old. Can't you be a little understanding?"
Qin Xiaoxia continued.
"Exactly, exactly! I'm only seventy. Can't you be a little understanding?"
Qin Xiaoxia: "..."
Doudou: "..."
Smack! Qin Xiaoxia slapped a hand over his face.
Su Su, meanwhile, looked at Doudou with astonished delight. Then, as though suddenly realizing something, she glanced at the mingled black and silver strands of hair on Qin Xiaoxia's head.
Seeing her expression, Qin Xiaoxia nearly swallowed his straw.
Inside, he was furiously complaining: Lady, you didn't seriously just believe that, did you??
Having concluded that this pretty girl might suffer from delusions, Qin Xiaoxia suddenly felt that-
In his current circumstances, persuading her would be rather difficult.
"I saw purple flames burning inside the crystal ball!"
Qin Xiaoxia was racking his brain for a way to get rid of her when she suddenly sprang that remark on him.
His expression instantly turned serious, and even Doudou let his straw slip out of his mouth.
The two of them, one big and one small, instinctively exchanged a look.
She could see magic?
Ordinary delusions could not explain that.
Qin Xiaoxia had never believed in fortune-telling before, but now it seemed there really was something to it.
Their reaction made Su Su even more secretly delighted.
Moreover, when she had accepted the sour plum juice Qin Xiaoxia passed her, she had keenly noticed a scar on his palm.
It was a strange design, with a circle in the center surrounded by irregular little "points."
At first, she had thought it was a Hexagram, but after seizing a chance to steal another couple of glances, she immediately ruled that out.
If she had to describe it, it looked more like a doodle of the sun.
Su Su quietly committed it to memory, planning to research it thoroughly when she got home.
"Miss, I think your eyes might have been playing tricks on you."
After thinking for quite some time, Qin Xiaoxia could not come up with a single reason to tell this girl the truth, so he still decided to send her away.
Had Gou Junbao been there, he would surely have been exasperated with Qin Xiaoxia for squandering such a golden opportunity.
Su Su tightened her grip on her sour plum juice, relaxed it, then tightened and relaxed it again.
Her mind raced.
What do I do? What do I do? My rude behavior at noon must have put them off.
She desperately wanted to witness real supernatural power. She wanted to join them even more-ten thousand percent more-but how could she insist under these circumstances?
She had never believed her looks entitled her to special treatment, especially from beings she could only look up to.
Yet she still could not help thinking.
So looks really only work on ordinary mortals...
While Su Su fretted, the restaurant owner came over with a cigarette between his lips and a tray of freshly grilled skewers.
He set the food down and, seeing that there were no other customers, sat alone by the entrance, silently staring outside in a daze.
However helpless Qin Xiaoxia felt just then, Doudou continued happily drinking his sour plum juice and started on his first barbecue meal in this world.
The flavor did not disappoint him.
That prompted Doudou to take a few extra looks at the "cook."
"Huh!"
A moment later, Doudou quietly tugged Qin Xiaoxia's sleeve and spoke in a low voice.
"Big Cousin, that man. Look above his head."
Qin Xiaoxia and Su Su both turned to look.
All Su Su saw was the owner's shiny bald crown, ringed with hair and reflecting the daylight from outside. There was nothing unusual about it.
Qin Xiaoxia, however, frowned.
He had not paid attention when they entered.
Now that he focused, the magic within him stirred along with his attention.
Barely perceptible wisps of "ominous threads," carrying an icy chill, drifted above the restaurant owner's head.
They were easy to miss unless one looked closely.
"Big Cousin, I've seen this once before, in a gray spirit's home in Margeson. It means his soul is being corroded by a cold, sinister power."
Not only Qin Xiaoxia, but Su Su heard every word clearly.
She could not see it, but she could imagine it.
The sheer mystique of those words sent her heart racing again.
Qin Xiaoxia felt conflicted.
At heart, he hated trouble. The fewer complications, the better, and this man was a complete stranger.
But now that the problem was right in front of him, he felt that if he ignored it, the owner might never even realize what was happening.
"Sir, you look pretty distracted. Has something happened?"
After hesitating for a while, Qin Xiaoxia decided to ask about the situation first.
The owner had been lost in thought. Hearing a customer ask him a question, he realized he needed someone to talk to as well.
So he stubbed out his cigarette and sat at the table beside theirs.
"Ah, at this point, there's no reason to hide it. I'm not joking-my house is haunted!"
That single sentence left Qin Xiaoxia speechless.
He had just thought the owner knew nothing about it, only to be proven wrong at lightning speed.
It turned out that the owner's son, who had only started first grade that year, had suddenly developed soul-loss disorder some time ago.
They had visited plenty of major hospitals and sought out plenty of spirit mediums and so-called holy men.
The hospitals could find no explanation, while most of the mediums and charlatans insisted that he had "lost his soul."
More frightening still, the family had discovered something.
After his dazed, unresponsive state had persisted for a while-
His facial features had begun to gradually fade!
It was horrifying. His eye sockets were flattening, his nose was slowly sinking and shrinking, and his eyelashes and eyebrows fell out every day. Even the creases made by his expressions were diminishing, as though the skin of his face were being stretched taut...
The only exception was his mouth!
Despite his "soul-loss disorder," his appetite was still quite good.
When describing his son's appetite, the owner hesitated before adding something.
"Extremely good..."
Then he went back to smoking. He seemed to have more to say, but held himself back from elaborating on that point and moved on to other matters instead.
Such as the hardships of seeking treatment, and the strain of paying for it.
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