Chapter 9 – It’s Red Because You Pinched It
“Let’s be clear first.”
Chou Bodeng agreed with a smile, his brow raised like a long saber newly emerged from ice.
“If you hurt me, I’ll kick you off.”
“I won’t.”
The Oracle Master released Chou Bodeng’s wrist. Still kneeling on one knee, he straightened up slightly and, by the light of the lantern, reached up to part the silver Fu leaves above.
Chou Bodeng could only hear the sound of him brushing aside the branches and leaves; he couldn’t see his actions. But he could feel that his movements were very gentle and patient, even more so than the nanny who had taken care of him when he was very young.
Chou Bodeng touched his left wrist, his eyes lowered in thought.
The Liu family was not short of maidservants. Logically, Lord Liu would never have allowed the Little Martial Ancestor of Taiyi to be so wronged as to have to do his own hair. But Chou Bodeng hated direct physical contact with strangers. This morning, this very Oracle Master had merely touched his shoulder through his clothes, and he had reflexively slapped him away.
Just now, however, this person had held his wrist. Logically, he should have kicked him off the tree immediately.
But he hadn’t.
The other person’s fingers were very cool. The moment his wrist was held, it was as if a snowflake had landed on his skin, overlapping with so many past first snow days when he had pushed open the window and reached out to catch the first touch of winter.
That slight coldness was so familiar.
On a branch slightly below.
The three people squatting in a row like skewered rice balls all sucked in a sharp breath.
Wow!!!
Chou Bodeng couldn’t see the young Oracle Master’s face, but from their angle, they could see it clearly. The expression on the young Oracle Master’s face as he lowered his eyes to untangle Chou Bodeng’s hair was as if it were the only thing left in the world! He was so focused!
They were all cultivators and a former Oracle Master; their eyesight was excellent!
“My father has never looked at my mother with that kind of gaze,” Zuo Yuesheng said in a whisper.
“My father hasn’t either,” Lu Jing chimed in.
“I don’t have a father,” Ye Cang said, indicating he had no experience in this matter.
“I say—” Zuo Yuesheng nudged Ye Cang with his elbow, his voice as soft as a mosquito’s buzz. “Are you people from the City Divination Department always so… so… considerate to trespassers? You even help them untangle their hair when it gets caught?”
“In your dreams!” Ye Cang rolled his eyes. “Back when I was an Oracle Master, if I didn’t chop their heads off directly, it would be considered merciful!”
“I know this one, I know this one!” Lu Jing patted the other two excitedly. “This is called…”
“It’s called being blinded by beauty!”
Lu Shiyilang was very experienced in this area and instantly regained his spirited confidence.
“If a girl as beautiful as that Chou fellow came to my house to steal something, forget about helping her untangle her hair! If she wanted my father’s pill furnace, I’d steal it for her!”
Zuo Yuesheng thought about the “Nine Dragons Cauldron” of the Medicine Valley Master, which was said to be worth half of Medicine Valley’s assets. He was silent for a moment, then patted Lu Jing’s shoulder with a touch of sourness. “Your father’s love for you is truly as vast as a mountain!”
If he dared to steal his old man’s treasures, his old man would break all three of his legs!
“Wait a minute,” Ye Cang noticed something was wrong. “Didn’t you say this guy’s only close family was his mother?”
In the evening, in order to trick Ye Cang into leading the way to find the Yin-Yang Pendant, Zuo Yuesheng had painted Lu Jing as a pitiful cabbage in the fields, “unloved by his father, ostracized by his brothers, and raised by his mother alone from a young age.”
Where did this “father’s love as vast as a mountain” come from?
“Ahaha, this, this…” Zuo Yuesheng laughed dryly. “We’ll talk about it later! We’ll talk about it later!”
“Fatty! You lied to me!” Ye Cang was furious and rolled up his sleeves to beat him up.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Zuo Yuesheng, Lu Jing, and Ye Cang, one after another, were hit hard on the forehead by the Taiyi Sword, which had flown down with a swoosh.
“Ouch!”
Clutching their foreheads, the three looked up to see Chou Bodeng looking at them with a smile that wasn’t a smile.
At first, only a single strand of his hair had been caught on a branch. But then, Young Master Chou, that “genius,” had fiddled with it, and even the narrow scarlet ribbon used to tie his hair had gotten tangled. After the Oracle Master removed the loosely tied ribbon, he patiently untangled the knotted hair, strand by strand. From beginning to end, he meticulously adhered to his promise, never once hurting Chou Bodeng.
Just as the last strand of hair was freed, Chou Bodeng was about to jump down from the tree to personally give each of the three idiots a kick.
Those morons, they only remembered that cultivators had good eyesight, but forgot that they also had good hearing. Chou Bodeng wasn’t deaf; of course, he had heard all their muttering.
Just as he was about to move, a hand pressed down on his shoulder.
“Wait,” the Oracle Master said. “It will come loose.”
Chou Bodeng thought about the “masterpiece” he had spent half a day creating, which was now reflected in a bronze mirror. He thought to himself, it probably doesn’t matter if it’s loose or not. He reckoned it would look better loose than how he had tied it.
However, the other person was clearly a perfectionist who wanted everything to be just right. After handing him the scarlet ribbon for tying his hair, he used his fingers as a comb and began to tie his hair for him.
Chou Bodeng had no choice but to silently mouth a threat to the three morons below, word by word.
“You. Are. All. Dead.”
Instantly, the three of them straightened up and sat primly.
Zuo Yuesheng had a long-standing fear of Chou Bodeng. Lu Jing had seen Chou Bodeng turn hostile in an instant during the day and was left with a deep psychological scar. Ye Cang, seeing the two of them acting so proper, subconsciously became serious as well.
But his shoulders were shaking, clearly holding back laughter.
Chou Bodeng regretted throwing the sword and scabbard together, otherwise he could have hit each of them again.
However, once they were all squatting properly, Chou Bodeng realized that their previous fooling around wasn’t entirely useless—at least it had served as a distraction.
Without the three idiots muttering, the Oracle Master’s movements suddenly became much more distinct. His fingers were very cool, and when they brushed against his scalp, the cold touch of his fingertips was particularly clear. Although he didn’t know why, it didn’t make Chou Bodeng feel disgusted, but it was strangely uncomfortable, and he subconsciously wanted to turn his head away.
The moment he turned his head, he was stopped.
The Oracle Master’s sleeve brushed against his face, and Chou Bodeng smelled a faint, clean scent of medicine.
It reminded him of the unknown concoctions he had drunk as a child.
When Chou Bodeng was ten, he had a period of inexplicably high fevers. Famous doctors from all over the world were summoned, but he still burned with a fever that left him in a daze. At that time, Chou Bodeng thought that heaven was finally not blind and was preparing to rid the world of him, this scourge.
Just as he was preparing to handle his own funeral arrangements, the old men of his family somehow found a strange and ancient Chinese medicine prescription and watched over him 24/7, making sure he drank his medicine on time.
Perhaps it was true that a scourge lives for a thousand years. A month later, he was able to go out and cause trouble again.
Fever was probably one of Young Master Chou’s most hated things in life, if not the most.
When the fever was at its worst, he was completely dazed, his consciousness drifting in and out of darkness like a lost soul. He could feel people coming and going around him, but he couldn’t open his eyes at all. His only memory was the smell of unknown herbs boiling in water.
In his daze, the Oracle Master took the narrow, long scarlet ribbon from Chou Bodeng’s hand.
His hands had well-defined knuckles, long and strong. Using his fingers as a comb, he tied Chou Bodeng’s hair. If one looked closely, one could detect a hint of unfamiliarity in his movements, as if he had never tied someone else’s hair before. Despite this, he still tied it neatly, something Chou Bodeng himself could never achieve even if he spent another ten thousand years fussing with a comb in front of a mirror.
The scarlet ribbon, serving as a hair tie, weaved through the Oracle Master’s pale fingers, winding around Chou Bodeng’s hair.
After tying the long black hair into a bun, he didn’t stop there. He took out a hairpin made of some unknown wood from his sleeve and inserted it through Chou Bodeng’s hair.
“It won’t come loose now.”
The Oracle Master withdrew his hand, took the lantern he had placed on a nearby branch, and looked down at Chou Bodeng with lowered eyes.
“What are you all doing here?”
There was a barely perceptible pause after the word “you,” but he quickly covered it up.
Chou Bodeng was about to answer when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye.
The three who had been sitting primly stood up, each holding a piece of white cloth, and began to wave it frantically at him. Seeing that he had finally noticed, they quickly spread the cloth flat and stretched their arms as far as they could to get it in Chou Bodeng’s line of sight. On each cloth was a large, flamboyant character written with snake fangs dipped in snake blood.
Together, they read:
Save! Our! Lives!
Seeing that Chou Bodeng had noticed, they flipped the cloths over. There was writing on the back as well.
Say! Nice! Things!
Chou Bodeng was speechless.
Without a doubt, this was the rotten idea of that fatty, Zuo Yuesheng.
Sensing Chou Bodeng’s subtle silence, the Oracle Master finally turned his gaze to the other three people below.
The moment he turned, Zuo Yuesheng and the others instantly wrapped up their cloths, stuffed them into their sleeves, and stood up straighter and more solemn than ever before.
The Oracle Master probably also felt that the three below were not worth his attention, and he quickly shifted his gaze back.
Looking at the three idiots who were frantically waving and making gestures, Young Master Chou, who in both his lifetimes had no idea what “nice things” were, thought for a moment and then placed his left hand in front of the Oracle Master.
Meeting those quiet, silver-gray eyes, Chou Bodeng slid the Kui Dragon Bracelet on his wrist down, revealing a faint red mark on his fair skin.
“It’s red. You pinched it.”
He was shamelessly and righteously taking advantage of the situation.
“I want compensation.”