eurekapd Chapter 166 Business Genius
Chapter 166 Business Genius
"You old geezer! Don't tell me you saw some deity. The deity said it's hot in heaven and asked you to make a fan to cool off, right?" Wang Zhe directly blocked the old beggar's escape route.
"No!" The old beggar exclaimed, gesturing wildly. Even after forty years, the scene was still etched in his mind!
It was a dark night, and the whole village was awakened by a thunderclap. The old beggar put on a coat, opened the window, and peeked out, only to witness the most horrifying scene of his life.
"A crack has appeared in the sky!"
The old beggar's hoarse voice trembled uncontrollably: "God is bleeding! The blood has flowed into the clear stream, turning the whole river red!"
"Huh???" Wang Zhe felt he had already spouted enough nonsense, but he didn't expect this old geezer to spout even more nonsense than him!
"Divine blood?" Jiang Lin's pupils dilated in shock.
Ji Xingyi's eyes flickered slightly. He held Jiang Lin's hand, and soon after hearing the old beggar's words, the young man's palms were sweating. What is divine blood? Why is Jiang Lin reacting so strongly?
“I think this is a misconception of the ancients, maybe it’s a meteorite or something?” Zhou Jue didn’t take Jiang Lin’s words to heart and continued to think about the possibilities logically.
Zhou Jue asked the old beggar to recount the scene again, describing it in detail without any subjective bias.
After the strange celestial phenomenon appeared, the blood flowing into the clear stream gradually gathered and turned into a pool of blood.
The old mayor of Qingxi Town rallied the villagers to take turns keeping watch day and night. One of them, drunk, went on night watch and accidentally fell in. When they pulled him out the next day, they found he was nothing but skin and bones!
"That's divine retribution!" the old beggar muttered. "In ancient times, a governor offered his daughter to appease the Dragon King's wrath, and our Qingxi Town is following the example of our ancestors!"
The old town mayor at the time was a staunch believer in divine retribution. He listened to the advice of some evil cultist and devised a method of human sacrifice. He selected young girls of marriageable age from the town and threw them into a pool of blood, hoping to appease the wrath of the heavens.
"Now I know why people always say that bad people come from remote and impoverished areas!" Wang Zhe's anger flared up, and he kicked the old beggar several times. Seeing that the young man named A Zhao was still protecting him, he simply kicked both of them at once: "Imitating the sages, you really have the nerve to say that! Why don't you jump in there yourself? How can you be so shameless!"
Chi Xuan retorted, "Why has it always been women who have been sacrificed since ancient times! Can't you men do it too!"
Seeing that he had said enough, Zhou Jue reached out to stop Wang Zhe: "Continue!"
“The last sacrifice is Yingniang.” After the old beggar said this, Azhao, who was protecting him, turned ashen-faced.
"Jin Lushan's dead wife?" Wang Zhe exclaimed. "Didn't Song San Niang say she died of illness?"
The old beggar glanced at Azhao and sighed, "Originally, it was San Niang who was chosen, but Ying Niang couldn't bear to part with her younger sister, so she volunteered."
"I had long ago recognized Yingniang as my goddaughter. After Yingniang died, I looked at her skin and somehow became obsessed." The old beggar looked sad.
"Grandpa!" A-Zhao's eyes widened.
The old beggar looked at Azhao with shame: "I cut off Yingniang's skin and made it into a fan. I just missed her too much!"
He painted Yingniang's image on the human skin fan. Looking at the fan, the old beggar felt that Yingniang was right in front of him.
Later, the old beggar gave the fan he had made to Jin Lushan, hoping it could comfort his apprentice's grief over his deceased wife.
When the young Jin Lushan saw the fan made from Yingniang's human skin, he indeed forgot his grief over his deceased wife. But the old beggar saw his goddaughter, while Jin Lushan saw not his dead wife, but mountains of gold and silver.
Jin Lushan, with his quick wit, rushed to the capital overnight and exchanged the first beauty fan for an unbelievable gold.
The rest is history. In forty years, the impoverished Qingxi was transformed into a renowned ancient town for fan making.
Jin Lushan, the apprentice, unexpectedly became the wealthy mayor of Qingxi Town!
Greed is not enough to swallow an elephant.
The natural disaster eventually turned into a man-made disaster.
Who would have thought that it all started simply because of longing?
"The reason I'm so poor is because I'm not shameless enough!" Wang Zhe said with a look of disdain.
"I always thought it was the BOSS who ate people, but I never expected it was people eating people." Guo Xinwen sighed.
I've always known that the human heart is the most terrifying thing, but I never imagined it could repeatedly push the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
Chi Xuan frowned, noticing a suspicious point: "But why has the BOSS listened to Jin Lushan all these years?"
Zhou Jue: "Judging from this, the BOSS may not be very intelligent, and Jin Lushan is keeping her under his control."
"Our ancestors were truly audacious. How could they keep such a monstrous thing as a pet?" Wang Zhe really wanted to raise both of his big toes: "You'd raise a golden hen to lay golden eggs, but instead, he raised a pond to skin people. Tsk tsk, what a business genius!"
Chi Xuan: "Did your whole village help him keep it a secret?"
The old beggar said, "The older generation doesn't want to go back to a life of hardship. Jin Lushan has also put together a competition for 'Fan-Painting Beauties.' The younger generation only knows that the selected 'Fan-Painting Beauties' all meet a bad end, but they don't know what they actually do."
"So most of the people who died over the years were outsiders. Jin Lushan was very generous. Before participating in the competition, everyone signed a death contract. It was written clearly and signed in black and white. The amount of gold they would receive in exchange for their death meant that no one dared to cause trouble."
Some people even sent their daughters from afar after hearing about the competition. They knew perfectly well they were there to sell their daughters. Liu Zhi, who died in the second round, was one such example.
Money makes the world go round, and Jin Lushan is now the local tyrant of Qingxi.
Chi Xuan: "I really want to kill him."
Guo Xinwen nodded: "Me too."
This was the first NPC who made her feel even more terrified than the BOSS.
Jiang Lin suddenly interjected, asking the young man named A Zhao, "Wait, you're the fourth-generation successor. If Jin Lushan is considered the second generation, what's your relationship with him? You're not his grandson, are you?"
Reminded by Jiang Lin, Wang Bo's face instantly turned murderous.
"None of this has anything to do with A-Zhao!" The old beggar hurriedly kowtowed to the crowd, "It's all Jin Lushan's fault, it has nothing to do with him! He didn't know!"
"Looks like they really are grandfather and grandson." Jiang Lin scoffed. "He must have handled quite a few human skins, right? The fact that Jin Lushan taught him how to make fans shows that Jin Lushan has high hopes for him."
Wang Bo thought of Zhu Qingya, and anger surged within him. He kicked the old beggar aside, grabbed A Zhao by the collar, and said, "I'm going to kill him to avenge Qingya."
Ah Zhao's face was deathly pale; even if his bones were shattered, they would still be connected by tendons. A simple "it's unrelated" wouldn't absolve him of any responsibility, and seeking revenge against him was perfectly reasonable.