Chapter 30: Too Much Talent Is Also a Sin

Chapter 30: Too Much Talent Is Also a Sin

Su Chunfeng knew that the old man who came with the middle-aged man selling talismans was definitely Gong Hu, also known as “Evil-Resistant,” who looked over sixty despite being only in his forties.

As for the middle-aged man peddling the talismans, Su Chunfeng had a vague memory of him as well.

He was probably Gong Hu’s least accomplished disciple, named Zheng Jianjun, if he remembered correctly.

Before 1997, Gong Hu had taken in three disciples. Two of them were honest and hardworking people. After the turn of the new century, thanks to Gong Hu, these two disciples gained some fame in the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts. However, Gong Hu’s other disciple, Zheng Jianjun, was lazy and gluttonous. He enjoyed tricking people and pretending to be a mystic. His skill in esoteric techniques was even worse, only reaching the first level of “Mind Awakening,” and he never improved beyond that.

But Gong Hu rarely disciplined this disciple.

Because Gong Hu, who had extremely bad luck, genuinely needed this lazy, slippery, deceitful, and shameless disciple to provide him with a sense of security and some financial income.

This was not surprising. In fact, for a long time after the revival of the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts, which had been dormant for over a century, began to sprout in the 1980s and 1990s, most people’s economic living conditions were not great. Even those who practiced the medical arts among the Five Arts of Metaphysics were not much better off, let alone the practitioners of the other four arts—mountain, destiny, divination, and appearance arts. This was an inevitable outcome under the broader historical circumstances and could not be reversed.

It was not until the late 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium that many previously impoverished individuals in the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts rapidly integrated into society and became wealthy. This was driven by the rapid socio-economic development, increasingly active and open mindsets, growing life pressures across all social strata, a surge in spiritual demands, a lack of faith, gradually deteriorating moral values, and increasingly fierce competition in all walks of life.

To be precise, it was only then that the mysterious circle of Qimen truly deserved to be called a Jianghu.

The reason was simple: only with the entanglements, struggles, and hatred over interests and fame could it be called a Jianghu. If practitioners with extraordinary skills lived in isolation without interacting, could that be called a Jianghu?

And the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts was more mysterious, cruel, and dangerous than any other kind of Jianghu!

This time, over a trivial matter, Zheng Jianjun informed his master. Gong Hu took it seriously and personally came to investigate. Of course, it was not because they had good after-sales service in selling talismans and folk sorcery and felt responsible for their clients.

Based on Su Chunfeng’s experience in the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts in his past life and his understanding of Qimen Mystics, he made a rough judgment about this matter. It was likely that Zheng Jianjun felt the situation where Old Lady Liu suddenly fell ill and became paralyzed was strange and serious. He suspected it was related to Esoteric Art of Qimen. Moreover, the person who cast the art had used such a heavy hand over such a minor issue, which clearly indicated a ruthless character. Knowing the mysterious and powerful nature of esoteric techniques, Zheng Jianjun feared that the ruthless mastermind behind the art would track him down and seek revenge, causing him to suffer an undeserved calamity. In his panic, he quickly reported it to his master.

After learning about the situation, Gong Hu also felt that if a mystic had indeed taken action, it was excessive. Therefore, he cautiously came to investigate.

And this investigation indeed revealed something unusual!

With this judgment, Su Chunfeng couldn’t help but secretly feel relieved that he had been careful enough to erase the traces of the art casting and talisman drawing on his family’s wall. It wouldn’t matter much if Gong Hu discovered that an art had been cast, but if Gong Hu found out that the talisman carved on the wall originated from “Esoteric Arts”…

Then there would be big trouble.

You see, among the vast world and countless people, inheritors of Esoteric Arts were extremely rare, and they all remained so mysterious and low-key that few knew about them.

Even Wang Qimin, an inheritor of Esoteric Arts, did not know any other inheritors of Esoteric Arts in this world.

Moreover, Esoteric Arts had always been regarded as “evil arts” and were ostracized and hostile by those in the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts who considered themselves the “orthodox” path of metaphysics.

So, once news spread that Esoteric Arts had appeared and harmed someone, even during this early stage of the revival of the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts, it would attract significant attention from many Qimen Mystics. Among them, there might be some extremists who would directly use esoteric techniques to coerce or even kidnap Su Chunfeng or his family to force them to reveal the identity and whereabouts of the user of Esoteric Arts.

But for now…

At most, Gong Hu and Wang Qimin could only suspect that there was a mystic secretly helping Su Chunfeng’s family, and that this mystic was ruthless. So, they might observe discreetly for a while. After some time, if they found nothing, they would consider whether, on the day of the incident, extreme weather had caused an extremely coincidental and severe backlash of vicious energy.

However, Su Chunfeng believed that they would definitely not use esoteric techniques to test whether there was a mystic behind the scenes.

Because it wasn’t worth it!

To put it bluntly, this was just a minor issue.

On the other hand, Wang Qimin’s desire to take on a disciple would become much more urgent because of this.

After all, for a Qimen Mystic, a disciple with such excellent innate talent was truly a rare find. Moreover, as Gong Hu speculated, Wang Qimin was genuinely worried that a mystic in the shadows had taken a liking to Su Chunfeng’s talent and intended to take him as a disciple, which was why they had secretly helped out.

If someone else got there first, wouldn’t Wang Qimin be heartbroken?

Thinking of this, Su Chunfeng couldn’t help but sigh narcissistically in his heart: “Such outstanding natural talent is as eye-catching as a firefly in the dark, and it’s really troublesome. But what can I do? I was born this way.”

During dinner, he asked casually: “Dad, Mom, I heard that Liu Jinming’s family invited a Great Master to perform an exorcism?”

“Don’t listen to the villagers’ nonsense. Actually, those two people came on their own.” Chen Xiulan smiled. “Hu Ling came to our house that night and told me, as if she was afraid our family would misunderstand.”

Su Cheng nodded and said: “Liu Jinming explained this to me too. Xiao Feng, Xiao Yu, don’t go around spreading rumors in the village like those gossipy people. Often, conflicts between neighbors happen because of rumors and hearsay that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.”

“Oh.” Su Chunfeng responded and lowered his head to eat his food.

Su Chunyu asked curiously: “Will the Great Master who went to their house use powerful arts to harm our family again?”

Smack!

Su Cheng tapped Xiao Yu’s head with his chopsticks and scolded: “What arts or no arts! Don’t talk like that outside from now on, understand?”

“Understood.” Su Chunyu quickly replied.

“Eat your meal!”

Under Su Cheng’s stern gaze, the dinner table fell silent.

Actually, although Su Cheng and Chen Xiulan appeared indifferent to such matters on the surface, they couldn’t help but wonder internally. It was hard to believe that the two charlatans who went to Liu Jinming’s house were not invited by Liu Jinming or his mother. And since they invited charlatans, combined with the previous ironclad evidence of the old lady spending money to learn folk sorcery to curse and harm Su Cheng’s family, how could people not suspect that they might be doing something bad in secret again?

However, Su Cheng and his wife Chen Xiulan simply did not believe in such feudal superstitions.

They also didn’t want such baseless matters to affect their relationship with their neighbors and add trouble to their increasingly happy life.

As Su Cheng put it: “Let’s live our own lives well. There’s no need to pick fights with unreasonable people.”

This was absolutely right.

During the busy farming season in May, Su Cheng had paid off the loan for the combine harvester and even had some surplus. After the busy autumn harvest and nearly a month of plowing, Su Cheng earned over thirty thousand yuan more. Now, their family’s economic condition was definitely among the top ten in the village.

Life was getting better and better.

Tuesday afternoon.

After gloomy weather had built up for two or three days, the first snow of winter finally began to fall thick and fast.

The schoolyard was soon covered with a thin layer of snow. However, the howling wind whipped up the accumulated snow and swirling snowflakes, wreaking havoc everywhere. The already white-blanketed schoolyard lacked the increasingly quiet, elegant, and scholastic atmosphere that usually accompanies snowfall.

The spacious classroom had only a single-barrel honeycomb coal heating stove, and the temperature was only slightly higher than outside.

Students bundled in thick cotton-padded clothes kept rubbing their hands and gently stamping their feet to keep warm. The rhythmic stamping echoed in the classroom. No matter how displeased the teacher on the podium was, they couldn’t say much. They could only raise their voices to make their lectures louder.

After school, students swarmed out of the freezing cold classroom.

In winter, the days were short and the nights long. Coupled with the overcast, snowy weather, it was almost completely dark by this time.

The third-year boys’ dormitory soon filled with students, noisy and chaotic. Quilts were crammed together on the long kang beds on both sides. In winter, because it was cold and got dark early after school, the number of boarding students doubled compared to spring, summer, and autumn. Among them, a small number of students chose to stay with relatives or good friends in Dongwangzhuang Village or Tunbingying Village.

The lights were turned on, but in such a large dormitory space, a single 45-watt light bulb was truly insufficient to illuminate the dormitory brightly.

The light was dim and gloomy.

Several classmates gathered around the only single-barrel honeycomb coal heating stove, warming themselves and chatting happily. Those who couldn’t bear the hunger and cold any longer had already taken their meal containers to the cafeteria to queue for food and returned. They either squatted on the floor next to the kang ledge or simply sat on the kang, eating their meals noisily and chatting happily.

Su Chunfeng and Li Zhichao returned with their meal containers, walked to the innermost passageway of the dormitory, squatted down, and ate their meal using the kang ledge.

The staple food was steamed buns and cornmeal porridge. The side dish was stir-fried shredded potatoes, which was almost the same year-round in the school cafeteria. Now that Su Chunfeng’s family was financially comfortable, his parents naturally couldn’t bear to let their growing child bring pickles and homemade sauce to school to make do.

While eating, Su Chunfeng heard messy footsteps and the light before him dimmed.

He and Li Zhichao couldn’t help but turn their heads and look up.

They saw Wang Liqiu, Xu Zhijun, and several others standing beside them. The classmate who had been squatting in the passageway eating by the kang ledge quickly got up, holding his meal container, and walked far away.

Wang Liqiu tilted his head, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, hands in his pockets, looking down at Su Chunfeng with a sideways glance, arrogant and disdainful. He said: “Su Chunfeng, eating well, huh… It’s snowy and cold today, we’re too lazy to go home. You, go get some food for us.”