novelcrest Chapter 460 The Right Arm is Useless, a Game Within a Game
Chapter 460 The Right Arm is Useless, a Game Within a Game
Chen, the accountant, strained to look up, the veins on the side of his neck throbbing faintly beneath the hairpin tip.
"At midnight on the fifth day of each month, red paper would drift down from the reeds beside the boat."
He frantically grabbed at the mud with both hands.
"I filled in the missing name and put it back in its original place, and the next day there were golden beans under my pillow."
Manager Hu lowered his wrist.
"Are golden beans beautiful flowers?"
Chen the accountant's lips trembled.
"I."
"Then go into the water and settle things with Zhou Ping and the others."
The moment the silver hairpin fell, a sword tip, stained with talisman ash and blood, slashed diagonally across.
The sword tip steadily supported Manager Hu's wrist.
Manager Hu turned to look at him.
The smoke from the fire made the corners of her eyes red, but no tears fell.
"You're stopping me?"
Mo Chengyue's sword tip pressed against the silver hairpin without swaying an inch.
His gaze fell on Chen's hands, which were hidden in his sleeves.
"Ask the questions first, then perform this play."
He sheathed the Rain Flower Sword and wiped the black water from the sword's spine onto the hem of his clothes.
"Live clues speak louder than bones."
Shopkeeper Hu pressed his fingertips against the edge of the small box.
It was gently touched inside the box.
She slowly put the silver hairpin back into her sleeve.
"You'd better ask for something valuable."
Mo Chengyue walked up to Chen the accountant.
He used the tip of his sword to lift a corner of a wet page, and his nostrils twitched.
"When the replacement pages arrived, did they smell of the old wooden box?"
Accountant Chen was stunned.
"have."
He nodded quickly.
"It has a faint, old-fashioned smell, with pine resin and the smell of paper that has been pressed in an old wooden box for a long time."
Mo Chengyue's eyelids drooped slightly.
He had been on duty in the library for many years and was very familiar with the rosin used to seal the scrolls and prevent insects.
The faint smell of the wet paper matched the scent of the sect's archives perfectly.
Someone checked the case file.
Someone sent him his background, fellow disciples, past events, and even details about those women, page by page, to Red Maple Ferry.
Seeing that he was silent, Chen the accountant immediately crawled forward half an inch.
"Master, I know the entrance to the underground ditch."
His throat was hoarse.
"I know where the red paper comes from, and I also know there's a stone eye inside, from which the replacement pages emerge."
Old Zheng gritted his teeth.
"You want to pick a clean road?"
Old Zhou patted Old Zheng's hand.
"Let him lead the way."
Manager Hu looked at Mo Chengyue.
"Can we believe it?"
Mo Chengyue said, "It can be used."
Shopkeeper Hu's eyes were even redder from the smoke.
"Then let's make him useful."
Accountant Chen nodded repeatedly.
A black mark appeared on his forehead from rubbing against the gray ground.
"It's useful, it's useful. The stone eye is at the third bend of the culvert, where the water sound is the most muffled."
The moment the words were spoken, the wet red register suddenly trembled.
The clattering of the pots and pans became chaotic.
Old Zhou flipped the old boat license plate over and pressed it down.
But from beneath that booklet, a living creature stirred; the cover bulged and then collapsed, and wet pages struggled to open from under the pot stick.
The red liquid squeezed out from the cracks in the paper, trickling into the dry soil.
Xiao Liu took a step back while holding the copper basin.
The rim of the basin hit his chest with a dull thud.
The fat shopkeeper opened his mouth, about to speak, but then met Mo Chengyue's gaze.
He immediately shut up and started banging on the pot.
The register broke free of the old ship's license plate, and more than a dozen wet pages bounced up one after another.
The red liquid splashed onto the gray ground, and the sound of the iron pot subsided.
Finally, it stopped on the last blank page.
There was nothing on the paper at first.
Soon, a drop of black liquid seeped from the center of the paper and slowly formed a stroke.
Mo Chengyue's right palm, which had been numb for a long time, suddenly burned.
The heat surged upwards along the blood plaster, and the cold crimson aura left by Yu Linhong was also stirred, flowing along the blood vessels towards the wrist bone.
He tightened his grip on the sword hilt with his left hand.
The Rain Flower Sword emitted a faint sound.
Manager Hu stared at the page, the color on his lips gradually fading from the smoke.
"What did you write?"
Xiao Liu looked down.
The next moment, the copper basin in his arms slipped from his hands.
bang.
The copper basin was smashed into dry ash.
Old Zhou stared at the line of black characters that were gradually taking shape, his throat bobbing a few times.
The row of iron pots made a brief pause.
He finally uttered those eight words.
"Mo Chengyue's right arm is crippled."
After Old Zhou finished reading that line, the wet red register next to the ashes of the pot was still seeping black water, and the edges of the pages were curled up with tiny red bubbles.
The fat shopkeeper's stick missed its mark, and the iron pot was knocked aside, the smoke from the ashes rolling around on the ground.
Shopkeeper Hu placed the white paper lantern onto the small box, his eyes reddened from the smoke, but he immediately launched into a tirade against Mo Chengyue.
"Mo Chengyue, your hand is crippled and you're still being stubborn?"
Mo Chengyue, with his right arm hanging down and his left hand gripping the Rain Flower Sword, turned his head to look at her upon hearing this.
"Manager Hu, could we at least agree on a standard way of swearing?"
Manager Hu tucked his sleeve under the small box, revealing the silver hairpin through his fingers with a cold glint.
"Unify what?"
"Don't take this too seriously, I'm still standing here."
"There's no use standing here. The roster is already filled in, and your right arm is useless."
Old Zheng stared at Mo Chengyue's lowered sleeve, and changed the direction of the pot stick in his palm.
"Master Mo, is what's written in that booklet true?"
Mo Chengyue looked at the last page of the roster; the few wet, black characters were still wet, and the watermarks at the end of the characters were dragging to the right.
"It's written for people on the water. Don't worry about whether it's true or not. Just let them believe it's true."
Xiao Liu squatted beside the dry ashes, holding the copper basin. The edge of the basin touched his knees, and he didn't dare to move any closer to the roster.
"Is it still watching us?"
"It is listening, and it is also filling in the gaps."
The fat shopkeeper swallowed hard, then slammed the wok stick against the iron pot, the sound erratic and disjointed.
"Who told you that?"
Mo Chengyue pointed the tip of his sword at the edge of the wet red register with his left hand, and the ash from the talisman was pushed into a gray line by the spine of the sword.
"Listen to your mouths, listen to the sounds in the water, listen to the blood in my sleeves."
Manager Hu immediately took over, his throat still hoarse from the smoke of the fire.
"Should I continue cursing?"
Mo Chengyue lowered his right sleeve even further, the hem of his robe covering the red lines on his palm.
"scold."
Shopkeeper Hu glanced at him, his fingertips tightening around the edge of the small box, and Ah Sui gently touched her inside.
She stopped what she was doing, looked up and shouted towards the shore.
"Everyone bang on the pot. Whoever stops is the one filling in the words in the water. Fatty Chang, don't be lazy. Your pot is more useful than your mouth."
The fat shopkeeper's face twitched, and he quickly banged out a series of rapid knocks.
"I'm banging on it. Manager Hu, you can curse Master Mo all you want, but don't drag me into it."
Manager Hu ignored him and stared at Mo Chengyue's sleeves that were hanging down.
"You're already like this and you're still setting up a sword formation? If your arm falls off, I'm not going to catch it for you."
Mo Chengyue smeared a pinch of talisman ash on the outside of his right sleeve. The ash was mixed with the blood seeping from his palm, and the red color was suppressed by the ash as soon as it appeared.
"Before it falls, I can still collect some interest."
Accountant Chen lay prone on the ashes, half his face covered in soot. Upon hearing the word "interest," he hunched his shoulders even lower.
"Master, the register can turn on you, don't touch it."
Old Zheng grabbed him by the back of his collar.
"So now you know to remind me?"
Accountant Chen's mouth was covered in mud, and his words were slurred and incoherent.
"When I used to mend pages, if anyone touched the wet ink, I would dream of paper cranes calling at the door the next day."
Xiao Liu didn't hold the copper basin properly, and the bottom of the basin slid off the dusty ground.
"Can the paper cranes even cry?"
The fat shopkeeper was quick to speak, and Old Zhou pointed a stick at him again.
"Smash your pot."
The fat shopkeeper swallowed his words, and the sound of the iron pot immediately followed.
Mo Chengyue moved his left hand from the sword hilt to the outside of his right wrist, and layers of talisman ash covered the damp stains on his cuffs.
The blood-stained patches were hidden under the clothing, leaving only a faint warmth seeping back through the skin and flesh along the meridians.
Manager Hu raised his voice even louder, as if he were putting on a show for the roster.
"Stop pressing it, the more you press it, the more it leaks. If it's ruined, it's ruined. Why pretend nothing's wrong?"
Mo Chengyue looked up.
"Manager Hu, you're getting quite adept at cursing like that."
"You told me to tell Ah Sui not to recognize the boat before, now it's your turn to not recognize the hand."
"If I were to repeat that, it would make me seem like I'm not very popular."
"You weren't exactly popular to begin with."
Old Zhou landed steadily on his wok stick and didn't even look up when he heard this.
"Master Mo, what's the next step?"
Mo Chengyue stared at the last page of the roster.
"Since it can write about my right arm, it means that the hand upstream hasn't retracted yet."
Old Zhou asked, "Can we follow it to find it?"
"You can try."
Accountant Chen immediately looked up, and dust fell from his forehead.
"Don't let it know you're looking for it."
Mo Chengyue looked at him.
"So shut up."
Accountant Chen pressed his face back against the ashes, wiping the mud off his lips.
Shopkeeper Hu asked in a low voice, "What do you want?"
"pot."
The fat shopkeeper immediately protected his iron pot.
"This pot won't do, it's the one my family uses for cooking."
Old Zhou kicked it over.
"Give it to me."
The fat shopkeeper handed over the pot, his face scrunched up in a frown.
"Be gentle, this pot has been with me for over ten years."
Manager Hu glanced at him.
"The accounts of human lives are laid out right there; why are you still thinking about the pot?"
The chubby shopkeeper muttered to himself.
"The account of human lives is one thing, but the pot didn't harm anyone."