Chapter 839 — Curing Illness and Inflicting It

Zhen Yingjun decided this was no place to linger, and he no longer harbored the slightest thought of avenging himself on Shen Yushu, for he sensed that this was beyond any power of his to resist! What was this? This was nothing short of a deity manifesting itself!

Otherwise, how was he to explain the bouncy ball from before? Now that he thought about it, those jump shots he had made were probably not his own doing at all but heaven's arrangement! How else could he have pulled them off? And when he recalled all the strange happenings at the pool table, balls that clearly had no strength left behind them yet behaved as though they had swallowed a stimulant—how was that to be explained?

At the time he had thought nothing of it, but now, the more he dwelled on it, the more terrified he became. He had been locked in struggle against the gods all along—what chance of victory could he possibly have had?

Look at things now: the old woman, a cripple, was completely fine, while he had been turned into a cripple instead... He did not dare imagine what might happen next. Scared out of his wits, he turned and fled, limping as he went! This place was too terrifying. Once he got home, he would hurry and summon a few "great immortals" to perform rites and drive the ill fortune out of his body!

He did not believe he had truly gone lame or that his mouth was truly crooked; he was certain some unknown thing had possessed him, and he was going to have the great immortals perform their rites!

"I know! I know! Little missy, you must be a fairy sent down from heaven! Only a fairy could possess such great divine power!" The old woman was no fool. Seeing her illness transferred in the blink of an eye to a wicked man, how could she not realize that Shen Yushu was behind it?

And what ordinary person could manage such a thing? It had to be the work of an immortal! So the old woman instinctively took Shen Yushu for a fairy maiden and made to bow to her in thanks.

Shen Yushu was startled—how could she let the old woman perform such a grand courtesy before her? She hurried to steady her and said, "Granny, please, you mustn't do that. It really isn't my doing..."

However thick-skinned Shen Yushu might be, she could not bring herself to play the fairy before the old granny.

But how could the old woman believe otherwise? She trusted only what she had seen with her own eyes. If not for Shen Yushu, how would that hooligan have gotten his punishment, and how would her illness have been cured?

Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu had no choice but to hurry away; otherwise the old woman would surely start kowtowing in a moment, and they could not bear such a thing!

Only once they had reached the car and gotten in did Gu Mengyao ask Wei Zhao, curious: "Wei Zhao, how did you do that?"

"Yes, yes, Arrow Brand Bro, how could the illness in the old granny's body be transferred like that?" Shen Yushu asked, equally puzzled.

"Heh..." Wei Zhao shrugged and started the car. "The old woman's ailment is nothing but the aftereffects of a stroke—put plainly, her meridians are blocked. Acupuncture could cure it. It's just that her family is poor and she has never been to a hospital."

Wei Zhao was not wrong. The old woman's illness was not truly an illness at all, merely the aftereffects of blocked meridians, and so acupuncture alone could cure it. But to cure it all at once, one had to combine it with Wei Zhao's energy transfer—though Wei Zhao did not mention this to Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu, because even if he had, they would not have understood.

"And Zhen Yingjun? How did he suddenly come down with the same illness as the old granny?" The young lady knew Wei Zhao was a formidable doctor; her own poison and General Wei Wu's wounds had all been healed by him. But curing illness was easy—inflicting it was hard. How had Wei Zhao manufactured the symptoms in Zhen Yingjun?

"Oh, same principle. I sealed several of his acupoints with acupuncture." Wei Zhao spoke simply. In truth, he had sealed them with energy, and that was what had produced the current state of affairs.

"So that's it!" Shen Yushu said, the truth dawning on her. "There's so much behind all this! Arrow Brand Bro, then what about the billiards earlier?"

"True qi," Wei Zhao said. This question was harder to explain, so he simply laid it at the feet of true qi.

"Oh..." Shen Yushu did know of true qi, though she did not understand it well; hearing Wei Zhao say this, she asked no further.

……………………

As for Zhen Yingjun, he did not dare linger. In a panic, he went to find his father, Zhen Dazhou.

When Zhen Dazhou saw the state his son was in, he was badly startled! Zhen Yingjun had been perfectly fine when he left the house that morning—how had he come home looking so wretched? What on earth had happened?

"Dad, what happened today was downright uncanny! I've never run into anything so uncanny in my life!" Zhen Yingjun held nothing back and recounted everything that had happened that day, from beginning to end, for his father. "Dad, tell me, how is any of that possible? It flies in the face of all reason. Do you think I ran into something unclean working mischief?"

"Hmm... that really is possible!" Zhen Dazhou made his living in the bloody trade of licking knives, and he was a rather superstitious man. Hearing Zhen Yingjun's account, he too found the whole affair bizarre; bouncy balls and the like made no sense at all! "You mean those two women might not be human? Might be goblins?"

"It's possible!" Zhen Yingjun nodded hurriedly. "Those two girls are so gorgeous—how could any ordinary person look like that? I've chased plenty of women in my day, but I've never seen anyone of that caliber. Thinking about it carefully now, there really is something fishy about them!"

Zhen Dazhou drew a deep breath, turned to Zou Tiandi, who had been silent all this while, and asked, "Brother Tiandi, what do you make of this?"

Zou Tiandi did not know the truth of the matter and had no idea just which great power Zhen Yingjun had managed to offend. His mind was on his own son, Zou Ruoguang, and whether the boy had been caught up in the disaster too, so he was somewhat distracted. "I'd say Brother Dazhou's guess is possible. Maybe he ran into something unclean?"

"Brother Tiandi, do you know any shamans or the like? Could you have one come perform a rite for Yingjun?" Zhen Dazhou did not dare delay; the sooner this matter was settled, the better. But it never even crossed his mind to take the boy to a hospital, for judging by Zhen Yingjun's account, this was plainly the work of evil influence—how could it possibly be illness?

Besides, illness did not cause a sudden crooked mouth and eye or a lame leg. Who had ever heard of such an acute ailment?

"I don't know any myself, but I can find one with a few inquiries. As long as one has money to spend, what shaman can't be hired?" Zou Tiandi was somewhat uneasy himself. This Zhen boy was a real troublemaker—his very first day in Songshan City, and he had already stirred up a huge disaster. In a moment he would have to call Ruoguang at once and tell him to keep his distance from Zhen Yingjun, lest he be dragged into it too.