“Please take a seat.” Chu Yunsheng pointed at the sofa opposite and said kindly.
At this moment, Old Youling was standing somewhere in the corner, hiding in the darkness. With just naked eyes, the old lady would not be able to see it.
“Mhm, mhm,” The old lady said repeatedly, trembling nervously.
“Grandma, don’t be so nervous, I just want to ask you a few questions.” Apart from facing aliens, Chu Yunsheng rarely had an attitude towards other people, so the way he asked was very natural.
“Great leader, please ask anything you want, I just don’t know what an old woman, who is about to leave this world, can possibly help you?” The old lady said cautiously. After all, she was in the fortune-telling business; a type of business that was not encouraged by the government, so psychological, she felt inferior to other people. Even police would make her tell everything she knew honestly, let alone the leader of the military she was currently facing now.
“Grandma, I am not a leader, so just call me Little Chu.”
All the people in the underground scientific research base were very respectful to Chu Yunsheng, so it was natural that this old lady would misunderstand it. Chu Yunsheng smiled and got straight to the point, “When we were at the west of Shanghai, I saw you were asking people some strange questions. Can you tell me what happened? I also heard that you were in the fortune-telling business. Is that true?”
The old lady has been fidgeting since the beginning. When she heard Chu Yunsheng mention this, she stood up and said in a panic: “I know that the government doesn’t allow anyone to engage in feudal superstitious activities. I promise the government that I will never do it anymore, really.”
Chu Yunsheng shook his head and said, “Grandma, you have misunderstood us. Firstly, I am not from the government or a leader, so don’t worry. Secondly, I am asking it honestly. I want to know what is going on. This is very important for me. Since you still have doubts, I can tell you frankly that actually I saw you write those words on the ground, and I also saw something you said personally!”
The old lady raised her head suddenly, and said with a trembling voice, “You saw it?” Then she shook her hands excitedly and said, “You saw the soldiers of the netherworld crossing the border!?”
Chu Yunsheng nodded calmly: “I saw it and heard you say this, but I don’t know what it means, so I need you to explain it to me.”
The old lady swallowed and stood there for a while, still could not believe what she had heard, and asked, “Did you really see it?”
Chu Yunsheng still nodded with a calm expression.
The old lady collapsed on the sofa suddenly, with tears in her eyes and cried: “Father, finally! Finally! Someone saw it.”
Her emotions seemed to erupt in an instant, sobbing constantly, and it took a long time for her to finally calm down.
Chu Yunsheng handed her some tissues that were already considered a precious resource, and asked, “Grandma, about what you said, did you learn that from your father?”
The old lady nodded, then shook her head, sighed, and finally said: “Young man, our family has been doing the business related to dead people for generations. Although after the cultural revolution, we are prohibited to do this kind of thing, fearing that the skills have been passed down in our family for generations would be lost, my father still taught me all the things that I need to know…
Then after the reform and opening up, the common people started to believe these things again. In order to earn some money, I started to do that business again, but I didn’t expect that it finally happened.”
She was very old. After she became emotionally excited for a while, she became a little exhausted. She rested for a while before continuing, “When my father was alive, he also said what he was doing was mostly deceiving our customers. Although he didn’t believe it, he still admired our ancestors who had passed down the knowledge to us. Until one day, he came back extremely terrified after completing a funeral for someone. My mother kept asking him what happened, but he never said a single word but kept burning the money for the dead people. At that time, the government was very strict about this kind of thing, so my mother urged him to burn all the superstitious material at home. However, not only did he refuse to burn anything, but he began to gather all the superstitious material he could find until he died. The night before he died, he laughed for a very long time and then kicked my mother out of his room. He then found me and told me something that I could only remember a part of it now.”
Chu Yunsheng frowned and said, “Did your father see it too?”
The old lady took a breath and looked at the door. After she seemed to have gathered enough courage she said, “He was very thin and weak at the time, and he kept saying nonsense that after he died, he would know a lot of things, it was a good thing. He also told me that soldiers of the netherworld will cross the border once in a thousand years! And the world would be in chaos and a lot of people would die, but he told me not to worry because it would still be three hundred years away and all I need to do was to remember this and then remind our children what would happen and ask them to be wary of, be wary of…”
Chu Yunsheng furrowed his brows even tighter. If it was three hundred years away, why did it appear now? So he asked, “Be wary of what?”
The old lady didn’t seem to want to say it. After hesitating for a long time, she sighed and said, “My father told me that if I tell other people about this it will bring a catastrophe to our family. So I need to be careful as to whom I should tell this to. Now that I am too old, I will not be able to live for long, and the soldiers of the netherworld have already passed through the border, and you were the only person who saw it, so if I don’t say it now, I probably will not have any chance to say it.
He was dying at that time, and the way he said it was both very confusing and fast. The only thing I could hear clearly was: several thousand years ago… The Dragon Chapters will mend the Heavens for three hundred years… At that time, ‘they’ will find a way to come back and stop the heavens from cracking… During this period, the Dragon Chapters must not be lost, otherwise, the catastrophe will be here very soon!”
Chu Yunsheng seemed to have heard the name The Dragon Chapters somewhere, but he couldn’t remember it at the moment. Moreover, what he heard made him even more confused, “What does mending Heavens for three hundred years have to do with those netherworld soldiers crossing the border?”
The old lady shook her head and said, “It has been a long time, and I can only remember this much. But it must be related. Otherwise, my father wouldn’t say it before he died.”
Chu Yunsheng nodded, and said, “Grandma, can you think of anything else?”
The old lady shook her head and said, “Not at the moment.”
Chu Yunsheng said again: “If you think of something again, you can come over and tell me at any time, in the scientific research base, you don’t have to worry about anything. I will let the government make arrangements for your family, so you don’t need to worry.”
After thanking him repeatedly, the old lady got up and left.
Chu Yunsheng watched her walk out of the room. Without turning around, he asked, “Old Youling, what do you think?”
The reason why he sent the old lady away was that he was eager to ask Old Youling’s opinion. At some levels, Old Youling was indeed a bit more knowledgeable than him. For example the knowledge about the spatial trap.
Old Youling floated from the corner to the sofa like a ghost, and said, “She could not discover me, which means that the first half of her words are true.”
“The first half is true, you mean the second half is false?”
Old Youling shook his head and said: “I didn’t mean that the second half was false. What I meant was that she had mystified the second half. In terms of what the truth really is, I am still checking. But boss, some of the things she said probably can still solve the question you asked earlier.”
Chu Yunsheng raised his head and said, “Which one?”
“The relationship between the Dragon Chapters and the soldiers of the netherworld crossing the border.”
“Oh, okay. You can explain it to me.”
Old Youling paused for a second and then said, “At first, I thought that the Soldiers of the netherworld crossing the border was because you had broken some forbidden rules or the sudden and abnormal mass deaths. Now it seems that it may be because of other reasons. If what she said is true, then the incident of the Soldier of the Netherlands crossing the border must not be a coincidence. Someone must be behind it, and their target is you!”
Chu Yunsheng thought for a second and asked, “What made you say that?”
Old Youling pointed to the ceiling, and said, “If you regard the great darkness as the cracked heavens, then it will be much easier to understand her words. According to what her father said, the chaos in the world would happen three hundred years later, and the Dragon Chapters can mend heavens for 300 years. So if there was nothing wrong with the Dragon Chapters, there would be no great darkness, and heavens would not crack, at least, it would not crack now.”
Chu Yunsheng’s eye suddenly revealed a cold gleam, “Now that heavens cracked, it means something must have happened to the Dragon Chapters!”
