Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
In the staff apartment, Odd Zhuo stared at the open box on the table somewhat dazedly.
At this very moment, he thought he could fully understand the sentiments of those who gave bribes, since he was now feeling the same thing.
The box on the desk was made of kun wood, which was highly impervious to dust, water and shock. The Zhuo family heirlooms, a few hundred years older than Odd Zhuo and passed down from generation to generation, had now come into his hands.
The family heirlooms comprised five objects: a Jinghua city land deed, a bank card with a huge amount of money on it, a USB drive, a hard drive and a phone card.
The Jinghua city land deed was for the Zhuo family ancestral land and in accordance with family regulations, the land title could not be sold no matter what. Legally, this was Odd Zhuo’s property, but given the government’s anti-corruption campaign these two years and in order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings as well as potential conspiracies to frame him, he had not gone back there during that time and had behaved himself and lived in the staff apartment. He hadn’t even dared write down his name as the owner of the black supercar which his family had handed down to him.
The Zhuo family ancestors were pretty mysterious; they had started out as fairly mediocre people, but had suddenly become rich when they had hit a particular generation.
Odd Zhuo discovered that there were no longer any historical records to be found among their ancestral documents that were related to the Zhuo family’s sudden wealth.
He had only heard that one particular day, some great-great-great-great-great grandfather had dreamt that he was on Mars, and had seen nine dragons pulling a coffin behind them 1 . The man had dazedly remembered a string of numbers that were on the coffin, and when he had woken up, he had gone to buy a lottery ticket. In the end, he had struck an unprecedented mother lode. However, after generations of squandering, what remained to Odd Zhuo now wasn’t much, though it was still enough for him to enjoy his ordinary life.
Honestly speaking, the first two of the heirlooms made complete sense to him. It was the next two items that had kept him in a state of shock for three days and three nights after he had received them.
First, the suspicious USB drive.
When Odd Zhuo had opened the USB drive, he had found only one TXT file inside. The document listed thousands of permanent VIP accounts and passwords, including a VIP old reader account for the Cultivation Reading Network.
In this dazzling line-up of accounts, the most valuable were five QQ numbers that had been passed down from the Zhuo family ancestors.
As for the hard drive… it had a one yottabyte capacity and the laser label “Foreign language learning” 2 on it. In the hard drive, there were… data files… of various customs and practices from different times and places from all over the world.
The phone card was the last heirloom and the one thing that Odd Zhuo felt to be the most useful.
On the other end of the phone card was the guardian of the treasure box, a man whom had been given the assignment by the Great Ancestor of the Zhuo family. Apart from looking after the family’s teachings, he was also duty-bound to help each successor to the treasure box if they asked for his assistance in resolving a crisis, provided it was within the scope of his capabilities, and he was only obliged to do so three times.
The guardian had no name. Previous successors had liked to call him Ambassador Protector, but after hearing it so often it felt like they were calling him “Big Shit,” 3 which was very embarrassing. Hence, Old Father Zhuo gave the guardian an inventive nickname during his generation — Magic Little Black! After that, Odd Zhuo also simply called him Uncle Black.
Previously, he had mobilized Uncle Black’s strength to investigate Wang Ling’s true identity when the latter had just been a shota six years ago.
This time, he had mobilized Uncle Black once again to investigate Wang Ling’s family background so that he could apologize to the boy. After learning that Father Wang was actually online guru Wang Situ, it was as if Odd Zhuo had discovered a new continent, and he marveled that he had found an indirect way to curry favor with Wang Ling!
He felt that he had completely disgraced his little shifu in yesterday’s spirit sword performance. Moreover, he was well aware that Wang Ling would definitely reject any blatant bribes; after all, this youth with mystical strength had done whatever he could to evade him all these years. Therefore, after extensive consideration, Odd Zhuo had felt that getting Uncle Black to use the VIP old reader account to directly give Father Wang a gift would probably be the most roundabout and tactful way… this one hundred million cultivation reading coins was thus just an apology fee.
Given Lord Master’s prowess, how could a mere one hundred million cultivation reading coins be enough for becoming Odd Zhuo’s teacher!
Also, since it was Uncle Black who had made the transaction, Odd Zhuo didn’t need to worry at all about the government’s anti-corruption inspection group investigating him — after all, a million yuan was not a small sum.
Staring at the treasure box in front of him, he smiled from ear to ear as he thought himself really too f**king clever!
His wristwatch phone rang as he was indulging in his flight of fancy and he immediately knew that it had to be Uncle Black.
As per convention, this was the confirmation call after the request had been fulfilled. If the mission objective hadn’t been satisfactorily achieved, Uncle Black would mobilize again until the task was completed.
“Hello, Uncle Black?”
On the other end of the line, the man sighed, his tone low and magnetic. “Mm… did… did it go smoothly?”
“Uncle Black, you’re too powerful! You could even find something like this!” Odd Zhuo exclaimed admiringly. For some reason though, he felt that Uncle Black’s voice seemed more hurried and tense than usual.
Uncle Black was silent for a second, then said, “You should know that the reason your ancestors left this phone card for you definitely wasn’t for this type of use… it was to give you a lifeline if you find yourself in danger. But you… you actually squandered two chances, just to investigate the identity of the same person…”
At this point, Odd Zhuo could clearly feel that something was off in Uncle Black’s tone, and he wondered if the other man was angry.
He knew that when Uncle Black had investigated Wang Ling back then, he had encountered extremely strong resistance… this was pointedly apparent when he had instantly and utterly forgot everything about the investigation.
For a while this had made Uncle Black think that he had a memory disorder. It had later forced him to start taking notes during his investigation as well as get into the habit of recording things.
“No matter what type of relationship you have with this person, I hope you’ll keep your distance. The best would be if you no longer approach him! Otherwise, I have a hunch that in my third mission, it’s very likely I’ll be collecting your corpse for you, understand?” As Uncle Black spoke, somehow his voice seemed to be trembling.
Odd Zhuo couldn’t help the way his eyebrows jumped. “…Uncle Black, aren’t you exaggerating?” ( F**k! Shifu is really powerful! Even Uncle Black is afraid of him! Sure enough, he’s not someone to be trifled with! )
“No, not at all!” Uncle Black enunciated each word, emphasizing how serious he was. “No one in the Zhuo family has ever been able to embark on a political career. In this game of thrones, when the storm comes, it’ll be far more dangerous than you think…”
“Very well, Uncle Black, I understand!” ( But! A new storm has already emerged, how can I remain stagnant 4 … )
“I hope you’ll think my words over. From this point on, I will no longer investigate anything to do with this family for you…”
After Uncle Black finished speaking, the call was directly cut off.
…
At that moment in a mysterious laboratory on the border of Huaxiu nation, a mysterious man dressed in black skintight clothes ended the call with shaking hands.
Also at that moment, Wang Ling, who had been standing behind the mysterious man, withdrew his pulsating spirit bomb 5 .
