Chapter 82 - 81: Not Completely Mad

Chapter 82: Chapter 81: Not Completely Mad

Gu Qingyin sat down, scrolling through her phone while she ate. Only then did she see the message from Huo Xingye. A thought struck her, and she looked up at the person across the table. "You’re coming with me?"

"Yeah," Huo Xingchen replied reluctantly. "My brother told me to."

Gu Qingyin scoffed. "You’re a grown man, yet you can’t think for yourself. He tells you to go, and you just go? How many minutes older is he, anyway?"

Huo Xingchen froze. "What’s that supposed to mean?"

Gu Qingyin said earnestly, "If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to."

Huo Xingchen stiffened his neck. "...I didn’t say I didn’t want to go."

"Oh." Gu Qingyin’s tone was flat yet dripping with sarcasm. "If you want to go, then stop using your brother as an excuse."

Huo Xingchen: ’...There’s no way she’s my mother!’

After they finished eating and cleaning up, the three of them and the monkey headed out.

"Where are we going?" Huo Xingchen only remembered to ask after he got in the car.

Gu Qingyin looked toward Liu Ergou.

Liu Ergou pulled out his phone. "Let me check where the entrance in Yun City is."

’Entrance?’ Huo Xingchen was a little confused. ’What entrance?’

Gu Qingyin, however, understood. She had been to the Mystic Association a few times before and knew a little about it.

"The place we’re going is called the Xuan Technique Association, or the Mystic Association for short. You can think of it as an official organization that manages Heavenly Masters. It’s responsible for their certification exams, assigning missions..." At this point, Gu Qingyin’s eyes glazed over for a second before she lamely added, "...and so on."

Huo Xingchen had been listening intently, and her trailing off nearly drove him mad. ’You just can’t remember the rest, can you!’

Gu Qingyin paid him no mind and continued, "The Mystic Association doesn’t exist on this plane of existence. It’s in a separate pocket dimension outside our world, but major cities have entrances and exits leading to it."

Huo Xingchen’s eyes lit up, and he uttered a single, heartfelt word: "Cool!"

Gu Qingyin glanced at him. ’Compared to his two older brothers, this kid really is a bit immature,’ she thought. ’And he has that cringey, dramatic flair, too.’

"Twenty years ago, the entrance to the Mystic Association in Yun City was in an old alley in the historic district. I don’t know if they’ve moved it since then."

"They moved it." Liu Ergou had a strange look on his face. "It’s at the City God Temple now."

Gu Qingyin froze, her mind reeling. "Which City God Temple?"

"The very one you’re thinking of."

Gu Qingyin’s eyes widened. "Isn’t that a tourist attraction? Have the people at the Mystic Association lost their minds?!" ’Making people vanish in broad daylight? Are they trying to make the place more popular?’

Just imagine: a tourist is admiring the view when suddenly, the person in front of them vanishes! They rub their eyes, and a group of strangers appears out of nowhere, maybe even flashing them a toothy grin.

’Oh my god,’ she thought. ’Seeing ghosts in broad daylight. How thrilling!’

"Well, they haven’t gone completely insane," Liu Ergou said. "The Mystic Association’s hours are staggered from the tourist area’s."

Gu Qingyin’s expression was blank. "What do you mean?"

"It means they only open at night."

After Liu Ergou spoke, the three of them in the car fell silent.

"It’s not even noon yet." Huo Xingchen’s expression was complicated. "Did we leave a little too early?"

Gu Qingyin sighed. "Well, since we’re already here, let’s go check out the City God Temple. I wonder how much it’s changed in twenty years."

There were changes, but not many.

The temple was still the same temple, but it had clearly been renovated and looked much more striking. Many new things had been added outside, like a wishing well, a lotus pond, a brush-washing pond...

Gu Qingyin followed the path with her eyes and suddenly realized something. "This is all just one pond, isn’t it? They just partitioned it into several sections... Tsk, tsk. They really know how to make a buck."

Huo Xingchen nodded in profound agreement.

Liu Ergou was speechless. ’When it comes to making money, who’s better at it than her son?’

Besides the attractions themselves, the biggest change was the sheer number of stalls. All sorts of food, drinks, and souvenirs nearly filled both sides of the walkway.

It was so over-the-top that even Huo Xingchen was shocked. "Is this still the City God Temple? It’s practically a shopping street!"

Gu Qingyin, however, took it all in stride. She wanted to buy a little of everything she saw, frequently asking, "What’s this?"

As an old man who had spent years as a hermit in the mountains, Liu Ergou had no idea what any of these things were. Whenever he was asked, he just looked completely baffled.

Gu Qingyin shoved him aside in disgust and started asking only Huo Xingchen.

At first, Huo Xingchen maintained his aloof act, giving her cold responses. But later, when he saw things that interested him, she didn’t even need to ask. He would start chattering away, sometimes for ten minutes straight without a pause.

Time flew by as they ate their way through the market.

During their stroll, Liu Ergou was mistaken for one of the temple’s Daoists and got pulled into countless photos. He tried to explain at first, but when one tourist offered him fifty yuan for a picture, he was swayed. After that, he started taking on plenty of "private commissions."

Gu Qingyin and Huo Xingchen sat in a nearby coffee shop, watching Liu Ergou take one "commission" after another. In one hour, he raked in a cool thousand yuan!

The scenic area closed at six in the evening. Well before then, a looped announcement began playing over the loudspeakers, and security guards started patrolling, reminding visitors to head for the exit and not to linger.

Everyone was heading out, but Gu Qingyin’s group of three went against the current, walking deeper inside. Whenever a security guard questioned them, they just said they were going back to find something and would be leaving immediately.

They continued until they reached the main hall of the City God Temple. That’s right—the attraction had been expanded. With the original temple as its center, a huge ring of commercial streets and recreational areas had been built around it. No commercial activities were permitted within the actual temple proper.

"Where’s the entrance?" Gu Qingyin was exhausted after walking around all day. All she wanted was to get this over with and go home to bed.

Mao Mao, draped limply over Gu Qingyin’s shoulder, let out a weak squeak.

Huo Xingchen glanced down at the monkey. "What’s wrong with him? He was just chattering nonstop for snacks a minute ago. Why’s he so sluggish now?" He frowned with concern. "Did he eat too much?"

Gu Qingyin rolled her eyes, annoyed. "He stole some rice wine from the sweet fermented rice ball stall. He’s drunk."

Huo Xingchen: ...

All afternoon, Mao Mao had taken advantage of his small size to steal quite a bit of food.

At first, Gu Qingyin worried he might get sick from eating things from the Mortal World. But she soon discovered the little guy’s stomach was a bottomless pit. No matter how much went in, he never seemed full, and his body showed no ill effects, so she eventually let him be.

And now, Mao Mao had grown even more brazen, insisting on tasting anything that caught his eye.

Gu Qingyin felt bad and could only trail behind him to pay for the stolen goods, but she was nowhere near fast enough to keep up with his thievery.

’If I’d known a sip of rice wine was all it took to shut him up, I would’ve bought him some myself!’

"We’re here." Liu Ergou compared what he saw to a picture on his phone, nodding repeatedly. "This is it."

Gu Qingyin looked up. It was a wall, on which was an abstract mural of the Dishonest Wealth God.

Why call it abstract? Because nothing normal should look like that.

’With its green face and sharp fangs, what kind of proper deity looks so terrifying?’

From his Daoist robes, Liu Ergou produced something that looked like a waist token. It was pitch-black with a rough, uneven surface, as if carved with some kind of pattern.

Huo Xingchen tried to get a look, but before he could see it clearly, Liu Ergou pressed the token against the wall.

A faint light flashed across the wall’s surface and vanished, so quickly it felt like an illusion.

"We can go in now."

Liu Ergou put the token away and smiled at Gu Qingyin and Huo Xingchen. "You two go first. I’ll enter last; I have to close it behind us."

Gu Qingyin was about to step forward when Huo Xingchen yanked her back. "Are you sure he’s not tricking us into walking into a wall?!"