After this case, I felt the difficulty of being a parent one more time. I couldn’t help but think about Yin Xinyue’s parents. They hadn’t gotten rid of the shadow of the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon yet.

When we left the He family, He Kui offered me five thousand renminbi. I didn’t receive it. I didn’t lack money, and his family was really poor.

I decided to make it an act of kindness!

Although Li Mazi didn’t mind helping people, we hadn’t earned much this time. Around two or three days after we returned home, he encouraged me to go out and see if we could find any new cases.

“You can find otherworldly items only by chance, and never if you look for them actively. What the heck are you rushing for?”

I was pissed off, but Li Mazi didn’t listen to me. As he was enthusiastic about searching for otherworldly items, I didn’t want to care about him anymore.

During the next two or three months, Li Mazi got a few cases. I couldn’t persuade him, so I had to follow him. They were just minor cases or some ghost-haunting cases. We didn’t earn much from those cases but exhausted ourselves instead. Li Mazi finally accepted his fate. He didn’t urge me to go out to seek business cases anymore. I finally had peace for myself. I spent time practicing drawing spiritual talismans, spells, and mantras.

A few days ago, Chuyi called me. He told me he had left Dragon King Village, so I shouldn’t worry about him anymore. And, he told me that we might meet the people from Longquan Villa at the trade conference. I should practice my skills to prepare beforehand. He didn’t mention my parents’ incident, so I had to keep it at the bottom of my heart and prepare myself as he had instructed.

However, the old saying was always right. You don’t seek trouble, but trouble comes to your door.

Li Mazi had stayed still for a few days, and someone had come to our door. Moreover, this time, our client had a special profession. He was an old man that sold tofu. He asked us to call him Chen Tofu.

That afternoon, I was wiping a kiln vase that dated back to the Ming Dynasty, when uncle Chen came in with his pole and baskets. I thought he had come in to invite me to buy his tofu, so I decided to ask him about it. Unexpectedly, he put down his heavy baskets and asked me curtly, “Little brother, is Immortal Zhang in the shop?”

I was speechless. I thought to myself, Who the heck is spreading the word that I’m an immortal?

Moreover, I couldn’t stand it when an old man in his fifties or sixties called me “little brother.”

“Uncle, I am Zhang Jiulin. What do you need?”

Uncle Chen shot me a surprised glance. Perhaps it was because I looked so young. He then started to tell me his story.

Uncle Chen’s real name was Chen Jiefang. Since he had sold tofu for almost his whole life, people called him Chen Tofu. The name then became his alias. He had come to me because he thought that something foul was pestering him.

However, when he said that, he didn’t look scared at all. I became curious. “Uncle, could you tell me more about it?”

“It’s not that scary, but every time I pass by a village to sell tofu, all the dogs in the village bark at me non-stop! At first, the people there thought it was fun. But after a while, they recognized that every time I walked by the village, all the dogs would bark crazily. Moreover, they don’t bark normally. They cry and howl. The people there said that I have something foul with me. They even said that I’m evil and don’t want me to come or walk by the village anymore…”

Uncle Chen sighed and said, “I’m old already, so I’m not afraid of foul things. I don’t need to go to that village to sell tofu, either. But I don’t feel comfortable living like this, and I want to get to the bottom of the problem. I learned about you while talking with a friend. That’s why I’ve come here to ask for your help.”

“Have you ever kept a dog? What happened when you passed by other villages?” I thought it was an interesting case.

If only the dogs in that village barked at him, it could be a problem within that village.

Uncle Chen shook his head. “I have never kept a dog. I like the quietness, and I can’t stand dog barking. Nothing strange happens when I go to sell tofu in the other villages. Only the dogs in Xiaoliu Village act strangely.”

“If it is as you say, you’re not the problem…” I comforted Uncle Chen. Then, I closed my shop to go to his house to take a look.

Uncle Chen lived in a small courtyard. I saw a large stack of dried grass and a donkey.

“If it’s a rainy day, I use this donkey to pull my tofu cart.”

I nodded and carefully observed his yard. There was nothing strange about it. And, with the presence of the donkey, his courtyard looked even livelier. His house had three rooms: his bedroom, his kitchen, and the room where he made tofu. It had a small electric mill and a few bags of soybeans.

After checking the whole place, I told him, “Uncle, there’s no problem in your house.”

He wasn’t convinced, so I had to take out the compass and check his house one more time. The compass didn’t show any strange reaction.

In the end, to assure his mind, I went to his neighbor and borrowed a dog. At first, the dog barked a bit because it was in an unfamiliar house. However, after a while, it calmed down. It meant that Uncle Chen’s house didn’t have a problem.

“What happened to me, then?” asked Uncle Chen.

After I had proven that his house was okay, Uncle Chen was still skeptical. Old people didn’t like trouble, and if he couldn’t solve the problem, he would never sleep well.

I didn’t have anything important to do these days, so I asked him to take me to Xiaoliu Village to take a look.

Uncle Chen was happy. He immediately prepared his donkey-drawn cart and put his pot of tofu on it. I got on the donkey cart and observed the scene at twilight. I felt that I had just time-traveled to ancient times. It felt good.

After half an hour, Uncle Chen turned and said, “Immortal Zhang, sir. Look, that’s Xiaoliu Village. Please listen if the dogs are barking.”

I nodded and pricked my ears up to listen. At the same time, I craned my neck to see.

The said village was still far away from us. The outermost house was around five or six hundred meters away. That was why I thought Uncle Chen was paranoid. It was too far; how could the dogs see him now?

Unexpectedly, after we moved dozens of meters more, we heard the dogs in the village barking!

Usually, one or two dogs would bark first. Then, the other dogs would follow as though they had received the signal. But this time, it sounded like all the dogs in Xiaoliu Village had started barking at the same time!