Chapter 326: Taoist Taotie
It was July 1st on Saturday in the tenth week of the semester.
It was another peaceful morning…
Wang Ling found the class group chat especially lively that morning. Usually, no one would talk in the chat at all. For most of them, it was just for sharing documents. After all, Dopey Guo covered all the various topics of conversation during the morning self-study period.
And most importantly, when they had created the group, some idiot had added Teacher Pan, which made it very awkward.
Perhaps because there had been a lot more gossip than usual lately, the group chat had exploded that morning.
When Wang Ling opened the chat, he found that his number of unread messages had become 99+. Anyone could tell that this was probably because of new developments in the Shuigou Sect matter.
He scrolled through the messages and saw a string of them from Dopey Guo.
“Did you know? The person suspected of being a member of Shuigou Sect who was arrested yesterday has pleaded guilty… The news hasn’t been made public yet, I heard it from an uncle of mine.”
“What’s the use of pleading guilty? Aren’t all the missing students back?”
“But those students don’t remember what happened, right? According to that person, each one of them were fed a type of fruit.”
“Fed fruit? Why?”
“No one knows yet; furthermore, the man appears to be a peripheral member of the group and was given the specific task of capturing people. Once he caught someone, he would hand them over to senior officers inside. He doesn’t even know where Shuigou Sect’s headquarters is. And do you know, this person even said Shuigou Sect actually wasn’t called Shuigou Sect.”
“What do you mean?”
“The standard pronunciation should actually be Shuiguo(1). Who knows which non-standard Mandarin speaker got it wrong for everyone…”
Everyone: “…”
Wang Ling: “…”
Wang Ling scrolled through the rest of Dopey Guo’s news.
To summarize all the information, Shuigou Sect’s real name was actually Shuiguo Sect. The organization took advantage of students going home after school to seize good-looking ones in particular. They were shut inside a small dark room and given fruit to eat. After that, they were sent back unharmed… was there something wrong with this damn organization?
Piecing the whole thing together, Wang Ling just wanted to flip a table.
Although the students had returned safely, neither the police nor the school authorities would relax until Shuigou Sect’s true purpose was revealed. Parents would still continue to pick up their kids after school for a while yet. The worry was whether Shuigou Sect would try something funny under these circumstances.
Eyes fixed on the screen, Wang Ling was lost in deep thought. Although none of the students from No. 60 High School had been harmed in the Shuigou Sect incident this time, he had a strong feeling that the school wouldn’t be able to stay out of it.
He smiled bitterly in his heart at this thought.
His high school life was really “colorful”… It had only been a while since the start of school, and already so many disasters had happened!!
…
Meanwhile, the Lady was sitting in an easy chair on the top floor of the Jiashi office building in the heart of the city and watching the morning news. At the same time, she was silently admiring Taoist Taotie’s tactic; no one, including the Lady herself, had expected him to return the students safely.
Since the start of this affair, it was Taoist Taotie who had plotted all of Shuigou Sect’s moves. As his partner in this, Mo Immortal Castle had merely provided him with information that had already been investigated and compiled together. A lot of this intelligence had come from Song Qingshu when he had still been with Mo Immortal Castle back then. The Lady had been holding on to it all this time, and hadn’t expected that it would prove to be so useful.
She was only halfway through watching the morning news when an intimidating aura suddenly passed over her, making her shudder all over.
She was acutely aware that someone was here… furthermore, this person was an expert!
The aura was coming from the bottom of the building, and she had sensed the man as soon as he had stepped inside.
She had a petrified expression on her face and cold sweat rolled incessantly down her forehead. This aura was too frightening, as if this man had crossed over mountains of corpses and an ocean of blood, the killing intent rolling off his body. Furthermore, the aura wasn’t aimed in any specific direction; it was clear that this person had intentionally released it, brazenly sending out a warning to all the people in this building that he had come…
“Who are you, senior?”
The Lady got up quickly as she projected her voice, and it echoed in the air.
A few seconds later, the office’s main door was flung open with a bang by that aura full of killing intent.
Then, with sweat running copiously down her face, the Lady saw a man wearing a face mask, dark glasses and a black windcheater slowly walk in…
The Lady panicked when she saw the man, and hurriedly bowed. “Nice to meet you, Senior Taoist Taotie!”
The Lord had already long told her about Taoist Taotie’s appearance, and coupled with that terrifying aura just now, she had almost instantly guessed his identity.
The man in the black windcheater didn’t say anything, and only went over to where she had been sitting earlier and sat down himself.
After roughly ten seconds of silence, he started to speak…
“Heh, juniors nowadays are becoming more and more ignorant…”
The Lady broke out in a sweat. “Senior Taoist Taotie, please don’t be angry. Junior didn’t know senior would be paying a visit, otherwise I would definitely have received you personally.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
The man in the black windcheater waved his hand and pushed his dark glasses up to stare at her. “I just suddenly wanted to come and take a look this time, and didn’t tell you beforehand, so it’s not your fault. But as juniors in the cultivation circle, that bunch of yours downstairs is really undisciplined!”
The Lady was stunned. “Why does senior say that?”
The man squinted. “I wasn’t looking to stir up trouble, but when I got to the main entrance, that receptionist insisted on asking if I had an appointment, and for me to take off my sunglasses and face mask!”
The Lady: “…”
The man sighed. “And that isn’t the worst part!”
The Lady: “Please speak, senior. Junior will definitely correct their behavior…”
The man in the black jacket: “I only removed my mask halfway before your subordinates started puking!”
The Lady: “…”
Speaking up to this point, the man’s black jacket had already puffed up slightly. It was very obvious that he wasn’t happy. Looks had always been a taboo subject for Taoist Taotie. When the Lady heard what her underlings downstairs had done, she broke out in a cold sweat. “Senior is right to reprimand them, death was too good a fate for them…”
“I never said I killed them; I just knocked them out with my aura.”
The man said, “Heh, I was worried that if they continued puking, they might throw up their golden cores.”
The Lady: “…”
Speaking up to this point, the man in the black windcheater paused, and then raised his head to look at the Lady and laugh. “Did you think I would wilfully slaughter innocents, like my senior brother Gorgeous Itinerant?”
(1) Shuiguo’ (水果) means ‘fruit.’