A Good-for-Nothing

234. Having an Idea (II)

Translator: Dragon Rider

Near the doorway, Zhao Fei was standing beside the French windows, enjoying the view outside with his head down.

“This magic barrier befits the headquarters perfectly. At this level of intensity, it could even simulate the climate outside. The one we’ve got in Hang City stands no comparison with it.”

With a bland face, Li Zong replied directly, “We offered to transfer you back here several times. You could enjoy this scenery every day if you want.”

Zhao Fei gave a watery smile. “I’m going to pass on that. There are twice as many paparazzi in Coastal City as there are in Hang City. If I work in this place, I’ll have to kiss my peaceful life goodbye.”

Li Zong flicked a glance at Zhao Fei, but instead of debunking his excuse, he said, “I’ll be in Shen City with He Zheng during the next few days. I want you to give more attention to the matters in this place. Zhang Jingqiu’s approaches to things are rough. Xiang Hailou is more poised, but he might not be able to take everything into consideration.”

Zhao Fei gave a snort, gracefully rubbing his fingers. “So I signed up to come here and run errands for you for free.”

“You may do whatever you want. Nobody’s going to try to stop you.” Li Zong pivoted around and left after saying this.

“Zhao Fei, nobody can keep running away from anything forever. You’re lost, but Hang City is just a small pond and it cannot trap you.”

Li Zong’s voice was not loud and it was getting lower as he progressed forward, but a cultivator’s five senses were different from those of a common person, so Zhao Fei could hear Li Zong as long as he actually talked, even if the movement of his lips were very slight.

Zhao Fei heard him, so he kept silent, neither admitting nor denying anything.

That very afternoon, word got out that Li Zong was going on a business trip to deal with the matter of the Zhu family, and Zhao Fei would be the acting vice-superintendent and stay in Li Zong’s office for two days.

Anybody else would have disagreed with this. Even Xiang Hailou would be against it, not to mention Zhang Jingqiu. However, Zhao Fei used to work in the headquarters. If he hadn’t insisted on being transferred from the headquarters in Coastal City to the sub-bureau in Hang City, he would have become the leader of the second or the third action group by now.

Lin Di and the others were all well acquainted with Zhao Fei.

As a result, although Zhang Jingqiu was disgruntled, he didn’t say anything. Now that Li Zong had put it that way, he’d better keep his promise. If Li Zong couldn’t, he would make Li Zong pay the price.

During the next couple of days, nobody raised any objections to Zhao Fei deputizing for Li Zong.

Since Zhao Fei had come to Coastal City, Li Zong started making preparations for his business trip to the Zhu family.

Before his departure, Li Zong had to talk with Li Tiangang to make some arrangements.

Li Zong didn’t tell He Zheng about this matter.

It was public knowledge that Li Zong had lost his parents at a very young age and had been brought up by Li Tiangang, his grandfather who used to be a general. But Li Tiangang’s greatest achievement had nothing to do with exorcism. It had been made during his military career. He had earned his glory by making it out of mountains of bodies on the battlefield, and the price for the stars on his epaulettes had been numerous wounds on his body and his countless brushes with death.

If it weren’t for a coincidence, maybe there would have been very few people who knew that Old General Li from a military family was also capable of exorcism.

When Li Tiangang had been young, he used to perform tasks in foreign countries very often. On one occasion, he’d brought some men to the Southeast Asia to conduct a special mission. On their way to the target location, in order to save time, they’d chosen to take a short cut but accidentally intruded into an obscure village.

In that village, they’d been attacked by a Jiangtou-caster (Jiangtou is a kind of dark witchcraft), and it had been with the help of Li Tiangang’s exorcism skills that a small group of them made it out of that village alive. Afterward, a top-ranking official of the Department of Homeland Security, after going to a lot of trouble, had made contact with Li Tiangang and come to know that members of the Li family were capable of exorcism as well.

But nobody from the Li family had ever distinguished themself as an exorcist. Apart from anything else, the powers of the Li family couldn’t hold a candle to the Welkin Upender of the He family.

However, just because the former generation was not good at something didn’t mean that the younger generation would be bad at it as well. Back in that village, with the elementary exorcism skills he’d got, Li Tiangang had managed to escape from that Jiangtou-caster, but not without paying a price. That Jiangtou-caster had actually put a cruel Mother-Child Hex on him. The Mother Hex had been in Li Tiangang, and the Child Hex had been passed on to his son and his daughter-in-law.

A Mother-Child Hex was a kind of evil witchcraft which allowed a Jiangtou-caster to use the Child Hex to nurture the Mother Hex, and the Mother Hex to nurture themself. Afterward, Li Tiangang’s only son and his daughter-in-law had died in succession. When Li Tiangang had realized that something was wrong, the Mother Hex had started to backfire on him.

Li Tiangang had personally sought help from Old Master Chi who was the old patriarch of a family of Jiangtou-casters in Hainan Province. The latter could temporarily deaden the hex but couldn’t thoroughly rid Li Tiangang of it. Right at that point in time, Li Zong, Li Tiangang’s grandson, had finished his overseas study and returned.

When it came to Jiangtou, if a counter-hex couldn’t be found, there would always be a simple and brutal solution – to directly kill the Jiangtou-caster. If the Jiangtou-caster was dead, the hex would naturally be undone.

After returning home and hearing his grandfather’s story, Li Zong hadn’t said anything. With Li Tiangang’s description of the village, he’d single-handedly gone to the border between the Republic of Hua and Vietnam, found that village and directly disposed of that Jiangtou-caster.

Just like that, Li Zong’s extraordinary talent had come to the knowledge of a lot of people. Even the patriarch of the Chi family had said that he wasn’t sure whether or not he could fulfill a task like that in a place totally strange to him and then make it out of there unharmed.

At that time, some people had believed that Li Zong was just lucky. However, ever since Li Zong, at the age of 23, had been recommended to the SMB by Li Tiangang and then hired, his performance had never disappointed anybody. Afterward he’d even become the youngest vice-superintendent of SMB the department had ever seen.

Li Zong was so powerful that he alone had made the name of the Li family known to the whole realm of cultivation.

But Li Tiangang never took advantage of his grandson’s achievement to court publicity. After he retired, every day he just took his bird and went somewhere quiet for a walk, or went fishing. Basically, he’d been leading a secluded life.