Chapter 30: Everyone Has Their Own Secrets

By the time Li Lin returned from the county city to Shangtikou Village, it was already evening, and he saw the Tree Immortal Lady wandering near the village entrance.

At this moment, the Tree Immortal Lady saw him as well, then turned and slowly drifted away.

Her long green snake tail swayed back and forth in front of Li Lin.

Li Lin quickly caught up and walked behind the Tree Immortal Lady with a smile.

“Tree Immortal Lady, are you waiting for me?”

The Tree Immortal Lady said nothing.

Instead, she returned to the altar and vanished from sight.

Tsk tsk, such a tsundere!

Li Lin smiled and returned home.

Having been away for several days, everything inside the house remained exactly as it had been.

Apparently no one had entered and rummaged through the place.

He even opened the wardrobe to take a look.

The six gold ingots that Wang Tianyou had given him were still inside.

Stretching lazily, he lay directly on the bed and fell asleep.

He had been traveling nonstop these past several days while facing life-threatening danger.

His emotions had remained under extreme tension, rising and falling dramatically.

He was utterly exhausted.

This sleep lasted until noon the next day before he finally got up.

Just as he was about to do some exercise in the courtyard, he saw Zhao Xiaohu waiting outside the fence.

“Brother Lin!”

Zhao Xiaohu was extremely happy to see Li Lin.

His complexion looked much better now, which puzzled Li Lin somewhat.

According to his calculations, Zhao Xiaohu had suffered the soul-calling technique of a gui twice.

Logically, his body should have been severely depleted.

Yet his recovery had been much faster than expected.

Could this kid also be talented?

“Xiaohu, how has the village been during the days I was away?”

“The same as always!”

Zhao Xiaohu replied with a grin.

“A lot of people heard that the wandering gui here was dealt with by Brother Lin, and now they all want to come back.”

Li Lin blinked.

“So that means I’ll have to move again soon?”

“Not really.”

Zhao Xiaohu lowered his voice.

“After the family that used to live in this house moved out, they disappeared. No one knows where they went.”

Oh.

Li Lin stopped paying attention to the matter.

Then he looked at Zhao Xiaohu and suddenly said,

“I’m going to cook some blood rice later. Come eat some too.”

“Wouldn’t that be inappropriate? That’s food for Spirit Hunters.”

Although Zhao Xiaohu was also curious about the taste of blood rice, he still shook his head.

“Give it a try. I think you might have the aptitude to become a Spirit Hunter.”

“Really?”

Zhao Xiaohu’s eyes lit up.

“Come inside.”

“Okay, okay.”

After entering, Zhao Xiaohu immediately said,

“Brother Lin, I’ll wash the rice. I’ll cook the meal.”

He shouted excitedly.

“Fine, you can do the cooking.”

Li Lin genuinely wanted to be lazy for a while.

Soon, the blood rice was ready.

This stuff greatly enhanced qi and blood.

Ordinary people could not eat too much of it.

Li Lin only served Zhao Xiaohu a small half-bowl.

Holding the bowl almost reverently, Zhao Xiaohu chewed each grain slowly.

Before long, he finished the small half-bowl of blood rice.

Then he sat quietly and nervously, waiting for Li Lin’s “verdict.”

After a while, a light sheen of sweat appeared on Zhao Xiaohu’s forehead, and his face turned slightly red.

Li Lin nodded.

Zhao Xiaohu indeed possessed the aptitude to become a Spirit Hunter.

However, there was not much of it.

He barely qualified.

The first step to becoming a Spirit Hunter was being able to digest and endure the effects of blood rice.

If an ordinary person ate this small half-bowl, their qi and blood would become wildly vigorous.

They would be unable to sit still and would desperately want to vent their energy.

The fact that he could remain seated quietly meant he had passed.

The second step was determining whether the person’s body could accommodate yin energy.

Li Lin pressed two fingers against the pulse point on Zhao Xiaohu’s left wrist and guided some yin energy into him.

Zhao Xiaohu shivered.

After that, however, there was no further reaction.

Barely acceptable.

If the two basic entrance examinations were scored out of one hundred, Zhao Xiaohu had barely passed.

The sort who scored just over sixty points.

He could indeed become a Spirit Hunter, but his future achievements would be limited.

Incidentally, Li Lin’s scores in both categories were around eighty-five.

A score of eighty-five in a single category seemed merely good.

Nothing extraordinary.

But scoring eighty-five in both categories was excellent.

In other words, he had no weaknesses.

Once he matured, he would become a well-rounded fighter.

For example, Xu Saifeng, whom Li Lin had killed, was the type who accepted yin energy easily but lacked vigorous qi and blood.

Once someone got close to him...

He could not even defeat a newcomer like Li Lin.

Looking at the hopeful yet nervous Zhao Xiaohu, Li Lin said,

“You qualify.”

“Really?”

Zhao Xiaohu jumped up immediately and ran circles around the room while shouting,

“I can become a Spirit Hunter! I can become a Spirit Hunter!”

Li Lin watched him with a smile.

After Zhao Xiaohu calmed down somewhat, he said,

“Go call Uncle Zhao over.”

“Mhm, mhm!”

Zhao Xiaohu nodded repeatedly and then ran off like a gust of wind.

He was clearly excited beyond measure.

Not long afterward, Uncle Zhao hurried over.

Meanwhile, Zhao Xiaohu waited outside the courtyard.

When adults discussed important matters, little brats were not qualified to listen.

Uncle Zhao sat across from Li Lin.

His expression contained both joy and nervousness.

“Xiaohu really has the aptitude to become a Spirit Hunter?”

Li Lin nodded lightly.

“He really does. I specifically verified it just now.”

Before practicing the Nourishing Yin Cultivation Method, Li Lin would not have been able to verify this.

After all, he himself had possessed no yin energy at the time.

How could he have tested others?

But now he could.

Uncle Zhao’s expression became complicated.

After sighing softly, he appeared extremely hesitant.

Li Lin said,

“Spirit Hunters have an obligation to discover and train talented people to become new Spirit Hunters. But Uncle Zhao, you also know that the casualty rate in this profession is very high.”

Uncle Zhao nodded.

Spirit Hunters enjoyed tremendous respect among ordinary people.

Under normal circumstances, common folk were unwilling to have any conflict with them.

But Spirit Hunters also had the duty of guarding a region.

A newcomer like Li Lin, for example, had been stationed in Shangtikou Village.

“I can bring Xiaohu into the profession. In fact, I can already teach him fist techniques, spear techniques, and even cultivation methods.”

Li Lin smiled.

“His circumstances are much better than mine were.”

“But he isn’t as talented as you are, Little Brother Li, is he?”

Uncle Zhao asked quietly.

Li Lin hesitated briefly before nodding.

It was the truth.

There was no need to conceal it.

It was better to tell the truth and let the other party make the correct decision.

“Can I think about it a little longer?”

“No problem.”

Li Lin smiled.

“However... Xiaohu isn’t Aunt Hua’s child, is he?”

Uncle Zhao suddenly stared at Li Lin in disbelief.

“How do you know?”

“Before that wandering gui outside the village died, she said something very interesting.”

Li Lin’s expression remained calm.

“She said she missed Xiaohu very much. She missed her child very much. But I felt something wasn’t right. According to the old village chief, that wandering gui had existed outside the village for more than thirty years. Yet Xiaohu is only... thirteen years old. Was there some mistake?”

“There was no mistake.”

Uncle Zhao sighed.

“Xiaohu is her child, that gui’s child.”

Li Lin narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment.

Then he instinctively leaned backward and sucked in a breath of cold air.

So Uncle Zhao had been a ghost rider!

“And Aunt Hua...?”

“When Aunt Hua was young, she spent every day standing in water planting rice and washing clothes. Later it damaged her body. According to the doctor, the cold damage in her womb was severe, and she couldn’t have children.”

Li Lin listened quietly.

“Then one day...”

Uncle Zhao lowered his voice.

“I got drunk. People in the village kept mocking me for having no children and being unable to produce offspring. So I ran outside the village and caused a scene. In my drunken haze, I ended up sharing a night with that gui. Three months later, on a certain night, she called my name and handed Xiaohu to me at the village entrance.”

“The villagers all know about this?”

“They don’t.”

Uncle Zhao smiled.

“Xiaohu appeared so suddenly that I lied to them. I said we prayed to the Tree Immortal Lady, and she used her magic to grant us a child.”

With Xiaohu’s face looking exactly like Uncle Zhao’s, right down to the large beard, nobody would ever suspect they were not biologically related.

After a moment of silence, Li Lin asked,

“I killed her. I killed that gui. Do you hate me?”

Uncle Zhao shook his head.

“At first she still retained some awareness. Later she became more and more insane. She kept killing villagers. Eventually she even wanted to take Xiaohu away. Long ago, I came to regard her as an enemy.”

“Let’s return to Xiaohu’s matter.”

Li Lin lightly tapped the tabletop with a finger, emphasizing his words.

“Xiaohu’s body can accommodate yin energy. He attracts the attention of gui more easily than ordinary people. Right now he still has a virgin body, and his vigorous qi and blood help. But after he marries and has children... he’ll be much more likely to suffer harassment from gui.”

“Becoming a Spirit Hunter can free him from that trouble.”

“But being a Spirit Hunter is itself a kind of trouble.”

After remaining silent for a long time, Uncle Zhao finally said,

“I’ll go back and discuss it with Aunt Hua again.”

“All right.”

Li Lin got up and saw the father and son off.

Then he picked up his bamboo hat, bamboo basket, and hoe.

He intended to go into the mountains and dig up more “weeds” for alchemy.

More than half of his Shengxi Pills had already been consumed.

He needed to prepare in advance and plan ahead.

Carrying the hoe on his shoulder, he entered the mountains.

After making a large circuit, his basket was already filled with medicinal herbs.

Just as he was preparing to return to the village, he noticed a graveyard.

Fresh soil had been scattered around one of the graves.

He walked over and discovered that a newly made grave had indeed been robbed.

The gravestone read:

The Grave of Wu Family’s Xiuniang.

Looking down into the grave pit, he saw that the coffin had already been opened.

Xiuniang’s remains were lying inside.

But...

Resting atop the bones was a brown, shriveled object that looked somewhat like a sheet of paper.

What was this thing?