Chapter 44: Bodhisattva Holding a Child Descends to Earth!

“…Are you worried that if the Lin family goes bankrupt, no one will take care of you?”

Lin Jiangye backed away several steps and hid behind the terrified Du Ning, quickly putting distance between himself and Lin Jingyao.

Although he did not know why Du Ning was afraid of him, he felt that right now, he was even more afraid than Du Ning. His whole body was uncomfortable.

“Gege, I guessed it. You would think of me that way.”

Lin Jingyao did not have the strength to pester him. Weakly, he slowly sat on the ground, the corner of his lips stained with glaring blood.

He was extremely weak. The cardiac arrest caused by oxygen deprivation had already harmed him deeply, and his broken ribs made it even harder for him to sit or lie still.

“It hurts, like ten thousand needles are stabbing into my lungs. Every breath hurts… But I brought this on myself.” His voice grew lighter and lighter, his smile bitter. Very carefully, he breathed out. “I can promise, Gege, I won’t cause trouble for you ever again. I know I was wrong.”

“If you know you were wrong, then stay quiet and don’t move around. I’ll send you to the hospital later. I need to deal with Du Ning’s wound first.”

“Thank you, Gege…”

Lin Jiangye’s scalp tingled from hearing this. He really did not want to bother with him, but still could not help giving a few more instructions. “Don’t talk to me in such a nauseating tone anymore. Also, you’d better not let Yu Wangxiao know what you’re thinking. That would be causing trouble for me. I’m truly convinced by you love-brained people. You disturb me dating all day long.”

After saying this, he no longer gave Lin Jingyao any extra glance. He turned and searched Du Ning’s room for a moment, finally finding a first aid kit at the very bottom of the wardrobe.

The first aid kit was very complete, even containing an AED defibrillator. Clearly, it had been specially prepared for Du Ning’s unstable mental state, doing as much as possible to be ready for accidents.

Lin Jiangye put on gloves, half-squatted, and supported the trembling Du Ning. He picked up a cotton ball soaked in iodine with tweezers and raised his hand, approaching her as slowly as possible.

“Sister-in-law, can you understand me? I’m going to disinfect the wound on your upper palate, then stitch it a few times. It’ll be very quick. It won’t hurt after one blink.”

Du Ning’s hands were tied. Originally, she was still moving and trying to retreat, but after Lin Jiangye came too close and their eyes met, she suddenly no longer dared to run.

Like a small animal that had suffered a severe fright and instantly entered a rigid state. Her eyes were still opened wide and fixed, but her breathing and the muscles of her limbs completely froze in this instant.

Lin Jiangye’s movement paused slightly. For some reason, he thought of Yu Wangxiao’s specially made gun. The effect of aiming and firing at the living dead was just this immediate.

He suddenly realized that Du Ning’s current state was very familiar. Its similarity to when she had been shot down downstairs earlier… was extremely high.

After personally witnessing it up close and comparing the two, Lin Jiangye could not help sighing inwardly—Yu Wangxiao really seemed like a genius.

Ordinary people could not play so many tricks with fragments of his corpse. He really was impressive.

There were many impurities in the meteorite, and after an unknown long journey through the years before reaching this world, there probably was not much residual energy left. Yet Yu Wangxiao had truly managed to maximize their efficiency. This kind of miraculous thing was something even Lin Jiangye himself could not do.

He sighed inwardly while stitching Du Ning’s wound. With the “patient” being incomparably cooperative, it ended smoothly in less than half a minute. But during the stitching process, Lin Jiangye also discovered an even more serious problem.

Du Ning’s wound healed too quickly. Her bleeding stopped at a speed completely unlike a human’s. When he had just checked the condition of her upper palate up close again, he discovered that the pierced mucosal tissue had already reorganized on its own, and the more severely damaged areas had almost recovered as before.

Lin Jiangye only needed to make three stitches. He could even feel the subtle movement of granulation tissue growing, as if it would slowly wrap around his glove in the blink of an eye. The sensation was horrifying.

Although Du Ning still looked human on the surface and could barely communicate, perhaps… she had already strayed very far from humanity.

“Sorry. I’ll find a way to help you solve this problem. I’ll try not to use invasive methods like this in the future.” Lin Jiangye sighed and tried to communicate with her again first. “Can you switch back to Yu Ling mode? Or calm down a little and try talking to me? I’ve heard you shout before, so your vocal cords aren’t damaged. You can use them normally.”

Du Ning only looked at him, her gaze empty and unmoving, still in that frozen, rigid state.

However, just as Lin Jiangye was planning to change methods, Lin Jingyao, who had been quiet for a while, suddenly spoke weakly. “Gege, she can talk. Today, I came looking for Yu Lin, but I couldn’t find him. As soon as I entered the front courtyard, I was knocked unconscious… She was the one who told someone to drag me in.”

“What did you say?” Lin Jiangye was instantly shocked. “She told someone to drag you in?”

Deliberately knocking someone unconscious and throwing them into a floorboard compartment with thin oxygen was almost no different from intentional murder. Du Ning was a patient without independent ability, and the security guards and butlers in the old residence were all hired by Yu Wangxiao. Who could she command?!

At this moment, a furtive walking sound rang outside the door, very light and slow, with no shoes.

Lin Jiangye slightly narrowed his eyes. He could clearly hear the subtle noise of socks rubbing against the floor.

He understood instantly and could not help silently sneering. He walked to the door unhurriedly, folded his arms, and waited for a moment. As expected, he heard the door lock with a click.

So in the next instant, Lin Jiangye directly raised his leg and kicked. The door and lock were violently kicked open together.

The extremely heavy redwood door abruptly flew backward and, accompanied by a terrified cry of pain, slid some distance through the dark, cold corridor without light before barely stopping.

The young caregiver who had looked honest and kind was pinned beneath the door, unable to get up. She struggled desperately but to no avail, immediately losing all ability to resist.

“Cough… help, help…”

The terrifying weight made it almost impossible for her to breathe. Her voice was hoarse and desperate.

But Lin Jiangye did not immediately lend a hand. He was curious about this person’s motive. Standing at her side, he said, “You deliberately locked me in Du Ning’s room. What, did you want me and her to kill each other? Or are you afraid that the matter of you and ‘Madam’ murdering Lin Jingyao would be exposed, so you wanted to silence all of us together?”

“I-I’m sorry… I was wrong. Save me, save…”

“Saving you is simple, but you must honestly confess. I suspect you’re hiding many things we don’t know. For example, has Du Ning really not spoken for two years? What benefit does deceiving us bring you? Was she the one who asked you to hide it?”

“It’s Madam. Madam is… the Bodhisattva Holding a Child descended to earth! I don’t dare disobey. There will be retribution… You hurt her, you’ll suffer retribution too…”

Great. Another mentally abnormal person.

Lin Jiangye was utterly speechless and slowly lifted the door panel.

The young caregiver still lay weakly on the ground, very seriously injured. Her chest cavity and both hands had multiple fractures. The pain had almost made her lose consciousness, and she simply could not get up.

He did not want to pull her up for now either. He turned to Lin Jingyao, who was standing at the door, and asked, “Hey, Lin Jingyao, have you heard of Bodhisattva Holding a Child?”

“No. Sorry, Gege, I don’t know… Gege, you’re amazing.” Lin Jingyao looked obedient, his eyes sparkling with amazement at the series of actions Lin Jiangye had just performed. He even seemed a little shy.

Lin Jiangye was chilled by this cheap little brother’s stare. He closed his eyes. “So that kind of Bodhisattva probably doesn’t exist, right? I feel like the two of them made it up.”

Of course, it could also be an individual or collective hallucination, but these matters could not be discussed with Lin Jingyao. He could only check by himself whether there were any clues.

“Gege is right. When I was little, I was always sick, and Mom took me to many places to burn incense, but I never saw a Bodhisattva Holding a Child… Ah, sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned Mom.” Lin Jingyao spoke until he suddenly got stuck for a long time, then hurriedly explained, “This time, I didn’t do it on purpose, Gege.”

“Your relationship with Qiu Zhen is normal. Mention her however you want. Stop gege-gegeing nonstop.” Lin Jiangye numbingly replied, then turned and walked toward the nanny room opposite Du Ning’s residence.

“Gege, where are you going?” Lin Jingyao panicked and hurriedly tried to follow him, but the sharp pain between his ribs made movement difficult. Breathing was too hard. Slowly shifting was already his limit.

“I’m going to continue investigating what’s in the floorboard compartment. You almost died in there. Are you sure you want to follow me?”

“…I, I’m scared.”

“Go downstairs now and find Yu Wangxiao. Tell him everything you experienced, and be detailed. Also have him handle Du Ning and that caregiver. I’m busy and can’t come over.” Lin Jiangye did not look back. “Yu Wangxiao is a very good person. Don’t keep gege-gegeing in front of him. He’ll definitely have someone send you to the hospital.”

“Ge—” Lin Jingyao instinctively called halfway, then got stuck again. He stood there awkwardly for a long while, caught between choices.

But in the end, he still kept his promise and obediently went downstairs, not chasing after him to add trouble.

Lin Jiangye let out a breath of relief and pushed open the nanny room door with a headache.

The overall area of the nanny room was smaller, but its facilities were also complete. It had a separate bathroom and walk-in closet, with two loft beds that came with desks, for caregivers to take turns staying overnight and caring for Du Ning.

He came to the junction between the bedroom and the walk-in closet and knocked on the floor. Through the slightly unusual hollow sound, he judged the direction and followed it all the way to the bottom of the built-in wardrobe in the walk-in closet.

Spare first aid kits and various emergency handling tools were also stored here. Several boxes were stacked neatly, but there was not the slightest dust around the boxes.

Lin Jiangye moved the boxes aside. As expected, a hidden door leading “underground” immediately appeared before his eyes.

The square door panel was made of the same material as the wardrobe. Its workmanship and outline were rather crude. Clearly, it had been slowly sawed open by hand, then had a hidden handle and door lock glued on with hot glue.

Lin Jiangye tried pulling the handle. It was not locked, and he easily pulled open the wooden door. Dust flew, and cold yin energy surged out.

He discovered that because the wooden door had to be opened upward… as long as sufficiently heavy boxes were all piled at the bottom of the wardrobe, in certain special circumstances, even this poor-quality door lock would not be needed.

If Du Ning had not collapsed the bed while struggling violently and smashed open the floorboard that had long been hollowed out, his cheap little brother would probably really have been done for. Unless the Yu family old residence suddenly underwent major demolition, aside from the two insiders who had stuffed him into the floorboard compartment, no one would have thought of where Lin Jingyao was.

This sensational, deadly compartment had never been mentioned even in the original work. Most likely, in the previous life, Yu Lin had no idea about the inside story of the old residence, much less that he had probably once had an elder brother who had not grown up.

The plush toys, infant products, and little building blocks scattered all over the ground had a very old-fashioned design style. Judging from the degree of decay and damage, it had not been merely twenty years.

Of course, some newer toys and little clothes were mixed in too, but they were also quite old. Without careful distinction, Lin Jiangye really would not have been able to tell.

For example, an electric toy car with its batteries removed, picture books and comics published ten years ago, a completely oxidized silver longevity lock, and a few baby teeth buried in dust and cement debris…

Lin Jiangye bent down and slowly moved through the low compartment. The moment he saw the baby teeth, his footsteps stopped abruptly, and his mind instantly tensed. He immediately used the tweezers he had taken earlier to pick up the baby teeth and carefully compared them. Only then did he slowly breathe a sigh of relief.

Fortunately, these teeth seemed to belong to the same child, not many children.

“Du Ning, ah, Du Ning. I hope you never actively had any contact with Lin Bingsheng, and that you don’t have anything to do with that disgusting bald man either. Otherwise, I’ll eat you today…”

Lin Jiangye sighed softly, turned on the flashlight again, and began a carpet-like search of everything that looked special or useful.

Unexpectedly, he really found a few torn, yellow hemp papers stacked in a pile of black-gray debris that seemed to have been burned, revealing severely faded corners.

Lin Jiangye carefully picked them up one by one and looked at them, carefully distinguishing the faded dark red brush characters on the yellow paper. He discovered that all of them were birth characters belonging to different people.

One set of birth characters quickly caught his attention—Dingchou year, tenth month, sixteenth day.

After quickly converting it in his head, that was the twenty-eighth year’s lunar November fifteenth… the day Yu Wangxiao was born.

Although Yu Wangxiao himself had never mentioned it, Lin Jiangye had deliberately looked up his birthday online. He had also been thinking that the date was approaching and was struggling over what gift to secretly prepare for him.

He immediately converted all the birth characters on the yellow papers. After looking them up online on the spot, his expression gradually became serious.

Yu Wangxiao, Yu Chaoyuan, Yu Lin.

The birth characters of all three of them were recorded on the yellow papers. Aside from them, several birth characters corresponded to Yu family collateral relatives, all now entrepreneurs who held a certain amount of power and had been outstanding since childhood.

That was right. At least more than twenty years ago, every one of them had been an outstanding young talent.

The birth characters of Yu family men whose official information could now be found online had actually all been piled together in this eerie floorboard compartment.

No women. Only men. All surnamed Yu.

What a coincidence. Lin Jiangye had happened to take quite a few metaphysics online classes recently, and he was at the stage where he was most sensitive to these details.

He picked up the silver longevity lock he had seen earlier. He discovered that this thing belonged neither to Yu Lin nor to Yu Wangxiao… Near the delicate pattern on the inside of the silver ornament, the two characters “Ling’er” were finely carved.

A not-so-good guess gradually arose in Lin Jiangye’s heart. With a taut face, he continued exploring this area.

He found many old pieces of bread dried hard as stone, the completely shriveled outline of fruit after rot, a large pile of candles and incense that had burned out many years ago, and all kinds of paper offerings that had not fully burned.

The more he searched, the more offerings he found. From the layers upon layers of candle tears, it was enough to see that the person performing the ritual had been very persistent and obsessed, tirelessly continuing the offerings for many years, but suddenly, it seemed to have come to an abrupt stop.

From the relatively newer toy car, he could infer that the offering ritual had completely stopped around ten years ago.

Coincidentally, a major event really had happened ten years ago… That was right, an unprecedented, brilliant meteor shower had grandly fallen on the islands around A City, stunning everyone.

“Yu Wangxiao, hurry down and look. Urgent, urgent, urgent!”

Hearing familiar footsteps gradually approaching from the other side of the corridor, Lin Jiangye immediately called out.

At the same time, he cautiously took out his phone and quickly sent Yu Wangxiao a message to prevent walls from having ears. There were too many people in the old residence. It looked quiet, almost gloomy, but who knew whether there might be a second crazy caregiver?

Yu Wangxiao arrived very quickly and jumped down from the entrance at the bottom of the wardrobe without hesitation. He frowned and covered his mouth and nose, lowering his head to adjust to the low height of the compartment. Then he immediately followed the light from Lin Jiangye’s flashlight and found him.

The two looked at each other for one second. Yu Wangxiao understood and took out his own phone, narrowing his eyes as he seriously read the message Lin Jiangye had sent.

[This is a birth-character life-borrowing ritual. Extremely extreme. She wanted to borrow the lives of all the Yu family members in one breath, sacrifice all of you, and exchange it for her child’s resurrection.]

In other words, right now, they could all see a certain twisted “sacrificial” result.

But this result seemed to have acted only on Du Ning herself…