This Taoist priest is so unprofessional!

Wang Xiaoer and the villagers who had chased after him were all stunned.

Several people at the gate, holding hoes and carrying poles, froze in mid-air, their anger replaced by bewilderment.

Inside the house, Wang Xiaoer was holding a chicken leg, his mouth half-open.

Looking at the eccentric Taoist priest before him, he had only one thought in his mind.

This person is probably an idiot.

"What the hell are you doing? Are you reciting poetry?"

Outside the courtyard, a villager was the first to react, raising his carrying pole and pointing it at the young man.

"Stop playing tricks! Get out here right now! Or I'll break your legs today!"

"Yes! Get out here right now!"

The villagers were brought back to their senses by the shout and were about to rush inside when the young Taoist priest suddenly darted behind Wang Xiaoer.

He poked half his head out and waved repeatedly at the outside.

"Fellow villagers, this is a misunderstanding, a huge misunderstanding!"

The Taoist priest's voice carried a hint of grievance, and it really sounded like the truth.

"This humble Taoist priest, Zhang Chen, has come here on official business!"

"Get your ass off with your business!" a burly man cursed. "You little liar, you were selling fake talismans at the village entrance yesterday, saying they could make me...you know, you swindled me out of five hundred yuan! But last night, in just a little while...uh-huh, you fucking pay me back right now!"

"Exactly! They said my cow was possessed by an evil spirit and tricked me out of three hundred yuan before they'd perform a ritual! Then, my cow went to Old Wang's cowshed in the middle of the night and wreaked havoc all night!"

The crowd was agitated and it looked like they were about to lose control.

Wang Xiaoer frowned, took half a step to the side, and wanted to get away from the source of this trouble.

Zhang Chen, however, was like a piece of chewing gum, immediately sticking to him again and grabbing his arm tightly.

"Don't move!"

Zhang Chen lowered his voice, but his tone was unusually serious.

He suddenly stood up straight, no longer looking flustered. Instead, he stretched out a finger and pointed at the crowd outside the courtyard, his face showing a compassionate expression.

"How foolish! You are all so foolish!"

Zhang Chen stomped his foot in anguish.

"Do you know what kind of destiny this young man before you has?"

The villagers looked at each other in bewilderment.

Aunt Zhang muttered under her breath at the back of the crowd, "Isn't it just bad luck?"

Zhang Chen seemed to hear it; he shook his head, his face enigmatic.

"No, no! This is a fate of 'utter despair,' a fate of extreme yin and malevolence in the world!"

He pointed at Wang Xiaoer, his voice suddenly rising.

"The aura of misfortune emanating from him is so thick it's almost tangible! In all my decades of traveling around, I've never seen anything so pure!"

Wang Xiaoer's eyelids twitched.

That doesn't sound like a nice thing to say.

Besides, you don't look that much older than me, right? Yet you've been traveling all over the country for decades?

The villagers were stunned by him and instinctively took a step back.

Li Laosi turned pale, thinking of his collapsed pigsty, and realized that what the Taoist priest said made some sense.

Seeing this, Zhang Chen was secretly pleased, but his face became even more solemn.

"It was precisely because I foresaw the ominous aura emanating from this place, fearing a great calamity, that I traveled a great distance to come!"

"I sold talismans and tended cattle before simply because I felt a connection with you all, and did it on a whim to investigate the source of the evil energy! Now the source has been found—it's this young man!"

He looked at everyone with a serious expression.

"This 'extinction' energy is a once-in-a-century event. Once it erupts out of control, not only your Kaoshan Village, but the entire area within a ten-mile radius will be thrown into chaos, with chickens and dogs roaming and livestock suffering!"

"Your sudden intrusion has disturbed my ritual, causing the evil energy to leak out... tsk tsk."

Zhang Chen shook his head, not finishing his sentence, but his regretful expression was more impactful than any words.

The villagers were completely stunned.

They glanced at Zhang Chen, who exuded an air of superiority, and then at Wang Xiaoer, who was expressionless and radiated an aura of "keep away."

I would rather trust it to have it than to trust it to have nothing.

After all, Wang Xiaoer's bad luck was a well-known fact in the village.

"Then... Daoist Master, what should we do?" The burly man who had threatened to break his legs had softened his tone.

"It's alright."

Zhang Chen flicked his sleeves, striking a pose of confidence.

"Tonight, I will set up an altar here to suppress the evil energy. You may all disperse. Remember, tonight, no matter what noise you hear, try not to go out, and especially do not approach this courtyard, otherwise you will be tainted by karma, and even the gods cannot save you!"

"Everyone, disperse! Disperse!"

The villagers felt as if they had been granted a pardon, and dared not linger.

They left behind polite greetings like "Thank you for your hard work, Taoist priest" and "We owe you everything, Taoist priest," and then disappeared in the blink of an eye, as if a ghost was chasing them.

In an instant, only Wang Xiaoer and Zhang Chen remained in the room.

Wang Xiaoer looked at him coldly.

"Are you done talking?"

"I'm done talking." Zhang Chen breathed a sigh of relief and patted the dust off his Taoist robe.

"Get out of here after you've said that."

Wang Xiaoer spat out the chicken bone he had chewed and then went to get a bowl of chicken soup.

He didn't want to have anything to do with this crazy guy who talked nonsense.

However, Zhang Chen completely ignored Wang Xiaoer's order to leave.

He went outside and began to wander around the yard.

His eyes were wide open, gleaming with intense light.

He reached out and touched the moss-covered base of the wall as if caressing a lover.

"A grand gesture, truly a grand gesture..."

He went back inside and looked up at the holes, where rainwater was still dripping down the thatch.

Far from being disgusted, he took a deep breath and a look of rapture appeared on his face.

"The Heavenly Gate opens, drawing in rootless water to cleanse the dragon's energy—wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!"

As he spoke, Zhang Chen went around to the back of the house and saw the large puddle that had formed due to the low-lying terrain. He slapped his thigh in excitement.

"The earth's gates are tightly locked, gathering yin and filth from all directions to nourish the dragon veins—amazing! Absolutely amazing!"

Zhang Chen, like a country bumpkin who had just arrived in the city, circled the dilapidated house that Wang Xiaoer thought was about to collapse, constantly muttering "Wonderful!" and "Amazing!"

He would sometimes squat down, pick up a bit of black mud from the yard with his fingers, and smell it under his nose.

Sometimes he would stand on tiptoe and peer through the window sill into the dimly lit room.

They looked as if this dilapidated house with its bare walls was some rare treasure.

Wang Xiaoer's brows furrowed into a knot.

"Have you seen enough?"

Zhang Chen turned around abruptly, his eyes shining as he rushed towards him.

"Not enough! Absolutely not enough! Brother, do you know that the person who set up this house... no, this feng shui arrangement, is an absolute genius!!"

Wang Xiaoer looked at his face, which was flushed with excitement, and took a step back.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He slammed the bowl down on the table with a loud thud.

"All I know is that if you don't leave soon, I'm going to throw you out!"

Wang Xiaoer's eyes were cold, like the water in a lake in winter.

He wasn't joking.

The fervor on Zhang Chen's face finally subsided somewhat.

He looked at Wang Xiaoer, then at the dilapidated house, and suddenly sighed.

"That's true. It's pathetic and lamentable to be sitting on a mountain of treasure without realizing it."

He straightened his worn-out Taoist robe, and for the first time, his expression became serious.

"Wang Xiaoer".

He pronounced his name accurately.

"You are twenty years old this year, born in the year of Gengwu, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, at the hour of Zi (11 PM - 1 AM), right?"

Wang Xiaoer's pupils contracted slightly.

His birthday was almost forgotten by everyone in the village except himself.

His parents died young, and no one ever celebrated his birthday.

How did this swindler know?

Seeing his reaction, Zhang Chen knew he was right.

"You don't need to know how I know. I'm just asking you, do you want to know why you're so unlucky?"

Wang Xiaoer fell silent.

This question was like a needle, piercing the most numb spot in his heart.

Why?

He also wanted to know why.

Why do other people have a bumper harvest from their crops, while his land is just overgrown with weeds?

Why is it that when others go up the mountain to chop firewood, they return with a full load, but his father gets knocked off a cliff by a wild boar?

Why did he live like a dog for twenty years?

He looked at Zhang Chen, his lips moved, but in the end he only managed to squeeze out a few words through gritted teeth.

"Fine, I accept my fate."

"Bullshit about accepting your fate!"

Zhang Chen suddenly swore, his spittle almost landing on Wang Xiaoer's face.

"You think your bad luck is just a coincidence? You think your 'desolate place' is a natural disaster? Let me tell you, it's all man-made!"

Wang Xiaoer's heart skipped a beat.

"What do you mean?"

"It means that one of your ancestors was an extraordinary Feng Shui master!"

Zhang Chen's voice wasn't loud, but it was like a thunderclap, exploding in Wang Xiaoer's ears.

"Your ancestor, using the art of geomancy and divination, foresaw that your Wang family's fate was sealed, your bloodline was declining, and your lineage would surely die out within three generations!"

"He must have been unwilling to let the Wang family line die out, so he defied the heavens and used his own understanding of celestial secrets to set up an unprecedented feng shui arrangement in this 'desolate and impoverished' place at the lowest point of Kaoshan Village!"

He opened his arms as if to embrace the entire dilapidated house.

"Let's call this situation 'Ten Generations of Poverty, A Hidden Dragon in the Abyss'!"

"Using your ancestral home as the focal point, we will draw upon the evil energy of the earth's veins within a ten-mile radius, converging it all here!"

"He gambled with the fate of himself and nine generations of his descendants! Each generation will be plagued by this malevolent energy, impoverished, and plagued by misfortune, thus repaying the karmic debt that the Wang family should have incurred due to the extinction of its lineage!"

"Ten generations of poverty, ten generations of suffering, ten generations of misfortune... all of it will be continuously compressed and purified by this great formation, eventually accumulating into a boundless fortune powerful enough to defy fate!"

Zhang Chen's gaze was fixed on Wang Xiaoer's face as he spoke, word by word.

"And the inheritor of this fortune is the tenth generation descendant of the Wang family."

"Wang Xiaoer, you are the tenth person!"

The room was deathly silent.

Only the water droplets dripping from the roof beams continued to make a "drip, drip" sound.

Wang Xiaoer stood there blankly, like a clay statue.

His mind went blank, buzzing.

He understood every word Zhang Chen said.

But when put together, he couldn't believe a single word of it.

A very, very long time passed.

"You mean... my twenty years of poverty and suffering were all... arranged by my ancestors?"

His voice trembled slightly, a tremor he himself was unaware of.

It wasn't excitement, nor anger, but a bewilderment so absurd it was almost unbelievable.

"No."

Zhang Chen shook his head, his expression complex.

"It's not an arrangement, it's an exchange."

"I would trade ten lifetimes of poverty for one lifetime of your boundless power."

"Otherwise, your Wang family would have been wiped out long ago. You wouldn't even exist in this world."