Chapter 338: Sparrows in the Hall

Chapter 338: The Sparrow on the Hall

“Your Excellency, your Yintang is dark; I fear there is an omen of bloodshed.”

As a managing priest within Black Dragon Capital, Tang Shangque had never imagined that one day someone would make such a portentous prediction about him.

In his eyes, this was no longer a simple case of showing off one's slight skills before an expert; it was a naked provocation.

The surging anger in his chest made Tang Shangque abandon his nearby home, turning instead into this ordinary alley he had never noticed before.

The wooden eaves of the houses on both sides of the alley extended outward, forming a narrow space that could barely block the falling snow.

A fortune-telling stall covered with white cloth was tucked away here; a man with a wispy mustache sat cramped behind the stall, wearing a Ming-style cyan robe of unknown origin, its severely worn collar and cuffs revealing a threadbare air.

His face was frozen pale; though he strove to maintain a solemn expression, he could not hide his body's instinctive trembling.

“Yet another piece of social trash with no skills to speak of, unqualified even to be a labor slave, fit only for swindling and deceit.”

Tang Shangque had seen too many such wastes; a single glance was enough for an accurate judgment.

This ability to discern quality was a necessary quality for any competent manager.

As the lowest administrative division of the entire Great Ming Empire, the basic treatment of the commoners here could not compare to the imperial heartland.

The convict-citizens could only survive by relying on companies large and small, dreaming all their lives of obtaining a 'hereditary' work post.

As for those relatively luckier convict-citizens, they achieved lock-breaking and sequence-ascension through mechanized body modification, becoming managers in the conglomerates, utterly changing their fates.

In this survival-of-the-fittest environment, those garbage lives who could get no post and lacked the potential to become Sequence Attendants, if they wanted to survive, could only think of every possible way to unscrupulously obtain survival resources.

Being a swindler was one of the more common paths.

But to impersonate an imperial heartland fortune-teller in the Wa District—this unique method of fraud was a first for Tang Shangque.

“You're the one who just said I had a blood-disaster omen, right?”

Tang Shangque plopped down before the stall, raising a hand to point at the fortune-telling banner standing behind the man; the drooping flag face bore the character "Divine".

“You'd better explain clearly, or I'll tear down your stall right now and drag you off to the Garrison Guard Bureau!”

“Sir, please don't be angry. Since I made this judgment, I naturally have my reasons. If you are unsatisfied after my explanation, there's no need for you to drag me away; I will turn myself in at the Garrison Guard Bureau.”

Facing the overbearing Tang Shangque, the fortune-teller wore an air of complete composure.

He spoke fluent Great Ming official dialect, without a trace of the awkward intonation and stiff phrasing common among the Wa people.

“You're a Ming person?” Tang Shangque suddenly frowned and asked.

The fortune-teller froze for a moment, then smiled and nodded: “Sir has discerning eyes.”

Tang Shangque hummed, crossing his arms, looking at the other with contempt in his eyes, “Continue the reading.”

“As the saying goes, 'A tree lives for its bark, a man lives for his breath'; the prosperous have luck, the long-lived have fortune, the righteous have chivalry, the warlike have killing intent, the high-ranking have nobility, the schemers have hegemony!”

“Those with strong qi have all things go smoothly; those with weak qi meet violent deaths.”

The fortune-teller quickly entered his role; after flaunting a bunch of abstruse words, he said solemnly: “Your face is pale, yet your Yintang is abnormally dark—this is clearly a sign of ill fortune!”

“Are you sure my Yintang is dark?” Tang Shangque asked with a half-smile.

“I have traveled the Two Capitals and Thirteen Provinces of the Empire, relying on these eyes of mine—which are not mechanical eyes, yet surpass mechanical eyes—I could not possibly be wrong!”

“Interesting.”

Tang Shangque chuckled, “Then did you not see that this face of mine is fake, pasted with bionic skin? The Yintang darkness you speak of—could it be that my skin has necrotized?”

“.”

The expression on the fortune-teller's face froze; a moment later, he gave an embarrassed smile: “That... is not impossible.”

“Soga.”

Tang Shangque spat out a phrase in Wa language, cold light flashing in his eyes.

Perhaps the weather was too cold; the fortune-teller shrank his neck into his collar, saying resentfully: “Sir, to be honest, I nearly became a Sequence Attendant of the Agriculture Sequence back in the day, so I am quite proficient in Imperial medicine; if you want a skin graft, I can provide the service.”

As he spoke, the fortune-teller lifted the white cloth on the table, wrapped it around himself, and the cyan robe instantly became white robes.

At the same time, the banner behind him rotated on its own, revealing a "Medicine" character on the reverse of the flag.

“No need. Read my palm instead.”

Tang Shangque said blandly, rolling up the sleeve of his priestly robe and placing his right hand on the table.

“This time, you'd better look closely!”

The fortune-teller's eyes drooped, and his face instantly fell.

There lay a bare mechanical arm on the table, flashing with cold light.

Seeing the other remain silent, the smile on Tang Shangque's lips also faded.

“What, can't read it?”

The fortune-teller glanced back at the banner behind him; seeing the flag face still drooping motionless, he fell silent for a moment, then suddenly gritted his teeth: “Of course I can!”

He grabbed the arm on the table, staring wide-eyed at the impossibly smooth palm.

“No palm lines—so you can't make anything up?”

Tang Shangque looked at the lowered head before him and sneered: “You learned some superficial physiognomy in the Yellow Millet Dreamland and dare come out to swindle; meeting me today is your bad luck!”

The palm on the table slowly curled its five fingers.

The sound of mechanical operation was more chilling than the sound of falling snow.

“Considering my good mood right now, as long as you admit Great Ming fortune-telling is inferior to our Wa District Shinto, I'll let you go. Otherwise, you'd better calculate if you have a blood-disaster omen today!”

Just as Tang Shangque's words fell, a gust of cold wind finally pierced through the alley.

That drooping flag—moved at this moment!

Fluttering in the wind, *huala!* *la* it snapped.

*Puchi!*

Two fingers plunged into Tang Shangque's neck like knives; the nerves hidden in the flesh were instantly severed, bone-piercing agony forcing a 'gurgle' from his throat.

“Motherf*cking little Wa dog, giving me trouble, huh? What Wa District Shinto—it's just the scraps we Yang Sequence bigshots played with, and you really treat it like treasure.”

The fortune-teller cursed incessantly, his other hand reaching to the back of Tang Shangque's skull, yanking out the brain-machine spirit aperture buried there.

*Zila!!*

Amidst crackling electric arcs, the cold corpse fell into the snow.

“Uncle Zou, couldn't we just kill him directly? Why the need for all this mumbo-jumbo and signal blocking, making it so troublesome?”

The fortune-teller peeled the white cloth off himself and threw it over the corpse, answering the childish voice drifting from his chest.

“Little Hua, you don't understand. This grandson's identity isn't simple. On the surface, he's a Black Dragon Capital managing priest, but secretly he's a puppet dark stake of the Honghu. If we rashly kill him and alert those two sides, all our work this time would be for nothing.”

“Most importantly, only this way is there a sense of ritual!”

He took off the cyan robe, revealing the priestly robe worn underneath long ago, wiped clean the sticky blood on Tang Shangque's brain-machine, and placed it against the back of his own skull.

A cable bundle extended, piercing into this brain-machine.

At the same time, the features on his face rapidly writhed, transforming in the blink of an eye into an exact copy of Tang Shangque.

The memory of the small flower clings, demanding the name Huek be silenced, while only the sparrow's presence offers solace, a quiet counterpoint to the silence that once held.