Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Xie Qingfeng's words were true; although he had intended to end his karmic ties with Hao Jixin in the Xie household by giving him a hastily written talisman, he had noticed that Hao's life was in peril.

However, as they had no deep connection, ensuring Hao’s survival sufficed; there was no need to expend spiritual energy, hence the ordinary talisman.

Xie Qingfeng leisurely took out his phone and displayed the payment QR code: “You are my first customer; I’ll give you a discount, 998 yuan.”

Despite having the original host's memories, Xie Qingfeng was not very familiar with this era's currency. Unsure whether Hao would believe him and be willing to pay, he set a price in line with the thousand yuan his foster parents had given the original host.

Hao Jixin was utterly silent: …

He hadn’t misheard; Xie Qingfeng was indeed trying to cajole him.

Hao Jixin silently stared at Xie Qingfeng, gave him a peculiar look, and ultimately, with a sigh, took out his phone.

"Never mind, being deceived is not the end of the world. Maybe he just needed an excuse to borrow money and was too embarrassed to ask directly. 998 yuan isn’t much. Consider it a peace of mind for my previous guilt."

Hao Jixin scanned the payment code, initially entering 9998 yuan, but thinking the other party used such a clumsy excuse and was too embarrassed to ask for money directly, he didn’t want to hurt his pride. So, he deleted and re-entered, paying the honest amount of 998 yuan.

[Payment of 998 yuan received.]

A mechanical female voice echoed from the phone.

Hao Jixin's eyes widened in surprise, "A voice reminder too?"

"A veteran scammer?"

But then he remembered that the other's adoptive parents ran a small restaurant, so it was possible he often helped collect payments.

Seeing Xie Qingfeng staring intently at his phone, Hao Jixin couldn't help but laugh, "Can we get going now?"

After pondering, Xie Qingfeng went around to the passenger side, got in, fastened his seatbelt, and fiddled with his phone to check the fare for the journey. Only then did he put away his phone, "28 Mingyuan Road [Xie Family Snack Shop]."

Hao Jixin thought to himself, "Great, now he really thinks I'm his driver."

Hao Jixin, usually easy-going, wasn’t offended and started driving. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Xie Qingfeng rummaging through a handbag, finally pulling a tag off one of the clothes he bought for his adoptive parents.

Xie Qingfeng then took out a ballpoint pen from the corner and frowned at it as he was about to write.

Hao Jixin caught a glimpse and thought the way Xie Qingfeng held the pen was quite peculiar, almost as if he was treating it like a brush pen.

Fortunately, Xie Qingfeng quickly and awkwardly adjusted his fingers to a more conventional way of holding the pen. Then, with bated breath and focused concentration, he swiftly drew... an indecipherable talisman on the cardboard tag filled with writing, which Hao Jixin couldn’t understand.

Xie Qingfeng infused the recently absorbed thin spiritual energy into the object known in his memory as a ballpoint pen and drew a safety talisman.

The previous talisman he gave to Hao Jixin was drawn casually, without paying much attention to his grip. Now, in the presence of another person, he used the original host's method of holding a pen.

Before getting out of the car, Xie Qingfeng handed over the talisman drawn with spiritual energy and insisted that Hao Jixin scan his payment code to pay for the ride, then stepped out of the car.

Hao Jixin watched Xie Qingfeng get out and remained silent for a long time upon seeing a payment of 88 yuan appear on his phone. It was the first time in his life he had received such a small amount, less than the tip he usually gave.

Yet, he found it amusing to watch Xie Qingfeng contentedly get out of the car and glanced at the [Safety Talisman] left on the dashboard, not taking it seriously. He just thought Xie Qingfeng was thorough in his schemes, even if it cost him only a tag and a quick doodle.

Earlier it was an old newspaper, and now a tag?

Which master uses a tag to write safety talismans?

He started the car and left, soon receiving a call from friends inviting him to a bar for drinks that evening.

Hao Jixin casually agreed, asking them to send the location. Checking the time and seeing it was getting dark, he decided to drive there directly.

Arriving at the bar, Hao Jixin saw the valet coming towards him, opened the car door, and was about to toss the keys to him.

Before getting out, Hao Jixin’s gaze accidentally fell on the lone safety talisman lying there. On impulse, he picked it up and pocketed it, then confidently walked into the bar.

On the other side, after getting out of the car, Xie Qingfeng took a detour through a narrow alley, inaccessible to vehicles, and walked half a street to reach the small restaurant run by his foster parents.

When he arrived, it was peak dining time, but there was no one at the restaurant's entrance. The glass door was locked, with a paper sign reading [Closed Today] attached to it.

Xie Qingfeng decided to return to his adoptive parents' home, not far from here. Arriving at the old neighborhood, he climbed the stairs to the fifth floor of the building and knocked on the door, but no one responded inside.

Xie Qingfeng came to deliver the clothes he had bought for his adoptive parents, fulfilling the original owner's last wish.

He took out his phone intending to call, but not knowing what to say, he eventually decided to just wait at the door.

After waiting for half an hour, footsteps echoed from downstairs. Xie Qingfeng quickly stood up and stepped aside, but it wasn’t his foster parents who arrived; instead, it was an auntie from the upstairs apartment.

She was surprised to see Xie Qingfeng: "Oh, isn't this Xiao Feng? Did you come from your biological parents' house? You won’t find your..." She paused, remembering he had found his biological parents, "You might not know, but this morning your dad was rendered unconscious by that, um, the mistaken one, what's-his-name Huan. He's probably still in the hospital now."

"What?" Xie Qingfeng’s brows furrowed. The original owner had been expelled from the Xie family in his later life, and by that time, his foster parents had already passed away. He hadn’t expected it would happen today.

Calming down, Xie Qingfeng asked which hospital his foster father was taken to and hurriedly took a taxi there.

Half an hour later, he arrived at the First Affiliated Hospital. After inquiring at the first floor, he found the cardiovascular department and headed straight to the twelfth floor in the elevator.

As he stepped out of the elevator and before reaching room 1205, a commotion erupted from the end of the corridor, followed by a doctor’s urgent shout: "Arrange for emergency treatment immediately."

Disordered footsteps and the sound of a stretcher sliding came rushing out from a room at the end of the hallway. Among the white-coated doctors and nurses, a disheveled, gray-haired woman, familiar from his memories as his foster parents, followed.

Xie Qingfeng's brow tightened, realizing that his foster father was the one being rushed for emergency treatment.

The medical team moved swiftly. As they approached, Xie Qingfeng glanced down and clearly saw his foster father with eyes closed and a ghastly pale face, his forehead clouded with dark energy – a sign of impending death.

Xie Qingfeng felt a pang of surprise, clearly unprepared for this.

Especially when he caught sight of his foster mother, her eyes brimming with tears, stumbling and disoriented, unaware of Xie Qingfeng’s presence.

Xie Qingfeng noted her appearance, surprisingly not one fated to be widowed early.

Clearly, something was amiss. Xie Qingfeng was confident he had not misjudged the situation. The issue lay with his foster father – someone had tampered with him, intending to cause his death.

After the group entered the elevator, Xie Qingfeng followed closely behind.

His foster mother, petite and slender, stood behind the stretcher and did not notice Xie Qingfeng entering last.

As the elevator descended, the medical team was busy resuscitating his foster father, who had stopped breathing, and no one paid much attention to the additional person.

Seeing the deathly pallor on his foster father’s face, Xie Qingfeng knew that even emergency care would likely be futile. However, his foster father was not meant to die at this time.

He reached out under the stretcher. The elevator was sealed, and the hospital, already heavy with yin energy and scarce in spiritual energy, made it worse. Xie Qingfeng had already depleted much of his spiritual energy at the Xie family breaking the ghostly concealment and later in writing the safety talisman.

Xie Qingfeng gave up trying to absorb the scant ambient spiritual energy. Prioritizing saving a life, he instinctively reached into the void and grasped the nearest jade cabbage from the treasury that had traveled through time with him. Using the energy absorbed from the jade cabbage, he waved his finger over his foster father’s face.

Almost instantly, an invisible golden mist engulfed and devoured the deathly aura shrouding his foster father’s face.

As the two energies merged, his foster father’s complexion returned to normal – pale and wan, but no longer bearing the mark of imminent death.

“He’s responding! The patient is responding!” a nurse exclaimed joyfully.

The elevator stopped at the second floor for emergency care, and the medical team hurriedly wheeled the stretcher towards the emergency room at the end of the hallway.

The foster mother watched the emergency room doors close before her legs gave way, and she nearly collapsed, only to be steadied by a pair of hands: “He'll be alright.”

With tears in her eyes, the foster mother looked up to see Xie Qingfeng, and unable to contain herself, burst into sobs: “Xiao Feng, your dad, he...”

Sobbing, the foster mother hugged Xie Qingfeng, finally breaking down with her fear and panic, now that she had support.

She was terrified of losing Lao Xie, who was only in his forties and should not have died so young.

Xie Qingfeng, having expended considerable energy to save a life, was somewhat pale, but he looked much better compared to his foster mother.

He sat with his foster mother outside the emergency room until her emotions gradually stabilized.

Xie Qingfeng's presence provided a pillar of strength for his foster mother.

During the two to three hours of waiting, Xie Qingfeng learned about the events of the day.

Before framing the original host in the afternoon, Xie Weihuan had first visited the original host's foster parents.

Facing his biological parents, Xie Weihuan was extremely mocking and sarcastic, even suggesting that the original host coveted wealth and would not return to his foster parents, warning them not to expect much from their biological son, arguing that they had no right to disturb his good life since they had never raised him.

He deliberately provoked his foster father, insinuating that the initial baby swap was a malicious act orchestrated by the foster parents.

The foster father, a man of integrity all his life, couldn’t withstand his character being questioned, especially since he had been unwell for a month due to stress. His body, already strained by years of labor, simply gave in and he fainted.

Listening to his foster mother's tearful account, Xie Qingfeng gently patted her back to comfort her.

If it were just a fainting spell, it wouldn’t have resulted in the deathly appearance seen earlier. This suggests Xie Weihuan might have done something more to the foster father.

Xie Qingfeng suspected Xie Weihuan, especially given his ability to manipulate surveillance footage and create the “ghostly concealment” on his phone, a feat beyond the capability of an ordinary person.

It's likely that Xie Weihuan had deliberately orchestrated the plot, aiming to erase the foster father from the picture.

Considering the subsequent frame-up of the original host, intended to ruin his reputation, the timing aligned perfectly with the original host being driven out.

With nowhere else to go, the original host would have had to return to his foster parents' home, only to find his foster father dead.

Coupled with the earlier accusation of “maliciously pushing someone down the stairs,” and now the death of the foster father, all blame could be conveniently shifted onto the original host, potentially destroying him completely.

As Xie Qingfeng pieced together these revelations, his expression darkened.