Reborn: Revenge of the Concubine's Daughter

Chapter 31 Frightening scene in the fire

“Whooshing——” “Whooshing——”

He Danggui’s skirt was swayed left and right by their palm energies. It was so cold that she shivered, lost her balance and fell on the ground. That’s when she saw the strange scene from her split vision that the big fire was suddenly put out.

Two big hands helped her up. The left one was Duan Xiaolou’s and the right one was… Gao Jue’s. He Danggui escaped from death, but what she was thinking at this moment was—no wonder Duan Xiaolou said yesterday that they all had the ability to extinguish the fire. It turned out that their palm energies involved strong cold air. There were two schools in the world known as “Cold Palm”. Were they from Wujianmen School of De’an or Hongmen School of Dali?

“Are you okay, girl? Where did you get hurt?” Duan Xiaolou asked anxiously, shaking her back and forth.

“What?” He Danggui regained her consciousness and smiled apologetically at the handsome face close to her, “Sorry to interrupt your work. I’m leaving now.” There was a trace of fear in her heart. If the flame burnt her skin, would it be painful?

“Are you okay? Anywhere painful?” Duan Xiaolou shook her twice again, as if he wanted to see if she was sturdy or she could be shaken apart.

He Danggui tried to get rid of his hands and smiled bitterly, “I’m dizzy because of your shaking.”

Gao Jue released his hand as soon as He Danggui got up. He stood beside her with a serious face silently. Hearing He Danggui said she was dizzy, he knocked out Duan Xiaolou’s hands immediately. Duan Xiaolou glared at him in anger, “That’s all your fault, why don’t you light the fire after we get out of here? Don’t you know the wind is quite strong today?”

Gao Jue looked up and suddenly shouted, “Tie them up. Nobody is gonna leave!”

He Danggui stood beside him and her eardrum was buzzed by his voice. She raised her hands to protect her ears and looked sideways—some Taoist nuns leaded by Tai Shan were huddling together, looking for something in a pile of paper at random when the fire was extinguished.

A dozen or so officials in blue came forward after receiving the order, and a group of Taoist nuns scattered and fled. However, the officials in blue were obviously skillful. They stepped with strange steps. Every time they gave a push, a Taoist nun would fall down. After a litter while, 6 Taoist nuns who had just been grabbing the paper were arrested and tied with the ropes one by one. Other nuns who watched this scene happily just now were frightened and ran away, afraid of being implicated.

Duan Xiaolou glanced at He Danggui from head to foot, checking her body. He pointed at her knees and asked, “Your clothes here is dirty. Did you fall and get hurt inside?” Then he pointed to the edge of her sleeve, “It’s burnt here. Is your arm okay?” Finally, he pointed at her chest, “It’s worn out here. Is the inside...”

He Danggui interrupted him, “Thank you, I will take a closer look after I get back.”

Duan Xiaolou was very dissatisfied with her perfunctory attitude, so he stared at the worn-out place on her apricot dress directly, as if he wanted to see through a hole in the fabric, wondering whether her body was abraded or not.

Tai Shan and 5 Taoist nuns lay on the ground, howling and crying. One of them saw He Danggui, as if she had seen the great savior and cried sadly, “Miss He, help, help! Only you can save us!” Others followed her and asked for help from He Danggui. Even Tai Shan was no exception. She was very forgetful to ignore the fact that she had pushed He Danggui into the fire a moment ago.

He Danggui felt ridiculous about it. She wondered when she had become a savior. If anything, they just called for help from her instead of the immortals. When she was on fire, she couldn’t even save herself. How could she save others now!

This time, Duan Xiaolou didn’t even give her a chance to act courteously. He flew away with her in his arms.

Zhen Jing squatted in the yard to wash her clothes. Looking up casually, she was surprised to see that He Danggui was held by Duan Xiaolou, and they landed from the roof. Zhen Jing threw the laundry stick, ran towards them and then asked anxiously, “Xiaoyi, what’s wrong with you? Are you ill again?” Why did she walk out of the door in person at noon, but now she was held back?

He Danggui broke away from the chest with the faint aroma of pear blossoms. Facing the broad chest, she complained for the fifth time, “Childe Duan, I’m sure I can walk. Please put me down.” Then Duan Xiaolou’s hands released. He Danggui stood on the ground and explained to Zhen Jing with a smile, “I’m fine. I fell down accidentally just now. But I’m fine. Zhen Jing, go get us 2 small bamboo slips with lids for carrying water. We will need them tomorrow.”

Bamboo slips for carrying water? Zhen Jing blinked, mistakenly thought that He Danggui wanted her to leave so that she could get along with Childe Duan alone. So, Zhen Jing said, “Looking for the bamboo slip? Ah, that’s quite hard to find. It may take 4 or 6 hours for me to find it! I won’t come back so soon. You can have a chat inside. I’ll keep looking until it’s dark!” She wiped her wet hands with the apron and ran away. He Danggui was speechless for a while. As the Immortals could testify, she really needed bamboo slips.

Duan Xiaolou had a good memory, so he still remembered what happened before. He stared at her flat chest and asked, “He, your clothes here have been worn, inside...”

He Danggui rolled her eyes and replied stiffly, “It’s fine inside.”

But Duan Xiaolou was extremely uneasy, “How can you know that without checking? I think it’s better to have a check!”

He Danggui told him firmly, “I’m sure. I don’t think it needs to be checked.”

After a “frightening fire”, the embarrassment between the two had been weakened a lot. They both had tacitly chosen to forget the past that Duan Xiaolou proposed marriage and was rejected by He Danggui. Then they began to chat and laugh naturally, seeming like their relationship was even closer than the proposing.

“By the way, Childe Duan, you haven’t made it clear what Master Gao burned. You know, the books and papers. Tai Shan just gave up her life and took my life for them!” Seeing the words stopping on Duan Xiaolou’s lips, He Danggui became more curious, “Hum, are there any amazing secrets in this small Shui Shang Temple that can’t even be told?”

Duan Xiaolou coughed and finally explained, “All she wants back are the receipts of the loan she made. Although we found those during the search last night, we didn’t know what they were used for, so we took one of them and put the rest back. When Tai Shan returned to her room, she did not notice that she had lost something, thinking she had avoided the search luckily. Today, Lu Jiangbei looked at the receipt and found it was a usury IOU, and the interest on it was astonishingly high. You may don’t know that although the law of our dynasty allowed the existence of private lending, the interest is limited to four and a half times of ordinary money shop at most. But the interest of Tai Shan’s usury was much higher than that. It’s called ‘snowballing usury’ in folk, and it is a rolling of interest.”

He Danggui nodded. She didn’t know Tai Shan was a loan shark before. But now she remembered that in her previous life, Tai Shan ranked the back rent of Zhen Jing’s family for so high. It must be a usury. He Danggui said after Duan Xiaolou, “So, you went to Tai Shan today to settle the score with the intention of confiscating all her receipts and burning them up as a punishment. Maybe those Taoist nuns were promised some benefits by Tai Shan, so they helped her to seize the receipts. But they failed and got caught.” He Danggui sneered at the scene of “officers caught Taoist nuns bravely” and felt quite funny.

Duan Xiaolou smiled, “You are really smart. When I confiscated the receipts before, Tai Shan was so worried that her eyes turned red. She suddenly shouted to her disciples, ‘Listen, I will award each one of you 10 liang silver for taking back a receipt and promote her as the Internal Administrator.’ Then those Taoist nuns took their gender as an advantage and snatched a few receipts from us crazily. I didn’t want to hurt them because they were just used by Tai Shan. But Gao Jue is really a bastard. In order to get back the receipts, he hurt a lot of people and accused me of doing nothing. He is really heartless even to women...”

He Danggui smiled, “Most Taoist nuns in here are from wild villages. They haven’t seen martial seniors before, so they think they could win you since they are outnumbered. They don’t know that they’re as light as a speck in the seniors’ eyes and can be brushed away with a lifting of their hands.” He Danggui thought for a moment and then said, “Although they have obstructed the case, they are just some stupid people. Besides, they have learned many lessons, so I think you will not punish them severely, right?”

Duan Xiaolou looked at her gently and chuckled, “Is this a plea for them?” His laughter shook his chest, and the air was filled with the faint aroma of pear blossoms from his clothes.

He Danggui didn’t deny it. Then a strange thing occurred to her, “But I saw a lot of books were burned besides the receipts in there. Are those all black account books of Tai Shan? If so... that’s too strange…isn’t that too many?”

Duan Xiaolou hesitated for a moment and then told the truth, “Those books were found in the Taoist nuns’ meditation rooms. Books with obscene pictures of men and women.”

“Ah...” He Danggui felt a little bit embarrassed. She wouldn’t ask in detail if she knew that.

Looking at her with an expression like shyness, he smiled with pleasure, “In fact, it’s quite normal to find such books in ordinary people’s houses, but here is a Taoist Temple, and the collection of such books is a ruining of the temple’s reputation. Wei Wenzhou who led the search last night was a very serious man. He had confiscated all the books related to it, so there were 200 in all.”

He Danggui blinked, “Well, even if the nuns don’t follow the rules, the Taoist rules can do with it. Why don’t you ask Master Tai Xi to supervise the implementation personally? Besides, you are not going to pursue the blame anymore, are you?”

Now, He Danggui finally understood the reason why Tai Xi was so polite to her before, because Tai Xi wanted her to intercede the scandal. If the secret that Shui Shang Temple had the collection of 200 books which printed pornographic pictures were spread, there would be no pilgrims here in the future and the temple would turn into a brothel. Nevertheless, Tai Xi and He Danggui had needed each other. Now that He Danggui had achieved her goal, she decided to help these Taoist nuns this time.

Duan Xiaolou wrinkled up his good-looking dashing eyebrows and a fierce expression appeared in his eyes, “I don’t care about others. Tai Shan is really wicked and I will make sure she gets her lesson!”

He Danggui shrugged her shoulders and analyzed objectively and calmly, “Tai Shan lent money at usury. The highest legal penalty is ‘destroying the receipts. And you have done that; Tai Shan pulled me to put out the fire, but I didn’t get hurt. At most, her crime would be regarded as ‘attempted assault’. She can also argue that she was too focused to put out the fire and had forgotten to let go of my hand. Then she would use the ‘Delay of probation’, 1 of the ‘3 privileges of ascetics’. Hum, she doesn’t even have to go to jail and at most, she just gets some money fines. Besides, you burned her usury of receipt for a loan, which caused her to lose a lot of money, then she will focus on those tenants who are planting the Taoist farms, and then further extract money from them. This is called the big fish eats the small fish, and the small fish eats the shrimps.”

Duan Xiaolou looked at this cheerful and eloquent girl and could not help rubbing her hair, comforting her, “Don’t worry about this. Even without any charges against Tai Shan, I can make her suffer terribly.”

“No, no, no! Please don’t do that!” He Danggui grabbed his sleeve and stopped him with a sharp voice, “Childe Duan, listen, I don’t want you to use the power of imperial guards to do these things or to help me tackle Tai Shan!” Whatever Tai Shan owed her; she would get it back in her own way. She didn’t want others to either do her the favor or owe Duan Xiaolou anymore. After all, she understood that money debt was easy to pay, but love debt was not.