Chapter 39 Traveling Notes

I tore off the red cloth and looked at the master. He was covered in a cold sweat as he met my gaze, obviously realizing that he had been played.

“Answer me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There have been so many accidental deaths in your sect. Not only have you cheated those people out of all their money, but you told them that they had a house in the underworld, and convinced the person with the weakest will to kill their whole family and take them to the underworld to live. Did I guess wrong?” I said, while continuing to stare at the master. Fatty and Poker-Face also took off their red cloths, and Poker-Face immediately turned to look directly at the back room.

“Come out!” Fatty yelled.

A thin woman came out of the back room—she was the wife of the dead master.

She didn’t appear to be afraid of us at all, and said in accented Mandarin, “So, Agui’s rich relatives aren’t all that stupid.”

“You’re jealous of Agui’s family because a fat guy has been giving him money and doing renovations for him.” I turned to look at Fatty, who immediately became angry.

“You knew that Agui missed his youngest daughter, so you began targeting him,” I said. “This master and your husband, were they colleagues? Your system is very well managed. Are you the person in charge of the Chinese region?”

“They’re both my husbands,” the thin woman said. At this time, a lot of people gradually appeared in the yard outside. It was obvious that they had been waiting to ambush us here for a long time. “This is my Vietnamese husband, and the one who died was my Chinese husband. Actually, you can be my husband too. Since the Chinese one is dead now, I have to find another one.”

Fatty just gave me a look, as if to say, “You see? It’s not because I was renovating Agui’s house, but because of your lasciviousness.”

I glanced at Poker-Face, feeling confused, but the thin woman immediately said, “He’s too young.”

“What are you going to do to us?” I asked the woman.

“Kill you.” The woman gave the people behind us a meaningful look and then turned and glared at the master. The master immediately became terrified, as if he had seen some evil spirit.

The three of us looked at each other and then walked towards the crowd waiting outside.

I won’t bother elaborating on the details of the ensuing fight. Our opponents were all civilian thugs instead of heavyweights, so we basically only needed to make one move per person. In just a short amount of time, they were all brought down. I turned off the tape recorder in my clothes, which we could use as evidence, and then looked back towards the house—the thin woman had already run towards the back room, trying to make her escape.

We immediately chased after her and found that the back room was full of gold bars stacked on the ground. They must have been offerings from the believers. The woman ran up to a car at the back of the house, jumped in, and drove off.

In fact, Poker-Face could easily catch up with them, but I didn’t think it was necessary. I used the people in Beijing to submit the recording to the proper authorities, effectively ending our involvement in the whole matter.

That night, Fatty and I predicted the outcome of this incident. On our side of the border, this cult would probably still exist for about a week at most. But in Vietnam, because of all kinds of collusion, this cult would probably continue. I figured it wouldn’t be long before they infiltrated the border again.

In light of the special geographical location here, this problem could only be resolved by Poker-Face. I looked at him and teasingly made a gesture like one of those Fei Kun Balu statues.

The corners of his mouth, which seldom moved, imperceptibly rose at this time. I figured it was because I was so hilarious.

What happened next, I can only speculate.

The next day, when we were out scouting for new menu items at the border, Poker-Face left us to go into the jungle to look for materials to make a dirty face.

With his dirty face, he snuck into the Vietnamese territory and entered the ancient temple using the extremely frightening methods of the Zhang family. I don’t know what he did exactly, but the dirty face was especially frightening. That night, the people in the temple must have thought that they saw a real demon.

Three months after we returned to Rain Village, the cult disintegrated at its roots. Of course, when we were in Banai, we didn’t know that these types of cults could be so vulnerable.

When Poker-Face came back later that night, he smelled like smoke, so I figured he must have burned the dirty face in the jungle.

We went back to Agui’s house and waited for A-Gong and A-Mu’s chicks to hatch. During this period of time, the most important goal for me was to figure out a way to remove the earthy taste from the stuffed snail meat dish.

To add to that, crab season was coming soon. I decided that when the three of us returned to Rain Village, we would develop three crab-related dishes.

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