The Tale Never Ends Chapter 152 The Crucible of Heaven

"You may know that some people will leave their physical bodies when they achieve immortality. By shedding off their physical chrysalis, they do not have to endure a hit by a stroke of lightning, the Crucible of Heaven. But beasts are different. They can assume human form once they achieve higher powers. But to climb even further, they would need to suffer the Crucible of Heaven, with or without their physical bodies." Father paused to light himself another cigarette. "There are five different Elements to the Crucible of Heaven: the Elements of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. We'll not delve into that for today. But simply put, the Crucible of Heaven is one's final test; a test of righteousness. If one has committed sacrilege or sin during one's lifetime, the person would be judged and the Crucible of Heaven shall fall upon him like a guillotine. Just like how I achieved immortality while retaining my physical body, beasts that wish this too would have to prepare themselves to withstand the final Crucible."

With Father's explanation, all of those questions were instantly answered! Unlike Master Six and most other immortals, Father became an immortal by retaining his physical body as a human. This would require him to pass through the Crucible of Heaven! The demons were all flocking to Wu Zhong because they knew that Father was the primary target of the Crucible of Heaven, and they were hoping that they could qualify with more relative ease once the Crucible has been weakened because of Father. This was why the demons were fighting for the best spot to study magic, to get themselves ready as soon as possible!

I now understood why Father blamed himself: the next Crucible of Heaven was for Father. Not knowing that Father had no intention of ascending so soon, the beasts and demons had been fighting amongst themselves and Father believed that the ruckus all began from him.

"Well, in that case, you might want to appear and mediate matters," I uttered, shrugging, but father just shook his head and said, "The matter might have begun because of me. But still, it is hardly appropriate for me to show myself. I'm afraid that it is your shoulders that this responsibility will still have to fall upon." He got up and moved to his room, ending our conversation for the night.

I chuckled at myself helplessly and retreated to my own room.

With nothing much to do, Edelweiss has been spending much time with Mother shopping. I entered our bedroom and found the top of our bed scattered with the bounties of her exploits with her mother-in-law as she went through the clothing one-by-one. As I walked in, she asked me if any of them looked nice. I shuddered. "Can I seriously say no? One simple wrong answer; that's all it takes, and I'll be spending the night on the cushions of the living hall!" That left me with only a Hobson's choice. "Every one of them seems nice on you, dear. All of them looks good," I piped quickly with feigned interest. "Can I seriously criticize any of them when everything you've spent here is as much as the Center's mid-year expenditure?!"

Three days passed uneventfully. I was upstairs at the Center, reading the booklet Father gave me, when an audible knock came from the door. I heard the door being opened and knew that that could only be Lin Feng. It was confirmed with his voice, asking, "Hi there, and how can I help you?", followed by some muffled voices before Lin Feng's voice barked up the staircase, "Hey, we have clients! Come down!"

We came down immediately. The client was a young lad. But he wore a sullen look on his face that I thought something was wrong with him on first glance. But there was nothing I could detect even with my Spirit Sight. I turned to Chongxi to see if he had noticed anything. But he merely shook his head. There was nothing wrong with him too, even with his divination magic based on the lad's facial features. "What could be the problem then," I wondered. We ushered him to the sitting area and made him tea. Finally, came the customary greeting, "How can we help you?"

But our client seemed to show no signs of loosening up. Rather, I noticed a hint of doubt forming on the edge of his eyes. Was he too shy to ask for fortune-telling on romances? "Are you here to seek advice on fortune-telling, or do you have other problems you need our help in solving?" I asked quickly, hoping to break the proverbial ice that was hanging over us uneasily. But I had subtly refrained from asking if the young lad was seeking services in handling marriage or funeral proceedings, especially after I found no suggestions of happiness or sadness from him.

There was a brief beat of pause before he asked skeptically, "Are you the real deal?" His question almost made me laughed. How did he expect us to answer this?!

But before Lin Feng and I could react, the bumbling fool of a Yuan Chongxi burst immediately, "OF COURSE WE ARE! WE ARE AS REAL AS IT GETS!" I almost threw up with shock. How can we admit we were real when we had not even listened to the complaints of the client?! I quickly interjected, "Well, we may have to first listen to your grievances before we can decide if we are able to help you." The young lad nodded before he began to speak hesitantly. "I have a case that needs handling. But it's strange. Very strange indeed. Can you help?" I chuckled. "That, we will have to see how strange this matter is. Out with it then."

The young lad began his tale, although he continued regarding us with untrusting stares. "A few days ago..."

The young lad was a local student; a high-schooler from the town from which we had retrieved the Forest Sprite. On one of his truant escapades, the boy had gone to an Internet cafe to have fun with his classmates. They were caught by the school authorities and were given severe warnings. Driven by anger and revenge, one of the lad's classmates planned to teach the disciplinary teacher a lesson.

This boy came back to school after the weekends, and showed his fellow truants a little cauldron and some joss sticks. He said to his other fellow students that he would be casting a ritual, hoping to invoke paranormal beings for help. Dismissing this as mere ludicrous nonsense, everyone ignored him. Everyone knew that this particular boy was a true fanatic of fantasy stories and fables who believed all fairy tales to contain shreds of truth. Some even claimed to have seen him talking to himself, reciting incantations and words of spells while burning sacrifices and joss sticks at night in the dormitory; a sight which was both ghastly and unsettling to most people.

But to everyone's disbelief, the disciplinary teacher came back to school a badly-injured and bruised man. Word began spreading across the entire school that the teacher was so badly drunk in a dinner, that he plummeted into a manhole the night before. The manhole was left open due to the ongoing repairs being done on the way to his home and it was unfortunate that the teacher had actually fallen into it.

The students who were caught running truants were happy to hear the news and the boy was so elated that he brought his felonious classmates to lunch.

But just when everyone thought that was the last of it, the disciplinary teacher came back to school the following day, looking even worse for the wear. An arm of his was injured and was bandaged in a sling around his neck. As it turned out, he got ended up in a street brawl after work the day before. He was in a terrible mood after falling into the manhole, and inadvertently got into a quarrel with some thugs which then escalated into a fight.

The truants were ecstatic. No one had expected the boy's jinx to work. They flashed thumbs-ups at him, congratulating him for his "success", much to his pride and joy.

Then came the third day. The disciplinary teacher did not come to school; in fact, no one saw him. The boy who cast the jinx became afraid; fearful that something bad had happened to the teacher because of what he had done. He began asking around his classroom and the ones next door for any news. But no one in his year knew anything. Despite being a boarding school, news did not travel as fast as a bushfire there. Finally, he overheard some teachers talking and discovered that the disciplinary teacher was involved in an accident. He was not fatally wounded, but bad enough to be warded nevertheless.

The boys began to feel as if something sinister had caught up with them. The young teenage boys could not believe that their hands were almost stained with murder. One of them hissed at their classmate, the one who jinxed their teacher, saying to him, "That's enough! It's getting worse! At this rate, somebody will die!" But to their dismay, the boy said to his friends, "Of course I want that too! But I have already done another ritual to stop everything last night, but I didn't know that the misfortunes will continue today!"

"So, that's why people always say, 'Be careful of what you wish for', innit?" I chuckled through the smoke.

Chapter end