Chapter 82: Fourth Uncle, Aren’t You Ashamed?
“Daxing, do you have a grudge against this Jiang Fangfei?” Su Keke asked.
Qin Xing replied, “No. It’s purely that woman-to-woman ‘can’t stand the sight of her’ thing. In those guys’ words, I’m probably just jealous.”
The truth was, she’d once overheard a conversation between Jiang Fangfei and a boy. Jiang Fangfei clearly didn’t like him, yet she still kept him hanging—stringing him along—and it made Qin Xing sick to her stomach. After that, the more she paid attention, the more she felt Jiang Fangfei was pretentious and calculating.
Like right now: her situation with Xu Hao had already blown up, even the kissing had gotten out, yet she was still chatting and laughing like nothing happened, not the least bit embarrassed.
Heh. She was probably secretly pleased—now everyone knew she “belonged” to Xu Hao.
But Qin Xing didn’t want Su Keke to know any of that.
“You’re not the type who gets jealous,” Su Keke said.
“Oh? Master Keke, really?” Qin Xing teased. “People keep saying I’m jealous of the school belle’s looks. I’ve heard it so many times I’m starting to believe it myself.”
Su Keke laughed and said, “A high forehead with unevenness, plus short, thin brows—those types tend to have stronger jealousy. But no matter what kind of face-reading it is, nothing is absolute. Someone who’s jealous, impulsive, and quick-tempered isn’t necessarily someone you can’t get along with. Sometimes their strengths can cover their flaws.
“Besides, physiognomy can change. When your mindset changes, your features and the twelve palaces will shift in subtle ways. That’s why people say, ‘A face is born from the heart.’”
Qin Xing clasped her fists at Su Keke. “Master, I’ve learned something. You really know everything.”
Su Keke said modestly, “There’s still a lot I don’t know—like controlling corpses, refining yin-sha, or exorcising ghosts. Master said those are side paths. Not knowing them is fine.”
“Hey, hey, stop, stop!” Qin Xing rubbed her arms. “Master Keke, let’s not go on. You’re giving me chills.”
Why was Keke always so serious? How were they supposed to joke around in the future?
“Oh right, Keke, I suddenly thought of something,” Qin Xing said. “I don’t think I told you which one was Jiang Fangfei just now. How did you know? Don’t tell me the school belle’s face is so beautiful you recognized her at a glance?”
Su Keke answered as if it were obvious. “Isn’t she Jiang Yueyue’s older sister? I could tell from her physiognomy. Their features and twelve palaces have at least three areas with over seventy percent similarity. Only sisters with blood ties would look that alike.”
The moment Qin Xing heard that, she abruptly stopped and blurted out, “Damn! What did you just say?”
“They’re blood-related?”
Su Keke looked at her, confused. “Daxing, didn’t you already know?”
The fact that they were sisters was something Qin Xing had told her.
Qin Xing quickly pulled her aside, swallowed, and asked in a low voice, “Keke, how sure are you that those two have a blood relationship?”
Su Keke answered honestly, “Ninety-nine percent.”
Even though she was basically certain, her master always said to leave room in everything, so she didn’t speak too absolutely.
“If you look carefully, you’ll find their ear contours are basically the same. Oh—‘the listening officer’ means the ears. And their ‘inspection officer,’ the eyes—on the surface the shape looks a bit different, but both have blunt-rounded outer corners, and the direction of the eye contour is the same. That’s already two matching features. Add in the overlapping similarities in parts of the twelve palaces—like certain rises and dips, smoothness and sheen—and it should be sisters, no doubt.”
After hearing that, Qin Xing’s face turned into the kind of expression someone wears after being forcibly stuffed with something disgusting.
She wasn’t the type of woman who liked to gossip behind people’s backs, but Keke wasn’t an outsider. And Keke had a tight mouth. Plus, this was something Keke herself had brought up—so after hesitating a moment, Qin Xing told her anyway.
“Jiang Fangfei’s mom only married into the Jiang family later.”
Su Keke blanked out for a moment when she heard that.
“Do you understand what I mean, Keke?” Qin Xing lowered her voice. “Jiang Yueyue’s parents divorced a few years ago. Later, her dad formed a new family with Jiang Fangfei’s mom. Jiang Fangfei didn’t have the surname Jiang before—she only changed it later.
“The adults in our circle all know this. But Jiang Fangfei’s mom is very capable—she quickly blended into the circle and got close with a lot of the ladies. She treats Jiang Yueyue like her own daughter, so over the years she’s built quite a good reputation.”
As she spoke, Qin Xing let out a cold laugh. “I knew this circle wasn’t clean, especially when it comes to men and women. But I didn’t expect… Jiang Fangfei is only three months older than Jiang Yueyue.”
To hell with a “second spring,” to hell with being “virtuous.” Jiang Fangfei’s mom was clearly a mistress who squeezed out the original wife and climbed her way up!
What was even more disgusting was that this mistress had been hooking up with Jiang Yueyue’s dad long ago and lay low for years. Even when the Jiang couple divorced back then, she only married into the Jiang family more than two years later—so no one suspected that this “late-entering Madam Jiang” had actually been the mistress all along.
The depth of that woman’s scheming was terrifying.
Hearing such a huge, melodramatic secret, Su Keke remained fairly calm.
Back when her master taught her face-reading, he always used real examples. The two of them would find a busy intersection, set up two small stools, and her master would snack on sunflower seeds while analyzing the faces of passersby.
She’d seen plenty of men and women with the kind of physiognomy that indicates cheating and affairs.
Qin Xing looked conflicted. “Keke, tell me—should we tell Jiang Yueyue about this?”
Su Keke shook her head quickly. “Don’t ask me. Absolutely don’t ask me. I don’t want to get dragged into it.”
Qin Xing looked at her with a face full of grievance.
Su Keke felt rather embarrassed and explained in a low voice, “Usually when I read someone’s face or tell fortunes, I charge money. It’s a fair exchange—silver for goods—so nobody owes anybody. Just now I didn’t know about this matter; otherwise I wouldn’t have told you. People like us who cultivate the Dao can’t casually get mixed up in these right-and-wrong affairs. It will drag in karma and cause-and-effect.”
“Got it, Master Su. You people really have a lot of rules.”
Su Keke said, “We have to. Face-reading is still okay—at most you accidentally get tangled in some karmic connections. But if you divine and calculate someone’s fate, to a certain extent it counts as leaking Heaven’s secrets.”
Shifu often admonished her: divine and tell fortunes less, look at feng shui more. Even catching ghosts and dispelling evil was better than divining and telling fortunes for people.
So when Su Keke had asked her uncle for his birth date and eight characters last time, she had actually hesitated. First, a master had already calculated his fate before; second, she always remembered Shifu’s teaching—not to casually divine for people, especially the kind of work that calculates life’s hurdles and turns. The more accurate it is, the more Heavenly secrets you leak.
Insiders did have ways to resolve it, but more or less they would still have to bear some backlash. Even Shifu was no exception.
After hearing this, Qin Xing nodded in understanding. “I get it—Heaven’s secrets must not be revealed, or else you get struck by lightning.”
In the class that followed, Qin Xing didn’t listen properly at all.
From time to time she glanced at Jiang Yueyue, feeling stifled to the point of heartache.
Su Keke, on the other hand, took this kind of thing quite lightly. She still did what she should do, and her study efficiency remained as high as ever.
After school, when she got home, Su Keke first called out, “Uncle,” and only after calling did she remember—today Uncle was going to beat someone up, so he would come back later.
Su Keke didn’t know that the person currently being pinned to the ground and beaten senseless by her uncle was Qin Junchi.
Aside from his face, the man had been beaten all over.
Qin Junchi lay on the ground like a dead man, wailing like a ghost and howling like a wolf. “You say it’s ‘sparring,’ but you’re clearly taking revenge for personal grudges! Fourth Uncle, do you have any shame? I’m your eldest nephew!”
