Chapter Eighty-One: Master Meng's Underhanded Scheme

This was not bragging on Wu Ning’s part. Leaving aside this life, even in his previous one, his sensitivity to numbers was almost pathological.

To put it plainly, from primary school to university, and then through his studies abroad, he had never once used a notebook or kept a contact list for any of his classmates, friends, teachers, or girlfriends. Their phone numbers, birthdays, wedding dates, divorce dates, all of it—if you told him once, it stayed in his head forever.

When he was in school, he even had a unique skill: listening to the accounts.

Production, supply, sales, fixed assets, working capital—recite it to him once, and as long as it was not too long or too much, he could calculate in his mind whether the books balanced and whether there was any problem.

...

After making a pact with Qin Miaoniang to bring the ledgers tomorrow night and read them aloud to him, Qin Miaoniang helped Wu Ning back toward the ward gate.

As for how the neighbors viewed the eldest young lady of the Qin family with Wu Ning... well, really, who had time for gossip? They were envious before they could even speak.

Besides, who would dare gossip? Wasn't Wei Daliang of the patrol battalion posted right by the ward gate? The moment he saw Wu Ning approaching, he immediately shouted for the ward laborers to open the gate.

What a joke. He was the nephew of the vice governor of the Southern Circuit of Wushan. Would he still need to climb over walls?

Of course, whether Wu Ning was blind, and why he was pretending to be blind, was not something a minor soldier like him should worry about.

...

Escorted back to Kangping Ward by Wei Daliang, Wu Ning had only just reached the front of his fourth uncle's house when he was startled.

"Who is it?" He saw a person crouched on top of the wall.

Fortunately, when that person recognized Wu Ning, he flashed down in a blur from the wall. Under the lamplight by the door, Wu Ning could finally make him out—it was actually Meng Cangsheng.

"Meng, why are you here?" Wu Ning asked.

"Waiting for you." Meng Cangsheng answered, glancing at Wei Daliang as he spoke.

Wei Daliang understood at once. He hurriedly apologized and retreated in silence.

Once Wei Daliang had gone far and only Wu Ning and Meng Cangsheng remained in the alley, Wu Ning asked again, "Something happened at home?"

If nothing had happened, Meng Cangsheng would not have been waiting here in the middle of the night.

As for how this fellow had entered the city, and how he would leave it later, Wu Ning did not need to concern himself with that.

With Daoist Meng's skill, he could have made a name for himself even in a martial-arts world. Getting out of the city was no trouble at all.

Meng Cangsheng said, "Zhou Xing has come to Fang Prefecture."

"I know." Wu Ning understood at once. So it was because of Zhou Xing.

"He came to my house just now and personally delivered the imperial decree to me. I was afraid he might recognize me, so I rushed into the city."

"Oh." Meng Cangsheng finally grasped it. Wu Ning had already been on guard. It was a pity...

"But he still grew suspicious."

"!!!"

Wu Ning was startled. Lowering his head in thought, he muttered to himself, "That bastard's memory is pretty good, to still remember something from five years ago?"

Meng Cangsheng shook his head. "I wouldn't say he remembered it, but from what your uncle said, he at least became suspicious."

"Then can he connect the dots and think the Taoist from the ferry five years ago was related to what happened to Qiu Shenji that night?"

"I don't know." Meng Cangsheng frowned too. "We have to be careful."

"How do we be careful?" Wu Ning thought to himself that there was no way to stop Zhou Xing from thinking back to what happened five years ago.

In Wu Ning's view, that night really had been a little careless.

By day, one Taoist had saved Li Xian's child; by night, another Taoist had killed Qiu Shenji and the body had vanished without a trace. Anyone would have suspected the two Taoists were the same person.

"By the way..."

Wu Ning then realized that Meng Cangsheng had entered the city in the dead of night, so this was clearly urgent.

"You came just to tell me this?"

"Mm, cough, cough!" At the question, Meng Cangsheng awkwardly cleared his throat.

He answered the wrong question entirely. "Let me say this first—the idea came from my master. If you don't like it, go argue with him. It has nothing to do with me!"

As he spoke, before Wu Ning could react, Meng Cangsheng's left hand flicked, and a damp cloth appeared in his hand. Without further ado, he slapped it straight over Wu Ning's face.

"What are you doin—"

He could not even finish the sentence before feeling that fellow rubbing hard at his face with the cloth.

"I'm done!"

Once he had scrubbed enough, Meng Cangsheng tossed out those two words, flashed away, and vanished into the night in the blink of an eye.

"You crazy bastard!" Wu Ning wiped at his wet, greasy face and cursed aloud. "You rubbed the skin raw!"

There seemed to be sand in that cloth, and it was terribly abrasive. Wu Ning only felt his face burning with pain.

...

Heh. The real suffering was still to come.

The next morning, almost the entire Kangping Ward could hear Wu Laojiu's roar:

"Meng Cangsheng! I'll curse your ancestors!"

...

"Hahahaha." Wu Laoba, who had no heart at all, looked at Wu Ning's face and laughed until he nearly cramped up.

"Old Ninth Wu, what happened to your face?"

Wu Ning's once rather handsome, youthful face was now swollen out of shape, covered all over with tiny red blisters that stood up in clusters.

It itched so badly that he wanted to scratch it, but feared disfiguring himself; if he did not scratch, it hurt and itched all the same.

All he could do was curse furiously, "Meng Cangsheng, your damn grandfather! I'm not done with you!"

"Hahahahaha!"

Wu Li was still laughing. "Well, this is great. I'm now the second handsomest among us brothers!"

Wu Qi was number one, beyond dispute.

"Enough nonsense. Come with me to find a physician!"

"Nope." Wu Li instinctively backed away. "What if I catch it too?"

Damn.

With no other choice, Old Ninth Wu had to go find a clinic on his own.

Truthfully, he was not terribly worried. It was obviously one of Daoist Meng's tricks. The point was to make Wu Ning "lose his looks," so that if he met Zhou Xing again, Zhou Xing would not recognize him.

But it really itched!

...

"Nothing serious."

In the clinic, after the old physician had examined Wu Laojiu for a long while, he finally reached his diagnosis.

"Just a pox rash. Rest up, take a few decoctions, and it will clear in a month or half a month."

At that, the old physician took a good look at Wu Ning. "Strange. You never had chickenpox before?"

By rights, if one had not had chickenpox by age fifteen, it was not easy to catch it afterward.

Wu Ning thought to himself, damn, my face has been rubbed raw—how could I not catch it?

Daoist Meng was truly ruthless. This illness was nothing serious, but it was miserable.

Now it was not just his face; his hands, feet, whole body, even the damn area in his trousers were covered in blisters. Ninth Lord Wu was itching himself half to death.

...

Still, the effect was obvious. Forget Zhou Xing—just looking at Wu Ning's face, all red spots, swollen and crooked, even his own mother or maternal uncle would probably not recognize him.

That evening, he went as promised to Yongping Ward to find Qin Miaoniang.

Even Qin Miaoniang nearly failed to recognize him. She only said, with alarm, that the rash had become so severe—he had been fine yesterday, and now his whole face was covered.

Wu Ning was miserable too, muttering, "Keep your distance. Don't catch it from me."

"Hehehe." Qin Miaoniang could not help laughing. "Don't worry. I had chickenpox when I was six!"

Very well then. Wu Ning kept rubbing himself against the low stool; even his backside was covered in it. It itched!

"Did you bring the ledger?"

"I did. But..." She looked at Wu Ning doubtfully. "Can Brother Ning still listen to accounts in that state?"

"Just read," Wu Ning said. "Stop worrying so much!"

"All right." Qin Miaoniang secretly stuck out her tongue and opened the account book, beginning to read it aloud to Wu Ning.

In truth, Qin Miaoniang felt that reading the accounts was entirely unnecessary. It was not that she did not trust Wu Ning; rather, she had already checked these books, and had even asked an old accountant with decades of experience to verify them again. Neither time had turned up any problem.

That meant there was probably no problem with the accounts at all.

As for why she still had to read them to Wu Ning? Perhaps it was simply a pretext to spend a little more time with this Brother Ning.

...

What Qin Miaoniang had not expected was that after she had only read six or seven pages, equivalent to five or six days of transactions, Wu Ning had already spoken up.

"All right, stop reading. The books are fake!"

"..." Qin Miaoniang was dumbfounded. Did he really have to be that formidable?

...

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