[Second update delivered!]
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According to what Wu Daodao had said.
If someone had harmed Sun Keke, it definitely wouldn't have been long ago.
Driving someone towards misfortune, even if one could control such power, was extremely difficult.
Most importantly, once misfortune struck, it would manifest immediately, with no latent period to speak of.
It was truly a case of immediate results—as soon as it's used, the user would know!
So, by calculating the time of Sun Keke's first mishap, one could simply infer the opponent's timing of the deed.
Moreover, Wu Daodao mentioned a critical clue.
"Whether it's making little effigies or casting curses, those are just ceremonial enhancements many sects use to add to the ritual's feel, to create an air of mystery.
But to truly plant a Seed of Misfortune in someone, the key method is, it must be through direct contact!
So, to find out who harmed Sun Keke, you should carefully ask her who she met and had contact with in the day or two before her first streak of bad luck. Slowly investigate and you will find out."
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Chen Nuo didn't immediately let Wu Daodao off the hook, but instructed Brother Lei to keep this senior brother at the garage and not to let him leave for the time being.
Of course, he was treated much better, with good tea and cigarettes to serve him.
Chen Nuo himself immediately went to Sun Keke's house.
It was Wednesday, and in the afternoon, Old Sun was at school, while Yang Xiaoyi went to work.
Sun Keke didn't need to attend classes after her final exams. She had an accident with a bicycle in the morning, so she decided to rest at home in the afternoon.
The injury was indeed not serious. When Chen Nuo arrived, he checked Sun Keke's injuries: a bit of bruising and a new cut on the knee.
Yet, when the young girl was seated on the sofa, pressed down by her boyfriend, and Chen Nuo lifted one of her little legs and fondled it, Sun Keke's face reddened as if smeared with rouge.
She muttered a few protests, but ultimately could not overrule Chen Nuo.
This guy... he wouldn't be taking advantage of the situation, would he...
Although inwardly she didn't resist the intimate gestures with Chen Nuo, to the point where her leg was in Chen Nuo's hands and his palms were caressing her leg, Sun Keke found herself breathing hard and her heartbeat quickened, half her body going soft...
Her heart had no real resistance, and she even faintly longed to cling to this young man's embrace.
But...
But that wouldn't be allowed.
Her father and mother had both warned Sun Keke in private at home, with their words hinting that at her age, she absolutely should not have any excessive physical contact with Chen Nuo.
"Chen, Chen Nuo." Sun Keke bit her lip, looked down, and said indistinctly, "Have you, have you touched enough...?"
Chen Nuo actually felt a stirring in his heart as well; the girl's calf was smooth, shapely, straight, and the curve of the calf muscle was full yet slender, her skin smooth to the touch.
"Ahem." Chen Nuo coughed awkwardly, set down Sun Keke's leg, then couldn't help but lean over and plant a kiss on Sun Keke's flushed cheek.
"Ah!" Sun Keke was startled, gently pushing Chen Nuo away, "You, you, don't."
Alright then, he'd promised Old Sun, to let sentiment shape the relationship, but to maintain propriety.
Chen Nuo also knew it wasn't the time to be affectionate with his girlfriend, so he let go of Sun Keke and started to interrogate her in detail.
Chen Xiaoguo was cunning; how could Sun Keke guard against him?
Especially when they were alone in the house that afternoon with no one else around, and her thoughts were all over the place with her beloved, she unwittingly let slip a lot of information to Chen Nuo.
Chen Nuo got a clue.
He counted back three days from the first time she fell down the stairs.
In those three days, the number of times Sun Keke encountered strangers was only twice.
Once was...
In the restroom of the furniture store on Tangzi Street, she met a very pretty older sister!
Cough cough cough cough...
Chen Nuo coughed guiltily and quickly looked away.
That, he couldn't mention.
Skip that, skip it!
The girl was also well-behaved and sensible, sparing money by not even taking the bus most of the time, opting to ride her bicycle instead.
She didn't talk to or make contact with strangers in public places.
Moreover, as a girl, she was naturally sensitive to physical contact.
Not just physical contact, but even a mere touch from a stranger would leave a sensitive impression and certainly be remembered by a girl.
So, the chance meeting with Lu Xixi on Tangzi Street could be passed over.
On the way to and from the store, she hadn't had any contact with strangers.
That left the second occasion.
According to Sun Keke, one day after school she had gone to her classmate Lin Xiaona's house.
Chen Nuo had actually met Lin Xiaona before.
She was the plump girl with the round, moon-shaped face.
That time in Yanbian, in the evening at the guesthouse, when Chen Nuo came back from South Korea and went to find Sun Keke, it was a chubby round-faced girl who answered the door—that was Lin Xiaona.
During that trip, Sun Keke shared a room with Lin Xiaona.
Since the girls stayed together, it indicated quite a close friendship.
Indeed, it was truly so.
Lin Xiaona was not particularly notable in class, a cheerful girl who always had a smile for everyone and got along well with her peers, the type with a bright, straightforward personality inclined to kindness.
Chen Nuo didn't have any suspicion towards Lin Xiaona... after all, they were in the same class.
If Lin Xiaona was some expert with hidden skills... Having spent a semester in the same school, although not interacting much, she never seemed out of the ordinary.
Chen Nuo believed his eyesight couldn't be that flawed.
But still...
"That day when I went to Lin Xiaona's house to hang out, she also invited another person. It was her neighbor from where she lived before, who came over to her place to play too."
Sun Keke seemed to fear that Chen Nuo might misunderstand, so she quickly added, "It's a girl, not a boy, don't get the wrong idea... I, I..."
The girl lowered her voice, "Apart from at school, I don't have any contact with boys at other times."
Chen Nuo smiled and said nothing.
The girl who went with her to Lin Xiaona's house.
She was Lin Xiaona's childhood neighbor, but Lin Xiaona moved away when she was in high school, yet the two of them still kept in touch.
The girl was two years older than both Lin Xiaona and Sun Keke and had already graduated and was working.
That day was a coincidence, that girl also went to Lin Xiaona's home to hang out, and that's when she met Sun Keke.
The three girls had dinner together at Lin Xiaona's house.
"Did you just have dinner and do nothing else?"
Sun Keke widened her eyes, "What else could there be? We just had dinner, chatted, watched TV for a while, and then I went home."
"What's that girl's name?"
"Her name is He Rong."
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He Rong was not hard to find.
Once Sun Keke mentioned the girl's name, it turned out she worked at a hardware manufacturing factory in this city.
After getting the factory name and key information, Chen Nuo immediately changed the subject, and started chit-chatting about other things with Sun Keke.
After talking for a while, the girl yawned and then leaned on Chen Nuo, watching TV with him for a bit.
Sun Keke didn't know why, but after watching TV for a while, she felt her eyelids fighting each other, and gradually she became drowsy, and not long after, she fell asleep.
Chen Nuo sighed with relief, withdrew the palm that he had quietly placed on the girl's back, and also withdrew the thread of psychokinesis he had released.
With the pull of telekinesis, he carefully enticed Sun Keke's spirit; the girl would probably sleep for a couple of hours once she was asleep.
Chen Nuo exhaled.
After thinking for a moment, Chen Nuo solemnly closed his eyes.
A few seconds later, the young man opened his eyes, exhaled, and slowly raised his right hand, extending an index finger to gently touch Sun Keke's brow.
A thread of spiritual power was channeled, and Chen Nuo closed his eyes, beginning to carefully examine Sun Keke's body.
According to Wu Daodao, the so-called Misfortune.
The so-called negative energy.
All of this was nothing more than a form of power of this world.
Just because Chen Nuo had not sensed it before didn't mean he couldn't sense it now.
Since it was a form of power, under Chen Nuo's careful examination, he would always find some difference, no matter how slight.
In the space of Sun Keke's consciousness, there was chaos; Chen Nuo did not use his eyes to observe.
Rather, he used a thread of his own spiritual power, intricately exploring back and forth within it.
He carefully avoided the clusters of Sun Keke's spiritual consciousness... touching them would awaken the girl.
After several explorations, he found nothing.
Chen Nuo frowned and thought.
He made his spiritual power even finer and re-entered it into Sun Keke's brow.
This time, his search was even more meticulous than before, almost microcosmic, like a special form of introspection.
Sweat started to appear on Chen Nuo's forehead.
This level of detailed search consumed a tremendous amount of Chen Nuo's spiritual power.
Finally...
"Hmm?"
A thought crossed Chen Nuo's mind.
"What... is this?"
·
Inside the space of Sun Keke's consciousness, at a very subtle location, Chen Nuo discovered a tiny and slightly different sign.
It was...
A tiny, shapeless, special fusion of spiritual consciousness.
To Chen Nuo's sensation, this object was exceedingly subtle. If not for his powerful psychokinetic strength at the pinnacle among Destroyers, even a master of psychokinesis might not notice it.
This fusion seemed to be a kind of spiritual power, yet it had already developed an intricate relationship with Sun Keke's own spiritual power.
Upon closer inspection, the two seemed to have merged into one.
And what made Chen Nuo notice it was not that he truly sensed its existence.
It was that...
It was subtly growing and changing!
It seemed like every second, it was minutely, ever so slightly, integrating with Sun Keke's spiritual power.
Bit by bit, it was growing!
Although the extent of the growth was incredibly minute.
Like Mount Everest growing by 0.001 millimeters.
Such extremely subtle growth and change would likely be undetectable by ordinary Mentalists.
But Chen Yanluo was, after all, Chen Yanluo!
Chen Nuo made a judgment!
This thing... it was not part of Sun Keke's own spiritual consciousness space!
It was an... outsider!
Just as Chen Nuo's own thread of spiritual power moved to make contact with it.
Suddenly, the object seemed to react, instantly extending countless tentacles, racing toward Chen Nuo's spiritual power!
It seemed to be an instinctual, proactive entanglement.
Chen Nuo frowned, but didn't dodge, allowing his spiritual tentacles to intertwine with it.
The moment his spiritual power's tentacles tangled with the object, Chen Nuo suddenly felt a deep corner of his heart jolt violently.
This sensation was brief and vanished in an instant.
But it was extremely uncomfortable, as though he had been jarred awake from a nightmare or his heartbeat had suddenly skipped a half beat. It was as if, in the dead of summer, he had inexplicably shivered.
Just for an instant, the feeling disappeared.
Chen Nuo felt that the sliver of spiritual power he had extended had already been tangled up by this thing, and then it began to merge as if by instinct, bit by bit with Chen Nuo's spiritual force tentacles...
"So it's you."
Chen Nuo sneered.
·
Several minutes later, Chen Nuo opened his eyes and retracted his right hand.
On the couch, Sun Keke was still deep in slumber.
Chen Nuo spread the palm of his right hand, and within it appeared that mass of amalgamation.
This thing had been uprooted by him from the very depths of Sun Keke's consciousness!
But once it left Sun Keke's body, it seemed to fall into a dormant state, no longer showing the slightest stir.
Chen Nuo carefully isolated a trace of telekinesis and wrapped it around the thing, layer by layer, like a cocoon.
Once touched by telekinesis, the thing seemed to immediately come back to life, reaching out tentacles to merge with Chen Nuo's telekinesis.
As if attempting to break through Chen Nuo's psychic cocoon.
But how solid was Chen Nuo's spiritual power!
How could an ordinary person like Sun Keke even compare?
Chen Nuo concentrated his spiritual power into an incredibly solid mass, and the small thing dissolved the cocoon thread by thread within, but for Chen Nuo, the speed of this dissolution was trivial.
"You still don't understand what you are, so just stay put here with me for now.
Are you something that can grow on its own and then unleash 'misfortune'...
Then I'll call you, Seed of Misfortune."
Chen Nuo sneered, his fingers closed together, and his spiritual power encapsulated the tiny "Seed of Misfortune" into his own spiritual space.
Within the cocoon formed by Chen Yanluo's telekinesis, this thing could no longer have any effect.
Glancing at the sleeping Sun Keke, Chen Nuo used telekinesis to gingerly heal the bruises and injuries on his girlfriend's leg, merely hastening the dispersal of the blood clots a little.
Then after covering Sun Keke with a blanket, Chen Nuo turned and left the Sun family home.
·
XX Hardware Manufacturing Factory, an old state-owned factory located in the south of the city, not very large.
Before the end of the workday in the afternoon, Chen Nuo stood at the entrance of the small factory.
Along a narrow street in the south of Jinling City, amidst dilapidated buildings.
The factory was small, hardly much bigger than a workshop; from the outside, it looked like just two factory buildings and a small two-story office building.
Not far from the door, there was a noodle shop. Chen Nuo entered, ordered a bowl of wontons, and sat there eating while keeping an eye on the factory entrance.
After waiting a while, Chen Nuo saw his target appear.
He Rong.
Although Chen Nuo didn't recognize He Rong, she was easy to identify based on Sun Keke's description.
The girl was short and plump, with her short hair dyed blonde.
And importantly, she had tattoos on her arms.
With these distinctive features, she wasn't hard to find.
He Rong, standing at the entrance, was immediately recognized by Chen Nuo as the target of his search.
Her short stature, probably just over one and a half meters, even with thick platform shoes, didn't reach one meter sixty.
Her makeup was heavy, with thick eyeshadow.
The blonde short hair, with a tuft of bangs on the forehead, was dyed purple.
She wore a short skirt, a black camisole on top, and over that, a short-sleeved shirt.
He Rong stepped out of the gate, glanced left and right, then walked down the road to the left.
Chen Nuo stood up, left the noodle shop, and followed from a distance.
After walking roughly a few hundred meters.
He turned a corner and the street emptied out.
There was a black sedan parked on the side of the road, a Mercedes, which looked expensive.
He Rong walked over, seemingly leaning casually against it, then pretended to check her reflection in the car mirror, casting furtive glances left and right.
Then she stood up, reaching into her bag pulling out something...
From a distance, Chen Nuo could see clearly, it was a small nail clipper.
He Rong held the clipper in a hand that seemed to naturally hang down, then slowly scratched along the car as she walked past...
In her wake, the black Mercedes was left with a long scratch on the door and body...
Chen Nuo frowned.
·
About ten minutes later, He Rong walked into an old residential complex.
The kind of apartment building built in the eighties or nineties.
Below the building, He Rong slowed her pace.
At that moment, a bicycle rode by from behind.
A girl in a school uniform dismounted and, upon seeing He Rong, greeted her enthusiastically.
"Rongrong sister!"
He Rong turned around, her face breaking into a smile, "Ah, it's you! Are you just getting out of school too?"
"Yes."
The girl looked fairly pretty, a bit taller and leaner.
Her uniform clearly read "XX Middle School."
The name of a well-known key middle school in Jinling City.
The girl exchanged greetings with He Rong, parked her bicycle, then said with a smile, "I'm heading home now, I have so much homework to do today, bye Rongrong sister."
"Okay, bye!" He Rong also appeared very amiable.
The schoolgirl picked up her heavy backpack and turned into one of the apartment buildings, while He Rong stood below for a while, listening to the other person's footsteps getting fainter as she ascended.
The smile faded from He Rong's face, replaced by a cold snort.
Then, after checking her surroundings, she slowly made her way to where the schoolgirl had parked her bicycle under the shed.
"Impressive, huh? Psh!"
He Rong muttered to herself in a low voice, then bent down quickly and pulled out the valve core of someone else's bicycle tire!
Obviously, this wasn't her first time doing such a thing.
When pulling out the valve core, she first gently unscrewed it a tiny bit so that the air would be released with a very low noise, not too loud to startle anyone.
Watching the tire deflate, He Rong stood up, dusted her hands off, and turned to leave.
Then, to Chen Nuo's surprise, He Rong didn't go upstairs to her home—though the neighborhood was clearly where she lived, she didn't enter any building but wandered out through another gate at the back of the complex.
Outside the rear gate of the neighborhood were a few street-facing shops.
He Rong stopped in front of a small restaurant.
At the restaurant's entrance, a spirited young man was hammering away, repairing a table.
He Rong went over to greet him, "Daqing!"
Seeing He Rong, the young man looked up, nodded, and smiled, "Finished school for the day, Rongrong?"
A middle-aged man with a limp leg and using crutches, one leg in a cast, came out of the restaurant.
The young man immediately went over to help, "Dad, why have you come out! You should be resting."
The middle-aged man shook his head, "Sitting still was making me feel stuffy."
Turning to see He Rong, the middle-aged man nodded in greeting, "Rongrong."
He Rong smiled in a very kind way, "Uncle, how is your leg?"
"The doctor said it will take a long time to recover after the cast is removed. It's not easy for bones to heal once they're broken, and I'm not young anymore— I need to recover slowly."
"Then you need to rest well. Be careful when you walk in the future, and don't fall again," He Rong said with a concerned tone.
Afterward, He Rong left.
She walked down a street to a place.
There was a small grocery store on the roadside.
But the sign had already collapsed to the ground.
The walls were blackened, and the store counters were all topsy-turvy, a complete mess from the soot and scorching of a fire!
He Rong looked around on the roadside, and a girl walked out from the ruins inside.
This girl was quite pretty, but her face was burdened with worries, looking troubled.
"Rongrong?"
"Hmm, I heard about what happened to you and came to see," He Rong said with a concerned expression, "Yingying, what happened?"
The girl shook her head, "I don't know... A fire just broke out. The fire department said it was due to electrical aging... Sigh."
As she spoke, the girl suddenly coughed a few times.
"Haven't you gotten over your cold yet?"
"I was about to get better... but two nights ago, the fire broke out, and I was busy putting out the fire all half of the night, then cleaning up... I've gotten sick again these last two days."
Yingying stepped back, "Okay, don't get too close to me. I wouldn't want to infect you."
"Then, you... be sure to take care of yourself."
"Mhm."
"If you need any help, tell me. We've been good friends for so many years."
A look of worry appeared on the girl's face, "There's nothing to help with... Rongrong, you've just started working and earning money; you can't help with this. This store was opened with borrowed money, and now it's burned down... A lot of the stock is gone too... Sigh, I shouldn't burden you with these troubles."
With that, the girl waved her hand, "Alright, this place is too messy, you better go back. Don't get your clothes dirty. And I've still got a cold; if I pass it on to you and you get sick, it could affect your work."
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After exchanging a few more pleasantries, the girl named He Rong turned around and left.
But as she turned, the concerned expression on her face turned into a cold sneer.
She walked back to the neighborhood and, after wandering for a while, found her target.
It was a limping stray cat.
The stray cat seemed very wary of He Rong. It tried to run away upon seeing her, but with one broken leg, He Rong caught up in a few steps and kicked it away!
The stray cat flew out and rolled in a corner. After struggling to get up, it limped away along the wall.
He Rong stood in place, exhaling a breath, a happy smile on her face.
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Chen Nuo stood on the rooftop of the building with a grim expression, coldly observing He Rong from above.
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Nighttime.
The night was quiet and still.
Behind the restaurant, inside a small bungalow.
In the narrow room, on a wooden bed, a middle-aged man was sleeping soundly, his leg in a cast, with a slightly awkward sleeping posture.
Chen Nuo stood quietly at the head of the bed, looking at the sleeping middle-aged man. Then he stepped forward, a finger gently resting on the man's forehead.
After a moment, Chen Nuo withdrew his hand, and in his palm was another...
Seed of Misfortune.
"So... it's like this after all," he murmured.
·
After spending another hour, Chen Nuo went back to the grocery store...
A moment later, he emerged, now with three Seeds of Misfortune in his conscious space.
"So young, yet such a malicious heart. Just like a little vixen," he said, shaking his head.
Apparently, He Rong had never even met Sun Keke before, yet she harmed her just like that...
And, listening to her conversations with several victims during the day, it also appeared they had good relationships, and they treated her quite well.
Could she have an antisocial personality disorder?
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