113: Chapter 113 Teahouse in the Old Town

The following afternoon.

Xiangyang Street, Old District, Jinghai City.

This street had long been marked for demolition. Circles drawn in red paint were everywhere on the walls along the street, with a crooked "Demolish" character inside them.

The "A Cup of Spring" tea house sat at the end of the street.

The lighting was dim, and most of the wall plaster had fallen off, revealing the blackened grey bricks underneath.

Jiang Feng set up his small folding stool in a corner, with a square table placed in front of him.

He hung a piece of cardboard on the corner of the table with nine large characters written on it: Brewing Tea and Character Divination, No Charge if Inaccurate.

There weren't many people in the tea house. The proprietress was a middle-aged woman in her forties with permed, curly hair.

She sat behind the counter, clutching a handful of melon seeds.

"I say, young man. You look fair and clean; why do you have to come to this dump of mine to swindle people?"

The proprietress rolled her eyes.

"Even the stray dogs on this street are nearly starving to death. Who has spare money for a fortune teller? You didn't come here just for the air conditioning, did you?"

Jiang Feng ignored her, pulling two folded straws from his pocket and idly twirling them between his fingers.

"Did you hear me?" Seeing him remain silent, the proprietress raised her voice significantly. "There's a limit to freeloading off the AC! You ordered a cup of the cheapest Tea scraps and have been sitting there all afternoon. Do you think my electricity is free?"

Jiang Feng silently activated the [Lingxi Ear].

He filtered out the frequency of the proprietress's shrill voice, and the world instantly became much quieter.

Sitting on his stool, he calculated the business for this trip.

The original site of the Xiangyanghua Orphanage was right at the end of this street.

Although it had long been burned to the ground, the karma of those years definitely still lingered here.

Jiang Feng knew that since the system had sent him here to "Break the Obsession," it would surely deliver the key figures to him.

Just then, the wooden door of the tea house let out a shrill creak.

Someone walked in.

It was a scrawny old man leaning on a blind cane.

Only one of his eyes was functional, and it was cloudy and bloodshot.

The other eye had completely collapsed, with the eyelids pressed tightly together, clearly just an empty socket.

He entered the tea house, tapping the ground with his cane.

The proprietress stopped cracking melon seeds. She recognized the old man; all the neighbors knew him.

"Old Zhou, here for tea again?" the proprietress greeted him with a hint of perfunctoriness. "The usual? A cup of Tea scraps?"

Old Zhou nodded, his cloudy eye scanning the tea house.

Finally, his gaze landed on the cardboard in Jiang Feng's corner.

The tapping of the cane on the floor quickened as the old man walked straight toward Jiang Feng's square table.

He sat down slowly and leaned his cane against the edge of the table.

"Is your Character Divination accurate?"

Jiang Feng put down the straws. "The sign says it clearly."

The old man gave a dry laugh, revealing a few yellowed teeth.

"Before I retired, I was a policeman. In my life, I've caught countless thieves and seen countless dead bodies."

"I don't believe in fate; I only believe in evidence."

"But today, I'll believe in the supernatural for once."

Hearing the word "policeman," the proprietress behind the counter immediately shut her mouth.

These days, no one wanted to provoke someone who had worn that uniform.

Old Chen's sitting posture didn't change, but his sharp eyes were already fixed on Old Zhou's hands on the table.

There were thick calluses on the webs of his hands and the sides of his index fingers—marks left by years of gripping a gun.

The old man reached out his right hand and dipped his index finger into the cup of low-quality tea in front of him.

His rough fingertip, wet with tea, slid across the greasy wooden table surface.

He wrote very slowly, his wrist trembling slightly.

Stroke by stroke.

A crooked character for "Blind" (blind) appeared on the tabletop.

Jiang Feng looked down at the character. The tea quickly seeped into the tiny cracks on the wooden table's surface.

The originally clear water marks began to blur at the edges. The handwriting was like a living thing, struggling not to be swallowed by the old wood.

Jiang Feng smiled. He knew all too well what these obscured traces represented.

"Old gentleman, what would you like to ask?" Jiang Feng leaned back in his chair.

"I'm asking for an outcome." The old man stared at the nearly dried character. "I'm asking if I can sleep soundly for the rest of my life."

Jiang Feng crossed his hands over his lap.

His current feeling was like a player with a max-level account returning to the novice village to crush everyone.

The advantage of the information gap gave him an inherent sense of oppressive control over the entire situation.

"The character for 'Blind' (blind) is composed of 'Death' (Death) and 'Eye' (Head)." Jiang Feng spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. "Old gentleman, it's not that your eye is blind; it's that your heart is blind."

The old man's single eye narrowed, and he looked at Jiang Feng coldly. "Young man, fortune-telling platitudes don't work on me. 'Death and Eye'? This eye of mine was injured during a mission. How is that Character Divination?"

"A mission?" Jiang Feng shook his head. "The scene you went to back then was less a mission and more a play arranged by someone else. In that play, you didn't see the real director. Therefore, your heart became a blind spot."

Old Zhou's previously casual sitting posture changed slightly as his back straightened.

Jiang Feng gave him no room to breathe.

He knew that platitudes and probing were meaningless against an old policeman like this.

He had to serve the main course directly, using the core truth to shatter his psychological defenses.

Jiang Feng leaned forward, his voice kept very low, audible only to the three of them.

"The fire at the Xiangyanghua Orphanage was indeed a clean sweep." Jiang Feng stared into the old man's single eye. "But what was even cleaner was a certain person's locked-room case."

The old man's breathing hitched.

Jiang Feng continued his onslaught. "That blind eye of yours wasn't lost while catching a thief at all. You lost it by driving yourself mad while searching for an impossible truth in the ruins. Am I right, Old Zhou?"

The tea house became terrifyingly quiet; even the sound of the proprietress cracking seeds vanished.

Old Chen remained silent, but there was an irrepressible fervor in the way he looked at Jiang Feng.

The Boss could always strike the heart of the matter with a single sentence.

Old Zhou's cloudy single eye widened to its limit, the red veins on the white of his eye looking as if they were about to burst.

He raised his withered hands and gripped the corners of the table, the veins on the backs of his hands bulging one by one, as if trying to break free from his skin.

He looked at the excessively young fortune teller before him as if he were looking at a monster crawled out of hell.

"You..." The old man's voice changed completely, carrying a fear and despair that had been suppressed for over a decade. "How do you know it was a play?"

He gasped for air, his chest heaving violently.

"When Dean Fiend, Devil died... the door to that basement was clearly locked from the inside!"