As Jianmen followed the silver ball of light to the north side of Chinatown, he had a worse and worse feeling in his gut. He couldn’t help but feel something wrong was going to happen, and his search for the scroll and then Shawn turning into a runaround only made things more concerning for him. He was aware that the Will did not want him to meddle with whatever was going to happen with Shawn, but he was worried that what was going on with Shawn would be something dangerous, like serious injuries, or death, or even worse.
And thinking of death, Jianmen revisited what happened the other day at the store - if he hadn’t thrown the phone at the man that was about to pull his gun on Shawn, Shawn might have been shot because the way he was holding his gun showed that he did not have much experience with using it, or that kind of confrontation; and on the other hand, the man with a matching jacket was fast and assertive in his movements, which showed that he not only had plenty of experience, he was also prepared to use it.
Building on this, Jianmen had a really bad feeling that this would be one of the things he feared the most, and if his suspicion turned out to be true, it would be really bad not only for Shawn, but also for Jianmen himself and even Nan.
It only took less than ten minutes of full speed run for Jianmen to reach the warehouse and storage area again. And as Jianmen followed the little silver ball of light, he found that he was going in the direction to the rundown building again.
When the ball of light finally reached the end of its lifecycle, he found that one police patrol car was parked in front of the rundown building, and there were some tire tracks on the road - looked like a car was there earlier and drove away. By Jianmen’s estimation of the timing, maybe it was the car that moved the body away.
The next ball of light conjured by Jianmen flew into a narrow but deep alleyway between the buildings of Uncle Luo’s Warehouse and General Tso’s Stock and Store. And when Jianmen entered the alleyway, he heard a faint but painful moan of a man.
“Fuck, Shawn, this better not be you.” Jianmen rushed to the source of moan.
Indeed, the one making the noise was not Shawn, it was another Chinese man lying on the ground, in a bloody mess and with a knife in his hand. And on his side, was another man - with clothing that looked strikingly similar to Shawn’s style.
Jianmen flipped the other man over, and indeed, it was Shawn. On his neck, there were two huge slash wounds, aside from various bruises showing what a brutal beating he endured. Jianmen gently lifted Shawn’s pale left hand and took a look - it was still warm, and all five of his fingers were bloodied or broken. And at the same time, Jianmen felt a strange “yanking” feeling, like some kind of invisible leash was placed upon him. If it was any other cultivator, they most likely wouldn’t have a definite idea on what this was. But with immense knowledge of the flow and mechanism of karma, Jianmen was able to tell what happened right away - it was the broken chain of karma being connected to him, and thus making Jianmen the “inheritor” of some of Shawn’s karma.
This kind of thing happens all the time, from Jianmen’s experience, one typical example of which is the relationship between parents and children - the birth of children means that the children will inherit some of the parents’ karma. And the inheritance of karma among non related individuals, though not as common, was nothing unheard of.
After a long sigh, Jianmen cast a small healing spell on the man lying beside Shawn, enough to keep him alive but not enough to raise suspicions when the help comes: “What happened? Tell me what happened.”
“Fuck … fucking De Niro.” the man coughed then answered: “He… he accused us of killing his man … his fucking man stole from us!”
“But you didn’t kill him right?” Jianmen asked.
“No! Of course… of course not! I just came here to get the … wait, who are you?” the man coughed up some blood as he struggled to sit straight up, and when he realized the bloodied knife in his hand he promptly dropped it: “And what’s this knife?! Did you put it in my hand?!”
“No, it was there when I saw you. I am Jianmen, Shanyi’s new help at the store. You’re Yewei Wu right?”
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“Yeah! Yeah. What the hell!” Yewei turned to his side and saw Shawn’s dead body then screamed: “Oh my god! Oh my god! Shanyi’s dead! And these fucking bastards tried to frame me as well!”
“Quiet!” Jianmen slapped Yewei: “Tell me what happened!”
“Can we… can we leave first?” Yewei started shaking, “They might be back if anyone heard me!”
“There’s a cop car outside, I doubt they’d be so bold to come back here.”
“These cops are in De Niro’s pocket!” Yewei grabbed onto Jianmen’s right hand sleeve: “Please! I don’t know how you came here, please get me outta here! I don’t wanna die!”
“Okay.” Jianmen sighed again and nodded.
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When Jianmen paused for a brief moment to lead his students onto another shop - one that was selling books, also one that Caroline and Jason never expected Jianmen would take them to when they were almost ready to leave.
“So indeed Shawn’s the unfortunate grandson who died.” Caroline asked while shaking her head: “How did Nan deal with it? And who’s this De Niro? Another mob boss?”
“Not yet a mob boss, but the leader of a medium sized gang. ” Jianmen took them directly to one of the shelves that was marked “Runes Research and Practices”: “And here, some of the additional learning material for you - I’ll cover some of the basics I chose for you, and you look around and find something for yourselves. ”
“Boss, you know that you’re asking us as students to choose textbooks for our upcoming studies trip?” Jason said while laughing: “Oh, I remember I had a professor that let us pick our own textbook once. And then half of us picked the catalogue of our library.”
“Okay, then choose one book each at least.” Jianmen shook his head: “Do pay attention and choose, the research and study of runes is of grave importance to your understanding of the rules of Xuanli and supernatural power in this world. And just like in the civilian world, a lot of times you can’t just punch your way out of things and you need to use your knowledge and experience to decipher a hidden solution.”
“Yeah, Jason, you hear that?” Caroline joked: “You leave the punching to me, you and your engineering school experience and knowledge can do the deciphering.”
“Everyone says that about anything powerful - you can’t buy your way out of things, you can’t pull your political strings out of things. But having money and political strings can still help - a lot too!” Jason chuckled, but still he started to browse through the books: “And can you continue with your story Boss? Tell us about how you didn’t punch your way out of things when you found your friend dead.”