My Clean Up (Part 2)
My hair was grey and red, a combination of mixing blood and dust together. It smelt pungent, too. You think I came up with the aloof character to live out my fantasies? I did it so that nobody would come close enough to check my hair! I was beyond lucky for nobody to have seen my white hair because blood lost its colour in a day in your hair and equally lucky Jiang Chen had so many materials available.
Adepts’ hair colours differed from that of ordinary people. The former had more blood circulating to their head. As a consequence, advanced internal discipline practitioners had a darker black lustre to their hair that didn’t turn white with age. That was how my shifu duped countless, innumerable, uncountable scores of young girls into believing he was still in his twenties.
By the time I cleaned out my hair, my head of white hair was fully visible. I splayed my hair and rubbed in the chemical formula I made as fast as I could. There was barely enough dye to cover my roots, so expecting to dye it as dark black as an elite was impossible. I, nonetheless, had the excuse of being injured. I also made some hair dye in three of the thirteen cauldrons I had simmering.
I needed to apply the three dyes one after another to ensure it couldn’t be washed out with water – as well as escape the perceptive eyes of adepts. I also needed to simmer them for six to eight hours for the dyes to work as intended. That was why I had some minions start simmering the ingredients for me while I was tending to Elder Lianhua’s injuries. I had other cauldrons simmering at the same time in order to mask the smell of hair dyes.
My hair dyes were ready, but did you think that was all I needed?! Wrong! Subsequent to applying the hair dye, I had to wrap my hair up and heat it with a flame. Usually, I used my internal strength to raise the temperature, completing the process within roughly an hour. Now, I needed, at the very least, two damn hours!
I could’ve slapped some herbs on my face if somebody suddenly entered and passed it off as washing my face. My hair, however… Yeah, there was no improvising my way out.
Why does my hair have to be a problem every time I’m in trouble?!
Boss almost saw my white hair in the palace during the revolt. Tian Hu gave me a hard time in Nanjiang over my hair. No lie: I sometimes considered if I should just go bald. Whatever the case, my only option at the moment was to hurry up with my hair dye.
Once I walked to a spot in the room, I abruptly stopped. Then, I retreated a step. When I stepped on a particular spot on the floor, the sound my footstep produced was different to everywhere else, albeit barely noticeable even to me.
There’s no secret room where someone is monitoring me under here, is there…?
I stamped on the spot twice and cursed, “Your mother is dead. Hey, your mother is dead.”
…
‘Kay, there’s nobody down there.
I held a torch up to my wrapped-up head with my left hand whilst knocking along the ground with my other hand, searching for where the echoes differed. By then, I was sure that it was hollow under the odd spot. Despite using thick boards, the fact of the matter was that it was different to other spots.
My shifu was a master at setting contraptions. He had plenty of contraptions installed in his room, though he never answered why he needed them. After I moved out and Young Shiyi found my porn stash multiple times, I had to consult Shifu for advice on contraptions. I remembering him grinning as he remarked, “I knew this day would come to you.”
Found it.
I didn’t let my thrill or unease cloud my judgement. Whenever something was concealed so carefully, it had to be some top secret. If there was a secret martial arts manual, some millennium-year-old demon or terrifying beast, I might’ve lost my life as soon as I opened it.
Mm…
I rubbed the back of my neck.
Well… I have free time on my hands at the moment…
I activated the contraption as my shifu taught me. The floor gradually rose. I pushed down, then activated the contraption again – rinsed and repeated seven times. On the fifth repeat, I had to lift the floorboard out half an inch and then pulled the board out in the end. This was one of the several advanced methods Shifu taught me.
According to Shifu, these few methods he taught me failed more often than out. He said, generally speaking, they’d only work when robbing graves. Although I wanted to know how he knew how to rob graves, I was aware it was best not to pry too much into his business, or my head would explode.
Anyhow, the main focus was, why was there such a contraption in the room? The floorboard I removed was large enough for only one person to squeeze through.
Aiming a torch at the dark gap only provided me a glimpse of a dozen-odd steps leading downward. Based on the echo, the passageway stretched dozens of metres.
I stopped to think and then focused on listening to sounds outside. Nobody was coming, but I didn’t head down straight away. I wrapped up the herbs and other materials I was using as well as put out the stoves so that the scent of the herbs would spread. I carried the stuff I wrapped up with me slowly down the staircase. Several steps down, I stopped to think again and decided to pull the floorboard back into place so that nobody could tell it had been removed.
Only once I closed the floor did I notice there were a lot of tiny holes in the ground that you couldn’t see with the naked eye. Needless to say, they were for providing an airway for the underground passageway. That being said, the passageway was large enough for oxygen to not been an issue.
I didn’t hear any movement in the passageway until the moment I went to head down. I almost dropped the torch! Turned out it was just Yan Jiangnan waking up upstairs.
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