Scumbag Alpha’s Pheromones Are Toxic - Chapter 22

Ji Yao read the news for a while longer before deciding it was meaningless. She pocketed her phone and went to find Qin Zishu.

The moment she stood up, she saw a figure ducking behind a corner up ahead.

Ji Yao: “…”

She walked over and, caught between laughter and tears, hauled Qin Zishu out. “How childish. You’re like a rebellious kid who refuses to grow up—all sneaky and suspicious.”

Qin Zishu protested, “I wasn’t being sneaky. I was watching you openly, honestly, and with full dignity.”

Ji Yao smiled. “Are you some kind of mouse spirit?”

“Even if I were a mouse spirit,” Qin Zishu said as they walked back together, “I’d be a beautiful one, like the ones in Journey to the West.”

After a short walk, Qin Zishu suddenly added out of nowhere, “Sometimes I really do wonder if I’m the reincarnation of a mouse spirit.”

Ji Yao arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

“I love the smell of gasoline when a car is fueling up, the scent of a new book when you tear off the plastic wrap, and that damp, cold smell of white walls after they’ve been soaked.” Qin Zishu recalled with growing certainty. “Sister, do you believe in past lives? I do. I feel like I must have been a mouse spirit.”

“You’re really obsessed with mice today, aren’t you?” Ji Yao laughed and took her hand. She swung their arms back and forth, just as she had when Qin Zishu was a child. “Miss Mouse Spirit, I’m fairly certain normal mice aren’t as rebellious or bold as you.”

Qin Zishu grumbled, “I wasn’t actually that rebellious.”

Ji Yao burst out laughing. “Just the fact that you dared to set a mountain on fire because of a disagreement makes you anything but an ordinary child.”

“I can’t believe that’s defined as rebellion. I was just worried about you back then.” The floodgates of memory opened, and Qin Zishu’s eyes sparkled as if she were claiming a prize. “Actually, I’ve never told anyone about the craziest thing

I’ve ever done.”

Ji Yao’s interest was piqued. “Tell me. Let’s see just how crazy it was.”

“Sister, I didn’t actually grow up in the orphanage from the start. I had a family once.”

As she spoke of her most distant origins, Qin Zishu’s tone naturally took on a somber weight. It was as if she were opening a thick, dust-covered book; she sighed, blowing away the surface grime, allowing the listener to feel the gray desolation of those years.

Ji Yao had investigated Qin Zishu’s background when she first adopted her, but it had only been a short line of text. It was nothing compared to a firsthand account. She set aside her playful mood and listened intently.

“Both of my parents were alive, and I had two siblings,” Qin Zishu began. “I shouldn’t have been sent to an orphanage. Lancang wasn’t a wealthy county, but the residents could at least support themselves through farming. No one was starving.”

Ji Yao knew Lancang was small; years ago, it was barely distinguishable from a cluster of villages. The orphanage was located in a village not far from the county center.

“My parents thought I was a disgrace, so they abandoned me at the orphanage,” Qin Zishu said, her eyes downcast. “As a child, I was more mischievous than any boy. I was always climbing trees and causing trouble for the family.”

Ji Yao didn’t understand. “But surely that isn’t enough to send you to an orphanage? After raising you for years, there must have been some affection.”

“That leads to the rebellious act I mentioned,” Qin Zishu said with a trace of a dry smile. “Sister, guess what kind of mad, rebellious thing I did to get kicked out of the house.”

Ji Yao felt her imagination was too limited to fathom the inner workings of such a “brat.”

Qin Zishu took a deep breath. “During the village’s annual ritual to the Mountain God, I pushed over the idol of Mount Kui.”

Ji Yao was shocked. “How old were you then? Surely it was an accident? Those statues are heavy, how did you—”

“I did it on purpose,” Qin Zishu said calmly. “I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I was at the age where I had to stand on a stool just to reach the altar.”

Ji Yao suddenly understood the gravity of her parents’ actions. In isolated mountain regions, villagers hold a deep, superstitious faith in deities. Rituals are a matter of life and death.

If a ritual goes wrong, panic ensues. People start whispering. By toppling the idol, little Qin Zishu would have been labeled as “unlucky” or “ominous”—someone who had offended the gods and would bring misfortune to her family.

“Why did you push it?” Ji Yao asked.

“I told them not to worship that god. I told them it was an evil deity. They wouldn’t believe me.”

Qin Zishu spoke with an airy indifference, but Ji Yao felt her blood run cold just listening.

After a moment of silence, Ji Yao remarked, “A rebellious kid not even three feet tall, yet you had a hundred pounds of backbone.”

“The adults threw me out of the temple. I was still fuming, so I snuck back in through the back door. I climbed onto a stool behind the statue and pushed the ‘Evil God’ over with everything I had,” Qin Zishu recalled. “The statue was solid porcelain; it only lost a layer of paint but that revealed the true, wicked features hidden underneath.”

“Huh?” Ji Yao felt like she was listening to a ghost story. “Brat, you aren’t just making this up to mess with me, are you? It sounds so supernatural.”

“Would making up a story get me a treat?” Qin Zishu countered.

“In your dreams.”

“Well, there you go. Why would I bother without an incentive?”

Ji Yao’s expression shifted several times before she urged, “Go on. What happened next?”

“The villagers worshipped that statue with great fanfare every year,” Qin Zishu said. “They claimed the idol was naturally formed on Mount Kui and was the source of the village’s blessings. There were small fairs every month, but the Double Ninth Festival was the grandest event. People from all over Lancang County would come.

I told them it was evil, but no one believed me. Not until I pushed over that benevolent, Guanyin-faced statue.

The pure, white exterior was just a layer of paint. Underneath was a different glaze. The deity that had ‘blessed’ them for a thousand years had ink-black eyes and crimson lips, radiating a sinister aura. The features were dignified, yet they bore an expression of unspeakable mockery and derision.

A god shouldn’t smile like that.

The elders called it—The Deity’s Loathing of Mortals.”

“Wow, your hometown is quite legendary,” Ji Yao said, finding it fascinating. “But if you exposed a fake god, why were you still sent to the orphanage at Mount Kui?”

Qin Zishu paused, looking uncertain. “Maybe because I later stood up to defend that ‘Evil God’?”

Ji Yao: “…”

Little Qin Zishu was definitely a bit ‘unusual.’ If I had been there, I might have believed she was cursed, too.

Without waiting for Ji Yao to ask, Qin Zishu explained naturally, “I don’t know why, but seeing the shattered statue, I suddenly felt the deity wasn’t entirely bad. I wanted to speak up for her. But they didn’t believe me anymore. They said the Evil God had seduced my mind and made me ‘unclean.’ They sent me to the orphanage to fend for myself.”

Ji Yao gasped, her voice sounding raspy. “How could they.”

Qin Zishu shrugged, seemingly unbothered. “It’s fine. I don’t care.”

Ji Yao’s expression was complex. “Why did you suddenly lose your mind like that?”

Noticing Qin Zishu didn’t answer, Ji Yao tried to lighten the mood with a joke. “Was little Qin Zishu really under a spell?”

Qin Zishu didn’t deny it. She only said, “I believe there are gods in this world.”

Because a god had blessed her, and a god had punished her. She didn’t know if the divine felt love or hate; it had thrown her into a cage, pulled her out of the mire, and yet trapped her in a cycle.

Perhaps that god was evil, but possessed a lingering conscience struggling within itself, just as she did.

“Maybe the god is in pain, too,” Ji Yao said, trying to follow her unconventional logic. “You two should just forgive each other and call it even. You broke her, and then you burned her mountain down. The fact that you’re still alive and kicking shows she’s a generous deity who doesn’t hold a grudge against a brat.”

Qin Zishu: “…”

That actually makes a lot of sense.

“Wait,” Ji Yao added, her imagination suddenly expanding. “Do you think the disaster when you were seven, the flood had something to do with these gods? Why did the flood specifically hit Mount Kui, which is relatively high ground?

Usually, water flows to the lowlands. It shouldn’t have flooded the orphanage or buried the village at the foot of the mountain in a landslide.”

It was indeed a strange mystery.

Qin Zishu’s eyes darkened. If it hadn’t been for that sudden disaster, the person Ji Yao took away back then might have been Jiang Jiaran.