055. Inn
Qingling endured it again and again, but he couldn't bear it anymore.
He asked: "You are going to kill me, how can I not be afraid?"
Isn't it normal for living people to be afraid of seeing the miserable and horrible appearance of their own kind or even living things? What's more, this evil ghost is thinking about his life all day long.
Shang Changheng disagreed. He said seriously, "You are my wife, you must be with me. It is only natural for me to take you away."
"But I am also a living person." Qing Ling was even more determined. He looked straight at Shang Changheng, "I am afraid of death, and I am even more afraid of you who want to kill me."
After a moment of silence, Shang Changheng lowered his eyes as if nothing had happened, and continued to read the book floating in front of him. He asked casually, "So what? The Qing family has borrowed my luck for a thousand years. If it weren't for me, the Qing family wouldn't have been able to survive until today, and there wouldn't be you. Qingling, it was me who was buried in that tomb for a thousand years in exchange for the Qing family's worry-free food and clothing for a thousand years."
Qingling suddenly felt deflated.
It was not him who imprisoned Shang Changheng in the tomb, but he did receive a share of the benefits from Shang Changheng.
"But if you want to live, you have a way out." Shang Changheng said in a very normal tone, "Then just kill me. Don't think about King Lie of Zhou Shang Changheng. After all, we are all dead. It doesn't matter if we die again."
Shang Changheng figured it out. As long as Qingling kept his eyes on him, it would be interesting even if he spent the whole day thinking about how to get rid of him.
It's much more comfortable than thinking about other messy things in front of his face.
Qing Ling: “…” I always feel it’s weird.
.
The head of Shang Changheng is buried under Zhanlong Mountain in Mingzhou, while his torso is buried at Huangshan Ridge in Mingzhou. These two places were Zhou Dynasty territories that were taken away by the Dongyi people thousands of years ago.
That is to say, when Shang Changheng was buried, he was in the territory of the Dongyi people. Past Mingzhou and further east is the place where the fiercest fighting took place. It has now been renamed Yuzhou. The terrain has changed over the years. The Yaoshan Mountain that Shang Changheng once defended is no longer a steep and continuous mountain range. The mountains and rivers have moved, the water veins have changed, and the center surrounded by mountains is Yuzhou, which is low in the middle and high outside, with towering mountains.
The mountains divided Yuzhou into several small towns. It took nearly a month on the road to reach the edge of Yuzhou.
But here, Shang Changheng did not feel that this was his burial place.
Even so, one still had to cross the mountains to enter the city. During the hot summer, Qingling felt much more comfortable because of Shang Changheng.
Over the past month, they have occasionally stayed in villages and towns. Qingling has even seen one or two ghosts wandering around, but they are all newly dead ghosts. Most likely, they have not yet been taken away by the underworld. It is now late at night, and they should find a place to rest, but the mountain road is difficult to walk on and they have wasted time. They cannot rest on the narrow and rugged mountain road, so they can only travel at night.
Tired from riding horses during the day, Zhu Lezhi and Miaoyuan took a rest in the carriage. Qingling estimated that they were almost out of the mountain road, so he opened the window and looked out. In the distance, he saw a little red light swaying in the wind, like a lantern at the door.
"There seems to be someone in front." Qingling said.
Zhu Lezhi immediately opened the window and looked out. Sure enough, he saw a lantern lit at the end of the mountain road. "It's true. But this lantern is a bit creepy."
The mountain road was dark and eerie, and the lanterns at the end were as red as blood. In this quiet and deserted place, it looked abnormal no matter how you looked at it.
"There is a flag." Qing Ling said. The carriage came closer and he could see more clearly. The tattered flag fluttered in the wind. He slowly read the words on it: "Inn at the Foot of the Mountain."
It is indeed at the foot of the mountain.
"When something is abnormal, there must be something wrong." Miao Yuan also found it strange.
If this kind of thing had happened in the past, both Miao Yuan and Zhu Lezhi would have immediately become alert, but now they were just gossiping and were not too worried.
With the person beside Qing Ling, unless there is another evil spirit that can still jump around and eat evil spirits from a thousand years ago, it will be difficult for them to die even if they provoke the most bizarre things.
"It's an inn after all, so it's okay to go in and take a rest." Qing Ling knocked on the door of the carriage and received a "hmm" from Shang Changheng outside.
If anything is getting in his way, get rid of it.
.
The Mountain Foot Inn is indeed at the foot of the mountain. It is a small two-story building that is brightly lit. The two red lanterns at the gate emit a scarlet and ominous light, and the air is filled with a gloomy aura.
Qing Ling found some dark brown marks on the door of the inn. He frowned slightly and took a square handkerchief to pad the door, trying to push it open. However, the door did not move at all when he pushed it.
Um?
Can’t push it open?
Qing Ling simply knocked twice and said to the inside: "Why aren't you welcoming guests when the lanterns are lit in the inn?"
After a while, a man's trembling voice came from inside: "The hotel is full. Let's go to another hotel."
Shang Changheng snorted coldly and took a step forward. The door that Qingling couldn't push open slowly opened. There were tables and chairs on the first floor of the inn. It seemed to be a place for passing guests to have meals, but at the moment there was no one in the house and the tables and chairs were very worn out.
Behind the counter stood a burly bearded man. The flesh on his face made him look fierce. A scar ran down his forehead, cutting off his eyebrow. But at this moment, he looked panicked. When he saw Qing Ling and his friends coming in, he smiled awkwardly, "Dear guests... there really are no rooms available."
"Oh." Qing Ling said indifferently, "Do I have to stay here?"
The man's voice trembled. "Well, well, well...it's not good to chase other customers away. We are doing serious business here."
He also deliberately emphasized seriousness.
Zhu Lezhi took a step forward, stretched out his hand and knocked on the counter twice, and said with a smile: "Don't play these empty games, tell me where the mountain is, and call your guests out to see that the inn in this shabby place is full of people. You think it's easy to fool girls, right?"
"How dare I." The man waved his hands repeatedly. When he was about to say something else, a skinny man in simple clothes came down from the second floor. He scratched his head and looked at the people below in a daze. "What are you doing? You are not sleeping in the middle of the night and you are bothering others. Hiss... My head hurts a little. I think I forgot something."
Qingling looked at the man, who looked tired and weak. After he finished speaking, he yawned, turned around and walked back. When he turned around, Qingling's pupils suddenly shrank.
The man who was complaining of a headache had a big hole on the back of his head, with a bloody hole bigger than a fist, as if the bone had been torn off by someone. The blood stuck to the hair around it had solidified into a dark brown and black blood clot.
Qingling looked back at the guy who was shaking like a sieve.
The waiter forced a smile again: "I am just a shopkeeper. We opened this shop here to provide convenience for the guests who pass by. You are all... not ordinary people. Why do you have to make trouble? Our boss is also... quite prestigious in Yuzhou. You are new here, so please don't make things difficult for us. We should keep to ourselves."
"You have a boss." Zhu Lezhi smiled and pointed at Qingling. "What a coincidence, this is our boss. We just came here to pay our respects to the boss. How can we refuse to let you in?"
The guy really couldn't laugh anymore. He thought to himself, you guys don't look like you guys are here to pay homage to the master of the mountain?
A monk full of merits, a girl full of spiritual energy, and the other two are even stranger. One is a powerful medicine that smells expensive, and he is followed by a... evil ghost whose background you can't tell but just looks scary.
Is this a visit to a leader or a challenge?
“Our boss… is, is, is from Xuanmen, nicknamed Jiuling. He is the descendant of the ghost-controlling sect.” The waiter was so frightened that his ferocious features were distorted and he stumbled several times while speaking.
"Ghost taming." Zhu Lezhi frowned slightly, turned around and said to Qingling, "This is also passed down from ancient times, but nowadays ghosts are rare in this world, and the art of ghost taming has gradually declined. It is true that I have not heard of it for a long time. I heard from the predecessors before that the tradition might have been broken, but I didn't expect that there are descendants."
Miao Yuan took over the conversation: "The last person who could control ghosts disappeared decades ago. His name was Qiu Ping."
Qing Ling nodded, "So here——"
Before he finished speaking, he suddenly felt some evil energy approaching, but this evil energy was mixed with life energy, half human, half ghost.
Then a man wearing a straw hat and raincoat suddenly appeared at the door, with a hunched back. In the blink of an eye, he entered the store. His face was hidden under the straw hat. As soon as he entered the store, he said, "Serve the food, as usual."
No one responded.
He seemed to have just noticed something was wrong in the store. He glanced at a few people with a cold gaze and asked hoarsely, "What's going on?"
The guy said with a bitter face: "This... I'm afraid today is..."
The man in the bamboo hat snorted coldly. He looked at Miao Yuan and said, "Physical cultivation, the rosary in your hand, it's from Wu Nian Temple, right? It's the Seven Treasures Bodhi."
He turned to look at Zhu Lezhi again, "Girl from the Zhu family in Tongzhou, I recognize the whip on your waist."
After saying that, his eyes fell on Qingling.
Qingling suddenly felt the naked malice.
"You...tsk, you smell so good-ah!"
Before he could finish his words, he had already fallen to the ground. Shang Changheng put one foot on his chest and sneered, "You are taking advantage of your age in front of me. Speak nicely."
“You…you…” The man was stunned, his bamboo hat fell off, revealing a lifeless, thin face, as old as a dead tree. His calmness just now disappeared completely, and his legs began to tremble like the guy. He asked tremblingly: “Are you…a ghost?”
It is very common to see ghosts in this place, but he really didn't realize it just now. It was actually a ghost, and... a ghost that could make him feel the crisis of life and death from the bottom of his heart.
"Who are you?" Shang Changheng asked.
"I'm Song Cheng." Song Cheng said tremblingly, "I'm a corpse dealer in Yuzhou."
Qing Ling knew about corpse recovery. This business was very common. As long as there was water, there would be people doing this business. People made a living by the water, but the business was different. Moreover, when it came to corpse recovery, everyone had different skills and used different methods. There were also corpse recoverers who had been passed down in a formal way, but they were rare nowadays.
Qingling looked at the guy thoughtfully.
So what is this?
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