Chapter 120 Mr. Fang: "You can't escape now, hand over the death umbrella to me..."
"It's him!" Zhou Yaren blurted out, suddenly sitting up from the ground, just in time to meet Li Liuyun, who was examining his pulse.
Li Liuyun, who nearly bumped into someone, stepped back a little: "What is he?"
Lin Mu rubbed his sleepy eyes and said, "I can tell you're awake."
Lian Zhao and Li Liuyun took turns keeping watch. He had just closed his eyes when he heard Ting Fengzhi sit up abruptly. He must have had a nightmare. He asked casually, "Ting Fengzhi, what is he?"
Zhou Yaren's forehead was covered in cold sweat, his blind pupils were unfocused. He was clearly "staring" directly at Li Liuyun, but he looked down on everyone: "That person who set up the formation."
Hearing the noise, the other two boys opened their eyes one after the other. Yu Heqi looked blank and asked, "Huh?"
Wen Yi didn't react either: "What formation?"
Lin Mu immediately tensed up, scrambled to his feet, and leaned closer to ask, "You mean the formation at Fengling Ferry? The one with the smiling face? Who is he?"
The face Zhou Yaren saw in the death report was definitely real; he had seen it before and recognized it.
In his utter despair, imprisoned, his body was covered in wounds from torture, the sores festering and oozing pus and blood. One of his legs, broken by a guard over a month earlier and now crooked, was immobile. Even so, his hands and feet were still bound by heavy iron shackles. At that time, Zhou Yaren was barely clinging to life, having gone without food or water for two days, merely lying paralyzed in prison awaiting death.
The prison reeked of foul odors, and the sounds of people crying out for justice and banging on the cell door with their shackles were constant.
In the dim light, Zhou Yaren heard the jailer's low voice: "Those locked up here are all death row inmates, they are full of bad luck. You are of noble status, how can you come to this filthy and disgusting place?"
When the prisoners saw officials arrive, they all clung to the cell doors, crying out for their innocence.
"My lord, my lord, I'm innocent! My lord, I'm innocent!"
"My lord, please spare me! I'm innocent! I didn't kill anyone, and I didn't set any fires."
"I didn't poison him, it wasn't me who poisoned him, Your Excellency, please see the truth."
It was very noisy, Zhou Yaren's ears were ringing, until the iron door of the cage was pushed open and a pair of official boots stopped in front of him.
Perhaps disgusted by his filth and stench, the man stepped back a little, covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, and squatted down to examine him.
The man spoke up: "Let me see his face."
So the jailer quickly brushed Zhou Yaren's hair, which was stuck together in clumps, away.
The man examined it for a long time, then shook his head: "How can it be so dirty? I can't see clearly."
Without hesitation, the jailer grabbed Zhou Yaren's sleeve and rubbed it against her face.
The man finally recognized the face: "Ah, how did you end up looking like this?"
The jailer adopted a fawning expression, forcing a smile and trying to evade the question: "There's nothing I can do, he's too stubborn, but he'll be executed soon anyway."
"Is that so?"
Zhou Yaren struggled to open his swollen, red eyes and tried with all his might to move his arm, but because the other person was standing too far away, he couldn't even reach those black boots. He could only weakly utter two words: "No..."
My throat was so dry and cracked, it felt like it had been stabbed open with a razor blade.
The man leaned closer: "What did you say?"
"no……"
"Not what?"
Zhou Yaren was speechless.
So the man bent down towards him, lowered the handkerchief covering his mouth and nose, and asked in a low voice, "Do you want to live?"
With her eyes swollen and her vision blurred, Zhou Yaren finally saw the other person's face clearly up close. It was the same Taoist priest she had met at the Death Umbrella.
For a very long time, from the moment the other party saved his life until today, Zhou Yaren has always regarded him as a benefactor, always remembering his life-saving grace, and vowing to repay him with all his might, even at the cost of his own life, in the future.
"Who is this person?" Wen Yi pressed.
Zhou Yaren: "Mr. Fang."
Lian Zhao: "Who?"
Zhou Yaren said, "Xu Zhangfang."
Apart from Li Liuyun, the other four teenagers had never heard of this unknown figure.
Li Liuyun asked, "You mean the Grand Musician?"
"Huh?" Lin Mu exclaimed in surprise, "Isn't the Grand Musician Ting Fengzhi's master?!"
“That’s not right,” Wen Yi remembered the sect leader mentioning something before, “wasn’t Ting Fengzhi’s master named Yin Ru something?”
Li Liuyun: "Yin Shiru is the current Grand Master of Music in the palace, and he was also a student cultivated and promoted by the previous Grand Master of Music, Mr. Fang."
Xu Zhangfang had already resigned from his official post eight years ago, citing illness.
Zhou Yaren was also protected by Xu Zhangfang eight years ago when he was in office. In the middle of spring that year, the Jitian ceremony was held, in which the emperor personally plowed the fields and offered sacrifices, and went to the Altar of the God of Earth and Grain to pray for favorable weather.
Xu Zhangfang, the Grand Master of Music, ascended the altar to divine the wind and came up with the prophecy: "The Wind Master is in prison, yet he can control the eight winds. He is the messenger of heaven and earth, able to hear the sounds of heaven and earth, hear the words of the sages of the past, and dispel the confusion of the ages."
To be honest, Xu Zhangfang passed on the Wind Listening Technique to Zhou Yaren. Although he did not personally teach him and Zhou Yaren relied on his own self-study and enlightenment, Xu Zhangfang was still a mentor who led him into this path.
Xu Zhangfang refused to accept Zhou Yaren as his disciple and soon resigned from his official post, his whereabouts remaining unknown.
Over the years, Zhou Yaren has asked her master about Mr. Fang many times, but her master always said he didn't know where he was and then urged her to study hard and not to worry about him.
How could he not care? He's cared for him for so many years.
Zhou Yaren found it hard to accept...
"But..." Li Liuyun hesitated, "How could it be him?"
Yes, Zhou Yaren also wanted to ask, how could it be him?
How could it be Mr. Fang?
Perhaps from the very beginning, this was a long-planned conspiracy, and I was just a pawn being manipulated. What's even more ridiculous is that the pawn was grateful to them.
Li Liuyun asked, "Tingfengzhi, the Smiling Man has always worn a mask, and we have never seen his true face. How do you know that the previous Grand Musician was the one who set up the formation at Fengling Ferry?"
Zhou Yaren suppressed her turbulent emotions: "Not only was the wrongful conviction at Fenglingdu and the execution platform formation his doing, but he was also responsible for the Northern Qu Taiyin/Dao Body."
When Zhou Yaren said this, all the teenagers present were stunned.
“No,” Lian Zhao said, stunned and unable to process what was happening for a moment, “Taiyin/Dao Body? Isn’t that an array formation from the Qin Dynasty?”
A group of teenagers from Taihang Road searched through the Beiqu Ghost Office again and again, and everyone knew that the Taiyin Dao Body belonged to the Qin Dynasty's remnant array!
Zhou Yaren's clenched knuckles turned white: "Aren't they here refining the elixir of immortality?"
The information conveyed in the few words Tingfengzhi uttered after waking up was so immense that it stirred up a huge storm in the minds of the teenagers.
As they pieced together the events, the more they thought about it, the more shocked they became, almost to the point of indigestion.
After a long silence, Lin Mu exclaimed, "My God..."
Then Yu Heqi also sighed, "My God..."
Wen Yi covered his forehead: "I can't, I need to calm down..."
Lian Zhao pondered with disbelief, "So, they really did use the Undying People to concoct an elixir of immortality, and some people who consumed it have lived from the Qin Dynasty to the present day?"
Li Liuyun stared thoughtfully at Tingfengzhi, and just as he was about to speak, a sound of a knife slicing through wood came from outside.
boom--
Something heavy collapsed outside the stupa.
Zhou Yaren immediately became alert: "Someone's coming."
Boom boom—
One after another, loud crashes and thuds echoed as the buildings collapsed and slammed into the ground.
Spurred on, everyone inside the stone chamber stood up, and several young men gripped their swords and rushed out.
"who?"
"The Laughing Man?"
"He actually managed to find us?"
In fact, there was no need to ask further; they could all guess who was stepping into the misty pine forest deep in the mountains at this moment.
As the group emerged from the pagoda, they saw that the pine trees that had stood atop several gates had been cut in half and lay scattered haphazardly in a row.
The boys looked around, but there was no one outside the pagoda. Perhaps the visitor was hiding somewhere in the impenetrable fog.
Zhou Yaren spoke up: "It's up there."
The teenagers looked up, but could only see the fourth level of the tower; the rest was shrouded in a thick, milky-white fog.
As soon as Zhou Yaren finished speaking, a long gust of wind suddenly arose, and she soared into the air with a whoosh.
Then a sharp figure swooped down from the top of the pagoda, like a long sword cleaving down!
Lin Mu saw a smiling white mask burst through the fog and crash down face-first, like a persistent ghost.
"Scatter!" Li Liuyun shouted immediately, and all the teenagers scattered like birds and beasts, leaping several feet away.
The smiling man's palm strike pierced the ground, and the force of the impact shattered the rocks, let alone flesh and blood, which would surely be reduced to dust.
The boys stared at the rubble and the deep pit where the ground had collapsed, their hearts filled with horror. Fortunately, they hadn't fought head-on; their opponent's palm strike could have been deadly, possibly killing them all.
The smiling man flipped himself to a standing position, his sleeves billowing as he raised his palms, adopting the air of a hermit master, and said in a pretentious manner, "This is the land of the Buddha, why do you children disturb the peace of the high monk?"
After speaking, he looked at Zhou Yaren standing in front of the tower gate. She looked disheveled, half-dead, like a fish on a chopping board.
The smiling man opened his palm to him and said in a friendly tone, "You can't escape now. Hand over the Death Umbrella to me."
Lin Mu wanted to retort, "You're the one who actually cut down trees and caused trouble in front of the pagoda, aren't you?" But he couldn't get a word in edgewise and only heard Feng Zhi say.
"What 'land of pagodas'? It's nothing more than He Yan building Buddhas and pagodas in your alchemy room so that those immortals who died without a burial place can have a tomb."
The boy was somewhat confused.
Who? He Yan? Where did He Yan come from? Did they miss some information just now?
The smiling man exclaimed "Ah!" in a tone that was clearly surprised, yet not entirely unexpected.
The two seemed to have absolutely no communication barriers.
"Us?" The tone was both surprised and knowing; surprised that Zhou Yaren already knew, and knowing that Zhou Yaren already knew.
That's true. Now that they've found the alchemy room, it's hard not to know a lot of things.
“You, all.” Zhou Yaren repeated each word slowly and deliberately, with unwavering resolve.
The smiling man smiled calmly: "But there are no 'us' here, only me."
The blind man's bloodshot eyes seemed to pierce through him, but what good was staring so wide when he couldn't see anything?
The smiling man stood with his hands behind his back. He had considered destroying the alchemy room back then, but he didn't know where to move those things. It seemed that no matter where he put them, there was no way to be sure of safety. In the end, he thought he was too lazy to bother. Anyway, everyone who knew about this place was dead, and the other one was also imprisoned in the bottom of Beiqu, never to see the light of day again.
Moreover, this mountain peak had been meticulously protected by a maze-like array, making it difficult even for him to enter. However, this suited his purposes perfectly, so he simply left it unattended.
Even now, after much deliberation, the smiling man finally fixed his gaze on the Death Umbrella: "She's the one who led you here, isn't she?"
As expected, my earlier worries were justified. Qiu Jue Dao did not completely slaughter Bai Yuan; the umbrella still needed to be destroyed.
As he was thinking, he heard Zhou Yaren say something.
"Yes, Mr. Fang."
Upon hearing this, the smiling man paused, then suddenly burst into two loud laughs. His figure moved as fast as an arrow, aiming straight for Zhou Yaren's vital point.
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