Chapter 171 Passing Through the Secret Realm "How shameless!"...
Seeing that Lu Bing remained unmoved, Chen Ying's fake smile faltered: "What, are you planning to play dumb with me..."
Seeing that she was about to have another outburst, Ah Cong tried to calm things down and stood up to pull her out.
"Don't stop me! What time is it now? Who has time to waste with him!" Chen Ying pushed it away and went straight across the square table. She grabbed Lu Bing by the front of his shirt and dragged him up from the ground with a very rough and barbaric motion.
Because of the snake veins being unstable, Lu Bing's limbs were weak, and he knocked over the bowl of porridge in front of him, burning the back of his hand red from the hot, thick porridge.
Once Chen Ying goes berserk, she never stays still. She drags Lu Bing out, and A Cong, who always lets her have her way, can only stand aside and stop interfering.
Lu Bing staggered and could only be dragged along by Chen Ying in a disheveled state. His knees and ankles slammed against the hard corners of the tables and chairs, causing him to wince in pain.
"I've put so much effort into you, just so you can carry the Yin Sui and lead us to the 'divine mountain' at sea." Chen Ying gasped as she dragged him out of the cabin and threw him onto the deck. After all, he was a tall man, eight feet tall, and although he was thin, he had quite a bit of weight. It was very difficult for Chen Ying to drag him. "A Cong, give him the Yin Sui."
After hesitating for a long time, Ah Cong took out the Yin Sui under Chen Ying's cold gaze.
Chen Ying, perhaps annoyed by its slow movements, snatched the Yin Sui away. As soon as she grabbed Lu Bing's hand, she saw a burning red mark on the back of his hand: "What happened to your hand?"
Lu Bing remained silent, but A Cong made a few hand gestures.
Chen Ying hadn't paid attention earlier, and even if she knew the reason, it wouldn't matter. Lu Bing was just a stray dog that she could treat with impunity anyway.
"If you don't want this whole boatload of people to die with you, you'd better cooperate." She was used to threatening Lu Bing with the lives of others, because only in this way could she control him. Even if they were complete strangers, logically speaking, their deaths were none of Lu Bing's business. He wasn't some saint who could save people from suffering; he himself was living a life worse than death in hell, yet he had to worry about the lives of others time and time again, allowing her to succeed each time. Chen Ying considered herself to have no sympathy whatsoever, but now she felt a little sorry for Lu Bing. Of course, she knew her own limitations; this sympathy for Lu Bing was no different from a weasel offering New Year's greetings to a chicken. Thinking of this, Chen Ying's tone softened a little, "Officer Lu, could you help me send Acong and the others back to their hometown?"
Lu Bing turned his head away without moving until he felt a chill on the back of his hand.
Chen Ying, head bowed, held his wrist, gently applying a small amount of ointment to the burn. She spoke to him with rare calmness: “They used the Gu technique to create the body of Fuxi, harming the Undying People, harming many people. And I followed in their footsteps, harming you, and harming many others as well. Do you often wonder, 'It has nothing to do with you, so why did I come to you? What did you do wrong?' You don't understand, do you? I didn't understand before either, why did I have such parents, why did I have such a fate? What did I do wrong? A-Cong and the others are the same; why did they suffer for no reason? This world is truly hard to explain. Perhaps it's just that other people's karma has beenfallen you, me, and A-Cong.”
Lu Bing's fingertips trembled slightly. Chen Ying thought he was in pain, so she held the fingertips in her hand and blew on them. "They say that you reap what you sow. According to this principle, what evil deeds have you sown that you have mistakenly eaten this evil fruit?"
"You're shameless enough." Lu Bing couldn't stand it anymore. "You've committed all sorts of evil deeds, yet you want to find fault with the people you've harmed."
Chen Ying laughed upon hearing this: "I thought you were really mute."
Lu Bingzhen didn't want to engage with this vicious woman unless he really couldn't hold back: "Have you been hanging out with this bunch of real mute people for too long? You've become so tight-lipped that you're coming here specifically to find excuses for the evil deeds you've committed?"
Chen Ying's mood improved after he made her laugh with just a few words: "You're the head constable of Bei Qu, aren't you?"
"So you're here to turn yourself in and confess?!" Lu Bing said, as if she wanted to bite her tongue off. I was just arguing with her.
Chen Ying's smile grew even brighter: "Yes, Officer Lu, what are you going to do with me?"
Despite his serious illness, Lu Bing clearly uttered a single word to her: "Get lost."
Chen Ying not only didn't roll away, but also flipped Lu Bing's palm over and firmly and ruthlessly pinched a snake vein on his wrist, just like pinching a fatal acupoint. Lu Bing's entire arm was so numb and sore that he couldn't move. Then the Yin Sui was placed in his hand.
The boat must have been in a rough sea, because the steady hull rocked a little.
The golden sun rises from the sea in the east, its rays illuminating the vast ocean and land.
Outside the west gate of the Mizhou government office, a woman pleaded pitifully for permission to visit the prison, but the yamen runners impatiently waved her away.
The woman knelt down, sobbing, "I beg you, sir, please be lenient and let me in to see him. Zhao Dashan is innocent! He has been wronged!"
"Hurry up and leave." The constable pulled out his sleeve that had been tugged at and slammed the side gate shut.
The woman refused to give up, banging on the door and crying, "Dashan is innocent! Dashan has been wronged! You can't kill him!"
But it was no use. No one in the yamen paid any attention to her. After patting herself for a while, she could only sit alone in the corner and weep sadly.
"Excuse me, excuse me," a donkey cart carrying firewood drove by, "Excuse me, brother."
The young man who was blocking the way moved to the base of the wall. His pale face was bloodless, and he looked as if he had lost his parents.
Indeed, those who are able to stay at this juncture are mostly close relatives and friends who have gotten into trouble and gone to jail, and their faces are all gloomy and miserable.
"I've seen you come here several times these past few days," the vendor sitting on his carrying pole said, fanning himself with his straw hat as he leaned over to ask the young man who had retreated to his basket, "What's wrong? Is your family in the yamen? What did you do wrong?"
The young man turned and glanced at him, but didn't say anything.
"If you don't bribe the jailers, they won't let you in," the vendor kindly reminded him. But the young man looked destitute; his lips were as white as his face, and his cheeks were sunken, as if he hadn't eaten for three days.
"Sigh, I can see you've had a tough time too." The vendor shook his head and sighed, then took two steamed buns from the side of his basket and handed them over. "Here, have some."
The young man waved at him.
The vendor thought he was being polite: "It's alright, take it and eat it, I have more here."
The young man continued to wave his hand.
The vendor suddenly realized something: "What, you can't speak?"
The young man paused for a moment, then nodded.
"He's mute." The vendor felt even more sorry for him, got up and stuffed the steamed bun into the young man's hands, "Eat up, eat up, I have more if you're not full."
The young man opened his mouth, wanting to say that he was not originally mute, but after transforming into a monstrous form, he could no longer speak human language.
Xu Fu was very uncomfortable. He was not used to this formless and shapeless 'body' that drifted with the current. Xu Fu took a long, long time to adapt. After thinking it over, he still wanted to have a human form. So he thought of the Gu Master. He never thought in his life that he would one day have to rely on the Gu Master.
But in this world, only a Gu master can give him a human skeleton and a human skin to help the Wangxiang take human form and leave the river to go ashore.
He had been on guard for so many years, painstakingly studying techniques to deal with Bai Yuan, but in the end he still died at the hands of that evil spirit. He would never let it go.
But that Gu Master was a despicable and monstrous creature. Xu Fu despised and scorned him. Although he was no good either, he was at least more respectable than the Gu Master. Xu Fu couldn't bring himself to lower himself to serve such a treacherous and cunning person.
Fortunately, after a great battle at the Sanmen Pass, he searched for a long time and finally found a complete and undamaged shroud at the bottom of the river. He put it on and went ashore, traveling by land and water to reach Mizhou.
Now it's called Mizhou. Going back a thousand years, this place was Langya, his homeland, the place where he once stirred up trouble. Xu Fu was somewhat sentimental, because he was going to come back and stir up trouble again.
It's obvious what the Gu Master and that group of Wangxiang were up to at sea. This senior, who returned from the sea a thousand years ago, doesn't need to rack his brains to figure it out. He just doesn't know how big of a wave they can stir up.
On this path to immortality, there are many delusional people who are obsessed with their desires but cannot obtain them, and who never even get close to it in their entire lives.
Now that he's dead and in this state, he's in a terrible state and has no desire to get involved in this mess.
Xu Fu accepted the vendor's kindness and followed the woman who was wiping away tears as she got up to leave, all the way to the city gate.
The woman ran around, crying out for justice for her husband in front of the government office for several days. But crying out for justice without evidence was of no use. Notices had been posted at the city gate and in front of the government office, announcing that Zhang Dashan would be beheaded and his head displayed to the public.
In this vast world, not every murder case can be thoroughly investigated. Those who are wrongfully imprisoned often have no way to clear their names, and wrongful convictions are commonplace in every prefecture and county. Xu Fu was naturally happy to see this happen. He didn't necessarily have to fabricate a wrongful conviction himself; he only needed to gather one or two cases from the county government offices—this woman's husband's murder case was one of them.
She couldn't save her husband, and she couldn't even scrape together the meager sum to bribe the jailers.
Sighing inwardly, Xu Fu thought, "How pitiful, how pitiful."
Xu Fu stood in front of the city gate, his gaze shifting from the woman's distraught back to the notice posted on the city wall. He stared at Zhang Dashan's execution date and began to calculate.
It'll be quick; he needs to hurry.
Xu Fu tucked the two steamed buns into his robes and turned to walk west of the city.
At the west end of the government office, there was an open space. Over the years, the cracks in the bluestone slabs were stained with an indelible dark red. This was the execution ground used by the government for beheadings.
Xu Fu squatted down, took out a dirty handkerchief and spread it on the ground. He held a thin bamboo strip in his hand and scraped out the bloodstains that had seeped into the cracks of the bluestone little by little. He then mixed it with cinnabar to draw the formation.
Concentrating on scraping clean a few cracks in the stone, Xu Fu moved to a different spot. Gazing at the dark red blood and mud, he thought of all the efforts he had made over the years: casting the Execution Cauldron, searching for the Autumn Execution Blade, forging the Execution Array with wrongful convictions, and so on. Even today, he was still doing the same thing. Xu Fu sincerely sighed at his unwavering commitment: "In the whole world, I have never seen anyone as persistent as me."
Xu Fu raised his head and looked at the blazing sun overhead. Even if that woman was at the ends of the earth, she would eventually fall into his hands. This was her fate.
The blazing sun was blinding, and Bai Yuan squinted, feeling inexplicably uneasy. Perhaps it was because they were deep in the sea, with an endless expanse all around, and the ship was like a drifting leaf on the sea, heading towards the unknown.
Like the calm before a storm, Bai Yuan had a vague sense of foreboding, but couldn't quite put her finger on it. She turned her head and looked at Zhou Yaren, who was pushing the boat with the wind on the deck, and was already covered in sweat.
Bai Yuan wanted to bring him a cup of cool tea, but the teapot was empty, so he took the teapot to fetch water.
Near the rudder, the captain and helmsman, responsible for determining direction, were measuring the shadow of the sun. The vast sea was boundless, and one could not tell east from west. One could only look to the sun, moon, and stars to guide one's course. Voyagers used this method to ensure that their course would not deviate.
As the fire chief was observing the shadow chief, he suddenly heard the helmsman exclaim in surprise, "Is that... a celestial dog eating the sun?!"
Upon hearing this, Bai Yuan looked up and saw that the perfectly round golden crow was now missing a corner. She suddenly realized something and leaped towards the deck…
The ship swayed and became unstable. Chen Ying on the deck almost lost her footing. She grabbed the gunwale in time. Even though the sunlight stung her eyes, she stared unblinkingly at the crescent-shaped sun and murmured, "The mirage conceives by gazing at the moon, and gives birth to the moon spirit that eats the sun. It can lead to the secret realm."
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