Chapter 78: Sixteen Broken Pages in Exchange for the Golden Crow Falling on the Western Mountain
The night is as dark as ink and the mountains and forests are silent.
Suddenly, a little fire lit up in the distance, and then the fire flickered and moved, shaking like a pair of wild beast's eyes.
"Master! She ran away!"
A sharp shout ripped the silence, startling a few night crows. In the shadows of the trees, the scholar's robe was torn by thorns, and he stumbled away, grabbing the girl's hand in his haste.
The girl looked a little confused, but she also followed the other person's footsteps lightly. She was not wearing shoes, and her white feet stepped on the mud, leaving dents.
She looked up at the scholar, her eyes somewhat curious and thoughtful.
How strange.
This person is obviously very scared and doesn't even have any spiritual power, so why would he come to "save" her?
"Hurry! Go to the stream!" The scholar's voice trembled and his heart beat like a pounding drum. At this moment, he had no time to care whether what he did was right or wrong.
Behind them, five or six black-robed monks came through the forest like ghosts. Their footsteps were so light that they made no sound when they stepped on the fallen leaves. Each of them held a blade in his hand, and they wanted to rush forward to block the two men's way, but they were afraid of something.
"Let's stop here, we can't catch up." The monk in the front stopped, his eyes as gloomy as water, his expression was a little regretful and a little unwilling.
Someone shouted out their reluctance: "Are we just going to let her get away like this? Zeng Yuan Dan..."
"Shut up!" The leading monk scolded the man harshly, gritting his teeth and saying, "That's a demon! She's determined to leave, and we can't stop her."
He took a deep breath, lowered his head and muttered, "We lied to her first. As long as she doesn't hold a grudge against us, even if her ancestors' graves smoke up, it will be a disaster. As for the Zeng Yuan Pills—there are still quite a few left, enough for us to get back at Wang Xuanling."
The old man, surrounded by several people, arrived late. His cloudy eyes looked in the direction the girl had left, and he felt as sad as if a carefully built building had collapsed. After a while, he sighed hoarsely, "That's all."
"Greed is insatiable, like a snake swallowing an elephant. We have already gained something, and we cannot dream of controlling a ferocious beast forever."
"Master, what should we do next?"
"Yes, Master, does the previous plan still count?"
The old man sneered, slowly turned around, raised his hand to stop the crowd from whispering, and looked towards the faint outline of the imperial city in the distance. He lowered his hand and brushed the jade pot hanging from his waist. His tone was icy, "The emperor once ordered Wang Xuanling to kill one hundred and sixty-seven people from Taiyin. Tomorrow, I will make them pay back this blood debt a thousandfold."
-
At noon, the bells and drums rang three times, and the ceremonial procession of floats really paraded onto the Imperial Street.
Every household opened their doors to look, and some curious people gathered around the wedding procession to watch as they walked. They saw a row of young men in red clothes and rolled-foot hats walking in the front, some holding incense burners and some holding feather fans. Behind them, actors on the flower cars were dancing with their sleeves waving. Behind them, more than ten people were carrying the eaves of a brass green tent with a gauze hanging in front, and a person was vaguely sitting inside.
When passing by the colorful pavilion and the happy gate, there were crowds of people. From time to time, the floats sprinkled gold and silver particles mixed with flower petals. Everyone was anxious and those who originally didn't want to join in the fun now started to move forward and followed the carriage.
In the direction of the final destination, Li's residence, there was also a large group of people waiting. Meng Caiyun, wearing a wedding dress, hid behind the gatehouse and leaned against the crack of the door to calculate whether most people had arrived.
We have to hurry. With such a big scene, it might alert the capital and it will be impossible to cover it up.
She gritted her teeth, picked up a bundle of rope and said to Meng Zhao beside her, "Come, tie it up for me."
Meng Zhao was shocked: "Prince...? What does this mean?"
"Hurry up, be quick," Meng Caiyun said in a low voice. "If I don't tie her up, how will the neighbors know I was forced? I'll show your sister my loyalty right away!"
Meng Zhao couldn't understand, but under the pressure, he had to do as he was told: "Actually, you don't have to do this for my sister. She just wants the lowest status..."
Meng Caiyun didn't want to listen carefully, and just hurriedly instructed, "Stay closer to me later."
It is imperative that Ah Zhao recover his memory in one go.
Meng Zhao said sternly, "I promise I'll stay with you forever."
Meng Caiyun lovingly touched the other person's head with his bound hands.
Meng Zhao looked suspicious, feeling that there seemed to be something different about this prince, but he couldn't tell what it was.
Two firecrackers were hung outside the Li residence, exploding with a crackling sound, sending red paper and green smoke flying. A flower carriage approached from the other side of the street, and the gate of the Li residence was wide open. Meng Caiyun, bound hand and foot, lay across the horse, dressed in a bright red wedding dress, his face furious: "Even if I, Li Qingyun, die today, or fall off my horse, I will never marry the princess of the royal family!"
The crowd was in an uproar, talking about it everywhere. Even the children were lifted up and sat on the shoulders of adults, watching the show with great interest. For a while, the streets were deserted.
Bai He was also sitting cross-legged on the float, a zither resting on his knees. Long Zhu emerged from his sleeves and suddenly placed his claws on the strings: "Something's wrong."
The sound of the zither was interrupted by the scratching of fingernails, abruptly stopping mid-song. Ah Wu, dancing below, lost her rhythm and looked up, somewhat puzzled. The troupe of musicians and performers up ahead seemed oblivious, continuing their joyful music. Meanwhile, Wang Fengxu, in the canopy of the green tent, cautiously lifted the gauze curtain.
"We'll be arriving at the Li residence soon," Bai He whispered. "After welcoming the bride, I'll immediately lend my spiritual power and have Wang Fengxu wake them up. What do you think is wrong?"
The little dog shook her head and said, "Intuition." Then she jumped onto the top of the green tent eaves and circled around the brass spire. Her dark eyes moved, taking in the dense crowd around her.
She counted slowly: "One, two, three... four."
At the same time, a childish voice rang out from the crowd: "Look! There's a dog on the princess' sedan chair!"
"Hey! It's true!"
The crowd was pointing and talking, and the buzzing sound slowed down the procession's progress, disrupting the rhythm and causing unexpected events.
The four people hiding in the crowd took off the jade pot pendants from their waists and threw them into the air in unison. Strangely enough, the jade pots actually stacked up together, as if deliberately blocking the direction of the sun. As everyone exclaimed, the jade pots did not fall to the ground, but were spinning, getting bigger and bigger until they covered the sky and the sun.
Several people sang loudly: "I would like to exchange the jade pot for the moon, in exchange for the golden crow setting in the west mountain!"
At that time, the sky suddenly became gloomy, and the light of the dawn bird's crimson rays was all absorbed by the jade pot with satisfaction, and then hung above the dome instead, like a bright and magnificent full moon, emitting a strange and absurd glow.
The sun turned into the moon, and a strange phenomenon appeared in the sky. Everyone was caught off guard and panicked, trying to escape.
However, the four people who threw the jade pot to steal the sun began to chant again. The light blue spiritual energy left the people and went straight to the strange moon in the sky.
Bai He's expression also changed slightly: "Taiyin! They want to take the living beings!"
Wang Fengxu pulled aside the gauze curtain, his face bleak. "Taiyin was destroyed by Daoist Patriarch Wang Xuanling... Oops, I forgot they weren't all dead yet! The Four Ghosts Massacred the City... Could it be that the real Four Ghosts Massacred the City refers to them?!"
Wang Xuanling, the founder of Qingcheng Monastery, once single-handedly destroyed a monastic organization known as the "Taiyin." This group practiced a unique technique, some capable of stealing the very essence of nature, absorbing the spiritual energy of all living things. Their members were largely exiled and defectors from various sects, and some called them "Sun-Eating Ghosts."
Wang Xuanling fought with Taiyin twice in total. He severely injured it in the first attack, and completely destroyed it in the second attack.
As Wang Fengxu listened to his master's wife's recounting of this history, he was actually a bit puzzled. For example, how had Taiyin been able to rise again, to wreak havoc on the world again? Wang Xuanling's second attack had clearly taken considerable effort. Could it be that these Taiyin people had secretly obtained some magical weapon?
But - if the four ghosts who massacred the city refer to Taiyin's sun-eating ghost, then what did Wen Ruojie mean when he saw the four ghosts taking Qingning's soul at the Princess's Tomb?
Could it be that the princess has some special physique that contains spiritual power, and they are so greedy that they are willing to make enemies with the king just to take the princess's soul for themselves?
"We can't let them continue," Bai He clenched his hands and leaned forward slightly, "Otherwise, the spiritual power will be lost, and when they wake up, they will just be empty shells!"
He closed his eyes, forced himself to calm down, plucked the strings with both hands, and played a heart-clearing mantra.
The full moon was in the sky, but it was still dark. The people who were fleeing in a hurry seemed to be attracted by the moon. The peddler carrying loads, the boy shaking rattles, the old woman guarding the stall, the woman picking things under the window... Everyone looked up at the moon in a daze. Under the same admiring expressions, there was a gradually obvious distortion of their expressions. Strands of light blue lines were passing from their bodies to the moon like kites.
Bai He bit his fingertips without hesitation and plucked the silk strings that were as sharp as blades without changing his expression. He did not dare to squander his remaining spiritual power and had to keep some to lend to Wang Fengxu.
"Where did this Taoist priest get in the way?" The four sun-eating ghosts realized something was wrong. They took out a pill from their pocket and swallowed it. The spiritual power in their bodies surged, and even the moon in the sky became brighter.
One of them seized the opportunity, jumped onto the float and kicked the person playing the piano. Bai He suddenly raised his eyes, glanced at him sternly, raised his hand to block, and took the opportunity to grab the man's ankle and pulled it. In a moment, there was a sound of bones breaking, and the man screamed and stumbled forward. Bai He immediately stood up with the piano in his arms and hit the man on the back of the neck with a lightning-fast move.
He looked calm, only moving his lips without saying anything, but judging by his lip movements it seemed as if he was looking for death.
Seeing this, the other Sun-Eating Ghost was so angry that he drew his sword and rushed forward, ready to chop, but something blocked his view from his sight. "What the hell!"
It was a white-haired local dog, only one year old, but its claws and teeth were fully grown and extremely sharp. Soon the man was scratched all over his face with red marks, and he rolled off the float with his eyes closed.
There were only two people left who could control the moon in the sky. They had learned their lesson and hid in the crowd, refusing to show up. They just secretly took two more Yuan Zeng Dan pills.
The jade plate rotates slowly, as if bathing in the pale blue Milky Way and gazing at the world in the distance.
"Princess! Princess!"
Amidst the sea of dazed and numb people, someone struggled to hold something, squeezed through a gap, and went against the flow of people to bring the object to the eaves: "The Imperial Master, the Imperial Master hasn't come out of seclusion yet, but he asked me to give this to you!"
The man who came was tall and straight, dressed in palace clothes. He was Tu Nan, the attendant official of Qingning.
And what she held in her hand was Wang Xuanling's guqin - the great sound with little hum.
Wang Fengxu was so moved that he almost knelt down: "It has to be Grandpa Daozu! Tunan, well done!"
He took the guqin from Tunan and saw him smile shyly. His tone was very proud and his gaze was full of excitement. Although it was just an "illusion", it was extremely real at this moment: "Princess, Tunan finally helped you, right?"
Wang Fengxu was stunned for a moment, then said, "You have always been helpful."
The guqin containing the spiritual power of the national teacher fell out of her hand, and Tu Nan was also attracted by the moon in the sky. The light blue spiritual power floated out of her body like a cocoon and floated towards Guanghan.
Wang Feng humbly said: We can’t delay any longer.
He raised his hand and shouted towards the float: "Master Bai! Thank you for your help!"
Then he took a deep breath, his arm veins bulged, he lifted up the purple lacquered guqin and threw it with force.
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