Chapter 68 Where Does Spiritual Power Come From? She bit his lip and kissed him deeply. ...
With a sudden, loud bang as the door was flung open, Lou Yan decisively abandoned the search for Heng Qichun's clothes, quickly burned the Warm Sun Talisman, then covered him with the blanket and pulled him down onto the bed.
The mountain people, carrying torches, forced their way in. Dozens of them crowded into a small room and soon overturned the screen that was used to cover them.
The firelight illuminated the inner room as bright as day, leaving no room for the intertwined figures on the bed to hide, casting extremely ambiguous shadows on the wall.
The middle-aged man holding the torch froze for a moment, seemingly not expecting such a scene inside. He stammered, "This...how could this be..."
Why are they doing *that*?!
As if to confirm his unfinished words, Lou Yan pressed against Heng Qichun's shoulder to prevent him from getting up.
He lay on top of Heng Qichun, holding his waist through the blanket, and bit his lips and kissed him deeply amidst the noise of the crowd.
Lou Yan only slowly ended the absurd kiss when Heng Qichun struggled with difficulty breathing, letting out soft gasps.
He propped himself up from the bed, the silver thread at the corner of his lips leaving a blurry shadow on the wall.
"What..." Lou Yan turned her head, her voice hoarse with the aftermath of their passionate encounter, "Is this how Nüqishan treats its guests?"
The middle-aged man holding the torch was clearly embarrassed. He stammered for a moment, then quickly turned to the person behind him for help: "Chieftain, I did detect spiritual energy here just now..."
The old man, referred to as the "patriarch," did not speak, but simply took something from his hand.
With his extraordinary eyesight, Lou Yan recognized it as a compass used for spirit detection.
During their intimate moment, Heng Qichun was too excited, causing his spiritual energy to surge wildly. Inadvertently, a wisp of divine radiance carrying the fragrance of lotus was revealed, which was then detected by the mountain people.
There was no time to ponder why they were searching for spiritual energy instead of worshipping the Nine Sons Mother. Lou Yan glanced at Heng Qichun out of the corner of his eye, confirming that his master's emotions had calmed down and there was no fragrance in the air.
Sure enough, the clan chief stared at the compass for a long time without finding anything. His face darkened, and he handed the compass to the person next to him, pushed aside the middle-aged man in front of him, and took two steps forward.
With a wider field of vision, he paused, looked at Lou Yan, and pondered for a moment: "What are you all doing here..."
Lou Yan snorted coldly, his handsome face contorted with sarcasm in the firelight, looking utterly resentful as if he were an innocent bystander whose good time had been ruined. "What do you think?"
The clan leader squinted slightly, peering through the small gap in Lou Yan's sleeve at the person lying on the bed.
The white-haired man I had seen before was lying on his back on the bed. His handsome face, which looked like that of a god, was covered with a blush. His eyes were filled with tears, and the corners of his eyes were tinged with a crimson.
Looking further down, the quilt didn't cover him properly; a small section of his shoulder was bare, and there were fresh bite marks on his neck.
If I remember correctly, they previously referred to themselves as a couple practicing Taoism.
Then there won't be any mistakes.
The clan chief coughed lightly and said, "It's all a misunderstanding. We were being presumptuous."
As he spoke, he turned and walked out, repeatedly apologizing, "It's too late tonight, you two should get some rest. I'll come to apologize again tomorrow."
"etc!"
"Chief, I understand!"
Lou Yan's voice rang out at the same time as the middle-aged man's. The clan chief happened to stop in front of the man, glancing at him with displeasure. "Wang Sheng, isn't disturbing our guests enough? What else do you want to say?"
The torch was still burning, but the flame had dwindled to a mere wisp.
The man called Wang Sheng was sweating profusely. He snatched the compass back from the mountain people behind him and looked at the clan chief with an urgent expression, saying, "Years ago, I learned the art of spirit detection under He Zizhou. This method is absolutely correct. When the spiritual energy appeared, the compass on the compass did indeed point to this courtyard."
He looked at the crowd gathered by the door. "Everyone saw it with their own eyes!"
"Yes!" someone chimed in as soon as the words left their mouths. "Wang Sheng is quite skilled at spirit reading and divination, everyone has witnessed that. He has no reason to deceive the clan chief!"
"But there is indeed no spiritual energy in the room, and these two guests haven't done anything else. Could there be some misunderstanding?"
"Could it be..."
A bead of sweat dripped from Wang Sheng's forehead. He stared intently at the unresponsive compass in his hand, and a bold conjecture arose in his mind: "If the spiritual energy doesn't belong to the two of them, then it belongs to the Nine-Child Mother."
“The Nine-Child Mother must regard them as her destined ones!”
Upon hearing this, the room erupted in uproar. Lou Yan managed to catch a few words from the clamor, such as "impossible" and "why would the Nine-Child Mother bestow children upon them?"
The clan chief's expression changed several times, and he tried to interrupt several times, but his aged voice sounded extremely weak in the midst of the incessant clamor of conquest.
"Whoa—"
The torches suddenly went out, plunging the rooms inside and out into darkness. The noisy voices paused for a moment, then quickly rose again.
"What happened?"
"How did the fire go out?"
"Hurry up, get on it!"
Wang Sheng hurriedly reached into his sleeve for a tinderbox, but it was too dark, and the tinderbox slipped from his hand and fell to the ground.
Suddenly, I heard a "click".
Lou Yan used a tinderbox to make fire and relit the burnt-out oil lamp on the table. The warm glow quickly replaced the torch that had accidentally burned out, illuminating the houses inside and outside the room.
He stood in front of the table with one hand around Heng Qichun's side. The young man's figure had fully grown up, with his shoulders outstretched and back straight. He glanced at them with disdain and said, "Since you all can't reach a conclusion, why don't we make it clear?"
The clan leader turned his head in disbelief and saw that his Daoist partner had already dressed properly during the darkness. Her snow-white clothes were like a thin mist, completely concealing the spring scenery beneath her clothes. All the erotic and ambiguous feelings were hidden in that moment, and nothing could be found afterward.
Only the crimson stain hanging from the protruding neck told them that what they had just seen was not an illusion.
After a moment's hesitation, Lou Yan switched hands and grasped Heng Qichun's wrist, while using the other hand to pick up the oil lamp and follow the light through the crowd to the outer room.
The clan chief and Wang Sheng exchanged a glance, both sensing an awkwardness in each other's eyes, and had no choice but to follow.
The courtyard where Lou Yan and Heng Qichun were temporarily staying was an abandoned residence in Nüqi Mountain. The house was sparsely furnished, with only a table, a few chairs, and a small stove by the door.
The house was too small to accommodate so many people, so only the clan chief, Wang Sheng, and a few older villagers remained, while the others waited outside.
Lou Yan pulled Heng Qichun to sit down on the side, secretly gripping his master's hand to reassure him, while gesturing with his chin to the other man to let him sit down.
His tone was foul, and his words were utterly rude, like those of an illiterate teenager. "My Daoist companion and I are staying here temporarily. What have we done wrong to warrant such suspicion from you all?"
The clan chief, who was over sixty years old, raised his hand and rubbed his old face.
As if unsure where to begin, he hesitated for a long time before finally asking, "What's your surname..."
"Lou," Lou Yan answered crisply.
“Ah, Young Master Lou.” The clan chief sighed, his brow furrowed. “It’s not that we intended to disturb you, but a strange thing happened in the mountains today.”
Lou Yan subconsciously looked at Heng Qichun upon hearing this, only to see that his master was just sitting there listening quietly, his expression calm and composed, and upon closer inspection, there was still a blush on his cheeks that had not yet faded.
Indeed, Heng Qichun has lost his memory now, and he is probably the only one who would still be so preoccupied with the word "strange things".
Lou Yan dared not show any fear, forced a light cough, sat up straight, and asked, "What strange thing is this?"
The clan chief sighed, “You two must already know that there are no women in our Nüqi Mountain. The people in the mountain all rely on the Nine-Child Mother to continue their lineage.”
Lou Yan raised an eyebrow. "I've heard that the Nine Sons Mother selects people she finds agreeable to give her offspring. Aren't you all going up the mountain to worship tonight?"
"It was tonight that the incident occurred." The clan chief's expression was solemn. He exchanged glances with Wang Sheng several times as he spoke, and finally told the truth, "The people in the mountains go to the Nine Sons Temple to kowtow and pray on the fifteenth of every month. The Nine Sons Mother will then grant them a son on this occasion. For thousands of years, this has never gone wrong."
"But tonight..." The clan leader paused, a hint of fear gradually appearing on his originally solemn face, "but tonight the Nine Sons Mother did not bestow an heir!"
This sparked a huge uproar, with the mountain villagers, including Wang Sheng, joining in the chorus. If left unchecked, it would become an unbearable commotion.
Heng Qichun was unaware that he had just leaked spiritual power. Upon hearing this, he frowned in confusion. His clear voice pierced through the noisy crowd, causing the other party to immediately quiet down.
He asked, "But what does this have to do with us?"
Wang Sheng opened his mouth as if to say that it was because he sensed spiritual energy outside their house, but seeing Heng Qichun's pure and innocent appearance, he swallowed his words.
He turned to look at the fierce-looking young man, certain that Lou Yan would understand what he was saying.
“I suspect that the Nine-Child Mother must have bestowed offspring upon us, but not us… instead, she gave them to you!”
The people in the mountains are oblivious to the passage of time. Although they have seen Taoist practitioners, they have not actively associated Lou Yan and Heng Qichun with them.
After all, they had been searching outside all night, and the compass only moved outside the courtyard.
What does this tell us?
It must be an auspicious sign from heaven that the Nine-Child Mother has bestowed her only offspring of the month upon these two guests! That's why there was a fluctuation of spiritual energy in their courtyard!
Lou Yan understood what he was saying.
He was glad that his fabricated story was perfect enough to convince the villagers in the mountains that he and Heng Qichun were Daoist partners who did not understand spiritual power.
"You mean to say that the Nine-Child Mother considered me, my master, my Daoist partner, and I as destined soulmates?" Lou Yan pondered for a moment, his tone growing increasingly urgent as he spoke the latter half of his sentence, clearly revealing the sarcasm and absurdity in his words, "...and even gave us a child??"
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