When you're starving, everything tastes good. He had been chewing dry rations for three days; he needed a bite of hot food to settle his stomach.
Sigh, his gut had really been spoiled by the cooks in the Yangshan Archipelago. Back in the day, when he traveled north and south, going ten days or half a month without a hot meal was routine.
Man, it was hard to go from luxury to frugality.
The blood rice cakes were soaked in hot broth, rich with flavor.
He Lingchuan took a bite. There was a faint gaminess of deer blood, but the taste was acceptable enough.
Dong Rui asked, "Where is this place? We got turned around on the road."
"Wuxian Town."
Both of them still looked blank. There were thousands upon thousands of towns in the world; whether it was called Wuxian or Liuxian made no difference to them.
The shopkeeper pointed east. "Fifty li to the north of east, and you reach the Yao Kingdom."
Then he pointed southeast. "Thirty-five li slightly south of east is Mount Jing. Don't go there; the mountains are dangerous."
He Lingchuan asked, "What about Baitou Ridge?"
"Also to the northeast. You only enter the territory of the Yao Kingdom once you cross Baitou Ridge."
The shopkeeper brought out another dish, one neither of them could really stomach:
Fish mint salad.
Dong Rui took just one bite before clutching his head. "Ugh, give me a break—I'd rather swallow a river fish whole raw."
He could stomach meat of unknown origin, but this stuff... this stuff...
"That's good stuff," a voice spoke up from the side.
There was only one other drinker in the tavern, short and thin, with slanted eyebrows and tiny eyes. Whenever he furrowed his brows, no one could tell whether his eyes were open or closed.
Perhaps drinking alone was too lonely, so he struck up a conversation with the two of them. "Take a couple more bites, and you'll come to like it."
Dong Rui shook his head, having no desire to try again.
Before this man sat a plate of peanuts and a stalk of scallion. He took a sip of liquor, bit into the scallion, and let out a long sigh from the pungent heat: "Ahhh!"
He Lingchuan noticed a half-palm-sized bronze bell hanging from the window lattice beside him. It was polished mirror-bright, its surface etched all over with runes.
The tavern's curtain didn't seal tight, and occasionally a gust of wind blew in, swirling through the room, yet the bell remained completely silent, without the slightest chime.
"Are you a cultivator as well?"
"You could say that," the drinker smiled. "Where are you two from?"
"The west."
"Where in the west?" the drinker asked. "You're both pretty big-framed; you don't look like locals."
"Further west than the Ya Kingdom."
The drinker froze. "Not in the Shanjin Plain? Man, you've got good luck. Why run out here, then? Tired of living the good life?"
"Coming to the Yao Kingdom to acquire some goods," Dong Rui smiled. "Just started doing business here this year. The Shanjin Plain might not be peaceful, but there's a hell of a lot of good stuff. For money, shouldn't a man be willing to walk through fire and water?"
Although this place was called the Shanjin "Plain," in truth it had every kind of terrain. Vast mountain ranges had their main trunks and offshoots here, running like the spine of the earth.
The great mountains of the Shanjin Plain gathered countless rich mineral deposits. Aside from the most common iron, tin, copper, and gold, there were numerous rare ores and earths essential for artifact forging.
Beyond that, horses, medicinal herbs, timber, and the like were all local specialties.
In terms of natural abundance, tiny Bailie wasn't even fit to carry its boots.
"What's the use of abundant resources? It's just there so you can look at it, not use it. The people here are all begging for food while holding a golden bowl." The drinker shook his head. "The God-Forsaken Land—did you think that name was earned for nothing?"
He Lingchuan, however, was looking at several pieces of red paper pasted onto the window.
They were rectangular, inscribed with talismans.
There had originally been holes in the paper window, covered over by these talismans.
He had only looked at them for a couple of moments when the bell beside the drinker suddenly rang without any wind.
Tinkle—
It was very crisp, but cut off after just half a chime.
The drinker immediately set down his cup.
One of the talismans on the window was suddenly pushed open by a gust, and the hole beneath let out a low wail, like a whistle blowing.
The next second, something appeared outside the hole—
An eye.
A bloodshot eyeball, rolling erratically, was peering into the tavern through the small hole in the window.
On a pitch-black rainy night, an eye suddenly appearing at a window hole three feet off the ground would send shivers down any ordinary person's spine.
He Lingchuan was startled as well, his chopsticks holding a mouthful of noodles freezing in midair.
The gaze from outside the window swept across the three patrons before swiftly locking onto the shopkeeper, filled with pure malice.
The drinker suddenly spoke up. "It's here. Right outside the window."
He pointed at the window hole. "Peeping at you right from here."
The shopkeeper's face turned stark white. Following his finger, Dong Rui and the two monkeys turned their heads as well, but outside the window, there was only pitch-black darkness—nothing at all.
What the hell was it?
The drinker noticed He Lingchuan's reaction, but said nothing of it. He merely told the panicked shopkeeper, "Get behind the counter and hold your breath."
How could the shopkeeper dare hesitate? He bolted back behind the counter in a single stride.
The eyeball outside the window vanished instantly.
In the next second, a wisp of black smoke drifted in through the door curtain, swaying as it wandered about the room.
The soul-snatching mirror let out a soft exclamation: "I wondered what vile thing it was—turns out it's just a stray ghost!"
The world inside the mirror housed many evil spirits, so the mirror was naturally no stranger to such things. But ghosts rarely appeared around He Lingchuan, and it hadn't seen one in quite a while.
Only then did Dong Rui notice a white circle drawn on the floor behind the counter; the shopkeeper was standing within it, not daring to take a deep breath or move an inch.
The black smoke drifted back and forth through the tavern, seemingly unable to find him.
Growing a bit agitated, it dropped to the floor and took human shape, feeling around the counter carefully with its hands.
This thing looked like a monkey that had crawled out of a mire—withered, skinny, and pitch-black, with a hunched back and an uneven row of jagged yellow teeth.
It gnashed its teeth constantly, its jaws clacking together.
The shopkeeper stood right in front of it, staring wide-eyed in terror, but the mud ghost seemed blind as a bat, completely failing to see this living man.
Of course, the shopkeeper couldn't see it either, but he could feel the temperature inside the tavern plunging rapidly.
Just then, a trickling sound came from behind.
The mud ghost whipped its head around and saw He Lingchuan calmly pouring liquor, acting as if nothing was amiss.
It spun around at once and moved closer to the two men.
He Lingchuan poured and drank on his own, pretending he couldn't see it.
The mud ghost leaned in close to sniff at the two men and two monkeys, pressing a claw onto the tabletop and leaving a muddy handprint.
The shopkeeper couldn't see the ghost, but he saw the handprint appear, and his face turned even paler with fright.
Then, it went over to the drinker.
The drinker had taken a mouthful of liquor, and the moment it drew close, he spat it out with a spray.
The liquid was tinged with faint red, mixed with specially prepared cinnabar.
Caught off guard, the mud ghost took the spray full in the face. It let out a shrill shriek, dissolved back into black smoke, and fled frantically toward the doorway.
Who could have known that the drinker had his hand resting on a bellows? With a gentle press—
Yes, the very kind of bellows used to stoke fires in kitchens and bathhouses.
The wisp of black smoke was sucked right into the bellows.
"All done," the drinker said, stowing away his tool and tearing the red papers off the window. "It has been subdued."
"Nice." He Lingchuan gave a thumbs-up. That was quick and neat.
The shopkeeper had held his breath until his face turned purple. Hearing this, he gasped for air twice. "Master Fu, am I safe?"
"Yes, you're safe."
Only after seeing the muddy claw-print on He Lingchuan's table had the shopkeeper truly believed that an evil spirit had really come. Now, he produced half a tael of broken silver and placed it on the drinker's table. "Thank you, Master! Let me go warm up some more wine for you."
Chapter 1147