"You two must be from out of town, right?" the bearded constable said, offering a friendly tip when he saw that Lu Yang was unfamiliar with Huangzhou. "If you ever run into a guy wearing a white paper hat in the future, watch your backs. That bastard commits crimes all over the place and is as slippery as an eel!"
"How so?" the pair asked, intrigued.
Indignant, the bearded constable said, "We've been hunting that grandson of a bitch for who knows how long, but we've never managed to nab him. Nobody knows where he popped up from, but he's been running rampant in Huangzhou for several years now.
"Pick any random spot in Huangzhou, and you can bet he's pulled a job there. This time, he impersonated the Qingming Inn to run a shady trap. Last time, he talked an accomplice into stealing something, got the guy wanted, and then turned the accomplice in to collect the bounty himself! What's even more infuriating is that not one of us realized the guy collecting the reward was him!
"The time before that, he disguised himself as a corpse and sold himself to a corpse driver. When the driver got ready to refine him, he found the corpse moving on its own—nearly scared the poor man half to death!
"Even after that white-paper-hat bastard left, the driver was still trembling in fear, thinking the corpse had reanimated. He chanted minor dispelling wards for days before finally realizing he'd been conned!
"Another time, the Barbarian clan reported someone running a smuggling racket across the borders of the wasteland. That was him too!
"To make money, that bastard stops at nothing! If we could catch him, we'd get five fewer working days a year!"
The moment the bearded constable mentioned the man in the white paper hat, his temper flared, growing angrier by the second. If the man showed up right now, the constable would probably swallow him whole.
Capturing the man in the white paper hat was not just his personal dream; it was the shared wish of all Huangzhou.
"There's another weird thing about that bastard. Several times, he appeared in two places at the exact same time, as if there were two of him. Who knows if they're twins or what.
"And just now—we had the inn surrounded, and you two were standing right at the entrance. Did either of you notice him leaving?"
Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou nodded in agreement. With their current cultivation, the movements of ordinary cultivators could never escape their senses, not even those of a master thief or seasoned criminal.
For him to slip away under such conditions meant the man in the white paper hat possessed extraordinary methods—or cultivation far beyond anyone's expectations.
*Fairy, did you notice when the man in the white paper hat slipped away?*
The Immortal Fairy rolled her eyes, feeling Lu Yang was vastly underestimating her.
"He fled west. But don't bother counting on those constables to catch him. Even if you two joined in, it'd be a waste of effort. His escape technique is quite remarkable.
"Besides, even if you did catch him, it would only be an avatar—hardly a scratch to him."
Lu Yang was startled. For the Immortal Fairy to give such an assessment, the man in the white paper hat had to be far tougher to deal with than he had imagined.
The bearded constable directed the other constables to seal off the scene to see if they could turn up any clues.
"Don't forget to put up the official inspection seals!" he bellowed.
"Boss, is putting up seals even going to work? He tears them down every single time," one of the bearded constable's subordinates asked timidly.
With how little regard the man in the white paper hat had for the law, even if they pasted seals all over the place, he would just rip them off and keep running the inn.
The bearded constable glared. "If I tell you to put them up, put them up! Whether he tears them down is his business—it just adds another crime to his record!"
"In that case, we'll take our leave," Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou said, bidding farewell to the bearded constable.
Before departing, Lu Yang kindly offered a hint. "I caught a faint trace when the man in the white paper hat fled. He went west."
The bearded constable looked at Lu Yang in surprise, but said nothing more.
"Huangzhou truly is a place of wonders and remarkable talents," Meng Jingzhou marveled. "Maybe I really can find a way to break my curse here." He felt getting out into the world had been the right call; after all, they had encountered such an eccentric figure and bizarre occurrence the moment they arrived in Huangzhou.
"We've been fussing around for half the day, and we still haven't found a place to stay," Lu Yang reminded him, bringing his focus back to their immediate problem.
Meng Jingzhou patted the horse's back. "Old horse, how about finding us a village where we can rest?"
The old horse flicked its tail, lowered its head to nibble a mouthful of tender roadside grass, and then conscientiously pulled the carriage toward the nearest settlement.
Before long, the old horse brought them to the closest village. At the village entrance stood a large stone engraved with three prominent characters: "Jianshi Village."
"Why is it so quiet?"
The two got down from the carriage, hoping to lodge there for the night, only to discover that every household had its doors shut tight. Oil lamps were lit, yet not a whisper of sound came from within, and naturally, not a single person was walking the village road.
In Lu Yang's memory, for a rural village without modern entertainment, the villagers ought to have had their doors wide open at this hour, visiting neighbors and chatting away.
"It's as if they're terrified of something. How strange," Lu Yang murmured, frowning.
Meng Jingzhou picked the house with the largest courtyard and knocked on the door. "Fellow villager, we'd like to stay the night!"
*Clang—creak—*
Two sharp sounds rang out as an old man opened the door just enough to peek half his head out, eyeing Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou warily.
"Who are you people?"
Meng Jingzhou flashed the warm, welcoming smile he had honed at the barbecue shop. "We two are travelers passing through. Night has fallen, and we were hoping to seek lodging for the night, if possible. Of course, we will pay."
The old man waved them away impatiently. "Go, go, go! Jianshi Village doesn't welcome outsiders! Leave right now, or watch out that the walking corpses don't eat you!"
"Eaten by walking corpses? You have walking corpses here? We two brothers are cultivators—we can help you get rid of them."
Hearing this, the old man grew even angrier. "No need! Just get lost!"
With that, the old man slammed the gate shut with a loud *bang*.
"Hey, what an unreasonable old fellow!" Meng Jingzhou said, feeling the old man was acting neurotic. He had offered out of the goodness of his heart to solve their trouble, only to be driven away.
"Could it be there are women in his house, so you can't go in?" Lu Yang teased with a mischievous grin.
"Get lost," Meng Jingzhou snapped, waving his hand as if shooing a fly.
Refusing to give up, Meng Jingzhou tried knocking on other doors, but the villagers either drove them away or refused to open up at all.
"Not hospitable in the slightest," Meng Jingzhou grumbled.
"What now? Move on to another village?"
Meng Jingzhou didn't feel like traveling any further. "Too much hassle. Back at the entrance, I saw a building—not sure if it's a temple or an ancestral hall, but it looked fairly clean and still seemed to be in use. We can just make do there for the night."
"Sounds fine." Lu Yang didn't want to keep running around either. First they were turned away at the Qingming Inn, and now Jianshi Village had rejected them too; who knew if the next village would do the exact same thing?
Rather than running around in circles, they might as well settle in for the night and investigate the cause come daylight.
The two made their way to the ancestral hall and lit an oil lamp with Three-Flavor True Fire, instantly brightening the hall.
"It really is quite clean."
The pair bowed toward the memorial tablets. "Pardon the intrusion, seniors. We'll just be staying here for one night."
At the edge of the village, in the graveyard.
Stones shuddered and the earth loosened, as though something below were stirring.
A withered claw burst forth from the dirt.
Immediately after, claw after claw broke through the soil like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, far beyond count...
Chapter 402