The retired official's surname was Sun, and he was called Master Sun by the villagers. A few years ago, he moved back to the village from the county town and built a huge house. He lived in seclusion, and the villagers could only see the steward and servants. They rarely had the chance to see him in person.
It was just a few simple pieces of information, but it was enough to make up a story.
Grandpa Sun must be a man with a story. The most likely reason he returned to the mountain village was to avoid trouble.
If Jing Jiu were to investigate, he would definitely be able to find out the truth of the matter. However, he had no interest in it. After looking at it from afar for a while, he left the village and embarked on his return journey.
In the process of leaving the village, he conveniently took a piece of clothing that someone had hung outside, tore it into strips, and tied the iron sword on his back.
Late at night, he crossed the mountains and returned to the cave.
The starlight was like snow, illuminating the mountains clearly.
A demonic beast the size of a small mountain lay in front of the cave. Its body was covered in blood, and it was no longer breathing. No one knew how long it had been dead, but it gave off a strong stench.
The mountain rocks outside the cave were full of holes, and the ground was littered with crushed stones. There were even traces left by the hard hair of the demon beast that was as hard as steel thorns. One could imagine how powerful the demon beast was, and how fierce its struggle before its death was.
Jing Jiu glanced at the demon beast and confirmed that its Monster Dan was useless. He walked around the corpse and entered the cave.
The patterns on the stone walls and the ground had already become a lot more blurry. The formation was broken and could no longer be used.
Guo Dong commented while looking at him, "The formation is pretty good."
What Jing Jiu used was the Inherited Heaven Swordsmanship, but it was not wrong to call it a formation.
Smelling the stinky smell coming from the outside of the cave, Guo Dong arched her eyebrows slightly, asking, "Are we still going to stay here?"
"I'm leaving now."
Jing Jiu walked to the pile of bones, picked up the cocoon, and walked out of the cave.
Under the starlight, he once again crossed the mountains and crossed the ridges. With his back to the sea, he finally arrived at the mountain village. It was already dawn.
Jing Jiu carried Guo Dong and walked to the front of the large house on the outskirts of the village.
Old Master Sun's house was very well built, and there was even a watchtower in the southeast corner. Not to mention defending against strong people, even the government would have to expend some effort to take it down.
The side door of the mansion was very sturdy. The iron sheet was covered with hardwood, about three inches thick, and the door latch was ridiculously thick.
Naturally, none of these could stop Jing Jiu.
He walked to the door, waved his right hand, and the latch on the inside quietly opened.
The mansion was very quiet. There were no lights or voices.
Jing Jiu came to the stable while carrying Guo Dong. He pulled out a horse and found the carriage.
He held the reins in his left hand and looked at the carriage, then at the horse.
The horse looked at him with wide eyes, looking very innocent.
Guo Dong asked, "You don't know how to harness a horse?"
Jing Jiu uttered "hmm".
"Like teacher, like disciple."
Guo Dong glanced at Jing Jiu with a complicated expression and started to teach him what to do.
Riding a horse and driving a carriage was much easier than Cultivation. With Guo Dong's guidance, Jing Jiu had taken care of everything quickly.
In the darkness of the night, the carriage slowly drove out of the mansion. The wheels of the carriage rolled over the ground, making a soft sound.
The time before dawn was the darkest and quietest. Even the slightest sound was enough to alarm people.
Jing Jiu and Guo Dong didn't have the experience of being thieves, and they hadn't thought about this kind of thing. They didn't realize what had happened until they heard the sounds of pursuing and cursing from the back of the mountain path.
Hearing the filthy words from afar, Guo Dong arched her eyebrows again, exclaiming, "It's so noisy; how can I sleep?"
Jing Jiu knew her temperament very well.
After having killed tens of thousands of people back then, she didn't have any psychological barrier to killing people; she could do it quite casually.
Zhao Layue had said that she was very vicious, but she was actually the vicious one.
He untied the iron sword and cut off a few tree branches by the side of the path, seemingly throwing them on the ground carelessly.
The few tree branches landed on the mountain path one after another, and the distance seemed to follow a certain pattern.
This was a simple formation to camouflage the eyes.
The morning fog rolled over from the mountain, blocking the road ahead.
The servants of the Sun family were trapped in the fog. They couldn't get out no matter how hard they tried. All they could do was watch the carriage disappear in front of them.
The filthy words and cursing suddenly stopped. The people felt a bit frightened.
"Look at your courage. It's just the fog! Let's go back first. We'll search the villages one by one in the morning! "
A caretaker cursed loudly, "These daring peasants. If we don't kill a few of them, we won't know the rules anymore!"
…
…
Hearing the words in the fog, Jing Jiu didn't turn his head around.
Yet, he was aware that Guo Dong was looking at him.
…
…
The caretaker suddenly let out a dreadful scream.
Those servants could see clearly from a close distance that the caretaker was waving his hands and screaming horribly, as if his hands were hitting something in the air.
In the next moment, the flesh on the caretaker's face withered visibly, as if an invisible force was sucking the flesh, until only a thin layer of skin was left on his face.
In an instant, the caretaker stopped breathing and fell to the ground heavily, turning into a dried corpse.
"It's a ghost!"
"It's a zombie!"
Seeing this scene and thinking of the blocked road ahead in the fog, the few servants were so scared that their faces turned pale, and they fled back to the village while screaming.
…
…
Since it was a ghost and a vampire, it was not a human who had stolen the carriage.
Even if the Master of the Sun family wasn't scared away, he wouldn't harm those innocent villagers.
There was a field not far from the village. Jing Jiu put down the reins and returned to the carriage, letting the horse walk on its own.
Guo Dong shot him a glance and asked, "What kind of devil method did you use?"
"A magic trick," replied Jing Jiu.
The wheels of the carriage rolled over the hard mud and harder rocks, making it a bit bumpy. It reminded Jing Jiu of the carriage of the Gu Clan.
Guo Dong was inside the cocoon, which was naturally cushioned and wrapped by the cocoon. So she didn't mind it and fell asleep gradually.
She spent most of the time in a deep sleep, just like Bai Zao did in the snowland.
The difference was that she would wake up once in a while and talk to Jing Jiu, asking him where they were.
A few days later, the carriage arrived outside a city.
This city was not the Dayuan they were heading to.
Jing Jiu saw that the city was quite prosperous, so he drove the carriage into the city. He wore a conical hat on the way. After walking for a while, he finally saw the medical house.
The carriage stopped outside the medical house. Jing Jiu got off the carriage with the conical hat on his head. He lifted his head to take a look at the plaque of the medical house, and then walked in.
He didn't come to the medical house to treat Guo Dong, because the doctor who could cure her illness hadn't been born yet.
Jing Jiu was led into the deep part of the medical house after talking to the assistant.
The formation was activated, and the quiet room was soundless.
Jing Jiu asked the doctor, "I have a general idea of the situation at the West Ocean. I just want to know how Guo Dong is doing."
The doctor shot him a few suspicious glances, asking, "You are …"
Jing Jiu took off the conical hat, exposing his face.
The doctor was startled by Jing Jiu's face and took a few deep breaths, feeling a pain in his teeth. "You … you … you don't even try to hide it?"
Jing Jiu said, "I don't have any new information except for the golden leaves. I don't think you people want them."
The meaning of this statement was quite clear.
You Curtain Rollers want to know how much my face is worth.
The doctor said while covering the side of his face with his hands, "Immortal Master, it's not a matter of money. It's true that we don't have any information."
Hearing this answer, Jing Jiu felt satisfied. He didn't show it on his face. He got up and left the medical house.
As he walked out of the door of the medical house, he saw a wheelchair placed against the wall. After some thought, he pushed the wheelchair out, leaving a golden leaf behind.
Guo Dong opened her eyes after he returned to the carriage. Seeing the wheelchair Jing Jiu had brought up, she asked curiously, "What did you do?"
"I went to deliver a letter," Jing Jiu said.
The Curtain Rollers had been treating him with great courtesy, which puzzled him a bit. But since they were willing to help him, he wouldn't be too polite to them. And he could also make sure and try to find out something else, making sure that nobody knew that Guo Dong was still alive, and to find out how serious the Curtain Rollers' attitude toward him was.
The carriage left the medical house, leaving a few ruts under the green tree in front of the medical house.
Sitting in the quiet room in the deep end of the medical house, the doctor pondered with furrowed brows for a long time, wondering how he should write the information.
The assistant walked into the quiet room with the golden leaf in his hand and told the doctor that Jing Jiu had pushed the wheelchair away.
The doctor didn't pay much attention to it, nodding his head.
Seeing the worried expression on the doctor's face, the assistant asked, "Who is that person? What has happened? "
The doctor didn't answer him. He waved his hand to signal the assistant to leave, and started writing the information.
As he wrote, he said helplessly, "We're not here to deliver a letter."
It was true that the main reason Jing Jiu came to the Curtain Rollers was to deliver a letter.
Many Cultivation sects and forces in the Cultivation circle had been concerned about where Jing Jiu had been all these years.
Few people knew that he had reappeared in Zhaoge City, including the Curtain Rollers.
The Curtain Rollers knew that he had been in Juye City, but they didn't tell anybody else.
The purpose of Jing Jiu coming here today was to tell the Curtain Rollers where he was.
If someone inquired about his whereabouts from the Curtain Rollers, the Curtain Rollers might not tell them. But what if the inquirer was from the Shenmo Peak?
Jing Jiu wanted the Curtain Rollers to deliver a letter to the Shenmo Peak for him. The content of the letter was simple: "I'm still alive."
…
…
The horse-drawn carriage continued on its way to Dayuan City.
On the way, Jing Jiu rode in a new carriage, but he didn't change the horse.
He wasn't in a hurry to travel, but he didn't want to be discovered by others. He traveled slowly in the late spring. He had finally arrived outside Dayuan City after more than ten days.
There was an important official road leading to Yu County in the southeast of Dayuan City. The carriages were coming and going on the road, and the smoke and dust kept rising up. It was quite a bustling place.
In comparison, the official road passing through the Jue Ridge in the northeast of the city was much more deserted, and not a single carriage could be seen for a long time.
The stream by the road was clear, and various houses were scattered among the mountains. Some were planted with green pines that looked like umbrellas, and some were covered with bamboo forests. The scenery was beautiful.
The sunlight was blocked by the pines and bamboos, and the stone slabs gave off a cool feeling.
Most of the houses on both sides of the official road were owned by the wealthy merchants in the city. There were a few famous houses without signboards, and the food and the girls were all expensive.
The horse-drawn carriage traveled along the official road. At the intersection of two streams, it turned right and entered a quieter road. As it reached the end of the stream, it saw a nunnery.
The nunnery didn't have a name. It was hidden in the forest, with a stone bridge behind it.
As the carriage arrived in front of the stone bridge, they saw an old stone lying on the ground.
The old stone was covered with moss, and there were two words on it that were almost covered by the moss.
"Three thousand."
Three thousand worlds or three thousand weak water?
It wasn't until the old nun in the nunnery came out to greet them that Jing Jiu realized the meaning of "Three Thousand Threads of Worry".
"I'm sorry. This small nunnery is shabby, and we don't receive guests."
The old nun said this to Jing Jiu with an apologetic expression on her face.
Guo Dong's voice came out from the carriage, "It's me."
The old nun's body trembled slightly, her face full of disbelief. A moment later, she came back to her senses and exclaimed in surprise and delight, "Is it Miss Dong?"
Guo Dong said, "I've come to the nunnery to recuperate. Don't tell anybody, and don't bother me."
This statement was quite blunt, not to mention polite. The old nun took it for granted and led the horse-drawn carriage into the deep part of the nunnery.
Jing Jiu untied the horse's head and handed the reins to the old nun, saying, "Take good care of it."
The old nun complied respectfully, and asked, "How long do I have to take care of it?"
"Until death," Jing Jiu said.
The horse glanced at Jing Jiu, the expression in his eyes innocent.
The old nun led the horse to the front yard of the nunnery, where she would take good care of it.
From that moment on, the old nun and the other three nuns had been guarding the front yard. They came to the stone bridge and kowtowed a few times every day at dusk.
The nunnery was small, but the scenery was good.
The most beautiful scenery was in a meditation room.
There was a round window on the wall of the meditation room. There was a small lake outside the window, and there were trees on the shore of the lake, their branches stretching out horizontally.
Sitting in the meditation room and looking out, the round window looked like a round fan, and the scenery was the painting on the fan.
The breeze blew over from the lake. Jing Jiu sat in the meditation room, holding a cup of green tea in his hand. He took a sip now and then, remaining reticent.
This was the fourth day since they came to Dayuan City.
On the opposite wall, Guo Dong opened her eyes and woke up.
Now, she slept and woke up more regularly. She would wake up once every few days, but the time she was awake was still not too long.
"Do you trust the nuns in the nunnery?" Jing Jiu asked while looking at the window.
Guo Dong said, "I built this nunnery back then because I liked the scenery here. Nobody knows who I am."
"The scenery here is indeed good," Jing Jiu said.
Guo Dong said, "The leaves will turn red in autumn, and the scenery will look better."
Jing Jiu put the teacup on the table gently, saying, "It looks like you like enjoying life very much."
Guo Dong said, "If I didn't enjoy it, why should I live?"
Jing Jiu said, "There are sceneries in other places, and they might be more magnificent. At least, they will be more interesting."
Guo Dong said, "I'm not tired of seeing the scenery here; why should I go to other places?"
Jing Jiu asked, "Why don't you inform Shui Yue Nunnery and ask them to bring you back?"
Guo Dong said, "That place is a nunnery, and this place is also a nunnery. There is no difference."
Jing Jiu asked, "Aren't you worried that they will think you are dead?"
Guo Dong said calmly, "They think I like to make trouble. Maybe they will feel relieved if they know I am dead."
The two of them didn't say anything more. They leaned against the wall and turned around to look at the lake and the trees outside the round window.
A gust of wind suddenly rose, the lake water rippled, and the tree branches quivered slightly.
It seemed that the scenes in the round fan had moved.
It was unclear whether the wind came from inside the fan or outside the fan.
Time flowed slowly like this.
The sun was setting.
Jing Jiu looked at Guo Dong.
She had fallen asleep.
The twilight was reflected in the meditation room by the lake water.
The whole room was golden.
The natural worm silk entangling her body grew fainter and whiter.
Jing Jiu recalled what she had said earlier.
It seemed that Master Shui Yue Nunnery and her Big Sister had the same attitude back then.
It was really.
It was not easy at all.
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