No, gentlemen also guard against

Chapter 875: The Absence of Women
Equivalent to a colored glaze bottle, of the finest quality.

Although Lu Jinghong was not quite sure why it was called "Lu's Medicine Bottle", the name was strange, but the level of this bottle was already good enough.

At this moment, in the cave hall, Lu Jinghong became the focus of the whole audience.

He was aware of the gazes from all around him, and his breathing became faster.

Lu Jinghong tried hard to control his emotions, then glanced calmly at Liu Aliang, Sha Ergou and other friends in the same group, and found that Brother Liu and "Silly Dog" seemed to be looking at him curiously, and some of the teenagers around them even showed envious eyes.

"Fanyang Lu's? Lu's medicine bottle?"

The Yue women watching around also looked surprised, and many of them began to whisper to each other.

At this moment, they, like Uncle Tang, noticed Lu Jinghong's feminine appearance and seemed to remember something.

Being the center of attention, at this moment, Lu Jinghong suddenly deeply understood the meaning of life:
As a human being, you have to pretend to be cool! If you don't pretend to be cool, wouldn't it be a waste of time to come to this world?
His chest heaved with excitement.

However, there was a righteous Vietnamese woman in the audience who spoke frankly:
"The Lu family of Fanyang belongs to the Five Surnames and Seven Noble Names, and is a high-ranking family. They do not meet the three non-acceptance conditions, and should be eliminated."

Lu Jinghong's originally excited expression suddenly changed.

"Just enter the bamboo hall."

At this time, the cold-faced Senior Sister Yuan spoke up and helped him:
"Ladies, you know him. His coming to the assessment this time was also the intention of the higher-ups. Ladies, you should have other considerations."

The upright female cultivator pursed her lips and said nothing.

Lu Jinghong immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

At this time, Master Tang, who was presiding over the ceremony on the high platform, spoke up and made the final judgment:

"Okay, next one."

"Thank you, senior."

Lu Jinghong clasped his fists towards Uncle Tang solemnly:
"Thank you, senior!"

With a polite word, he turned and walked off the stage.

At this moment, Lu Jinghong, whose steps were unconsciously light, did not notice that his uncle Tang, who knew all the secrets of the fetal bottle, was looking at his back in a complex and strange way.

The remaining teenagers lined up one by one, climbed onto the platform, and accepted Uncle Tang's "Immortal Touching the Head" test.

As soon as Lu Jinghong got off the platform, he immediately came to Ouyang Rong and Sha Ergou.

Pretending to be nonchalant, he clasped his fists and casually said hello:

"Brother Liu, Brother Sha, I am sorry for showing off my ugliness."

Ouyang Rong shook his head: "Mr. Lu has amazing talent, he is worthy of being a descendant of a famous family."

Lu Jinghong couldn't close his mouth when he was sincerely praised by Brother Liu who had been in the limelight and suppressed him yesterday.

He just suppressed his smile and was about to speak when he heard Sha Ergou's loud voice:
"To show off? Isn't Mr. Lu the best placenta? He should be very powerful. I saw that everyone was shocked by Mr. Lu. He should be showing off. Why is Mr. Lu showing off? It's not true."

He said this with some envy, and then muttered softly:
"I understand. No wonder that monkey likes to bite Master Lu. It may be because Master Lu has a top-grade placenta. He is really different..."

Lu Jinghong's eyelids twitched when he heard this, and he couldn't help but correct her:

"What placenta? It's a placenta bottle."

Sha Ergou scratched his head: "Oh, fetal bottle, they are all similar, the same meaning hehe, after all, it is birth, brought out from the mother's womb..."

Lu Jinghong had a blank expression on his face. Although Sha Ergou's words of envy did not sound fake, they sounded strange and he felt something was wrong.

It always felt like Sha Ergou was cursing someone, but as he was from a family of scholars and had been a nobleman for generations, it was not easy for him to compete with an illiterate and uncouth person.

All in all, Lu Jinghong felt that it was really difficult to talk to Sha Ergou. It seemed that this guy was specifically designed to antagonize him, like a scholar meeting a soldier and unable to explain himself clearly.

From this perspective, the slightly dull Brother Liu next to him is more handsome. It is more comfortable to communicate with him. There is nothing wrong with him. He is suitable for dealing with.

Just as Sha Ergou and Lu Jinghong were communicating across channels, Ouyang Rong's gaze turned towards the platform.

Uncle Tang, who seemed to be of a very high seniority, was able to detect the remaining teenagers very quickly. Almost in the instant when his palms touched their foreheads, he was able to report each person's fetal bottle level.

However, the woman who was taking notes behind him was a little slow, and her writing speed was somewhat slowed down...

After about an incense stick of time, the test was completed.

Except for Lu Jinghong who has the top-grade Qi-refining aptitude equivalent to 'Liuli Jingping', none of the other young men have top-grade aptitude.

But there are four people who have the best fetal bottle, including Hiro.

There are ten people who have the same mid-quality fetal bottles as Ouyang Rong and Sha Ergou.

The remaining three young men are at a lower level, they are low-grade fetal bottles.

However, among the dozen or so young men on the field, Ouyang Rong's fake body, with a bone age of 19, is the oldest.

In the center of the cave, Senior Sister Yuan climbed onto the platform, took the scroll recording the qualifications of each young fetus, put it into her sleeve, bowed politely to Senior Uncle Tang, and said goodbye.

She turned her head and said coldly to the group of young men below:

"Be quiet and follow me."

Senior Sister Yuan took the lead and walked towards a corridor on the northwest side of a cave.

Everyone who had finished the second level followed.

Ouyang Rong took a look and saw that it was the corridor that Song Zhian, Yu Mili and the other Yue girls had entered not long ago.

The assessment of this group of Zhutang preparatory boys and the assessment of the new Yue girls including Song and Yu were indeed carried out in separate batches.

In other words, this group of Zhutang prospective young men were just brought along for a short while and were secondary. For Yunmeng Jianze, the most important and most important thing was to select a new group of Yue women.

Moreover, Ouyang Rong and his companions had heard Senior Sister Yuan casually say on the road that Bamboo Hall would not accept young men like them who were blank slates in the past. Those who could enter Bamboo Hall were all talented sword cultivators who came from the Tiannan Jianghu and the ten major sects in the world. They were all well-known sword cultivators in the mountain Jianghu, or top sword cultivators recommended by the direct descendants of Yunmeng Jianze at the foot of the mountain.

There is no gender distinction for those who enter the Bamboo Hall. They just practice swordsmanship together so that talented sword practitioners can gather the strengths of all schools instead of being complacent. The same is true for the Yue women in Yunmeng Jianze.

This was the original intention of establishing the Bamboo Hall, so its entry requirements are very strict and no seedlings or waste are accepted.

However, as time went by, Zhutang gradually became a branch of Yunmeng Sword Lake. Except for a few ungrateful people and those who had become enemies, all the sword practitioners who had studied in Zhutang became the most die-hard pro-Yunmeng sect after they went down the mountain and returned home.

In the Bamboo Hall, sword cultivators of different levels would assist Jianze in handling matters down the mountain in the past. Even those who had been removed from the list and left for many years would still do something for Jianze... They could be considered to be spreading their influence down the mountain and expanding their influence.

Not long ago, the battle for the giant Buddha in Tiannan Jianghu attracted worldwide attention. The sword cultivators in Zhutang participated in it. They had violent clashes with the imperial court's Qi-refining practitioners on battlefields including the Xingzi Lake Buddha.

There was a serious loss of personnel among the sword cultivators in Zhutang.

This time, the female monarchs made an exception and allowed Zhutang to recruit new young men like them, not to let them register directly and become Zhutang sword cultivators, but to inherit the mantle of some of the Zhutang sword cultivators who died in battle.

A female swordsman from Yue or a swordsman friend of the swordsman who died in battle and is now in the bamboo hall will take over as the disciple on behalf of the master.

This is because some Bamboo Hall sword practitioners are alone, without any relatives or friends, and each of them has their own master. The sword techniques they have learned may be niche and eccentric, or completely passed down from one person to another.

After they died in battle, if there was no one to inherit, the tradition would be truly lost.

The female rulers of Jianze could not bear to see this, so they made an exception and recruited these young men as a way to continue the incense of the Zhutang sword practitioners who died in battle.

When Ouyang Rong heard Senior Sister Yuan chatting on the bamboo raft, his eyebrows raised. He suddenly realized that although Miss Shuang and the others were not very decent in the matter of being embroiderers, these Yunmeng Yue women were still quite particular and humane in some big and small matters.

In addition, being among the special young men taking the Zhutang assessment, he also had some feelings:

The battle at the Big Buddha in Xingzi Lake was the first major battle between the Great Zhou Dynasty and the monks of Tiannan Jianghu led by Yunmeng Jianze. It was also a battle that completely tore their relations apart.

On that day, the "Tiannan rebels" including Nujun Yuenu and Zhutang Jianxiu intercepted and killed the Buddha's head on Qingyang Heng Street outside Xingzi Lake, and a bloody battle broke out.

Ouyang Rong was not present that day, but was writing poetry in a drunken dream in Xunyang Restaurant a hundred miles away. On that day, the people from the court who presided over the battle were Rong Zhen, Lin Cheng, the third son of Wei, and Wang Lengran.

Later, thanks to the war between the two sides, he was kicked aside by the empress and "demoted", and took advantage of the situation to harvest the heads of Lin, Wei, Wang and others, and also burned down the Xingzi Lake Buddha that was a waste of money and labor...

Later, Rong Zhen, Nanny Song and others took great pains to ask Ouyang Rong to leave the mountain as a lifeline. When he went to Xingzi Lake to clean up the mess, he passed Qingyang Heng Street several times. Ouyang Rong, who passed by in a hurry, only smelled the strong smell of blood in the air after the Xuanwu Guards and the female officials cleaned up the scene. He did not see the piles of corpses of the sword cultivators Yue women and the armored female officials...

Now it seems that the battle on Qingyang Heng Street was indeed brutal enough. Coupled with the subsequent fighting and hunting in various parts of Jiangnan that continued until the Battle of Xunyang Grottoes, and the "Limiting the Number of Vietnamese Women Order", these Tiannan rebels did suffer heavy losses.

In the second half, Ouyang Rong is acting as the governor of Jiangzhou. Although he is a "weak scholar", he is in charge of the construction of the Donglin Buddha, and follows the imperial edict to issue the "Limiting Yue Women Order". He also assists the female historian Rong Zhen behind the scenes and gives advice as a dog-headed military strategist...

Well, in the eyes of the rebels in Tiannan Jianghu, although Ouyang Lianghan was not the main culprit, he was also an accomplice who made them grit their teeth.

That was the Fang sisters' initial attitude towards him.

Ouyang Rong, who currently quite approves of Yunmeng Jianze's move to pass on his legacy to the sword cultivators who died in battle, does not feel guilty about it.

The lives of you Yue women and Zhutang sword practitioners are lives, but the lives of the people of Jiangzhou under my rule are not lives?
Ouyang Rong has a clear conscience regarding all these good and evil, grudges, right and wrong.

When in a position, one should work for the government; when in a region, one should work for the welfare of the region;
Even when the giant Buddha he built with his own hands hindered the future safety of the people of Jiangzhou and became the source of chaos and a tool for the empress to extend her power, Ouyang Rong could nod and destroy it without blinking an eye...

While Ouyang Rong was in a trance, he found himself walking in the corridor with the main group and Senior Sister Yuan for a stick of incense.

Just as he had expected, the terrain of the corridor became increasingly sloping upwards as he went further in, as if it was leading to a high place in the mountains.

Ouyang Rong, like everyone else, did not ask any more questions. He walked quietly for another incense stick of time and finally passed through the corridor and stood on a flat space.

In front of us, there is a colorful sun shining into our eyes and a whistling mountain breeze blowing in our faces, bringing us the fresh air we have not felt for the whole morning.

The young men were told to take a breath and support their knees. Ouyang Rong pretended to wipe the sweat off his face and looked ahead. They came to an exit of the cave.

The entrance of the cave is huge, with blue sky and white clouds outside and a mirror-like lake in the distance.

From their perspective, there seemed to be no road outside the cave entrance. It was suspended in the air, and there should be a cliff below.

At this moment, at the edge of the cave, eight Yue women and some familiar young girls were staying.

From time to time, a few girls were led out of the cave by the Yue woman and disappeared from sight.

"Brother Liu."

Just then, Miss Yu's voice was heard.

Ouyang Rong, Sha Ergou and Lu Jinghong turned around and saw that it was indeed her.

Song Zhian was also standing next to Miss Yu, staring out of the cave in a trance, as if she didn't see them. Only Miss Yu, who was looking around and stealing food, had her eyes rolled back to the back of her head.

This group of new girls were closer to the entrance of the cave, and no one knew what the scenery outside was like.

While Senior Sister Yuan was chatting with her companions aside, Lu Jinghong immediately walked over, and Ouyang Rong and Sha Ergou followed tacitly.

After approaching the cave entrance, Ouyang Rong saw out of the corner of his eye that the outside of the cave entrance was not a complete cliff, and there was no dead end. There was another way to go. Along the stone wall on the right side of the cave entrance, there was a rugged and climbing mountain path, like a charming and thin snake, extending all the way to a higher place. He didn't know if it was the top of the cliff.

Soon, the five-member team reunited.

Miss Yu asked curiously:
"Brother Liu, have you passed the second level?"

Just as Lu Jinghong was about to speak, Sha Ergou said with a smile:
"Just scratching my head, it's not as difficult as the first level yesterday. By the way, what are you waiting for? Is the third level here? Haha, it can't be that we have to jump down..."

Song Zhian withdrew his gaze from outside the cave and shook his head gently:
"The third level is up there. We came late and are about to be the last batch in line. The senior sisters asked us to wait here slowly. Most of the girls have already gone up for the test. I don't know how it's going.

"I heard from my senior sisters that the third level is held in a place called Yangxin Palace, which is on this cliff. The third level seems to be more difficult than the previous two levels, and it takes more time than the first level. There is a limit on the number of people who can go up each time, and they have to come in small groups..."

The pretty girl pointed to the top of her head, looked serious, and continued:
"A senior sister said that this place was a forbidden area in the past. No one was allowed to enter except for the female monarchs or those who were granted permission to break through the state of mind... According to convention, it is opened every few years and presided over by the female monarchs, specifically for the third level of the assessment for new Yue women. However, this time, the eldest female monarch suddenly went into seclusion and the second female monarch had something to do, so neither of them came. It seems that the sixth female monarch presided over it..."

Ouyang Rong, who was standing behind the four people, heard this and his eyes flickered slightly.

He looked up at the ceiling of the cave and murmured softly:
"The Hall of Mental Cultivation..."

(End of this chapter)