Maoshan Taoist priests practice falsehood and become reality

Chapter 13 Program Interview
  "Xiao Ling, what are you talking about? I'm sorry Su Heng, she's been a little unusual lately."

"It's okay, then I'll go back first."

"Aren't you staying for dinner?"

Xia Qin persuaded her to stay.

"No, I plan to go back and take a rest."

After saying goodbye to Xia Qin and his daughter, Su Heng chose to take the subway home to rest. When he woke up, he simply cooked a bowl of instant noodles. After eating, he went out again.

At 21:46, Su Heng arrived at the convenience store, and after a brief handover with the day shift clerk, she officially started working the night shift.

At 22:56, the real girl sent him a news link.

Click to open a news report about the Cobblestone Path Incident.

According to reports, the seanceer received the alarm and rushed to the scene in time, saving a young man and woman and successfully preventing a tragedy.

The accompanying picture shows him and Xia Xiaoling, both of whom have thick mosaics on their faces.

Real Girl: This mosaic makes people feel as if we are the evil spirits.

Xuanheng: Oh.

Real Girl: You scumbag, I typed eighteen characters and you replied with "Oh"?
  Xuan Heng: Is Sister Xia Qin okay? Have you noticed anything unusual? In addition, the master bedroom cannot be occupied anymore. I need to find an excuse for her to move out.

Real girl: (╯▔ dishes▔)╯! You boy only has eyes for my mother.

Xuanheng:? ? ?
  Real Girl: Don’t worry, I made an excuse and said she was scared to be alone, so she slept in my room at night.

Xuanheng: Very good, then you sleep in her room.

Real girl: (╯▔ dishes▔)╯! !

Xuan Heng: I’m busy at work, so I won’t talk anymore.

Real girl: (╯▔ dishes▔)╯! ! !
  Su Heng searched for relevant news, and he was surprised to find that in less than three days, eight cases of evil spirits harming people occurred in Haibin City, resulting in a total of six deaths and eight injuries.

This data is obviously not normal. In response to the recent frequent cases of evil spirits, the Séance has held an emergency meeting and will announce effective solutions to the public tomorrow, and hopes that citizens will reduce unnecessary outings.

"It turns out that there have been several cases of evil spirits hurting people one after another. No wonder there are not many customers tonight."

Thinking of the A-level evil spirit that cursed Sister Xia Qin, and the sudden arrival of Vice President Wei Zonglin in District 9, Su Heng vaguely felt that something was happening in this city.

The streets were empty, except for the occasional car that appeared and sped by.

Su Heng stretched out, walked out of the counter, checked and removed the expired products on the shelves one by one. He would heat up the rice balls or lunch boxes that were coming due and eat them as a midnight snack.

After it is removed from the shelves, it must be replenished immediately. Usually you just need to refill the bowl of instant noodles and potato chips, which is a little relaxing. It only takes two round trips from the warehouse to the store.

After replenishing the goods, Su Heng chose to rest.

He recited the mouth-purifying mantra once, and then the mind-purifying mantra.

At 02:10, Su Heng started making fried skewers and oden. He took out bags of ingredients from the refrigerator, made them according to sales, classified and packaged them, affixed shelf-life labels, and entered them into the computer.

At 04:01, the east is getting darker, sanitation workers go to the streets to clean, and the delivery vehicle arrives.

There are fifteen refrigerated boxes filled with fresh rice balls, milk cakes, three frozen boxes filled with Guandong steamed buns, ice cream and the like, two normal temperature boxes and eight drink boxes.

After signing the goods receipt, Su Heng started the most tedious task of scanning the QR code for goods entering the warehouse.

This work took nearly two hours. When it was almost completed, customers began to come in to buy breakfast one after another.

The morning rush hour is the busiest. Fortunately, at about 7 o'clock, Sister Xia Qin came to the convenience store to help.

Su Heng excused herself to go to the bathroom, recited the mind-purifying curse, and came out to observe Xia Qin. She found that the curse did not get significantly worse. It was probably related to the move out of the master bedroom.

At 07:20, the colleague responsible for the morning shift came to hand over the shift.

In the past, when colleagues were working at the front desk, Su Heng would stay to help organize the inventory in the warehouse and chat with Sister Xia Qin.

But not now. He had too much to do and not enough time.

When leaving, Sister Xia Qin asked:
  "Want to come to my house for lunch?"

"Not today."

"Okay, go back and have a good rest."

After leaving the convenience store, Su Heng took the subway and went straight to Maoshan Taoist Temple to prepare for morning classes for the new day.

The subway was crowded with drowsy office workers. Everyone's face was written with exhaustion, as if they had not slept last night.

Usually at this point, he is also sleepy, tired, and looks haggard.

But since he became a Taoist priest in Maoshan, with the blessing of the Purifying Mantra, he only needs five hours of sleep a day to be full of energy and radiant.

At 08:35, Su Heng arrived at Maoshan Taoist Temple.

Master and two senior brothers sat around in front of the TV.

"Master, brothers, good morning."

"Good morning."

A morning show interview was being played on the TV. This program would interview popular seancers from time to time, and occasionally gossip about the seancers' private lives. Its style was relaxed and casual, and it was quite popular.

Today’s host is Ru Yue, and the special guest is Ruan Yanfei, an intermediate spiritual master who is committed to animal protection.

The interview room was decorated in a home style, and the two of them sat on the sofa and chatted like friends.

"Good morning Ruyue."

"Good morning Ruan Yanfei, I really like the video you posted yesterday about saving stray cats."

"Haha, thank you. It is everyone's responsibility to care for animals. I am just doing what I can. Besides, who can refuse to help cute cats?"

Ru Yue looked at the tablet in her hand: "Wait a minute, I just received a message backstage. An audience member said that he had witnessed evil spirits flying in the air. What do you think of this?"

Ruan Yanfei shook his head and smiled: "It's purely a rumor. As we all know, most evil spirits cannot be directly observed by the naked eye. The only ones that can be observed are D-level or C-level evil spirits that have just transformed from humans due to a curse. These two levels of evil spirits cannot Flying, maybe this netizen saw a kite."

Ru Yue nodded in agreement: "Yes, but recently there have been several cases of D-class evil spirits injuring people in Haibin City, and the citizens are worried. Some people even doubt whether the protective cover in District 9 is damaged, causing the evil spirits outside the safe zone. Take advantage of the situation and spread the curse over a large area."

Ruan Yanfei: "The protective shield is inspected and repaired every day, and the safety magnetic field covering the ninth area is normal without any damage. The reasons for the frequent occurrence of D-level evil spirit incidents are still under investigation. In addition, there is good news for Share it with everyone.”

Ru Yue: "Oh, what's the good news?"

Ruan Yanfei looked at the camera: "The headquarters of the Seance has dispatched a capable general. This person is very remarkable. He is the sixth seancer in history to achieve 100% removal of spirits. He once saved the souls in the Blood Moon Incident ten years ago. Millions of lives..."

Ru Yue: "Is it that one?"

Ruan Yanfei smiled and said nothing.

Ru Yue: "Okay, let us maintain a sense of mystery. Viewers are welcome to leave a message and vote to guess the identity of this mysterious spiritual master. At ten o'clock, the mysterious guest will be a guest in the live broadcast room to bring us the solution to the evil spirit crisis in Haibin City. The latest plans and measures. Before this, let’s take a look at the case of an evil spirit wounding someone on Qingshi Road yesterday.”

The small TV behind the two began to play a short video. The picture changes from blurry to clear, a corpse is being carried out, and blood is everywhere. Medical staff at the scene were checking whether the victim was injured and whether he needed medical treatment.

Ru Yue: "Oh my God, the scene looks very bad. Have you noticed that the man in pajamas is covered in blood and seems to have been seriously injured."

Ruan Yanfei: "Don't worry, it's the blood of the evil spirit. Our seancer killed the evil spirit with just one blow before the citizens were injured."

Ru Yue pretended to be surprised: "It was solved with just one blow? I don't know which spiritual master it is. Do we know it?"

Ruan Yanfei: "In fact, she also came to the scene today."

Ru Yue: "Oh?"

In front of the TV, Li Ping said excitedly:

"It's coming, it's coming!"

The music is ringing.

Host Ru Yue read loudly: "Let us welcome Wang Yuran, an intermediate seance master from Haibin City Seance!"

Wang Yuran, wearing a white crisp suit, walked out from the backstage.

As soon as she sat down, Ru Yue sighed: "As soon as she appeared just now, I was thinking, wow, this girl is so beautiful. I can't imagine her fighting evil spirits at all."

Ruan Yanfei took over the conversation at the right time: "Don't be deceived by appearance, she is an out-and-out fighting madman."

A photo of Wang Yuran wearing a combat uniform was posted. The background of the photo was in a cafe. Wang Yuran had a serious expression, a pistol on his waist, and combat boots. His temperament was like a samurai sword with a cold light.

"Is she the same person as the sweetie sitting next to me?"

Wang Yuran just smiled lightly at the two exaggerated compliments, as if she was already used to this kind of thing.

Ru Yue was a little embarrassed. Her professionalism made her understand that the spiritual master in front of her was different from a bombastic character like Ruan Yanfei, so she chose another topic:
  "Talk about the Qingshi Road incident. How did you subdue the evil spirit with one blow?"

Wang Yuran said expressionlessly: "If an intermediate spiritualist cannot subdue a D-level evil spirit the second they meet, he should take the rank evaluation again."

These words really embarrassed Ruan Yanfei, who was ready to interrupt at any time. In terms of fighting evil spirits, he was once criticized as not worthy of the title of intermediate spiritual master. His fastest record against a D-class evil spirit was 3 minutes and 56 seconds.

Ru Yue instantly understood Ruan Yanfei's hesitation and smiled happily.

"However, I was not the main force in subduing the evil spirits in the Qingshi Road incident."

Ru Yue's eyes lit up, and she smelled the inside story: "Did anyone else help you?"

"Well, when I rushed to the scene, the evil spirit had been subdued by a man in pajamas. All I did was walk up to the evil spirit and stab him in the head, that's all."

Ruan Yanfei finally grasped the topic and retorted loudly: "This is impossible. The man in pajamas is just an ordinary citizen. How can he have the power to subdue evil spirits? I hereby solemnly remind all citizens that when encountering evil spirits, they should call the spirit ghost hotline as soon as possible and call Evacuate the scene as much as possible, any attempt to confront or fight the evil spirits is tantamount to suicide."

Ru Yue'er received the news back home and echoed: "Wang Yuran just made a joke with everyone. When facing evil spirits, don't be impulsive. Safety is the first priority."

Wang Yuran wanted to refute, but thought about it and let it go. This is just a show, no one cares about the truth.

"Hey, why does popularity count as part of the assessment?"

Wang Yuran sighed secretly.

With the development of spiritual masters to this day, in addition to ability and record, the promotion assessment also has a popularity index. This index was born nine years ago. Someone proposed to make a ranking of seancers, which would help bring the distance between seanceers and ordinary people closer.

Since then, the mystery of the seancer has been almost eliminated, and he has become a special combatant blessed by a star halo.

Seances also strive to promote the popularity index, and more popular seanceers will receive additional financial and equipment subsidies.

After all, turning the spiritual master into a star will help the stable development of the safe zone, but for hawks like Wang Yuran, it is nothing more than torture in disguise.

There was really no way she could deliberately create a false and likable persona with a dove spiritual seancer like Ruan Yanfei in order to please the citizens.

Séances are divided into two factions, the hawks and the doves.

The hawkish view is that a seancer should focus solely on destroying evil spirits and ignore the rest.

If he hadn't heard that Wei Zonglin was also one of the invited guests, Wang Yuran would not have bothered to participate in this kind of interview that is loved by doves.

Wei Zonglin is the recognized leader of all the hawk sect spiritual masters. Unlike the Peace Dove, which insists on stable development in the safe zone, Wei Zonglin insists on regaining the land lost by mankind from the evil spirits and expelling all evil spirits from the world one by one.

Twenty years ago, such arguments were mainstream. It wasn't until the Seance was trying to regain and establish the Thirteenth District that they encountered the Red Moon Incident and paid a huge price.

Since then, radicalism has been regarded as a sign of danger, so the doves who prefer to stay in a corner were born. Dove spiritual masters believe that as long as the probability of evil spirits harming people is controlled below 6%, the so-called safety standards have been met.

As for regaining lost ground, at least we have to wait until human technology achieves another major breakthrough.

This argument gained great support ten years ago, when doves replaced hawks as the representatives of seancers. It ushered in an era of peace where humans and evil spirits would not invade each other.

Wang Yuran firmly believes that peace is just a short-lived illusion, and sooner or later a life and death battle will break out between humans and evil spirits. Everyone should make final preparations for that war instead of settling in a corner and fantasizing about the natural demise of evil spirits.

……

"It turns out she is the master's granddaughter."

Su Heng learned from two senior brothers that Wang Yuran, who was being interviewed on TV, was Wang Zhiyuan's granddaughter.

No wonder she looked familiar when I first met her.

"The big shot that will appear at ten o'clock is probably Wei Zonglin."

After all, there is currently no news on the Internet about Wei Zonglin coming to Haibin City in District 9.

There is currently no bigger figure than Wei Zonglin.

But these have nothing to do with Su Heng. Big shots are too far away from his life.

What we need to focus on now is improving our own cultivation and completely eradicating the curse on Sister Xia Qin's seal.

The program entered the commercial break, and Wang Zhiyuan, who did not see his granddaughter, looked at his new apprentice Su Heng.

"Su Heng, how is my granddaughter?"

"A list of talents."

"Well. Are you free now?"

"Master, just ask."

Wang Zhiyuan stroked his beard: "You go to Baihua Village for me. Your two junior uncles have been there for a while. They can't get through on their mobile phones, and Wei's letter doesn't come back."

"I guess I'm drunk again. How many times has this happened?" Liu Yun sighed.

Li Ping counted with his fingers: "Not counting the time when the villagers tied the widow to a pillar by sneak attack, this is the seventh time."

Liu Yun looked at Su Heng with sympathy: "Be smart, these two uncles are not good friends. Don't be led astray."

Wang Zhiyuan glared: "How dare you say bad things about our uncles behind their backs! Su Heng, the two uncles are old and have bad tempers. Please say more nice things when we meet. There are two cigarettes under the third table in the homework room. Take it with you. The two uncles will be happier if they smoke."

Surprisingly attacking a widow, smoking while hungover, these two uncles don't sound like serious Taoist priests at all, do they?

(End of this chapter)