Day and night tour

Chapter 215 Hunger Trap
People's emotions are not the same. Gu Ling thinks Zhou Xuan is very gentle, but Zhao Wuya... just feels cold.

Zhou Xuan felt as if every bone in his body was broken and his perception became dull.

After the fake dream god was shattered, the god's aura quickly receded, and Zhou Xuan's spirit and perception were drawn out of his body along with the tide of aura.

He was exhausted and slumped on the ground. In order to maintain his final dignity, he supported himself with one hand to avoid falling to the ground in disgrace.

"Young sir, your momentum just now was amazing." Seeing that Zhou Xuan's forehead was covered with cold sweat, Gu Ling hurried over, supporting him and praising him.

Zhao Wuya, shirtless, also came over and said exaggeratedly, "Landlord, are you really Erzhuxiang? With the few moves you just showed, the dragons I found are not as powerful as yours."

In order to show how big the dragon he found was, he stretched his arms as wide as possible.
Zhou Xuan asked weakly, "Can you find a dragon that big?"

Zhao Wuya was exposed by Zhou Xuan for his boasting, but he was thick-skinned and calm. He gestured with his hands to measure the length of "ten centimeters" and said calmly, "I should be able to find a dragon this big, right?"

Zhou Xuan, Gu Ling: "..."

Yazi has a really stubborn mentality. He tries to make up for his own boasting.

This fierce battle is over.

Zhou Xuan, pretending to be a "fake dream god", beat the Willow God into a bloody mess.

The dream of the brick factory completely dissipated, revealing its original appearance.

There were many bloodstains in the factory's gatehouse and on the yellow soil in the yard.

From the deepest brick house, a faint sound of crazy laughter came.

Gu Ling helped Zhou Xuan up, pointed to the tile-roofed house in the distance, and said, "There's someone laughing inside, laughing like crazy."

“Anyone laugh?”

"Yes, I heard it all." Zhao Wuya also echoed.

Zhou Xuan could only smile bitterly.

After disguising himself as a god, his perception became extremely dull, and he couldn't even release his perception.

Instead, Zhou Xuan's hearing and eyesight declined significantly.

The huge consumption of spirit and perception is the price of being possessed by the "Dream God".

Fortunately, Zhou Xuan could feel that his spirit and perception were recovering slowly.

The price is the consumption of spirit and perception, rather than completely destroying the spirit and perception. Just take some time to cultivate it.

"The price of asking the gods to possess me is still too high, and the vacuum period is too long."

Following the sound of laughter, Gu Ling led Zhou Xuan and Zhao Wuya towards the brick house where the crazy laughter came from.

Along the way, Zhou Xuan noticed that the soil in the yard was covered with radiating bloodstains.

As soon as the door of the brick house was opened, the stench of blood went straight into his nostrils.

Zhou Xuan took out a handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose, and saw an old man in the room. He was holding a butcher knife and chopping things on the table.
"Hey, guests from outside? It just so happens that our brick factory has improved its food today and is having roasted pig!
Have you ever tried roasted pig? It is hung in the oven and roasted with fruit wood. It is roasted to a crispy outside and tender inside. Once it comes out of the oven, the whole street is filled with the aroma of roasted pig.
It’s not always available...”

The old man praised the deliciousness of his roasted pig, and his saliva flew in the air like mist.

But the "flying" of spit has its limits. If it floats too far into the sky, it will be mixed with a few grains of dust. Unable to bear the weight of the dust, it will fall onto the chopping board and onto the body that has been chopped into pieces on the chopping board...

"No, you are not outsiders, you are pigs, and if you are pigs, you should be roasted..."

The old man was already crazy, and now he was even crazier. He held the butcher knife and chopped towards Zhou Xuan's forehead.

"boom!"

Gu Ling lit a ball of Taoist fire and set the old man on fire. The fire was extremely fierce and in just two or three moments, he was burned into a pile of bones.

Zhou Xuan walked around the old man who had been burnt to bones and came to the iron gate of the brick kiln.

There was a fire in the kiln, and the iron door was also burned. Zhou Xuan picked up an iron hook from the ground, hooked the handle of the iron door, and pulled it hard.
"Squeak."

As the iron door opened, the truth inside the cave came out.

Zhao Wuya took one look and vomited on the spot.
Gu Ling was a man who had rolled in flesh and blood. Her ability to endure was much stronger than Zhao Wuya's, but she couldn't help but twitch her eyelids.
Inside the kiln, men and women were hung, with iron hooks piercing their hands and hanging them inside the kiln, where flames were blazing...

The smell of burning filled the entire brick house.

Zhou Xuan looked at the tragic death of the brick factory workers and didn't know what to say for a moment. He felt a sense of depression in his heart.
finally,
He gripped the iron hook tightly and knocked on the iron gate rhythmically.

"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, good men and women, I hope you will be reborn into a good family in your next life. If you don't become an official, you will become a wealthy businessman, and enjoy a hundred years of health and happiness..."

The sound of the iron hooks and iron doors knocking serves as the guiding bell for the dead souls to enter the underworld.

Zhou Xuan had two tattoos on Gu Ling's back, one of which was a "white tiger head", the totem of the god "Tianjun".

"Tianjun" controls the passage between the human world and the underworld.

At this moment, "Tian Jun" seemed to be infected by Zhou Xuan's sad voice, and seemed to be unable to bear the tragedy of the world.
The "white tiger head" tattoo crawled from Gu Ling's back to her face, controlling her to emit a tiger roar.

After a burst of tiger roars, the substance around the brick house began to become ethereal, and the walls became like gauze. The souls in the cave walked out of their bodies and walked towards the walls.

Before passing through the wall, all the ghosts turned around and kowtowed devoutly to Zhou Xuan.

The Wicked Scroll on Zhou Xuan's chest began to vibrate...

……

"Young sir, your ceremony of sending away the dead souls seems quite professional."

After leaving the brick factory, Gu Ling preached to Zhou Xuan.

"The Zhou family is a ghost theater troupe. Even though I, the young master, am not doing my job properly, I have learned some rituals for guiding the dead souls through what I have seen and heard."

Zhou Xuan turned around and checked the Cleansing Wrongs Talisman first.

The Cleansing Wrongs Talisman adds one more chance for one to return to the temple to cleanse wrongs.

According to the rules, when clearing your grievances, if you kill an evil god, you will get two chances to return to the temple.

In the breakfast shop on Jiaofangju Street, Yu Zhongguang, a believer of the Willow God, died. He had been given the chance once, and with this time, it was indeed two chances to return to the temple.

At present, Zhou Xuan has had three chances to return to the palace, and with the addition of the Painful Scholar, he has four chances to return to the palace.

"If I don't waste my time going back to the palace, it's enough for me to burn three incense sticks."

Zhou Xuan put away the Wrong-Clearing Scroll, looked back at the brick factory, sighed with a little disappointment, and said: "Liu Shen got here before us. He succeeded in getting the Dragon Locking Cave at the brick factory. I hope that Hunger didn't succeed in getting the other Dragon Locking Cave."

Of the five dragon-locking caves at the dragon's tail of Mingjiang Prefecture, four have been nailed down, leaving only the last one.

"It shouldn't be a big problem. You also said that Willow God wanted to lure the tiger away from the mountain. Since he failed, the dragon-locking cave in the Yue family's house should be guarded..."

As Gu Ling was speaking, suddenly, a white light flashed in the sky.

The white light stopped in front of her, it was a lantern.

"Old Li's lantern." Gu Ling pulled the lantern in front of her, and after sensing it for a while, she said excitedly, "Young Master, they have killed hunger."

"Sure?"

"It's absolutely true. Old Li also said that you are the first to contribute to the quelling of hunger. The painter is holding a celebration banquet in the Gu Lao Temple and begs you to be there."

"Um... let's go." Zhou Xuan pondered for a while. He didn't like to attend any celebration banquets, but out of his professional attitude, he wanted to go to the celebration banquet to confirm again whether Hungry died.

Capturing hunger in exchange for blood and human brains is a deal that Zhou Xuan and the Gu Lao Society do.

Since it is a business, Zhou Xuan must do this job well.

"You guys go, I can't go." Zhao Wuya pointed at his naked upper body.

At the celebration banquet, people were coming and going, and everyone was attending with great fanfare. Would it be appropriate for him to go there naked?
"Let's go to the Metropolitan Museum first. I'll change my clothes and then ask someone to send you a new set of clothes." Gu Ling arranged the itinerary.

……

In the early hours of the morning, Zhou Xuan, Gu Ling, and Zhao Wuya appeared in the Gu Lao Temple.
Zhao Wuya was wearing a suit, trousers, leather shoes, and a Taoist bun on his head. He looked very striking, like an avant-garde artist. If he had a pipe in his mouth, his image would be even more complete.

Gu Ling wore a black cloak, which was suitable for serious occasions such as a celebration banquet.

The painter, who was sitting at the head seat at the banquet in the Gu Lao Temple, came forward to greet Zhou Xuan as soon as he saw him enter the temple.

"Young Master, you have saved Mingjiang Prefecture this time. Hunger has been rampant for many days, but as soon as you stepped in, you caught him by the tail.
On behalf of the Bone Elders Association, the City God, and the people of Mingjiang Prefecture, I want to thank you very much."

The painter's words set the mood, and all that was left was to toast Zhou Xuan.

Zhou Xuan raised his hand and said, "Painter, if hunger is really captured, it is not just my credit. Lao Yun, Zhao Wuya, Gu Ling, Li Chengfeng, and the night watchmen of the City God are all great."

Gu Ling was moved by what she heard. She nudged Zhao Wuya's shoulder with her elbow and said, "See? I told you that the young master is very gentle. If you want to replace him, he won't take all the credit."

"This shows that our landlord Zhou is a kind and noble person, but he is definitely not gentle."

Zhao Wuya still remembered the "revenge" of having his Taoist robe stripped off.

"That's right, that's right, everyone who shows up at the temple contributes to catching hunger."

The painter changed the subject, but unexpectedly, Zhou Xuan's topic shifted to a wider range.

He said to the painter: "Has hunger really been killed? I want to see the corpse of hunger."

"Hunger was burned into a pile of charcoal by my Dao Yanhuo."

Li Chengfeng said.

"Where is the charred corpse?" Zhou Xuan was still worried and wanted to take a look for himself.

"Qingfeng, show the charred corpse to the young master." Li Chengfeng gave an order to Qingfeng.

Qingfeng waved his hand, and the City God ordered Zhang Yifeng to come over carrying a cloth bag.

The cloth bag was opened, revealing a charred corpse of a "starving" person.

Zhou Xuan lowered his head to take a look. Although the corpse was already burnt, its shape did look like the fat belly of a fat man.

When "Hunger" first appeared in Mingjiang Prefecture, it was in this form.

"Young sir, this is a starving corpse, right?"

"Uh...it should be." Zhou Xuan waved his hand and asked Zhang Yifeng to tie the bag again.

……

"Are you really hungry?"

After Li Chengfeng and Zhang Yifeng returned to their original positions, Zhou Xuan drank the wine offered by the painter and sat there asking himself questions.

He always felt that something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what was wrong.

He simply pulled Li Chengfeng over and asked about the details of killing "Hunger".

Li Chengfeng said loudly: "It's mainly because Lao Yun is too powerful. His dragon-hunting skills are at the pinnacle. He went to Yue's house and found the dragon-locking acupoint in less than ten minutes. The acupoint is located in Kangsheng Inn in Yue's house. The inn is spacious enough. Qingfeng and I pretended to be guests and sat in the private room. The other night watchmen also scattered and ambushed in other private rooms, waiting for "hunger" to come.
It was not until the evening that a middle-aged man in a mandarin jacket and with a big belly entered the store. Immediately, everyone felt extremely hungry. We realized that something was wrong with the middle-aged man, so we arrested him and found that he was just a dead man. His "belly" was hunger.

After listening to Li Chengfeng's story, Zhou Xuan felt that there was no problem.

"Hunger" is the offspring of God and has dreams of physical body. Li Chengfeng, Qingfeng, and the city god's night watchman are disturbed by the dream of hunger.

In terms of physical appearance, "hungry" fits the description.

From the perspective of dreams, "hunger" is not a problem.
Now the "starving" corpses are also put in bags, and the matter should end here.

But Zhou Xuan still had a knot in his heart - he suspected that "Hunger" was not what he wanted.

This kind of lump is just a personal feeling, mostly on the emotional level.

Now, rationally, we think that "hunger" is dead, but emotionally, we think that there is something else going on with "hunger".
Who should you listen to?

"Listen to the emotional part. I am an emotional person."

Zhou Xuan was still pondering over the issue of "hunger", while the rest of the people at the banquet were smiling and toasting each other.

Zhao Wuya ate beef in big mouthfuls and handed Zhou Xuan a chicken drumstick, saying, "Landlord, give me a chicken drumstick. It smells delicious."

"I don't like to eat."

"You don't even like chicken legs? How delicious they are? Take a bite, it's delicious."

Zhao Wuya moved the chicken leg forward another inch.

Zhou Xuan couldn't refuse the kindness, so he took the chicken leg and ate it in small bites, saying, "I loved eating chicken legs when I was a child, and the adults gave in to us at that time. But after growing up, I felt that I was too old to eat chicken legs, so I didn't like to eat them anymore."

"I'm different. I love to eat chicken legs all the time." Zhao Wuya has a special fondness for chicken legs. He tore off another one and handed it to Yun Ziliang: "Grandmaster, you have one too..."

"You are considered filial."

Yun Ziliang took the chicken leg and smelled it.
After eating a few bites of the chicken leg, Zhou Xuan suddenly thought of something and stared at the chicken leg in a daze.

"Landlord, why are you stunned again?"

"I figured out one thing."

Zhou Xuan finished the chicken leg in a few bites, put the bone on the table, chewed and swallowed it, then called Li Chengfeng and asked the painter to meet him in a corner of the Bone Temple.

"Hunger was not killed by you." Zhou Xuan said firmly.

The painter was shocked by these words and asked, "Young Master, how do you know it's not dead?"

"I felt something was wrong from the beginning, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong." Zhou Xuan said, "Now that I think about it, Hungry's behavior is wrong. Time can change many things, but it has not changed Hungry's form or his ability to dream."

Zhou Xuan also got the inspiration from chicken legs. He loved eating them when he was a child, but later he didn’t like them anymore. This is the change that time has brought to him.

As for "Hunger", it has been many days since it first appeared in Mingjiang Mansion and was killed tonight.
These days, the "hungry" form is still the "human stomach" form it first appeared in.
The physical dream of "hunger" still only makes people feel hungry, and then slowly infects people's spirits, causing them to kill themselves.

"Time is changing, and Hunger must have changed a lot. The Hunger you killed tonight is exactly the same as the first time it appeared, both in form and in the dream. This is a problem."

The vision of a person who has been struggling for many years will definitely not be as clear as when he first entered the society. If it is still so clear, he must be pretending.

"Young master, what you said makes sense, but... it has only been a few days since Hunger first appeared in Mingjiang Mansion. There hasn't been much change. Isn't that normal?" Li Chengfeng said.

"Not normal." Zhou Xuan shook his finger and said,
"For the sake of "Hungry", Willow God forced me to lure the tiger away from the mountain. For the sake of cultivation, "Hungry" punched 36 holes in the dragon tail of Mingjiang Mansion. In order to save "Hungry", Willow God rushed into Huifeng Medical College.

All signs indicate that Willow God attaches great importance to "Hunger", and "Hunger" has also gained a lot of cultivation resources. Even though it is only a few days, it is enough for it to grow.

If the current "hunger" is still the same as when it first appeared,

There is no reason for Willow God to value such a useless talent.

The dragon energy from the thirty-six dragon tail orifices was absorbed in vain."

The painter and Li Chengfeng became more and more frightened as they listened. If "Hunger" was not dead, then they were lured away by Hunger.

Perhaps, now the fifth dragon-locking cave has been nailed down.

Mingjiang Longwei was lost.

“We fell into the trap of ‘hunger’.”

It was hard for the painter to accept the current situation. Even though he was in charge, Qingfeng, Li Chengfeng and the night watchman were all out, but they were still tricked by "hunger".

Zhou Xuan patted the painter's shoulder gently: "There's nothing unacceptable. You should have gotten used to it... City God and Bone Master have been hunting them for so long, but haven't they achieved anything?"

It's hard to hear, but it's the truth. The painter felt like he had something stuck in his throat.
However, Zhou Xuan changed the subject and said, "Only after actually coming into contact with them did I realize that Hunger and Willow God are indeed very cunning. It is not unfair that you lost to them."

"Uh..." The painter originally thought that Zhou Xuan was just simply mocking him, but he didn't expect him to be so objective.

"Let's not talk about anything else for now, let's go to Kangsheng Inn in Yue's house."

Zhou Xuan preached.

Kangsheng Inn is the fifth dragon-locking cave at Longwei of Mingjiang Prefecture.

"There doesn't need to be too many people going with me." Zhou Xuan began to call on people.

He chose the painters, Li Chengfeng and Yun Ziliang.

Lao Yun’s dragon-hunting skills are extremely sophisticated, and he is indispensable.

The painter has the highest reputation and is also bound by the law, so he is definitely the best bodyguard.

The four of them left the table and drove to Kangfeng Inn at Yue's residence.

The car hit the road.
Zhou Xuan sat in the back seat and asked the painter, "Old Hua, I heard that the Zulong of Mingjiang Mansion has been getting weaker over the past three hundred years?"

"Yes, and the extent of the weakening is quite exaggerated. Several generations of priests in the Bone Elders' Society have been trying to solve the mystery of the weakening of the Mingjiang Prefecture's Zulong, but to no avail."

"Mingjiang Mansion is really weird."

"Very strange." The painter also admitted that Mingjiang Prefecture was strange. He pointed his hand toward the sky and said, "Young Master, Mingjiang Prefecture was once blessed by nature. At its peak, there were six gods above the sky. Moreover, we are the only prefecture among the nine prefectures of Jingguo that has two gods."

There were two gods in Mingjiang Prefecture.

Zhou Xuan has more say on this, as the relationship between the gods and the ancestral tree is very close.

Wherever there are gods, there are ancestral trees.

Zhou Xuan’s tattoo was taught by the Peach Blossom Ancestral Tree—the wine-boiling monk recognized that there was an ancestral tree in the totem hall of the Washing Away Wrongs Sutra.

Although this ancestral tree has never shown its true appearance, since it knows tattoos, it must be the ancestral peach tree that was once worshipped by the tattoo tree clan.

There is an ancestral peach tree in Mingjiang Prefecture, and the dream god was born in Mingjiang Prefecture.

And now in the sky of Mingjiang Prefecture, there is a divine fire, which belongs to the "God of Pain and Disaster".

therefore,

Mingjiang Prefecture does have two gods - the god of dreams and the god of pain and disaster.

The painter shook his head and said, "Two gods, two ancestral trees. Now, not a single ancestral tree can be found. Mingjiang Prefecture is far from what it used to be."

How come I can't find any? One of them is my tattoo artist.

Zhou Xuan did not reveal the whereabouts of the Peach Blossom Tree, but instead changed the topic to a more gossipy one.

He asked, "There are nine prefectures in Jing State, and Mingjiang Prefecture has two great gods. So there must be a prefecture without a god."

"There are no gods in Snow Mountain Prefecture."

Snow Mountain Mansion is not that good? Zhou Xuan thought secretly.

“But there is an ancient Buddha in Xueshan Prefecture,” the painter reminded.

Zhou Xuan then remembered that the ancient Buddha had descended on the Rotating Snow Mountain in the Snow Mountain Mansion.

"Mingjiang Prefecture has now produced two evil gods, the Ancestral Dragon is weakening, and the two Ancestral Trees are nowhere to be seen. If we cannot successfully enshrine the Heavenly God's Fire to make it stronger, I'm afraid Mingjiang Prefecture will be the first prefecture to be in chaos."

Speaking of troubled times, Zhou Xuan became interested.

My sister told me that my grandfather once made a divination and predicted that troubled times were coming.

Yun Ziliang also said that troubled times will come in the near future.

Now the painter mentions the troubled times again,

Zhou Xuan really wanted to know, what was this so-called chaotic world?
"Take our Mingjiang Prefecture for example. The five great celestial gods, Peng Hou, Shui Yong, Gui Shou, Tian Guan, and Fu Hou, have worked together to predict the end of Mingjiang Prefecture.

At that doomsday, Mingjiang Prefecture was flooded, and a huge evil ghost devoured people at will. Millions of people were devoured by him. This is the chaotic world. The time when the chaotic world will occur has not been deduced. It may break out tomorrow or a hundred years later. "

Because the painter knew the scene of Mingjiang Prefecture during the turbulent times, he felt extremely excited when the fire of the gods was ignited.

……

It is said that when the painter and Zhou Xuan were chatting about the situation of Zulong in Mingjiang Mansion, scenes of troubled times and other lively topics,

Yun Ziliang, who always loved to join in the fun, was surprisingly quiet and didn't say a word, which made Zhou Xuan very uncomfortable.

When the car arrived at Kangfeng Inn and stopped, Zhou Xuan secretly asked Yun Ziliang,
"Lao Yun, it's not like you today. You don't even participate in such a lively topic."

"You can't get involved randomly. There's a saying that goes - the secrets of heaven should not be revealed. If you talk too much about the secrets of heaven, you will suffer retribution."

Yun Ziliang has never forgotten how Canglong Mountain brought upon itself the "divine punishment".

"You are quite cautious." Zhou Xuan closed the car door and walked to the front of Kangsheng Inn. He smelled a sour smell.

It's similar to the vomit of a drunk person, but with the smell several times stronger, and that's the smell coming from Kangfeng Inn.

Li Chengfeng lit the lantern and handed it to Zhou Xuan.

Lifting the lantern, Zhou Xuan saw that the door of the inn was riddled with holes, as if it had been thrown into the water and then fished out after being soaked for decades.

"It wasn't like this when you came here before, right?" Zhou Xuan turned around and asked Li Chengfeng.

Li Chengfeng shook his head and said, "When we came here, this inn was quite respectable."

"Alas, hunger has taken over the fifth dragon-locking cave."

Zhou Xuan didn't even bother to push the door. He kicked the rotten door panel into pieces and strode into the inn.

"Wait for me outside. No one is allowed to enter this inn without my permission."

Zhou Xuan held the lantern in his hand and planned to go straight to the second floor, but the staircase where the light shone was rotten and it was likely to collapse if he stepped on it.

The stairs could not bear the force, but Zhou Xuan had another way. He held the magic horse armor, which flashed with golden light, and his figure appeared on the second floor.

He held up a lantern and shone it around, but there was no one in sight. He immediately took out the Wrong-Clearing Scroll and entered the space-time gap from an hour ago...

(End of this chapter)