The ultimate master in the city

Bu Leng Leng—

Zhou Fengchen shook the rattle drum a few times, "Xiao Bao?"

After being called three times, Xiao Bao emerged from the rattle drum with a startled look on his face, shouted "Dad!" and climbed onto him.

Zhou Fengchen quickly picked it up and asked anxiously, "Where are your uncle, your mother, and your aunt?"

On the way there, the group chatted idly, and Xiao Bao's way of addressing them became a jumbled mess. He called the old man Yuan Zhi, and the old woman the boss lady, but it was unclear how he addressed them.

Xiao Bao said timidly, "There were three bad men and four bad women fighting... Mom couldn't beat them, and neither could Grandpa. Grandpa was captured by those men, and Mom and Grandma were captured by those women. I didn't get out, and they didn't capture me."

Zhou Fengchen slapped his forehead. This little treasure was a ghost child, and its way of thinking was different from that of humans. It was impossible to understand anything from it. All he could be sure of now was that two groups of people had come. The women's group had taken away the landlady and Chu Xiaoling, while the men's group had taken away Yuan Zhi, and all of this had happened in a very short time.

He stuffed Xiaobao into the rattle drum, turned around and rushed out the door, following the footprints forward. When he got to the road ahead, the footprints separated, one going left and the other right.

He didn't know what to choose, so he gritted his teeth and chased after it to the left, looking at the footprints and scanning the nearby mountains and snow. He could spot any movement immediately.

However, after chasing for three miles, they found no one, and even the footprints were covered by heavy snow.

"Yuanzhi! Boss lady!" He shouted twice, but there was no response in the quiet, snow-white mountain forest.

He was panting heavily when he hurriedly returned the way he came, intending to look to the right. However, when he reached the end of the path, his footprints were covered by snowflakes, and he could only see a few faint traces. After searching for a while, the surrounding snow surface was flat and smooth, with no traces left.

"Yuanzhi! Boss lady! Old Chu!" He called out twice more, looking left and right, suddenly confused.

I had some cigarettes I bought a while ago in my bag. I took one out, lit it, squatted down on the snow, and took a couple of puffs. When I finished, I couldn't help but curse in Shaanxi dialect: "You son of a bitch, calling your mother Guihua! You bastard..."

After venting his frustration with a few curses, he realized that there was no use in being anxious now. The tracking talisman was ineffective in the snow. Since the other party had kidnapped Monk Yuanzhi's landlady instead of killing her, they must have some purpose. Therefore, he couldn't just search blindly; he had to figure out what had happened to Asi Palace.

Let's start with the corpse-driver, A-Kui.

He threw away his cigarette butt, brushed the snow off, took out another set of five coins, arranged them on the ground in a five-element position, made a hand seal, and the five coins immediately lined up, pointing in one direction—the place where A-Kui had been leading the corpse.

He took the copper coins, exhaled a puff of hot air, and chased after them.

……

The heavy snow is still falling, the weather is gloomy, and there seems to be a blizzard ahead. I don't know when it will end.

Zhou Fengchen trudged forward through the snow, which was more than ten centimeters deep, not daring to run too fast, because he relied entirely on the copper coins for guidance. These things were very elusive, and if he took a slight detour, he would have to turn back and find them again.

After walking for seven or eight hours, from the early morning until seven or eight o'clock the next morning, we finally came to a place where there were people.

It was a place resembling a village or town, deep in the mountains. The houses were strange, some were multi-story buildings, some were tiled houses, and some were bamboo houses, all in a mess and without any order.

The copper coin indicates that this is the location, meaning that the corpse-driver Aqui is very likely here.

He stuffed the knife into his long leather bag, shook off the snow, and went into the village.

It was early morning, and many people in the village, dressed in their traditional clothing or ordinary clothes, were sweeping snow, washing rice, or carrying water. When he entered the village, no one was surprised, and no one gave him a second glance.

At the west end of the village, there was a lively family gathering at a house. A group of men, young and old, had paper figures, paper horses, and strange paper houses set up in front of the door. It looked like a funeral, but it didn't quite look like one because no one was wearing mourning clothes.

When Zhou Fengchen arrived near the house, he thought for a moment, then ran to a secluded spot on one side of the house, spread out a snowdrift, found a flat stone, threw the Five Emperors Coins down, and made a hand seal.

Okay, the corpse-driver A-Kui is inside!

Just as he was about to collect the copper coins, a middle-aged man with a crew cut suddenly jumped out from the side, pointed, and said in heavily accented Mandarin, "Hey! Outsider! What are you doing digging up my copper coins?"

"Uh—" Zhou Fengchen looked surprised, pointed at the copper coin, then at him, "This copper coin is...from your family?"

"Ah! It's mine." The middle-aged man said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Zhou Fengchen smiled, picked up the copper coin, and asked, "If you call its name, will it answer you?"

The middle-aged man paused for a moment, then ran over, lifted the stone, and rummaged through the snow a few more times. Finding no other copper coins, he glared, stretched out his hand, and shouted, "Nonsense! It's not a person, how can it talk? Give it to me!"

Zhou Fengchen shook his head. "It will respond when I call its name, believe me?"

The man scoffed, "Bullshit!"

Zhou Fengchen tossed five copper coins out, saying, "Watch closely!"

The middle-aged man was unconvinced. "Come on, shout it out. I'm watching."

Zhou Fengchen coughed and quietly made a hand seal, "Copper coins, copper coins, come here!"

Suddenly, the copper coins that had fallen into the snow hole stood upright, then rolled along the snow, reaching Zhou Fengchen's feet. They climbed up his trouser leg and miraculously slipped into his pocket.

The middle-aged man watched the whole thing, his eyes widening with each passing moment, until finally he plopped down on the snow, exclaiming, "Holy crap!"

Zhou Fengchen smiled, reached out and helped him up, "How was it?"

The middle-aged man looked him up and down, a little intimidated. "Are you a deity?"

"It's not that exaggerated!" Zhou Fengchen shook his head. "I'm a magician."

"Oh, oh..." The middle-aged man nodded, still looking somewhat nervous.

Zhou Fengchen thought for a moment, then simply took out a hundred yuan and handed it over, pointing to the house next door, "Did a corpse-transporter come to this house this morning?"

The man's eyes lit up when he saw the money; it was much more substantial than copper coins. He grabbed it and stuffed it into his pocket. "Yes, yes! We're driving the Zhang family's ancestor. It's terrifying. The corpse driver is sleeping right now."

Upon receiving confirmation, Zhou Fengchen breathed a sigh of relief. Speaking of sleep, he was also extremely tired. He had been traveling for seven or eight days in a row, and then there was the matter with Zhao Guizhen, so he had hardly slept at all.

He took out another two hundred yuan. "I've been traveling all night. I'd like to get something to eat and get some sleep. Is your place convenient?"

"Convenient! Why not?" The middle-aged man's tone was like he was about to fight; his eyes were glued to the money.

……

The middle-aged man, named Aru, was a Miao man who lived in a bamboo house, about ten meters away from the family of the corpse driver. When he brought Zhou Fengchen home, his wife and two children were having breakfast. He shooed them aside and personally served two bowls of white rice porridge and two steamed buns to eat with Zhou Fengchen.

There were two side dishes in total, one with salted dried meat and the other with pickled cabbage stems. It was alright with the congee and steamed buns.

Zhou Fengchen ate a few bites, then casually asked, "What happened to the family that transports corpses?"

He was very curious about where the corpse came from and why they were rushing it in the heavy snow.

Aru was taken aback, then lowered his voice and said, "This is terrible for the Zhang family. Someone died, they lost money, and they got nothing. The corpse was their ancestor who died far away. They're just waiting for their ancestor to come back and save them. By evening, a Taoist priest will come to perform a ritual and then continue digging!"

I like the novel "The Strongest Master in the City".