The ultimate master in the city

After performing the ritual to appease the old woman's ghost and leaving the mountain road and Su Ling's group, Zhou Fengchen and Zhang Shisan were too lazy to go back to Miao Gong's house in Tietou Town. They decided to head straight back to Sunflower Town.

We set off around 2 a.m. and arrived in Sunflower Town just as dawn was breaking. No one was up yet, and the streets were desolate. Torn plastic bags and scraps of paper, wet with dew, clung to the ground.

The two dared not delay and headed straight for the "Painting Soul Temple" in the west of the town.

A light morning mist rose in the mountains. The "Painting Soul Temple" was hidden among a pine tree. The main hall, built of gray bricks and tiles, along with more than ten side halls, was lifeless and appeared desolate.

Perhaps because they knew that Master Wu was a ghost, Zhou Fengchen and his companion suddenly felt that the temple was incredibly eerie.

When they arrived at the temple gate, they found it was open. The two exchanged a glance and went inside. The courtyard was empty, with no early-rising monks.

The main hall with the Buddha statue directly in front of us was not closed, and when we went inside, there was no one there.

Zhang Shisan glanced at the statue, then quietly patted Zhou Fengchen, "Why do I feel like this statue looks different?"

"What's changed?" Zhou Fengchen asked.

Zhang Shisan said, "His eyes don't seem as bright as they were yesterday."

Zhou Fengchen took a closer look and, sure enough! When he came in yesterday, he felt as if the statue was staring at everyone, but now it was just staring blankly to one side.

"Whether it's changed or not doesn't matter much." Zhou Fengchen shook his head and called out to the back hall, "Is anyone there?"

He called out three times, but no one responded.

Something seems off!

The two exchanged a glance, then reached the curtain at the back door and peeked inside.

Inside was a large, empty room with only three or five beds and nothing else. However, the walls were painted with strange and wonderful pictures of immortals and Buddhas drinking and singing, outlined with thick, colorful paint. They looked lifelike and even a little bewitching.

Zhang Shisan was taken aback. "So, Master Wu and that monk were hiding here listening to us talk yesterday?"

"Whether he listened or not is irrelevant." Zhou Fengchen looked around and said, "The key is that there's no one here. How can a temple be run like this? Something doesn't feel right."

"Let's go outside and take another look."

The two of them ran outside as fast as they could. Once they got to the courtyard, they called out a few times, but no one responded. So they went to each room to push open the door.

After searching through all the side halls and rooms of the temple, including the toilets, there wasn't a single monk in sight; it seemed like an empty temple.

Both of them felt cheated. Returning to the main hall entrance and looking around, Zhang Shisan angrily exclaimed, "Could it be that these damned monks tricked us and ran away?"

Zhou Fengchen's brows furrowed deeply. "Where did Yuan Zhi go? Why is he gone too?"

"Monk Yuanzhi! Your grandson..."

Zhang Shisan shouted at the top of his lungs several times, but received no response. Frustrated, he pulled out his fan, fanned himself a couple of times, and said, "What's going on? What happened?"

Zhou Fengchen thought for a moment, "Could these monks be ghosts who can't go out during the day... No! They were all here yesterday at noon!"

Zhang Shisan's heart skipped a beat. "Could it be that Master Wang from the underworld made his move? Did he also kill Wu Daozhu, that henchman of the Scattering Flower Ghost King?"

"We can't possibly kill Monk Yuanzhi too, can we?" Zhou Fengchen said.

Zhang Shisan narrowed his small eyes. "That's not necessarily true. They're all bald. Maybe the ghost soldiers have mistaken them for someone else."

"Don't talk nonsense!" Zhou Fengchen waved his hand. "Let's go ask the people in town; someone there will surely know."

The two took off their Taoist robes and put them away. When they arrived in town, some townspeople had already gotten up, and the only breakfast shop had lit a charcoal fire. The shop owner, rubbing his sleepy eyes and yawning, was cleaning up the oil pot to prepare for frying dough sticks.

The two entered the shop and asked, "How long will it take for the fried dough sticks to be ready?"

The shop owner has a unique personality: "Just wait for my wife to get up; she's in the bathroom."

"Okay." Zhou Fengchen nodded, then asked, "I have a question for you. Do you know where the monks from the Painting Soul Temple in the west went?"

The shop owner was taken aback. "Why are you asking them? Those monks are quite strange."

Zhang Shisan said, "We wanted to offer incense, but found that no one was inside."

"That's normal," the shop owner said. "Sometimes their temple doesn't have anyone for three or four days in a row. And when there are people, it's only around noon; there aren't any in the morning."

"Why?" Zhou Fengchen asked subconsciously.

The shop owner lifted a large oil drum and poured oil into the pot, saying, "I don't know. They don't accept donations and rarely interact with people in town. Only Master Wu, the Taoist Master, comes to town every few days to beg for alms. He eats everything, but he especially loves meat."

"Uh! Okay, we'll come over for breakfast later." Zhou Fengchen said, pulling Zhang Shisan along.

After leaving the breakfast shop, the two went to the street and asked many people for directions. The answers they received were almost identical to what the breakfast shop owner had given them.

Zhou Fengchen was troubled. He took out a cigarette and handed one to Zhang Shisan. The two of them took a couple of puffs.

Zhou Fengchen looked down at the street and said, "What the hell is going on? Where did Monk Yuanzhi go?"

Zhang Shisan said, "Should we use their birth dates and times to track Yuan Zhi?"

This reminded Zhou Fengchen, who took out a cloth talisman from his pocket, found a secluded spot, wrote the birth date and time of Monk Yuanzhi on it, and then activated the talisman to track him.

It's malfunctioning! It's not working!

"Damn it!" Zhou Fengchen panicked a little.

"Don't rush! Let me try." Zhang Shisan took out his Bagua compass and cast a divination to track the movement, but the pointer didn't move at all.

Both scenarios suggest that Monk Yuanzhi is either dead or trapped somewhere.

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The two exchanged a glance. "Let's go check out the temple again!"

Upon arriving at the "Painting Soul Temple" again, there were still no monks inside. However, the two searched even more thoroughly this time, turning the entire temple upside down.

But... still no one came!

Sometimes, this feeling of not getting answers and not understanding what happened can drive a person crazy.

The two men, scratching their messy hair and grumbling, returned to town. When they arrived at the breakfast shop, the fried dough sticks, spiced soup, and glutinous rice balls were already prepared.

The two ordered a ton of food and ate heartily. Suddenly, Zhang Shisan exclaimed, "Eh?" and asked, "Do you remember those two strange widows who wanted to become nuns?"

Zhou Fengchen jumped in surprise and quickly asked the shop owner, "Sir, do you know where two widows in town who want to become nuns live?"

The shop owner blinked. "No widow who wants to become a nun. What do you look like? How old are you?"

Zhou Fengchen said, "She's about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, and quite good-looking."

"No!" The shop owner shook his head directly. "There aren't many people in town. There have only been three widows in all these years. One remarried last year, and the other two are over fifty years old."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Fengchen and his companion were incredibly annoyed. After paying, they listlessly returned to the "Painting Soul Temple," found a secluded room, and took a nap, determined that the monks would eventually return.

I slept in a daze until two or three in the afternoon before waking up. I didn't see the monk, but instead saw a Miao girl who looked about seventeen or eighteen years old.

The girl walked in from outside the temple, grinned at the two of them, and asked, "Who is Zhou Fengchen?"

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