Chapter 159: Grain Warehouse Demon Infestation

Days pass like flowing water, and in the blink of an eye, a month has passed.

The mortician's shop has welcomed and sent off guests, handling seven funeral businesses, two funeral rites, and some fragmented funeral sales.

Xu Qing estimated the customer flow and constantly improved his business strategy.

Those who had the ability to seek his funeral services were mostly well-off families. Occasionally, people who were strapped for cash would come to patronize, and they were also ordinary families who didn't worry about two meals.

And those refugees and beggars would never patronize his shop, running here to arrange funeral affairs.

To avoid the loss of potential customers, Xu Qing specially added new notices to the city gate bulletin board, and at the same time, he widely publicized in places where refugees and beggars liked to gather, such as under the dry bridge, dilapidated houses, and abandoned temples.

In this day and age, there are many disciples of the Eight Great Gates of the jianghu, and the imperial court can't manage them all. Those beggars who play the lotus flower fall and sing the mouse treasure have outstanding business capabilities. After receiving Xu Qing's benefits, they widely arranged his funeral shop and publicized it everywhere.

Nowadays, as long as someone passes under the dry bridge, they can always hear the sound of beggars playing boards and singing lyrics. Those beggars are also very capable. They don't sing these unlucky lyrics when begging for food, but when they are free, they will play the boards as a pastime.

This is not it. Beside the water gate bridge, there are beggars playing boards:

"The lame beggar froze to death in the City God Temple,

He borrowed incense candles and a flatbed cart.

He didn't eat his fill before he died,

Today, paper horses are tied in double portions.

White lanterns, paper money drifting,

The old shop in the south of the city is bright all night.

Three copper coins for a thin coffin,

There is still a good person Xu in the world."

These lyrics can't be called elegant, but they are catchy.

Besides these talented beggars, Xu Qing also set his sights on the children who ran and played on the street all day.

Children holding sugar figures, windmills, and various small toys ran and jumped on the street, singing nursery rhymes—

"The filial son pawned his clothes to bury his sick mother,

The lonely girl cried for the spirit, lacking filial clothes.

He cut his own burial cloth,

And took it to wrap your parents' bones.

The wind is cold on the Yellow Springs road,

There is warmth in human hearts in the world."

There are also storytellers who took the storybooks gifted by Xu Mouren and broadcasted funeral advertisements for him for free. It is often heard in teahouses—

"Making way and welcoming before the Yama Hall,

The world owes you ten thousand strings of wealth,

The underworld grants you a guiding name.

Ten thousand lamps on the Yellow Springs road,

All are people who owed debts before they died..."

The atmosphere in Linhe doesn't know when it became gloomy. The government office has often talked to Xu Qing, but since he is doing a proper business, the masters, coroners, catchers, and runners of the patrol room are mostly acquainted with him, so they all turn a blind eye, treating it as a young man's nonsense, waiting for this wave to pass, perhaps it will be fine.

Besides the shop business being prosperous, in this month or so, the incense of the Cat Immortal Hall has also broken through the ten-thousand-wisp mark.

The ten thousand wisps of incense that people often talk about refer to the incense of temples and temples reaching a certain level, and the ten thousand wisps usually refer to large temples and temples.

In one month, the subsequent influence of the Cat Immortal Hall punishing the sheep herder, tearing down the Fertility Temple, and subduing the demon tiger finally fermented. Xu Qing also witnessed the transformation of the hall's incense from one hundred wisps a day to three or four hundred wisps a day.

However, by today, the growth of incense has shown a downward trend.

Xu Qing is not surprised. After all, most people don't burn incense on weekdays and only hold the Buddha's feet temporarily.

Those who have received the grace of the Cat Immortal Hall can burn incense once as a thank you, which is already considered pious in their hearts. If they want to worship again, perhaps they have to wait until the holidays or when they have requests for the immortals before they might light that wisp of incense.

During this period, Sister-in-law Wu of the paper shop next door had a daughter-in-law to accompany her, and the whole person had a spirit. Xu Qing also gave Zhang Wan a job, asking her to help manage the burial clothes shop not far from the paper shop.

As long as this person has something to do, he won't think too much about extreme things in his heart.

With Zhang Wan managing the burial clothes shop, the Dazhuang and Erzhuang brothers returned to Guanmen Village to continue managing the incense of the branch hall.

However, before Guan Dazhuang left, Huang Xiaoliu of the transmission hall helped the general hall circle a job—rat infestation in the Jinmen grain warehouse.

The Jinmen grain warehouse is not comparable to ordinary households. There are many granaries inside. The granary officials and granary assistants often get angry because of these rats.

They didn't use less rat poison, and they didn't invite fewer cats, but it didn't work. It wasn't until the granary official inspected and saw a huge rat shadow flashing in the grain warehouse that he understood that a rat had become a climate and became a rat king, so it didn't eat poisoned bait and wasn't afraid of those ordinary cats.

After Xu Qing learned about this from Huang Xiaoliu, he took Xuan Yu and Guan Dazhuang to the Jinmen Prefecture.

If Huang Xiaoliu circled another job, he wouldn't dare to guarantee that he had the confidence to solve it, but this matter of rats...

The big cats and small cats in his Cat Immortal Hall are not for display.

Arriving in Jinmen Prefecture, Xu Qing followed the path and invited Guo Dongyang, who had a good eloquence, to be the mediator, and asked the granary official in charge of the grain warehouse to introduce his own hall.

The Great Yong Dynasty has had many natural disasters in recent years. When Emperor Longping was in power, he often didn't think about his own mistakes, but instead attributed the reasons for the country's bad luck to ghosts and external objects.

At that time, Emperor Longping was reluctant to allocate disaster relief funds, but was willing to spend a large amount of money to supervise the construction of a sacrificial platform over a hundred feet high, and at the same time promoted sacrificial ceremonies, advocating sacrificing wherever things didn't go well.

After Zhao Rong, the Emperor of Jingxing, "ascended" to the throne, he not only inherited the great unification but also inherited the sacrificial platform that was about to be completed. The sacrificial style of the Yong Dynasty was also pushed to an unprecedented level by Zhao Rong.

In Xu Qing's eyes, the sacrificial style of the Great Yong can also reflect the degree of its illness in a sense.

Otherwise, after the Jinmen gang was wiped out, the government would not hold Buddhist affairs at the ferry and let the monks of Baishui Temple preach Buddhism.

The granary official of the Jinmen grain warehouse obviously also knew this. Since the Cat Immortal Hall is so spiritual, then allocate some money and grain from the granary to do sacrificial rituals.

By reason, the Cat Immortal Hall doesn't need these superficial articles, but the granary official said that if you don't accept the grand handling, then the grain warehouse matter doesn't need your Cat Immortal Hall to handle it. He can also go to the monks of Baishui Temple.

Monks catching rats...

Xu Qing found it hard to imagine how the granary official put these two things together. This business doesn't match!

Xuan Yu was excited for a whole day because of the sacrificial ceremony. This is the treatment that only large temples and temples have. The Cat Immortal Hall can be treated like this by the government. Isn't it saying that the hall opened by it and Xu Qing has also entered the upper-class circle?

However, the next day, Xuan Yu looked at the three-foot-square small sacrificial altar and the three melons and two dates offered on it, and the cat was shocked for a long time and couldn't say a word.

Five thousand taels of silver for a dedicated sacrificial fund, and the result was just such a small dharma altar?

Even the dharma altar for Xu Qing to chant the spell to drive the rampant soldiers was much larger than this small table.

Guo Dongyang was not surprised. He had no interest in the sacrificial matter, but was very concerned about Xu Qing's ability to drive away rat infestations. A young scholar who ranked fourth in the imperial examination's preliminary test, but had no intention of competing for fame in the officialdom, instead started a funeral business, and now he was taking a black cat to eradicate the demon rats in the grain warehouse. This kind of grotesque and bizarre thing was rare, and if Xu Qing really subdued the demon rats...

Guo Dongyang felt that his "Dongyang Travel Notes" might be able to add a new stroke.

The Jinmen grain warehouse covers a vast area, about two hundred and forty zhang long from east to west and three hundred and twenty zhang wide from north to south. Inside, there are dozens of vat-style underground grain cellars. The largest cellar mouth is nearly ten zhang wide, and the deepest grain cellar is fifty zhang away from the ground. The total storage capacity can reach ten million shi.

This is not only a place for long-term storage of rice and grain, but also a hub for Jinmen water transport to transfer grain and grass.

Xu Qing's Qi-gazing technique unfolded, and he found that the grain warehouse was full of the energy of the five grains, and there was no trace of demonic energy at all.

"Is there really a demon rat in the grain warehouse?"

"That is natural. This official saw it with his own eyes. Can it be fake?"

Xu Qing was suspicious: "If there is really a demon rat, why not let the Demon Hunting Division come to catch the demon?"

The granary official shook his head: "The people of the Demon Hunting Division have been here once, but this demon rat has the ability to escape the ground. The granaries and grain cellars below are very deep. You can't move the millet grain away wherever the demon rat runs."

"The demon rat hides in the depths of the grain and grass. These grains and grasses have become its reliance. The Demon Hunting Division cannot set fire or poison. This matter can be called a stubborn disease. Otherwise, why would we be sick and go to the doctor, and write to you, this 'earth doctor'?"

Xu Qing glanced at the granary official. Can an earth doctor be worth five thousand taels of sacrificial silver?

"You just say that you can't get rid of the demon rat, but what if I get rid of the demon rat?"

The granary official laughed: "If you get rid of the demon rat, there will naturally be a reward."

Xu Qing shook his head: "We immortal practitioners don't covet vulgar silver. We only hope that the official can parade the demon rat through the streets and tell the people of Jinmen about the achievements of my Cat Immortal Hall."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 160 =====

Xu Qing shook his head and said, "We of the Cat Immortal Hall do not covet worldly silver. We only hope that when the time comes, you, my lord, will parade that demon rat through the streets to show the public, and tell the people of Jinmen about the contributions of our Cat Immortal Hall."

(End of this chapter)