Chapter 84: Reaching-Out God of Wealth

Early in the morning, as the sun rose, Ning Zhe turned into a peregrine falcon, flapped his wings across Yunmeng Marsh, and arrived above Chuyun Mountain Villa.

The moist wind blew across the wide lake, rippling layers of green waves in the lush forest outside the manor. July in Yunzhou is the season of Xia Hua, and Chuyun Mountain is lush and green.

Seclusion is a word that sounds beautiful but is actually very annoying. Modern people with delicate skin and tender flesh entering the deep mountains and old forests are just buffet meals for mosquitoes and insects. Therefore, the forest surrounding Chuyun Shanzhuang is not a purely natural primitive forest, but an ornamental forest planted and managed artificially. There is basically only one kind of tree in the entire forest.

That is what Lan Shiwen said yesterday: paper mulberry tree.

"The flowering period of the paper mulberry tree is from April to May, and the fruiting period is from June to July. It will be slightly later in the north, but not much difference." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe flapped his wings, raised his altitude, and looked down at the lush ornamental forest below.

Today is June 10, 2018, just in the season when paper mulberry trees bear fruit, but the forest outside Chuyun Shanzhuang was lush and green, and no red inflorescences or fruits could be seen anywhere.

The paper mulberry tree is a purely wild tree species with extremely strong adaptability, not a delicate fruit tree like cherry or lychee that needs care. It won't say that it will have a large-scale reduction in production or even total crop failure if it encounters extreme weather.

Therefore, there is only one reason why the forest outside Chuyun Shanzhuang has no fruit—

"The paper mulberry trees in this forest are all male." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe immediately came to a conclusion.

The paper mulberry tree is a very typical dioecious plant and cannot self-pollinate like monoecious peach and plum fruit trees. When a forest only has male trees and no female trees, there is no object for cross-pollination, and the embarrassing situation of not bearing fruit during the fruiting period will occur, as it is now.

Commonly known as a bachelor forest.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe circled in the ornamental forest outside Chuyun Shanzhuang for a long time and basically confirmed his guess. This bachelor forest was indeed artificially combed to remove female trees. Looking around, there was only lush green, and no trees bearing fruit could be seen.

... No, there are still some.

After searching for a long time, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe finally saw a small forest mixed with red and green near the deep mountains in the north of Chuyun Shanzhuang. The green is leaves, and the red is fruit. The fruit of the paper mulberry tree is somewhat like a mulberry, because it is a Moraceae plant itself, but the sugar content of the paper mulberry fruit is relatively low, not as delicious as a mulberry.

The number of these few paper mulberry trees bearing fruit is small, only about five or six, hidden very deep in the vast forest. Even if Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe turned into a bird and circled, it took a lot of effort to find them.

To be precise, it was 5 male trees surrounding 1 female tree, a trend of stars surrounding the moon, just like the God of Wealth child statue guarded by 5 Seven-Firing Pots yesterday.

"This is the place."

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe slowed down his flight speed, landed lightly in front of the only female tree, shed his feathers, turned into a young man wearing a ghost mask, and did not approach rashly.

Because under that tree, a loose figure was sitting.

Out of caution, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe did not get too close. The current distance had exceeded the limit of human naked-eye observation. He took out a camera he had prepared from his arms and looked far away at the person sitting cross-legged under the female tree.

To be precise, that was not a person, but a clay statue sitting cross-legged in a small shrine.

The shrine was located under the canopy of the only female tree, built of blue bricks, covered with bright red glazed tiles. A three-legged, two-eared bronze incense burner stood quietly in front of the door, and three sticks of incense drifted out purple smoke.

Looking at the burning degree of these three sticks of incense, it seemed that they had just been lit not long ago, and not even much ash had accumulated.

"A wisp of smoke on the mountain, fifteen days in the station." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe put down the camera and shook his head slightly.

Who is so wicked to light incense in the deep mountains and old forests? They are not afraid that the incense ash will ignite the fallen leaves and start a big fire in the Chuyun Mountain Nature Reserve. That would not just be fifteen days in the station; a suspended death sentence would be considered a light punishment.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe adjusted the focal length of the camera and squatted down to observe from an angle that could directly see the inside of the shrine. Inside the shrine sat a hunched statue that looked like it was made of clay, looking like an old man in his seventies with sparse hair, thin bones, and an immortal-like temperament. He was wearing a loose Confucian shirt, with a curled fallen leaf on his shoulder. The mottled sunlight hit his chest through the gaps in the leaves, just as mottled as the age spots on his neck.

... This is not a statue; this is a person.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe pressed the shutter to capture a photo, compared it with the photo of Ji Bochang on his mobile phone, and confirmed it was correct.

This old man sitting cross-legged in the shrine is Ji Bochang. If you zoom in and look carefully, you can vaguely see his belly slightly bulging. That is the biogas produced after the internal organs, excrement, and undigested food in the old man's belly fermented after he died, pushing the old man's originally shriveled abdominal cavity round and bulging.

"He didn't go to the earth to rest in peace after he died, but ran to the deep mountains and sat in a shrine. Is he here to be an immortal?" Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's brows furrowed slightly.

The posture of Ji Bochang's corpse sitting cross-legged made him feel very familiar, looking almost exactly the same as the God of Wealth child statue in his study.

The child's cheeks were round and auspicious, the old man's face was thin and refined. The similarity was that both "idols" had a small cloth bag tied with a string on their legs.

What is this cloth bag for?

There was no time to study the strangeness of it. A wisp of blue smoke drifted through the branches and leaves of the paper mulberry tree into the sky, and a bad premonition welled up in Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's heart.

"God of Wealth?"

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe hesitated for a moment, and finally decided not to approach rashly. He should go back to find Shi Yurou and Ji Yunying first. Since it is the God of Wealth, the copper coins on them should have some effect here.

But just as Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe took a deep breath and turned to leave, a long sigh appeared in this quiet deep forest.

=9+Shu_ba

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's pupils widened slightly. He raised the camera and calibrated the focal length. He saw that the incense in the incense burner had burned out at some point, leaving only a trace of pale gray.

A strong wind brought gloomy clouds, covering the clear sky, and the sky darkened. In the shrine, the "God of Wealth" opened its eyes.

It was a pair of empty eye sockets without eyeballs.

Across a mottled forest, the God of Wealth's empty eye sockets looked at Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe, who was holding the camera.

【Civil and military are not divided, life and death are not discussed】

The old and hoarse voice came from His chest, with a buzzing hollow resonance, and it was also like a string of copper coins hanging on the waist, accompanied by the clinking collision of hurried running steps.

The God of Wealth said, and reached out a hand to Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe.

The next second, Liu Hongzhi died.

The face under Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's mask switched rapidly, and he turned and left without hesitation, but before he could take a step, another life passed away quietly.

The God of Wealth raised a hand and claimed two lives.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe, who had died twice in an instant, dared not delay any longer, immediately abandoned his human body, turned into a bird, rushed out of the forest, and fled without looking back.

And in the forest behind him, the God of Wealth slowly put down his hand, stood up, and crawled out of the shrine.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 85 =====