Chapter 445

"Find a hotel in the county town ahead to stay."

"Still early, right."

Liu Changping first looked at the sun outside the car window, then glanced at the time in the car, which wasn't even four o'clock in the afternoon, and felt he still had energy to drive for a long time.

"I'm tired."

"Oh, okay."

Liu Changping drove the car off the provincial road.

The conditions in the county town were much better than the town they stayed in last night; they chose a hotel opposite the county government and stayed in.

The room was very spacious, and there was a large balcony outside.

After showering, Li Zhuiyuan rinsed the clothes he and A Li had worn for these two days, squeezed them dry, and handed them to A Li, who hung them on the balcony.

Li Zhuiyuan wiped his hands with a towel while looking at the girl who was obsessed with ensuring the interval between each piece of clothing was consistent on the balcony.

In his memory, this should be A Li's first time hanging clothes.

However, no matter how A Li was, she wouldn't be so ignorant as to wonder: do clothes need to be washed to be worn a second time?

Although, in the past, because of Grandma Liu's doting and hobbies, A Li rarely wore a piece of clothing a second time; after all, Grandma Liu even complained that three hundred and sixty-five days a year were too few and not enough to fully exert her design talent.

The sky was still early, and Li Zhuiyuan planned to take A Li downstairs for a walk.

He had already expressed his purpose for this trip to the Great Emperor.

His Master had painstakingly planned for that hell and wanted people to let go of a portion of the authority of the coffin-bottom; you have to let people slow down properly.

Furthermore, people were in an emotional turmoil; for the sake of his own safety, he shouldn't rush to crowd in front of them.

Going downstairs, in the hotel lobby, he ran into Liu Changping, who had just finished calling his wife.

Li Zhuiyuan: "Let's go out to eat together."

Liu Changping nodded and said: "Okay, let's taste the local specialty food."

Li Zhuiyuan chose a restaurant that was on the verge of closing down.

It was very quiet; it was mealtime, and there was only Li Zhuiyuan's table of guests.

The boss was a middle-aged man with sideburns, who enthusiastically invited Liu Changping to the back kitchen to choose a chicken.

Li Zhuiyuan and A Li sat down at the table; on the table was a pot, and below was a small firewood stove; this style of firewood chicken catering existed everywhere.

On the wall hung an advertisement board, telling the history of this local delicacy, saying that Emperor Wu of Han and the Crown Prince toured here and praised this firewood chicken endlessly...

It was all made-up stories, but other places had basically updated to the version of Qianlong going south of the Yangtze River or traveling in disguise.

Liu Changping sat back after choosing the chicken and also looked at the advertisement board, curious:

"Did Emperor Wu of Han

Whether he had actually been here or not, Li Zhuiyuan did not know.

However, the characters in this story were quite fitting for the hellish scenery.

One must know, when the Crown Prince rebelled, Emperor Wu first beheaded those who helped the Crown Prince, then beheaded those who suppressed the Crown Prince, and finally beheaded those who sat on the fence and helped neither side.

Yin Changsheng was a figure from the transition period between the Western and Eastern Han dynasties; he should be very familiar with the story of Emperor Wu of the Western Han.

The chicken was brought up, and the bearded boss began to stir-fry it.

He used the knife-grip method to hold the spatula.

Layers of calluses had formed and worn away on his hands, creating "callus rings"; every "ring" was a breakthrough in his realization of blade technique.

After stir-frying, he covered it with a large pot lid, and the boss pointed to the wall clock to start the countdown.

Time was up; he opened the pot.

Picking up a piece of chicken, it was not only a bit tough but also sour; the chicken was fresh and freshly slaughtered, so the reason for this flavor could only be the boss's unique secret recipe, which indeed deviated from the public's taste.

Fortunately, it was still edible; adding some side dishes and vermicelli to stew, the sourness was actually quite appetizing.

When paying the bill after eating, the bearded boss asked enthusiastically: "How was it? Is the flavor of this chicken alright?"

Li Zhuiyuan: "The flavor of this chicken is quite good; it would be even better if you didn't put chicken in it."

The boss was stunned for a moment, but he didn't get angry; he just smiled and said: "You are not the first customer to tell me that."

In fact, the boss's secret seasoning would be more suitable for making things like spicy hot pot, rice noodles, or noodles; it just wasn't suitable for pairing with a whole chicken as the main dish.

Li Zhuiyuan: "But you are still unwilling to change."

The boss shrugged: "One must have some persistence."

Li Zhuiyuan guessed that the boss was probably unwilling to let go of his murderous intent.

After finishing the meal, they returned to the hotel to rest separately.

The next morning, after Li Zhuiyuan collected his clothes, he went downstairs with A Li.

Liu Changping had long been sitting in the car waiting; he didn't urge them to depart either.

After getting into the car, Liu Changping started the engine, but before they even drove out of the hotel gate, Liu Changping sensed something was wrong; he turned off the engine and got out to check, discovering that nails had been driven into the tires.

Liu Changping: "It's nothing, I brought a spare tire; I'll just change it, it'll be quick."

Li Zhuiyuan: "No rush, take your time changing it."

The young man guessed that this was likely just the beginning.

Sure enough, when Liu Changping finished changing the tire and restarted the car, just as they drove out of the hotel gate, white smoke began to rise from the hood.

Now there was no other way; they had to take the car to a nearby repair shop to get it fixed.

Liu Changping smoked a cigarette and said to Li Zhuiyuan: "Brother Xiaoyuan, how about I leave the car here and we get another vehicle to go to Fengdou?"

Li Zhuiyuan refused; there was no need to ruin another car.

By the afternoon, the car was repaired, and the damaged tire had been patched.

Everyone got in the car and set off again.

This time they drove a bit further, driving out of the county town.

As it turned out, it would have been better if they hadn't, because the taxi began to emit a rhythmic sound like a tractor, and they had to pull over and stop.

They took the car back to the repair shop for another inspection and repair.

Midway, a minibus stopped by, with quite a few passengers on board.

Liu Changping glanced at the origin and destination sign hanging behind the minibus windshield and said: "Brother Xiaoyuan, how about we take this one first?"

Li Zhuiyuan refused again.

If he wasn't even willing to ruin his own car, how could he be willing to ruin a whole busload of people along the way?

By the time the car was repaired again, it was already dark; not intending to drive at night, at Li Zhuiyuan's request, the taxi drove back to the hotel, and everyone checked into rooms and stayed again.

Early the next morning, when Li Zhuiyuan woke up, he saw a taxi with Jin Ling license plates circling outside; it must have been Liu Changping test-driving the car.

He went downstairs, got in the car, and set off again.

Driving out of the county town limits, just past yesterday's distance, while passing over a very plain little pothole, there was a "bang" and a tire blew out.

When Liu Changping went down to check, he discovered that besides the front right tire blowing out, two nails had also pierced the front left tire, which was leaking air and going flat.

With only one spare tire that had just been patched, there was no way one could do the work of two, so they had to take the car back to yesterday's repair shop.

The repair shop boss was a bald middle-aged man; seeing Liu Changping come again, he hurriedly pulled out a cigarette, handed it to Liu Changping, and said very sincerely:

"Buddy, I really didn't play any tricks; I was responsible and fixed it properly for you. The nails on the road weren't scattered by me either, really, heaven and earth are my witness, no matter how unscrupulous I am, I wouldn't pick on you like a sheep and fleece it to death!"

Hearing this, Liu Changping was both annoyed and amused; in the end, he could only helplessly take the cigarette and nod.

He was an experienced driver; he could tell if there were problems with the car and whether the boss had been up to no good.

The bald boss asked in a low voice: "Buddy, did you run into something evil recently?"

Liu Changping took the cigarette out of his mouth and said: "Don't talk nonsense like that."

The bald boss: "On the east side of our county, there is a River God Temple; it's very efficacious. Do you want to go and pay your respects?"

Liu Changping glanced at the young man and the girl standing on the side and shook his head: "We don't like to engage in these feudal superstitions."

Seeing this, the bald boss didn't say anything more.

After changing the tire, the taxi set off again.

This time their luck wasn't bad; before they even left the county town limits, they were reminded by a motorcycle behind them honking its horn that the fuel tank was leaking.

Li Zhuiyuan: "We aren't leaving today; let's go back to the hotel."

They checked into rooms again.

On the balcony, Li Zhuiyuan saw Liu Changping hail a local taxi at the hotel entrance, heading toward the east of the city.

In A Li's bag, there was tea from Grandma Liu.

Li Zhuiyuan borrowed a tea set from the hotel, brewed a pot of tea, and spent the whole afternoon sitting on the balcony, basking in the sun and reading a book.

It wasn't that he was deliberately slacking off here, but that work required him to be forced to slack off.

This feeling of "paid leave" was indeed more comfortable.

Midway, Li Zhuiyuan received a call from Tan Wenbin; they had already finished one place and were rushing to the next target.

Li Zhuiyuan asked if they had been injured.

Tan Wenbin replied: Not severely.

Li Zhuiyuan didn't ask for more details, and Tan Wenbin didn't elaborate.

Being so far apart and on different routes, Li Zhuiyuan had no ability to command them from afar, and he didn't want to disrupt their rhythm.

Zhao Yi hadn't called in the past two days; he must have already entered the no-man's land.

Chen Xiyuan hadn't contacted him even once; well, Sister Chen probably didn't know that such a thing as "contacting" existed.

The sun went down; it was dusk.

Liu Changping hadn't returned yet.

Li Zhuiyuan took out the Luo Pan, the evil flood dragon emerged, and after placing one of Liu Changping's hairs on it, he began to search for his location.

He wasn't in the east of the city; he was very close to the hotel.

Li Zhuiyuan stood up and visually estimated the direction from the balcony.

"A Li, let's go have dinner."

It was still that same shop; it was still lingering on.

At mealtime, the inside was still completely empty.

Standing at the shop entrance, Li Zhuiyuan looked at A Li, and A Li closed her eyes.

Li Zhuiyuan took A Li's hand, pushed open the wind chime at the entrance, and led the girl with closed eyes into the shop.

The bearded boss held a chicken-slaughtering knife in his hand, lifted the curtain, and came out from the back kitchen; fresh blood was dripping from the knife.

The boss said with a smile: "Haha, having opened the shop for so long, you are my first repeat customers."

Li Zhuiyuan: "Cook some side dishes to go with the rice this time; don't slaughter any chickens."

The boss: "How can that be? The chicken is already slaughtered."

Li Zhuiyuan: "Then we won't eat."

The boss licked his lips, made a "please" gesture toward the outside: "Then please do as you wish."

Li Zhuiyuan: "Let our person go; if we are to leave, we must leave together."

The boss swallowed his saliva: "I didn't expect that the real big shots were you two little ones. Heh, to think I spent the whole afternoon testing him; it was truly a waste of effort."

Li Zhuiyuan: "So retiring from the Jianghu is correct. If you don't even know the simple truth that the people you can't ignore in the Jianghu are the old and the young, retiring early is safer."

The boss held the knife horizontally in front of him and said in a deep voice:

"Even if I have retired from the Jianghu, I still understand the principle of what should be done and what should not.

You carry heavy calamity on your bodies, and even the River God Lord has been shaken by it; no matter what, I cannot just stand by and watch you bring disaster to this county town without doing anything!"

Li Zhuiyuan knew what was going on with the calamity on his body.

The "gaze" from Fengdu, while landing on himself, naturally also spilled over onto his driver.

This level of gaze was brought to the River God Temple; if it were just a ticketed tourist attraction, it wouldn't matter, but if it were truly efficacious, the spirit inside would inevitably be shaken.

It was just that Li Zhuiyuan couldn't be bothered to explain it to this bearded boss.

Should he tell him that this was just a playful interaction between himself and the Great Emperor of Fengdu?

With a preconceived notion, he would only think he was a lunatic, babbling nonsense.

A Li's eyes opened at this moment.

There was no color in the girl's eyes.

The curtain leading to the backyard was lifted again, and a middle-aged woman wearing a hairpin and a blue long robe walked out from inside.

Her expression was dull, and her movements seemed completely beyond her own control.

Judging from her attire, she should be a staff member at the River God Temple; she was not a Daoist priest, nor had she become a nun; it was like a form of worship or sacrifice.

Between the woman's eyebrows, a faint blue luster appeared weakly; she had borrowed a portion of power from the River God.

In terms of the form of inheritance, the River God Temple was very much like the Lin family temple in Lin Shu You's hometown; in terms of the way power was transferred, it was like the "Chuma Xian" (immortal horse-riding) of the Northeast.

It couldn't be seen in reality, but in the state of "walking in the shadows," one could see a transparent blue water snake coiled around the woman's neck, lending her its power.

Now, this water snake was controlled by A Li.

The water snake's tail covered the woman's eyes, and the snake's head bowed down toward A Li; not only did it dare not meet her gaze, but it also dared not resist.

That guy Zhao Yi liked to use the Life-Death Gate seam to peek into other people's hearts whenever he had nothing to do; even with himself, Zhao Yi would scan him when he was idle.

Therefore, every time he made progress, Zhao Yi was always the first to discover it, and then he would beat his chest and stamp his feet in grief.

But Zhao Yi alone dared not scan A Li with the Life-Death Gate seam; that would be like a moth flying into a flame.

The woman from before should have been standing in the backyard, either watching over Liu Changping or ready at any moment to rush in and cooperate with her husband to take action.

She was too impatient, and there was no formation in the restaurant; even if Li Zhuiyuan hadn't used the Luo Pan to locate this position, he had sensed the obvious fluctuations in Qi from far away when he came here.

A little boy of three or four years old followed in; he walked to the woman's side, reached out to gently tug at her clothes, looked up, and called out with great worry:

"Mom? Mom? Mom, what's wrong with you?"

When his wife walked out from inside in such a dazed state, the bearded boss's teeth made a "creaking" sound; his eyes turned red, and he stared fixedly at the girl beside the young man.

Li Zhuiyuan raised his hand, extended two fingers, and aimed them at his own eyes.

The woman performed the same action; her two fingers were almost pressing against her own eyes.

Li Zhuiyuan pointed his hand at the bearded man:

"Hand over our person, and we will leave."

Liu Changping was still alive; the blood on the knife in the boss's hand was chicken blood.

The little boy: "Dad, what's wrong with Mom? Why is Mom acting so strange?"

Facing his son's inquiry, the bearded man lightly tapped his knife handle with his right hand.

"Hum!"

The outer shell of this knife cracked, revealing a smaller, more exquisitely crafted knife inside, engraved with patterns that had the effect of inducing blade energy.

Inside the restaurant, a sharp wind began to rise.

This was a master of the blade.

Compared to the small, regional inheritances like the River God Temple, for a master like him to open a small firewood chicken restaurant here just to guard his wife and child truly deserved the term "retiring from the Jianghu."

It was very much like loving a woman so much that one settles down and lives in the city where she works and lives.

For this, he had cast aside and given up a lot.

But at this moment, he was not threatened; the increasingly sharp wind showed his increasingly firm heart.

Even if his wife was controlled by others and her life was in their hands, even if his young son was right here, he had no intention of putting away his knife; instead, he officially revealed it.

"I've been doing loss-making business for so long; today, I finally got to do a big one. To sacrifice one family to protect the whole city—it's worth it!"

Li Zhuiyuan: "Sigh..."

The young man was a bit speechless.

He actually didn't like dealing with such pure Jianghu people, because such people often didn't know how to seek advantages and avoid harm; they liked to do loss-making business.

Such people were very rare in the Jianghu, as rare as endangered wild animals; if you accidentally encountered one, even if he entered your courtyard and started rooting around, you still had to coax him to leave on his own.

Li Zhuiyuan glanced at A Li.

A Li's eyes regained their luster.

The woman returned to normal: "You... Pfft!"

Before the woman could finish her sentence, she spat out a mouthful of fresh blood and her gaze became dull again.

This wasn't done by A Li.

It was the water snake on the woman's neck, fearing that the woman would speak again and anger A Li, which actively blocked the woman's perception in an uncontrolled situation.

This rapid unsealing and resealing caused the Qi and blood in the woman's body to flow backward, making her spit blood, and also turned Li Zhuiyuan's attempt to ease the situation into a catalyst.

The bearded man let out a loud shout; he flew up, and the knife fell down.

"Clatter..."

The metal playing cards in the young man's pocket flew out and landed in front of him; the already prepared General Sun appeared, holding a weapon, and blocked the bearded man's strike.

Upon contact, General Sun immediately felt the pressure.

The opponent wasn't strong—he really couldn't be called powerful—but this blade intent was incomparably firm and sharp, actually beginning to penetrate the defense of the talisman armor and reaching the divine soul that had descended upon him.

This was a swordsman who had not realized his full talent for the sake of his wife, child, and a warm bed.

The bearded man unleashed three more strikes in succession; General Sun blocked them three times, smoke constantly erupting from his body—this was his divine soul being cut.

And with the sufficient time gained by General Sun, Li Zhuiyuan, surrounded by the evil flood dragon, had already completed the formation layout for this restaurant.

"Step back."

General Sun retreated.

The bearded man raised his knife, intending to attack again.

The next moment, he suddenly discovered that the distance between him and his opponent, as well as the young man and the girl, was growing further and further away; his knife could never reach them.

Inside the restaurant, it was as if dividing lines had appeared, pushing away and separating the areas where he, his wife, and his child were located.

He held the knife horizontally in front of him, looking at all this in disbelief.

The young man's figure suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Hum!"

With a flash of blade light, he slashed at it, but the young man's figure distorted and dissipated like blue smoke.

Immediately, the young man's figure reappeared on the other side.

The bearded man slashed again, shattering the figure.

Figure after figure appeared; even though he knew they were fake, he slashed at them one by one.

But every slash was adding layers of pressure from the formation he was enduring; invisibly, he was empowering the suppression of this formation against him.

It was just that the suppression effect had been held back by Li Zhuiyuan and hadn't fallen yet.

After the timing was about right, Li Zhuiyuan released the pressure collectively.

"Thump!"

The bearded man couldn't withstand this terrifying pressure; he knelt on the ground with his hands supporting him, and the knife in his hand fell away.

His face was distorted, his veins were exposed, and he struggled to support his body so as not to let himself fall flat on his face.

Li Zhuiyuan walked up to him and said: