Chapter 378: Roadblock Search

The leading Daoist Priest Jin sighed and said, "We'll search for two more days. If we still can't find them, then we truly can't find them."

He said, "Even if we find them, they may not necessarily be punished. They did use spells under desperate circumstances. Once it's reported, at most they'll be fined some silver and that'll be the end of it."

What's important is to find the people, otherwise, he would definitely be punished.

Daoist Priest Jin couldn't help sighing at the thought and asked, "Still haven't found Lu Jiannan?"

"Senior brother, I cast a divination. That Lu Jiannan is definitely not in Changzhou Prefecture anymore. Looking at the hexagram signs, he went toward the southwest—that's the direction of Jiangxi."

Several people looked toward the southwest together and let out a collective sigh of melancholy, all guessing that he must have gone to find Yang Ji.

If Yang Ji were to join this struggle, Changzhou Prefecture would be even less at peace.

"These struggles in the mortal world are too frequent, too brutal."

With such a sigh, their desire to find Pan Yun and the four others diminished once more.

At any rate, they saved quite a few people. Once reported, the Celestial Master Mansion and the imperial court should show some leniency, right?

So the blame for not finding the people could be lighter too, right?

And at this moment, Pan Yun and the others had already left Changzhou Prefecture and were heading toward Jingcheng.

In the first month of the year, there were few merchant travelers on the road. Looking out across the official road, their single carriage was the only one in sight.

With no people around, Hong Yan didn't take human form, and didn't even tuck her tails away. All three great tails swayed freely. When she grew tired of riding in the carriage, she'd leap off and run and play on her own.

When the carriage stopped as dusk approached, Hong Yan came back carrying a chicken.

The five who had originally planned to sleep outdoors looked up at the chicken in pleasant surprise, all staring at Hong Yan. "Is there a village nearby?"

Hong Yan, who had expected to be scolded, pointed in a direction and said, "Run forward a stretch, turn, then run another stretch and you'll reach a village."

Wang Cong was about to get back on the carriage when Pan Yun stopped him and asked shrewdly, "How long is a stretch?"

Hong Yan shook her head.

Pan Yun: "How long did you run for that stretch?"

Hong Yan: "About two quarter-hours, I guess."

Seeing Miao Zhen turned around to continue gathering firewood. Wang Cong also gave up on driving and, together with Tao Yan Bai, continued hauling various things out of the storage space.

Pan Yun fished around in her sleeve, pulled out a handful of copper coins, counted out fifty wen and strung them together, then stuffed them along with the gold hairpin into Hong Yan's hand. "Please trouble you to run back for half a shichen and leave the money in their chicken coop. Little Hong, go supervise her."

Hong Yan didn't move. Little Hong poked her head out of the gold hairpin. Seeing only a sliver of sunset left on the horizon, she came fully out of the hairpin and floated beside Hong Yan.

Seeing Hong Yan pretend she couldn't hear, Pan Yun flicked her forehead and said, "Although foxes eating chickens is perfectly in accordance with Heaven's principle, since you have the ability to create fewer karmic debts, you should create fewer. Save more of your karmic-debt quota for the future."

This reasoning was something Hong Yan was hearing for the first time. She gripped the money tightly, thought it over for a while, then figured it out. "If it's all prey, does a hunter's prey or a poor person's prey create less karmic debt than a rich person's prey?"

Pan Yun nodded. "Exactly. The former is for livelihood, the latter is for showing off. The Heavenly Dao is fair. When humans kill you to survive, it's in accordance with Heaven's principle. By the same logic, when you kill humans to survive, it's equally in accordance with Heaven's principle."

But Hong Yan wasn't short on money now, so going to steal was still a karmic debt, though an extremely minor one.

But Pan Yun, who was used to bad luck, felt that any karmic debt she could erase, she should erase. Storing up more of the quota, saving it for when it truly mattered.

Hong Yan took the money and the gold hairpin and ran toward the village. Little Hong whooshed into the gold hairpin. Hong Yan moved at extreme speed, transformed into her true form, and with a flash of her body vanished from everyone's sight.

So you see, the two stretches of road she covered would take them an entire shichen to drive, or even longer, to reach.

Too far. Not worth it.

Tao Yan Bai was selecting ingredients and asked, "Little Martial Uncle, shall we have stewed chicken with a hundred mushrooms for dinner tonight?"

Stewed chicken with a hundred mushrooms means stewing lots of mushrooms together. That broth—oh, it's unbelievably fresh.

Pan Yun nodded: "Good!"

When Hong Yan returned with Little Hong, dinner was already ready. Besides the stewed chicken, there was also a large bowl of blanched greens with lean meat.

Very simple fare, but Pan Yun and the others ate with great relish. Even Hong Yan took human form, hugging a bowl and eating heartily.

Little Hong floated at their side, eating her own incense while occasionally sniffing the food aromas drifting over.

She suddenly felt that traveling with Pan Yun and the others was wonderful—at least she wouldn't go hungry.

Everyone was content. It was only at bedtime that things got a bit miserable. Not to mention the bitter cold wind that was hard to bear, the insects quietly coming back to life were already endlessly annoying.

Tao Yan Bai lit some insect-repelling incense and scattered some realgar and other insect-repelling powders around. Only then did the little black dots flying around them disappear.

Pan Yun put forward a request: "Senior Martial Nephew, when calculating the journey next time, be more meticulous. Better slow than miss—aiming to reach a relay station is the key."

The other three nodded. The fox and Little Hong had no objections—they were used to staying in the wilderness.

Wang Cong agreed. After that, they never missed a relay station again.

Originally, the farther north they went, the colder the weather became, and the more layers of clothing they piled on.

But one night, a spring breeze swept past. When the few of them woke, they saw wild grass sprouting by the road and willow buds emerging along the river. By noon that day, the sunlight was dazzling, so warm it made people feverish and dizzy.

Tao Yan Bai and Wang Cong, sitting on the carriage shaft driving, could barely keep their eyes open. At some point, Tao Yan Bai's eyes closed, the bamboo switch in his hand slipped, and his body tilted to the left. Just as he was about to tumble off the carriage, he jolted awake, instantly sitting upright.

Wang Cong on the other side, who had already dozed off, was shaken by the jolt and snapped his eyes open. He blinked, sat up straight, and said to Tao Yan Bai, "Don't fall asleep." Tao Yan Bai replied expressionlessly, "Oh."

Pan Yun lifted the curtain and said, "You two go inside and nap for a while. I'll drive."

Seeing Miao Zhen had also slept a while and woken up feeling refreshed, and crawled out as well. "Senior brothers, you two get some sleep."

The two didn't decline, climbed into the carriage compartment, and yielded the carriage-shaft seats to them. "Don't drive too fast."

Pan Yun said, "Don't worry, I can still drive a carriage."

They shed the thick cotton clothes from the past two days, wearing only a single-layer cotton-lined Daoist robe, hair tied up high. Oh, that was Seeing Miao Zhen. Pan Yun's hair had grown a bit longer too, but it only just barely reached her ears.

Without a hat she wasn't cold either, so she had now taken her hat off.

It was an age when male and female were hard to tell apart. Dressed like this, without speaking, no one could tell whether they were female Daoists or male Daoists.

As for their voices, they wouldn't claim they could fully change their timbre, but using primordial energy and internal force to compress their throats and alter their voices, they could still manage.

So when they were stopped midway by a group of officials, Pan Yun instinctively used primordial energy to compress her voice: "... We come from Yushan County, Guangxin Prefecture, and are heading to Jingcheng."

The constable swept a glance at her and Seeing Miao Zhen and asked, "What are you going to Jingcheng for?"

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Pan Yun: "Visiting relatives. My second senior brother holds an official post at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices in Jingcheng."

Hearing they were family of an official, the constables' attitude softened a bit, and they asked, "Who else is in the carriage?"

Pan Yun knocked on the carriage wall; Wang Cong inside woke Tao Yanbai and Seeing Miao Zhen, and the three of them also poked their heads out.

Three heads instantly filled the doorway. The constable who wanted a look inside the cabin paused, silently meeting five pairs of big eyes, then after a moment snapped his ledger shut with a slap. "Move aside, I need a look inside the cabin."

"Oh." The three of them immediately shrank back.

The constable lifted the curtain and looked; inside, everything was visible at a glance. After all, their luggage was stored in a spatial space, and to lighten the burden on the horses, all five of them had boarded the carriage traveling light.

Hong Yan was hidden in a corner, but in the constable's eyes, there was only a table there, with some tea and refreshments set out on it.

His gaze swept past in a glance; he dropped the curtain and waved them through.

"Wait."

The person who had been sitting in the tea shed rose and walked over. Pan Yun looked up, and seeing who it was, couldn't help a slight tremor in her eyes—why was it him?

Pan Yun shifted her gaze slightly aside, took a quick glance at Seeing Miao Zhen, then imitated her, lifting her eyes to look curiously about, and at Liu Jing, who was slowly walking over.

Although two years had passed, and although he had been inconspicuous at the time, Pan Yun still remembered him—one of the Embroidered Uniform Guard who had ransacked her home.

She quickly scanned the tea shed, and sure enough spotted quite a few officers in Embroidered Uniform Guard dress there.

She lowered her eyes, and couldn't help shifting her bottom a little.

Liu Jing stepped forward, lifted the curtain and glanced into the carriage, frowning. "Open the carriage belly."

Wang Cong: "... my lord, our carriage doesn't have anything that fancy. This is an extremely simple carriage; the cabin was added on afterward, and once you take it apart it can serve as a flatbed cart, so there's no carriage belly."

Liu Jing's face darkened, and he barked, "Everyone out of the carriage."

Wang Cong hesitated, but still obediently got down. He was a bit regretful—shouldn't have let Hong Yan hide just because she was pretty.

Her hiding in the corner only kept people from seeing her, but if you reached out you could still touch her.

The three got out of the carriage.

Pan Yun and Seeing Miao Zhen, who had been sitting on the carriage shaft, also climbed down. They saw Liu Jing leap up, and feel about again and again at the bottom of the cabin.

Seeing he was about to feel his way to where Hong Yan was, Pan Yun gave a light cough and kicked the carriage.

Liu Jing whipped his head around, fixing Pan Yun with a fierce stare.

Pan Yun grinned at him. "My lord, why bother with all that trouble? Look down—through the floorboards, can't you see the ground?"

Having said that, she kicked the carriage again. Perhaps she used too much force; the floorboards shook, and Liu Jing, standing inside, could look down and see the ground whenever the boards rose and fell.

Liu Jing:...

With the floorboards in such a state, naturally there couldn't be any carriage belly or hidden compartment.

Liu Jing swept his gaze once around the cabin, always feeling something was off, yet unable to pinpoint what.

He jumped down from the carriage, took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands, his gaze sweeping back and forth over the five of them, and finally asked Wang Cong, "Have you run into any suspicious people along the way?"

Wang Cong: "May I ask what you mean by suspicious, my lord?"

Before Liu Jing could speak, a constable beside him said, "Anyone who clearly isn't a subject of our Great Ming—speaks in a strange, off-kilter way, and carries the smell of blood and fish about them."

Liu Jing glared at the constable, then said to Wang Cong, "Anyone you found the least bit out of the ordinary."

Wang Cong: "This poor Daoist would like to lend the officers a hand, but unfortunately on our way here we barely ran into anyone, and couldn't tell that anything was off about them."

Liu Jing's face darkened and he said nothing.

(End of chapter)