Chapter 82 God of Wealth
Chapter 82 God of Wealth
"The body is missing?" Ning Zhe tilted his head slightly and looked at Shi Yurou's left hand.
Her left hand was tied with two red ropes, with four copper coins strung on the ropes.
"According to what you said, after the body disappeared, one of the copper coins you and your brother carried with you was also missing. Is this the one in your hand?"
"Yes." Shi Yurou walked closer and stretched out her white wrist in front of Ning Zhe so that he could see clearly the copper coins tied on the red rope.
Normal copper coins are usually round on the outside and square on the inside, which means the sky is round and the earth is square, and also implies that there is no order without rules. However, the four copper coins tied on Shi Yurou's wrist are just the opposite. All four copper coins are square on the outside and round on the inside, and appear to be the metallic color of brass under the light.
"Would you mind untying the rope so I can take a look?" Ning Zhe asked.
Shi Yurou shook her head gently: "I'm sorry, my father specifically told me before he died that I must carry this string of copper coins with me and never give it to anyone else, not even my mother."
"I see..." Ning Zhe waved his hand, signaling her to raise her wrist higher so that he could have an angle to observe the inscriptions on the four inverted copper coins with square outside and round inside.
There are words on both sides of the copper coin, one side says [Peace and Joy], the other side says [All the Best Comes to You], and I don’t know which side is the front side.
"My brother and I have been carrying this string of copper coins since we can remember. Originally there were five coins, but one became missing after we watched the wake last night." Shi Yurou continued, showing Ning Zhe a missing knot on the red rope.
Is there any connection between the disappearing corpse and the missing copper coin?
"Did your father say anything else?" Ning Zhe asked, moving his eyes away from her wrist.
"No more." Shi Yurou shook her head and said, "My father said that after he dies, we just need to invite the people on the list to come to the study and tell them about the will, and they will know what to do."
Ning Zhe scratched his head.
If it was Yu Ziqian himself or other upgraded people on the list, they might have really understood something here, but Ning Zhe knew that Yu Ziqian's memory content was very limited. After listening to Ji Bochang's will, it cannot be said that he suddenly realized it, but at least he could be said to be completely in the dark.
He didn't even know who Ji Bochang was.
Let's start with the information we know so far...
First, after Ji Bochang died, his body moved strangely and disappeared in the middle of the night.
Since Te Rang had possessed and manipulated the bodies of the dead in the Bishuiwan Manor before, and knowing that Ji Bochang knew multiple ascenders and that he himself was most likely an ascender, Ning Zhe could reasonably believe that the ghost controlled by Ji Bochang possessed his body after his death, and the macroscopic development turned into a strange event.
However, the danger level of this strange incident did not seem to be as extreme as Te Rang. Shi Yurou and Ji Yunying, brother and sister, were present when Ji Bochang's body mutated, but both of them managed to survive.
"Or maybe their survival is related to the string of copper coins they carried with them..." Ning Zhe added in his mind.
Before his death, Ji Bochang made a will, asking his children to invite the upgraded people according to the list to attend his funeral. It is likely that he knew that the rules would be out of control after his death, so he invited other upgraded people to help solve the strange events caused by his death.
The relationship between the ascenders is very loose, and there is no unified organization or institution to manage them. The ascender network is just a dark forum where some ascenders gather and communicate occasionally, rather than the name of an organization.
Therefore, the Ascension Network will not be like the adventure dramas in another world, where a commission is posted on the board saying that XX strange incident broke out in XX place, and the Ascensionists are sincerely invited to go and solve it, and the commission reward is XXXX... This kind of thing does not exist on the Ascension Network.
Every upgraded person is an unrestrained lone ranger. If translated into the world of immortals and heroes, it would be an ownerless land with no sects and only independent cultivators.
"Really? 'Bring them to the study, tell them the will, and they'll know what to do'... is that right?"
Ning Zhe whispered to himself, looked around, and began to observe the environment of this study.
As Shi Yurou said, this study room still retains the appearance before Ji Bochang's death, without any changes. The desk is fully equipped with pens, ink, paper and inkstone. Under the paperweight is a half-finished handwriting, which reads:
[It is better to eat without meat than to live without meat]
There is no next sentence.
Ning Zhe took a closer look and felt that the calligraphy was just so-so. The soft brushstrokes looked like someone with kidney deficiency. It was not even as vigorous as the old man in Gubei Town who wrote Spring Festival couplets for people for 15 yuan per piece. Was this the great calligrapher of Yunzhou?
Maybe this is art, ordinary people don't understand. Then he looked around, and on the shelves against the wall were a variety of porcelain and cultural ornaments, vases, tea pets, teapots, dragon blood tree pots, and a few "nothing to do" signs hanging on the shelves. On the surrounding walls were Ji Bochang's own calligraphy and paintings.
A full set of Ru kiln tea sets was laid out on the wooden coffee table not far from the desk. A round ceramic kettle was placed on a small charcoal stove with a gentle fire. Shi Yurou rolled up her sleeves and sat on a rattan chair next to the coffee table, using a bamboo tea needle to open a tea cake.
His movements were not very skillful and it seemed that he did not often make tea for people.
Ning Zhe walked closer and took a look at the strong and stable fire under the kettle, and said softly: "Date pit charcoal? It's quite exquisite... But you are making tea here, isn't it considered touching your father's things?"
He remembered that Ji Bochang's will was for Shi Yurou and her brother to keep all the things he often used in their original state.
"When guests come, we have to serve them tea. Etiquette is essential." Shi Yurou's voice was pleasant, soft and refreshing. "Besides, my father usually uses another purple clay tea set. This set belongs to my mother. We just need to put it away after entertaining the guests."
"I see." Ning Zhe's eyes moved away from the small charcoal stove, swept across the full set of tea sets on the table, and finally stopped at the cracked teapot: "Although knowing etiquette is a good thing, the seven-heat teapot is generally not used to make tea. It is a plaything."
"Huh?" Shi Yurou opened her eyes wide, then realized that she had picked up the wrong teapot in her haste.
She quickly put away the cracked pot on the table, replaced it with an ordinary porcelain pot, and said modestly: "I'm so sorry to have embarrassed you..."
Ning Zhe shook his head and said nothing more. He bent down and picked up a toad on the tea tray.
This is a tea pet carved from yellow stone, a fist-sized gold-swallowing toad with a copper coin in its mouth. Like the copper coin on Shi Yurou's wrist, it is square outside and round inside. The bulge on its back feels warm and has been raised for many years.
Ning Zhe put the gold-eating toad back to its place and continued to observe the environment in the study.
In addition to the pot that Shi Yurou had just put away, there were several other teapots on the shelf for collectibles, some with small mouths and big bellies, and covered with cracks.
"It can be seen that Ji Bochang liked to pretend to be cultured during his lifetime, but it's a pity that he only learned a lot of dross." Ning Zhe sighed lightly and gained some understanding of Ji Bochang's character.
These cracked teapots are a special kind of collectible, originating from the teapot repairmen in ancient times.
Porcelain at that time was still relatively precious, and people would not throw away if it was accidentally broken. Instead, it would be sent to a porcelain master to be repaired and continued to be used. The master would piece the cracked porcelain back together and use bowl nails to seal the cracks, and then the piece could continue to be used.
Repairing teapots was originally just a craft to make a living, but the nobles in ancient times, perhaps because they had nothing better to do, thought that repaired teapots had a different kind of beauty than intact ones, so they actually began to deliberately break expensive teapots, repair them and put them on display for appreciation.
The process of mending the pot is called "baking".
Later, the teapot even developed industry norms and standard industrial chains, because the direction and trend of the cracks when the teapot is manually broken are uncontrollable, which affects the appearance. Therefore, a standard process is to fill the teapot with dry soybeans, pour water on it, and wait for the soybeans to swell and crack the teapot after soaking overnight. The teapot cracked by soybeans has even and beautiful cracks, and it is more ornamental after repair.
On this basis, some people will put soybeans back into a teapot that has already cracked and been repaired once to make it crack again, and then repair it again.
It was repaired when cracked, and cracked again after repair, and this process was repeated seven times. The result is the collectible called "Seven-Bake Pot" on this shelf.
Ning Zhe’s comment was that these people were just too full.
After counting, I found that there were exactly five baking pots on the shelf, no more and no less. In the center of these five pots, there was a small statue, which looked like a moon surrounded by stars.
The statue is carved from yellow stone and shows a child sitting cross-legged, who appears to be about five or six years old, with a full forehead, round face, thick and fleshy earlobes, an auspicious look, and rich clothing.
"This is my father's favorite statue when he was alive." Shi Yurou stood up from the coffee table, walked to Ning Zhe and introduced it.
"Statue of a deity?" Ning Zhe hissed softly, "What kind of deity is this kid?"
There is no lotus pedestal or anything like that sitting on the buttocks of this sitting child statue, so it is obviously not a Buddha statue or a Buddhist boy statue. Ning Zhe has the impression that there are few gods in other religions that fit this image.
Shi Yurou thought for a moment and replied, "I heard from my father before that this is the God of Wealth."
(End of this chapter)