Chapter 92: The Three Immortals of Yunling
Chapter 92: The Three Immortals of Yunling
The Han River is surging, and the people on the river are humble.
Ning Zhe was willing to accompany Lan Shiwen to the Chuyun Mountains in order to ask him to use the rules of predicting the future to help him predict something in the future. But what about Lan Shiwen himself? Why did he take this risk?
"It can't be that it's to save the countless people in Yundu City, right?" Ning Zhe said to himself half-jokingly.
"Why not?"
Lan Shiwen turned the steering wheel to the left and turned the big bend at the bridge head: "I grew up in Yundu, this is my home, my relatives are here, my friends are here too, in my 22 years of life I have never been far away from my hometown.
Yundu is where I was born. How could I allow a ghost to slaughter the people I know on the land where I live? How could I sit back and watch the city where I have lived for 22 years being dragged into hell by a mad old man?
"Take it easy, it's 220 mph. Don't let yourself get killed by the devil or by the steering wheel." Ning Zhe lit a cigarette skillfully, then put it out with a complicated expression without taking a single puff.
Ning Zhe is a good young man who does not smoke or drink, but Zhang Yangxu is not. The security guard surnamed Li is a heavy smoker who smokes at least two packs a day.
"Tell me, what's going on." Ning Zhe put his unsmoked cigarette into the ashtray, opened the car window for some fresh air, and asked casually, "You said Ji Bochang wanted to drag Yundu to be buried with him. Why do you say that?"
"Literally." Lan Shiwen answered while looking at the road: "You know, the money for buying life is one of the common currencies on the ascending network. The source of this copper coin is the God of Wealth Wutong driven by Ji Bochang."
"As long as you have enough money to buy your life, you can use the money to buy back your life even if you die in a strange incident. Not only the ascenders need this thing, but ordinary dignitaries also flock to it. But this kind of thing cannot be traded openly. You need something with a more idealistic price as a cover to launder money... So Ji Bochang became a well-known calligrapher and painter in Yundu. His calligraphy and paintings can always be sold at sky-high prices, and after each calligraphy and painting is auctioned, the buyer will receive a copper coin as a gift."
"No wonder." Ning Zhe suddenly realized: "I thought, writing characters like that and still shamelessly calling himself a calligrapher, and being admired by thousands of people, is simply anti-Tian Gang."
It turns out that what those famous businessmen bought was not calligraphy and paintings, but lives.
"I only found out about this later..." Lan Shiwen sighed and continued, "But just like the rules we discussed before, the money to buy a life will increase exponentially with the number of transactions. The first time you buy a life, you only need 1 copper coin, the second time you need 2, and the third time you need 4 copper coins."
"At the same time, the price of selling a life is constantly plummeting, from 1 life for 1 coin to 2 lives for 1 coin, 4 lives for 1 coin..."
To outsiders who don't know the inside story, this is just a purchase restriction rule. Ji Bochang, known as the God of Wealth, will never sell more than three lives to the same person. But only he himself knows the real reason. From the fourth life onwards, the transaction cost will become too high for people to bear...
"The rules are fair. Others will raise the price of their lives, and so will Ji Bochang himself."
Lan Shiwen slightly eased off the accelerator, slowed down the car and turned closer to the distant Izumo Villa, and continued, "I don't know how Ji Bochang squandered all the lives that the God of Wealth sold to him, but what is certain is that Ji Bochang died many times for some reason, until he could no longer afford even one more life, and could only watch himself die of illness and old age."
"The despair of approaching death drove him mad. This was almost unacceptable for someone who had bought and sold his life. Ji Bochang lost his morality as a human being. In his madness, he planned his own funeral and invited those ascenders who he thought 'could not break the Five Passes Rule'."
"Ji Bochang planned a super-large bizarre event at his own funeral, in which at least 10 rules went out of control. He wanted to drag the entire Cloud City into hell to be buried with him."
"This old lunatic..." Lan Shiwen gritted his teeth as he said this. He was one of the few people among the ascenders who had a sense of responsibility. Although the number was not too great, it was enough to drive him to risk his life to nip this large-scale strange incident that was brewing in the cradle.
"Get out of the car. We're on a mountain road and can't drive there." Lan Shiwen unbuckled his seat belt and said, "The haunted house is deep in Mt. Izumo. We have to get there as soon as possible. We must get the money that Ji Bochang hid inside before the God of Wealth kills the other ascenders and snowballs their assets."
Otherwise, everything will be over.
"Understood." Ning Zhe also got out of the car.
Ning Zhe handed the bracelet with all 14 copper coins on it to Lan Shiwen, and then the pure black woolen coat turned into a gray-black fur coat.
A tall and strong brown bear appeared in front of Lan Shiwen: "Come on my back, I will take you into the mountains."
"Oh my god." Lan Shiwen was stunned. He had looked up Ye Yao's information on the Ascension Network. This person's rules were clearly related to light and shadow. How did he become a druid?
...Yes, which Ascender doesn't have some hidden cards? Otherwise, they wouldn't be called Ascenders.
Lan Shiwen climbed onto Ning Zhe's back and hugged his neck tightly. The tall and strong brown bear, who was fattened by the zoo's food, growled and rushed into the woods.
"The brown bear has poor eyesight, please show me the way." Ning Zhe's voice came from below.
"Okay." Lan Shiwen nodded in agreement:
"The place we are going to is an ancient house called 'Juxian Garden'. In ancient times, it was a Taoist temple that worshipped the local belief called 'Three Immortals of Yunling'. Later, when dynasties changed, the new court worshipped Buddhism and suppressed Taoism. The Taoist temple was taken over by an official named Yin and converted into a summer resort, which later became Juxian Garden. Now it is a key cultural relic protection project in Yunzhou."
"The Three Immortals of Yunling?" Ning Zhe thought about it and seemed to have some impression: "I seem to have read about the primitive beliefs of the Yunmengze water system in a book. The Three Immortals of Yunling are the three immortals Fu, Lu, and Shou?"
"I didn't realize that you, a native of Yongzhou, actually know about Yunzhou's cultural heritage." Lan Shiwen smiled and said:
"That's right. The names of the three Yunling immortals are: Tianzun Ziwei, the Blessing of Infinite Blessings; Emperor Wenchang, the Eternal Food and Blessings; and Nanji Xianweng, the Longevity and Infinite Life. When Juxian Garden was first a Taoist temple, it enshrined these three immortals. Later, it was converted into a summer resort by court officials. The statues of the three immortals have never been moved, and they are still worshipped today."
"Oh? This is interesting..." Ning Zhe narrowed his eyes slightly, and he remembered something.
Something that puzzled him when he first entered Izumo Villa last night.
(End of this chapter)