Immortal Road.

Chapter 432: Visiting Bole, the Black Lotus Relics

It was noon, and it was not the time for the annual auction, so the auction house was very quiet during the off-season.

In the hall, apart from a few appraisers who were stationed there, there were not many people hanging around.

"Da da da..."

Footsteps were heard outside the door and then walked in, but no one was willing to get up to respond. They were all taking a nap.

Lin Shan looked at the familiar hall layout and felt inexplicably relaxed.

He looked at the appraisers one by one and found that he didn't recognize any of them. He probably thought they were all new people who had been replaced in recent years.

At this time, a maid came up to him and asked him if he had anything to be appraised or if he wanted to mortgage it for auction. She would receive him throughout the process.

Lin Shan smiled slightly, spread out his spiritual sense, explored in the huge building, then retracted his spiritual sense and said thank you.

"No need, you go and do your work, I'll just walk around by myself."

The maid had been in the auction house for quite some time and had met some important figures. She could sense the extraordinaryness of the person in front of her, so she tactfully withdrew.

The appraisers in front of the counter seemed to have just come to their senses at this moment, but they all sat in their seats without moving, secretly nervous in their hearts, and kept asking the visitor not to come to them.

Because the young man walked calmly and they could not tell his cultivation level, he was at least at the Foundation Establishment stage, so it was very likely that he came from a prominent family.

Generally speaking, these ordinary appraisers would not be able to tell the difference between the items brought for appraisal or auction by such people.

It’s normal to think about it.

The disciples of the big sects have received systematic education since childhood and graduated from professional schools. Their knowledge and vision must be far superior to others. Do they still need you to identify them?
What others can't see, you probably can't see either.

As for the profession of appraiser, if the disciples of the big sects were really willing to condescend to fight for a living, there would be no way for independent cultivators to survive at all.

Although performance is important to them, they will also be held responsible if the appraisal is wrong or cannot be made, so no one wants to take the job.

If you want to find it, you can only ask the chief appraiser to check it.

But the chief appraiser.
Basically, everyone is like that. On weekdays, they either stay in the cave to practice, or go out to travel. They don't have to stay in the auction house all the time. They just come to take a look occasionally. They don't sit at the auction during non-auction periods.

Fortunately, Lin Shan had no intention of looking for them. He walked around the counter and went straight into the backyard and upstairs.

The number one appraiser in the world of cultivation is here. Do we still need you to appraise it?

joke!

The appraisers breathed a sigh of relief at their respective counters, turned their heads away from the situation, and dozed off in their chairs.

Lin Shan went up one level after another and found that there were indeed not many people during the off-season, and there was not even a security guard.

It can be seen that the auction house's business has been declining in recent years, and its operations are bleak. It is estimated that it was affected by the great war between good and evil in the Song Dynasty decades ago, which led to an economic downturn and the monks tightened their purse strings.

No one is willing to consume anymore and keeps the spirit stones tightly in their hands. The capitalists in the cultivation world have no choice but to tighten their belts and lay off employees, and the ones who suffer the most are the low-level workers.

Lin Shan walked up to the fifth-floor attic step by step without any obstruction.

Through the beaded curtain, you can see an old man with a haggard face sitting cross-legged in meditation at the end of the red carpet.

"Fellow Daoist, you are a guest from afar. I'm sorry that I can't greet you. Please come in."

Lin Shan did not hide himself, so Master Zuo could naturally sense it.

Compared to the past, the old man has aged visibly. His hair has fallen out, brown spots have covered his face and arms, and his skin is loose and wrinkled.

My eyes are cloudy and lifeless, and it is a bit difficult to keep my eyelids open.

At this moment, he was raising his head with difficulty, looking outside the curtain.

Lin Shan walked in step by step and bowed. He could feel that Master Zuo was on the verge of death. His body was leaking and his vital energy was being lost. It was estimated that this had happened in the last two months.

What he didn't expect was that the other party recognized his identity after looking at him for a moment with his presbyopic eyes.

"Oh, it's you, kid."

Master Zuo's speech was hoarse, his throat was not feeling well, and his teeth were almost falling out when he opened his mouth.

Smiling is uglier than crying.

However, you can feel that he is smiling sincerely.

"Junior Lin Shan, hello to the real master!"

"Yeah, yeah, get up."

Zuo Zhenren wanted to raise his hand, but found it difficult, so he just stretched it out as a gesture, slowly tilted his head, and motioned Lin Shan to sit down.

He found a cushion next to Lin Shan and started reminiscing about the past with Zuo Zhenren.

Because the two of them had similar cultivation levels, they chatted quite smoothly without any sense of estrangement. For a moment, they were like old friends, having a great time talking to each other.

Master Zuo was not surprised at his breakthrough to the Jindan stage. It might be because he felt that he was not an ordinary person and would soar into the sky sooner or later.

It is also possible that he is too old and is about to die, and has become calm and unperturbed.

It was only when she learned that he had taken an elixir of longevity and regained his youth that she showed a hint of envy.

Only when you have truly experienced the helplessness and pain of reaching the end of your life can you appreciate how precious the elixir of life is.

The two talked about the past, and how Master Zuo Xiaolinshan always asked for an advance on his salary. This was the first time he had seen such a young man in so many years. He thought it was very interesting and approved it.

Lin Shan expressed his sincere gratitude and asked about the subsequent situation of the auction house.

Master Zuo looked melancholy as he slowly told him what happened after he left.

Due to the departure of Mr. Zhang and Lin Shan, Yichuan Auction House does not have someone qualified to be the chief appraiser, so the position can only be left vacant temporarily.

Later, when war broke out in the Song Dynasty, many independent cultivators were afraid of being implicated, so they left the market town and fled into the mountains, hiding themselves from the world and waiting for the right time.

The auction house’s business has been bleak since then, and it has not been able to hold an auction for twenty consecutive years.

Later, the righteous path finally showed an opportunity to win and drove the three sects of the evil path back to the East China Sea. The sects on the side of Dayan took the opportunity to launch a surprise attack and took the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun into their possession.

At that time, in order to deploy a cross-sea attack and drive the three evil sects out of the East China Sea as a springboard, the righteous path had no choice but to accept it.

After the East China Sea was recovered, he hastily transferred personnel to the north to defend against the southward advance of the State of Yan.

Now, on the front lines of both sides, in the area below Yanyun, Yichuan and the surrounding sects and families have already completely surrendered to the State of Yan.

They have no choice but to surrender. Their spiritual veins, industries, and ancestral homes are all here. They can't escape at all.

They say it's hard to leave their hometown, but in fact they are afraid that they won't be able to make a comeback if they move to another place.

Master Zuo was also very aware of the current situation and had already invested his family and assets there.

At that time, he had become the only Jindan Zhenren in the family and the pillar of the entire clan.

He was originally a casual cultivator, and later became a son-in-law of a cultivation family. Later, he crossed the class barrier and became a shareholder of an auction house. Step by step, he was promoted to an elder of the Yichuan Internal Affairs Department.

This can be said to be a typical case of a casual cultivator making a comeback in the northern cultivation world!

Many poor boys also want to get something for nothing, and imitate Zuo Zhenren to get close to a rich woman, so that they can reach the pinnacle of life and avoid many detours, and reach a height that others cannot reach even if they work hard for a lifetime. However, the old patriarch of the family was willing to cultivate the young Zuo Zhenren, and he must have seen his potential, so he handed his daughter and family over to an outsider.

If you don't have the skills, the girls from the cultivation family will at most ask you, what kind of toad are you?
Since the old patriarch passed away early in his life, Zuo Zhenren has become the real dictator of the family's foreign relatives, controlling all the power and property of the family.

But in recent decades, the pressure he has been under has been unimaginable.

The evil sects of Yan State came one after another, constantly exploiting and blackmailing, and no one could afford to offend them.

Zuo Zhenren was forced to give in continuously, but the other party became even more aggressive, and there was resentment within the family.

At the same time, bad news came from outside. His title of elder of Yichuan Internal Affairs Department was stripped away and replaced by Jindan Zhenren who was parachuted in from Yan State.

After a long period of hard work and due to his advanced age, he finally became exhausted and his health deteriorated.

When he became less interested, he simply handed over power to his original family members, returned to Yichuan Auction House, and guarded the place where he made his fortune alone.

Just when he was waiting to die, Lin Shan happened to come back.

After a conversation, both of them sighed.

"I have already left the family and given up all the family assets. I have left the family with nothing. From now on, I will have no connection with the outside world."

"Yichuan Auction House is the business I have devoted my entire life to. I have been busy working for most of my life and working hard to build it privately. I cannot just watch it collapse so easily."

"So. Ahem."

"Uh, cough, cough."

Master Zuo was holding a handkerchief tremblingly, coughing up blood and looking into the distance.

"I will pass it on to my illegitimate son to help him on his road to success!"

Lin Shan's eyes widened: "What? Illegitimate child?"

Good guy!
You are a son-in-law. You married a rich woman, but instead of taking good care of her family, you are still flaunting your wealth outside?

Why don’t I have this blessing!
He was jealous and sad, but Zuo Zhenren did not feel ashamed. Instead, his eyebrows were sharp and his words were righteous.

"Although I am married into the family, I also know that there are three types of unfilial behavior, and the worst is to have no offspring!"

"Their children are born with their maiden names, but my Zuo family cannot be extinct!"

"I am leaving my offspring abroad only to comfort our ancestors and continue the family line. This is not half-hearted. This is what we should do. Why should you be surprised?"

Awesome!
Lin Shan seemed to be meeting Zuo Zhenren for the first time. He described finding a mistress outside in such a fresh and refined way, which seemed to make sense and was righteous!
I have never seen such a shameless person!
But why am I so envious?
You have hooked up with a rich woman, become a son-in-law, have a mistress, and have arranged for an illegitimate child. The red flag is flying at home, and colorful flags are fluttering behind you.

In Lin Shan's eyes, his life was worth it.

Master Zuo was not satisfied after hearing this. Instead, he began to worry about his illegitimate son!

"Alas, this rebellious son, he only knows how to travel around all day and doesn't care about worldly affairs. I have tried to persuade him many times but to no avail. How can he inherit the family business in the future?"

"He had a childhood marriage arranged for him. The other party was the daughter of a cultivation family, but he looked down on her!"

"We helped him get into a sect to practice, which is also a blessed place with a complete heritage, but he still has no interest!"

"We had no choice but to assign him the position of chief appraiser so that he could familiarize himself with the industry and pave the way for taking over in the future. But he left without saying a word, and he was gone for another three or four years!"

"I am old, unable to move, unable to control myself, and I am really worried."

Master Zuo sighed, looking old and weak.

How helpless a dignified Jindan Zhenren could be, he couldn't even take care of his own son.

Lin Shan had no choice but to comfort him with kind words and reassure him.

"Master, don't worry. Your son is young and energetic now, and is rebellious and stubborn. When he grows up and has more experience in the world, he will understand your good intentions."

Master Zuo shook his head and told him that things were far more complicated than that.

"If the rebellious son was just mischievous, that would be fine! Before he left, he seemed to have met a wandering Taoist priest who passed through Yichuan, and heard some rumors about the Black Lotus Sect from him!"

"From then on, he couldn't stop himself. He had to go to the interior of the Song Dynasty to find the secrets of the Black Lotus Cult that had been there for thousands of years!"

"You said he was full and had nothing better to do. Why didn't he come back to inherit the family business and go find those cannibalistic people from the Demon Sect?"

"What? The Black Lotus?"

Lin Shan was also surprised. He didn't expect to hear information about the Black Lotus Sect here.

Hadn't the three righteous sects of the Song Dynasty already driven out or wiped out the evil forces long ago?
The last time we heard about the Black Lotus Sect was when the Zhenzhi Academy in Lu State was destroyed.

"According to intelligence reports from the mainland of the Great Song Dynasty, it seems that there are indeed some members of the Black Lotus Sect. They went underground after the war between good and evil, and are still operating in secret, waiting for the outside world to come and counterattack again."

"It is said that these people who stayed behind are part of the original local Black Lotus Sect. They did not want to follow the Demon Sect to evacuate East China Sea to Lu State, so they continued to stay and lurk in their homeland."

"That rebellious son heard that the Black Lotus Sect had a Seven Evil Soul Locking Technique that was so magical and so powerful, so he went to look for it on his own in a fit of rage!"

"He doesn't even think about it. With his limited cultivation, how can he find the other party? Even if he finds them, how can he learn the magic from the evil people of the Black Lotus Sect? It would be good if he doesn't get beaten to death!"

"What a rebellious son! Never mind. Let him die outside."

Master Zuo became angrier and angrier as he spoke. He coughed in anger and his angry rebukes echoed throughout the fifth floor.

Lin Shan hurriedly tried to comfort him, while keeping a close eye on him.

The Black Lotus Sect actually still has a local faction left in the Song Dynasty!

It seems that among the team that evacuated from the East China Sea that year, not all of them left their homes like Protector Yan. In the six regions of the Song Dynasty, there were always people who were reluctant to leave their homeland and went underground to continue their actions.

Now that I have reached the Jindan stage, perhaps I can look for the Black Lotus Sect to see if there are any Black Lotus Buddha statues that I can find?
When it comes to ancient rhyme, he is more enthusiastic than anyone else.

Master Zuo also stated his purpose at the right time. He said those words just now to bring up the topic and make a request.

"Little friend Lin, if you meet that rebellious son in the Song Dynasty someday, how about giving him a hand without delaying your work?"

"At my age, I can only live one day at a time. If I hadn't been so obsessed, I would have passed away last month."

"I can't hold on any longer now, so I can only ask you for help."

Lin Shan straightened his face and agreed solemnly.

"You have helped me a lot before. This is just a trivial matter. If I encounter such a thing again, I will do my best and will not stand idly by!"

Master Zuo couldn't hold back his tears and wanted to stand up to thank him, but he couldn't stand up at all.

Lin Shan quickly stopped him from making any big movements and told him to just sit there, then he asked.

"What's your son's name?"

"Zuo Ning."

"Does it have any characteristics?"

"Like me, I was born without eyebrows, so I'm easy to recognize."

(End of this chapter)