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Chapter 182 No One Is Alive
An old man in his seventies was watching the tea stall by the path. There weren't many people coming and going on the path, so he sat bored at the table, with one arm resting on the table to support his head, dozing with his mouth open. He didn't even notice that customers had come to the tea stall.

Talisman wanted to go forward and wake up the old man, but was stopped by Rune.

He saw that the old man was quite old, and was afraid that he was sleeping too soundly. When he suddenly opened his eyes and saw the talisman, he would be frightened and think that he had fallen asleep in the Hall of Yama.

He walked over and tapped the table with his fingers: "Old man, wake up."

The old man opened his eyes dazedly and was startled to see a person standing in front of him. He looked behind him and saw four more people. Realizing that they were guests, he hurriedly stood up and greeted them, "Guests... Oh! It's the Taoist priests! Would you like to have some tea and rest?"

I have sweet tea for soothing the throat, salty tea for cooling off the heat, and bitter tea for cooling off the internal heat. Which one would you like?"

After asking, before Zhu Yu and the others could choose, he waved his hand again and said, "Look how confused I am! You Taoist priests have come from afar, why should I ask you any questions? I will just serve you all three!"

After saying that, he quickly ran to the carriage beside him. Behind the carriage was a stove. On each of the three stove burners sat a large, shiny copper pot, which seemed to be filled with warm tea.

"How did he know we came from far away?" Fu Lu was a little surprised.

Just now, his eldest brother said only four words. How did the old man know where they came from from these four words?
This question is quite easy for Zhu Yu to answer.

She whispered to Fu Lu, "Because there are no Taoist priests in Shuo Country."

"Why is this?" Fu Lu was a little surprised.

"My father said that monks and Taoists don't produce anything, but they need a lot of gold, silver, and rice to support them. It's not worth it. If you work diligently, God will naturally bless you." Zhu Yu said as he glanced at Yan Daoxin with a little embarrassment.

As a result, Yan Daoxin, a genuine Taoist priest, did not take it as an offense after hearing this, and even nodded at her: "What your father said is true.

Therefore, the master set a rule early on that all Taoists in Shanqing Temple were not allowed to go out to beg for alms.

The vegetables in the vegetarian meals at the temple are all grown by the brothers themselves, and the rice and flour are purchased with the money they earn from practicing medicine. They never eat for free.

He pointed at Lu Qing and said, "Even this fellow, apart from the period when he was weak in the temple, he had to work hard to earn a living.

We at Shanqing Temple have never supported those who eat for free!"

Zhu Yu was a little surprised. She had thought that Shanqing Temple was such a prestigious Taoist temple, with a hermit like Qiyun Shanren who even Emperor Jin had to treat politely. It should be very popular, and all the Taoists in the temple were as dignified as the big monks she had seen in the capital after she married into the Kingdom of Jin.

I didn't expect that this master would have such rules.

No wonder Prince Lu Qing does not have a single bit of arrogance. Whether he was in the Lizhou camp or the night he spent in the deserted house in Huazhou, he did not show any signs of discomfort or disgust.

It turns out that during the years he spent in Shanqing Temple since he was a child, he received much more training than the outside world imagined.

This new discovery raised a new question in Zhu Yu's mind - what was Emperor Jin's intention in sending Lu Qing to Shanqing Temple?
When Zhu Yu first heard Yan Daoxin say that Lu Qing needed to send a certain number of handwritten scriptures back to the capital every month to report on his work in order to dispel the so-called evil spirit, he felt that Emperor Jin seemed to want Lu Qing to grow up to be a useless person who lived in seclusion in the mountains, could only copy scriptures, and was stupid and dull.

But thinking about it carefully, it didn't seem right. When Lu Qing was sent to Shanqing Temple, he was almost dead. It was the Qiyun Mountain Master's superb medical skills that forcibly pulled him back from the judge's book of life and death.

Afterwards, Lu Qing strictly abided by the rules of Qiyunshan in the Taoist temple and did not get any bad habits that were common among the children of nobles in the capital. Under the guidance of Qiyunshan, he also learned a lot of good kung fu.

Not to mention that Yan Daoxin secretly took him out to see the world.

If you think about it carefully, Lu Qing’s growth experience in Shanqing Temple has made him what he is today.

Emperor Jin sent him to live with the people of Qiyun Mountain. It seemed like a kind of estrangement, but it also seemed to give Lu Qing the opportunity to grow and become a better person.

So the intentions of Emperor Jin...are really hard to understand...

Just as he was thinking about it, the old man came back tremblingly with a few bowls of tea. Fu Lu hurried over to help him take it and put it on the table.

"Masters, you must have been tired from traveling so far. Come and have some tea to quench your thirst!" Although the old man's eyesight was dim, he could see that they were exhausted and must have been in a hurry to get here. "I wonder if you are passing through our Shuo area, or have you come here specially?"

"Father-in-law, we have come to Shuo Country specially." Zhu Yu said to the old man.

Upon hearing this, the old man's expression became even happier. "Oh my! Is it possible that the king also knows about the strange things happening in the country, so he specially invited a few Taoist priests to come and help our Shuo Kingdom exorcise evil spirits and eliminate disasters?"

Zhu Yu was a little surprised. She had only been married for a few months, and before she left, she had never heard of any rumors of disasters.

Zhu Cheng never believed in ghosts and gods, let alone evil spirits. Zhu Yu had never heard any rumors about this in Prince Shuo's palace.

Zhu Yu was a little unsure whether something strange had happened recently, or whether it was because everyone knew Zhu Cheng's temper in the past that he had concealed the news from the people in Prince Shuo's Mansion.

But she had to pretend to be very calm in front of the old man: "We are indeed here at the invitation of King Shuo. As for why we came here in a hurry, we didn't explain in detail.

According to what my father-in-law said, did something strange happen in Shuo Kingdom before? "

"Yes, yes!" The old man hurriedly pulled a wooden stool from the side and sat down next to their table. "You Taoist priests, you may not know that our Shuo Kingdom was once as peaceful as it could be. But about a year ago, something strange happened. People who were fine the day before suddenly disappeared the next day, as if they had vanished into thin air!
At first, there were only one or two people, and everyone guessed that they might have been taken away by some wild beast while they went up the mountain to hunt and chop wood. However, the hunters in the village went up the mountain together to look for them, but they didn't find any wild beast or people.

Later, more and more people suddenly disappeared. In one village, almost half of the able-bodied men were gone, with no one left alive or dead...."

"The person is missing, why don't you report to the police?" Yan Daoxin interrupted and asked.

"We did report it, but the county magistrate said he wouldn't believe that a healthy person could just disappear like a puff of smoke. He also accused us of playing tricks and said that if we continued to talk nonsense, we would be punished.

No one in the village dared to report to the authorities anymore."

(End of this chapter)