Evil Master and Disciple

Lu Yunshi has been focused on his own affairs all these years and has never paid attention to the old man selling wontons near Yiningfang.

All I know is that the old man's surname is Li, that's all.

Tonight, the old man mentioned his adopted son, Ye Feng, which made Lu Yunshi suddenly realize something was unusual.

That's the old man's age.

Lu Yunshi was over a hundred years old. He had served as the Grand Eunuch in the palace for half his life and was quite wealthy. When he retired, he used the money he had saved over the decades to buy a small house in Yiningfang in the inner city.

It has been forty years.

Not long after Lu Yunshi bought that house, this old man Li started setting up a stall here.

Forty years have passed in the blink of an eye, and Old Li is still setting up his stall here.

Nearly forty years later, an old man remained largely unchanged, still energetic and able to flip a wok without shaking.

is it possible?

So Lu Yunshi asked the old man if he was a cultivator.

The old man picked up his wine glass, drank it all in one gulp, and had a strange expression on his face.

Seeing that the old man remained silent, Lu Yunshi asked, "Does this mean you're admitting it?"

The old man remained silent.

Having spent so many years navigating the treacherous waters of the palace, Lu Yunshi had long since become a shrewd and calculating man.

Seeing that the old man remained silent, he frowned slightly and said, "I never expected that there would be a cultivator setting up a stall at my doorstep for forty years. I didn't even notice. I admire you, I truly admire you!"

The old man smiled and said, "Lord Lu, I didn't say anything. It's all your own guess."

"At the time, my guess was reasonable."

"Hehehe, cultivator... If I were truly a cultivator, why would I be setting up a stall here to make a living? It's just that I've lived a bit too long, and Lord Lu calls me a cultivator. You're really flattering me."

Lu Yunshi's effeminate gaze was fixed on the old man in front of him.

He secretly activated his dragon energy, attempting to probe the old man's cultivation level.

However, Lu Yunshi's expression changed slightly.

Because he didn't sense any spiritual energy fluctuations from the old man's body, not even the slightest bit.

There are only three possibilities for this to happen.

Firstly, he had guessed wrong. The old man in front of him was not a cultivator, but an ordinary person with no cultivation, so there was no spiritual energy fluctuation in his body.

Secondly, Old Li has a magical artifact that can conceal his aura. Lin Yi once used the artifact of the Celestial Mirror to successfully disguise himself as a mortal.

Another possibility is that the old man's cultivation level is far above his own. Only someone with a much higher cultivation level could shield their aura and remain undetected by outsiders.

There is only one person with this unfathomable aura.

That was the elder Dugu Chan.

Nou Yun-shih did not think his guess was wrong.

He still leaned towards the idea that the old man was a cultivator, otherwise it would be impossible for him to still be alive after so many years.

Lu Yunshi said, "Since you are unwilling to tell me, I will not force you. Come, let's have a drink."

The two drank cup after cup, and the pot of wine was quickly finished.

So the old man brought out two pots of wine that had been warmed up from the wood-fired stove.

The two stopped talking about cultivators and instead began discussing the changes in Yiningfang over the past thirty or forty years.

Most of the conversation revolved around the Confucian Inn, which was run by Princess Changning across the street.

Previously, the Rulin Post Station was a residential area. Later, His Majesty bestowed this area upon the current Princess Changning, who then built her residence here.

Because Princess Changning loved poetry and literature and enjoyed reading, she later became a student of Wen Liangong. To make it easier for her to study with Wen Liangong, Princess Changning moved back to the palace from her princess residence.

Because of her preferences, she decided to renovate the mansion and turn it into an inn.

Princess Changning was the main topic of conversation between Lu Yunshi and the old man, and they talked about it for almost half an hour.

Then the conversation turned to Ye Feng.

Lu Yunshi laughed and said, "Old Li, how do you know my adopted son, Ye Feng?"

The old man didn't hide anything and said, "Young Master Ye stayed at the Confucian Inn across the street for more than a month some time ago. He often came here to eat, and we became familiar with each other over time."

Young Master Ye is a good man, not petty at all, and extremely generous. If it weren't for his help recently, which allowed me to make a small fortune, I would never have considered retiring to the countryside.

"Oh, I see."

Lu Yunshi looked at the old man and spoke calmly, seemingly not believing what the old man said.

After finishing the wine and eating the wontons, the gong had already sounded twice in the middle of the night, indicating that it was already very late.

Lu Yunshi dropped a twenty-tael silver ingot and placed it on the table.

He said, "Since Ye Feng has helped you, I can't be stingy. Take this money, go back to your hometown, buy land, build a house, and enjoy your old age."

After saying that, Lu Yunshi got up and left.

Suddenly, the old man said, "Lord Lu, you are neither an evil person nor the strange person that people in the market say. You are a good person just like Young Master Ye."

"I've accepted the silver. In return, I'll remind you that many secrets lie buried beneath the capital, some of them tens of thousands of years old, or even longer. These long-sealed secrets should remain buried forever; don't even think about unlocking them."

Lu Yunshi's eyes flashed, and he stared intently at the old man, slowly saying, "Old Li, what do you mean by that? I don't understand."

"You understand, haven't you been investigating the mysterious disappearance of the twenty-eight dragon veins after they entered the capital recently?"

Those twenty-eight dragon veins are connected to a huge secret, a secret that has existed for much longer than the current dynasty.

The Confucian sage actually discovered the location of those dragon veins back then. The reason he didn't publicize it or pass on those twenty-eight dragon veins to future generations was because he knew the importance of it.

Those twenty-eight dragon veins won't cause any trouble for the capital or the imperial court, so you shouldn't investigate them.

There's a saying: curiosity killed the cat.

The art of cultivating dragon veins has been extinct in the human world for many years. I hope that you and Eunuch Luan can carry forward this art and not touch upon those oldest secrets of the human world, otherwise it may bring trouble to you and to the human world.”

The old man's words greatly surprised Lu Yunshi.

He had already guessed that the old man was most likely a cultivator.

But to his utter surprise, the old man knew that he was cultivating the energy of the dragon vein.

Moreover, he knew that he had been secretly investigating the disappeared dragon veins in the past few days.

An unprecedented shock surged through my heart.

"You...who are you?"

"Me? Who am I? I'm just a wonton stall owner."

“Old Li, now that we’ve come this far, there’s no point in pretending anymore. How did you know that I and Xiao Luanzi are dragon vein cultivators? How did you know that I was secretly investigating the twenty-eight lost dragon veins? And how did you know that the Confucian Sage deliberately hid these twenty-eight dragon veins back then?”