A Tale of Encounters with Immortals: A Peach Blossom Temple in the Martial World

Sunset over Yuncheng.

The light shone on Cloud City in a blood-red hue. Under the orange glow, the blood on the ground appeared even darker, as if it were sucking the light shining on the dried blood into a black hole.

The bodies of Qingfengwei lay scattered about.

Many of the Ghost Clan members also died. More than a thousand Qingfeng Guards killed more than three thousand Ghost Clan members, which was already a great achievement.

The Oni were slaughtered without a leader appearing.

These ghost clan members hung up all the corpses of Qingfeng Guards.

The rest is just skinning and eating the meat.

This is a tradition of the Oni clan.

The skin that is peeled off will be given to the ghost people to wear when they travel around the world during the day.

Yuncheng has fallen!

The Qingfeng Guard's news arrived rather late; after all, it wasn't until the second group of messengers went to investigate that they discovered something was amiss. So they quickly sent a report to the imperial court.

The emperor was furious.

But all that could be done was to be furious.

The emperor suppressed the third prince Zhu Yanyun's third request to send troops.

In the emperor's view, the gains and losses of Yunzhou were not very important. This was because Yunzhou had always been a desolate land, and apart from the occasional visit by barbarian tribes, it had served no purpose.

What's the point of going to a deserted place?

Aside from wasting money and resources by stationing people there, there was nothing else of use. Even foreign tribes were reluctant to come. There were hardly any people, and even if they did come, they wouldn't be able to steal anything.

I come here occasionally, just to try my luck and see if I can find anything.

Gradually, this place became a deserted city.

The demon race gradually came to regard this place as their bridgehead for entering the Central Plains. With so many demons dying, new demons would soon come to replenish their ranks.

The matter was suppressed.

This made the third prince, Zhu Yanyun, very depressed.

He had once guarded the western frontier, and although it was several hundred miles away from Yunzhou, he was quite familiar with the west. He also knew how to deal with the barbarian tribes there.

In recent years, we have fought back and forth with them, defended the west, and not retreated an inch.

Good fighters have no illustrious feats.

The emperor knew that of his sons, the crown prince was already dead, and only the third prince was capable of inheriting the throne and was the most suitable candidate. If he also had the achievement of pacifying the ghost tribe, then he would be the crown prince and the heir to the throne without a doubt.

The third prince wanted to seize this opportunity.

"Father, if I cannot quell the Ghost Clan, I will offer my head to you!"

Seeing Zhu Yanyun kneeling on the ground, eager to fight, the emperor still did not give in.

Neither the father nor the son took the matter to the imperial court for a decision.

This is not the way an emperor and his princes should conduct themselves.

Because once the matter is brought to the imperial court, there is no room for maneuver, regardless of whether it succeeds or fails.

"Third brother! You're too impatient!"

The emperor sighed.

"Your subject wishes to share the burdens of Your Majesty."

The Third Prince's forehead was covered in sweat.

I am indeed a bit anxious, but the border is stable now, and there is not much room for maneuver domestically. The only thing is the complete annihilation of the Qingfeng Guard in Yuncheng.

If we catch it, it will be a great achievement.

The Emperor said, "You should go find a place to recuperate and cultivate your mind for a while."

The Third Prince, Zhu Yanyun, was dumbfounded.

“Father, I do not need to cultivate my character. I read books and practice martial arts regularly, and I have already entered the Innate Realm.”

The emperor angrily said, "Cultivating one's character is to allow you to calmly consider things before deciding whether to do them. Nothing should be rushed. Go!"

Zhu Yanyun realized he might have angered the emperor, so he dared not argue further, kowtowed, and prepared to leave.

"stop!"

Zhu Yanyun stopped and turned around.

"Take Old Seventh Leaf away!" the emperor said.

Zhu Yanyun was stunned. He looked at the emperor and tentatively asked, "Where are you taking the seventh prince? To my residence?"

"To Lingzhou!"

The emperor looked up at the outside, then at Zhu Yanyun.

"Go and stay in Linbin Town, Daoxian County, Lingzhou for a while, and follow Zhang Zhenren closely there." The emperor said, then thought for a moment, "You can come back after the New Year."

Zhu Yanyun was stunned. Was this his banishment?

why?

Why?

A sudden surge of grief and indignation welled up within him. He was clearly the most outstanding prince, so why was his father treating him this way? In his eyes, that Master Zhang was nothing more than a wicked Taoist priest who had bewitched his father.

Even the Imperial Advisor is a hundred times stronger than that True Man.

He wanted to follow a Taoist priest...

After bidding farewell to the emperor, he silently returned to his residence alone.

No one in the manor dared to provoke him, not even the princess dared to say anything. Even those who silently accompanied him were driven away. This instilled a strange sense of dread in everyone in the manor.

After sitting in silence all night, a loud roar suddenly came from the prince's study.

"I—reject—this—"

The next day, a group of people set off from the capital.

A horse-drawn carriage accompanied them.

A richly dressed young woman sat inside the carriage, accompanied by two maids.

"Master, have we been kicked out?"

A round-faced maid puffed out her cheeks and said somewhat angrily, "It must be Consort Yuan gossiping to the Emperor. She's always the one picking a fight and complaining..."

Another slender maid with dimples chuckled, "I think it's because the Emperor cares for the princess that he let her out for a stroll. After what happened before, I'm still worried about staying here..."

"Shut up!"

The seventh princess said.

"What nonsense are you two spouting? The things discussed in the palace are only for a select few to talk about. You can't discuss them with outsiders, and you certainly can't discuss them outside the palace. Do you understand?"

"Understood!" the two maids replied, rising to their feet.

The Seventh Princess had a very good relationship with these two maids. These two maids had been growing up with the Seventh Princess since she was five years old. Although they were maids, they were also playmates, and they could speak to each other more casually.

"Princess, what does that real person look like?"

The Seventh Princess wrinkled her nose: "He has a long beard, a lewd face, and behaves rudely. He's a really bad guy."

"what?"

The two maids sighed in unison, their faces falling into a gloomy expression.

Oh no, the future looks bleak!

The three girls sighed and groaned inside the carriage, no longer paying attention to the scenery outside the window. They felt that their journey to this desolate place had robbed them of the joy of life.

The Third Prince traveled slowly and stopped along the way, not in a hurry to get there. He didn't want to go to that small town too early. Was that a place for a prince to stay?

A mountain hollow somewhere in Peach Blossom Mountain.

“I will treat this place as a lake,” Zhang Zhengdao told the Grand Preceptor. “I plan to plant a tree here, and this tree may grow into a towering tree.”

His statement about towering peaks was not a modifier, but a declarative sentence.

"This place will gradually change in the future."

Zhang Zhengdao said.

"If the Imperial Advisor wishes to spend his later years in peace, he can come here and keep me company. We can go fishing and have a drink together..."

The Imperial Advisor was overjoyed and cupped his hands in greeting: "I would be more honored than to accept your offer. I feel that I am already living out my old age in peace and comfort."

Zhang Zhengdao laughed and said, "You... definitely can't do it, because even if you wanted to, the emperor wouldn't want you to retire like this."

The imperial advisor calculated with his fingers and couldn't help but smile bitterly.

"I'm destined to be a workaholic."

"You only want to take advantage of the dynasty's fortune, but unfortunately... luck is a very elusive thing. Although everyone's destiny has its own trajectory, everyone's ending is not always the same."

The Imperial Advisor has already calculated that the Third Prince will arrive in the next few days.

The Third Prince is here, why should I retire?

"Please, Master, teach me!"

"Let's talk about it after you've cleared up your worldly ties! Your time hasn't come yet!"

Since Zhang Zhengdao had already said so, the Imperial Advisor had no choice but to shut up and not discuss the matter further.

As the sun was about to set, the two slowly walked back to the town and bid farewell. The Imperial Advisor pondered the whole way: the Master said his opportunity hadn't arrived yet, so where was it?

Unable to calculate his own luck, he had no choice but to give up.

Instead of returning directly to his residence, Zhang Zhengdao secretly made a detour and slipped into Sister Gui's wine shop. From afar, he saw a worker standing by the counter drinking and bowing to Zhang Zhengdao in greeting.

"The real person has come to drink!"

"The real man's face is truly handsome, like a jade-faced hero..." Jade-faced hero is a handsome swordsman in a story called "The Legend of the Demon-Slaying Heroes" that a new storyteller in town recently told.

"Master, let me offer you a bowl of wine..."

……

Zhang Zhengdao cupped his hands and smiled, responding to each question.

Sister-in-law Gui leaned closer mysteriously.

"I heard... the princess is coming to propose marriage? What will happen to my little flower?"