This Liao Zhai is not right

The curfew in the city started at Youshi and ended at Yinshi the next day, that is, from 7pm to 5am the next morning. It was strict on the outside but loose on the inside. If the people in the city dared to go out on the streets during the curfew, the lightest punishment they would receive if they were caught was thirty lashes.

However, when it comes to high-ranking officials and wealthy businessmen, the court's curfew is of no use. The lights in the mansions remain on all night long, and the decadent music from the pleasure boats on the river does not stop until dawn.

It's no wonder that Su Su keeps complaining about how a night owl who is used to working until the early morning has to be forced into a passive situation where he has to close the door and go to bed at 7pm.

"Night life?"

Chang'e had long been accustomed to the new words that came out of Su Su's mouth from time to time. After a little thought, she understood what it meant. Then, a few indescribable meanings flashed in her eyes: "Do you also want to go to the pleasure boat in the river to drink wine?"

"That's not my intention. I just want to join in the fun."

The uncomfortable feeling reappeared, and Su Su kept making excuses.

"Since you can't sleep all night, I'll find something for you to do." Ignoring Su Su's sophistry, Chang'e got up and searched for something.

Su Su thought that she wanted to draw divine power from him again. When he was calculating how much divine power he should give to her, he found that she obviously had no such intention at this moment.

Being pressed by Chang'e in front of the dressing table, Su Su was puzzled: "What are you doing?"

"Don't you want to go to the pleasure boat on the river to drink wine? I'll make some preparations for you!"

She took off her Confucian scarf, pushed aside her hair, and wiped off the rouge and watercolor that concealed her skin color.

Chang'e moved her hands quickly. She divided the hair into strands and tied it on top of the head into a cloud-like bun. She then swept it upward and secured it with a hairpin, allowing it to hang down a little.

Without any makeup, just by changing her hair style, the young man with sharp eyebrows, bright eyes, red lips and white teeth, and a bookish air, turned into a stunning beauty with willow-shaped eyebrows, curled eyelashes, and seductive eyes.

Even at this point, Chang'e still did not give up.

He skillfully stripped off Su Su's shirt, leaving only the plain white undergarment she wore last night. Then, as he looked at her with increasing horror, he put on a waist-length skirt in red and black.

Against the backdrop of the colorful skirt, the pretty girl, who is already a stunning beauty, is graceful and elegant. Her every frown and smile makes people want to hug her slender waist and love her tenderly.

It's really tempting.

"It's done. You can go to the pleasure boat on the river and drink wine."

Going to the painted boat to drink wine in this state...

Please spare me.

Staring at the charming face in the bronze mirror on the dressing table, Su Su wanted to cry but had no tears: "Just looking in the mirror is enough. It would be impolite to go to the painted boat to drink wine."

How can this be considered a drinking party?

It's clearly something that was delivered to people's doorsteps to be treated as wine.

"I have spent so much effort, how can I just not go? If you don't go to the pleasure boat to drink wine, then I will come to drink your wine." Chang'e's eyes flashed with an eager look.

Drink my flower wine?

Don't even think about it!

Su Su turned around and sat on the bed, curling up in the mattress: "No, I want to sleep."

"Don't you want to enjoy what you call nightlife?" Chang'e asked again.

Su Su curled up in the mattress and replied, "No."

"That's great. Since you plan to sneak into the underworld and seize the throne of Yama, it's best to prepare early and practice to recuperate from your injuries. Even if you can only recover to the point where you can slightly mobilize the magic power in your inner elixir, it will be good for you to protect yourself and improve your chances of seizing the throne of Yama. After all, Black Mountain Lord has practiced for tens of thousands of years and has become a ghost immortal. He is not easy to deal with." Chang'e sat sideways in front of the bed and urged.

Although he had heard of this matter before at Hu San's tomb, Su Su's understanding of the heaven, earth, human beings, ghosts and gods was still not clear enough.

He poked his head out and asked, "The Black Mountain Lord has become a ghost immortal. I wonder what the difference is between him and the Yin spirit body of the tree demon in Lanruo Temple?"

“It’s a far cry from that.”

Chang'e explained without hesitation: "The tree monster in Lanruo Temple still has its body as a flaw, and it can be killed with just one strike of thunder. However, the Lord of Black Mountain does not cultivate the Yang God, but has spent ten thousand years of Taoism to seek transcendence in the Yin. The god statue is unknown, the ghost gate has no name, and it does not belong to the reincarnation. He refined the body of Black Mountain into the body of a ghost fairy, accommodating thousands of Yin gods. As long as the Yin gods are not destroyed, the spirit and soul will not disperse."

Good guy.

Su Su exclaimed, "What a good fellow."

Why didn't you tell me earlier that Heishan Jun had tens of thousands of lives?

Imagine that you have gone through a lot of trouble to build up your power, and you have defeated Black Mountain Lord head-on with a hundred thousand ghost soldiers and hundreds of ghost generals, and killed all the monsters who defected to him. You might even be lucky enough to get rid of Black Mountain Lord as well.

However, the next second, Heishanjun was revived with full health, and shouted: "If you kill me a few tens of thousands more times, you can get rid of me completely."

Who can afford to offend this?

The difference between immortals and mortals is as vast as that between heaven and earth.

In a sense, a big demon like the tree demon who has occupied Lanruo Temple and harmed countless people is not even worthy of carrying shoes for Black Mountain Lord, so Su Su's heart was filled with such terrifying thoughts.

"The ghost fairy alone is so outrageous, tell me about the others." Su Su sat up from the quilt and asked repeatedly.

“Most of the ordinary cultivators of immortality follow the path of refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit, refining spirit into emptiness, and refining emptiness into the Dao. They inhale and exhale the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, refine the three treasures of essence, qi and spirit internally and use them for their own benefit, nourish the spirit and soul to become Yin spirit, and from then on they enter the realm of transformation of spirit, where they can have Yin spirit leave their body and perform magic. Then they condense the Yin spirit and feed it back to the mortal body, prolonging life, which is the realm of returning to emptiness. When the Yin spirit is fully developed and has magic power, a thunderstorm will come. After surviving the thunderstorm, they enter the realm of refining emptiness, where Yin gives birth to Yang, and Yin spirit transforms into Yang spirit. They can appear in broad daylight, create things in the void, and be born and destroyed with a thought, and possess all kinds of incredible magical powers.”

“Once we get here, the road ahead starts to look very different.”

Chang'e paused for a moment, then continued, "Those who have achieved great success in Yang Shen, experienced three disasters, nine calamities, and ten tribulations, and have realized their true selves, and ascended to heaven, are called celestial immortals; those who have stopped at achieving great success in Yang Shen, and have not realized the great way, and have not experienced tribulations, and have lived long and healthy lives, are called earthly immortals; although those who have practiced Qigong are not Yang Shen, they specialize in one method, have faith and determination, and will not change throughout their lives, and those who have achieved success, have the Qi of the Five Elements residing in their internal organs, and contain the spirits of the five internal organs, so that the eight evil plagues cannot harm them, and they are mostly at peace and have few illnesses, and are called human immortals."

"As for the gods..."

At this point, Chang'e looked at Su Fu with interest for a few times before saying, "Some have made contributions to the world and have been granted titles and seals to become gods in the form of ghosts, transcending the ordinary and becoming saints; or they are like Tai Huaqing, who has been worshipped since ancient times and has given birth to spiritual wisdom. And there are not many people like you who have become gods in the flesh by practicing qi and taking into account the way of the gods."

Chapter 44: Alarming the Snake

"Aren't there many great masters who left their remains behind to ascend to immortality? Why isn't he among them?"

Chang'e's description was detailed enough, but Su Su still found some missing parts.

For example, the four Heavenly Masters Zhang Daoling, Ge Xuan, Xu Xun and Sa Shoujian were immortals who left behind their remains and ascended to heaven.

"They have backers in the heavens. As long as they survive the heavenly tribulation and their Yin spirits transform into Yang spirits, someone will naturally remove their names from the list of dead and enlist them in the ranks of immortals."

When one person attains the Tao, the chicken and the dog ascend to heaven.

Nowadays, even ascending to immortality involves backdoors.

However, Chang'e was quite disdainful of these backdoor methods and simply skipped over them, continuing, "The celestial immortals have experienced three disasters, nine calamities and ten difficulties, and have become one of their own. They are nowhere, yet omnipresent, and have great freedom and ease. Although the earthly immortals live forever, they will eventually be troubled by the five decays of the celestial beings. Their clothes will be dirty, their hair will wither, their armpits will sweat, their bodies will be smelly, and they will be unhappy with me. It is difficult for them to live truly long. As for human immortals, it is difficult to erase their names from the registers after death. Although there are means to prolong their life and allow them to live for hundreds of years, their souls cannot escape the six realms of reincarnation. The stream of gods and immortals is even more illusory. Their believers are endless, and their divine power is vast. The residual soul of the fierce god Chiyou under Guan Sheng can only avoid his edge, but if the Taoist tradition is cut off, their divine power will be like a flower in a mirror or a moon in the water, and will no longer exist. As for the ghost immortals, there is no need to mention them. Even if their Yin gods are powerful, they will die when they see the light, and will have nowhere to go. They can only be reborn and abandoned."

"So, celestial immortals are the most valuable, followed by earthly immortals and divine immortals. Human immortals and ghost immortals fear the dangers of the great road, and they abandon the essentials and pursue the trivialities. They can only be regarded as inferior."

What you said makes sense, but Mr. Black Mountain has tens of thousands of lives.

How could a man waste the tens of thousands of lives he possessed?

This isn't how you fight a round-robin battle!

Even if there are tens of thousands of pigs, it is not an easy task for one person to catch them, right?

"The heavenly realm looks similar to the mortal world. People with connections can easily be promoted to the immortal class by becoming a yang god. People without connections have to go through three disasters, nine calamities and ten tribulations before they can become a celestial immortal. It's no wonder that some people are willing to take shortcuts to become human immortals or ghost immortals."

Su Su said thoughtfully.

Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes. The convenient doors are wide open for those with connections, so how long will it take for them to come up with other tricks?

Just when Su Su was about to ask how much the immortals in heaven were worth, Chang'e snorted and said, "Throughout the ages, those who have been listed in the immortal books are as numerous as crucian carp crossing the river. Look at how many are left now? Only the celestial immortals and the innate gods live forever in the world, and the rest will eventually turn to ashes. The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors are all in the past. Li Dan retired from the army and turned to the way of the gods. No one knows where Confucius and Zhuangzi were reincarnated. Even the Sakyamuni in the West has long been extinct. Most of the rumors in the world are extremely absurd, and there are very few that are credible."

"No way. Confucius' teachings have been passed down to this day, and there are countless Taoists who worship Laozi and Zhuangzi as their ancestors. With such incense and vows, at least they are not much worse than Guan Yu who is currently hunting down Chi You!"

What Chang'e said was shocking. Some great figures who were rumored to have become immortals had actually died long ago. This was indeed contrary to the common knowledge.

"The Master did not speak of strange things. He himself kept a distance from such things. How could he achieve enlightenment after his death? Moreover, how much of Confucius' teachings are still circulated in the world today? There is a deity called the Great Sage Teacher, but He is no longer Confucius, just as the Taoist tradition of Taishang Laojun, who turned to Shintoism, is far from the old Li Dan."

Talking about this, she murmured in a somewhat inappropriate tone, "There are rumors in the world that I stole the medicine and flew to the moon, and became a toad that can only pound medicine. Do you think this can be true?"

"So, the legend of Hou Yi is also false?"

Su Su became interested and asked about it immediately.

When this matter was mentioned, Chang'e was even more furious: "The one who shot down the ten suns was Dayi, a god from the time of Emperor Yao, who was no less powerful than Guan Yu today, but his lineage had long been cut off and he became nothing more than a dream. And Houyi was just a king who usurped the throne during the Xia Dynasty, what does he have to do with me? The mortals in the world are making up stories and making up nonsense, which is really infuriating."

"It's easy to spread rumors, but hard to refute them. It's really difficult."

Su Su was deeply touched by this.

Most rumors are groundless, but once they spread, they will become more and more true. There are even people who provide details for their research in an effort to increase their authenticity.

As a result, the rumor spread and turned into a stereotype.

Especially these days when information is so blocked, there is no way for you to show up and dispel rumors.

"It is useless to know more about this matter. I will give you some of my moonlight so that you can practice harder and heal your injuries."

She stretched out her hands, and the bright moonlight shone through her palms, shining on three inches below Su Su's navel. She didn't need to use her inner elixir to inhale and exhale. The bright moonlight passed through her clothes, seeped into her skin, entangled with her inner elixir, and flowed through her limbs and bones.

The nights without divine power being absorbed passed extremely quickly.

In a blink of an eye, the eastern sky will turn white.

After a night of baptism by the moonlight, Su Su was full of energy and his complexion was glowing. The purple-red inner elixir that had been unresponsive before also became somewhat lively.

After a quick wash, he walked into the yard.

Something big seemed to be happening in the city. Even through the courtyard wall, Su Su could hear the noisy and constant talking in the alley outside the courtyard.

Just then, I saw Chang'e pushing the door open with the food she had bought in her hands.

He asked directly, "What happened outside? Why is there so much noise so early in the morning?"

"It's all your fault. The demon who performed the evil magic in the hotel was killed last night. His ghost must have been captured by the night wandering gods in the city and interrogated in the City God Temple of Guangling Prefecture to get important information. In the second half of last night, ghosts and gods passed through Yangzhou City, and I don't know how many people had their sleep disturbed by the ghost messengers who broke into their homes."

Chang'e said as she handed over the food in her hand.

He took the food and looked at it. It was a plate of walnut-sized steamed buns, which were steaming and fragrant. Su Su's appetite was immediately whetted.

Use chopsticks to pick it up and put it into your mouth. The sweet soup mixed with the slightly salty meat filling spreads between your lips and teeth, filling your mouth with rich fragrance.

"Then what? Did the runners under the City God of Guangling Prefecture find the hiding places of other White Lotus monsters?" Su Su asked while swallowing.

"There were sounds of fighting in the west of the city for most of the night. After the curfew was over, someone saw the government officials carrying out two dead bodies from the courtyard in the west of the city."

The implication of Chang'e's words was very clear.

The ghost runners under the City God of Guangling Prefecture not only found the hiding place of the White Lotus Demon in Yangzhou City, but also fought fiercely with him. The City God of Guangling Prefecture had his hands full of ghost soldiers, and the casualties were unknown, but the White Lotus Demon managed to leave at least two lives.

"That's it? I thought the City God of Guangling Prefecture could wipe out all the White Lotus monsters in Yangzhou City last night. Now, the other White Lotus monsters who escaped the search of the Yin soldiers and runners are scattered and hiding. It is extremely difficult to capture them all in a short period of time. Moreover, the real capital of the White Lotus monsters is the thousands of believers who have been bewitched outside the city. They will take action in the near future. The City God of Guangling Prefecture has done a really ugly thing."

Chapter 45: Fox of West Mountain

The development of events described by Su Fu was not much different from what Chang'e had expected.

The population of Yangzhou City is nearly 400,000, making it the most prosperous city in the south of the Yangtze River.

The City God of Guangling Prefecture took action overnight and caught the White Lotus Demon hiding in Yangzhou City by surprise, causing an uproar in the city last night. In the end, he only killed two people hastily. Such a result can be said to be ugly.

The poor performance was so unappetizing that Su Su felt that the steamed buns in his mouth were not as delicious anymore.

"We should go to the courtyard where the White Lotus Demon is lurking in the west of the city. If we can find any clues, we can make preparations early." After picking and eating the steamed dumplings, Su Su had the idea of setting off for the west of the city.

Chang'e was thinking the same thing: "The Zong Weng's house is also in the west of the city. You and I can go there to verify whether Zong Zimei is really as you said."

"It just so happens that we can do two things at the same time."

Su Su agreed simply and straightforwardly.

Putting down the remaining chopsticks from the soup dumplings in his hand, he looked at Chang'e who hadn't moved yet and urged her, "Since we are leaving for the west of the city, help me disguise myself quickly."

"I'm afraid that won't work. All those who participated in the beating of the monster in the inn last night were found by the ghost soldiers and runners, and taken to the City God Temple in Guangling Prefecture to confront and interrogate the monster's ghost. The only ones missing are the two handsome scholars who instigated them to beat up the monster. Right now, the Sun God is frantically looking for these two scholars all over Yangzhou. He really doesn't know where they are hiding now." Chang'e replied.

"Is there such a thing? We should really look for it carefully."

Looking up at the sky, the weather was gloomy and dark, and there seemed to be a dim divine light moving back and forth among the dark clouds. This was the figure of the Sun God, and Su Su was happy to play dumb.

However, she looked down at the Danqing waist-length skirt she was wearing and still felt that something was wrong: "It's okay to disguise myself in something else, but I really don't want to wear this on the street. It will attract too much attention."

"What's wrong with that? Who would have thought that such a bright and beautiful person would be the scholar who instigated the diners to kill the demon in the inn yesterday? The more conspicuous she is, the less likely it is that the gods who roam the city day and night will be suspicious."

Chang'e made the decision and put an end to Su Fu's idea of disguising himself as someone else.

But Su Fu was feeling uneasy.

Fortunately, when he went out, a hazy drizzle fell from the dark clouds that had been brewing for a long time. Holding up an oil-paper umbrella that he had bought from the roadside and trying his best to cover his face, Su Su was able to breathe a sigh of relief.

There was a fine rain falling, a cold wind blowing, ripples on the river, and white mist rising like clouds and fog, shrouding the city of Yangzhou in mist and rain.

There were many pedestrians wearing straw raincoats on the road, but most of them were in a hurry. Occasionally, someone passed Su Su head-on, but her face was blocked by an oil-paper umbrella, so one could not see her face. One could only infer that she was a young woman by the colorful skirt she was wearing.

"We have walked a long way to the west of the city, and only found a few small fish and shrimps hiding. We didn't see any powerful white lotus monsters. It seems that they were scared away by the Guangling City God's move to alarm the snakes."

Lowering his oil-paper umbrella, Su Su turned his gaze away from the porter who was in a hurry and wearing a straw raincoat.