Zhu Xian: Learn from the Great Ying Immortal and rebuild the Trinity School

Chapter 41: The Devil's Curse

At midnight,

The moon hangs alone in the sky.

Sailing in the night rain, the river surface is covered with mist.

"Boatman, I want to ask you something (please don't push me), is this still the border of Minzhou?"

The boat captain who was rowing the boat chuckled, turned around and found Xu Zhiqiu among the many crowded customers on the boat.

"What a coincidence! After crossing this river, we will reach the Central Plains. Hey, you have good stamina. You have been standing here for half an hour, right?"

"Haha, you're flattered."

In the boat tent, Xu Zhiqiu moved his butt carefully and apologized to the auntie who rolled her eyes beside him.

The boatman asked:
"Young man, there are so many ferries on the river during the day, why did you choose mine to ferry you at night?"

Xu Zhiqiu smiled helplessly and touched his tense wallet.
“Can’t we save a little bit?

Lu Xueqi spread her legs and rode on his neck, not caring about being shy.

Her bright eyes looked around, her face became paler, and she couldn't help but secretly hugged Xu Zhiqiu's neck tightly.

This scene is like a daughter riding on her father's head.
However, this "father" only looked like a teenager of about sixteen or seventeen years old.

There were so many people on the boat that it was almost packed and it was hard to find a place to stay.

If not for this, Xu Zhiqiu wouldn't have bothered playing the game of Arhat with Lu Xueqi.

It has been more than a month since the two of them left Kaoshan Village.

We had to sleep in the open air and endure a lot of hardships along the way.

Naturally, there is no such thing as "men and women should not touch each other".

Among the passengers on the boat, only these two were dressed decently.
The rest of the people, young or old, were mostly in tattered clothes, skinny, unkempt, and looked like poor people.

When there are many people, the noise will naturally be noisy.

Some were snoring, some were sobbing, some were mumbling…

There are also people who breastfeed their children.

The skinny baby snuggled in his mother's arms, howling with hunger.

The mother looked expressionless as she unbuttoned her shirt.
I took out two shriveled and sagging "meat bags" and took great effort to squeeze out a few drops of milk.

The baby sucked it in his mouth to satisfy his hunger.

"Hello, please make way."

Xu Zhiqiu shouted for his permission while trying to squeeze to the bow.
He was polite to everyone, but all he got in response was a blank stare.

Only the boat owner was kind-hearted.
"Brother, where are you and your daughter going?"

Lu Xueqi was stunned when she heard this, and then pouted in dissatisfaction.

I don't know whether I was annoyed that the captain called me a younger person or that he called Xu Zhiqiu an older person.

Xu Zhiqiu smiled and said:

"I was just about to ask you, do you know how far Qingyun Mountain is?"

"Oh, Qingyun Immortal Mountain... That's far away, even two thousand miles away is too far. How can we go there to become his disciple?"

"Yes, you are more knowledgeable than me, can you show me the way?"

"I know one."

The boat captain was very enthusiastic and pointed at the river surface blurred by the raindrops in the night.

"If you go upstream along this river, you will find the great river 'Hongchuan'. If you go upstream along 'Hongchuan', you will reach Qingyun Mountain."

"But there are no official roads along this route. Most of them are dirt roads and mountain roads. There are many wolves, insects, tigers and leopards. It's not easy to travel!"

"As long as there is a way to go, thank you, boatman."

Xu Zhiqiu thanked him with a smile.

The boat was sailing in the night rain, but the speed was not slow, as the ferry got closer and closer to the opposite bank of the river.

Xu suddenly asked:

"How many trips did you make this night?"

"Seven or eight times a night, and rest at dawn."

"Oh, so much hard work... what's the point?"

"What's the point? Isn't it for... eh?"

The captain was about to answer when suddenly his eyes became blank.

It seemed that this simple question had caused his brain to freeze. Slowly, a sense of sadness emerged from his wooden eyes.

……

The ferry slowly approached the shore.
Xu Zhiqiu carried Lu girl off the boat.

The river bank is covered with weeds.
The waves gently hit the river bank, and from time to time they rolled up a piece of blackened dry bone and a few shredded rags.

Apart from the two of them, no one else got off the boat.

After stepping onto land, Lu Xueqi finally breathed a sigh of relief.

She looked at the ferry going away, with a lingering fear in her eyes.

The captain rowed the boat away and returned the same way.

Suddenly, moonlight came through the gaps in the clouds and shone onto the boat, as if a curtain had been torn off.

The hull gradually became mottled and the sail was full of holes.

The hull was in tatters, like a piece of unburned charcoal.

Looking at the boat again, including the captain, there is no one else on it.
It was just a lonely wreck floating on the river.

Xu Zhiqiu told Lu Xueqi about the things he heard on the way -

"In recent years, Minzhou has suffered from disasters, and more than ten thousand disaster victims have fled from here to other places. This boatman specializes in doing business with them."

"As more and more disaster victims poured in, the local state government was unable to cope with the influx, so they sent officials to intercept them and prevent them from entering the country."

"But every policy has its own countermeasures. The victims could no longer survive and resorted to any desperate measures. The police came during the day, so the boat was changed to a night ferry. At first, they could still get away with it..."

"But the news soon leaked out. In order to kill the chicken to scare the monkey and prevent future generations, the local state government sent people to launch rockets to intercept..."

"At that time, the whole ship was burned red by fire. The people on board were either shot to death by arrows or burned to death by fire. The rest were all fed to turtles in the water. From then on, there was a ghost ship on this river."

"Alas." He sighed suddenly, "We are all miserable people."

The water ghosts on this boat have lost their six senses and are all dead spirits lingering in the human world.

Although he died a sudden death, he never had the intention to harm anyone.

How could we bear to let them drift forever?
Then he chanted the sutra and the mantra:
"The gods of the ten directions are as numerous as sand and dust..."

Although Xu Zhiqiu is not a Taoist priest,

But the passengers on this ship were all honest and decent people when they were alive. Even though they died suddenly, they did not harbor any deep resentment or ghost resentment.

He can still do some simple salvation.

Just consider it as the boat ticket money.

"Gathering merit and virtue, we save sinners together..."

As the sutras for salvation were recited, a mark shaped like a flame and a cloud slowly emerged between his eyebrows.

The mark was silver sand in color, exuding a faint glow.

I don’t know if it is related to this, but a thin mist suddenly rose on the surface of the river.

The mist continued to gather and condense around the ghost ship, soon enveloping it completely.

At this time, Xu Zhiqiu was almost at the end of his scripture -

"Neither lost nor desolate, without self nor name, recite the verses of sin and blessing aloud, and the dirt in the heart will be cleansed thousands of times..."

In the fog, the outline of the ghost ship gradually faded.

Until a moment later,
The fog has dissipated, the rain has dispersed, the clouds have cleared,
Under the bright moonlight, there was no trace of the ghost ship on the river.

The transcendence is completed,

The mark on the forehead gradually faded.

Xu Zhiqiu frowned and whispered to himself:
"This damn Nine Heavens Mica seems to have had an affair with my spiritual consciousness?"

It was a dry joke.

suddenly,

The upper dantian vibrated.

--Doing good deeds without asking for reward.

Since the incident at Kaoshan Village,

A sixth stone tablet rises in the interior scene.

Letter to the Emperor

The Mantra of the Devil of the Heaven of Transformation

(End of this chapter)