One Qi Chaoyang

Chapter 241: Seeking Help and the Heart of Judgment

The night is coming, the dew has not yet fallen, and the cold has not yet arisen.

But this hillside looks like the place where three yin meet.

Someone was whispering in the darkness.

"This person is a stranger. Granny Niu just said that she met him on the road. She doesn't know his exact origins, but she knows that he is from Liangjie Mountain and his Taoist name is Fuyun. He seems to have a rather irritable temper, so everyone should be careful."

"Is this Taoist priest from outside delicious?"

"If you want to die, don't drag me down with you."

"I want to sleep with that corpse puppet. It's cold and hard. It must be very comfortable to sleep with it in my arms."

"Then go buy them. Do you have those things he just mentioned?"

"I want to sleep with that Taoist priest for a night in exchange for that corpse puppet. Will he be willing?"

"I think you want to swallow someone's vital energy. Even though this Taoist looks cold and fierce, I can sense the fire inside. Don't be burned to death by someone's vital energy."

It wasn't just two people who were having this conversation, but several people were talking to each other in the darkness.

Wherever Zhao Fuyun led the corpse puppets, the place became quiet. Some of them sat there staring at him, while others rolled up the cloth spread on the ground and moved away.

However, some of them looked a little dazed, lying there motionless.

Zhao Fuyun stopped at a place where there was a huge banana leaf spread on the ground, and on it were some small things.

Zhao Fuyun squatted down and looked carefully at the things on the banana leaf. These things gave off a muddy smell.

Not only that, the 'person' opposite also exudes it.

"Goo!"

The person opposite made a muffled sound. Zhao Fuyun looked up at the other person. This was not a human. Rather, this was a half-human, or half-orc. There was a special name for this person, called half-demon, a monster that had not yet fully transformed into a human.

It was a big toad, the size of two millstones.

His body shape was transforming into that of a human, but his head was still in the shape of a toad, without ears, and his pair of protruding eyes were full of fear. He covered his mouth with his paws, and the sound just now came from his stomach, as if he couldn't bear it anymore.

The green claws are very similar to human hands, and the pair of feet squatting on the ground are equally large.

It was not wearing any clothes, but it was wearing a black robe and a hat. Just now it was squatting here with the hat on, and Zhao Fuyun could not tell from it that it was not a human.

As for the smell of mud, he had smelled a lot of strange odors since he arrived at the hillside. It seemed that no one took a bath, or maybe they had been pickled in the smell because they had stayed in a place with strong odors for too long.

As Zhao Fuyun stared at it, it couldn't help but let out a surge of air from its stomach again, and then made a 'gurgling' sound, like a hiccup.

Zhao Fuyun found that he seemed to have scared someone, because the toad covered its mouth with its hands, but its whole body was shaking like a sieve.

"Don't be afraid." Zhao Fuyun said with a smile.

"Gu, gu, gu..." The black robe it was wearing was shaken off.

Zhao Fuyun then lowered his head, stopped looking at it, and picked up a black stone from the banana leaf.

This dark stone has one side that looks like it has been hit, removing the black surface and revealing a different color inside, a relatively fresh blue.

Zhao Fuyun also read a lot of books on identifying precious materials in the mountains. He thought this should be blue ochre.

This kind of stone is not very useful for refining tools. As far as he understands it, it is an inert material and is unlikely to react with other materials. When melted together, it will not form anything new. There are also few things made with it as the main material. However, it can still be used to make a suitable amulet, and of course, it can also be made into a talisman.

Zhao Fuyun threw it back onto the banana leaf, then stretched out his fingers to move a few other things, including a fish monster scale, a pair of snake teeth, a lotus pod, and a lump of mud.

Zhao Fuyun took another look at the toad on its way to transformation and said, "The most valuable thing here is your body. You are an excellent material for the treasure bag."

"Cuckoo cuckoo..."

Looking at the toad turning around and jumping into the pool at the foot of the hill, Zhao Fuyun laughed.

Amid the laughter, the sound of a toad leaping into the water was heard from the pond.

Zhao Fuyun looked around elsewhere and it didn't look like there was anything good in this ghost market.

Vines, stones, soil, bones... even some mushrooms and flowers were sold. He was not an alchemist, nor was he the kind of monk who liked to cook soup.

Just as he was about to leave, a voice suddenly shouted: "Master Fuyun, help..."

After these two shouts, the cowherd sitting on the big black buffalo's back had already swung her sheep whip at the sow behind her.

Zhao Fuyun stopped again while leading the silver-armored corpse puppet. He looked at the sow in surprise.

"Was it the one calling me 'poor monk' just now?" When Zhao Fuyun spoke, he was still looking at the sow, but after he finished speaking, he was looking at Granny Niu.

Granny Niu looked frail, but she had already arrived at the destination and refused to get off the buffalo's back. Zhao Fuyun even thought that her feet were too small for her to walk on the ground, so she stayed on the buffalo's back.

The buffalo was lying there, and she sat on its back and responded with a serious face: "Master, you heard it wrong. No one called me Master."

"No, someone called me, I heard it." Zhao Fuyun looked at the white sow next to the buffalo, wanting to hear it speak again, but the white sow no longer spoke, especially its eyes, which were covered with turbidity.

Granny Niu's face was as gloomy as if it was going to rain. She suddenly turned around and asked, "Who called Taoist Master Fuyun just now?"

The wind whistled on the hillside, but there was no one to answer.

Zhao Fuyun's eyes fell on the white sow.

At this time, Granny Niu knew that she could no longer hide the truth, so she slowly said, "Master Fuyun, have I ever offended you in any way?"

"No, not only did you not offend me, you also brought me to this ghost market and helped me." Zhao Fuyun was still looking at the white sow, as if he had discovered something new.

He knew that the art of transformation could not only change himself, but also change others.

Moreover, his own magic of ever-changing forms was learned from the Tiandu Mountain. It combines paper transformation, shadow transformation, illusion transformation, cremation, and rainbow transformation, etc. Without cremation or rainbow transformation, his body can only change its appearance.

He couldn't transform himself into a bird with flesh and blood, let alone a pig. If he insisted on changing himself into a pig, he suspected that he would just turn into a pile of meat. So he was curious about what this spell looked like.

"Why does the Taoist priest want to make things difficult for me?" Granny Niu asked, staring at Zhao Fuyun's face.

"I don't mean to offend Granny Niu, but I feel that since someone called me by my name, I should ask about the situation." Zhao Fuyun looked away from the sow and said, "To be honest, I am not the kind of person who cannot bear to see the suffering of the world, because I don't think I have the ability to change these things."

"All living beings suffer, and I am still struggling in the sea of suffering. But when someone calls my name, my heart cannot pretend not to hear or see it."

Zhao Fuyun seemed a little nonchalant at first, but became serious later, with seriousness and solemnity in his eyes.

Granny Niu suddenly sighed and said, "When I first met the Taoist priest, I felt that a person like him should live in seclusion in the mountains. The grudges and grievances of the world are like an invisible net that will trap people. Why would the Taoist priest bother to linger in this world?"

"Because, if the Tao is not yet achieved, who can practice meditation in the mountains for many years?" Zhao Fuyun looked at the wind blowing quietly through the branches and leaves, as if looking at himself.

"Many things are just a thought. As long as you act like you did before and pretend you didn't hear anything, you will gain my friendship."

"Covering your eyes and plugging your ears?" Zhao Fuyun slowly turned his head and looked at the monsters all over the mountain. These monsters not only had all kinds of strange smells on their bodies, but some of them even had a bloody smell in their mouths and breath, and some of them were followed by resentful souls.

These are obviously cannibals.

"But, it called my name just now, it was asking for help, I heard it, you can't fool me, and I can't fool myself either." Zhao Fuyun's voice was as if he was talking to himself. At this time, he didn't even say "poor Taoist".

"Why don't you just pretend you didn't hear anything?" Granny Niu's voice also turned cold, and she continued, "Sometimes, I say so much, not because I'm scared, but because I don't want to cause any trouble. Do you know who she is and why I turned her into a sow and brought her here to sell?"

Zhao Fuyun shook his head. Of course he didn’t know.

"She was originally the wife of Xu Jing, the master of Xutang Pass, but she was cruel by nature. In order to maintain her beauty and prevent herself from aging, she would eat the heart of a child every month. So I turned her into a pig and brought her here to sell, so that she could experience the feeling of being slaughtered."

Granny Niu's aura did not diminish at all. Instead, she sounded so righteous that people felt that she was definitely telling the truth.

"Since Granny Niu has such reasons, why not let her speak and have a face-to-face argument? There are humans, demons, ghosts and monsters here. Let's listen and see who is lying!"

After Zhao Fuyun finished speaking, the originally quiet hillside suddenly became lively again. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, etc. all came out from the darkness at once, and only the people who were mixed in among them were still standing and watching from afar.

"Okay, let them argue face to face, and we will judge who is lying." An unknown existence spoke in the darkness.

Zhao Fuyun discovered that the toads that jumped into the pool had crawled back and were on the outer circle looking inside.

Zhao Fuyun felt that they not only liked to watch the fun, but also because they had the opportunity to be judges.

In this world, no matter where you are or who you are, what everyone likes to do most is to be a judge, even if you are a monster.

(End of this chapter)