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Chapter 347 Incense Delivery Team

"Joyful and cheerful?" Lu Qing noticed that the rune had deliberately used this word.

The rune nodded solemnly: "Yes, it means joyous and festive."

This is the first time in my life I've ever seen so many people coming out of a house in groups of three or five, all with that same cheerful expression on their faces.

"Let alone ordinary farmers, even when I accompanied my master to the palace to meet the emperor, I never saw so many palace maids and eunuchs whose expressions all seemed to be cut from the same mold!"

Humans have seven emotions and six desires. In daily life, regardless of joy or sorrow, even two people sharing the same bed may not be able to fully empathize with each other's feelings, let alone many people who are not even from the same household!

Following the description of the rune, Zhu Yu imagined that when people of different ages, heights, and builds came out of their homes, they all had the same expression on their faces: their eyes were shining and their lips were upturned, just like the farmers they had met in the fields before.

That smug expression, when seen on a single person, might be quite impressive.

But if many people look exactly the same, it would be incredibly strange.

“Later, as those people came out of the houses one after another, I realized that there was something wrong with this place.” Fu Wen continued, “Some of the people who came out of the houses were men and women, old and young, and they looked like a family.”

But some things are strange. One after another, three or four old men came out of a house. They were all over sixty years old and looked nothing alike. They didn't seem like brothers.

Some houses could suddenly have one or two strong men and three or four women emerge at the same time. This...this is really unbelievable. It's definitely not what you'd expect from a proper peasant household. It's more like..."

He frowned, unsure if his description was accurate enough: "It's as if those people just casually walked into a courtyard and rested there; it's simply illogical."

Lu Qing wasn't surprised at all, and nodded calmly: "Indeed, this Immortal Fortress is a strange place, and it seems natural that many things here are illogical."

Fu Wen continued, "For the rest of the day, none of them returned. I could see no smoke rising from any of the courtyards, and no one left their elderly or children at home."

In ordinary farming families, how could there be no one at home and everyone running out to work with happy faces?
Then during the day I would close my eyes and rest in the tree. In the evening, I heard a sound again. I quickly opened my eyes and looked down. I found that the people who had gone out to work in the morning were returning in twos and threes. They were all in high spirits. No matter their age, they did not show any signs of fatigue. It was as if they had inexhaustible energy.

Most importantly, I could see clearly that in the two courtyards closest to the tree, several old men went out in the morning, but several young men and several old women returned in the evening!

They were never the same group of people from beginning to end.

That's why I'm even more convinced that those people weren't ordinary farming families at all, but rather people of unknown origin, whose minds weren't quite clear, so they could just wander into any courtyard and spend the night there.

"And then what?" Zhu Yu felt that there must be more to the story. After all, it was already quite dark, and if nothing else happened after those people came back, Fu Wen could have returned earlier.

Sure enough, Fu Wen continued, "After those people went back, they were all very calm at first. There was no one coming in and out of the yard, which was not like the scene after a normal day of work."

Not long after, someone suddenly screamed in a courtyard. The voice sounded extremely terrified. The person loudly questioned who the person in the room was and where they were.

He shouted inside the house for a long time but no one responded. Then the man rushed out of the house and ran away without any explanation.

He had only run away for a short while when several guards came and caught him again.

The person who ran away looked to be in his early twenties, an age when he should have been strong, but he looked exceptionally thin and weak. When he was caught and brought back, he didn't even have the strength to struggle.

After they brought him back, they locked him in a room. A little while later, a group of servants arrived. I heard the guards say something about a "fragrant incense team" coming, and then I hurriedly left, as if afraid that something terrible might happen if I stayed even a moment longer.

"So what's the deal with this 'incense-delivering team'?" Zhu Yu asked curiously.

"The so-called 'incense delivery team' was just a group of servants who delivered hot soup in the morning. Each of them carried an incense burner and delivered it to each household along the way."

After they left the courtyard to offer incense, the person who had been shouting earlier fell silent.

I waited until it was completely dark and the night patrol guards had left the area before I climbed down the tree, crept over, and saw exactly what Master had described yesterday. The people were lying haphazardly inside the house, as if they had been drugged by the incense.

"Are you alright?" Yan Daoxin quickly came over, took Fu Wen's arm, and took his pulse. Seeing that his pulse was stable, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Don't worry, Divine Doctor, I held my breath before entering that courtyard. After quickly checking the situation, I left immediately and rushed back from the top of the wall." Fu Wen nodded.

“It seems that someone is using different sleeping incense to control the people here.” Zhu Yu felt that his original guess was finally confirmed by what he saw in the runes. “The so-called hot soup delivered to each household in the morning, besides waking them from their coma, should also be the reason why they are all full of energy, smiling, and have no other emotions.”

The person the rune saw seemed to have suddenly woken up from the effects of the drug for some unknown reason, which is why he cried for help and tried to escape.

This fairy castle is quite large; a rough estimate suggests it houses at least two or three hundred people.

Lu Qing and Lu Yan exchanged a glance and quickly calculated in their minds the scale and number of households they had investigated the previous night. Based on the assumption that three to five people were sleeping in each household, the number of people here was no less than Zhu Yu's estimate.

So the two of them nodded, agreeing with her statement.