Dao Cheng Gui Xian

Chapter 189 The Old Snail at the Foot of White Bone Mountain

Li Wushou wasn't entirely just coaxing a child.
He's been a bit troubled lately.

Both the process of refining incense and replenishing the physical body went quite smoothly.

But deep down he still didn't like this passive feeling.

To solve one problem, one is immediately plunged into one problem after another, seemingly endless.

But he had no other way to ensure that the Three Immortals Restaurant was well-fed and watered.

It is easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but how difficult it is to go from extravagance to frugality.

He has started to be picky about the foods that used to fill his stomach.

Not only him, but the old beggar was the same.

Actually, Chen Gou'er was the same; otherwise, he would have insisted on eating that monkey on the spot.

Immortals must be free from worries, right?
Li Wushou had thought more than once that if he were an immortal, he would surely have no worries about food and drink, and no trouble would dare to approach him.

How pleasant it would be to stay cooped up in the Three Immortals Pavilion all day long then?

Preserving Wufang City is merely for the sake of immediate survival; becoming an immortal is the true path to poetry and distant horizons!

Therefore, he was eager to improve his strength.

Whether it's taking bones or exploring the Upper Cultivation Cave where the Paper Goddess originated, it's all for this purpose.

This time, he didn't intend to linger at White Bone Mountain, nor did he have the patience to go with the flow again.

Planning ahead before acting may save him a lot of effort, but it will also make him increasingly irritable and impatient.

So this time he's prepared to take the initiative!

Walk out of the woods
Continue for more than ten miles

The road suddenly branched off in many different directions.

Li Wushou stood at the fork in the road and walked into a wide road covered with ruts.

Horse and donkey droppings were everywhere along the road, some dried and some fresh, indicating that many people traveled there.

As you walk, the terrain gradually rises higher.

Looking up, at the end of the continuous woods along the roadside, a pointed peak is faintly visible.

As I walked, the sharp point turned into a white line.

As they walked on, the white line transformed into a single line.

Then the whole picture was presented to Li Wushou.

Two miles away, a gray-white mountain range lies quietly at the end of this wide road.

The mountain range is not high, consisting of rolling hills, with the main peak being just over a hundred feet high.

Looking down, the entire mountain range consists of a main peak and four smaller hills connected together.

Four hills surround the main peak, enclosing it in the center.

This White Bone Mountain is different from other mountains; it is barren of vegetation and entirely grayish-white.

The main peak is filled with subterranean fire, which makes the temperature of this mountain higher than that of other places.

Li Wushou's bones were planted at the foot of the main peak.

But at this moment, Li Wushou discovered that this mountain of bones was clearly different from the one he had planted bones in several years ago.

The temperature on the mountain was significantly lower, and there were plants growing on the mountaintop.

This plant is quite rare; it's actually white.

Li Wushou glanced at it briefly, then looked away.

All of this is from Li Wushou's perspective. If an ordinary person were standing in Li Wushou's position, they would only see the trees on both sides of the road and the entire sky shrouded in mist.

Composing himself, Li Wushou headed towards White Bone Mountain.

Two miles is no more than the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea on foot.

Upon reaching the foot of the mountain, the forest abruptly ends.

The boundary of White Bone Mountain is clearly defined by the trees.

The road splits up again under a large tree closest to White Bone Mountain.

Two paths lead to the left and right, respectively, to the two hills surrounding the main peak, while one path in the middle leads directly to the main peak.

At this moment, several horses were tied up on each of the two roads to the left and right, indicating that some people had already arrived before Li Wushou.

Li Wushou took a step, about to head directly to the main peak along the middle path, when suddenly he heard an old man's rebuke:

"Hey kid! Did you bring your gift?"

Li Wushou was taken aback; he hadn't seen anyone here!
With a broader perspective, we finally spotted a clue on a tree branch by the roadside.

There was indeed no one here, but a snail with a human face and the size of a water ladle was perched on a branch.

This snail carries a white shell on its back and has a single white horn on its head, segmented like a bamboo shoot, but the top and bottom are the same width.

What surprised Li Wushou even more was that the snail had long gray whiskers and looked quite old.

Seeing Li Wushou looking at him, the snail, with a cold face and somewhat angry, asked:

"What are you looking at? Hurry up and give me the gift!"

Li Wushou's expression was unfriendly. This snail must be some kind of spirit or evil spirit.
It's a bit old, but it should taste good.

The snail seemed a little uneasy under Li Wushou's gaze. It coughed twice to hide its nervousness and mustered its courage to say:

"Young man, is this your first time here? Everyone who comes to White Bone Mountain to celebrate a birthday must give a gift."

Li Wushou pondered in silence, then thought that he should deal with the bamboo gentleman first, since the snail couldn't possibly run away at that speed!

So he reached behind him to take a package, which was the one the monkey had been carrying on its back.

After opening it, besides a few gourds of monkey wine, there were also six spine bones inside.

He had also heard about the congratulatory gift from the donkey-walker, but he didn't know whether the gift was delivered at the foot of the mountain or to an old snail.

Li Wushou pulled out two of them, wondering where to put them. Suddenly, a blurry image flashed before his eyes, and the old snail that had been on the branch abruptly leaped down. As it landed, the whiskers on its chin suddenly grew longer and wrapped around the two spines that Li Wushou had pulled out.

Using a sudden burst of strength, the old snail swung around in mid-air, its spine curled up, and flew onto the head of a horse nearby.

Before Li Wushou could react, he heard a loud, energetic shout coming from the roadside:

"drive!"

Then the old snail rode its horse toward the path leading to the main peak of White Bone Mountain, disappearing from Li Wushou's sight in the blink of an eye.

Li Wushou was left alone under the tree, looking somewhat disheveled.

It took Li Wushou a long time to recover, and he murmured in disbelief:
"Have I been deceived?"

He spent all his time studying the acting skills and refinement of beggars, but he never expected to be fooled by an old snail today.

"Hahaha"

Inside the Three Immortals Pavilion, the old beggar, who had just woken up, was gnawing on a pig's leg and was laughing so hard he was wiping away tears.

He hadn't paid much attention earlier, so he hadn't realized the old snail was a fraud. Now, seeing the old snail run away so easily, he couldn't help but laugh.

Chen Gou'er laughed along, but he didn't understand why Li Wushou said he had been tricked after he handed over the gift.

He was laughing because the way the snail was riding the horse was so comical.

Li Wushou took a few deep breaths and asked in the Three Immortals Pavilion with a hint of annoyance:
"Have you laughed enough? If you've laughed enough, come out and get to work!"

Li Wushou had originally planned to call out the old beggar when they were closer to the main peak, but now he didn't want to wait a moment longer.

The old beggar was overjoyed. He quickly finished the pig's leg in his hand, then slowly got up and took a handful of incense from the altar.

With a flick of his brow, the phantom of the Three Immortals Pavilion appeared, and the old beggar stepped out from within.

Chen Gou'er immediately came up with a solution, and Li Wushou tapped his brow to retract the Three Immortals Pavilion into his divine aperture.

Seeing that Chen Gou'er was about to get angry, Li Wushou quickly explained:
"Don't rush, you'll have your chance to show off your skills later. Old beggar, go close the shop, let's go check out some food first!"

Chen Gou'er finally stopped, and Li Wushou regained his composure and said to the old beggar beside him:
"Let's go!"

The old beggar nodded, gesturing and pointing at his surroundings as he walked, as if measuring something.

"Huh?"

Suddenly, the old beggar let out a soft "Eh," and an amused expression appeared on his face.

Li Wushou continued walking and asked the old beggar, "What's wrong?"

The old beggar chuckled with a hint of schadenfreude, "Someone has fenced off a small courtyard outside your bone-planting site!"

Li Wushou nodded; he wasn't surprised by this.

He had a very strange feeling after entering White Bone Mountain.

Judging from its appearance, the bone structure seems to be stable, and its growth is meeting expectations.

But somewhat unexpectedly, the energy of the bone he had planted seemed to have split into five parts.

Besides the main peak, he could also feel the aura of his own bones on the other four mountain peaks.

Although the aura of these four sets of bones is not as strong as that of the main peak, it is still much stronger than when I first planted them, and the aura on them is genuinely mine.

Li Wushou was also unclear about what had happened, but judging from the current situation, it was clearly related to Zhu Junzi.

This solidified Li Wushou's belief that the Bamboo Gentleman was indeed after his bones.

Ever since learning of Zhu Junzi's obsession with collecting spines, Li Wushou had been pondering this question, and now it seems his prediction was correct.

Slightly turning his head to the old beggar beside him, he asked:
"Can we still close now?"

After gesturing, the old beggar didn't say anything and replied directly:
"of course can."

Then, with a somewhat arrogant expression, he took out a stick of incense from his hand, handed it to Li Wushou, and said:

"Once this incense stick is lit, not a single mosquito can fly out of White Bone Mountain within one incense stick's duration."

Li Wushou took the incense and casually tucked it into his chest. Before he could speak, the old beggar beside him said something rather sly.

"Oh! Including that old snail that was riding a horse and running so fast!"

A vein throbbed on Li Wushou's forehead, and he was about to lash out when the old beggar laughed and vanished from the spot.

Li Wushou composed himself and continued walking towards the main peak.

This section of the road is sandwiched between two hills. Because the hills are no more than a hundred feet high and the terrain is not steep, it does not give people a feeling of darkness and pressure. From Li Wushou's perspective, it is even somewhat open.

But this short stretch of road made Li Wushou very irritable.

After entering this section of road, I don't know when it started, but suddenly I heard the chirping of cicadas.

The sound was less noisy than the normal chirping of cicadas; it was low and dry.

The echoes passed over the mountainside, forming a continuous chorus that sounded as if there were hundreds, or even thousands, of birds.

For some reason, Li Wushou felt a sense of disgust towards this voice!
My pace quickened unconsciously, and I finally reached the foot of the main peak.

There were a dozen or so horses, a dozen or so carriages, and a dozen or so sedan chairs parked here.

Before Li Wushou even got close, he heard two people protesting indignantly against a pair of skeletal lions:

"We already presented the gift at the crossroads at the foot of the mountain, why do we need it again here?"

A smile unconsciously crept onto Li Wushou's lips, and his earlier frustration lessened considerably.

These must be his predecessors!
But Li Wushou had no intention of empathizing with these seniors at this moment. He directly pulled out two spines from his package and handed them to the white bone lions guarding both sides of the road.

One of the skeletal lions picked up the spine, flicked its head, and the bone flew up and landed in the bamboo basket behind it.

The other one slowly stepped aside, bowed slightly, and welcomed Li Wushou, saying, "Welcome, Wandering Taoist, to White Bone Mountain. My master has prepared a feast. Please come in!"

Li Wushou nodded. These two bone lions were quite good; they were rather polite.

They hadn't walked far when suddenly the angry roar of the skeletal lion came from behind them:

"Stop making a scene here. Look at the demeanor of that wandering sorcerer. He looks unfamiliar, probably a first-timer himself. Why didn't you see him get scammed? It's all because you're stupid!"

Li Wushou was taken aback and retracted his previous assessment.

These two skeleton lions are so-so!
(End of this chapter)