The steward left the secret chamber and chased out of the door. In a short while, he caught up with the Taoist priest who had left earlier.
"Master Yuan Qi, please wait!"
Master Yuan Qi stopped in his tracks and turned to look at the steward. "I'll check my spells when I get back. There's no need to say more about other things."
The steward smiled. "Master, don't be angry. My subordinates are dull and don't know how to talk. They're not doubting your ability. We naturally believe that there won't be any mistakes on your part."
Only then did Master Yuan Qi's expression soften a bit.
"However, this matter is indeed rather strange. What's your opinion, Master?" the steward asked.
Master Yuan Qi pondered for a moment and said, "He is blessed with the purple aura. He is a born genius, with a fate as tough as the stones in the East Sea. You can tell from the fact that he didn't die but only suffered minor injuries when he fell from the cliff."
"For someone like him, even if you kill his physical body, his soul will find another body to be reborn. Only by imprisoning his soul, wearing down his life fire, and making his soul completely disappear from the world can you truly and completely kill him."
Master Yuan Qi explained it to him again.
"Doing so is undoubtedly going against the will of heaven. Since it's against heaven, it won't be easy to succeed. Any accident may happen in the process."
"But as to why this happened, I need to cast divination and calculate after I get back."
The steward's expression turned solemn. He bowed with his hands clasped and said, "Then I'll leave everything to you, Master. You must follow the master's order and make sure this person is completely dead and never rises again."
Master Yuan Qi waved his hand and left without looking back.
Master Yuan Qi didn't live here. After he left the mansion, he walked to a very ordinary residential house nearby.
Just as he was about to push the door, he found that the door was ajar and the bolt had been picked open somehow.
His face changed. He pushed the door open and walked in quickly. Looking up, he saw a man in a Taoist robe reaching out his hand towards a black clay pot on the shelf.
"Yuan Zheng, what are you doing!"
The other man was startled. He withdrew his hand and turned around, smiling at Master Yuan Qi. "Senior brother, you're back."
Although he was also wearing a Taoist robe, the robe was full of patches, which was very different from Master Yuan Qi's splendid one. If Ye Wanmian were here, she would surely be greatly surprised.
This was the Taoist priest who had stopped her on the street and spouted nonsense.
"When did you come to Dongli Town? How did you know where I live?" Master Yuan Qi asked with a cold face.
Master Yuan Zheng said with a smile, "After senior brother left the mountain, I was bored alone on the mountain, so I also came down. I calculated senior brother's whereabouts and came to look for you."
He sighed. "Actually, I didn't want to bother senior brother either. I wanted to earn some silver by my own ability, so I set up a stall in the town's market to tell people's fortune.
"Who would have thought that they all regarded me as a swindler and even set dogs on me. My leg still hurts now."
As he said that, he wanted to lift his robe to show the wound.
Master Yuan Qi was very speechless. He quickly stopped him. "I believe you. But I don't have a place to take you in here. I'll give you some silver. You'd better take the silver and go back to the temple."
Master Yuan Qi walked into the inner room, took out ten taels of silver, and handed it over.
"Here. This is enough for you to get back to the temple."
Master Yuan Zheng looked at the money bag but didn't take it. Instead, he blinked curiously and asked, "Where is senior brother working? You're so generous."
Master Yuan Qi frowned slightly and said, "The youngest son of Mr. Chen has been possessed by evil spirits. He sleeps all day during the day but goes crazy at night. I'm helping Mr. Chen stabilize his soul."
"I see!" Master Yuan Zheng suddenly understood. He gave a thumbs up to Master Yuan Qi. "With senior brother's ability, you will surely help Mr. Chen's son recover soon."
He rubbed his hands. "Well, senior brother, does Mr. Chen's mansion still need other Taoist priests? I can do things like reading feng shui and telling fortunes."
Feeling Master Yuan Qi's cold gaze, he quickly took the silver and said, "Thank you for your help, senior brother. I'll leave Dongli Town and go back to the mountain tomorrow."
Finally getting rid of Master Yuan Zheng, Master Yuan Qi locked the door. After making sure it couldn't be opened from the outside, he went back to the shelf, took down the black pot that Master Yuan Zheng had almost touched.
The pot was tightly sealed. There seemed to be nothing unusual about it from the outside, but actually the bottle was covered with runes written in ink, and there was a yellow talisman pasted on the bottom.
Both the talismans on the pot and the yellow talisman were used to imprison the soul he had hidden in the pot.
He checked the pot with a solemn face. After making sure that the yellow talisman on the pot hadn't been touched and the pot was intact, he let out a sigh of relief.
But he still wasn't at ease. After putting the pot back in its original place, he cast another divination to calculate the result.
The copper coins spun on the table for several circles and finally stopped.
Master Yuan Qi's expression changed slightly.
The divination indeed showed that there was a variable in this situation.
...
When the sun was about to set, Ye Wanmian, who had dried her hair, finally walked down the mountain with the yellow dog.
She had a great harvest on the mountain today. The bamboo basket behind her was so heavy that it hurt her shoulders.
However, she had taken a comfortable bath in the lake under the waterfall today, washing away the dirt and fatigue on her body. So Ye Wanmian's steps were much lighter than usual.
It was just...
Looking at the yellow dog that had run away angrily in front and refused to turn back no matter how she called it, Ye Wanmian never understood what she had done to offend it again.
It had been so comfortable when she was combing its fur just a moment ago that it had even drooped its ears.
Ye Wanmian sighed.
The heart of the big yellow dog was just like the sky in June or a child's face. It could change at any time.
Fortunately, after they got down the mountain, the yellow dog that had run away alone stopped and waited at the foot of the mountain. When Ye Wanmian's figure appeared in front of it, it walked up to her side with its head still slightly raised, looking very proud.
That look seemed to be saying "I'll reluctantly forgive you", which made Ye Wanmian couldn't help smiling.
Ye Wanmian and the yellow dog had stayed in the mountain for a long time. She thought that the soldiers of the Eastern Palace who were guarding the town gate had already left. But when they got back to the town, those soldiers were still there.
Thinking that she might meet Bu Hua again later, Ye Wanmian couldn't help muttering "bad luck" in her heart.
The town was not peaceful now. It would be sealed off at night. So there were quite a few common people waiting to enter the town at this time. They were queuing up to be checked one by one.
Ye Wanmian and the yellow dog mixed among them and waited patiently. Just as there were only a few people left before it was their turn, there suddenly came an unusual sound from behind.
Xiao Jingcheng's hearing was very sensitive now. He was the first to notice something was wrong.
He could feel the ground under his feet vibrating slightly, and the frequency of the vibration was very regular. This was a sign that there were troops moving nearby, and they were heading towards Dongli Town.
As if to confirm his thought, the next moment, a fast horse galloped towards here from behind. The man on the horseback was holding a flag that Xiao Jingcheng was very familiar with.
"The guards of Dongli Town, listen up! His Highnesses, the Kings of Mu, Xuan, and Ning are coming. Quickly make the idlers retreat and welcome the three highnesses into the town!"