Zi Yang

  "Old master, the first character is 'up', what's below?" asked Lao Wu.

  "Clear." Mo asked, picking up a few pieces of firewood and throwing them into the fire.

  "What is Shangqing?" Lao Wu asked casually.

  "The three ancestors of Taoism are known to the world as the Three Purities, and Yuqing is one of them." Mo asked in response that Taoism and Confucianism complement each other, and the classics of Confucianism happened to be Mo's main course of study.

  "What's written on the back of the wooden board?" Lao Wu asked curiously.

  Mo Wen heard the words and leaned in close to the fire, borrowing light to examine the characters on the back of the wooden sign. The wooden sign was only about the size of a palm, with dense and intricate small characters written from right to left and top to bottom, divided into five columns.

  "A thousand years of Dharma gatherings, the Upper Clarity personally attends, selecting the best from all over the world, ferrying countless people across."

  Mingzhou Wuliang Mountain, Upper Pure Land Dharma Platform

  Third row: "Xīnchǒu year first month fifteenth."

  Carrying four pieces of silver weighing ten taels each.

  "May 9th, 1924."

  Mo asked no more after finishing reading and shook his head with a bitter smile, then threw the wooden sign into the fire.

  "Old master, what's wrong?" Lao Wu asked, seeing Mo ask throw away the wooden sign, puzzled.

  "This is an invitation to deceive people into donating money under the guise of recruiting disciples." Mo asked, and Sui replied casually. "Zhang" refers to a type of good wood that has a fragrant scent and is easy to carve, so "selecting Zhang" implies selecting suitable material, and " ferrying people across" means spreading the teachings.

  "What did you say? Read it out loud so I can hear it too." Old Five was very curious, and handed his wooden sign to Mo Xiong.

  He had no choice but to read out the words on the wooden sign. The content of the two signs was roughly the same, except for the last column of numbers which were different. This sign read "Yi Wei San Liu Jiu".

  "Old man, how did you know it was a scam?" Lao Wu didn't catch on.

  "Have you ever seen an immortal?" Mo asked in response.

  "We've never seen one before, how could an immortal possibly let us see it?" Old Five shook his head.

  "That's it, Shang Qing is one of the three immortals with the highest magical powers in legend, how can he condescend to collect disciples? Moreover, immortals eat wind and drink dew, detached from worldly affairs, if they collect money for transmission, wouldn't that become a street performance?" Mo Xun said.

  "That's right, what does the last sentence mean?" Lao Wu nodded and asked again.

  "According to the numbering of license plates based on the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, one cycle of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches is sixty years. If all the license plates are complete, there should be tens of thousands of identical ones." Mo asked Old Five to return the wooden plate.

  "Whoever takes on apprentices can't take on tens of thousands of people." Old Five took over the wooden sign and also threw it into the fire.

  "Don't burn it, leave it." Mo Wen stopped Lao Wu from doing so.

  "What's it for?" asked Old Five.

  Don't ask, Lao Wu didn't answer the question. Earlier, Lao Wu was possessed by Lao Fuzi and scared him half to death. This amulet was given by a Taoist priest, whether it's true or not, wearing it can only be beneficial and harmless.

  One night without words, the next morning, the two got up and looked for food in the city. The city of Qingping was just north of the Huren border, and the journey ahead was full of danger. Mo didn't ask what dangers lay ahead, but he knew there would be many. He wasn't sure where the danger would come from, so all he could do to prepare was collect as much dry rations as possible.

  There were many soldiers stationed here, and naturally there was food. Although most of it was taken away by the barbarians, a lot of scattered grain was still collected. There were pots and cooking utensils left behind, and Xiao Wu baked a lot of millet cakes. At noon, the two men took their dry rations and the warm clothing they had picked up and left Qingping City.

  The city of Qingping is desolate to the north, the former road has grown with wild grass, houses have collapsed, fields are barren, and the Hu people established Zhao Guo for over a decade. This place is located on the border of two countries, no civilians dare to live here, they fled from here more than a decade ago.

  After advancing thirty miles, the snow on the ground began to thin out, and horse hoof prints and cart ruts appeared in the snowy area. Within dozens of miles around, there were no signs of human habitation. These horse hoof prints and cart ruts were undoubtedly left behind by the Xiongnu people who had invaded the south previously.

  As we continued north, the roadsides were occasionally littered with filth and mire, which was relatively scattered but not far from the roadside. It can be seen that the barbarians are not only cruel and savage, but also completely shameless.

  The two of them walked quickly, and by dusk they had already covered over 70 miles. On a sunny slope that blocked the wind, they discovered traces of where the Hu people had stopped to rest earlier. There was no snow here, and all around they could see scattered pieces of women's torn clothing. At this time, most respectable women's clothes were mainly blue or green, with few being red, but Mo saw a red color - in the grass on the east side of the road there was a red skirt.

  "Master, it seems to be the mistress's skirt." Lao Wu ran over and retrieved the already torn red skirt.

  Don't ask, with eyes closed and nodding, according to etiquette, women should wear a top garment on the upper body, trousers on the lower body, and an outer skirt. Regardless of winter or summer, they must wear a skirt. However, in Xiyang County, there were not many wealthy families who could afford silk fabrics to make skirts. Only daughters from merchant, official, or noble families could wear skirts all year round. And this particular skirt was red, so it must be the one Lin Ruochen wore that day, and no one else would have it.

  "Master, has the mistress been bullied by them?" Laowu's eyes widened.

  He didn't ask, he just opened his eyes and stared blankly at Xiao Wu for a moment, neither nodding nor shaking his head. Before this, he had already anticipated what would happen, but he hadn't expected that the barbarians would humiliate the captured women so brutally in this desolate wilderness, and among these many humiliated women was his own wife.

  "Old master, didn't you expect that the Hu people would do something like this?" Lao Wu guessed from Mo Xiong's expression that he had already been mentally prepared.

  "A sheep enters a tiger's mouth, how can it escape unharmed?" Mo asked, and Mo Ran nodded silently.

  Lao Wu didn't say another word and handed over the tattered red skirt in his hand to Mo Wen, "Sir, do you still want it?"

  Don't ask him to stare at that red skirt that has been torn apart, and after a brief hesitation, he reached out to pick it up.

  "Old master, are you really going to leave this thing behind?" Laowu still didn't let go.

  "It's not her fault, can't blame her." Mo Wen sighed and opened his mouth. He understood what Xiao Wu meant, nowadays there were five things that could make a husband divorce his wife, and the first one was if the woman lost her chastity.

  "Old master, if Old Master were still alive, he would never let you marry a woman who has been touched by a barbarian." Laowu still didn't let go.

  "It's an unintentional mistake, and it's unfair to blame him." He didn't ask about the inner conflict in his heart. From a young age, he had read the books of saints and sages, which taught that men were superior to women as a heavenly principle. If a woman lost her chastity, there was only one way to gain people's understanding - by taking her own life. But here, Lin Ruochen's body was nowhere to be found, which meant that Lin Ruochen was still alive. Deep down, he thought that Lin Ruochen had been forced into losing her chastity, but years of Confucian indoctrination made him somewhat dissatisfied with Lin Ruochen's compromise.

  "Master, you'd better think carefully, you're not like us servants." Lao Wu reluctantly let go, he was just a servant, only able to remind the master, but couldn't disobey.

  "I've made up my mind, as a married couple, we can't be heartless." Mo didn't ask what he had carefully folded the red skirt and put it in his arms.

  "Our fellow villagers will look down on us." Lao Wu made a last-ditch effort. Without asking, the decision he made was indeed very beneficial to Lin Ruochen, but it damaged the reputation of the Mo family. This principle even this illiterate servant understood.

  "Countryman? What countryman is left between you and me?" Mo asked, turning around and walking away.

  The sun sets in the west, and the moon rises. The two of them couldn't find a place to rest and had to travel through the night. Lao Wu's words became less frequent; he didn't agree with Mo Wen's decision. In his opinion, Mo Wen was an old master, a man of dignity, and couldn't marry a woman who had lost her chastity.

  Baoyi and his companion had been away from home for a long time, but not everything was going as smoothly as they had hoped. That night, the two of them couldn't find a suitable place to rest, and in the end, they could only spend the night shivering in an abandoned house that had lost its roof over a decade ago.

  For three consecutive days, the two of them didn't see a single person except for a woman's corpse lying by the side of the road. It wasn't until now that Mo Xun finally understood why the Taoist priest he had seen earlier was so hungry - it was likely that the priest hadn't expected this area to be completely uninhabited within a radius of three hundred miles.

  There was only one desolate road here, and along the way, the two men found two places where the Hu people had made fires to rest. Each time, Mo Xun would stop to search, fortunately without finding any human remains. Just as he suspected that the Hu people eating humans was a rumor spread by the Jin people, at the third place where the Hu people had stopped, he and Lao Wu were stunned. Within a hundred yards of the forest, there were over a dozen large fire pits, with a large number of frozen intestines and gnawed bones scattered nearby. Seeing this scene, Mo Xun was stunned, and after a moment, he began to vomit. Lao Wu quickly reached out to pat his back to help him catch his breath, but after two pats, Lao Wu also couldn't help but start vomiting. Due to the cold weather, the scattered intestines and organs had not yet rotted, with bright red lungs, dark red liver, curved piles of white intestines, and a strange smell that would make anyone vomit.

  After entering the forest, the two of them started vomiting. They ran out of the forest while vomiting, but after vomiting, Mo Xun took Lao Wu back to this bloody place again. Earlier, he found that those roasted corpses did not have skulls. The heads and clothes left by these eaten people should be somewhere in the forest.

  After running out of the forest again, Mo Xun and Lao Wu were pale, they didn't find any clothes, only skulls, headless bodies are not as terrifying as bodiless heads, what shocked them most was that among those skulls, there was one that belonged to a young maid who had been bought by Mo's family since she was a child.

  "Master, I'm scared." Xiao Wu's voice trembled.

  "Even beasts do not eat their own kind; those who are not of our kind must have a different heart." Don't ask, and Lao Wu is the same, his teeth chattering when he speaks.

  "Let's go back, it's still early." Xiaowu was really scared. At that time, the calculation of age was all nominal years. Although they called each other "old", in fact, he was only fifteen and Mo Wen was only sixteen.

  "It can't be, the saint said 'A person without faith is unknown to be possible', I once promised her that I would never betray her, I cannot lose faith in people." Mo asked Mai stepped forward, he didn't dare hesitate, because he was worried that under his fear, he would do something "unknown to be possible".

  But they hadn't gone far when Mo Xun suddenly stopped, and Lao Wu saw that Mo Xun's behavior was unusual, so he quickly caught up with him. He raised his head to look ahead, and what he saw made his soul shake greatly - a team of soldiers and horses were rushing towards them from the north.

  "Master, what should we do?" Lao Wu nervously misaddressed him again.

  "Run quickly..."