As soon as Gu Mang heard that he really had a cousin that would come to see him the day after tomorrow, he was surprised.
After his mental damage, he seldom showed such obvious happiness. He seemed to have a lot of mental health.
Throughout the day, he asked Mo Xi from time to time, "Mo Xi, what's my cousin like?"
Mo Xi intended to one, give him a little more expectation and two, did not want to say too much, so he only said, "You'll know when you see him."
"Oh..."
After sitting in the guest room of the inn and playing with the bamboo dragonfly for a while, he turned around and asked, "What do I want to say to him when I see him?"
"You can say anything you want. There are no rules."
"What do you say when you see your cousin?"
"... I don't have a cousin." Mo Xi put down the scroll in his hand, looked at Gu Mang's round blue eyes, and said, "Don't be nervous, he is your brother, not your enemy."
Gu Mang looked relieved. But before long, he looked at his clothes, ran to the bronze mirror and looked at his appearance carefully. Then he ran back to Mo Xi and pulled Mo Xi's sleeves. "Clothes."
"Huh?"
"I want to change into new clothes. In this way, cousin will be happy."
Mo Xi almost laughed. "Are you going to propose a marriage?"
"What is a proposal?"
"... I said it for fun," Mo Xi said to Gu Mang. "Have a good rest in the inn. It's very safe
in my defensive array around the inn. I'll go and buy you a new outfit."
Gu Mang nodded.
It was not hard to pick out clothes for Gu Mang. Mo Xi knew his waist size very well. In a short time, he took a paper bag from one of the best ready-made clothes shops in Lin'an.
Back at the inn, he handed the paper bag to Gu Mang and said, "Go and change it. Do you like it?"
The robe was pure white. It was embroidered with a shadow cloud pattern with snow silkworm ice silk. The style was simple and elegant. Gu Mang was good at close combat. He used to like to wear narrow sleeves and strong clothes. Later, he became a prisoner and didn't have any good clothes at all. He had never worn such a wide robe with flowing sleeves and silver light.
He walked carefully out of the back of the screen, lest he should go too far and step on the clothes. Then he stood in front of Mo Xi, his blue eyes overflowing with uneasiness.
"Feeling… It's kind of weird."
His hair was still in a loose bun, with soft black hair hanging on his cheek. His skin was white and his eyes were clear. After changing into such an outfit, he could really see some similarities between him and Murong Chuyi.
Mo Xi said gently, "Very good-looking, you are just not used to it."
Gu Mang was a little surprised. "Really? Good looking?"
"En," Mo Xi chuckled. "You just need to adapt."
Gu Mang nodded happily, but before long, he thought of something else. He ran to the back of the screen to replace the snow gauze clothes and held them in his hands.
"What's the matter?" Mo Xi was slightly surprised. "Don't you like it?"
Gu Mang said, "It will get dirty." He carefully folded the clothes, raised the tan oil paper on the table, and fanned his eyelashes. Suddenly, he blew it carefully and then wrapped it up again. He solemnly patted it. "I'll wear it the day after tomorrow."
Although the demonic energy had invaded his mind, the desire for family love was engraved into his marrow all the time.
Mo Xi watched him put the paper bag with the clothes on the head of the bed. After a while, he simply hid it under the pillow. After a while, he turned it out and took a peek. He reached out and carefully touched the cloth, showing an uncertain and expectant look.
Gu Mang was busy going around the oil paper bag all night. The bamboo dragonfly gadgets he bought before were all out of favor. Even when he went to sleep, Gu Mang couldn't let it go. He asked in a low voice after a while:
"Mo Xi, does cousin wear such clothes?"
"En. He likes it best."
"Mo Xi, cousin, does he look good?"
"Since it's your cousin, how can he be ugly?"
"Mo Xi, there's tomorrow and the next day is a day later. I have to wait another day. Can't I see him tomorrow?"
"He has a little of his own business to deal with tomorrow, and when he has done it, he can come here safely."
"Well, then let him deal with it well, don't worry."
"En."
"Mo Xi..."
After asking these questions, the voice gradually weakened. Gu Mang seemed to want to discuss more about his cousin, but he was a little sleepy. He yawned and finally mumbled Mo Xi's name. He had no time to go on saying anything, so he went to sleep in a daze.
The next day, Gu Mang was still curled up in the quilt, but Mo Xi got up early. The busiest times in a city were in the morning market and night market. Mo Xi planned to inquire about the legend of rebirth, but after a round of questioning, the citizens were not interested in cultivating themselves. They knew very clearly about which green vegetables and tofu were the freshest and cheapest, but they didn't know about the hermits in the vicinity of Lin'an City.
For this result, Mo Xi was not surprised. If a hermit was so inquisitive, he wouldn't be a hermit.
She knew nothing of the art of rebirth, but the enthusiastic old lady told him which family's breakfast was the most delicious. Mo Xi went there, and the shop was filled with a group of people on the third floor.
He took a seat in the corner, and a man ran from the hall with a white sweat towel on his shoulder. "You have a special breakfast here, I'll have one of each dish please."
"Very good!" he said running through the hall full of vitality.
It sounded like Mo Xi was wasting food, but he was not. It wasn't too much for an adult man to go through all the many kinds of fancy shops in the morning. The dishes were made very quickly. In a short time, the dishes were brought one after another - fresh meat wonton soup with fine filling, shrimp meat and wheat, tender and full elasticity, sweet and soft osmanthus balls, fried eel soup with smooth, rich noodles, crispy fried fish with burnt yellow flavor dipped in clear vinegar and acid to remove the greasiness, and even more fish meat flavor. As well as the fried juniper made in Lin'an City, the white skin as thin as cicada wings was wrapped with two fried dough sticks, which were pressed flat on the small baking stove, sandwiched with green onions, spread with thick sweet sauce down the pancake, which was crisp and sweet.
After tasting them one by one, according to Gu Mang's taste, he ordered several more bowls to be taken away from the store.
While waiting for the soup noodles, he suddenly heard a table of city people sitting next to him talking about the family's affairs while they were eating.
A woman said, "In the morning, Yue Juntian led a group of people up and down to Huntian cave in the outskirts of the city. Aiyo, I just came back from picking fresh wild vegetables outside the city, and then I ran into his family's honor guard at the gate of the city, which scared me."
The mud-footed man18 beside her laughed at her, "What are you afraid of? You are afraid that master Yue will arrest you to be a little daughter-in-law? Master Yue looks at the face. You are half old, Xu Niang. He won't look at you. Don't be afraid." The woman was furious. "What happened to my mother? Old lady, this is Xu Niang. I am still charming! Eat your noodles! Don't be so stingy here!"
Another man at the same table said with a smile, "But I heard that Yue Juntian's body hasn't been well the whole year in recent years. When he was young, the wind and snow were gone, but now he has no spirit."
"Yes," the woman said, "You didn't see him. His face was yellow and waxy, just like the one in the coffin. Aiyo, but his two sons are pretty, but one of them is lame."
"Do you think it's Jiang Yexue? He's here, too?"
"No, since he was expelled from his home, he can go out with the Yue family at this time. After all, it's the Huntian cave sacrifice."
There was also a stranger at their table who didn't know much about Lin'an and Yue mansion. Just when they were chatting, he didn't say a word. This time, he couldn't help being curious. He swallowed the noodles and asked, "Dage, Dajie, this Huntian cave… Where is it?"
The woman explained enthusiastically, "It's a corpse dump."
The mud-footed man added, "It should be said that it's the place where the spirits are sealed."
The stranger opened his eyes and was surprised. "Ah… Haunted?"
"Yes. It's the old legend of Lin'an City. When Chonghua was established, Lin'an was not in the territory, but in the hands of the barbarians. At that time, the barbarian people practiced evil methods and imprisoned most of the people in Lin'an City in a cave. They wanted to kill them and then refine them into ghost hell soldiers."
"But while the barbarians had such ambitions, they had no such ability. They killed tens of thousands of people. The corpses were piled up in the caves and flowed into pools. Those who died in vain were indeed angry and violent, but they were not controlled by the barbarians at all. Instead, they ate them up and went out to roam around and killed people everywhere."
"Then what happened?" said the stranger.
"Later, Chonghua sent the ancestor of Yue Juntian, a master of weapon refining at that time, to Lin'an to suppress the mob of hell soldiers."
"The elder Yue was very intelligent. He refined the magic tools to drive the spirits. At last, he successfully sealed those ghost hell soldiers into the blood pool of the cave. He made a blood contract with them, so that these spirits were willing to follow the instructions of the descendants of the Yue family. And the cave that seals them was called Huntian cave."
The strangers were not stupid. They immediately said, "He must have paid a not small price?"
"Not really," the woman said mysteriously, "I tell you, it's said that the leader of the Yue family sacrificed a large part of his spiritual power to these hell soldiers every three years. Until they abdicate, they can't stop."
The stranger said with a worried voice, "Dajie, you just said that Yue Juntian is ill. Does he have any power to feed these hell soldiers?"
"There must be no more. However, I heard that those in charge of the Yue family can also choose to make a blood sacrifice when they are forced to. That is, they can enter the blood pool and their relatives can accompany them to kneel down, which can also temporarily calm the agitation of the hell soldiers…"
The stranger couldn't hear very well. "How much blood would it take..."
"Too much." The woman made an exaggerated gesture. "So, this kind of sacrifice must be accompanied by family, because after Yue Juntian's blood sacrifice, the whole body will be consumed very weakly, so he has to gather qi and have spells cast for him by his blood relatives, anyway that's what people say. Otherwise, Jiang Yexue and him are so stiff. Do you think he would allow Jiang Yexue to go to Huntian cave to sacrifice with them? It's all counted there!"
The stranger showed a sudden awareness and nodded. "I have been taught, I have been taught. I didn't expect that there were still some legends about the Yue family in Lin'an. I wouldn't know if I didn't come here personally."
The mud-footed man waved, "Every kingdom has his own gossip in every fief. Although it's not a secret, no one knows better than the local people. For example, in Lin'an, the most obvious thing is the little things of the Yue family, because the king is Yue Juntian."
The stranger was quite interested. "What else can I hear? I'll treat you to breakfast. Please tell me more, Dage, Dajie."
These people used to like to talk about such secrets. Even if it was not good, they liked to catch people talking about them. Today, they were even more happy to meet people who were interested in them and were willing to invite them to dinner, so the table was heated again. But Mo Xi sat in the original place and thought about the details about the sacrifice of Huntian cave. Suddenly, he felt uneasy.
The whole family of the Yue family were concentrated in the cave. And after Yue Juntian's blood sacrifice, the spirit power would be weakened a lot. Thinking about the truth that Murong Chuyi just learned about thirty years ago yesterday…
Murong Chuyi's cold, icy white face in the cemetery seemed to reappear.
"I will meet with Gu Mang after the sacrifice at Huntian cave. Until then, I will not be able to deal with Yue Juntian——"
When Murong Chuyi said this, he felt that maybe he was not completely sincere.
And just then, suddenly, there was a scream and noise from the downtown area. The people who were in the morning market automatically did a double take. A bodyguard of the Yue family, who was covered with blood, stumbled in from the east gate. Half of his face was torn, and his bloody skin and flesh hung down, scaring the women and children around him to pieces.
The bodyguard dragged his legs and feet to the direction of the Yue mansion, but he obviously knew that he could not hold it. So when he fell to the ground with a thump, what he did was not to get up at once, but to move forward a little bit and catch the nearest passer-by. He raised his head without regard. "Rebellion… Rebellion…"
The passer-by shivered like chaff. The bodyguard talked and kowtowed. He also bowed to him. "What, what?"
"Instead Yue, Yue family… Huntian Cave… Conspiracy...!" After he had just finished saying that, he vomited a mouthful of blood and fell to the ground and died.
Mo Xi got up quickly. His face at the moment was terrible.