The moon is in the middle of the sky, the night is late and the mountain breeze is cool.
The house had been quiet for a long time.
"Ga-la-la," there was a soft sound, and Kuroyuki came out with a basin of sewage.
"How's it going?" I asked, wiping the water from the corners of my eyes as I got up and stepped forward.
"Sleeping," Kuroyuki returned blandly, carrying the basin to pour water.
I leaned over the doorframe and looked inside to find that Red Riding Hood was indeed lying asleep in bed, which made me breathe a sigh of relief, not realising that I was quietly closing the door and turning around to walk out.
Outside, Black Moon had finished pouring the water and was heading for the front door, seemingly to leave.
I took quick steps to catch up with her.
"That, by the looks of it, there shouldn't be any big problem if Dai Hongcai stays here, with you looking after her, she shouldn't suffer much and no one will dare to bully her." I said to him as I walked alongside him towards the front.
He stopped and fumbled around in his coat pocket for a moment, surprisingly pulling out a packet of cigarettes.
"You still smoke?" I asked, looking at him with some consternation.
"Just recently learned," he nodded, turned his back, lifted the black cloth covering his face, lit a cigarette, faced the mountains and took a deep drag.
"Would you like one?" He tossed the cigarette case and lighter towards me.
I took it, lit one and smoked it too, followed by a long silence, with only the sound of the wind coming incessantly.
"Are you really a god?" After a long time, I looked at the large front door and Shanghai brand lighter in my hand and felt that he was a bit too hands-on as a god.
"I'm not a god, I'm just a spokesman for God," he shook his head with a bitter smile and continued, "I'm actually just a sinful soul who occasionally catches a glimpse of sin redemption."
"It's too deep for me to understand, and I don't want to pursue it too much, I just want to ask you a question," I hesitated for half a day, but I still said what was in my heart, "That, Red Riding Hood is delirious now, so she doesn't really have much judgment or autonomy, so what I want to say is, that, if, you. Ahem, if you really care about her, I'd like you to wait until she's recovered her sanity before you and she - in short, I think that would be true happiness."
"I understand what you mean, don't worry, I'm not as monkeyish as you think, to you mortals, **** is equal to flesh=lust, but to us, it's the spiritual cherishing that's more important," he said with a smile, as if despising my superficiality.
I breathed a sigh of relief and smiled a little scratching my head, "In that case, I'm going to head down tomorrow, I've been out for many days and if I don't go back, I think my parents will be anxious."
"Well, have a good trip then, and come back to visit more often," he said to me as he raised his hand to flick off his cigarette.
"That, little dodgy thing, do you remember? That Soul Fury-" I asked, looking at him.
"Of course I remember," he nodded, then reached into his coat pocket and felt around again, before pulling out a pair of bells and shoving them into my hand, saying to me, "Kill it for me."
"Don't worry," I said, taking the pair of bells and clutching them tightly in my hands as I nodded solemnly to him.
"I trust you," he finished his sentence and turned to drift away.
I stood quietly under the moon, my mind drifting for a moment.
...
The next day, with the purple sun coming in the east and the sky shining brightly, I bid farewell to Mr. Sanwu and went down the mountain.
After descending the mountain, I realised that the hill was not very far from Full Moon Tun, and after walking for about two hours, I returned to Full Moon Tun and found my bicycle, which had been completely buried in snow, in the broken shack at the entrance of the village.
After unlocking the bike and giving it a quick wipe down, I got on it and headed home.
It wasn't long before I arrived home at five or six in the afternoon, before the sun had set.
You can imagine how angry my parents looked when they saw me.
"Didn't school end a long time ago? Your classmates would have been home already, where have you been?!" My mother twisted my ears and dragged me all the way into the hall, grabbing a broom and beating me.
All I could do was duck and explain to them.
Luckily, they were both reasonable and they knew that I was no longer the ordinary child I used to be after learning the art from the old blind man, so they let me go in the end.
They were no longer angry, so my life was comfortable, because by now it was the end of the year and the family had a mountain of good food.
Of course, all this ease was only superficial, for I was still worried about Xiaodu from the beginning to the end, and I was anxious to get her out.
However, I knew that with my current power, I could not defeat the Soul Fiend, so I had to wait until I was strong enough to find the Soul Fiend and take revenge on Little Puddle and Tai Hong Hao.
As luck would have it, when the Chinese New Year was approaching, the old blind man, who had been invisible to the gods, appeared.
The old man had a dog beating stick in his hand, a gong on his shoulder and a rag bag on his back, but he was walking through the village to tell fortunes and check customs.
When he came, he couldn't leave. If I didn't say yes to him, my parents wouldn't say yes to him either, so he had to stay at my house and prepare to spend New Year at my house.
During this process, I told him what I had experienced during this period of time, and then I begged him to teach me some formations so that I could deal with the spirit demon.
In response to my request, the old blind man just laughed and said, "Do you think you're going to compete with the Soul Demon after you meet it? Let me tell you, the reason why it used a formation against you at that time in the home of that pair of grandchildren was because it was forced to do so, because the power of its doppelganger was limited, but if you encountered its main body, it would never use something like a formation against you, because the formation was too slow, and it would definitely use other more dangerous and powerful moves. So I ask you, what are you going to do then?"
The old blind man's words were reasonable, and I knew that my strength was limited, so at that moment I did not feel like dropping my head and saying, "I don't know what to do either, originally I had Little Muddle and Yun Qingyue to help me out, but now they are both, one is sealed and the other is still in a sleeping state, I don't know what to do anymore, after all my own power is still very weak. "
Hearing my words, the old blind man then stroked his beard and said to me meaningfully, "Who said your power was weak? You probably don't know it yet, your current power has actually reached the level of a Patriarch, it's just that you don't know how to bring it into play."