Pawn Crossing the River

The entire Jade Capital has a deserted temperament. It is not only immovable by all winds, but also kept away from people thousands of miles away. However, Taiqing Square is the only exception. Various shops gather here, with the largest flow of people and the most pyrotechnic atmosphere.

When you come to Taiqing Square, the first thing you see is a majestic statue of Taishang Taozu, which is ten feet high. Shangqing Street and Yuqing Street intersect here, and the statue of Taishang Daozu is located at the intersection of the two. It is the center of Taiqing Square and the center of Yujing.

It is said that at the earliest time, someone proposed to erect a statue of Xuansheng here, but it was rejected by Xuansheng and was changed to Taishang Daozu.

It’s not that I mean to belittle Taishang Daozu, but there are too many statues of Taishang Daozu. In Yujing City, there are not only one thousand, but also eight hundred. It’s really not inferior to this one. But Xuan Sheng’s attitude is very determined, not only In Taiqing Square, looking at Yujing, Xuandu, and Zifu, from beginning to end, Xuan Sheng did not leave a single statue. It is said that there are only portraits of Xuansheng in Jinque and Zixiao Palaces, and only real people and Dazhen people can see Xuansheng's true appearance.

At this time, the sky is getting dark and the lanterns are starting to turn on.

Around the statue of Taishang Daozu, there are twenty-four sky lanterns hanging with tassels. Each sky lantern is the size of a water tank. They slowly rotate in a strange trajectory around the statue of Taishang Daozu, filling the entire Taiqing Square. illuminate.

After dark, Taiqing Square was extremely lively, with people coming and going, including people wearing double-breasted and wide-sleeved crane cloaks, as well as people like Qi Xuansu wearing regular clothes.

Surrounding Taiqing Square are various shops. In addition to regular shops such as restaurants and inns, there are everything from swords, jades, spiritual objects, talismans, pens and ink, elixirs, medicinal materials, clothing materials, food ingredients, wood, etc. After night falls, everyone lights up the lights, and each house has more than one. If you look down from above, it seems that the entire Taiqing Square is rimmed with light.

Unfortunately, there is a ban in Yujing, and Taoist priests below the second rank are not allowed to ride the wind, so no one except real people can see this scene with their own eyes.

The only thing that is not available is brothels and gambling houses. The Taoist sect strictly prohibits such things that corrupt the morals, and prostitutes are not qualified to enter Yujing City, not even the so-called oiran.

Qi Xuansu stood on the edge of Taiqing Square, with his hands folded on his lower abdomen, looking up at the sky lanterns floating in the sky, recalling the scene when he first came here, he was dazzled by the sky lanterns and the surrounding sky lanterns. Lights, Taoist statues, people coming and going...

Qi Xuansu came to Taiqing Square from the west along Yuqing Street, while Zhang Yuelu came to Taiqing Square from the north along Shangqing Street.

It has always been facing south, so the north of Yujing is naturally Xuandu.

Although Zhang Yuelu had just been promoted from principal to deputy hall leader, she was not in a good mood. The strife and undercurrents surging among the higher-ups of the Taoist sect made her extremely disgusted, but she had to be involved.

So for the first time, she left the inner city of Xuandu and came to the outer city of Yujing to relax.

Although they are both fourth-grade wine-sacrifice Taoist priests, Zhang Yuelu's status is incomparable to that of Sun Yongfeng. Not to mention that Zhang Yuelu has been promoted to deputy hall master and has half-immortals given by the Taoist sect. In terms of housing alone, Zhang Yuelu has been assigned He bought a two-entry mansion in Xuandu, and Tianjitang also exempted Zhang Yuelu from all rental fees, and the lease period was as long as thirty years. The Taoist sect has no shortage of geniuses in the eyes of ordinary people, so it has established a system of nine-grade Taoist priests. What the Taoist sect lacks is the banished immortals.

With the strength of the Taoist sect, one can turn a disabled person into an ordinary person, or an ordinary person into a banished immortal, but the cost of the latter is much higher than that of the former. Moreover, real people and big real people also consume various resources. Therefore, the Taoist sect gives extremely favorable treatment to such natural-born immortals. Whether it is a half-immortal or a mansion in Xuandu, it is nothing compared with the cost of forcibly creating an immortal.

Zhang Yuelu walked alone in Taiqing Square. Although she was very famous, not many people had actually seen her. In addition, she was wearing a very plain Taoist robe without any grade marks, instead of the quite... Because of the eye-catching Taoist crane cloak of the fourth grade wine offering, and because it was night, the sky lanterns could not be used as the sun no matter how bright they were, so they did not attract anyone's attention.

Zhang Yuelu strolled into a shop that specializes in weapons. Most of the weapons used by people in the Taoist sect are swords, and they are quite disdainful of firearms. However, this shop does the opposite. Not only does it not have a single sword, but there are many Mainly firearms and Qimen weapons.

Zhang Yuelu's use of swords was true, but it had been difficult to overcome the difficulties in the past. After she had a semi-immortal object, she was no longer interested in long swords that were mostly spiritual objects. On the contrary, these strange and weird things aroused her interest even more.

The shopkeeper is a sixth-grade Taoist priest who likes to play with mechanisms and other things, and has a lot of research on firearms. He once worked in Tianji Hall, and later he retired and opened this shop after saving enough capital.

When he saw Zhang Yuelu come in, he didn't rush to greet him, but let Zhang Yuelu browse by himself.

Zhang Yuelu's eyes swept over many firearms, including the "Dragon Hand Gun" produced by the Shenji Camp for thirty-six years, and then his eyes fell on a cigarette rod.

No matter how talented Zhang Yuelu is, he is still young after all, and his experience and experience that need time to accumulate are limited. It is impossible to know everything. He couldn't help but curiously asked: "Shopkeeper, why do you still have a cigarette stick here?"

The shopkeeper smiled slightly: "This is not an ordinary cigarette rod, but a strange weapon called the 'Ban Mian Sou', with an edge on the outside."

Qi Xuansu walked into the shop just at this time. When he heard the shopkeeper's words, his eyes fell on the cigarette pole, and he immediately thought of Qiniang's long cigarette that never left her body.

Only then did he know whether Qiniang's weapon was the Changyan or the Qimen weapon.

But Qiniang has never used it, only for smoking. Qiniang occasionally made several attacks, killing people with her bare hands. She was quick, accurate and ruthless, leaving her opponent no time to react. The hand knife was even sharper than a real knife, making Qi Xuansu unable to tell the difference.

Zhang Yuelu's gaze shifted from "The Old Man with a Face" to Qi Xuansu.

Zhang Yuelu, as a relegated immortal in the stage of returning to his true form, has reached the state of manifesting a baby, which corresponds to the holy fetus state of Sanren.

It is not difficult to see from the names of the two realms that the two realms belonging to different inheritances are quite similar.

The Sanren lineage is very interesting. It looks like several realms taken from other lineages and put together together, and it also looks like a replica of the banished immortal. To sum up, the banished immortals are well-versed in many schools and are proficient in everything, while the lay people are also well-read in many schools and are sparse in everything. Therefore, in the Sanren lineage, there is also the saying of "little banished immortal", but this title is more derogatory than praise. There is even a saying that the Sanren lineage is the product of Daomen's attempt to mass-produce Banished Immortals. As a result, Daomen failed. It is not that Daomen cannot copy Banished Immortals, but that they cannot mass-produce. The cost of copying a Banished Immortal is too high, so high that Daomen feels that even The cultivated banished immortals would not be able to recoup their costs unless they died midway, so in addition to the five ancient inheritances, there was an additional lineage of Sanren.

As a proud man who has already entered the upper echelon of Taoism, Zhang Yuelu knows that this statement is not a rumor, but the truth.

Because the Taoist sect felt that the Confucian sect was incompetent and self-proclaimed, since the beginning of Xuansheng, in addition to re-employing young people, it has also vigorously promoted various innovations. Therefore, there are many bold moves within the Taoist sect, and imitating and banishing immortals is only one of them that has a greater impact. As an example, various semi-immortal objects are also the result of Taoist attempts to imitate immortal objects.

Back to the Sanren themselves, because the Sanren originated from the banished immortals, there is a subtle connection between the two. Just like in the same lineage, people with high realms can easily see through the reality of people with low realms.

Therefore, Zhang Yuelu immediately noticed Qi Xuansu's existence, and even Qi Xuansu's realm cultivation level could not be hidden from her.

A Sanren in the Kunlun stage, in the inner alchemy realm.

This was nothing at all, but what interested Zhang Yuelu was that this person of the same age had an aura about him.

Let's call it "murderous".

This is not something that can be accumulated by one or two lives, nor can it be raised by the son of a noble family by killing a few servants. Many men in black who are often on the battlefield are nothing more than this.

Zhang Yuelu's intuition accumulated in Beichen Hall told her that this person of the same age was not a native of Yujing, but was probably from the local government.

The master of the Tiangang Hall once said that the Taoist priests raised in the flower gardens of Yujing cannot withstand the wind and rain, so the Tiangang Hall must recruit Taoist priests from the local Taoist government. This is also the reason why the Tiangang Hall is always short of manpower.

Zhang Yuelu asked Master Zhangtang why he didn't change this situation.

The master's answer is simple. The hard-working gardener who cultivated this flower garden is very satisfied with the current scenery and does not allow anyone to change it.

If the real person in charge can speak so cryptically and dare not say it directly, then the identity of the gardener is self-evident.

Just when Zhang Yuelu was slightly lost in thought, Qi Xuansu had already asked the price. He originally wanted to buy himself a life-saving weapon. Firearms were the best, but he was frightened by the price of several hundred peace dollars. Without any hesitation, he turned and left. shop.

Zhang Yuelu lost interest in continuing to read and left the store.

The two of them left the shop one after another, and a young woman came forward to greet them, presented them with two wedding invitations, and asked enthusiastically: "I wonder if you two can enjoy the ceremony?"

Both of them were startled.

Then I saw many people gathered in the City God's Temple not far away. The atmosphere was lively, and a wedding was actually being held.

Weddings pay attention to the morning greeting and dusk walking, which means that you go to marry the bride in the morning and hold the wedding at dusk.

Among the twelve hours, dusk refers specifically to the eleventh hour, Xu. In Western time, it is the period from nineteen o'clock to twenty-one o'clock.

Qi Xuansu and Zhang Yuelu coincidentally took out their pocket watches and opened the cover.

It happened to be the moment of Xu.