"What's the explanation for sacrificing one's life to seek Tao?" Chen Xiaomu asked, staring at the old Taoist.
The old Taoist was startled for a moment, then laughed awkwardly and said: "Because Pindao won too many times, they decided that Pindao was playing tricks!"
''Haha" Chen Xiaomu couldn't help but laugh and taunted: "It turns out you are also a gambler. What you are saying about sacrificing your life to seek enlightenment is sheer nonsense! You came to see me just because you wanted to sue Wu Guanglu for secretly setting up a dungeon to imprison you? "
"No, that's not the intention!" The old Taoist shook his head repeatedly and said anxiously: "Master, the poor Taoist begging the army to be brought to see you is actually to present a treasure to the emperor!"
"Present treasures?" After Chen Xiaomu heard this, he couldn't help but look at the old Taoist who was all in rags, and asked doubtfully: "Taoist Master, did I hear that right? You said you wanted to present treasures to the emperor?"
The veteran nodded affirmatively: "Exactly."
Chen Xiaomu asked curiously: "May I ask, sir, what treasure are you planning to present to the emperor?"
The old Taoist hesitated for a moment and said, "Tongshou Dan, have you ever heard of it?"
Chen Xiaomu shook his head: "I haven't heard of it."
The old Taoist nodded and said to himself: "No wonder, this Tongshou Pill was refined by the poor Taoist for decades. It is so expensive that almost no one can afford it except the emperor!"
Chen Xiaomu suppressed a smile and asked: "Taoist Priest, what is the effect of this Tongshou Dan?"
The old Taoist's eyes widened for a moment and he said: "Guan Ye, poor Taoist, this Longevity Pill is the treasure of treasures! Take one pill every morning on an empty stomach, and you can live as long as the heaven and the earth!"
"Puch!" After listening to the veteran's explanation, even Wei Yuxin, who had always been serious about his words, was so amused that he couldn't help but laugh out loud. Lian'er, who looked sad just now, also kept grinning.
Chen Xiaomu asked dumbfounded: "Taoist Priest, you have such a magical elixir, are you even reluctant to take it yourself?"
This question made the old man even more enthusiastic. He patted his withered chest and said proudly: "Master, do you think how old I am?"
Chen Xiaomu pondered for a moment and asked tentatively: "Is Taoist Master already in his sixties?"
The old Taoist said proudly: "This year, I am a seventy-year-old man, has added another round of years!"
"Oh!" Chen Xiaomu exclaimed in shock, "I didn't expect that the Taoist priest is already eighty-two years old!"
The old Taoist smiled and said: "This is all the effect of Tongshou Pill. Pindao has been taking one pill every morning for half a year, with no interruptions!"
Chen Xiaomu asked with a smile: "So, the Taoist priest has not even stopped during these days in the dungeon?"
"Alas...!" When mentioning this matter, the old Taoist sighed, and then said bitterly: "I originally had enough to take with me, but it's a pity that they were searched by the gangsters in the casino in the past two days!"
Chen Xiaomu spread his hands and said: "There is nothing we can do. If you have a sample with you now, I can go and tell the emperor on your behalf. Now that you have nothing, how can you tell me?"
The old Taoist smiled furtively, reached out and fumbled around in the tattered clothes for a while, and finally found a small gray pill the size of a finger somewhere somewhere on his body. He held it in the palm of his hand and sent it to Chen Xiaomu.
Chen Xiaomu reached out and took it, put it under his nose and smelled it. The gray pellet gave off a faint sour smell, "Can I break it open and look inside?" Chen Xiaomu asked, pinching the pellet with his thumb and two thumbs.
"This...!" The old Taoist was confused: "My lord, I am not a poor Taoist who can't bear to part with it. This longevity pill costs five hundred taels of silver!"
"Hey!" Chen Xiaomu said in surprise: "This small pill of yours actually costs five hundred taels of silver. Are you trying to steal money?"
The old Taoist stretched his neck forward, stared and said, "Master, you can't say that. Do you know how many precious medicinal materials the poor Taoist put in this little pill?"
Chen Xiaomu waved his hand, "Okay, I don't care about your elixir, so I don't want to extort you another five hundred taels of silver. Go back to where you came from!" As he said, he handed the elixir back to him. Sophisticated.
The old Taoist was stunned when he heard that, but he did not reach out to take the pill back, but said: "If the official is not worried about presenting it to the emperor, there is no harm in breaking one pill and taking a look."
Without saying a word, Chen Xiaomu opened the pill pill in his hand from the middle. Suddenly a familiar smell floated into his nose, which made him feel happy. He originally thought that this thing was hard to find in the north, but he didn't expect that this old Taoist actually had it in his hand. .
The old Taoist is very good at observing words and expressions. When he saw Chen Xiaomu's face beaming with joy the moment he broke open the pill, he couldn't help but worry, for fear of meeting someone who knew the goods. However, this worry was fleeting. He believed that the northerners would never He will recognize the main ingredient in the pill, which he got from a large island in the sea thousands of miles away from here after a lot of hard work.
Just when the old Taoist was thinking wildly, Chen Xiaomu's words made his heart suddenly hit the bottom, "Taoist Master, I heard that there is a drug called tree brain in your elixir, is this right?"
"Ah! This... yes, yes." The old Taoist wanted to deny it, but when he thought that he had been recognized by others, he might suffer hardship if he didn't admit it, so he had no choice but to nod in approval.
Chen Xiaomu said unhurriedly: "Taoist Master, as far as I know, although this tree brain has the function of treating bruises and injuries and awakening the mind, it can also cause side effects of dizziness and respiratory failure after overdose. Based on this, I am not unjust in convicting you of regicide, right?"
When the old Taoist heard this, he was so frightened that he fell to his knees with a plop, kowtowed repeatedly, and cried bitterly: "This poor Taoist deserves to die. This poor Taoist has no intention of regicide. Please be aware of this!"
Chen Xiaomu snorted coldly: "Since you have no intention of regicide, why do you repeatedly ask me to introduce this poison pill to the emperor?"
"This, this...!" The old Taoist hesitated and was speechless.
''Come here, please imprison this demon for the time being, and then execute him in Lingchi after I inform the Emperor! "Chen Xiaomu shouted without any explanation.
Yi Fang heard the sound and stepped forward to pin Lao Dao to the ground, and ordered the soldiers to find a rope and tie him up tightly.
The old Taoist soul was in disarray. When he was about to be dragged away by two soldiers, he struggled desperately and shouted: "My lord, please spare my life. I am willing to confess all the truth."
Chen Xiaomu waved his hands to the two soldiers, and the soldiers let go. The old Taoist lay on the ground, breathing heavily. He calmed down for a while before he began to confess. It turned out that this Taoist priest's lay name was Wu Cuo, a native of Xinjing. A local, he lost his parents due to the war when he was young. He was adopted by Taoist Master Guanyun in Sanmiao Temple outside the city. Sanmiao Temple is actually a very small Taoist temple. There is only one Taoist priest, Taoist Master Guanyun, and there is almost nothing there every day. When people come to offer incense, they don’t get any money for incense. The only source of income is that the Taoist priest Guanyun rents more than ten acres of land behind the Taoist temple to nearby farmers for farming. He lives by collecting a limited amount of land rent every year. Although his life is poor, Guanyun Taoist still lives in poverty. The elder has a very expensive hobby, which is refining the elixir of immortality, which is loved by all Taoist priests in the world. Now he can hardly make ends meet with the little rent he collects. He often cannot eat a meal a day, and sometimes he is really hungry. Unable to bear it, he had no choice but to go out to beg for alms and beg for leftover soup and rice to fill his stomach. One day he was begging in a village and happened to meet Wu De, who was also begging for food. It was already winter and he was less than ten years old. He was of a very young age, still wearing summer single clothes and a pair of broken straw sandals on his feet, and his face was blue and blue from the cold. The Taoist priest saw that he was really pitiful, so he took him back to the Taoist temple and took him in as his own. He is the only disciple and takes the two characters "Tongshou" as his dharma title.
As a result, after a period of exposure, Wucuo completely fell in love with alchemy, and was even more obsessed with it than his master, Taoist Master Guanyun. After more than 20 years of this, after his master, Taoist Master Guanyun, became immortal, he simply sold Taoist priests. With more than a dozen acres of land to survive, he began to travel around in search of various alchemy materials. This journey lasted more than 20 years, reaching the big island in the vast South China Sea in the south, and the snow-capped Tianshan Mountains and Changbai Mountains in the north. Let him run all over the place. Over the years, he has found countless alchemy materials. He exhausted more than a dozen horses along the way and scattered dozens of carriages. In short, he took away what he could, but he really couldn't. Some of them were refining it locally, and some even paid escort agencies or inns to bring it back for them. Although it cost a lot, they also made a lot of money. For example, he has encountered jade from the south and jade from the north. He once sold a piece of jade in the Western Liao Kingdom for a full ten thousand taels of silver.
More than ten years ago, as I grew older, I felt homesick and had the idea of returning to my roots. In addition, I had brought back enough stones from the post station with escort agencies over the years, so I returned to Zheng Guo Xinjing outside the city. There were only a few houses in the small Taoist temple. At this time, the inside and outside of the dilapidated Taoist temple were filled with stones that he had brought back from various places. After simply renovating the Taoist temple, Taoist Tongshou started the road of alchemy again, thinking that one day he could really make alchemy. Produce the elixir of immortality.
It’s just that refining alchemy is too expensive. After a short time, Taoist Tongshou was penniless. At first, he relied on borrowing money from his neighbors. Later, when people saw that he only borrowed money and refused to repay it, no one lent him money anymore. , in desperation, he had to go out to beg for alms. Since everyone nearby knew his nature of seeking death and refining elixirs, no one was willing to pay attention to him anymore, so he had to go to Xinjing City to beg for alms. It happened that one day when I was passing by a casino, I saw people coming and going in it. It was very lively. My heart couldn't help but skip a beat. I remembered the dice rolling skills I learned from an old Taoist in the Taoist temple when I was traveling in the south. I thought to myself: "This is But it’s an inexhaustible cornucopia of money!” He then went in to try his hand with the little more than one hundred pennies he had. Unexpectedly, he won more than two taels of silver in one round.
He was afraid that if he continued to win like this, he would attract the attention of gamblers and people in the casino, so he kept a close eye on it, and then quietly transferred a tael of silver before he stopped.
Having tasted the sweetness in the casino, he would go to the casino every now and then to gamble carefully. He never won much, never more than two taels of silver at most, and he never attracted anyone's attention. Until a few days ago, several houses in the Taoist temple were in disrepair and were all collapsed by heavy snow. He found the bricklayer Kuang and calculated that it would cost at least one hundred taels of silver to repair several collapsed houses. After careful consideration, he , in order to repair the house as soon as possible, he decided to make a big win. Unexpectedly, this time when he won more than ninety taels of silver, and when he saw that he was done, he finally attracted the attention of the gambler hired by the casino to watch the place and prevent gamblers from cheating. , and then stepped forward to expose the trick he had used, which was to secretly replace two of the three dice with dice with iron cores inside, and then use a magnet hidden in his sleeve to control the points of the two dice as he pleased. , and after the bet was over, he quietly exchanged the two dice back.
