The blue flames swayed silently, like flowers from hell, blooming quietly.
Master Chun Shen was sitting in an empty Zen room, with his eyes closed and the human bone beads in his hand moving regularly.
The vaulted roof is hidden in the darkness, as if there is something hidden in the rafters.
Chun Shen didn't even open his eyes when he knew Jiuheng Yui was coming.
"Now that you're here, please show up!
Two young monks stood on the left and right of the host. On the tatami between the monks and the host, a set of Go was spread out.
The four monks stared at the chess game, motionless. If it weren't for the hot breath exhaling from the corners of their mouths, they might have been mistaken for wood carvings or stone statues.
"You've been here from Changzhou for three days, and you still don't know the rules of Mo Neng Temple?"
Master Chun Shen didn't open or close his lips, but he shouted with great energy.
The monk stepped forward quickly, preparing to search the girl.
"Yui Kuheng, when you poke your head there, you look very much like the assassin who assassinated my master a hundred years ago."
"It's a pity that the assassin was finally captured by the master, and we threw him alive into the abyss of the unknown volcano."
Host Chun Shen stared at Yui Kugaki's face and recalled the long past.
"Time flies so fast, another hundred years have passed in the blink of an eye."
"Do you want to make the same mistake as him?"
"Come here!"
Yui Kugaki was hesitant, but in the end, driven by some kind of power, the girl followed the mage's order and walked towards the host involuntarily.
"Please take a seat."
Yui lifted up the hem of her kimono, knelt down obediently opposite the mage, and stared down at the blue flames in the furnace. The flames reflected the girl's delicate face, which was particularly bright and moving.
"Okay," Master Chun Shen's tone sounded like a naughty child trying to end a game as soon as possible.
One monk held down Yui Kugaki while another monk began to search the girl carefully.
With a clanking sound, dozens of weapons were shaken out by the monks.
Chun Shen stepped forward, picked up an exquisite fire gun on the ground, threw the sharp dagger on the tatami, and looked up at Jiuheng Yui.
Under the blue flames, Chun Shen's young face looked very young.
The four monks drew their sabers at the same time, and the lights further elongated their strong figures. Yui was submerged in the shadows, but her eyes were still determined.
Host Chun Shen waved his hand to stop the monk's move.
"A blunderbuss, a dagger, a bottle of poison, ropes, and iron hooks. Master, she also brought gunpowder..."
Host Chun Shen laughed and said, "Are you going to blow up Mo Neng Temple?"
The four monks around him also laughed.
Master Chun Shen's smile suddenly froze, and the monk immediately closed his mouth.
"Where are your accomplices?"
"No one else but me."
"Why? Why are you doing this?"
Host Chun Shen picked up the fire gun again, placed it in the palm of his hand, and chanted a spell. A ball of orange-red flame ignited in the palm of his hand. The short flint gun with a wooden handle quickly turned into molten iron and flowed into the tatami.
"Are you an assassin sent by Liu Zhaosun? Can you kill me? Do you see that fire guns can't hurt me, sharp blades can't hurt me, and no assassin can kill me,"
As the mage spoke, he held a dagger. The sharp blade cut into his palm, and the ancient spell rang in the girl's ears.
"My God gives me new life."
Through the blue candlelight, the girl saw that the wounds that were still bleeding a moment ago healed together instantly, as if...
"It's as if nothing happened, right?" Master Chun Shen's tone was obviously filled with pride, "Our family has transcended life and death. Thousands of years ago, my father, who was the presiding officer of Shiranui, inadvertently came from the mountains. Received this divine power."
Yui Kugaki couldn't help but interrupt him: "But your father Hui Ran Yao Monk is dead."
Chun Shen was like a stray cat whose tail was stepped on
Ba, stood up suddenly.
"That was an accident."
The girl murmured: "Isn't life full of accidents? You can also be killed by accidents."
"Baga! Don't be rude to the host!" An angry monk picked up his scabbard and hit the girl in the face.
Kugaki Yui flew a few steps away, and when he looked up again, his face was covered in blood.
She struggled to stand up, but Shiranui Demon Monk teleported in front of her, gently lifted the girl's chin, and said kindly:
"So, please tell me now, where do these weapons you carry come from? Where did we offend you? Let you, a weak woman, travel hundreds of miles from Choshu Domain to take my life. .”
Yui Kugaki tried hard to lower her head, but her chin was tightly grasped by Chun Shen and she couldn't move.
She curled up and gave up struggling:
"I picked it up, I picked it up on the road. In Nagasaki, you threw babies into the alchemy furnace to practice. Here, you threw those infertile girls alive into the back mountains and fed them to wild animals. As long as they are human, they will come If I kill you, I can’t kill you, and someone else will come and kill you.”
Master Chun Shen had a nonchalant expression on his face. When he heard that people were coming to kill him, he suddenly covered his chest and his thick black eyebrows turned white one by one.
He calmly recited a spell to stop his body from aging, and his eyebrows turned dark again.
"Did you see it yourself?"
"My sister, escape from the unknown volcano Kikyo River."
"Platycodon River?" The mage raised his eyebrows slightly. The monk next to him came close to him and whispered something. He smiled and nodded.
"Oh, that Kikyo River in Nagasaki, she was a famous female madman. It's a pity that I couldn't stop her madness. It's a pity... Were you bewitched by Liu Zhaosun to kill me?"
Kugaki Yui said loudly:
"I don't know Liu Zhaosun! Yesterday I saw you throwing the dead mother into the abyss."
"Ah, you saw it," Master Chun Shen put down the prayer beads and began to rub his rosacea with his restless fingers.
"Don't look at anything inappropriate. Sometimes, it may not be good if you see it." The host's eyes began to wander up and down the graceful figure of the girl, like a greedy snake.
"Perhaps you have seen it wrong, but without my protection and without the protection of the Suinouji Temple, how would those girls in the Edo countryside and those girls from other feudal lords be reduced to?"
To emphasize this point, Master Chun Shen continued:
"They would be endlessly abused by the customers in brothels and Noh performances, and then die miserably. Their bodies would be dumped on the streets of Edo and fed to wild dogs. Lao Na and all the Shiranui monks took in these poor people in order to pursue justice. "
Kugaki Yui said tit for tat: "Is it justice to imprison a helpless woman in the Eight Immortals Mountain and in your palace for you to have fun and ravage?"
The monk chuckled, with a murderous look on his face.
Host Chun Shen cleared his throat and patiently explained as if he was giving guidance to a junior who had just finished tonsure:
"You should stay in Changzhou and why bother coming to this muddy water. What you see may not be true. The truth only exists in your heart."
As he spoke, the mage quietly took out a bell-like magic weapon from the drawer of the cabinet behind him and swayed it gently.
Yui Kugaki's attention couldn't help but be attracted by the magic weapon. The magic weapon made a rhythmic clanging sound, and the girl's eyelids began to become heavy.
Chun Shen continued to talk to himself and continued to explain what he had done:
"All living beings are equal, share in common, and everything will return to its origin."
"Those young girls who come from various domains voluntarily sacrifice their twenty or fifteen-year-old bodies to the ancient gods. When they are old and grow old and leave the shrine or the temple, they will receive a considerable amount of money. It is equivalent to thirty years' salary of a middle-class samurai. Now that prices are soaring and the people of each domain are struggling to make ends meet, this money is very important to them and their families."
"I am doing good deeds."
Master Chun Shen's pupils suddenly widened.
Like a passage, Jiuyuan
Yui's consciousness slid down the old monk's pupils to another world.
The black, tree-like thing passed through the old woods of my hometown and stood on a high hill.
It used its mouth as dense as a spider web to pray loudly to the rocks, praying to the ancient evil gods in the mountains.
Yui Kugaki didn’t know where she knew how it prayed—putting its mouth to the ground.
Maybe she really saw it? But she didn't want to look back.
Those dense mouths are exactly the same as the mouth of Master Chun Shen standing in front of me now...
The hill below began to shake violently, and a huge crack soon opened in the ground. When Yui Kugaki wanted to escape, an octopus tentacle protruded from the crack and wrapped around her thin waist.
······
The wooden window crashed and was blown open by the wind, and the biting and fresh wind rushed towards the face.
Yui Kugaki shuddered and woke up from the chaos.
She calmed down and found that she had been tied up to a black pillar.
The eminent monk who did not know the volcano left his seat, with his feet dangling in the air, floating on the roof like a jellyfish suspended in the sea.
She hurriedly looked around and found that the layout in the Zen room was completely different from before.
The tatami underfoot was removed, and the floor was filled with burning candles.
A huge weird symbol that resembled an octopus limb was centered on Yui Kugaki and spread to all sides.
Four monks, wearing black cloaks and holding oil lamps, stood at the ends of the octopus's limbs.
The smell of burning animal fat hung in the air.
"Let me go, you beasts!"
Master Chun Shen lowered his head and glanced down. He was wearing a strange mask on his head, so his true expression could not be seen clearly.
"Kuagaki Yui, remember, this is your honor, to benefit the common people and help me practice."
"You bastards, you use babies as an introduction to elixirs, and you still have the nerve to claim to benefit the common people! Let me go!"
There was heavy breathing in the darkness, and the ground shook. Was it an earthquake?
The octopus graffiti slowly opened a crack, and Yui didn't dare to look at it anymore.
Everything is your own illusion.
"If the wealth of the mortal world is nurtured by a river, then Shiranui Shrine or temple, and us, are the source of this river, and the source of the source is not you and me, but the ancient gods."
"No matter how high-sounding you say it, it can't change your crime! Just like your perverted master, you imprisoned women for twenty years, made them pregnant, took away their babies, and used them to make elixirs. You are all beasts!"
The darkness on the roof poured down like a waterfall, swallowing the girl in an instant.
