A quarter of an hour later, the two of them sat down in the elegant room of Piaoxiang Building.
Shi Xiaohan couldn't wait to grab the recipe from the waiter in the store, and while flipping through it quickly, he rattled off a long list of dish names:
"A plate of beggar's chicken, a bird's nest in clear soup, a bowl of spicy and sour mullet eggs, and sweet and sour carp..."
The waiter's hand speed could no longer keep up with her speaking speed, and he couldn't help shouting: "Sir, can you speak a little slower? I can't write anymore!"
Gu Xu sat opposite her and closed his eyes to rest, silently thinking about the improvement plan for the "Ghost Killing Talisman".
He didn't care at all what dishes Shi Xiaohan ordered or how many dishes he ordered.
It’s not like he paid for it anyway.
Anyway, Shi Xiaohan always eats every dish and never wastes food.
After another quarter of an hour, the waiter brought the food one after another and placed a full table.
"It's time to eat, it's time to eat!" Shi Xiaohan cheered, immediately filled himself a large bowl of rice, and began to devour it, making "chi-liu-chi-li" sounds from time to time.
Under her background, Gu Xu was as elegant as a lady.
He took his time and wiped his hands clean with a napkin, then drank the soup, then picked up the vegetables, and finally ate the staple food, chewing slowly and tasting it quietly.
For him, the most important things in life are undoubtedly eating and practicing.
Food needs to be enjoyed with heart.
Savoring food carefully and slowly can help maintain health.
Like Shi Xiaohan, it was simply a waste of natural resources.
…………
The wine and food are full, the cups and plates are empty.
Shi Xiaohan stretched out, waved, and asked the store owner to come and pay the bill.
"Sir, the total is five taels of silver!" The shop owner had an attentive smile on his face and handed the bill to Shi Xiaohan with both hands.
Shi Xiaohan took the bill and without even looking at it, he put the banknote into the boss's hand and said, "Take it."
The boss smiled even more enthusiastically.
He likes customers who pay readily and never haggle.
Gu Xu, who was next to him, silently calculated in his mind - five taels of silver, equivalent to two and a half months of his salary. Please try to come to such high-consumption places as rarely as possible in the future.
Of course, except for free prostitution.
…………
After the meal, the two returned the same way.
At this time, the lights on the street dimmed and the crowd gradually thinned out.
"Gu Xu, what are your plans tonight?"
"Go back to the Exorcism Department and take on another mission to earn more merit."
"You are really... full of achievements." Shi Xiaohan pouted, obviously not satisfied with his answer.
"Because I want to be like the Heroine of Time, kill more ghosts and monsters, and benefit more people," Gu Xu chuckled, "try to be a hero who can do justice for heaven like the Heroine of Time."
He obviously knew what Shi Xiaohan liked to hear most.
Sure enough, Shi Xiaohan quickly turned from anger to joy, stood up on tiptoes and patted his shoulder: "Do a good job! I support you! Don't let the prestige of our exorcist department fall!"
Gu Xu nodded in agreement, thinking that this girl is really easy to coax.
He is about to be promoted recently.
The competitor named Ma Qin is coming fiercely - he is of a higher level than him, has more seniority than him, and has a registered residence in a big city. He is definitely a difficult guy to deal with.
He must seize the time, do more tasks, and strive to improve his impression score in the eyes of the examiner.
…………
In this Qi dynasty, which was suffering from serious internal conflicts and increasingly fierce competition for official career, Gu Xu was obviously not the only one who was anxious about his future.
At this moment, on the other side of Yishui County, a young man with a sallow face wearing a blue cotton gown came to a fortune-telling stall with a sad face.
"Master, can you help me test my luck as an official?" As he said this, he took out a bunch of copper coins from his pocket and placed them on the fortune teller's desk.
This fortune teller calls himself "Zhang Banxian".
He was sitting next to the table with his legs crossed. He was in ragged clothes, unshaven, and holding a tattered cattail leaf fan in his hand. He looked like a beggar, without any of the temperament that a "half-immortal" should have.
On the wall behind him, two apricot-yellow pennants hung.
There is a couplet embroidered on the banner——
First couplet: Four pillars and eight characters, calculating the misfortunes and blessings in the world;
Second line: The Five Elements and Eight Trigrams tell the good and bad omens of the world.
"How do you want to do the test? Look at the face, test the characters, draw lots, or make a hexagram with six lines?"
"Do you know all this?"
"certainly."
"Then... let's take a calligraphy test! Master, please help me see if I have any chance of promotion recently."
After that, the young man in blue shirt picked up the brush on the table and wrote the word "horse" on the paper.
The fortune teller "Zhang Banxian" stared at the word "horse" and remained silent for a long time.
"Does it mean immediate success?" the young man in blue shirt urged, with a mixture of expectation and anxiety in his tone.
"No," Zhang Banxian shook his head repeatedly, "The horse moves with the sun, but it's night now and there's no sun, so it won't work."
The young man in blue shirt looked stiff.
However, he was still a little unwilling and wrote the word "Qin" on the paper.
"Then you can help me test the word 'qin' again!" he said.
At the same time, he thought to himself: Qin, Qin ordained it. Nothing unexpected happens this time, and the result should be "selected by superiors, and the official career will be prosperous".
But the half-immortal Zhang was still shaking his head.
"The radical of the word 'qin' is 'gold', which originally meant that financial resources were rolling in and skyrocketing, which was a sign of good fortune. Unfortunately, there was a word 'ow' next to 'gold', which unintentionally became 'owing gold', which can be said to have interrupted the financial path. , It’s hard to develop your ambitions, and there’s no hope of promotion.”
This young man in blue shirt is Gu Xu's competitor, Ma Qin, a second-level monk from Qingzhou Prefecture.
He has been so anxious that he can't sleep every day lately.
the reason is simple.
On the one hand, he is now almost thirty-five years old, but he still has accomplished nothing - he has no real estate, no wife, no black hat, and he is still a lowly official.
The so-called "loser in life" refers to people like him.
When acquaintances saw him, they couldn't help but say: "Ma Qin, Ma Qin, you are almost 40 years old, how can you still be so miserable?"
His rivals, on the other hand, were downright terrifying.
Ma Qin originally thought that by moving from the talented Qingzhou Prefecture to a remote small town like Yishui County, he could avoid the fierce competition, easily obtain the official position he wanted, and become a master.
But he never expected that a terrifying freak would appear in Yishui County.
According to the gossip Ma Qin got from his boss, the freak named Gu Xu had been practicing for less than a year and was already preparing to break through to the second realm——
Is this the speed that normal humans should have?
Alas, the waves in the Yihe River push back the waves in front, and the waves in front die on the beach.
The next generation is to be feared, the next generation is to be feared!
As an ordinary clerk with nothing but ten years of work experience, Ma Qin was so sad that he wanted to cry.
He reached out and touched the top of his head, only to feel that the hair was getting thinner.
…………
Gu Xu returned to the exorcism department alone.
He first browsed the bulletin board and selected a task for himself that was not too difficult.
The reward is forty meritorious deeds, which is equivalent to killing four demons.
The mission description is very simple: "Yishui County School is haunted. I hope the Exorcism Department will send someone to solve it as soon as possible."
The county school is a school for students to study.
In the Daqi Dynasty, there were only a few people with the qualifications to practice, and the imperial examination was still the promotion step for most ordinary people.
According to Daqi's imperial examination system, candidates who passed the children's examination were allowed to study in county schools in preparation for taking the higher-level provincial examinations, which was called "entering school."
Eight years ago, when Yishui County was attacked by ghosts, the county school was also destroyed, causing many casualties among teachers and students.
One year after the disaster subsided, the county school was rebuilt.
As the students returned to the lecture hall, the scars of the past seemed to have been smoothed away.
Until tonight.
Zhou Siqi, the teacher of Yishui County, was forced to return to the county school late at night to retrieve the key because he forgot his key in the drawer.
Unexpectedly, in this supposedly empty classroom, I heard the sound of reading aloud.
Rhyming, neat and loud.
Zhou Jiaoyu was so frightened that his face turned pale and his scalp was numb. He quickly ran out of the county school and asked the guard at the gate to inform the exorcism department about the incident.
So now, this task has been handed over to Gu Xu.
"I came back just in time!" Gu Xu secretly complained.
At the same time, he took out three copper coins again and used the six-line hexagram method to predict the misfortune of this mission.
The result is "Qian goes up and Qian goes down", which is the hexagram of "Qian is the sky", which indicates good luck and good luck in everything.
Then Gu Xu showed a happy smile on his face.
He took the remaining "ghost-killing talisman" and set out boldly.
"Come back early!" Chen Jisheng, who was working at the desk, raised his head and told him, "If you can't fight, run away. Don't show off."
"Don't worry," Gu Xu smiled slightly, "I'm very capable."
After that, he stepped out of the exorcism department's office and walked into the dark night.
