Suddenly a few young ladies came, and the others looked around curiously. These few people sat down, somewhat out of tune with the surrounding environment.
The waiter brought two large bowls of soup, "Aren't you locals here?"
"Who says it's not the case? We are locals." Lu Taotao picked up the tofu with chopsticks and the tofu was broken into pieces.
The waiter handed over the spoon and said with a smile: "Where are you? I will definitely never forget outstanding people like you if I have seen them."
Lu Taotao was focused on eating and said nothing. Lu Anran asked, "Have you been setting up a stall here for a long time?"
"It's a craft passed down from my ancestors. I followed my father when he set up a stall. I grew up in this stall." No matter whether he opened a shop or set up a stall, he entertained people with his mouth and talked endlessly. "I'm not talking to you. Come on, I know better than anyone how many wealthy gentry families there are outside the city."
Yun raised his thumb and pushed the jade bone fan away, then turned his eyes and said, "We heard something on the way here."
The waiter finished the soup, added water to the pot, and said without raising his head: "Sir, if I don't know, I guess not many people in this county know."
"Yaksha kills people." Yunqi supported his chin and said lazily, "Have you ever heard of it?"
The little boy paused and waved his hands quickly, "I can't tell you, I can't tell you."
Lu Taotao smacked his mouth after eating, "If there's anything you can't say, I'm going to catch one and keep it at home."
The waiter opened his mouth in shock, "Girl, you are joking, be careful if Yaksha hears this and comes to find you at night."
"He is not active in the woods, but also goes to other people's homes?"
"Does the Zhou family know?"
Yun Qi and Lu Anran looked at each other and shook their heads, "You tell me."
"You are from out of town, so I don't know what's normal. My family this week is a well-known wealthy family in our local area." The business was not busy at the moment, and the waiter of the stall chatted with everyone: "At first, Yaksha was active in the Qitian Ridge area, and Miss Zhou's family We had arranged to get married, and they happened to be passing through that place on the day of the wedding. Someone advised them to take a long way around and take the waterway, but Mr. Zhou said that he didn't believe in yakshas. If there really is such a thing, just ask him to come to me."
Lu Taotao thought it was strange, "Yaksha heard it and went to their house?"
"No, Yaksha transformed into Miss Zhou and gnawed the maid alive." The waiter shook his head, "Poor Miss Zhou, who is as beautiful as a flower, is now semi-crazy, and her marriage is ruined."
Yun Qi supported his chin and nodded: "It's indeed a pity."
"The Zhou family is worried now. A few days ago, we invited Taoist priests from Fuxing Temple to set up a dojo for three days."
"The direction is wrong, isn't it?" Mo Yan squatted on a long bench, finished a bowl of soup and said, "Yakshas are ghosts and gods, and they should be saved by Buddhism."
The vendor's waiter smiled contemptuously: "Who is building a Buddhist temple these days?" He pointed to the east and said, "You are also here to see the royal ashram, right? Dongyue Zhenren is a true heavenly master and a master of earthly immortality."
Lu Anran shook his head in his heart. The original intention of Buddhism and Taoism was not to compete for superiority in the world. Instead, people in the world wanted to distinguish between good and bad due to various desires.
Yun Qi chuckled: "You are so well-informed."
The stall waiter said proudly: "It's a small matter. If you can't get in, remember to come to my place. I have a way to handle it for you."
Yun Qi turned around and patted his shoulder with the jade bone fan, "Thanks in advance."
"No, just give me some money, one hundred taels per person."
Lu Taotao shouted: "You are robbing money."
"You can't say that." The waiter threw the rag over his shoulder, patted his chest and said, "I make money based on my skills."
After one bowl of soup per person, it is not what the waiter boasted. It tastes delicious and sweet. The whitebait is so small that you can eat the whole fish body. It is tender and elastic, fragrant and refreshing.
"Silverbait only grows in Shibabo. The lake water there absorbs the essence of heaven and earth all day long, so the fish meat is more delicious." The vendor took the money and said, "But ordinary people can't catch it. I have ancestral skills. How about you?" Let’s see, is there a second store in town that sells this?”
Lu Taotao rolled his eyes, "I don't believe it. I'll catch two tonight and show them to you."
The waiter looked a little weird, "I can't go there for the next two days."
"What's wrong?"
"Someone just died there!" The vendor's waiter covered his mouth and spoke in a low voice, "When he was discovered, Yasha had only eaten half of his body."
Lu Taotao put her hands on her hips: "Okay, how dare you sell fish fished out of a lake where people have died."
Others had a bad taste in their stomachs.
The stall waiter waved his hands in a hurry: "Girl, don't talk nonsense. I caught these fish a few days ago and kept them in the bucket. We businessmen have to be conscientious when making money."
Yun Qi asked: "Do you know the person who died? When did he die?"
"A villager in Songxi Village. His family said he went into the mountains to hunt, but no one came home when it got dark. The next day, he was found in the third berth of Shibabo."
Lu Anran looked at Yunqi and said, "I want to take a look."
Lu Taotao crossed his arms and nodded: "I really want to go and see it."
Guanyue, who followed silently behind, had an intuition that the two of them were probably not looking at the same thing.
—
There are eighteen moors in Yuyue, one after another.
The sun goes down and the sky is not completely dark yet. The lake is like a mirror. The sunset in the west is reflected on the lake, which is beautiful and like a fairyland.
The evening breeze blew gently, ruffling the surface of the lake. A few naughty fish jumped up from the lake, throwing out little splashes of water, like falling flowers.
"It's so beautiful." After Lu Taotao sighed, he flew up, stepped on a small half circle of the lake and flew back, "It's still living water."
Lu Anran looked into the distance, "The eighteen berths here appear to be blocked by different hills from the outside. In fact, each berth below is connected and leads to the underground water."
Mo Yan squatted on the ground and picked up pebbles and said, "It looks good, but being serious is of no use."
Lu Anran looked at a place, "The third one is parked there."
"Well," Yun Qi stood beside her, "The body is gone, so let's go there and take a look."
Lu Anran nodded, feeling quite regretful.
Logically speaking, the body of a person who had just died should be placed in the county office before the case was finalized, but Guan Yue made a trip and said that the body had been cremated.
"According to common sense, a person who dies normally will remain in mourning for seven days and then be buried in a coffin." Guanyue reported back after getting the words from the county office: "But there is a local custom that is different from other places. Their bodies here are seriously damaged, even If there are any defects, they should be patched up with paper, and then cremated together within three days. In that case, the deceased's body will be complete after he goes to the underworld."
Lu Taotao sneered, "Anyway, I'll paste the paper figures on them, so I might as well paste them on the whole family and go to the Palace of Hell to report together."
"You have such a mouthful, be careful of getting beaten when you go out." Mo Yan said sarcastically.
Lu Taotao didn't think so, "I think I, a great fox fairy, have traveled from south to north and never bowed my head to anyone."
Yunqi said in a long voice, "You've run out of antidote this month."
"Hey, you can't be Lu Anran's boss." He turned around and met Lu Anran's gaze, widened his eyes and shouted, "No, do you really listen to him?"
Lu Anran said calmly: "You are too noisy."
Lu Taotao was stamping his feet behind everyone, clasping his hands and twisting his face, and groaned: "You are a bitch, you are an adulterer and a whore."
"What did you say?"
The corners of Lu Taotao's mouth twitched upward, "Little sister, you have a beautiful heart, a kind heart, and a good temperament. You are like a fairy in the world."
"Pfft -" Mo Yan laughed wildly, "This is the first time I have seen someone more shameless than our prince."
One sentence offended two people, and received two pairs of cold eyes.
—
The third lake is similar to other lakes, except that there is a red maple forest in the southeast corner.
Different from other places, the maple trees here are still red even in summer. From a distance, it looks like half of the mountain is burning, with balls of flames dancing enthusiastically under the mountain wind.
"People die in this position." Guanyue compared the position, and it happened to be the outermost edge of the red maple tree.
Lu Anran squatted down, picked up a few maple leaves, smelled them, and then looked around.
Wu Fang circled around and came back, "There are no wild beast footprints."
Lu Taotao was lying on an extended branch. The branch was bent by her and almost dropped to the ground, but it still stubbornly did not break. "I told you that Yaksha can fly here. What kind of footprints do you need?"
Yun Qi flicked the jade fan pendant with his index finger, "It seems there is a little less blood."
Lu Anran stood up, raised his head and looked around, "Well, this is not the place where the first crime occurred."
"No way, you found it after you pulled a few handfuls of dirt?" Lu Taotao tilted his head with his chin in his hands.
"No matter what the yaksha is, if the deceased is eaten and dies, blood will naturally flow out when the skin is torn and broken by the stumps, and the blood will flow, drip into the soil and penetrate, even if it can be covered up by dead leaves and soil, it has already been The blood-stained soil will not disappear in a short time." Lu Anran narrowed his eyes and said: "I have smelled the soil here, and there is no smell of blood at all."
Lu Taotao wrinkled her nose and said, "Lu Anran, you are so disgusting. You smell the mud where the dead have been lying."
Yun Qi tapped the palm of his hand with his fan and thought deeply: "After death, the body is dumped here. The blood has solidified, so there is not much blood stain, and it cannot flow into the mud."
Lu Anran nodded: "Yes, it's a pity that the ground here is full of dead leaves."
Mo Yan didn't understand, "What happened to the dead leaves?"
"If it is a ferocious beast, it is heavier and will leave marks even if it steps on dead leaves, but..." The night dimmed, and Yun Qi's eyes sunk deeply, "Deer Taotao, let you walk through this maple leaf forest, Will you leave footprints?"
Lu Taotao turned over and sat up, "Who are you looking down on?"
She blinked, smiled playfully, flew into the air as lightly as a kite, climbed down on the top of a tree, and made a rustle of dead leaves under her feet, but when she landed, she didn't even leave a mark.
Guan Yue suddenly realized, "Your Majesty is saying that if someone is better at qinggong, it can be done. Maybe it's not a yaksha cannibalism at all."
"This is a guess. After the fox fairy snatched the bride, I always feel that the 'monster' is not that smart."
Lu Taotao raised his head, put a red maple leaf on his nose and blew it away, "Your words are very targeted."
Lu Anran asked Guanyue, "What's across from the red maple forest?"
"There are many mountains here. The red maple forest is backed by the mountains, and there is no road behind it." Guan Yue asked: "But we want to investigate?"
Yun Qi said: "It's dark today, you can go again tomorrow."
After several people returned to the city, Lu Anran said to Yun Qi: "So far, it seems that only Miss Zhou has escaped by chance."
Yun Qi understood immediately, "You want to go to Zhou's house?"
"All the original people have disappeared, and we still don't know whether they are alive or dead. Since Miss Zhou's accident, the Yaksha maniacs have surfaced." Lu Anran lowered his eyes, his dark eyes were calm, and said slowly: "The next few people are all the same as Miss Zhou. The maidservant died in a miserable state, just like a ferocious beast devouring its food."
"Maybe Yaksha really eats people, but he didn't eat the first few?"
Lu Anran tilted his head, "The prince suspects that there are two cases involved?"
Yun Qi put his hands behind his back and slapped his jade bone fan on his back, "It's hard to say. If you want to know what's strange about this, you have to go and see this Miss Zhou Pei."
It was decided at that moment, but the next day, before they went out, they were shocked to hear something again.
