The strange story of Huai'an Inn

In the Hongyuan Hall of Qingming Temple, the huge alchemy furnace burns with an inextinguishable flame all year round, soaking the whole room in the hot and trembling air.Around the alchemy stove stood a circle of medicine cabinets that could only be seen by looking up. The medicine boys were busy shuttling through the lanes formed by the cabinets, busy preparing medicinal materials and preparing medicine primers.

Daoist Qi Yao stood in front of the copper stove, the heat wave lifted his hair hanging from the temples, his eyebrows were tightly frowned, probably because he hadn't stretched them all year round, his face was obviously young and handsome, but there were two faint lines between his brows. texture.

He secretly counted the time in his mind, turning around from time to time to look at a five-element and eight-diagram plate standing behind him, turning the position of the hexagram image, and muttering words in his mouth.

He didn't hear Song Mingzi coming in, until the person was behind him, and he reached out and patted his shoulder abruptly.

"Senior Brother, what if you are so careless, what if someone plots against you?" Song Mingzi was very satisfied to see the fright that appeared on the calm face of Daoist Qi Yao for a moment, and made that old-fashioned face like a jade carving suddenly come alive.

"In the temple, who would dare to plot against me except you?" Daoist Qi Yao ignored him, and continued to fiddle with the hexagrams, "Just came back from the inn?"

"Yes. Zhu Helan has no signs of infection, and Xiao Paitang should not be infected. But... his identity is still a mystery, and all the visions that have happened this year are related to him. I think... the key may be in the Otherwise, Gu Dawu wouldn't have risked falling out with the priest of the Mother Goddess of Everything to invade Guan Chongliu's consciousness that day."

Daoist Qi Yao listened carefully, and recalled the few encounters with that waiter.He is quite handsome in appearance, but wearing a waiter's outfit, it is hard to find it in the crowd at first glance, he is nothing more than an ordinary little person.

But he is actually an unknown filthy creature cultivated by Mr. Gou Chen from the source soup...

Although Yuantang has infinite possibilities, to form a creature as complex as a locust tree and a human, something else is needed.Just as alchemy requires a single recipe, and dispensing medicine requires a prescription, Yuantang needs to be guided by a magic weapon with the power of the unclean god, plus some auxiliary materials, and a finished product can only be produced after repeated trials.

Today's locust tree is the final product, the most perfect product of the big beach source soup at the foot of Zilu Mountain... and Guan Zhongliu is made from the source soup in the South China Sea.

What kind of magic weapon does Mr. Gou Chen have in his hand?Is it... the book of the poor?

"Song Mingzi, you have to keep an eye on the movement of Huai'an Inn recently." Daoist Qi Yao thought about it and said, "If Guan Chongliu leaves, we have to follow him immediately."

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Although real person Qiyao had calculated that Guan Chongliu would make a move, he didn't expect that he would already be in action when the two real people were talking.

Zhu Helan asked Xiaoshun to prepare the carriage that night, and rushed to the coppersmith's place overnight, looking for a bronze ware that could help Chongliu block the sound of the drum without being so expensive.After he left, Chong Liu quickly packed up a few things, took his own wooden box, and quietly left through the back door.

Although his current mental state is worrying, but without time to sleep, he has more time to ponder.He became more and more sure that if he continued to stay in the inn, it would bring disaster to more people.The big witch will not let him go, as long as he leaves, Zhu Helan, Xiaohuai and everyone else will be safe.

What's more, who is the insider has not yet been found out, so stay away, so that the raven will not come up with any new schemes to torture his precarious spirit.

He was afraid that he would go crazy, lose control of his filth, and do something irreversible...

Besides, the shopkeeper finally found his place in this world, and finally got his own home after hesitating in 2000.Chong Liu didn't want to get involved in Sangya's trick because of himself.

It's better to leave.

Chong Liu closed the door of the backyard and walked to the empty street.Every time I take a step, my feet feel like being filled with lead, and my heart feels like it's being pulled, and it gets thinner and thinner, until finally it's empty.

He didn't want to leave, the inn was his home...but he had to face his mission.He must know why he was born.

After this walk, can I come back?

Chong Liu paused and turned around.In the dense night, the dark silhouette of the inn can be vaguely covered by the night fog.He felt his eye sockets swell, but no tears came out.

He left a letter to everyone in the inn, especially to Zhu Helan... He didn't know if the shopkeeper could forgive him.But...if the parting is sooner or later, he can choose to stay away first, so that even if they are separated by thousands of miles, he will always feel that the other party is still living in a certain corner of the world, and he can leave the comfort of self-deception in his heart.

The city gates were closed, but he knew a dry drain, and slipped out of the city from there.

Numerous temporary military tents were densely packed outside the city, and all the refugees who escaped from Gyeonggi and other towns on Zhaoning Road were housed inside.Chong Liu walked through the silent tents, and could vaguely smell a special smell in the air.

It was a smell he hadn't noticed before...something like a mixture of decaying trees and an old man's deathbed, a vision of everything falling apart and dying.

"The smell of the God of Chaos..." Chong Liu suddenly had this concept in his mind as he walked through the camp lightly.

In the past few days, similar situations often happened. Some sudden concepts, knowledge that he didn't know before, appeared in his mind out of thin air, as if something had leaked out.The knowledge didn't have any sense of intrusion, as if it was already in his mind and suddenly remembered.

Walking out of the camp where the refugees lived, Chong Liu went into the woods until he found a secluded place.He looked around and made sure there was no one around, so he squatted down and put his hands on the ground.

The shopkeeper will be back soon, he doesn't have much time, and he can't go far with human methods.Fortunately, the knowledge that has been pouring out of his mind these days includes how to use his own filth to open a shortcut.

His hands deformed silently in the darkness, countless thin jellyfish-like tentacles spread out on the ground, the sharp and thorny tips pierced into the ground, countless sensory organs were constantly opening and closing on the translucent skin , catching the direction of the wisps of Dao Qi and filth that are swimming in the earth.

In Chong Liu's brain, a scene composed of many illusory and messy lines soon appeared. They slowly arranged and moved by themselves, and gradually pieced together into a straight line.When he opened his eyes, he saw the familiar scene unique to the shortcut.The surrounding scenery is compressed and cut, twisted into dizzying angles.But the strange feeling of the other world that made him terrified at the beginning has faded away.

Carrying a burden on his back, he strode forward on the shortcut road full of holes, but this time he no longer lowered his head and just looked at the road in front of him, but swaggered forward, looking at all kinds of strange creatures living in the cracks of space around the shortcut. panoramic view.He saw the translucent worms crawling between the cracks in the scenery, and also saw the strange worms in the distance that were three or four stories high, with long, barbed legs.He raised his head and saw the gloomy sky with more than a dozen large or small eddies circling, and also saw those sac-shaped creatures slowly drifting by in the low sky.

The names of all these ethnic groups that are quietly prosperous in the vast and endless unknown domain that ordinary people have never seen in their lifetimes clearly emerged in Chong Liu's mind.It was as if he had known them all along, from a long, long time ago, when the Taoist God and the Unholy God had not yet separated into one, when the ancestors of human beings were still wandering aimlessly in the sea, he had known them.

These filthy creatures generally don't approach shortcuts.When any alchemist or disciple of the unclean god tried to stray from the main road and approach them, they would often run away quickly.But when Chong Liu walked to the side of the road, passing through the cracks with a feeling of surprise like reunion after a long absence, the amoebas did not hide, but puffed up their wriggling bodies, trying to get close to him.The huge and slender black figure protruding from the deeper crack in the space, with a face without facial features and only a few gill-like slits, swayed at Chong Liu, which was extremely weird, but Chong Liu didn't think it was scary.

The filth on the entire shortcut is tilting in the direction of the heavy six, and many filthy creatures stick their heads out from every dark corner.They didn't make a sound, nor did they have any malicious intentions, they just quietly watched Chong Liu pass by them.

The purpose of Chongliu is Fushang City, the largest port near the South China Sea.There is the largest merchant ship in the entire Central Plains, and half of the people in the city are sailors who make a living at sea.

He can catch a ship to the South Seas or even the Far West, and then...

Then the water ghost will find him.

If you want to go to Poor Island, this may be the fastest way.

After Chong Liu walked for about an hour, he gradually became exhausted.The sound of drums flooded his consciousness again, and the severe headache was like an awl poking and stirring randomly on the inside of the skull, throbbing and throbbing.He gradually became dizzy, unsteady on his feet, and almost fell into a black hole.

No way, he had no choice but to come out from the shortcut.Before dawn, the snow-covered trees were chilling and silent.A gust of cold wind blows, and the cold air seeps into the blood through several layers of anticipation.Chongliu shivered, reluctantly trudged through the snow for another distance, and saw a half-collapsed wall in the distance.He hurriedly walked along the wall, and luckily found an earth temple that hadn't collapsed yet.He hurried into the temple, turned to the back of the dilapidated god statue that had no expression on it, found a place sheltered from the wind and sat down next to the statue.

He took out the wine gourd from his bag and drank a few mouthfuls of strong tea.However, the tea that could have relieved the pain poured upwards in his stomach, and he covered his mouth hard so as not to spit it out.

Chong Liu took out all the clothes from the package and wrapped them around his body layer by layer.He closed his eyes, but he knew he couldn't sleep.The sound of the drum fluctuated louder and softer, farther and nearer, and every time when he was about to fall asleep, the sound would suddenly increase to wake him up.

Chong Liu wanted to tear off his scalp, pry open his skull, and pull out the invisible drum in his brain.

He couldn't sleep, couldn't escape the torment of the drums.He began to miss the smell of old wood in the inn, the warm bed, and the warm body sleeping beside him...

But now, there is nothing beside him except his own shadow.Just like before he came to Huaian Inn.

He remembered that when he was a child, when his master woke up, he would always sit alone at the entrance of the cave, looking at the rising sun in the distance in the east.It is such a warm and bright color, but it falls between the master's brows and eyes, but he feels lonely and lonely.

Only now did he understand that in his dream, Master could travel countless worlds with the god he fell in love with, seeing the past and the future.But once he woke up, he was alone.No one can understand him, no one can comfort him, he yearns for a world he can't reach, a god he can't be with.

Chong Liu sighed, but felt that the cold was getting stronger.So I rummaged through the baggage again.

While picking up the clothes, a small ball rolled out of the bag.Chong Liu was stunned for a moment, and reached out to pick up the ball.

The cold touch of metal covered with tentacle-like protrusions quietly dormant in the palm.Chong Liu looked at it, feeling a little dazed.

It was too quiet in the early morning, only the whistling wind and swaying tree shadows.But the sky had gradually turned dark blue, and dawn would soon be breaking.

Chong Liu looked quietly at the ball, and the tip of his index finger suddenly deformed, becoming a thin tentacle with a greenish spike at the end.The spike pierced the hard surface of the iron ball, and the next moment, a strange scene appeared.

The tentacles on the surface of the ball began to twist and wriggle, suddenly coming alive.They began to roll and stretch, and the tentacles stretched longer and longer, as if they suddenly exploded in Chong Liu's palm.

They landed on the ground, wriggling and twisting like snakes, forming a chaotic and entangled mass.But soon, those translucent, slippery, or scale-covered tentacles merged with each other, and the blue color faded, forming slender pale legs, a slightly malnourished and thin body, thin arms, and finally It was an extremely familiar face to Chong Liu—his own face.

He released his brother.

It hugged its body and curled up shivering in the cold air, looking at him blankly.

Chong Liu looked at the eyes that were the same as his own but full of anxiety and fear, sighed, took off the cloak and robe he was wearing, and handed them over.

"Put it on, don't catch a cold."

It took it suspiciously, but quickly wrapped its naked body.From the beginning to the end, its eyes were fixed on Chong Liu, as if it was afraid that Chong Liu would attack it.

This was the first time Chong Liu released him after leaving South China Sea.After all, there is no one else here, and no one will be hurt.

"My name is Chong Liu, you are my elder brother... Let me call you Chong Wu? Okay?" Chong Liu leaned on the throne and asked softly.

It didn't respond at first, but after a while, it finally opened its mouth and asked, "Aren't you going to kill me?"

"If I wanted to kill you, you wouldn't have the chance to ask this question now." Chong Liu's expression and tone were full of exhaustion.

It looked around, confused.This place is different from the place where it grew up and the pictures it stole from Chong Liu's memory.

Chong Liu grabbed the stand of the statue with his hands and stood up dragging his extremely heavy body, "Didn't you say you never saw the sun when you were underground? It's about to rise now."

It frowned, blinked a few times, but didn't move.It doesn't understand what Guan Chongliu wants to do.

Chong Liu stretched out his hand to it, "Come?"