“Bloody hell, I thought you had some good money making scheme. Do not scare me like that.”
“Several hundred thousand starving refugees are already miserable enough. You still want to squeeze money out of them? How can you do something that angers heaven and the people?”
“The words are correct, yet the actual principle is another matter. You must understand what starving refugees are. They are people on the verge of death.”
“You have your righteousness and morality, but they only want to survive. Survive, do you understand?”
“They hope someone will save them. They hope someone will buy and sell them. For no other reason than to have a chance to live on.”
“You who are full and drunk, sitting at the wine table, can of course talk endlessly about righteousness and morality. The starving refugees do not have your ease. As long as they can live and have a chance to sell themselves, that is already the greatest fortune. To them, people who only talk about righteousness and morality are the most shameless ones.”
“Oh, you speak so grandly. If that is the case, why do you not go yourself? Stop moving your lips. Go and do something practical. Go on then.”
“Hehe, I can only talk about the principles with my mouth. If I really go and do it, I will be drowned by spit. So called righteousness and morality are too frightening. No matter how reasonable you are, most people in the world will not reason with you most of the time. Disaster victims are only a small group. Ordinary people are the majority. Those who do not follow the crowd will die.”
“Cut it out. Good that you know.”
“By the way, I heard that this flood was caused by the Si Nan Mansion?”
“Ah, who says it was not. I heard it too. What a sin.”
“Yes, it seems that in Zhao Zhou there is a great lake that has never dried up. They say there might be some immortal water mansion at the bottom of the lake. To find that immortal water mansion, the Si Nan Mansion dug a flood channel to drain the water. As a result the downstream area turned into a vast swamp, creating countless disaster victims.”
“Alas, I heard they also organised the evacuation of the downstream civilians beforehand. It was calculated per person. Whether rich merchant or beggar, all treated the same. Ten taels of silver per person. However after the officials deducted layer by layer, what actually reached the civilians was less than one tael per person.”
“Yes, the civilians could not take their houses, the fields that fed them, or their various belongings. After leaving their homes, how could one tael of silver help them settle down? They were living well. With so little money, naturally they were unwilling to move.”
“Those civilians thought they could resist by sticking together and that the authorities would not dare to act recklessly. Those dog officials also thought that since it involved so many lives, they could drag it out. Who knew the Si Nan Mansion did not care about you crafty civilians or dog officials. When the time to act came, they acted directly. As a result countless people starved to death instantly. How tragic.”
“I heard the court was shaken by this matter. It happened to be during the six hundred year grand celebration of Jin Country. The emperor was furious and sent the Duke of Xuan Country to investigate thoroughly. He gave the Duke of Xuan Country the power to execute first and report later. It is said the Duke of Xuan Country chopped off the heads of more than three hundred dog officials in one go.”
“Hey, the Si Nan Mansion still did not suffer any consequences at all.”
In the corner Yu Qing slowly drank his small cup of wine while listening attentively.
He also knew that only these wandering江湖 folk dared to speak such words. Ordinary civilians would not dare to discuss like this.
After eating and drinking to his fill, Yu Qing called the shopkeeper to settle the bill. He slapped down a silver ingot, stood up and left.
He casually took the brown cloak hanging on the nearby pillar, shook it open, draped it over his shoulders and tied it. He left the hood at the back alone, stroked the small moustache on his lips, and walked through the hall of the wine house.
More than half a month had passed since he left the capital.
Now he looked once again like when he first came out of the mountains.
He had restored his simple and free ponytail, and grown a small moustache to look mature. At first glance one could not recognise him as the former top graduate.
These past half a month he had lived freely and easily.
With money, travelling around everywhere, how could it not be comfortable? It was truly like immortal days, nothing like being constrained in the capital.
Of course he was still quite ambitious. Whenever he stopped he would study that treasure map or practise the Feng Chen Sword Art.
He still had not understood the meaning of the treasure map and had found no clues so far.
He had however learned all thirty six forms of the Feng Chen Sword Art.
Of course he was not gifted enough to fully master the Feng Chen Sword Art in just half a month.
He had only learned the fancy moves of the thirty six forms and practised them to familiarity.
The sword forms were actually not difficult to learn because this sword art did not require re cultivating inner energy or anything. He already had some inner energy cultivation, plus he had a fairly good foundation in sword skills, so practising it was twice as effective with half the effort.
As for the true techniques that combined the sword art into one, he had not mastered a single one.
There was no way. That was truly the difficult part.
For the first move, combining thirty six swords into one, he could only send out six swords together with the roaming dragon body technique. He was still far from the true thirty six swords combined into one.
But for Yu Qing himself it was already very pleasing. Just the most basic thirty six forms of the sword art had already benefited him greatly and let him feel the exquisite refinement far surpassing the Ling Long Temple sword method.
Because of this his confidence had become somewhat out of control. He felt he might have become an expert and often wanted to pick fights to test his real strength.
Fortunately the time since he returned to the jianghu was still short and he had not met anyone he disliked enough to draw his sword.
The key was that people saw his very confident appearance and also felt he was not easy to provoke.
“Brother Yu, have you eaten?”
At the door of the wine house a person walked towards him and greeted him when they met.
Yu Qing only gave an “Mm”, smiled and waved in greeting, then passed by without stopping for him at all.
The two were not familiar. They had just been fellow travellers before and had exchanged names.
Now when he walked the jianghu he used his real name Yu Qing without changing it. He no longer wanted to be bound by the name A Shi Heng. Because he was A Shi Heng he could not do this or that. Everything he did had to consider whether it would affect A Shi Heng. It was truly too stifling.
He was not afraid of using his real name. Except for people from Ling Long Temple, outsiders basically did not know his real name. Even the villagers of Nine Slope Village only knew the Taoist titles of the priests in Ling Long Temple and did not know the real names of each Taoist.
This also came from Ling Long Temple’s need for seclusion.
For example the people of Nine Slope Village all called Yu Qing “Guang Guang Dao Zhang”. Yu Qing’s original Taoist title was Guang Guang, given by his junior martial uncle in the past.
The waiter led a strong and sturdy blue roan horse from the stable. It looked like quite a spirited mount.
The horse he had temporarily bought in the small town before was too rough. It did not look good and its stamina was not good either.
That was understandable. What good things could there be in a small broken town?
In short someone felt it did not match his inner and outer bearing as a sect leader. Young people still cared about the opposite sex’s gaze. Between face and substance, and since he had money anyway, he sold the inferior one and bought this good one.
He took the reins, mounted the horse, and casually tossed a copper coin as a tip, earning a word of thanks from the waiter.
He kicked the horse’s belly with both feet. The blue roan horse immediately stepped forward and charged onto the official road.
A young man with a ponytail on his head and a small moustache on his lips, wearing a brown cloak as a cape, dressed in a green shirt, with a long sword hanging at his waist, riding a blue roan horse and galloping against the wind, had a somewhat elegant and dashing air. Plus he originally looked quite decent. With this outfit any woman would忍不住 turn her head to look.
This earned him a satisfied smile. With such a carefree life, how could those in the capital possibly keep him there.
He had no plans to return to Ling Long Temple for now. Although he had begun to doubt his junior martial uncle’s wisdom, he still thought his junior martial uncle’s words had some reason. After resigning and leaving the capital he should not return to Ling Long Temple temporarily to avoid bringing trouble back there.
Only after creating the false impression that A Shi Heng would not return to Nine Slope Village could he go back. He decided to wander outside for half a year or a year before returning.
Halfway along the road there came a clinking collision sound from his money pouch.
Yu Qing looked down and knew that Big Head had objections again.
Big Head did not like being put in the jar when he was riding because it would jolt nonstop. No one would feel good about that.
However Big Head was only voicing its opinion. If Yu Qing ignored it, it would not make noise anymore.
The key was that making noise was useless. If it annoyed the person, being grabbed by the jar and shaken hard was very uncomfortable. Someone was not a soft hearted person.
Man is the knife and chopping block, I am the fish and meat. Under the eaves one has to lower their head. He had to submit whether he liked it or not and could only behave obediently.
Having heard the objection, and in a good mood, Yu Qing took out the metal jar from his money pouch, unscrewed the lid, and indicated that it could come out for a ride.
An insect immediately flew out with a buzz. It flew around very fast, darting in all directions, sky and ground, with whooshing sounds.
The fire cricket’s speed was originally very fast. If it had not been for the illusion technique obstructing its vision back then, with Yu Qing’s hand speed it would have been impossible to catch it. So many profound level cultivators could not catch it. How could he, a martial level cultivator, catch it without tricks.
Having regained its freedom, Big Head felt like flying around wildly in joy.
The silk thread that had leashed its neck was gone.
It was not that Yu Qing had developed feelings after spending time with it and did not want to mistreat it or anything.
The problem was he could not delay the valuable rainbow silk that could sell for a high price just for an insect that could not be sold.
The rainbow silk was worth one thousand taels of silver per strand. Spending so much money just to tie up a worthless insect long term was not worthwhile.
Some days ago when a suitable opportunity to sell came, he decisively sold all ten strands from one bowstring, including the one tied around Big Head’s neck. In total he gained another ten thousand taels of silver.
Having earned so much silver again, the delighted Yu Qing no longer cared for Big Head and was too lazy to tie it anymore. The key was that ordinary ropes could not hold it anyway, so he let it be. If he could not prevent it from running, then let it run if it wanted.
As a result the freed Big Head immediately ran away.
It turned out the well behaved baby before was all an act. It was very cunning. It ran without the slightest hesitation and caught Yu Qing off guard. Damn it, it did not have any old affection at all.
This clearly showed it had been preparing to escape the whole time and was just waiting for the opportunity. How patient.
The speed was too fast. For a moment Yu Qing could not catch it even if he tried. It flew straight through a hole in the window and disappeared without a trace.
But it was not a pity that it ran.
He had already mentally prepared for it.
That damn thing was no longer satisfied with eating bones. After tasting the spiritual rice, it wanted to eat some spiritual rice every few days to change its taste. That was a bit excessive.