Chapter 1 Before Dinner

Before dinner, I kept replaying the events of the journey in my mind.

I noticed that the tourists on the bus didn't seem very interested in the scenery outside the window. Almost no one looked outside the whole way, and no one took pictures.

Moreover, the bus hadn't stopped along the way. No tour guide would lead a tour like that!

This indicated that neither the tourists nor the tour guide had their minds on sightseeing.

These tourists should know very well what they were doing and what they wanted to do.

If my deduction was correct, then the tour guide's story wasn't just casually told. Her story could arouse such great interest from the tourists, which meant that the story was the key to their trip.

I had also heard that story, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

The only thing that could be considered a clue was the inexplicably appearing eminent monk.

Miao and si (temples and monasteries) are not the same.

Miao are for deities, si are for Buddhas.

Why would the person in the story go to a miao to find an eminent monk?

More importantly, when the tour guide told the story, she used the phrase "the eminent monk indeed came." This showed that the man wasn't sure he could find the eminent monk before going up the mountain.

The tour guide also said: The man burned incense and made a wish at the miao.

Doesn't this tell the tourists that the miao on the mountain was just a contact point?

This was very similar to the way Jianghu (martial world) hired Yin Xiansheng (Hidden Masters).

Yin Xiansheng were unwilling to meet their employers for various reasons.

The employer could only see the middleman, or leave the price and requirements in a certain place under someone's guidance, waiting for the Yin Xiansheng to pick it up. After the other party had done the job, they would naturally find the employer to collect the debt!

The only place in Taiqu Mountain where monks could be found was the Tiewa Si (Iron Tile Monastery)!

I roughly sorted out the tour guide's story, and it was time for dinner. When we arrived at the restaurant, we saw Xu Yulong and the others sitting at a corner table.

They had obviously seen us, but no one came over to greet Feng Ruoxing.

Feng Ruoxing frowned, but I held him back: "A warlock doesn't save those who seek death. You've done what you should do. Just wait for them to solve the rest themselves!"

Lin Zhao also transmitted his voice: "Look at these tourists, they all seem to be waiting for a story."

Only then did I glance around the restaurant.

All the tourists were shoveling food into their mouths. They didn't seem to care what they were eating, nor what the food tasted like, they just wanted to finish their meal as quickly as possible.

When the sound of chopsticks being put down rang out one after another, the tour guide walked in from outside.

Lin Zhao whispered, "The tour guide came back from outside. I searched around the hotel just now and couldn't find her anywhere!"

As soon as Lin Zhao finished speaking, the tour guide walked straight to the stage in the restaurant and picked up the microphone: "Everyone must be anxious! Then I'll tell you the rest of the story."

That man couldn't bear to watch his wife leave him like that, so he begged the eminent monk to save his wife.

The eminent monk told him: Fate has determined that a person must die at a certain time and place, and it cannot be changed. You have already survived, so don't ask for too much.

However, the man didn't believe this. He felt that the eminent monk must have a way to achieve both goals, so he kept begging the eminent monk to save her.

The eminent monk had no choice but to say to him: If you want to save your wife, you have to bring her soul back.

However, a person who has died once has different thoughts than before. It's hard to say whether she will come back with you.

But the man didn't believe it. As soon as he heard that there was a way to save his wife, he asked where he could find her soul.

The eminent monk told him: You should still go to the place where the rocks fell! Your wife can't find her way home and will still go to the original place. But you have to be careful.

That night, the man took a torch and followed the original path.

When he walked to the bottom of the cliff, he saw his wife wearing a set of red clothes, squatting in mid-air.

Without thinking, the man ran forward with a torch, shouting his wife's name as he ran.

When he reached her, the woman suddenly raised her head, grinned at the man and smiled: I don't want to die.

The man was stunned. The woman said, "Look up, what's on top of my head?"

The man raised the torch and saw that the woman had been holding a rock on her head.

Before he could figure out what was going on, the rock fell down and smashed him in the head, killing him on the spot.

The next day, the woman did come back to life. But she never went to the rocky cliff again. Instead, she gave the eminent monk a sum of money and asked him to drag her husband's body back.

She also specifically instructed the eminent monk that if the man's head wasn't broken, he should smash it a few more times.

As a result, the eminent monk dragged back a corpse with its head smashed to pieces just before dark.

The tour guide smiled: "My story is over. Everyone should go back to rest! Tomorrow, I will take you to continue touring the Taiqu Mountain area."

The tour guide left, but the entire restaurant became silent.

After a long while, someone stood up and left the restaurant without saying a word, as if they were preoccupied.