Chapter 134: The Drunken Man

The sky suddenly darkened, and the first snow of early winter arrived unannounced.

Flakes danced wildly across the sky, blanketing all things in the universe. In the blink of an eye, the entire world was completely shrouded in pristine white.

The two continued walking toward the Lingyun Hall, accompanied only by the crunching sound of footsteps beneath their feet.

They reached a fork in the road.

"I am heading back to Qinglian Residence to tidy up my things," Wen Jing said to Ji Changge.

"Oh, alright."

They parted ways, heading left and right respectively, both letting out a quiet sigh of relief.

Shaking the snow from her shoulders, Wen Jing shivered and shrank her neck, rubbing her frozen ears with her hands as she quickened her pace toward Qinglian Residence.

A trace of longing for the Wen Manor surfaced in her heart. Counting the days, she had been here for well over half a month. She wondered if her father and Shilang were doing well, which inevitably filled her with a sense of melancholy. On second thought, the Huaqing Taoist Temple had long been sealed off, forbidding anyone from entering; perhaps her father and Shilang had come to visit her, though it was impossible to say for sure.

As she passed the main gate, the faint sounds of an argument drifted over from a distance. Wen Jing hurriedly followed the commotion.

The source of the noise grew closer, and the clamor grew louder; the dispute seemed quite fierce.

"The Huaqing Taoist Temple is not receiving outsiders right now! Leave immediately! If you do not leave this instant, we will arrest every last one of you!" an angry Great理 Temple guard shouted furiously.

Arguing with the guard was a burly man dressed in Hu attire, his face flushed red as if he had consumed quite a bit of alcohol. Behind him stood a team of mules, apparently a trade caravan, with their carts heavily laden with cargo.

"Abbot Feng of this Taoist temple is an old acquaintance of mine! Why on earth can't I enter? Today, I am going in whether you like it or not!" the bearded leader shouted, sticking out his neck defiantly.

"Good sir, look at how heavy the blizzard is right now. The mountain paths are treacherous; just let us in to take shelter for the night, and we will be on our way at dawn," added a refined-looking middle-aged man standing beside him.

The guard's initially furious expression softened slightly, but he still waved his hand dismissively. "I said no means no. You had better find somewhere else to seek shelter."

"Hey, we're giving you respect, but you're refusing to take it, aren't you? With snow this heavy, where on earth do you expect us to find another place? That's easy for you to say!"

Hearing this, the guard flew into a rage, drawing his blade with a sharp *clang*. "This is an official case being handled by the Great理 Temple! How dare you act so insolent? If you want to throw a drunken tantrum, go do it at your own home!"

The burly man grew angry as well, drawing a bizarrely shaped short saber. The atmosphere instantly grew tense.

"Oh, this gentleman looks rather familiar. It seems I have seen you somewhere before," Wen Jing said as she stepped forward.

"You've laid eyes on yours truly?" the intoxicated man asked, gazing at Wen Jing through booze-clouded eyes.

Upon seeing Wen Jing, the guard sheathed his saber.

"It is true that the Abbess is not currently in the temple. However, the immortal mistress is. Yet, since there are so many of you, why don't you come with me first to seek her opinion? If the Holy Mistress grants permission, you may stay. How does that sound?" Wen Jing asked with a gentle smile.

The burly man looked Wen Jing up and down carefully, noting that the young maiden possessed fair skin and delicate features, made all the more striking by the surrounding ice and snow, her dark hair and red lips rendering her exceptionally captivating.

"That sounds like a splendid idea," the middle-aged man hastily stepped forward to say.

"Very well, I shall go inside first, and you all wait here," the drunken man agreed, casting sidelong glances at Wen Jing every now and then.

Feeling those lecherous eyes crawling over her skin, Wen Jing suppressed the urge to pull out her scalpel and gouge them out, saying instead, "Follow me."

The guard hesitated for a moment before letting the burly man through.

"Are you new here?" the intoxicated man asked, eyeing Wen Jing.

"I have been here for a while; it is simply that you have not laid eyes on this poor Taoist, though I happen to remember you," Wen Jing replied with a pleasant smile, thinking to herself that since this man claimed to be an old acquaintance of the abbess, perhaps she could pry some information out of him.

Upon hearing this, the drunken man's face turned somewhat displeased, and he muttered, "Tsk tsk, Abbot Feng still keeps people hidden away and won't let them be seen. Could it be she's afraid that old me can't cough up that little bit of silver?"

Wen Jing's brow furrowed. The man had only said half his sentence—what did he mean by not being able to afford the silver?

"How could that be? Just by looking at you, one can tell you are a man of wealth. How could you possibly be unable to afford a bit of incense money?"

The man was slightly taken aback, then laughed. "You little Taoist nun really know how to joke around—incense money, hahahaha."

Finding herself laughed at for no apparent reason, Wen Jing wanted to ask further but feared a slip of the tongue. What kind of money was this oaf actually talking about?

"Where on earth did your abbess go to make a fortune?" the man continued to ask, swaying unsteadily as he walked.

"The abbess went to other Taoist temples to propagate the Way," Wen Jing fabricated casually.

The man glanced at Wen Jing again, a trace of suspicion crossing his face. "Propagate the Way? She must have gone to some Buddhist monastery instead, didn't she? Hahaha!"

The man's words grew increasingly ribald. Wen Jing could not tell whether he was speaking drunken nonsense or telling the truth; judging by his remarks, the abbess seemed to be cut from the exact same cloth as Ruan Qinglian.

"It seems you and our abbess are on quite intimate terms?" Wen Jing probed further.

"Intimate? More than just intimate. But she is old now; I much prefer making friends with a young Taoist nun like you," the man said, casting a profoundly suggestive gaze at Wen Jing.

Looking at the man's greasy face, Wen Jing felt her stomach churn violently, finding it ten times more repulsive than looking at a corpse in the advanced stages of decomposition.

"Impudent! Within the grounds of this Taoist temple, how dare you utter such vulgar nonsense!"

Hearing that familiar voice, the man was not angry; instead, he was overjoyed. He turned around and said, "Immortal Mistress Ruan, it has been many days. I have missed you dearly."

Wen Jing turned her head to the side. To her surprise, Ruan Qinglian had hurried over so quickly.

Ruan Qinglian sneered. "This Taoist temple has been sealed. Exactly how did you manage to get in?"

The burly man grinned and pointed at Wen Jing. "Naturally, this little Taoist nun brought me in."

Glancing coldly at Wen Jing, Ruan Qinglian demanded, "Why did you bring an outsider in?"

Wen Jing briefly recounted what had happened at the temple gates just moments ago.

"No. You are all men, and you cannot be accommodated within the temple. You had best go seek shelter at the Fahua Temple nearby," Ruan Qinglian refused without a moment's hesitation.

The man was stunned, appearing utterly surprised by Ruan Qinglian's response. He had assumed she would readily agree, and now he was losing face. "You let people stay before, why can't we stay today? With the abbess away, do you no longer hold old grandpa here in your eyes? It's just money, after all!"

With that, the man untied the money pouch from his waist and hurled it before Ruan Qinglian. A bag of gleaming gold ingots rolled out onto the snow, looking exceptionally dazzling.

Ruan Qinglian's expression, already cold to the bone, froze over entirely. Mindful of Wen Jing standing close by, she softened her tone slightly. "There have been ghosts haunting the temple recently, and several people have already died. Otherwise, a well-run temple like this wouldn't have been sealed off. If you aren't afraid of death, then by all means, stay."

Hearing this, the burly man looked over at the gloomy, shadowy thickets nearby. A shiver ran down his spine, and the alcohol instantly drained from his head, sobering him up by half.

"Look at the temple now. Does it look anything like the bustling place of worship it used to be?" Ruan Qinglian pressed on.

The last shred of doubt in the man's heart vanished completely. The more he looked, the more an aura of malevolent eeriness seemed to emanate from the temple.

"Then I won't disturb you any further. See you around."

Seeing the burly man turn on his heels and flee without a trace, Wen Jing felt a surge of annoyance. Why couldn't Ruan Qinglian have appeared at any other time, instead of showing up precisely at this critical juncture? The man clearly knew something. She had been on the verge of luring him to Lingyun Hall so that Ji Changge could interrogate him; and now, the cooked duck had flown right out of her hands!

"Young Lady Wen has a compassionate heart, but sometimes, meddling in other people's business is not necessarily a good habit," Ruan Qinglian said before turning and walking away.

Wen Jing naturally caught the subtext in her words. In the past, she might have found it grating; now, she merely treated it like a passing gust of wind. Her priority was to intercept that trade caravan from earlier and get to the bottom of this.

Regarding the incident that had just transpired, Ruan Qinglian chose to keep her lips tightly sealed. Such a humiliating episode was surely something she wished never to speak of again, which fortuitously suited Wen Jing's intentions.

......

Ji Changge examined the names one by one in the roster, cross-referencing them with the list of names from the previous interrogation records. He discovered that the roster contained over four hundred names, whereas there were only a little over two hundred people currently in the monastery. Furthermore, the roster only recorded names, ages, and dates of entry into the temple, lacking any records of departure or dates of death. Trying to match the names of those other two hundred missing individuals to the eight sets of skeletal remains would likely consume a massive amount of time.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Dongsheng asked, looking toward Ji Changge.

"If only we had cranial facial reconstruction technology, but alas, this is ancient times," Wen Jing muttered under her breath. Otherwise, weeding them out one by one was going to waste so much more time.

Seemingly accustomed to Wen Jing uttering incomprehensible terms, Dongsheng was not particularly surprised and asked quite naturally, "What is cranial facial reconstruction?"

"It means taking the shape of a skull and restoring it to the person's original appearance," Wen Jing explained.

Upon hearing this, Dongsheng asked excitedly, "There is such... magical methods? Then hurry up and reconstruct all of their faces!"

Wen Jing was speechless. She knew Dongsheng would react precisely like this. In an era without computers, how on earth did he expect her to reconstruct them...

Seeing Wen Jing's silence, Dongsheng and Ji Changge said in unison, "You don't know how."

He learned how to use that phrase quickly, Wen Jing couldn't help but complain inwardly. Was there truly no method to determine the identities of these eight corpses? (To be continued...)