"Not moving at all?" Chen Ling felt very strange. "Until the Special Investigation Department left?"
The City God glanced at the young man, then looked at Jiang Yu without any expression. After thinking it over in his mind, he was certain that this must be the person that the Netherworld Messenger said should not be offended.
He smiled and said quickly, "That's true. But what's strange is that the rest of the Special Investigation Department left half a day later."
"So Li Daoxuan left at least two hours earlier than the others..." Chen Ling asked, "Why? Was it because of something urgent?"
There were more than tens of millions of people living in North City, so how could the City God remember clearly what each person had done? He looked at Jiang Yu fearfully, afraid of being blamed for his incompetence. Seeing that the other party didn't even look at him, he quietly pinched his palms which were covered in cold sweat.
He whispered, "Mr. Chen, can you allow me to check something?"
Chen Ling nodded: "Take your time to investigate, don't rush." Considering that the other party was a local official after all, he could not flatter him, but at least he could not be too neglectful. He asked politely, "Mr. City God, would you like tea or water?"
The City God was shocked by the words "Master City God". With Jiang Yu around, how could he dare to call him "Master"? With just one word from Jiang Yu, he could kneel on the ground, hug his legs and call himself his grandson.
"No, no!" Cheng Huang quickly refused. Feeling Jiang Yu's gaze, he pulled the corner of his mouth hard and said, "I'm not thirsty."
Chen Ling thought he was being polite, so he poured him a cup and brought it over.
The City God took it stiffly and said thank you several times, which made Chen Ling feel a little embarrassed.
The City God took a sip of water. Perhaps because it was brought to him by his husband's fiancé himself, it was plain water but it tasted sweeter than ordinary water... He smacked his lips, swiftly reached into the inner pocket of his suit, and took out a book.
The book was filled with obscene words, and Chen Ling couldn't understand it even when he stood aside.
Wu Weiwei groaned, pulled Chen Ling over, and whispered, "Brother Chen, have you noticed that the City God is so kind and easy to talk to?"
Not only is he easy to talk to, he even has a bit of flattering tone.
Chen Ling made a gesture to silence him, "Be quiet."
Wu Weiwei immediately zipped up his mouth, sat upright and waited for the follow-up to the incident twenty years ago.
Soon, the City God put away the book and said, "He received a message that a new evildoer had been captured by the Special Investigation Department, and then he hurried back."
Chen Ling asked: "What evil way?"
City God: "He is just a little Taoist priest who makes a living by piercing villains and cursing people. He is not a powerful figure."
"Strange." Wu Weiwei stroked his chin and said, "It's not like there's no one in the Special Investigation Department. He doesn't need to go back at all."
Chen Ling also thought so, "I'm afraid the evil way is just an excuse to leave Yuhe Mountain."
"But why did he have to leave at that time?" Wu Weiwei looked puzzled.
Chen Ling shook his head. If something couldn't be figured out from the surface, he could only ask someone who didn't care. He wouldn't be able to find the correct answer by just guessing.
"Step back." The man who had been silent all of a sudden spoke.
Jiang Yu stood up from the wooden chair, raised his eyelids and looked at the tightly closed door of the main hall. He curled his lips and chuckled mockingly, "There are quite a few people."
The City God shuddered and made a move to leave, but he remembered something and stepped back. He boldly walked up to Jiang Yu and whispered, "The Emperor ordered me to tell you that the ghosts and gods in the underworld must not interfere in the affairs of the living world."
Jiang Yu glanced at him indifferently, and the City God felt cold all over and fled underground on the spot.
Chen Ling glanced at the old ancestor thoughtfully, sneered, and stared at the door intently.
The footsteps came closer and closer, and the noise of the soles of shoes rubbing against the ground and the sound of talking became louder and louder. Within half a minute, there was a knock on the main door.
It was Li Hongyu who knocked on the door: "Chen Ling, are you there?"
Li Hongyu originally didn't want to come this time, but Li Daoxuan spoke personally, so he had to take the risk of offending his friend and make this trip.
Chen Ling opened the door and looked up to see a crowd of people. The people from the Special Investigation Department had blocked the door tightly, and the feeling of oppression was very strong.
Li Hongyu said, "My junior uncle said..." He hesitated for a rare moment, and in order to save face for his friend, he lowered his voice, "He said that you guys switched the white amber."
Chen Ling asked, "What if I say no?"
Li Hongyu frowned slightly, "Chen Ling, don't make it difficult for me."
Chen Ling reached out and pulled the person into the house, and while the person outside was not able to react, he slammed the wooden door shut.
Li Hongyu keenly noticed the stagnant atmosphere in the main room and turned to look at Wu Weiwei who was closest to him.
Wu Weiwei got angry when he thought of Li Daoxuan. He turned his head away and pretended not to see him.
Li Hongyu raised his eyebrows and smiled, then nodded to Jiang Yu, "Mr. Jiang, it's not that I don't believe you."
"Yeah." Jiang Yu nodded, not caring.
He placed his hand casually on the edge of the beak, turned his palm over, stretched out his fingers, revealing the white amber lying on it.
He walked in breathlessly. The smell was bearable when he was outside, but now that it was so close, even though Li Hongyu was usually calm, he couldn't help but take a step back.
"It smells like a dead body."
"You deserved to die." Wu Weiwei muttered softly. If it weren't for the fact that they had all been through life and death together, he really wanted to pick up a stool and beat the guy out.
Li Hongyu frowned at the stench and took a step towards Wu Weiwei, "Did I recruit you?"
"…" Wu Weiwei pursed his lips. Although he was angry, he still said truthfully, "No."
Li Hongyu said "hmm" lightly, and no one knew what it meant.
He turned back and continued to look at Jiang Yu: "Mr. Jiang, can you return Bai Hu to me?"
"Li Hongyu, can I ask you a question?" Chen Ling bolted the door and was about to leave when the two wooden doors were suddenly slammed hard by someone outside.
Li Hongyu pursed his lips, walked to the door and said to the people outside: "Just wait outside, I'll be out soon."
The people outside refused to do so and disobeyed his order for the first time: "Deputy team leader, the team leader has ordered us to bring the things back. We are worried about you going alone."
Li Hongyu didn't continue to pay attention to him, and turned to Chen Ling and said, "What did you want to ask just now?"
"The cases at Rongshen Middle School and Fengling Mountain are both being cleaned up by your Special Investigation Department. I want to ask, have you ever found any sacrificial ritual vessels similar to the white amber?"
"No." Li Hongyu answered quickly and affirmatively.
Chen Ling: "Don't you want to think about it again?"
"No need." Li Hongyu, "The Special Investigation Department has a strict rule from top to bottom. If anyone finds something, they must hand it over. No one dares to keep it privately."
"What if the higher-ups find out?" Chen Ling was more direct. "What if Li Daoxuan finds out?"
"Chen Ling, are you doubting my junior master-master?" Li Hongyu's face turned ugly, but he kept silent.
"This is what we just discussed. Take a look." Chen Ling opened the notebook and showed it to him. He then said, "According to this reasoning, Rongxin Middle School should have a Qinggui. Correspondingly, Fengling Mountain should have a Xuanhuang."
"I don't want to doubt Team Leader Li, but he can." Risking being beaten, Chen Ling analyzed to him in an orderly manner, "Back then on Fengling Mountain, as the chief commander, Team Leader Li was a master of Taoism and had the greatest ability. He should have been guarding down there. But he did the opposite and rashly led people up the mountain, which resulted in the death of Qing Tanzi and the loss of control of all the souls that had just been controlled down there."
He said with a sullen face: "Li Hongyu, you have been in contact with him the longest. Ask yourself, is Li Daoxuan a reckless and hasty person?"
Li Hongyu was stunned, with mixed emotions in his eyes.
Chen Ling continued, "And what happened today, the five thunderbolts he invited happened to hit the lake. If Jiang Yu was not so powerful and did not get support from the outside world, he might have died by now."
"Those five thunders..." Li Hongyu thought of something and suddenly stopped talking.
Chen Ling grabbed his arm and asked, "What do you want to say?"
Li Hongyu said nothing.
Chen Ling asked: "Your junior master said that he was chasing a black shadow away from the Blue Lake, and you followed him. Did you see any suspicious people?"
Li Hongyu clenched his fists tightly. He couldn't deny it. "No."
At that time, Li Daoxuan's figure was looming in the woods ahead. Apart from the back of his junior master's uncle, he really didn't see anything else.
"But this doesn't mean anything." Li Hongyu didn't notice that his voice was trembling.
He remembered several strange things.
After Li Daoxuan told him not to be jealous of Chen Ling for the first time, he talked to him privately several times, and each time they were about similar topics, asking him to stay calm and not to be jealous and suspicious.
After he did not make much progress for several times in a row, Li Daoxuan actually became cold towards him, and many tasks in the department that should have been assigned to him were assigned to other people.
Li Hongyu approached Li Daoxuan and asked him if he had done anything wrong recently.
Li Daoxuan said: "Hongyu, a proper sense of utilitarianism can help you gain a better foothold in the Special Investigation Department, but you don't have it."
This is not something that Junior Master-Uncle would say.
Li Hongyu grew up in Qingxuan Temple. Looking back, before he became a disciple of the temple master, he almost became a disciple of his junior uncle. At that time, Li Daoxuan did not like to care about the secular affairs of Qingxuan Temple because he disdained it.
He seemed to have always had a yearning for power, so after Master Li Hongyu became the abbot of the temple, Li Daoxuan was angry and even refused to stay in the temple for a long time.
He was very resistant to the tasks assigned to him.
Li Hongyu was precocious and could remember things at an early age. He remembered that when he was four or five years old, he accidentally overheard an argument between the temple master and his junior uncle.
Junior Master said: "Are you humiliating me now? I don't want it. If you really feel bad about it, just give me the position of the temple master!"
Perhaps the argument in the room was too loud, so he heard it clearly. Because he couldn't understand the meaning, he even went to ask other brothers what it meant.
The senior brother covered his mouth and told him, "You don't mean anything. Come on, I'll take you to pick some fruit."
Children are very curious, and since his senior brother refused to tell him, he kept recalling the sentence and thinking about it, and it was engraved in his memory before he knew it.
Later, when the Special Investigation Department was recruiting people, Qingxuan Guan recommended Li Daoxuan.
After that, Li Hongyu never heard him arguing with the temple master again. Every month when he saw his junior uncle returning to the temple, the other party would smile as gently as spring breeze and never showed a ferocious and angry face again.
Occasionally, when he had more time, he would preach to them in a gentle voice, teaching them to be kind and peaceful to others, and not to take their own gains and losses too seriously.
He also said that he was too impetuous when he was young, which was very detrimental to his body and mind and his spiritual practice. He wanted him to take this as a warning and not make the same mistake.
And he continued to teach them this way for the next twenty years.
How could such a person suddenly be dissatisfied with his lack of utilitarianism... Li Hongyu couldn't understand.
"Li Hongyu, think about it again. Is there anything weird about your junior master?" Chen Ling spoke again after giving the other party some time to think.
Li Hongyu raised his eyes, his eyes blank.
Chen Ling reminded again: "Especially when he was at Rongshen Middle School and Fengling Mountain, did he ever act alone?"
"Act alone..." Li Hongyu closed his eyes. His brain was out of control. He actually followed Chen Ling's words and started trying hard to recall.
After a moment, his face twitched a few times and his face looked like it was covered with a layer of white ash.
Seeing that his face was so ugly, Wu Weiwei moved his lips a few times and whispered, "Hey, are you okay?" He thought for a moment, stood up and pulled the man to sit down, "Sit down and talk."
Li Hongyu was caught off guard and was pulled two steps to the side and sat on a wooden chair.
For a moment, no one spoke. The air seemed to be still. The atmosphere was stiff and oppressive, as if something was about to burst out.
"Yes." After an unknown amount of time, Li Hongyu's hoarse voice sounded.
In an instant, except for Jiang Yu who still had that indifferent look, the other two all looked at Li Hongyu, anxiously waiting for his next words.
Li Hongyu placed one hand on the armrest, curling his fingers and clenching them. "That night at Rongxin Middle School, after you left, Junior Master ordered us to search the entire school. All the manpower was assigned, including myself. So I'm not sure if he stayed there after all of us left."
Wu Weiwei couldn't help but ask: "Where is Fengling Mountain?"
"Fengling Mountain has encountered a major change, and there are many things to deal with." Li Hongyu closed his eyes and thought, "We stayed in Fengling Hot Spring Club for a total of three days. On the first day, I led the team to the village. The people in the village were either tortured by ghost face sores and couldn't get out of bed; or they were already dead, and their bodies were lying in their beds with no one to clean them up."
"I followed the path you mentioned before and found an underground cave. All the jars that were used to hold ghosts were broken. Then I went down to the pool, went underwater, and found another way to the hot spring resort."
It was a waterway, half of which was submerged in the lake water, and the other half had been underground for a long time, so the oxygen was very thin.
Li Hongyu waded through it and lost half his life.
"When I reached the end, I found a wall that had been knocked down. Beyond it was the underground wine cellar of the hot spring resort." He paused, his lips trembling slightly, his brows tightly knitted together.
Wu Weiwei saw that the usually calm young man now clenched his teeth, seeming to be very resistant to the words he was about to say.
But after a few self-debates, he finally told the rest: "I heard a noise in the wine cellar, and thought it was a colleague from the department, so I chased him all the way out, and I saw Junior Master."
The small cave at the bottom of Fengling Mountain is used to feed ghosts all year round. One can imagine how much resentment and hostility there is.
It is indeed very likely that the inner demon has hidden Xuan Huang in there.
As for Rongshen Middle School, it is the land of Jiuyin, and Qinggui should be hidden in the most central location of Rongshen Middle School.
However, it is too late to know now.
Li Daoxuan already has Qinggui and Xuanhuang in his hands, and now he has sent someone to get Baihu. He has now collected three of the key chess pieces.
Now only Pingshan remains.
Jiang Yu seemed to know what Chen Ling was thinking. He played with the teacup and whispered, "A place with good feng shui is close to mountains and water, and the air flows smoothly. Pingshan is just the opposite. It is surrounded by barriers on all sides. There are mountains but no water, so bad luck can only flow in but not out."
"Pure Yin Qi, ghost Qi, corpse Qi, plus bad luck..." Chen Ling pursed his lips and glanced at Li Hongyu, and asked: "Bai Hu, do you still want to take it back?"