Strange Gentlemen

Chapter 200: 07 Soul-soothing incense

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Luo Yujing knelt beside the coffin, with her head down. In this position, Kusheng could only see the top of her hair. He held Luo Yujing's head with one hand and shouted "Evil-killing Sword".

"You followed her and did evil things like this last night!"

This was new. Zhuxie Sword had been with Kusheng for many years, and this was the first time it had been slandered like this. Therefore, when Luo Yujing was stimulated by the "iron hand" pressing on his head, and raised his hand to hold it and stab Kusheng backwards, Zhuxie Sword did not resist and stabbed out smoothly.

—It's just a sword.

Ku Sheng dodged Luo Yujing's sword by tilting his head, and jumped out of the coffin. Luo Yujing staggered again and stabbed at him with a sword, but Ku Sheng clamped the blade with two fingers.

"This is... being bewitched by a monster." When Kusheng saw the lifeless eyes of Luo Yujing and the miserable dead weasel lying on the ground, he knew what happened last night.

If an ordinary person was bewitched by a spirit, they would just follow orders in a daze. But Luo Yujing was different. She hid the spirit of an evil spirit in a human body, and her body did not reject her, so she could still remain conscious.

Once provoked, her violence would be aroused, clouding her mind and causing her to do something extreme.

Seeing her current state, it was even worse than when I saw her a month ago. Kusheng felt a headache and kept saying, "Don't cry! Don't cry! Don't cry!"

Then he grabbed her wrist with both hands and snatched the Sword of Evil-Slaying from her hand.

Luo Yujing, whose hands were chained and whose mind was not clear, burst into tears when he touched her. Kusheng's face twisted when he heard her cry. He threw the dangerous Zhuxie sword with one hand and inserted it into the scabbard a few meters away, and then tried to cover her mouth.

Unexpectedly, seeing his hand approaching, Luo Yujing seemed to be even more stimulated, and miraculously regained some consciousness. She avoided his hand and struggled to say, "No... I just touched the zombie's hand... I didn't wash it!"

Kusheng was stunned and subconsciously retorted: "Nonsense, I didn't touch the zombie just now! No, have you recovered?"

The next moment Luo Yujing began to cry and struggle again, and her eyes, which had been slightly clear, became cloudy again.

Kusheng: “…” Okay, you’re not awake yet.

He poked Luo Yujing with his finger, pushed her back, and hooked his foot over the coffin, just enough to put her in. Luo Yujing fell into the coffin with a thud, and was about to get up when Kusheng squatted on the edge of the coffin and poked her back again.

He took off the gourd from his waist, dipped it in the cinnabar ink, and drew a ghost-suppressing talisman on Luo Yujing's face.

The Sword of Extermination was flashing wildly at the side.

After drawing the talisman, he saw Luo Yujing was still struggling. Kusheng seemed to have realized what was happening, so he tapped his forehead with his fingers and said to himself, "I made a mistake. I should have drawn the calming talisman."

He had done so many things to exterminate ghosts and punish evildoers that he started writing by exterminating ghosts without ever giving it any thought.

He took up Luo Yujing's white sleeve and rubbed it on her face to remove the previous ink stains. He then drew a calming charm on her face again. Only then did she gradually calm down and fall asleep with her eyes closed.

But at this time, her face and clothes were already covered with black and red ink.

When she was so quiet, Kusheng discovered that her lower abdomen was red. It turned out that she was injured in the abdomen. The bleeding had stopped, but she had struggled hard just now and started bleeding again. Looking at the shape of the tear on her clothes, it was clearly a wound caused by the Zhuxie Sword.

Kusheng turned his head unhappily and said to Zhuxie Jian: "Zhuxie Jian! You didn't allow me to hurt her, but you stabbed a hole in her belly!"

Zhuxie Sword was too lazy to pay attention to him.

"What should I do? If I don't care, I'll die!" Kusheng turned his head and stared at Luo Yujing's belly. After thinking for a moment, he decided to untie her clothes to check the wound.

But before he reached out his hand, he thought, if she woke up and found that he had undressed her, wouldn't she misunderstand? A misunderstanding would be fine, but if she was stimulated again, it would be more trouble than gain.

This is easy to do. You can't take off her clothes, so just tear a small hole in it.

“Tear—”

The Sword of Extermination lost its color as if it was dead.

After tearing a hole in Luo Yujing's clothes, Kusheng looked at the wound and felt that it was less serious than he thought. He immediately relaxed and took out a yellow talisman, drew a hemostatic talisman and pasted it on the wound on Luo Yujing's stomach. He felt that it was not enough, so he drew two more and pasted them all on.

After doing all this, he jumped down from the coffin and squatted beside the Sword of the Evil Slayer. With lingering fear in his heart, he said, "Sword of the Evil Slayer, I have been in the world for nearly a hundred years, and this is the first time I have found evil spirits so terrifying."

Generally, evil ghosts will kill people when they appear. If they are provoked, the evil ghosts will become even more powerful. If Kusheng wants to calm down such evil ghosts, he always kills them directly to give them permanent peace. But the one in front of him cannot be killed, so he has to seek a second way.

"We can only burn some incense for her to calm her spirit and to get rid of her anger, so that she won't go crazy if she is stimulated." Kusheng scratched his head. Although he had learned how to make these sacrificial incense in Baihe Temple, he never thought that he would need them one day.

"Where can I find the soul-resting wood for making incense?" Kusheng pondered.

This soul-resting wood does not refer to a certain kind of tree, but a spiritual tree that grows in a place with a lot of incense. With nourishment over time, it can be called the soul-resting wood, and it is most effective when used to make soul-resting incense.

The place where they are now is Suzhou. The most famous place in Suzhou is Jinchuan. There is a clan god protecting the city of Jinchuan, and that god is "White-robed Zhu".

When Ku Sheng traveled outside, he never liked to go to places that were protected by clan gods. The reason was simple: because with the clan gods around, there were fewer evil ghosts nearby, let alone the evil spirits he was looking for.

But now he wanted to find the Requiem Tree. If you were to ask where the Requiem Tree might appear nearby, it would definitely be near the Ujigami Residence. It just so happened that Jinchuan was not far from here, so he went there.

Luo Yujing had fallen asleep at this time and could not sit on the rattan chair. Kusheng did not dare to hold her close to his back, so he simply let her lie in the coffin. He carried the coffin on his shoulder with one hand and carried some miscellaneous items with the other hand, and walked towards Jinchuan with the clanging of the people.

With his speed, he arrived there in less than half a day.

There was a large family called Zhu in Jinchuan City, and there were no ghosts or monsters disturbing the city. People lived a prosperous life, and the houses were more luxurious and the streets were wider than those in other places. Even the people here were more knowledgeable than those in other places. When they saw a "strange" person like Kusheng walking on the street, they would just look at him twice and rarely point fingers.

There are many rivers in Jinchuan, and the Zhu family mansion is separated by a tributary of Jinchuan. Except for the Zhu family members, ordinary people are not allowed to approach. In the eyes of the locals, the mansion is extremely sacred, and people often go to the family shrine built near the river to burn incense.

Kusheng passed by the clan shrines built by the locals spontaneously, and walked around to the woods where few people went, and sneaked into the Zhu family mansion from there. The places where these families worshipped the clan gods were easy to find, and the places with the strongest incense were there.

Moreover, once they entered, as long as they did not make any big noise, they would not have to worry about being discovered for a short period of time. After all, all of these people who served God were both respectful and fearful of their God and kept their distance from him.

Avoiding the guards of the Zhu family in plain white clothes, following the smell of incense, Kusheng carried the coffin and other items to the edge of a lake. The lake was covered by layers of white gauze, and there was no sign of living people inside. A gorgeous attic was built by the lake. Next to it was a big tree, and a thick layer of incense ash had accumulated under the tree.

This is a soul-resting tree. Kusheng looked at the trunk and was quite satisfied. He put down the coffin and other things, drew out the sword to kill evil and poked the trunk.

After poking it twice, a voice sounded faintly in my ears.

"Is it appropriate to sneak over to my place and chop down my trees?"

It was noon, and white gauze was fluttering everywhere. When Kusheng first saw the man floating in the air, he almost mistook him for a piece of fluttering white gauze.

Because his figure was ethereal and he was wearing a white gauze dress, he looked as plain as if he had faded. The sunlight fell through the gaps between the leaves and penetrated the man's figure.

Kusheng knew that this was probably the god of the Zhu family.

"Why is it inappropriate? It's just peeling some bark." He said, and his hands kept working, peeling off a large piece of bark.

Zhu Shishen didn't seem angry, just floating there watching him peel his own bark. As a Shishen, he could naturally sense the aura of "the same kind". The "aura" of humans and non-humans was completely different in his eyes. He could see that the uninvited guest in front of him was a Shishen who was "stillborn".

Although he did not become Ujigami but became something else, considering the time when he was born, he was a very immature little fellow.

Seeing that he ignored him, Zhu God floated to the coffin on the side and looked at Luo Yujing lying inside.

He wondered, "Is this your wife? You made her look so miserable. When she wakes up, she will be angry with you."

Kusheng stuffed the peeled bark into his arms and said, "She is not my wife, don't talk nonsense! Besides, why should she be angry? She chopped with my sword, shouldn't I be angry? When she wakes up, I will teach her a lesson!"

Zhu God looked at him, shook his head and sighed: "Why are you being so stubborn? I've been through this before, don't I understand it better than you?"

Kusheng just thought that this guy was incomprehensible and was too lazy to say more to him. After he got the things, he happened to hear someone coming from afar. He immediately picked up the coffin and the miscellaneous items and left as quickly as he came.

The Zhu spirit floated in the overlapping white gauze, watching his back as he climbed over the wall and walked away. He sighed with a smile, then disappeared while waving his sleeves.

Soon, several Zhu clan members dressed in white came to the tree with incense and offerings through layers of white gauze, ready to offer as usual. Their clan god did not want to see the clan members, so they could only offer sacrifices under the sacred tree outside. Who knew that at this moment, they saw that a large piece of bark was missing from their sacred tree, revealing the white trunk underneath.

“Ah!” Several tribesmen were shocked. “What happened? The sacred tree! The bark of the sacred tree has been cut!”

In the end, of course, no one was able to find out who had done this heinous act. They only made a note in the Zhu family's pantheon that on a certain day of a certain month of a certain year, a piece of the bark of the sacred tree mysteriously disappeared, and they ordered people to take good care of the sacred tree in the future.

Let’s not talk about all this, let’s just say that Kusheng left the Zhu’s mansion, found a place to pound the bark into ashes, mixed it with some other materials, and finally cut his arm with the Zhuxie Sword, squeezed out two drops of blood, and made soul-soothing incense.

He lit the incense and placed it next to the coffin.

A familiar faint fragrance lingered in the air, and Luo Yujing gradually woke up from her confusion. This reassuring fragrance was like some kind of guidance, taking her a long, long way, and finally getting to the right path.

Luo Yujing felt a sense of peace and tranquility that she had not felt for a long time.

She opened her eyes amid the shaking and found herself lying in a coffin that was covered with scratches. A stick of incense was stuck above her head, and the trembling incense ash fell down and floated onto her face.

I raised my hand to wipe the incense ash off my face and felt some black and red ash. Once, twice... The more I wiped, the dirtier it became. No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn't get clean.

Luo Yujing: “…” I felt the calmness slowly disappearing.

She tried to sit up and felt a chill on her stomach. She looked down and saw a hole in her clothes. Several yellow talismans were stuck there and couldn't fall off. Her clothes were covered with ink, blood, and dust. A strange stench permeated her whole body.

When Ku Sheng saw her wake up, he put down the coffin and was about to question her for abusing the Sword of Killing Evil.

Luo Yujing asked first: "... You threw me into the toilet?"