Chapter 12: Sweet and Sour Fruit, Blood on the Lips
Ding Ning looked at Song Shenshu's dead eyes and said softly, "Debt repayment, this is a natural thing, there is nothing to be displeased about."
Because he knew that he still had enough time, he did not rush to leave this crow's nest boat and began to meticulously search every pocket in Song Shenshu's coat.
In the concealed pockets within his sleeves, he searched out several items.
A notebook full of dense handwriting, a money pouch, a dan bottle, and two copper talismans.
Ding Ning opened the note and looked at the fact that it was all about Song Shenshu's insights on the Red Yang Divine Skill's cultivation and some speculations on subsequent cultivation, he couldn't help but shake his head and casually tucked it into his sleeve.
The money pouch was very light, but after opening it, Ding Ning saw that inside were several Da Qin Mica Blade coins that exuded a beautiful luster. This kind of coin was made from the shells of a rare mica shell in the deep sea overseas, and was a unique coin of the Qin Dynasty, worth 500 gold a piece.
Ding Ning did not give it too much thought and put it away without a care in the world.
However, the moment he opened the copper-colored rough porcelain dan bottle, he was obviously a bit surprised.
At the bottom of the dan bottle, there was a small, bleak white pill lying alone, like a dead fish eye.
"Is it for when you're preparing to break through the realm, I can't imagine that you've even prepared this Yuan Condensation Dan, thank you for your true essence, thank you for this Yuan Condensation Dan."
Ding Ning emotionally said this to the deathly Song Shenshu, and after he thought carefully again to make sure that he didn't need those two passage tokens from the Scripture and History Vault, he once again merged his fingers into a sword and stabbed at the bottom of the ship's cabin.
A hole appeared in the wooden planks, and murky muddy water quickly poured through the broken hole and into the cabin.
Ding Ning bowed his body and exited the crow's nest, his feet gently pointing and landing on a wooden path that was half submerged and half still above the water not far to one side.
This was the route he had chosen after spending several years of observation, so at this moment no one was aware that the remains of a Great Qin practitioner were in the shadows behind him, slowly sinking into the water with a crow's nest boat.
It was only after passing through several consecutive riverbank jetties that the surroundings gradually became lively with the sound of people's voices.
Ding Ning walked into the obscure alleys along the river where people came and went just as he usually did when he was strolling around, but his breathing became a bit rapid, and a touch of rouge-like red gradually appeared between his tightly pursed lips.
Feeling the intense blood stench between his lips and teeth, Ding Ning's face remained calm to the extreme as he took out a copper coin and bought a bunch of sugar gourds from the hands of the vendor who wandered up to him.
He hung his head slightly, chewing the sweet and sour fruit, and the crumbs of red icing sugar mixed with the blood between his lips and teeth, so that it could no longer be seen.
When he thought of Song Shenshu, who was sinking into the muddy water in solitude with that small crow-topped boat, and the rough porcelain dan bottle lying quietly in his sleeve pocket, the effort he had spent in the past few years hadn't been in vain and he had gotten some superb rewards, he was a little happy.
However, when he thought of more things, and thought of how some people had ended up even more miserable than Song Shenshu, his nose couldn't help but sour.
He now wanted to go right back to that old woman's hammock and eat a hot oil cake, but he knew he had things to do.
......
The shadowed oubliette had completely disappeared from the water's surface, and the only thing that kept coming to the surface was a series of bubbles with some stirred up silt.
A wooden basin floated above these bubbles.
Inside the wooden basin sat a cloaked-haired man in his forties, dressed as a fisherman, after seeing these unusual bubbles, the man's face turned cold, he squinted his eyes and looked around to make sure that there were no remaining people around him, he paddled with one hand, letting the wooden basin float over to a discarded stake, and then he easily pulled up the stake that was nailed into the silt at the bottom of the river.
The stake was heavy, and even though most of it was still being dragged through the water, the wooden basin underneath him was still somewhat unable to carry the extra weight, with the top edge almost flush with the surface of the water.
Without a care in the world, he braced the stake back above those bubbles, then whacked it down hard.
Hearing a strange noise coming from the bottom, he was sure something had gone wrong, released his grip on the stake, and in the next instant the wooden tub shot out at an alarming speed, dragging an amazing wave of water across the intricate, murky surface.
......
Ding Ning ate all the candy canes and swallowed the last trace of blood.
He had been walking non-stop without passing through repetitive places, yet if someone had a complete map of the Ghost City in their hands, they would have realized that he had actually been circling around the vicinity of one place for the next half a pillar of incense after passing straight through an area.
It was a pier.
"There was a soft thud.
There was the slight scraping sound of a wooden basin against the rotting wooden piles at the edge of the dock.
Ding Ning heard the sound coming from this spot on the water a block away to his side, and he didn't move to quicken his pace a bit, passing through a clanking ironworker's store before he saw the cloaked man who had walked up from that hidden dock.
He followed the cloaked man silently.
It was his plan to kill two birds with one stone.
Everyone knew that this underground kingdom in the darkness must have a strong controller, but for so many years, very few people knew exactly who this controller was and what kind of big shot stood behind him.
Song Shenshu came here almost once a month, and even if he was able to conceal himself from the ears of those outside, those inside here would surely know his true identity.
A dynastic official, a cultivator assassinated here, would surely cause a not-so-small shock.
The trader who found out that Song Shenshu hadn't taken the Fire Turtle Gallbladder on time would quickly realize that Song Shenshu had had an accident, and would also understand that this kind of accident would most likely cause many clearances and cause a disaster.
So he would definitely use his fastest speed to tell the controller here.
......
The mood of the cloaked man dressed as a fisherman was extremely grave, he lowered his head and hurriedly rushed along, completely unaware that there was someone behind him following from afar, and it seemed that Ding Ning had a strange ability, his figure never appeared at an angle that would cause this cloaked man to be wary.
The cloaked man hurriedly walked into a pawnshop.
Ding Ning did not even approach that pawnshop.
During these several years, other than some secret passages within the mansion that he was unable to know, he was already familiar with all the corners of the fish market.
He knew that there were several courtyards at the back of this pawnshop, with three exits that could be accessed.
So he simply walked uphill towards an intersection where he could see two of the exits in this area.
Suddenly, his brows furrowed imperceptibly.
Three figures appeared in the corner of his eye.
The road that the three figures walked out on was exceptionally muddy, and one could even hear that distinctive barfing sound of the soles of their shoes walking in the mud.
That muddy road was precisely one of the exits that extended towards that area of the pawnshop.
There weren't many people around where Ding Ning was at the moment, so he simply turned around in a very unusual manner and swept past with a glance like he wasn't thinking.
With just one glance, the pupils of his eyes imperceptibly contracted slightly.
There was a stooped old man holding a black bamboo staff, a very short and clean-cut young man, and a thick-browed young man dressed as a foreigner.
The hunched old man with the black bamboo staff walked at the very front, turning around right at the entrance of that road and walking back.
Instead, the clean-cut young man and the thick-browed young man continued onward, walking through an alleyway just below Ding Ning, their figures looming in the cracks of the awning.
Ding Ning did not look at the old man or the two young men again, he took a deep breath, and a bitter smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Whether it was that old man who was so old that he couldn't even straighten his back and seemed like he would collapse and die of old age at any moment, or these two young men, neither of them had any aura of a cultivator on them.
Even if a cultivator above the Fifth Realm brushed past them, I'm afraid that they wouldn't even be able to detect that they were cultivators at all.
Yet Ding Ning was certain that all three of them were powerful cultivators.
This was because he recognized the hunched old man holding the black bamboo staff.
As for the other two, he had never seen them before and was unable to determine exactly which sect's cultivators they were, yet he could sense the respect that the rickety old man had for these two.
That hunched old man would only have this kind of respect for powerful cultivators.
Being able to control the five qi in his body to the point where he could not even visibly sense the aura of a cultivator, the cultivation realm of these two young men must be exceptionally terrifying.
Just then, what caused Ding Ning to be slightly stunned was that he felt another overbearing and dry aura.
Following this aura, he saw a butter paper umbrella.
As if he didn't even want to be drenched with sporadic droplets of water, the tall and thin man holding the butter paper umbrella was holding this umbrella open in all of this.
The surface of the umbrella covered his face, and one could only see that each of his knuckles were thick and exceptionally powerful.
This was clearly a cultivator.
Ding Ning, on the other hand, was a bit more knowledgeable than the vast majority of cultivators, so through that domineering and dry aura, he easily judged the origin of this person's division.
Looking at this person's route of travel, Ding Ning knew that today, there would definitely be one more body of a cultivator in the wilderness of Changling.
