Chapter 402: Man with a White Paper Hat

"Are you two from out of town?" The bearded constable, seeing that Lu Yang was unfamiliar with the Barren Province, offered a well-meaning caution.

"If you run into someone wearing a white paper hat in the future, you best be careful. That bastard commits crimes all over the place, sly as a fox!"

"How so?" The two were puzzled.

The bearded constable said resentfully, "We've been looking for that white-paper-hatted grandson of a bitch for ages and have never managed to catch him. Don't even know where he popped up from, but he's been active in the Barren Province for several years now."

"Pick any random spot in the Barren Province, and it's bound to be a scene of his crimes. This time he posed as the Qingming Inn to run a bandit shop; last time he instigated an accomplice to steal, got the accomplice wanted, and then caught the accomplice himself to claim the reward. What's more detestable is that none of us realized the one claiming the reward was him!"

"The time before last, he disguised himself as a corpse and sold himself to a corpse-driver. When the corpse-driver was preparing to refine it, he found the corpse moving on its own, nearly scaring the corpse-driver half to death."

"Even after the white-paper-hatted man had left, he remained utterly shaken, thinking it was a walking corpse, and chanted minor wards for days before finally realizing he'd been tricked!"

"And another time, the barbarians reported a case saying someone was running a smuggling business on the wasteland border—that was him too!"

"To make money, this grandson of a bitch stops at nothing! If we could catch him, we could work five fewer days a year!"

The bearded constable grew furious at the mere mention of the white-paper-hatted man, his anger mounting as he spoke. If the man were to appear right now, he looked ready to swallow him alive.

Catching the white-paper-hatted man was not his desire alone; it was the desire of the entire Barren Province.

"There's another strange thing about this grandson of a bitch. Several times, he appeared in two different places simultaneously, as if there were two of him. Don't know if it's twins or what."

"And this time, we surrounded the inn, and you two were at the entrance. Did either of you notice him leave?"

Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou nodded. With their cultivation levels, the movements of ordinary cultivators could not possibly escape their awareness, even if it were a habitual master thief.

To be able to escape under such circumstances indicated that the white-paper-hatted man possessed extraordinary means, or a cultivation level far beyond anyone's expectations.

"Fairy, did you notice when the white-paper-hatted man ran?"

The Immortal Fairy rolled her eyes, feeling that Lu Yang was taking her far too lightly.

"He ran west, but don't count on the constables catching him. Even adding you two wouldn't help; it's a waste of effort. His escape technique is highly unusual."

"And even if you catch him, it would only be catching a clone, completely harmless to him."

Lu Yang was startled. For the Immortal Fairy to make such a judgment, the white-paper-hatted man was even more difficult to deal with than he had imagined.

The bearded constable commanded the remaining constables to seal off the scene and see if they could find any clues.

"Don't forget to paste the seals!" he shouted.

"Boss, does pasting seals do any good? He tears them down every single time," the bearded man's subordinate asked cautiously.

Given the white-paper-hatted man's utter lawlessness, even if seals were pasted, he would just tear them down as usual and keep the inn running.

The bearded constable glared: "If I tell you to paste them, paste them! His tearing them down is his business, it just adds another count to his crimes!"

"Then we shall take our leave." Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou bid farewell to the bearded constable.

Before leaving, Lu Yang kindly suggested, "I felt a slight inkling when the white-paper-hatted man escaped; he fled towards the west."

The bearded constable looked at Lu Yang in surprise, but said nothing more.

"The Barren Province is truly a place of remarkable people and spiritual land; perhaps I really can find a way to break my curse here," Meng Jingzhou lamented, feeling he truly ought to travel more. See, just upon entering the Barren Province, they had encountered such a peculiar person and strange affair.

"After tossing about for most of the day, we still haven't found a place to stay." Lu Yang reminded Meng Jingzhou to attend to the immediate matter first.

Meng Jingzhou patted the horse's back: "Old horse, find us a village to rest in?"

The old horse swished its tail, lowered its head to take a bite of the tender grass by the roadside, and conscientiously pulled the carriage toward the nearest settlement.

Before long, the old horse pulled the two of them to the nearest village. At the village entrance stood a large stone inscribed with three large characters: "Jianshi Village."

"Why is it so quiet?"

The two got down from the carriage, intending to request lodging for the night, only to find that every household in the village had its doors tightly shut, oil lamps lit, without making the slightest sound. Naturally, there was not a soul on the village roads.

In Lu Yang's impression, given the absence of entertainment, the village folk at this hour should have had their doors wide open, visiting and chatting with one another.

"It's as if they are afraid of something, strange." Lu Yang frowned.

Meng Jingzhou chose the household with the largest courtyard and knocked on the door: "Fellow villager, we would like to request lodging for the night."

Clang—Creak—

Two sounds rang out, and an old man opened the door, poking out half his head to peer warily at Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou.

"Who are you people?"

Meng Jingzhou flashed a very amiable smile trained from his days at the barbecue shop: "The two of us are travelers passing through this place. The sky is getting dark, and we would like to stay for the night if possible. Of course, we will pay."

The old man impatiently shooed the two away: "Go, go, go, Jianshi Village does not welcome outsiders. You two leave quickly, or beware being eaten by corpses!"

"Eaten by corpses? Do you have corpses here? We two brothers are cultivators, we can help you get rid of the corpses."

Hearing this, the old man grew even more infuriated: "No need, you two get lost!"

With that said, the old man slammed the main door shut with a bang.

"Hey, you old man are truly unreasonable!" Meng Jingzhou felt the old man was acting hysterically; he had kindly offered to solve the trouble, only to be driven away instead.

"Could it be that there are female members in his family, so you can't go in?" Lu Yang joked with a wicked grin.

"Get lost." Meng Jingzhou shooed Lu Yang away like swatting a fly.

Refusing to give up, Meng Jingzhou went around knocking on other doors, but the results were either the occupants driving them away or simply refusing to open up at all.

"Not hospitable in the slightest," Meng Jingzhou muttered.

"What now, keep moving to another village?"

Meng Jingzhou did not want to move again: "Too much trouble. I just saw a place at the village entrance, don't know if it's a temple or an ancestral hall, but it looked quite clean and seems to still be in use. We can make do there for the night."

"Fine then." Lu Yang did not want to keep tossing back and forth either. They were rejected at the Qingming Inn just now, and rejected again upon coming to Jianshi Village. Who knew if the next village would reject them too?

Rather than tossing about like this, it was better to find a random place to make do for the night and investigate the reasons when daylight came.

The two arrived at the ancestral hall and lit an oil lamp with Samadhi True Fire; the hall instantly brightened up.

"It's actually quite clean."

The two bowed to the spirit tablets: "Our apologies to the seniors, we will just stay here for one night."

At the end of the village, the graveyard.

Stones trembled, and the soil of the graveyard loosened, as if something were moving underneath.

A withered claw burst out from the earth.

Following closely, claws broke through the soil like bamboo shoots after rain, too many to count...