Chapter 38: The New Police

In Lu Qingjiu's imagination, Bai Yuehu should be an immortal fox spirit who does not care to eat the world's mundane goods or engage in mundane strife.

After living with Bai Yuehu for a while, Lu Qingjiu realised that most of Bai Yuehu's reasons for not wanting to get involved in things were laziness, and now there was an additional reason for being poor.

Because they are too lazy to earn human coins, Bai Yuehu can't even afford to eat small dumplings because they don't have anything to eat. He has to live a miserable life without a hot meal, eating big geckos and manta rays every day.

Lu Qingjiu's feelings were complicated when he realised that this delicacy, which existed only in mythology and could never be tasted by ordinary people in their lifetime, had become an object of dislike for Bai Yuehu. No matter what the delicacy is, I'm afraid it will be tasteless after hundreds or thousands of years of eating it.

Looking at Bai Yuehu, who has cut her hair short and is sitting in a rocking chair, Lu Qingjiu is reminded of what Zhu Miaomiao used to joke about.

Bai Yuehu heard the laughter and turned his head to Lu Qingjiu: "What are you laughing at?"

Lu Qingjiu hid his smile, "Nothing, I just wanted to ask you what you were having for dinner."

Bai Yuehu said, "It's all right."

Lu Qingjiu thought of their encounter and said, "Do you want to eat xiao long bao? If you want I'll go to town and buy it for you."

Bai Yuehu is always casual when it comes to good food, so he said, "Anything is fine."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Okay, I'll make a pot of porridge first, you watch the fire for me, Yin Xun, you can come with me."

Yin Xun, who had been very quiet since her return, nodded her head in agreement.

They went out and found the minivan, Yin Xun got in but was a bit fidgety, Lu Qingjiu said, "What is wrong with you?"

Yin Xun pointed to the seat under his bottom and said, "This is a slug, what part of it are we sitting on?"

Lu Qingjiu couldn't help but laugh at his words, so he could only reassure Yin Xun, saying that slugs don't have arms and legs, and that all parts are similar. However, Lu Qingjiu also noticed that after seeing Bai Yuehu on the mountain, Yin Xun's condition was not right.

Yin Xun is a thick-headed person, so I guess he'll be fine in a couple of days.

The town's bun shop is open from morning until after eight o'clock in the evening. This one doesn't sell anything else but dumplings, and because of their exceptional taste, there are even people who come from the city just to eat his buns.

Lu Qingjiu has only eaten once, however, and that was when he invited Bai Yuehu for a meal.

"Why did you suddenly think of coming over to buy him a bun?" Yin Xun twists and turns in the minivan.

"It's just that you're not comfortable at home." Lu Qingjiu gripped the steering wheel and looked ahead, "You won't tell me what you're being asked about."

Yin Xun scratched his head, a little embarrassed: "It's not that I don't want to talk about it, it's just that I can't describe the feeling, it's like my body's most instinctive reaction." When he saw Bai Yuehu in the black robe, an inexplicable fear came over him, a fear so sudden that even he could not find the source, let alone how to explain it to Lu Qingjiu.

Lu Qingjiu didn't force the issue, shrugging his shoulders and simply bringing up the subject that made Yin Xun uncomfortable.

When they arrived in town, they went straight to the bun shop. When the owner heard Lu Qingjiu say he wanted two hundred buns, he smiled and asked Lu Qingjiu to come back in an hour to pick them up.

Lu Qingjiu paid the money, so he and Yin Xun went to a random teahouse next door and ordered two bowls of tea to sit and chat.

"Alas, in fact, you are the richest person in the family." Yin Xun and Lu Qingjiu said. Yin Xun and Lu Qingjiu said, "To tell you the truth, I'm just like Bai Yuehu, I'm also poor as hell."

Lu Qingjiu said, "You're poor too, aren't you a mountain god?"

Yin Xun said, "Stop it, I couldn't even afford to eat hot rice before you came."

Lu Qingjiu: ""How in the world do you two live your lives?

The two were talking when a man walked straight towards them on the side of the road, walked across to them and sat down opposite Lu Qingjiu without ceremony.

The man looked very young, probably only in his twenties, and his appearance was very handsome, but the cold and arrogant aura on his body gave people an uncomfortable feeling.

When Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun saw this man stop talking, they looked at each other and both saw a look of surprise in each other's eyes; it was obvious that they did not know this man.

"What's your name?" the young man looked at Yin Xun, his tone a little hard and his eyes unkind.

Yin Xun was stunned by the aggressive questioning: "Who are you? I don't know you, do I?"

"Police." The youth pulled his ID out of his pocket and waved it in front of the two men.

The young man's ID did show that he was a police officer named Pang Ziqi, but the fact that he had come to them so inexplicably and with such a bad attitude made it difficult for Lu Qingjiu to be kind to him, and his tone cooled down: "Officer Pang, we didn't do anything, did we? "

Pang Ziqi looked at Lu Qingjiu for a moment, ignoring his words and reaching out to nod at the table in front of Yin Xun: "I'm asking you, what's your name?"

"My name is Yin Xun, what can I do for you?" he said.

"Where do you live?" Pang Ziqi asks again.

Yin Xun was irritated by his rude questioning and he slammed the table: "What do you mean by that tone of voice, interrogating a prisoner?"

Pang Ziqi laughed at Yin Xun's yell and said, "If you haven't done anything, why should you be afraid to tell me where you live?"

Yin Xun: "Even the police have to give a reason for interrogating people, don't you think it's not very polite to come up and ask questions so suddenly"

Pang Ziqi says: "I'm only polite to people."

Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun both looked frozen for a moment, then Yin Xun's eyes glared and he said angrily, "Officer Pang, how can you call me inhuman?"

Pang Ziqi was about to speak when a hand came up behind him and pressed him on the shoulder, followed by a helpless voice, that of Lu Qingjiu's old acquaintance, policeman Hu Shu: "Sorry to disturb you."

Hu Shu, dressed in civilian clothes, stood behind Pang Ziqi with a bitter smile: "This is our new colleague from the police station."

"He said I'm not human." Yin Xun pushed her heart down and deliberately made an angry face.

"Hey, sorry sorry sorry, little friend is new here." Hu Shu said, "Don't be bothered with him."

Pang Ziqi shrugged off Hu Shu's hand and stood up, "Who are you calling a child?"

Hu Shu said, "You."

Pang Ziqi said, "You're not that much older than me, are you?"

Hu Shu spreads his hands, "A year older is still older."

Pang Ziqi seemed a little upset as he pointed to Lu Qingjiu: "This is someone you know."

"Right." Hu Shu nodded, "That previous case was done thanks to him."

When Pang Ziqi heard this, he looked Lu Qingjiu up and down with a critical eye and said: "You live with him", by which he naturally meant Yin Xun.

"We are from the same village." Lu Qingjiu replied.

"You should also know that you have a bad vibe on you if you know those things too." Pang Ziqi spoke with astonishment.

"Not good how," Lu Qingjiu asks.

"The aura of a ferocious beast is strong." Pang Ziqi said of the ferocious beast and gave Yin Xun a look, "A beast is a beast, although it pretends to be human, once it is stimulated it will reveal its ferocity, and then it will be too late to regret it."

Lu Qingjiu said, "You're very experienced."

Pang Ziqi sneered, "Experience is piled up on the lives of those who have gone before us." He was about to say something else when he saw Lu Qingjiu make a gesture of stopping.

Lu Qingjiu's tone was gentle, but anyone could hear the determination in his words, "Officer Pang, thank you for your advice, but I know my own affairs very well and don't need anyone else to make decisions for me."

Pang Ziqi stared at Lu Qingjiu for a moment and said coldly, "I hope so."

Lu Qingjiu didn't want to talk to him, so he called Yin Xun and left. Pang Ziqi didn't stop them either, except for the unkind gaze that never left his eyes, and I don't know what he was thinking.

Yin Xun was not happy to hear Pang Ziqi's words and muttered that Pang Ziqi was a poor, weak and poor mountain god, and that he could not speak.

Lu Qingjiu said helplessly, "Did it ever occur to you that the beast Pang Ziqi was talking about was not you?"

Yin Xun reacted: "That's wait, he's talking about Bai Yuehu "

Lu Qingjiu: "It's possible." Bai Yuehu is a much more appropriate word for a ferocious beast than Yin Xun.

Yin Xun sighs, "I hate people like that anyway."

Lu Qingjiu didn't say anything as the two of them walked from the teahouse to the door of the bun shop, asking the owner to pack up the buns they had bought, glancing in the direction of the teahouse a few times in the process.

After they had left, Pang Ziqi and Hu Shu sat down where they had been sitting earlier, and they seemed to be arguing heatedly about something. Although they were some distance away, Lu Qingjiu could see

Hu Shu is seen slapping the table with emotion while Pang Ziqi is confronting him with a tit-for-tat.

Lu Qingjiu looked at it for a while, but felt that something seemed wrong.

Yin Xun, who was a non-human and a little more sensitive to these things than he was, wondered, "Hey, that's weird, who's that guy next to Pang Ziqi?"

"What," Lu Qingjiu said, "do you mean Hu Shu?"

"No, it's not Hu Shu," Yin Xun said. Yin Xun said, "Look at the one standing behind him."

Lu Qingjiu takes a closer look and realises that there is a man standing not far behind Pang Ziqi, a woman with long hair, wearing a lime green dress and holding a brown umbrella, so large and deep that it covers her face.

At first glance, the woman appears to have nothing to do with Pang Ziqi, but a closer look reveals that she seems to be deliberately standing behind him.

"What is this?" Lu Qingjiu was a little surprised that this thing should not belong to the human category, even if he would not have noticed a person standing behind Pang Ziqi if Yin Xun had not said something earlier.

"I don't know." Yin Xun looked at it. Yin Xun looked at it, "It doesn't look like anything good," and there was an air of uncertainty about it that made people reluctant to go near it.

Lu Qingjiu said, "He didn't notice."

Yin Xun said, "I don't think so."

As he walked forward, the woman with the umbrella standing behind him moved forward with him, seemingly without feet, walking on the ground as if she were floating in mid-air. When Pang Ziqi is fast, she is fast, and when Pang Ziqi is slow, she is slow.

Lu Qingjiu looked a little creeped out.

After sending Pang Ziqi away, Hu Shu sighed and came over to Lu Qingjiu and apologized again, explaining that Pang Ziqi was sent from above and would only stay here for a while, and because of the special department, he was also extraordinarily arrogant, but in fact he was not particularly bad

As he spoke, he noticed that Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun were both lost in thought and froze, "What are you two looking at?"

Yin Xun pulled Hu Shu over and pointed at Pang Ziqi, who was about to walk away: "Did you see anything?"

"What's that?" Hu Shu was confused.

"Just weird people and stuff." Yin Xun asked.

"Strange people," Hu Shu said, "I don't think there is a stranger person in this town than Pang Ziqi."

Since he said that, he must have lost sight of the woman in green who was following Pang Ziqi. Lu Qingjiu said politely, "Then talk to Pang Ziqi when you go back, I feel that something is following him." He didn't dare to say too clearly.

"Okay, but that's what his department does." Hu Shu waved his hand, "You guys don't have to worry too much."

After Lu Qingjiu asked him carefully, he found out that a special department had been sent from above because something else had happened, but of course Hu Shu didn't tell them exactly what it was because of the need for confidentiality.

Hu Shu helped them carry the buns to the car and wondered why they had bought so many buns, even for a family of three, they would have to eat for weeks.

Lu Qingjiu smiled and didn't say anything, knowing that the buns were the size of Bai Yuehu's meal.

When they got home, Lu Qingjiu reheated the buns, cut up some pickles and congee, and the three of them ate them. The taste of the dumplings had not changed at all, they were still thin-skinned and stuffed, with a bite full of rich meat sauce and a firm, elastic filling that even Lu Qingjiu could eat in one bite.

As he ate, Lu Qingjiu recounted the events of the day in town, skipping some of the details and focusing on the woman who was following Pang Ziqi, and he and Yin Xun were both a little curious as to what it was.

Bai Yuehu, after hearing this, said that humans are really bold.

"What do you mean by bold?" Lu Qingjiu didn't understand.

Bai Yuehu said, "Well, he touched what he shouldn't have touched."

"What is it that you shouldn't touch." Yin Xun said, "It's a curse."

Bai Yuehu said, "I don't know about that, but he must have been very clear about it himself." He is clearly not interested in Pang Ziqi's death.

Looking at Bai Yuehu's reaction, Lu Qingjiu knew that the food was definitely not good, otherwise Bai Yuehu's attitude would not have been so cold.

"It's scary to be followed by something like that." Yin Xun is distraught, "and he doesn't seem to be able to see it himself."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Yes."

This was something they were curious about, but did not take to heart and passed on.

Yin Xun, who knows the mountains well, said that there was a wild plum forest and that the plums were almost ripe, so he asked Lu Qingjiu to go up with him to pick some.

The fruiting period is very short, only about ten days, and as the flesh is not protected by the outer skin, it is easily pecked by insects and birds, so wild plums are rare. This patch of plums was specially preserved by Yin Xun.

Lu Qingjiu carried a basket up the hill with Yin Xun and after walking through the dense jungle, they saw the plum grove that Yin Xun had described.

The plum trees are not very tall, and the bright green branches are covered with fiery red plums, some of which turn a beautiful purple colour when they are ripe.

"Yes, it's very sweet." Yin Xun says, "These are the trees I take care of every year."

Lu Qingjiu said, "You can eat all of this."

Yin Xun said, "If we can't finish it, we'll take it down the mountain and sell it for money, and buy some meat with the money left over."

Lu Qingjiu: ""Why does it sound so tragic?

Lu Qingjiu was fine, but Yin Xun's teeth were so soft that he didn't even eat his dinner after having a full stomach.

Lu Qingjiu looked really funny.

Bai Yuehu also liked the plums, so Lu Qingjiu washed them and brought them to him in a big pot and put them in front of him to be eaten. Yin Xun looked at him with a grimace, he hadn't had enough, but his teeth were dying. Bai Yuehu ate openly in the face of Yin Xun's gaze, without even giving him a second glance.

In the end, most of the dozens of catties of plums went into Bai Yuehu's belly, Lu Qingjiu even gave some to Li Xiaoyu's family next door, and the rest was made into plum sauce.

The plums are perfect for making sauces, similar to cherries, and because of their moisture and sweetness, the resulting cans are sweet and sour, and in summer they are even better than sour plum soup when used in water with ice cubes. The summer is almost half over, and as autumn is about to begin, Lu Qingjiu is planning to go to town to buy some more seeds for the autumn.

Originally, farming was very seasonal and many crops needed to be planted in advance, but since Bai Yuehu had taken over the task of planting, Lu Qingjiu was able to save himself a lot of trouble, as long as he provided Bai Yuehu with the seeds, he would get the appropriate crops after a while. Sometimes when Lu Qingjiu was passing by the village, he would meet an old lady or an old woman and have a chat with them, and they would praise Bai Yuehu for being a good cultivator, and say that although he was a good-looking boy, he was very good at what he did.

Lu Qingjiu had mixed feelings after hearing the older lady's words, thinking that the fox spirits in other families are all voluptuous, but the fox spirits in his family are so different from other sultry sluts, all their strength is put into the fields. So he went home and took pity on her and made a big pot of beef stew in the evening.

Yin Xun was bewildered and asked if something good had happened at home, but Lu Qingjiu looked at him and Bai Yuehu with loving eyes and then gave them each a chopstick of beef, telling them to eat more.

Yin Xun: ""What really happened.

Lu Qingjiu finished his meal and asked Yin Xun to wash the dishes, saying that he had to go to town to buy some seeds and spices, and that he was going to brine some chicken feet and beef for a snack in the evening, but he had almost run out of brine ingredients at home.

"Go on go on." Yin Xun said, "Come back early."

Lu Qingjiu nodded his head in agreement. He walked over to the van with his backpack, opened the bonnet of the van and stuffed a handful of juice gummies inside, then patted the head of the van and said, "Tough job, going to town again."

The minivan blared twice in delight and ran a little faster this time down the hill.

Lu Qingjiu left at noon, intending to buy the seeds and spices and go straight back, preferably early so that he could have marinated chicken feet in the evening.

Lu Qingjiu parked his car and went to the seed shop to buy some seeds for the autumn. As he was settling the bill with the owner at the door after choosing his seeds, his eyes noticed a familiar figure walking down the street.

Lu Qingjiu turned his head and saw Pang Ziqi, who had not been very nice to them before. When he got a good look at Pang Ziqi, his eyes instantly widened and a look of horror came out of his pupils.

"What's wrong," the seed shop owner asked, puzzled when he saw Lu Qingjiu's expression of discomfort.

"No, nothing." Lu Qingjiu shook his head.

"You know this new policeman," said the seed shop owner, thinking that Lu Qingjiu had a problem with Pang Ziqi, "He's not very good-tempered, but he does his job well, I heard he was transferred from the top and he's not here long."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Oh," he responded vaguely, but the fright in his eyes did not diminish.

The woman with the umbrella was standing behind Pang Ziqi, her head on Pang Ziqi's shoulder, and the umbrella in her hand over their heads. This time, Lu Qingjiu saw the woman's face clearly, a face that could not be considered human at all.

Lu Qingjiu's scalp tingled as he watched, and he was about to withdraw his gaze when he noticed that the woman had noticed him at some point, her head tilted this way, and her eyes looked over.

Lu Qingjiu's back immediately went cold at the stare of her eyes, which were only the whites of her eyes, and he pretended not to see the woman, withdrawing his gaze without a second thought, yet the malevolent stare did not disappear until Pang Ziqi, who was patrolling the streets, disappeared around the corner.

What the hell is that thing? What has Pang Ziqi gotten himself into? Lu Qingjiu thought with trepidation, that thing looks like it's not to be messed with, and if Bai Yuehu is right, Pang Ziqi is in for a rough ride.

The author has something to say.

Lu Qingjiu: What brought us together, was it love?

Bai Yuehu: It's poverty.

Lu Qingjiu.