Chapter 64: This Seat Tells a Story to My Brother

Ran looked over and saw the answer appearing and stumbling down the stone steps of the palace.

The child was three or four years old, clutching a small bamboo pinwheel and bouncing towards Master Chu. He is dressed in a small, plain shirt, with a jade collar, a lucky name lock and a red silk amulet on his lapel, just like a smaller Master Chu.

"" Mo Ran knew, this time, the reason for the cavalry to cross their fingers.

He couldn't help but murmur, "Senior, you and your master are both Lin'an, and your master's surname is also Chu, do you think this Chu family, which is more than two hundred years old, could be your clan family, you two couldn't be some kind of distant relatives I think it's very possible."

Chu Wanning didn't say anything, but also stared at the two men.

He had never known his origins and could not remember much from his youth.

Could this Master Chu really be one of his ancestors?

As I was thinking about it, the queue arrived at Mo Ran.

Master Chu raised his eyes and was about to give Mo Ran a talisman, but when he saw a new face, he was stunned, then smiled gently: "A stranger, new to this place."

His voice is mellow and refined, a far cry from Chu Wanning's icy sternness.

"Ahhh yes, yes."

I can't tell you how it felt to have someone who looked so much like his mentor talking to him so kindly.

The Prince of the Imperial Guard smiled slightly, "I am Chu Xun, may I ask your surname?"

"My, my last name is Mo, and my name is Mo Ran ."

"Where did Mr. Mo come from in Lin'an?"

"Far, far away, in the Shu, Middle Shu Area." Even with the gentle demeanour of Chu Xun, Mo Ran felt he was about to be seen through by this man.

Chu Xun was stunned, then smiled modestly and said, "It is indeed a long way off." He paused, his gaze dropping a few inches to catch sight of Chu Wanning standing next to him, a hint of surprise appearing on his elegant face.

"This is."

"My name is Xia Sini." Chu Wanning said.

Mo Ran brought him to his side, stroked his head and smiled dryly, "This is my brother."

It doesn't look like me, it looks like you.

Perhaps Chu Xun had no time to think about it because of the urgency of the situation with a major war looming. Or perhaps he was just a character in a fantasy world and could not react too strongly to things that were not part of it. In any case, he frowned and looked at Chu Wanning for a moment longer before handing them the two drawn talismans.

"A visitor from afar is a guest, not to mention the fact that the people are not living in peace these days. Please accept these two talismans, and if you have no other arrangements, why don't you stay in the city for two more days?"

Mo Ran said, "I've heard all about it. Is your son going to take the people to Putuo? What is this paper for?"

"This talisman is the Soul Extinguishing Talisman." Chu Xun explained, "worn on the body it can conceal the breath of the living."

Mo Ran immediately understood: "Ah, I see. If we seal the breath of the living person, the ghosts will not be able to perceive whether the other person is dead or alive. That way even if we walk past in front of the evil spirits, they will still be confused and not know what to do."

Chu Xun smiled and said, "Exactly."

Mo Ran saw that he was busy and was not in a position to ask any more questions, so he thanked Duke Chu Xun and dragged his younger brother to the side.

As they sat by the wall, Mo Ran turned his face to the side and saw that his younger brother was holding the piece of paper and asked, "What are you thinking about?"

"I was thinking that it does seem like a good idea." Chu Wanning mused quietly, "and yet somehow they didn't end up going."

"It's not in the book."

Chu Wanning says: "The most detailed account of this disaster two hundred years ago is found in the Lin'an commentary. But there are only a few lines."

Mo Ran asked, "What does it say in the book?"

"Lin'an was besieged and the scene in the city was unknown. When the volunteers broke the siege, they saw the corpses leaning on the road and nine of the ten rooms were empty. All of the 100 members of the Imperial Guard and the 740 families of the Qianshou were dead."

"" Mo Ran said, "Was the cause of death not even written down?"

"There is no record of it. The city of Lin'an was besieged and few survived. A few survivors were later rescued by the Feathermen, but the Feathermen were often uninvolved in the world and thought differently from mortals. In their eyes, it did not matter what the truth was, and even if they knew, they would not tell the world for no reason."

Chu Wanning paused and continued, "But since they are leaving in two days' time. What exactly happened then will also be seen soon. Why don't we walk around again and maybe we can scout out some clues."

The two men put away the Soul Extinguishing Talisman and were about to leave.

A footstep was heard, followed by a tug on Chu Wanning's sleeve.

"Little brother."

Chu Wanning looked back and it turned out to be the little male who looked quite like himself. The little male was extremely young and said in a milky voice, "Little brother, father said you have no place to stay here, if you don't mind, you can stay at our house tonight."

"This."

Chu Wanning and Mo Ran looked at each other.

Mo Ran asked, "Is it convenient that your dad is already so busy."

"It doesn't matter." The little one smiled warmly, "There are already many people living in the house who have no place to stay, so we all live together. With daddy around, we're not scared at night, there are no ghosts."

His speech is still incoherent, but his simplicity and enthusiasm are heart-wrenching to hear.

Mo Ran said, "Good, then we'll come and bother you at the house in the evening, thank you, little brother."

"Hey, hey, no thanks to me, no thanks to me."

Watching him bounce away, Mo Ran took Chu Wanning's hand and said, "Hey, I'm telling the truth."

"I know what you're going to say, you shut up."

"Hahahaha. You know again" Mo Ran laughed and rubbed a handful of his hair, "When we get back to the mountain, I really need to ask Master, one of you looks like the older one and the other one looks like the younger one. I wouldn't even believe you if you said you didn't have any blood with Ch'u Taishou."

Chu Wanning: "So what if there is blood."

"Ah."

Chu Wanning looked lightly at the father and son under the tree and then said without a ripple, "It was two hundred years ago anyway. They're both dead."

After speaking, he turned and left.

Mo Ran stayed in the same place for a while before he drew his legs to catch up with him, chanting as he walked: "Hey, you say you're such a young kid, how come you're so hostile at such a young age? If it were me, I would have to go back and set up a shrine for them, make a nine-foot-tall golden body and hang jewellery all over it, so that the incense would not be cut off every year. I'm still counting on my ancestors to protect me." "Don't leave so soon.

As the two walked around the city, they found that every house was collecting rice straw and tying scarecrows.

When I asked, I found out that the people of the city had been instructed to do this by the Duke of Chu Xun. Each of the inhabitants of the city, regardless of their age, was required to have a relative scarecrow, wrapped in paper and dripping with their own blood. They were made into so-called "fake puppets".

The reasoning is similar to that of the river god who wanted to eat a human head, so someone made steamed buns and wrapped them in meat and threw them into the river as a sacrifice to the god.

It is important to understand that some ghosts and gods are not very sharp-witted for root and branch reasons. A little trickery can fool them, such as Chu Wanning's ghost master of ceremonies, who they had contacted before.

In this way, Chu Xun has at least prepared the people of the city for two things, the first of which is a charm for extinguishing their souls so that they will not be discovered by the ghosts during their escape.

The second is the straw puppet, because once the ghosts discover that all the people in the city have suddenly disappeared, they are bound to be extremely frantic. Leaving the puppet as a cover can temporarily stabilise them and delay the migration of the city.

But the more this happens, the more suspicion grows in Mo Ran and Chu Wanning's minds.

Why did the Duke of Chu Xun's work fall through when he had already set it up so well?

With such misgivings, they went back to the governor's house. By this time it was already dark. Many of those who lived in remote areas were reluctant to go home and had come to spend the night inside the Shangqing boundary, dragging their families and rolling their bedding with them.

The Imperial Guard House is closed at night, leaving only the kind of white-clad guards seen during the day patrolling in all directions.

When Mo Ran went over, there were no empty rooms left in the house and it was packed with people everywhere, with at least three or four families huddled in one compartment, with no room to stand.

In the end, the two men had to choose a corridor to rest in. Mo Ran asked the guards for some straw and spread it on the ground to soften the bedding, so he took Chu Wanning up there.

"I'll let you sleep here today."

Chu Wanning said, "It's good."

"Yeah?" Mo Ran laughed, "I thought so."

He collapsed beside Chu Wanning and stretched out, then put his arms behind his head and looked at the wooden top of the portico.

"Master, you see how good those birds are at making dreams. Although this dream has the memories of the surviving people as its cornerstone, it is rare that it can be so detailed that even the wood grain on the vault is so clear."

Chu Wanning said, "After all, Feathermen are half-immortals, and although they are not at the top of their game, they have some powers that are beyond the reach of mortals."

"Also." Mo Ran blinked and rolled over, propping her head up to look at Chu Wanning, "I can't sleep."

"" Chu Wanning glanced at him, "Then I'll tell you a story to coax you."

He had originally made a mocking joke, but Mo Ran was so thick-skinned that he laughed and said, "Yes, yes, yes. Tell me a story about the Seven Fairies and Dong Yong."

Chu Wanning, not expecting him to take it seriously, froze, then turned his face away resentfully, "You're thinking big. At your age, you're not ashamed of yourself."

Mo Ran laughed and said, "Look at that, people will always think about what they can't have, it doesn't matter how old they are. When I was little, no one told me any stories, so I always thought about it and thought about it, wishing there was someone who could also coax me. But then that person never came along, and I grew up, so I stopped thinking about it. But I still think about it."

Chu Wanning :""

"No one told you stories when you were a child, either."

"Hmm."

"Haha, so you don't actually know how to tell the story of Dong Yong and the Seven Fairies, do you?"

Chu Wanning: "What is there to say about this kind of waffle."

"No means no, and don't say it's anything rambunctious. You'll have to grow up like this and become a particularly boring person like my master, who doesn't like to talk to anyone."

Chu Wanning said angrily, "If you don't care, you don't care, go to sleep."

After saying this, he lies down and closes his eyes.

Mo Ran rolled around laughing and rolled over to Chu Wanning, where he looked at his little brother with his eyes closed, his eyelashes dark and long, cute, so he reached out and squeezed his face.

"Really sleeping"

"Asleep."

"Haha." Mo Ran laughed, "Then you fall asleep and I'll tell you a story."

"You can tell a story."

"Yeah, just like you would talk in your sleep."

Chu Wanning shut up.

Mo Ran lay beside him, the two of them resting on the straw, their heads close to each other. Mo Ran laughed for a while, but when he saw that his brother was ignoring him, he gradually stopped laughing so much, except that his eyes were still curved, looking at the roof of the veranda, the rough smell of grain and rice running up his nose every now and then, and his voice was calm and tranquil.

"The story I tell you is one I made up myself. I used to be envious when no one told me stories to coax me, but there was nothing I could do about it, so every day, lying in bed, I told myself stories to myself. The one I tell you is my favourite, and I have given it a name, called the cow eating grass."