Chapter 142 Taoist Temple

Chapter 142: The Daoist Temple

The room was small, neatly arranged, with a bed inside and a basket at the head filled with odds and ends.

Against the wall stood a wardrobe, not very tall, but big enough to hide a person.

Meng Wan glanced around—this room seemed lived-in, and he just hoped it wasn’t the Daoist’s room.

He slipped into the wardrobe. The craftsmanship was crude, unlike the modern ones that were airtight; even with the doors closed, there were gaps for ventilation, saving him the trouble of leaving a crack that might give him away.

The full moon of the fifteenth night was round and bright, shining through the paper window covering and lighting up the room like a streetlamp. Bored, he began to carefully examine what he could see through the gaps in the wardrobe.

Hmm… under that basket, there seemed to be something wrapped in a cloth—was that oil stain seeping through? A chicken leg?

Meng Wan swallowed, craving it.

He fought back his appetite and continued scanning the wardrobe.

The owner must be a child—the clothes were all small, fitting someone between ten and fourteen years old. Such a young age, yet all the robes were gray Daoist robes.

I'm so hungry, Mom. I want chicken legs too…

That young Daoist who was handing out incense in the main hall earlier—the age matched. This should be his room, right?

When will Song Tingzhou come back? He’s about to become a father, how can he be so unreliable?

No wonder the higher-ups were so kind as to send Song Tingzhou troops—there must have been cases of whole units getting wiped out on the way.

Song Jingxing, you bastard!!!

—

“Xiao Ci, did you put away all the silver your father prepared for you?”

Suddenly, two people slipped into the silent room without a sound.

Chu Yujing softly asked the young Daoist in front of her, her gaze full of affection.

The young Daoist nodded silently.

Chu Yujing slowly hugged him, her voice restrained and pained, “Now there’s a perfect opportunity. A big shot has come to town, definitely from an official family. Soon, Dad will be able to take you out of here. We’ll go back to your maternal grandfather’s hometown—there are mountains and clear waters, and every house has a stream and a little bridge in front…”

She spoke to the young Daoist for a long time, waking Meng Wan, who had been dozing off in the wardrobe, but the young Daoist didn’t respond once.

Meng Wan thought it over for a moment. Chu Yujing was safe and sound here, so Qing Xing and Min Geer should be fine too, though he didn’t know where they were hiding.

He didn’t come out to confront Chu Yujing directly. Chen Yong must have known that she had a son in the Daoist temple, since the Daoist and Chen Yong were likely in cahoots. Could this son be a hostage or leverage Chen Yong left with the Daoist?

Chu Yujing was desperate to get her son out of town, and her words clearly hinted that she had guessed Song Tingzhou was an official, intending to use him.

Chu Yujing was familiar with the town, the Chen family, and the Daoist temple. What if she deliberately set Meng Wan up to die here, provoking Song Tingzhou to retaliate against the Chen family, shattering the town’s shackles and letting her and her son escape far away?

Putting himself in her shoes, Meng Wan might very well do something like that, so he couldn’t trust anyone easily.

Chu Yujing had come to see her son, likely seizing some opportunity, and after a while, she bid him farewell and left. Throughout, the young Daoist gave no response.

After Chu Yujing left, the young Daoist stood still for a moment, then suddenly strode over and yanked open the wardrobe door.

A sharp, thin dagger thrust straight toward his face. The young Daoist’s pupils instantly contracted, and he held his breath.

Meng Wan smoothly placed the dagger against his neck, raising an eyebrow. “Little Daoist, you’ve got guts.”

Even in such a life-threatening moment, he didn’t make a sound.

But Meng Wan quickly noticed something off. He asked in surprise, “Are you mute?”

The other boy just stared back at him with eyes far more mature than his age, dark and unsettling, showing little fear of death.

Meng Wan hissed under his breath. No wonder Chen Yong was willing to hand over his son as a hostage—he couldn’t speak.

Though he didn’t know how he’d been found out, since this little Daoist had discovered him, he couldn’t just let him go.

Should he just kill him?

A flicker of murderous intent passed through Meng Wan’s eyes, caught by the young Daoist, who finally raised his hands and started gesturing frantically.

Meng Wan said impatiently, “I don’t understand.”

The dagger hadn’t broken the skin, but it still caused a stinging pain. The young Daoist’s previously calm expression cracked slightly.

Reluctantly, he pointed to the basket of odds and ends by the bed. Meng Wan led him over and watched as he awkwardly pulled out a stack of paper and a brush.

“Don’t kill me. I can take you out of here,” the young Daoist wrote on the paper, his characters large and ugly. It seemed that when his life was truly threatened, the kid didn’t want to die after all.

“If it’s so easy to leave, why haven’t you and Chu Yujing gone?” Meng Wan didn’t believe him. The kid was clearly full of tricks.

The young Daoist wrote haltingly, “My master poisoned me. I have to get the antidote before I can leave. Without his medicine to suppress the poison for a month, I’ll die.”

“Poisoned? Chu Yujing doesn’t know you’re poisoned?” Meng Wan recalled that Chu Yujing’s words had only mentioned being bound by Chen Yong, not a word about the young Daoist’s poisoning.

The young Daoist paused his brush and wrote two words, “She knows.”

She knows her son is poisoned? That was strange. Chu Yujing hadn’t mentioned the antidote at all. Without it, even if they escaped the town, the young Daoist would only live a month, never making it to Suzhou.

This Chu Yujing seemed gentle and harmless on the surface, but she was full of secrets. Truly, no one could be underestimated.

Meng Wan grew even more distrustful of everyone in this town. “You said you have a way to send me out. What is it?”

The young Daoist pressed his lips together and wrote, “If you help me get the antidote and take me out of Pingshi Town, I’ll tell you how to leave.”

Meng Wan didn’t believe a word. “Who knows if you’re telling the truth? What if you get the antidote and then betray me?”

Hearing this, the young Daoist wrote urgently, “If you don’t help me, you won’t get out either. The mountain demon isn’t satisfied yet. Leaving the temple now is suicide. Once tonight passes, the townspeople will find you, and you’ll die anyway. No—with your looks, my master might even keep you alive to peel your skin!”

Meng Wan’s heart tightened. “What exactly is this mountain demon? Don’t try to fool me with that mountain god nonsense.”

The young Daoist thought for a moment and wrote, “My master created it. It’s originally a mutated white wolf. My master has many other crazy ideas. He had Boss Chen and many others in town catch a lot of beasts, all locked up in the temple.”

Meng Wan still found it hard to believe. “How can a wolf and a human head stitched together still live?”

“It’s not a head, but the skin.” The seven characters the young Daoist wrote sent a chill down his spine.

Meng Wan was stunned for a long time. This Daoist was a madman. He had to leave as soon as possible.

He bluffed to the young Daoist, “My family has five hundred troops waiting outside the town. If I don’t show up, they’ll raze Pingshi Town to the ground.”

The young Daoist scribbled quickly, “With that many people, you still got tricked?”

Meng Wan coughed dryly. “So, how do we steal the antidote? Can we slip your master some knockout drops?”

The young Taoist wrote speechlessly: "Do you know why my master's hair is half black and half white? It's all caused by him poisoning himself. Knockout drugs are completely useless against him. I'll find a way to lure him away, and you go to his alchemy room to steal the antidote."

Before this, he couldn't find any helpers. Now that he had finally met Meng Wan, the young Taoist thought this was the most feasible plan.

"No." Meng Wan refused decisively. The Strange Taoist was far too dangerous.

"Not to mention I know nothing about medicine and can't tell poison from antidote. What if you fail midway and he returns early?" Meng Wan absolutely refused to entrust his life to someone else.

The young Taoist wrote: "Then what do you suggest?"

Meng Wan's beautiful eyes narrowed slightly as he calmly spoke the most brutal words: "We'll find a way to kill your master first, then you can slowly search for the antidote yourself. The townspeople fear and respect him, but beasts won't care, right?" He was only half convinced that the young Taoist actually knew a way out, but if they killed the Strange Taoist, the Taoist temple would be much safer, giving him time to figure out an escape on his own.

Although the young Taoist was mature for his age, he was still a child. Upon hearing Meng Wan's words, his expression shattered. Staring at him with his mouth agape, he trembled as he wrote on the paper: "Kill?"

In the main hall of the Taoist temple, the townspeople dared not touch any of the temple's items. The main door was wide open, and the cold wind blew into the hall, yet no one dared to close it. At this critical moment between life and death, no one cared about the distinction between men and women anymore; they all huddled together.

In the early morning hours, the massive form of the mountain demon appeared outside the temple. Its entire human head and half of its beastly body were covered in blood and filth. The townspeople were so terrified they didn't even dare to breathe. With their eyes closed, they chanted whatever came to mind—"Amitabha," "Infinite Tao," "Guan Yin Bodhisattva"—whatever deity came to mind, they prayed to.

The mountain demon stared hungrily at the people inside the hall, a trail of blood-red drool flowing onto the ground. Yet it seemed to have some hesitation about the Taoist temple, ultimately not breaking in. Instead, it ran into the forest near the temple.

The townspeople had escaped disaster, but no one wanted to leave. They all waited for dawn.

In the backyard of the Taoist temple, the mountain demon, which should have been in the forest, was instead in the Strange Taoist's alchemy room. It watched as he processed and polished the bones stripped from a pile of corpses, finally refining them into white bone rods and then grinding them bit by bit into powder, sealing them in jars. The mountain demon closed its eyes in boredom.

The young Taoist was nearby, scrubbing the beast with water from a large bucket. The beast obediently let him handle it, showing none of the ferocity it had displayed when devouring people on the street earlier.

After a while, someone came straight to the door. Though startled by the creature, she quickly suppressed her fear.

"Master, when will the medicine you're refining be ready? My husband has been holding on for some time now, but he can't last much longer."

The Strange Taoist roared angrily: "Madam Chen, how dare you come to question me? You promised the virgin boys and the handsome young man, but of the seven people you offered, five were corpses. Where are the other two living ones?"

If there were live captives, the mountain demon would have carried them back for him to dissect.