Chapter 6

As the donkey named Lǘzi saw Zhang Wenfeng slowly approaching, it began to bray, its voice hoarse and breathless.

The donkey’s head kept nodding down towards the wooden trough, frantically hinting that it hadn’t eaten a single bite all night, damn it.

"Alright, alright, I’ll add more feed and water for you. Stop braying, it sounds terrible. You, if you’re hungry, can’t you go down the mountain to the stream and find some green grass to eat? It’s not that far, and you still need me to take care of you?"

Zhang Wenfeng was in a good mood and teased the black donkey, which was anxiously pacing around, using the refined language of the Daan Kingdom.

He didn’t notice the contempt hidden in the donkey’s sidelong glance.

He walked to the side warehouse where the hay, corn stalks, and beans were stored, cutting and mixing the feed to give the starving donkey an extra meal.

The Daan Kingdom, where he was located, was vast, encompassing eighteen states, each with six to ten counties.

According to his memory, the Daan Kingdom had been established for over 520 years, promoting Daoist teachings, and adjusting taxes and corvée labor according to the annual harvest. Occasionally, there were disturbances by ghosts, bandits, and rebels, but they were all suppressed.

The kingdom bordered three other countries, and every ten years or so, there were rumors of war.

The Immortal Spirit Temple was located in Yuanyang County, under Nanjiang State, in Xiling County.

Xiling County was not a remote and desolate place, with abundant resources.

The local customs and governance were relatively good, though not to the point where people wouldn’t pick up lost items, there were no rampant bandits or widespread famine.

The temple, besides him, the former abbot’s closed disciple, had two elderly men who handled miscellaneous tasks, a lame man named Zhang Yifang, who was responsible for the kitchen and cleaning outside the temple, and a hunchback named Zhang Wencai, who farmed and grew vegetables on the mountain.

They all shared the surname Zhang, and like Zhang Wenfeng, were distant relatives of the former abbot, Zhang Yixian.

Yesterday, after dinner, the two men took leave to return to Zhang Family Village, five miles to the south, for the hunchback’s second son’s full moon celebration. The hunchback took the lame man to help with the kitchen, and they wouldn’t return until the guests dispersed the day after tomorrow.

The Immortal Spirit Temple was said to have a lineage of over 500 years, dating back to the founding of the Daan Kingdom.

Zhang Wenfeng needed to thoroughly review these old stories.

After filling the two wooden troughs with hay and clean water for the donkey, he walked to the kitchen outside the courtyard wall.

As the abbot, besides his daily practice of chanting, drawing talismans, and studying medicine, he spent part of his day working in the fields.

As his former abbot and master often said, "A practitioner must understand human suffering. True Dao is found in daily life. Deliberate pursuit can easily lead to self-attachment. What is learned from books is shallow; the practice of Dao requires personal experience."

Zhang Wenfeng, born into poverty, took his master’s teachings to heart.

He could handle both the hall and the kitchen, wield a brush to paint landscapes, and perform swordsmanship in the fields. These skills were honed through daily practice over the years.

His master, who had taught him to follow the natural way and had since passed away, rarely ventured into the fields or the kitchen.

With clean hands and a mind focused on the divine arts, he was a man of high virtue.

It was said that ten Daoists were nine doctors, and the former abbot was skilled in medicine, talismans, feng shui, divination, and various refined arts like music, chess, calligraphy, and painting. With his white beard and dignified appearance, he rarely left the temple to perform rituals or handle funerals.

His reputation spread far and wide, reaching the county.

Even though Xiling County was over twenty miles away, before the former abbot’s passing, the Immortal Spirit Temple often welcomed distinguished guests who came to offer incense, seek medical help, and obtain talismans, making it a bustling place, unlike its current impoverished state.

Under his influence, Zhang Wenfeng learned a bit of everything and was skilled in the kitchen.

He quickly started a fire, boiled water, and kneaded dough. He scooped two spoons of clear oil from the oil can and cooked pickled vegetables and salted meat in another iron pot, making a large bowl of knife-cut noodles.

After filling his stomach with the noodles, Zhang Wenfeng let out a satisfied belch, cleaned up the kitchen utensils, and walked to the shade in front of the temple square to walk around and digest, while also organizing his thoughts.

He searched his memory, and this body was healthy and knew some medical skills.

There were no external or internal injuries, no signs of poisoning. Why did it die suddenly around the fifth watch of the night?

It was truly strange.

Another thing puzzled him: in the netherworld, he could understand the words of the person who called his soul, but why couldn’t he understand them in the outside world?

Could it be that reciting Daoist scriptures had a special effect in the netherworld?

After circling back and forth for over ten rounds, Zhang Wenfeng suddenly stopped and slightly tilted his head towards the low mountain forest to the southwest. This body practiced Daoist breathing and internal cultivation, with a warm qi in the lower dantian, enhancing his senses. He had just noticed that someone seemed to be watching from there.

After searching carefully for a while, Zhang Wenfeng withdrew his gaze in doubt. Could he have sensed it incorrectly?

After some thought, he turned and walked to the back courtyard of the temple to his thatched hut, took down the three-foot-three-inch sword hanging on the mud wall and wooden pillar (one foot in this book equals 23 centimeters, based on the Han dynasty measurement), and passed by the animal shed, preparing to leave through the back gate to investigate.

"Ah... ah... uh..."

The black donkey suddenly brayed as Zhang Wenfeng quietly passed by.

Zhang Wenfeng was genuinely startled, but then he was amused by the donkey, which had eaten its fill and wanted to be close to him.

Well, even if someone was watching, they would have heard the commotion and fled by now.

He fastened the sword to his left waist, gently patted the donkey’s head, and opened the wooden corridor door, entering the shed to untie the rope from the post, leading the black donkey down the mountain to let it graze.

Since the yellow ox had been frightened and rolled down the hill, breaking its hind leg, and was sold by the lame man and the hunchback, the heavy work of grinding flour and plowing the fields had fallen to the donkey. They planned to buy a new calf next spring.

It was already mid-autumn, and the winter days were long. Keeping an extra animal would be a heavy burden, so the hunchback and the lame man suggested waiting to see the calf market next year before making a decision.

After reaching the stream by the low mountain forest, Zhang Wenfeng released the rope, letting the gentle black donkey graze freely.

He carefully searched the low mountain top and soon stopped at a patch of flattened grass. The indentation in the grass was the right size to fit a person, with fresh broken grass stems and several faint footprints in the nearby mud, spaced much farther apart than a normal person’s.

Zhang Wenfeng’s eyes showed deep thought. The person watching him was a skilled martial artist.

He suspected that the person’s motives were not pure and might be related to the sudden death of the body.

Otherwise, for a skilled person to come and spy at such a convenient time was too coincidental.

The person’s sneaky and hidden movements suggested they were up to no good.

The temple didn’t have many valuable items to steal, except for the black donkey and about fifteen stones of winter grain.

Even if the Daoist ritual items were stolen, they would be hard to sell and could leave clues for the authorities and the Daoist registry, which would always investigate and punish those who harmed the temple without mercy.

After much thought, with too few clues, Zhang Wenfeng gave up on the speculative thinking. Since he had come back to life and was now on guard, he wasn’t afraid of being harmed by the thief.

The most pressing matter was to understand his own abilities and cultivation methods.

He needed to know himself before he could know others, and be prepared for any eventuality.