Chapter 7

"Master, what is the character below the first one, which is 'Shang'?" Lao Wu asked.

"Qing." Mo Wen picked up a few pieces of firewood and threw them into the fire.

"What is 'Shang Qing'?" Lao Wu asked casually.

"The three patriarchs of Daoism are known as the Three Pure Ones, and Shang Qing is one of them." Mo Wen replied. Daoism and Confucianism coexist, and Confucian classics were precisely the main subjects Mo Wen studied.

"What is written on the back of the wooden tablet?" Lao Wu asked curiously.

Hearing this, Mo Wen moved closer to the fire, using the light to examine the small characters on the back of the wooden tablet. The tablet was no larger than a palm, with densely written small characters from right to left and top to bottom, divided into five columns:

Column one: "Millennium Dharma Assembly, Shang Qing personally arrives, selecting the best from the world, boundless salvation of people."

Column two: "Wuliang Mountain, Minzhou, Shang Qing Dharma Field."

Column three: "First day of the first month of the Xin Chou year."

Column four: "Bring ten taels of silver."

Column five: "Yi Wei 924."

After reading, Mo Wen shook his head and smiled bitterly, then threw the wooden tablet into the fire.

"Master, what's wrong?" Lao Wu asked, puzzled by Mo Wen's action.

"This is an invitation from a dishonest Daoist to deceive people under the pretense of taking disciples." Mo Wen replied casually. Camphor is a good wood, fragrant and easy to carve, so "selecting the best" implies choosing capable people, and "boundless salvation" means spreading the Dao.

"What does it say? Read it out, let me hear too." Lao Wu was very curious and handed his wooden tablet to Mo Wen.

Mo Wen, helpless, read out the words on the wooden tablet. The content on both tablets was roughly the same, except for the last column, which read "Yi Wei 369" on this tablet.

"Master, how do you know it's a scam?" Lao Wu didn't catch the hint.

"Have you ever seen an immortal?" Mo Wen countered.

"No, how could we ever see an immortal?" Lao Wu shook his head.

"That's right. Shang Qing is one of the three immortals with the highest supernatural powers in legend. How could he descend to the mortal world to take disciples? Besides, immortals live on the wind and dew, detached from the world. If they took money to spread the Dao, wouldn't they become street performers?" Mo Wen said.

"That's true. What does the last line mean?" Lao Wu nodded and asked again.

"It's a number based on the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. One cycle of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches is sixty years. If the numbers were complete, there should be tens of thousands of the same number." Mo Wen returned the wooden tablet to Lao Wu.

"No one can take tens of thousands of disciples." Lao Wu took the wooden tablet and was about to throw it into the fire.

"Don't burn it, keep it." Mo Wen stopped Lao Wu.

"Why keep it?" Lao Wu asked.

Mo Wen didn't answer Lao Wu's question. Lao Wu had been possessed by the old scholar, which had scared him half to death. This wooden tablet was given by a Daoist, and whether it was real or fake, keeping it would be beneficial and harmless.

The night passed without incident. The next morning, the two of them got up and searched for food in the city. North of Qingping City was the territory of the Hu people, and the journey ahead was fraught with danger. Mo Wen anticipated many dangers on the northward journey but wasn't sure where they would come from. The only preparation he could make in advance was to collect as much dry food as possible.

There had been many soldiers stationed here, and there was plenty of food, though most of it had been taken by the Hu people. They still managed to collect a lot of scattered grains. There were remnants of stoves and cooking utensils, and Xiao Wu baked many millet cakes. By noon, the two of them left Qingping City with dry food and warm clothes they had picked up.

North of Qingping City was extremely desolate. The roads were overgrown with weeds, houses were collapsed, and fields were abandoned. The Hu people had established the state of Zhao for over a decade, and this area was on the border between the two countries. No one dared to live here, and they had fled long ago.

After walking thirty miles, the snow on the ground began to thin, and hoof prints and wheel tracks appeared in the snow. There was no sign of human habitation for dozens of miles, and these hoof prints and wheel tracks were undoubtedly left by the Hu people who had invaded the south.

Continuing north, they occasionally saw excrement on the roadside. The excrement was scattered and not far from the road, indicating that the Hu people were not only cruel and savage but also shameless.

The two walked quickly and by evening had covered over seventy miles. On a wind-protected slope, they found traces of the Hu people's previous rest stops. The snow had melted, and they could see scattered pieces of women's torn clothing. At that time, virtuous women's clothing was mostly blue and green, with little red. However, Mo Wen saw red. In the grass to the east, there was a red skirt.

"Master, it looks like Madam's skirt." Lao Wu ran over and picked up the already torn red skirt.

Mo Wen closed his eyes and nodded. According to etiquette, women should wear a top and pants, with a skirt over them, regardless of the season. However, in Xiyang County, there were few wealthy families, and poor girls couldn't afford to buy fabric to make skirts. Only the daughters of merchants and officials could wear skirts all year round. This red skirt could only have belonged to Lin Ruochen, no one else.

"Master, was Madam violated by them?" Lao Wu's eyes widened.

Mo Wen opened his eyes and looked at Xiao Wu blankly, neither nodding nor shaking his head. He had anticipated what would happen, but he hadn't expected the Hu people to ravage the captured women in the wilderness, and among the many violated women was his wife.

"Master, did you guess the Hu people would do this?" Lao Wu guessed from Mo Wen's expression that he had been prepared.

"A sheep in the tiger's mouth cannot escape unscathed." Mo Wen nodded silently.

Lao Wu didn't say more and handed the torn red skirt to Mo Wen, "Master, do you want it?"

Mo Wen stared at the torn red skirt, hesitated for a moment, and then reached out to take it.

"Master, are you really going to keep this?" Lao Wu didn't let go.

"Against her will, she cannot be blamed." Mo Wen sighed. He understood what Xiao Wu meant. At that time, there were five reasons a husband could divorce his wife, and the first was the loss of chastity.

"Master, if the old master were still alive, he definitely wouldn't let you marry a woman touched by the Hu people." Lao Wu still didn't let go.

"An unintentional mistake should not be blamed." Mo Wen was extremely conflicted. He had grown up reading the classics of sages, and Confucianism believed that men were superior to women, and a woman who lost her chastity could only gain the world's forgiveness by committing suicide. However, there was no body of Lin Ruochen, which meant she was still alive. Deep down, he believed that Lin Ruochen's loss of chastity was out of necessity, but years of Confucian education made him somewhat dissatisfied with her compromise.

"Master, you must think carefully. You are different from us servants." Lao Wu reluctantly let go. He was just a servant and could only remind his master, not defy him.

"I have thought it through. We are married, and we cannot cut ties." Mo Wen folded the red skirt neatly and put it in his chest.

"Our neighbors will look down on us." Lao Wu made a final effort. Mo Wen's decision was indeed generous to Lin Ruochen, but it would damage the Mo family's reputation, a fact even an uneducated servant understood.

"Neighbors? Do we have any neighbors left?" Mo Wen turned and walked forward.

The sun set, and the moon rose. The two had no place to rest and had to travel through the night. Lao Wu was noticeably quieter, not agreeing with Mo Wen's decision. The reason was simple: in his view, Mo Wen was a master, a person of status, and could not marry a woman who had lost her chastity.

Leaving home and traveling far from home was not always smooth. That night, they couldn't find a suitable place to rest and ended up shivering in a house that had been abandoned for over a decade without a roof.

For three consecutive days, they saw no one except for a woman's corpse by the roadside. At this point, Mo Wen finally understood why the Daoist he had met earlier was so hungry. The Daoist probably hadn't expected that there would be no one for three hundred miles in this area.

There was only one desolate road, and they found two places where the Hu people had made fires and rested. Each time, Mo Wen would stop to search, but fortunately, he didn't find any human remains. Just as he suspected that the rumor of the Hu people eating humans was a fabrication, at the third resting place, he and Lao Wu were stunned. Within a hundred paces in the forest, there were several large fire pits. Near the fire pits were scattered frozen intestines and bones that had been gnawed on. Seeing this, Mo Wen was stunned and began to vomit. Lao Wu, seeing this, hurriedly patted his back to help him, but after a few pats, he couldn't help but vomit as well. Due to the cold, the scattered intestines and organs had not rotted, and the fresh red lungs, dark red heart and liver, and the white, curved intestines, along with their strange smell, would make anyone vomit.

After entering the forest, the two began to vomit and ran out of the forest. After vomiting, Mo Wen again led Lao Wu back to the bloody scene. Earlier, he had noticed that the bodies that had been roasted did not have skulls. The heads of these people and the clothes they left behind should be somewhere in the forest.

After running out of the forest again, Mo Wen and Lao Wu were pale. They didn't find any clothes, only skulls. Skulls without bodies were even more terrifying than bodies without heads. What shocked them the most was that one of the skulls belonged to a maid the Mo family had bought when she was young.

"Master, I'm scared." Xiao Wu's voice trembled.

"Even beasts do not eat their own kind. Those who are not of our race must have different hearts." Mo Wen, like Lao Wu, spoke with chattering teeth.

"Let's go back. It's not too late to go back now." Xiao Wu was really scared. At that time, ages were counted in nominal years, and although they called each other "old," he was only fifteen, and Mo Wen was sixteen.

"We can't. The sage said, 'A man without trust, I do not know what he can do.' I promised her I would never betray her, and I cannot break my word." Mo Wen walked forward, not daring to hesitate, for fear that his fear would make him do something he would regret.

However, Mo Wen didn't walk far before he stopped. Lao Wu, seeing Mo Wen's unusual behavior, hurriedly caught up and looked ahead. He was terrified to see a troop of soldiers galloping towards them from the north.

"Master, what do we do?" Lao Wu, in his panic, called Mo Wen by the wrong title.

"Run quickly..."