The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, becoming a disciple of Yue Buqun

Page 204

"What do you mean by expensive or not? I'm not expensive at all."

The old man waved his hand.

"Just call me Lao Li."

Hearing the old man say this, Jiang Ning smiled but said nothing.

After navigating through the country lanes, Jiang Ning followed the old man to a farmhouse.

The old man opened the door and went inside, with Jiang Ning following closely behind, looking around at the furnishings.

Simple.

旧。

This is my impression of Jiangning.

"Have you eaten?"

The old man then asked again.

Jiang Ning shook his head.

"not yet."

The old man nodded, turned around and went to the kitchen to fetch a pot of boiled vegetables and a few vegetable dumplings.

"There's not much food at home, please don't mind."

Jiang Ning naturally didn't mind, and sat down at the table to eat with the old man while looking around the room.

The old man appeared to live alone, as there were no signs of anyone else living in the house.

Although Jiang Ning had some doubts, he didn't ask any questions for fear of offending someone.

After a quick meal, the old man led Jiang Ning to a room.

“This used to be my son and daughter-in-law’s room. No one lives here now. You can sleep here tonight.”

"Thank you."

Jiang Ning thanked him and then asked, "Grandpa, are your son and daughter-in-law out?"

"died."

The old man said it calmly.

Jiang Ning paused for a moment.

"Feel sorry."

The old man shook his head, said nothing, and showed no change in his expression. He then walked out of the house and went back to his own room.

Looking at the dark environment inside the room, Jiang Ning didn't go to sleep right away, but went outside to the open space.

It was nighttime, and the moon had climbed into the clouds. Its bright light shone on the earth, making it not so dark outside, even at night.

Jiang Ning sat outside for a while and noticed a child peeking at him from the open space next door.

The child looked to be about five or six years old, with a robust and chubby appearance.

At this moment, the child looked at Jiang Ning with curiosity in his eyes.

"come over."

Jiang Ning waved to him.

The children weren't shy at all; they ran over as soon as they saw Jiang Ning calling them.

"What do you see me doing?"

Jiang Ning looked at him and a smile appeared on her face.

The child looked at Jiang Ning for a moment before asking, "Are you Grandpa Li's grandson?"

Jiang Ning smiled and shook his head: "No."

"Then why did you come to Grandpa Li's house?"

The child still looked curious.

"I'm just staying here temporarily; I'll be leaving tomorrow."

Jiang Ning replied.

"Where to go?"

The child tilted his head.

Jiang Ning pointed in a direction: "Over there."

The child looked in that direction, his expression instantly turning frightened, and he quickly said...

“There are bad people over there, don’t go. Grandpa Li’s son died at the hands of those bad people.”

Hearing this, Jiang Ning raised an eyebrow and asked, "How did you die? Tell me."

The child quickly shook his head: "My dad doesn't let me talk nonsense, he's afraid Grandpa Li will be sad if he hears it."

Jiang Ning took out a few candied fruits from her bosom and handed them to him.

"Eat?"

The child looked curiously at the candied fruit in Jiang Ning's hand, but did not take it.

Jiang Ning raised an eyebrow and smiled, "Afraid I'll harm you?"

As soon as he finished speaking, Jiang Ning put one of the candied fruits in his mouth and chewed it a few times.

Seeing that Jiang Ning had also eaten, the child curiously took one and put it in his mouth. The next second, his eyes lit up as he stared intently at the remaining candied fruit Jiang Ning had.

However, Jiang Ning withdrew her hand and looked at him with a smile.

"Do you still want to eat?"

"Hmm."

The child nodded repeatedly.

Jiang Ning laughed and said, "Tell me that secret you were talking about earlier, and I'll let you eat it."

The child looked conflicted, and after a second he said, "Then I'll tell you, but don't tell anyone else, and don't tell my dad either, otherwise my dad will beat me, and he hits really hard."

"Don't worry, I don't have many other good qualities, but I'm good at keeping my mouth shut."

Jiang Ning made a promise.

The child believed him, plopped down on the ground, crossed his legs, and began to tell his story.

"I overheard my father and mother talking."

The child's voice was childish, but his tone was very serious.

“My dad said that many, many years ago, not long after Grandpa Li’s son and daughter-in-law got married, they heard that Grandpa Li’s daughter-in-law was very beautiful. The bad guys from Tianfeng Village came to our village to rob us. Later, when they saw Grandpa Li’s daughter-in-law, they wanted to take her back, but Grandpa Li’s son refused. He was stabbed to death, and his daughter-in-law was taken away.”

The story is simple, with no twists or turns; it's just bandits killing people.

Jiang Ning's face remained expressionless upon hearing this; he simply nodded.

After the child finished speaking, he stared intently at Jiang Ning's hand.

Jiang Ning then gave him all the candied fruit she had in her hand.

Jiang Ning bought this in Yangzhou. It tastes great and can be stored for a year, so Jiang Ning bought some to bring back for Liu Zhao and his junior brothers to try.

The child happily ate the candied fruit that Jiang Ning had given him.

Jiang Ning then asked, "Do you know what Grandpa Li's daughter-in-law's name is?"

The child looked bewildered for a moment, racking his brains to think, before his eyes lit up and he said, "My dad said her name seems to be Wang Yunlan."

Jiang Ning nodded without saying anything more, his gaze fixed on the mountains in the distance, lost in thought.

……

Tianfeng Village.

Main hall.

A group of bandits were sitting around a table eating meat and drinking wine.

At this moment, a tall and burly bandit, holding a leg of lamb and eating it with his mouth full of oil, laughed.

"Brother, Jiangnan is still the best. The money here is much better than that wretched place in Shaanxi, and we don't have the King of Hell chasing us away."

"you do not say."

One of them chuckled and said, "We brothers have traveled all the way to Jiangnan, but we're afraid we'll never see that King Yama in our lifetime."

At this moment, a burly man with a thick beard in the main seat laughed and said, "Brother Hu, is the King of Hell really that scary?"

The man who was named said, "Boss, you don't know, the Huashan Sect has gone mad and started suppressing bandits in Shaanxi. That Yama King is even more ruthless. He's going from one mountain stronghold to another, leaving rivers of blood in his wake. There's not a single survivor. We brothers were lucky enough to escape from another group of Huashan disciples. We overheard their conversation and quickly fled here."

The man's face showed fear as he spoke, still feeling lingering fear even though the incident had happened quite some time ago.

"Brother, my eyelids have been twitching a lot lately, does that mean something's going to happen?"

At this moment, a bandit with a Shaanxi accent looked somewhat sullen and said, "I even dreamed yesterday that the King of Hell came looking for us."

The bandit named Lao Hu glared at the man and cursed, "Don't say such unlucky things at night."

"Is that even possible? My brothers and I have traveled thousands of miles, from Shaanxi to Jiangnan. Would Ning Yama, the King of Hell, really come all the way from Jiangnan to wipe us out?"

Chapter 284: I can't take it anymore, just mentioning him sends chills down my spine.

"Big brother is right."

The man nodded: "We've all come all the way to Jiangnan to hide from that King Yama, there's no way we'd run into him here, right?"

"Brother Hu, is Yama really that terrifying? I've never heard of him before. Does he have three heads and six arms?"

The leader of Tianfeng Village was intrigued to see how terrified these people were of one person, even though they were thousands of miles apart.

These men came to his mountain stronghold last year. He saw that they were tall and strong and had decent martial arts skills, so he let them stay.

At first, he wondered why these people, who were from Shaanxi, had come all the way to Jiangnan. One of them, called Lao Hu, told him that the Huashan Sect was cracking down on bandits in Shaanxi and they couldn't make a living there anymore, so he didn't ask any more questions.

Now that he heard the other party mention the name Ning Yanwang again, his curiosity was piqued.

"Brother Hu, from what you just said, isn't he just a disciple of Mount Hua? How dare he call himself the King of Hell?"

Seeing that the current leader's curiosity had been piqued, the bandit called Old Hu said, "Leader, you may not know this, but although this person is a disciple of Mount Hua, his martial arts skills are extremely high, and he is ruthless."

Although this burly man with a thick beard was the leader of the stronghold, he was basically a bandit in the Jiangnan area. He usually robbed people on the road and ransacked nearby villages. He didn't care much about things in the martial arts world, especially things that happened thousands of miles away.

"Two years ago, the Huashan Sect suddenly decided to suppress bandits. The Huashan Sect Leader Yue Buqun sent two of his disciples, Linghu Chong and Jiang Ning, to lead the Huashan disciples to sweep across Shaanxi. Jiang Ning was one of them."

Recalling the past, the bandit's face showed bitterness: "Back then, the mountain stronghold where we brothers lived was not a big stronghold, and we didn't live as well as the chief. But at least we had wine and meat, and we could go down the mountain to catch a few women to relieve our boredom."

"But ever since those Huashan disciples attacked the stronghold, our brothers have been dying one after another. We brothers were lucky enough to not run into Ning Yanwang's team and survived by chance."

Although they encountered Linghu Chong leading the team, it was Jiang Ning who left a psychological scar on them.

"We originally thought that the Huashan disciples who slaughtered us were ruthless enough, but we didn't expect there to be even more ruthless ones."

“I heard from the Huashan disciples who slaughtered our stronghold that none of the brothers in the strongholds that Jiang Ning had slaughtered could escape his clutches. He slaughtered wherever he went.”

"Later, my brothers and I felt that we could no longer stay in Shaanxi, so we ran to Luoyang. Then we heard that the King of Hell went down the mountain to Sichuan and slaughtered the Qingcheng Sect, a major sect in Sichuan. We brothers felt that Luoyang was not safe either, so we ran here."

The leader nodded thoughtfully and asked curiously, "Then why is he also called the King of Hell in the martial arts world?"

The bandit smiled bitterly upon hearing this, "His reputation was spread by us brothers."

"Oh?"

The leader became curious.

"Hey."

The bandit sighed and said, "Back then, my brothers and I were still in Luoyang. We sought refuge in a mountain stronghold for temporary shelter. When we had nothing to do, we would go to Luoyang to eat, drink, and have fun. We were doing quite well. I never expected that not long after, a storyteller in a teahouse would be spreading his story."

"When we heard that the King of Hell had slaughtered so many mountain strongholds in Shaanxi, he went to Sichuan to slaughter the Qingcheng Sect and wipe out a large gang. He was like the King of Hell, and we said something. We never expected that our words would get out."

"I see."