Chapter 125 Try Baixiang

After Yuan Ming retrieved the Soul Crow, he rode non-stop and soon arrived outside the village.

After getting off the horse, he walked into the village holding the reins. In the open space in front of an old poplar tree near the entrance of the village, he met several children playing.

These children were only seven or eight years old, and they still had pigtails on their heads. When they saw outsiders entering the village, their first reaction was not curiosity, but fear, and they ran to their homes in a hurry.

The scattered villagers outside also disappeared in the blink of an eye. Every household in the village hurriedly closed the door and bolted it. Except for the barking of dogs, no other sound could be heard.

Yuan Ming was also a little stunned when he saw this scene, and led the horse through the village.

When he walked to the center of the village, he saw a gray-haired old woman sitting next to a well. It seemed that she fell because she ran too fast and could not stand up.

Yuan Ming led the horse over, and the old woman retreated in fear, her face pale.

"Old man, don't be afraid. I'm just passing by. I have no bad intentions." Yuan Ming hurriedly explained in southern Xinjiang dialect.

Seeing that Yuan Ming looked clean and spoke in a gentle tone, and didn't look like a bad guy, the old woman felt relieved.

"In this ghost place of ours, almost no one comes except robbers and human traffickers. How did you get here?" She said, brushing away the messy hair on her forehead.

Yuan Ming stepped forward to help the old woman sit up and found that her ankle was twisted and swollen.

He grabbed the old woman's ankle with one hand and pressed her calf with the other. With a little magic power, he pushed it down and instantly straightened the old woman's twisted tendons.

The old woman, who was in great pain a moment ago, immediately felt no pain in her ankle.

"Are you a doctor?" The old woman looked at Yuan Ming again and exclaimed.

"No, I'm not a doctor. I just passed by here and wanted to ask if there is any place in the village where I can buy incense, um... the kind of incense used for offering sacrifices." Yuan Ming explained.

"That incense... our village doesn't have a temple for worshiping gods, and everyone is so poor that they don't have money to buy incense. If you want to buy incense, go south from our Heishan'ao and go to Baiji Town. You can buy incense in the funeral shop there." The old woman thought for a while and said.

"Thank you very much." Yuan Ming heard this, thanked him, and led the horse away.

The old woman waited until he walked away before she dared to get up and moved her feet. She found that she had fully recovered and was immediately surprised.

At this time, people came out of the house one after another. Most of them were old, weak, women and children, and there were few young and strong men. At this moment, they all gathered around to ask questions.

The old woman changed her previous trepidation and narrated what happened just now. Finally, she made a final conclusion: "It's just a traveling barefoot doctor who is looking for incense ash for medicine. There is no need to make a fuss."

...

Yuan Ming followed the old woman's advice and soon arrived at the Baiji Town mentioned by the old woman.

It was called a town, but it looked like a village built on a relatively flat land. It was not much bigger than the old woman's village. It was also sparsely populated and looked depressed.

Yuan Ming entered the town. This time, he did not encounter the situation of every household closing the door. However, the people he met sporadically also looked very cautious and fearful.

Yuan Ming finally found out the location of the funeral shop and rushed over immediately.

It was a small courtyard at the end of the town. There was no proper sign inside or outside the door. If no one pointed it out, Yuan Ming would hardly know that it was a funeral shop.

However, as soon as he entered the courtyard, Yuan Ming saw several coffins parked in the courtyard. The style was different from the ones in the Central Plains in his memory. They were much smaller and rougher.

A skinny old man in a gray cloth robe was concentrating on polishing one of the coffins.

"Young man, how can I help you?" Seeing that it was a strange young man who came in, the old man stopped his work and looked up and asked.

"Oh, I want to buy some incense and candles." Yuan Ming said.

Seeing that he just wanted to buy some incense and candles, the old man led Yuan Ming into the house.

In the dim wooden house, miscellaneous objects were placed in a very messy manner. The old man picked up a wooden box from the ground, put it on the table, and removed the wooden board covering it.

In the box, pairs of white candles as thick as thumbs and a bunch of slender incense were neatly stacked.

There were not many types of incense, one was red and the other was black, but the thickness was different. The thinnest was like a willow branch, and the thickest was just like a child's little finger.

"Give me a handful of each of these." Yuan Ming looked through them and pointed at the bunches of incense.

"Only incense, no candles?" the old man asked in confusion.

"No." Yuan Ming nodded.

The old man looked puzzled, but he didn't ask any more questions. He took out four sticks of incense from the box, two red and two black, with different thicknesses.

After paying, Yuan Ming left the town.

He found a hidden cave in the mountains, set a trap outside, and then moved stones to block the cave entrance.

Then, he sat quietly in the cave, summoned the incense burner, and placed the incense he had just bought on the ground.

At present, he was not sure whether the key to his soul possession was on the incense burner, or whether the incense burner and the incense were equally important.

In short, this first attempt must be carried out in a relatively safe environment.

Yuan Ming took the lead in pulling out a thin black incense stick and inserted it in the middle of the incense burner, about a finger's distance away from the last black incense stick on the incense burner.

He looked back and forth between the two black incense sticks several times and found that although both were black in color, the incense stick that came with the incense burner was much better than the new one in terms of texture, workmanship and surface fineness.

"It's a pity that there is only this one left."

Yuan Ming smiled bitterly, took out the fire stick, blew the flame, and sent it to the black incense stick in the middle.

The flame quickly lit up the incense head, and a wisp of white smoke slowly rose up, accompanied by a familiar smell of incense.

This smell was no different from what Yuan Ming smelled outside the City God Temple when he possessed Wang Shun before. In fact, there was no obvious difference from the smell when he lit the two black incense sticks before.

However, as the incense was lit, he was still very awake and did not feel drowsy at all.

"Sure enough, it won't be that easy..." Yuan Ming sighed.

When the black incense stick was half burned, Yuan Ming pulled it out of the incense burner, but he did not give up and took out another black slender incense stick and lit it.

However, the situation was no different.

This incense only burned a small part, and Yuan Ming pulled it out and threw it aside.

Then, he pulled out another thin red incense, inserted it into the incense burner and lit it.

The bright red flame lit up at the incense head, and a wisp of smoke rose.

Yuan Ming waited for a moment, and saw nothing unusual, so he pulled out the red incense and threw it aside.

The third incense was a slightly thicker and shorter red incense, with a bamboo stick embedded at the root.

Yuan Ming inserted it into the incense burner and then lit it.

Compared with the previous two incense sticks, the only change in this incense was that the smoke was thicker. Other than that, it was the same, and naturally could not make Yuan Ming possessed.

After burning for a while, Yuan Ming pulled it out.

In the end, there was only a slightly shorter and thicker black incense in front of him.

He placed the most hope on this kind of incense, because it looked the closest to the black incense that came with the incense burner.

Just after Yuan Ming solemnly inserted it into the incense burner and lit it, Yuan Ming's vision became a little blurred under the cover of smoke.

But he himself did not feel anything strange, and the incense burner did not change at all.

As expected, he failed.

"It's really impossible to find it so easily!" Yuan Ming shook his head. Although he was a little depressed, he was mentally prepared.

After saying that, he got up and moved the stone at the entrance of the cave, came outside, and breathed a few breaths of fresh air.

Looking at the sun that was gradually setting in the west, Yuan Ming did not plan to continue on his way. He walked to an ancient tree and sat cross-legged, began to practice the Nine Yuan Jue, and continued to practice.

Finding black incense is important, but practice cannot be abandoned for a day.

...

Half a month later.

In a busy market town, Yuan Ming, wearing a blue-gray robe, walked into an incense shop.

The shopkeeper was a gray-haired old man. Seeing a young man coming in, he greeted him with a smile.

"Boss, what kind of incense do you have in the store? Show me all of them." Yuan Ming said before the old man spoke.

"Okay, wait a moment, sir." The old man seemed to have seen such directness for the first time. He was slightly stunned, and without asking more questions, he walked back to the counter, took out all the incense in the store, and laid them out for Yuan Ming to choose.

"I don't know what you want to use it for? Although my shop is not big, the variety of incense is quite complete. If you need it, I can introduce one or two to you." The old man asked.

Yuan Ming glanced at the counter and knew that the old man was not boasting. There were different thicknesses and textures on the table. There were almost a dozen different styles of incense.

Some were as thick as a thumb, with cloud patterns outlined by gold and silver lines on them. Although some were slender, they were mixed with bright spots of gold and silver, which looked very exquisite.

Most of them, Yuan Ming had almost bought and tried them in the past half month.

Yuan Ming hesitated a little and took out his black incense.

"Shopkeeper, have you ever seen such incense?"

The shopkeeper rubbed his hands and carefully took the black incense from Yuan Ming's hand and looked at it carefully.

After looking at it for a while, he didn't seem to see anything special. He said with some embarrassment: "Forgive my poor eyesight, just from the appearance, I can't see anything special about your black incense. I wonder where you bought it from?"

Yuan Ming was speechless. If he could buy it himself or knew where to get it, he wouldn't come to him to ask.

"To be honest, I just couldn't buy it, so I came here to try my luck." Yuan Ming said so.

"If you can tell me the place of origin, I can help you think about it. What kind of incense is it?" The old man thought for a while and smiled.

"Oh, is there any difference?" Yuan Ming asked doubtfully.