The Way of the Dao Was Heartless

The Way of the Dao Was Heartless. The cold wind was like knives, and heavy snow whirled through the air.

The moment Lu Sheng opened his eyes, he found himself seated in a yellow-gray carriage. The cabin swayed slightly, and beside him came the soft, delicate voice of a little girl speaking.

Outside the carriage, wave after wave of noisy, bustling voices filled the air.

There were cries of vendors hawking goods, shouted calls, and cheers. Children laughed and played as well.

Lu Sheng let out a long sigh.

He knew he could not go back. He had been an old hand muddling along in a state-owned enterprise, eating and waiting to die. Then, after getting drunk one time, he woke up in this world. It had been five days now.

He sniffed. The air carried the fragrance of wine, baked flatbread, and fried dough twists.

"Oh my, the White Osmanthus Wine from Osmanthus Fragrance Workshop smells better and better."

Xiao Qiao, the personal maid in the carriage, spoke in a childish voice.

Xiao Qiao was only twelve this year. With her naturally babyish face and tiny frame, she looked no different from a ten-year-old child. Her chubby little face was fair with a rosy glow, and she wore a small green padded dress. Her little hands were rubbing the hair tie that Lu Sheng would use to bind up his hair when he got down.

This sort of hair tie was made from a very costly kind of interwoven tree bark. It naturally gave off a faint fragrance, but its only flaw was that it hardened in cold weather and needed to be warmed and softened between hot hands.

Lu Sheng smiled but said nothing.

The carriage soon came to a stop.

He lifted the curtain and stepped down. The gray-white street was paved with slabs of bluestone, each one as large as a washbasin.

Carriages rolled back and forth along the street, while people led horses to and fro.

Peddlers, wandering young ladies, and female relatives all appeared openly in public without the slightest reservation, their coquettish laughter ringing out again and again.

Lu Sheng raised his head and glanced at the winehouse before him.

The white rectangular signboard bore three flamboyantly written characters in its center: Osmanthus Fragrance Workshop.

"Young Master Lu is here! Please come in! Your private room with the First-Class designation has been kept for you!" A servant hurried over with a face full of smiles.

Lu Sheng nodded. Affecting the manner of a wealthy young master, he took the silver-edged white paper fan from Xiao Qiao's hand and gave it a light flick. The fan opened, revealing a misty landscape painting. Peaks rose and fell, light and shadow overlapped, and there was an inscription that clearly bore the bearing of a great master.

He followed the servant into the winehouse as easily as if he knew the way by heart.

The winehouse had two floors. Quite a few people sat in the first-floor hall, listening to someone sing.

A young girl in green stood crisply in an open space, her voice gentle and melodious. Beside her, a middle-aged woman played the pipa.

She was singing Tale of Three Meetings, a story of the tragic love between a general going off to war and a fox maiden from the mountains.

Unfortunately, the drinkers present were all coarse men. Only a handful of scholarly young masters could understand it; everyone else turned a blind eye to the two women. There were even fewer tips.

Lu Sheng stopped walking. Seeing how lively the first floor was, he simply found an empty seat downstairs and sat.

"Who ordered Tale of Three Meetings?" he casually asked the servant.

His status at Osmanthus Fragrance Workshop was no ordinary one. If this place was comparable to a high-end entertainment club on Earth, then he was its supreme VIP customer. He spent at least several hundred thousand a year here.

Such spending made him a top-tier customer in a small Northland city like Nine Links City.

"It was Young Master Zhou. Young Master Zhou Que," the servant answered quietly.

Lu Sheng did not make things difficult for him and waved him away.

After pulling Xiao Qiao down to sit beside him, he swept his gaze over the crowd on the first floor. Before long, he spotted a pale, frail-looking young master dressed all in white, lightly fanning himself with a gaudy gold folding fan trimmed with lotus-leaf edging.

"He has probably taken a fancy to that little girl singing again," Lu Sheng said, shaking his head.

"Young Master warned him just last time. That man is really a bad person!" Xiao Qiao pouted in dissatisfaction.

Lu Sheng smiled and said no more. He began quietly listening to the song.

Before long, a table full of wine and dishes was set upon the dark-red wooden table. Lu Sheng picked up a mouthful of shredded pork stir-fried with celtuce and put it into his mouth. Then he took a sip of White Osmanthus Wine, which was about as strong as a soft drink. Its faint sweetness and floral fragrance mingled together, making it much like drinking fruit juice.

"Fine clothes and rich food, free of worries, with a beautiful little maid to warm my bed—this life is simply too decadent." Sometimes Lu Sheng wondered whether he should simply live out his life like this. After all, this sort of parasite's life was exactly what he had pursued in his previous life.

He took a bite of food and a sip of wine.

Then he opened his mouth and let Xiao Qiao feed him a peeled salted Ice Shrimp.

In this snowy city of the Northland, Ice Shrimp were a local specialty. One only needed to scoop casually through thick ice holes to catch great quantities of the small, translucent-bodied shrimp.

These were Ice Shrimp.

Ice Shrimp were half the length of ordinary shrimp, but their flavor was incomparably fresh and delicious. The meat melted the instant it entered the mouth, truly a peerless delicacy.

Naturally, they were also exceedingly expensive. Ordinary people could count themselves extravagant if they ate them once a month. How could they have them at every meal like he did?

While Lu Sheng enjoyed delicacies, drank fine wine, and listened to little tunes, his mind was occupied with other matters.

He had been in this world, which resembled ancient China, for many days now. Yet from what he had observed, this world had many strange aspects.

At first, he thought he had returned to ancient times, but later he discovered that was not the case. The customs, festivals, and climate here were vastly different from any dynasty or region he knew.

While Lu Sheng was lost in thought, the winehouse doors opened once again.

A group of burly men in short, fitted martial outfits filed in. They found a table near a corner and dropped into their seats.

One glance was enough to tell that these burly men were not locals. Their dress resembled that of people from the Central Plains, and their clothing and bearing lacked the rough boldness of the Northland.

"Ah."

The leading burly man was bald, wore bronze earrings, and had a face full of flesh. Yet he was sighing heavily at the moment. "There is no way to live like this."

"What is there to worry about, Big Brother? If we cannot get through Li Family Village, we can take the second route. We can go around by Zhang Village," another man said with a frown.

"What do you know? When I came over to meet up with you, I took the route through Zhang Village. The situation there was much the same as at Li Family Village. Quite a few people had died." The flesh on the bald man's face trembled, and his expression grew even more troubled.

"What exactly happened, Big Brother? Tell your brothers about it and let us broaden our horizons," one of the men urged.

The bald burly man sighed again. "I do not know the details either. I only know that several fishing villages by Suiyang Lake have met with disaster. It seems there is a Water Ghost causing trouble."

"A Water Ghost? No way!"

Lu Sheng's table was not far from theirs, so he could hear their unconcealed conversation. He had originally been listening only for amusement, but he had not expected them to start talking about supernatural things.

In this life, the Lu Family was one of the foremost great households in Northern Ice City. Saying they possessed wealth beyond measure was still putting it mildly. Compared to Earth, they were at least wealthy people with assets worth over a hundred million.

Over the past few days of drinking outside, he had heard many rumors of demons, monsters, gods, and ghosts in winehouses. But most had been legends and stories. This was the first time he had heard of something like these men's personal experience.

Thus, Lu Sheng pricked up his ears and began listening closely. Fortunately, the men made no effort to hide anything and continued talking loudly about the strange events in the fishing villages.

"I saw that Water Ghost with my own eyes. It was over ten feet tall, with a blue face and fangs, covered from head to toe in waterweed. Good heavens, if your Big Brother had not run so fast, you would not be seeing me now." Hu Laoda still looked deeply shaken.

"Big Brother, does something like a Water Ghost really exist?" one man asked skeptically.

"Could it be a story you made up, Big Brother?" another man said with a chuckle.

Lu Sheng found it amusing as well. It was probably just some reckless brute boasting again.

He had seen plenty of people like that lately.

After eating and drinking, he had the servant bring over the songstress's list of songs and browsed through it casually.

Tale of Three Meetings was not bad, but it did not suit the occasion. He intended to change to something more cheerful.

Smack! But just then, the bald man's face flushed red as he slapped the table.

"You really think I, Hu Laoda, only know how to brag? Look! Look at what this is! A piece of bone the Water Ghost left on the ground! I secretly picked it up afterward!" He carefully pulled a jade-like green stone from his clothes and slapped it onto the table.

"Isn't that just a piece of low-grade jade?" one man laughed.

"Low-grade jade? This is low-grade jade? Bullshit!"

The bald man's face turned red.

"Brother, could you let me take a look at that?"

A gentle voice suddenly came from nearby.

Lu Sheng stood beside their table with a smile, his gaze sweeping across the green jade stone on the tabletop.

"You dare take this thing? It was left behind by a Water Ghost." The bald man looked surprised. He had only taken it out now to show off and intended to throw it away later. After all, it was not something left by a human. If it drew the Water Ghost back to cause trouble, that would truly be a loss outweighing the gain.

"It is fine. I only want to look at it." Lu Sheng did not believe in Water Ghosts. He merely thought the jade looked rather good, unlike ordinary low-grade jade.

Ordinary low-grade jade could be bought everywhere in shops and stalls. It was made from leftover scraps of jade casually polished down, and it was extremely cheap. Yet for some reason, the moment he saw this piece of jade, he felt that something was off.

Hu Laoda, the bald burly man, looked Lu Sheng over and saw that he possessed an extraordinary bearing and wore expensive clothing.

He wore a blue robe with a white fox-fur coat, a round blue-jade cap, and black boots embroidered with silver-thread cloud patterns. His outfit alone could pay for several months of spending at Osmanthus Fragrance Workshop, perhaps even enough for an ordinary family to live on for more than a year.

"If the young master wants it, that is not impossible. Uh... one tael of silver will do," the burly man said after hesitating, testing the waters.

"Fine." Lu Sheng had Xiao Qiao take out a tael of broken silver and place it on the table.

"It is yours." The bald man decisively picked up the jade stone and stuffed it into Lu Sheng's hand. The men exchanged glances, rose to their feet, and left.

Lu Sheng said nothing. He watched them go, pinching the jade stone in his hand and lifting it to inspect it carefully.

"One tael of silver would have purchasing power equal to a thousand yuan in China on Earth. Only in this life could I be so extravagantly wealthy."

He shook his head. One tael of silver was nothing to him. According to this body's memories, his lowest monthly expenses usually exceeded a hundred taels of silver. At times, he might spend over a thousand taels. That was more than a million!

Thinking this, he inwardly cursed himself for being wasteful. Holding the jade stone, he ignored the gazes of the surrounding customers watching the excitement, called Xiao Qiao over, and left the winehouse for the waiting carriage outside.

But just after leaving the winehouse, before he had even gone halfway down the road, he suddenly froze and raised the jade stone onto his palm.

The jade stone in his hand—right in the center of his right palm—began to melt.

The originally hard stone turned into a lump of dark-green slime within seconds. From within the slime came the faint sound of a scream.

Puff! The entire mass of slime suddenly exploded, turning into a cloud of green smoke that slowly drifted apart before Lu Sheng.

Lu Sheng stood there in astonishment. In the blink of an eye, the jade stone was somehow still in his hand, except the green color inside had silently vanished at some point.

"What was that just now..." He stood there blankly, continuously replaying the scene in his mind.

"Young Master? Young Master?" Xiao Qiao kept calling to him from beside him.

Lu Sheng came back to himself and looked again at the jade stone in his hand. It was nothing but an ordinary Cobblestone now—not even jade anymore.

A chill crept into his heart, but he vaguely understood something.

"Let us go. Back to the residence!"

Xiao Qiao blinked, unable to react for a moment. "Oh."

The two boarded the carriage. The driver cracked his whip through the air a few times, and the two shaggy black horses slowly began to move.

Inside the carriage, Lu Sheng did not say a word. He kept staring at the Cobblestone in his hand.

Xiao Qiao also noticed that something was strange about the stone.

He got swindled again! she muttered inwardly. She did not say much. This time, Young Master had gotten off lightly. The worst time before this had been when he spent more than a thousand taels of silver on some so-called antique wine jug, nearly angering the master to death.

This time, it was only one tael of silver. Young Master sometimes spent more than that on a single meal.

The carriage made its way back to the residence. When they passed the city gate, Lu Sheng heard someone shouting outside.

"...I heard earlier that the Water Ghost had been eliminated! A wandering Daoist took action and resolved the fishing villages' crisis!"

"Did someone from the imperial court come?"

"They arrived long ago. I heard even Ouyang Constable from the Prefectural Office in the city nearly got dragged into it. Fortunately, he encountered a traveling Daoist. It is said that with one move, golden light flashed from the Daoist's hand. The Water Ghost screamed on the spot, turned into green slime, then exploded into thick smoke and dispersed."

"So it was not an expert from the imperial court who acted?"

"Of course not!"

Lu Sheng could tell that these were city-gate officers chatting idly.

He often deliberately passed by this city gate. The officers and garrison soldiers here were well-informed and loved boasting and spinning tall tales about strange happenings everywhere.

"What a coincidence..." Lu Sheng's expression did not change. Recalling the jade stone from earlier, his heart sank.

The carriage slowly headed toward Ku Rong Street, the most prosperous street in the city.