Zhuolu - Chapter 3

Turning over and jumping off the coffin, Lin Xin looked around the sacrificial hall before pulling out a mirror from the corner. It was a brass mirror with an old elm base, the mirror surface was covered with white paper, and it was buckled upside down on the table. This was placed among the funerary stuff for the burial, piled up with a mess of baubles.

He peeled off the white paper two or three times, and a small pale face was reflected in the mirror.

“Huh!” Lin Xin was taken aback. He didn’t even draw the talisman, why did he appear as a ghost? But when he looked closely, it looked like it was his own face.

He hadn’t seen his childhood face for more than ten years and found it a little unfamiliar at the moment. He hadn’t eaten dinner, and he was wearing thin clothes. Thus, in this sacrificial hall that was leaking cold everywhere, his face had turned pale.

Touching his nose awkwardly, Lin Xin was amused by himself. The child in the mirror had a pair of eyes that were deeper than ordinary children. With Lin Xin’s smile, he could vaguely see what he would look like in the future.

“Unfortunately, it’s not like the peach blossom eyes of the Lin family, but rather like a wolf cub.” Lin Xin imitated the tone of the Lin family when he spoke of himself, and sighed with emotion, biting his fingers while quickly drawing a symbol on the back of the bronze mirror.

After the last stroke, the bronze mirror suddenly shone brightly, and after a while, it changed from the sun mirror to a shadow mirror. Sun mirrors were the mirrors used on weekdays. When reading words in the mirror, the left and right were reversed, which was called a mirror image; while the shadow mirror was a magical instrument. When reading words in a shadow mirror, the reflection was positive, as if the reality had completely moved into the mirror. After doing this, he looked through the mirror.

Now this old elm bronze mirror showed the word “sacrificial” in the center of the mourning hall clearly, which was right.

Taking a sacrificial fruit to eat, Lin Xin walked around the mourning hall while holding the mirror. The shadow mirror couldn’t see the living person, but the soul. After a while, he saw a little girl with beautiful eyes and beautiful eyes, sitting like a beautiful winter plum next to Zhao Dashao.

After a person died, if no special method was used to preserve it, the soul could only stay in the human world for seven days. In other words, this girl must have died within seven days. It was estimated that since the eldest young master died suddenly, his wife must have been angry. Mortal life was cheap, if you say kill, you will kill.

Lin Xin sighed, and after eating the fruit in three or two bites, he grabbed a handful of paper money and burned it for the girl.

Going forward, he saw Xie Tianhe again, floating in a daze. Smacking his lips, Lin Xin felt a bit unfortunate, this Xie Tianhe had good qualifications, and it would certainly be good to use him to feed a spirit weapon, but unfortunately there was no weapon worth refining now.

After walking around the mourning hall, he met several acquaintances, but he didn’t see Zhao Dashao.

“Could it be that the soul was lost?” After throwing away the mirror, Lin Xin climbed back onto the coffin and covered Zhao Dashao with yellow paper. This state was exactly the same as when he crushed his soul back then, but the method of crushing his soul was only figured out when he was seventeen years old. Who would crush his soul at this time?

Could it be that there were some ancient spirits that ate souls?

He raised his hand and wanted to scratch his head but remembering that his hand had poked Zhao Dashao’s face, he gave up, lowered his head and groped for a while in the coffin, and pulled out a yellow jade pendant from Zhao Dashao’s waist.

This was taken from him by Young Master Zhao when he first came to the Zhao family. The cool, smooth and delicate topaz, carved into the appearance of a fairy deer looking back, was what his father gave him when he was parting from him, this was the only thing of his father he had left.

He ripped off the gaudy silk sash on it, found a basin of clean water to wash it off, then removed a thin hemp rope and tied the jade pendant to his neck. After his father died, he hadn’t shown him any filial piety yet, so all he could do was talk about feelings.

“Xin’er, you and Zhao Jian will go first. Dad will look for you in a few days.” The man with a resolute expression put the jade pendant into his young son’s hand. His supposedly affectionate peach blossom eyes were full of grief.

“Father, I’m not going, woo woo…”

“Master, let’s go to Zhao’s house in Weishui first, that is my brother’s territory, let’s take a break before leaving.”

“Uncle Zhao, open your eyes, woo woo woo …”

He didn’t know if it was because of the body, but those memories that had already turned vague when he was a child were now coming up clearly, and when Lin Xin woke up, he couldn’t tell how old he was.

“Don’t sleep, kneel quickly, the Shen family is coming!” As soon as it was dawn, the person in charge filed in with a group of servants in filial attire and re-cleaned the mourning hall.

“Didn’t you say he would come yesterday?” Lin Xin rubbed his eyes and got up in a mutter.

“Yesterday, how could we know that the prince was going to come in person!” The steward’s face showed an expression of excitement and sorrow, so complicated that it was wrinkled into a ball.

“Prince?” This title, like a small thunderbolt, fixed Lin Xin in place, “Is he the prince of Huan Xinghai?”

“Which other prince could it be!” Then, he thought of the prince, “The eldest son of Duke Xuan, a genius who is rarely born in the world, although he has been frail and sick since he was a child…”

Frail and sick? Hearing these words that should be completely irrelevant to Shen Lou, Lin Xin was a little unsure again. He knew how good that person’s body was. It was said that he had been strong as a calf since he was a child. Could it be that the prince was not Shen Lou, so where was Shen Lou?

Shen Lou was on the speeding carriage.

The retainer Dong Shechuan rode in front, facing the snow with a bitter face, “Sir, the Zhao family said that the burial will be postponed until our arrival, we don’t need to travel continuously.”

In the middle of his words, there was a young man’s calm and unquestionable voice, “Go on, hurry.”

Touching his nose, Dong Shechuan clamped his legs on the horse’s belly embarrassedly, and whispered to the expressionless guard beside him, “Brother Huang, why do you think the prince is in such a hurry? The eldest young master of the Zhao family will not run away!” Although he was also an immortal, he was just a civil servant in Huan Xinghai, and he had not worked so hard for a long time. He thought it would be a simple errand, but he didn’t expect it to become a chore when the Prince was added to the mix.

The guard wearing dark clothes was called Huang Ge, he was the guard who had brought the medicine that day. Hearing this, he said without turning his head: “Sir, I don’t know anything, the prince has always asked me to pay attention to some people who are suspected of being lost. After searching for a long time, he finally found some news, why won’t he be in a hurry?”

The guard was well-informed, but he didn’t understand the use of Shizi looking for that soulless person.

Shen Lou sat in the warm carriage, holding a silver carved hand stove, gently rubbing the deer carved on the stove cover. He thought it was finished long ago, but unexpectedly, he was reborn two years earlier, and the evil consequences of those souls were scattered until today. Now Lin Xin must be young, would he be in Weishui? He hoped that the Zhao family would not let him down.

Zhao Wanhu brought his sickly-looking wife to the door to greet him in person. When he saw the silver- fronted canopy carriage from a distance, he bowed and shouted, “This minister Zhao Ding, welcomes His Royal Highness!”

Then, in the blink of an eye, the carriage was already in front of them.

The carriage stopped, the guard dismounted and opened the door curtain, then a young man in black wide-sleeved clothes came out, while the maid next to him immediately stepped forward and put a fox fur cloak on him. The young man was born extremely handsome, his eyes were clear, and his height was like a star in the sky; once you saw him, you would never forget it, but if you saw for a long time, you would be terrified.

Zhao Wanhu had met the prince when he had gone to pay tribute a year ago. Although Shen Lou was arrogant and did not give him face at that time, he was far from the young man in front of him who was afraid to look directly at him. He didn’t know what magical skills this Prince had practiced in the past two years, but his aura was even more terrifying than his father’s.

Shen Lou kept walking, then he raised his hand slightly to signal everyone to abstain from standing on ceremony and went straight to the mourning hall.

The servants who were too late to tidy up quickly retreated, leaving two cultivators and Lin Xin, the “filial son” kneeling on the futon. When Shen Lou entered the mourning hall, he saw the little child in plain clothes at a glance, and when he met those recognizable dark blue eyes, his bumpy heart instantly fell back down.

“Prince, this is my eldest son who has suffered so much. You have to decide for us.” Mrs. Zhao while being supported by the maid came over, covering her mouth with a handkerchief and crying.

His eyes moved away as soon as he touched it, and Lin Xin didn’t even notice that the prince looked at him one more time, but he didn’t shy away from it. Shen Lou looked really good, with some youthful thinness, like a tender lotus root washed by a stream in a sunny day, tempting people to take a bite.

Shen Lou gave Zhao Dashao incense, but because of his identity, he didn’t have to bow down, but Lin Xin, as a filial son and a worthy grandson, had to return the ceremony. The little child, holding his short arms and saluting solemnly, looked really cute.

Even though he was a ferocious wolf when he knew him but he was just a hairy dog now that he was young, not to mention that Lin Xin was born with good looks…

“The rhinoceros head and jade cheeks, the crane bones are loose, the young man has an extraordinary appearance, and he will become a great weapon in the future,” Dong Shechuan said. He stroked the beard at the corners of his mouth and praised, “This is the second son of the mansion?”

As soon as these words came out, there was a sudden silence in the mourning hall. Mrs. Zhao’s face was a little ugly, but Zhao Wanhu didn’t change his face. “Laughing at the adults, this is the son of my younger brother.” Without even mentioning Lin Xin’s name, he asked the people to examine the body.

“Shechuan, go and see.” Prince Shen, who had come here while travelling through the night, was not interested in Zhao Dashao at all, and motioned Mr. Dong to open the coffin.

“…” Dong Shechuan was stunned as he watched the prince leisurely call the child to his side, as if it had nothing to do with him, and suddenly had the urge to recite poetry.

Crossing the snow-capped mountains and crossing the ice plains, what is it like for the prince to travel day and night?

But his urge to recite poetry would not let him avoid opening the coffin, and storytelling could not save Dong Shechuan as well! Mr. Dong, who had to accept his fate, could only bite the bullet and meet with the young master Zhao.

Lin Xin had been paying attention to Shen Lou’s movements, and when he saw him waving at him, he immediately ran over and gave his place to the person who was opening the coffin for the autopsy.

“What’s your name?” Shen Lou looked down at him, now he was just a young boy, only one head taller than Lin Xin.

“Xin, my name is A Xin.” Lin Xin seemed a little shy, as he bowed his head and twisted his fingers, while Shen Lou was not paying attention, he quietly touched the back of his hand hanging by his side.

The author has something to say:

Small Theater:

Xinxin: My name is

Loulou: Is it the one who sang “Lige”?

Xinxin: No, it’s A Xin

Loulou: Is that the one who sang “Stubborn”?

Xinxin: QAQ Loulou

Loulou: Okay, don’t cry, don’t cry, I know it’s baby Xinxin=3=