I picked up skill fragments in the demon world

#125 - Burning the thatched cottage!

Chapter 125: Burning the Thatched Cottage!

After Zhang Chen hid the pig's head meat and sent Cheng Yu upstairs to sleep, he transformed into a vampire bat and flapped his wings and flew away.

Zhang Chen never suffered losses; he always avenged grudges on the same day!

That Fifth or Sixth Master actually dared to humiliate him so much, it was simply hateful! The most important thing was that he had embezzled his money. Was Zhang Chen's money blown in by the wind? Did his money come so easily?

The moonlight at night enhanced Zhang Chen's speed. As the moonlight was absorbed, he seemed tireless. In just an hour, he had already returned and landed in the mountains.

Standing in the moonlight, Zhang Chen looked at the thatched cottage in the mountains, a hint of killing intent in his eyes: "What a pity! There are almost no wild beasts left in the mountains. However, there are many snakes near the Tomb of the Emperor's Daughter, but these people are all martial arts experts, and they also have sharp weapons. It is almost impossible to kill them with snakes. Let's spare their lives for now and move all their things away first."

Zhang Chen directly summoned the fox spirit, and then the fox spirit swaggered out. At the same time, a strange wave spread from the fox spirit's body, and the illusion had already begun to take effect.

Before long, the fox spirit carried jewelry, antiques, calligraphy and paintings, and all kinds of valuable items, presenting them to Zhang Chen like treasures: "All the things in that old guy's thatched cottage that I could move have been moved here by me."

Zhang Chen looked at the treasures on the ground, piled up into a small mountain, reaching his knees in height, probably worth tens of thousands of taels of silver.

"Antiques and calligraphy are not easy to sell. Once they are sold and someone traces them, it would be bad. Although I have some means, I can't resist the siege of martial arts masters. However, those jewels, gold, and silver can be used as a teacher apprenticeship gift," Zhang Chen said to himself.

He was not short of money now!

Since he had the fox spirit, he had not lacked money.

However, it would be a pity to discard these calligraphy and paintings. When I go south in the future, I can go to another city to exchange them for some gold and silver in a pawn shop, which can be regarded as making up for the loss.

However, he had nowhere to hide so much money.

After thinking for a moment, he simply hid it in the water deep in the cave. Then, Zhang Chen looked at the thatched cottage, holding a fire starter in his hand, and looked at the fox spirit with his eyes: "Go, set that house on fire, so that I can vent the anger in my heart."

The fox spirit gasped when he heard this, staring at Zhang Chen with his eyes, and a thought popped into his mind: "Is this guy a devil?"

"We seek wealth without harming lives. Isn't it too much to burn people to death?" The fox spirit was a little resistant.

"They are living people, not dead animals. Can a mere thatched cottage trap them?" Zhang Chen said.

Of course, he knew that he couldn't burn that old guy to death, but it would be good to vent his anger.

The fox spirit had no choice but to do as he was told. Before long, a fire rose in the dark night, engulfing the thatched cottage in an instant. Then, a commotion came from the mountains, and the Fifth or Sixth Master stood outside the thatched cottage, his voice full of heart-wrenching pain: "Ah! My 'Report of Colorful Pictures'! My Wu Xiaozhi 'Calligraphy Post'."

Fifth or Sixth Master's shrill voice echoed in the mountains, and Zhang Chen's expression was surprised: "Could it be that this calligraphy post and painting have some origin?"

But it doesn't matter anymore!

Zhang Chen glanced at the burning thatched cottage and disappeared into the night as a bat.

The next day, early morning,

It was another day of morning class, and a group of disciples gathered in the martial arts field. This time, Zhang Chen and Xiao Dou Ding were not late, and the two stood obediently in the square.

At this time, the Law Enforcement Elder stood on the high platform with a gloomy face, scanning the disciples below the stage with his eyes, so angry that he was smoking from all seven orifices.

"Some of you are really audacious. How long has it been since I last reprimanded you? Some of you have actually attacked the kitchen again!" The Law Enforcement Elder stood on the high platform, reprimanding with a gloomy face: "You can steal a thousand or a hundred times, but I only need to catch you once, and you will be ruined!"

Then came a long series of rambling words.

Zhang Chen and Xiao Dou Ding looked at each other under the stage, listening to the reprimand on the stage, the corners of their mouths slightly raised.

After the martial arts practice, Zhang Chen only felt the blood in his body moving, and the large tendons between his arms were moving. He seemed to have a trace of induction.

"It seems that it is not far from entering the Ming Jin stage," Zhang Chen and Xiao Dou Ding came to the main hall with the disciples and began to recite the Yellow Court Scripture with everyone.

It was a pity that no skills were dropped. Zhang Chen suspected that it was because there was no original golden book, or that there was a problem with the process of the disciples reciting it.

Zhang Chen followed the recitation of the ten thousand-word Yellow Court Scripture for a month, but he only recited a few hundred words, knowing only the sound but not the meaning.

Breakfast cafeteria

The Law Enforcement Elder's eyes were like an eagle's, staring at the disciples serving food, and said to the Law Enforcement disciples beside him: "You keep an eye on them. If anyone doesn't look hungry, it means they were full last night. This person is highly suspected of committing the crime. Search the houses later to see who has any leftover steamed buns and focus on them."

The disciple quickly agreed when he heard this.

"Did you buy the hound that I asked you to buy?" The Law Enforcement Elder asked again.

"There is already some progress," the disciple said.

"That's good! After buying the hound, I want to see who stole the meat! These disciples are simply audacious and this evil trend must be suppressed," the Law Enforcement Elder said.

Zhang Chen and Xiao Dou Ding carried rice porridge and steamed buns. The two looked at each other all the way, and neither of them had an appetite.

"What should we do if we can't eat it?" Xiao Dou Ding quietly asked Zhang Chen.

Zhang Chen narrowed his eyes: "We have to eat it even if we can't eat it! If we don't show that we are hungry, I'm afraid there will be big problems. Those elders are not fools and will definitely see something."

Xiao Dou Ding was also full of helplessness. He and Zhang Chen came to the house, and you and I nibbled on the steamed buns and drank the porridge. However, this time there was no longer the previous enjoyment, but their faces were full of pain.

Fortunately, both of them were martial arts practitioners. Although they were full, they could digest it through martial arts practice.

"Eat less meat next time," Zhang Chen muttered to himself.

Sure enough, when the two were halfway through eating, the Law Enforcement Elder came to the door for a surprise inspection. Seeing that the two had eaten half of the steamed buns, he did not cause any trouble.

In the morning, they still cleaned the temple as usual, and then went back to practice martial arts. Zhang Chen found an opportunity to turn into a bat and fly away. In less than an hour, he had already appeared in the county town.

First, he bought a bamboo hat and put it on, and then, following the fox spirit's guidance, he carried the gift box towards the Chen and San families.

Zhang Chen's transformation into a bat could not carry too much weight, at most no more than thirty pounds, but carrying the weight of the gift box was enough.

Zhang Chen was very generous, directly carrying twenty gold cakes. As for the antiques, calligraphy and paintings collected last night, he was afraid of causing trouble and delaying his learning plan, so he did not take them out as gifts to flaunt.

However, Chen Sanliang's poverty exceeded Zhang Chen's expectations.

In a dilapidated alley, a pungent odor assaulted his nostrils, causing him to gag.

He even suspected he had arrived in an African refugee camp, feeling as if he were in an African urban village.

"Wang Family Alley, eighth household," the fox spirit said, using illusion magic, following behind Zhang Chen and guiding him.

Carrying the cardboard box, Zhang Chen carefully counted the doors, finally arriving at a dilapidated gate.

The gate was very old, riddled with wormholes, and appeared to have been there for many years.

However, before Zhang Chen could knock on the gate, a woman's angry scolding suddenly came from inside the courtyard: "Chen Sanliang, if you dare to look at those useless books of yours again, I'll burn them all and immediately return to my parents' home, you hear me?"

"Wife, you can't be unreasonable, scholarship is my life's work... Hey... Hey... Hey, you can say what you want, but why are you hitting me!"

A refined middle-aged man's voice came from the courtyard, but it sounded hurried: "Hey, I'm warning you, don't touch my books!"

"We don't even have rice to cook, we're about to starve to death, and you're still here reading books, are you happy only if I starve to death? You're not the same as you used to be, your reading has become useless, why can't you come out and live a practical life?" The woman's voice was sharp, and as she spoke, the sound of furniture being knocked over came from the courtyard.

"Slap!"

Suddenly, at one moment, the sound of a slap came from the courtyard, and then the air seemed to freeze.

Seven or eight breaths later, the man's panicked apology came: "Wife, I didn't mean to hit you! I was wrong, I apologize to you!"

"Chen Sanliang, you've grown bold, haven't you?" The woman's voice was even sharper, and she began to roar.

"Hey, don't scratch my face! Don't scratch my face!" The man's panicked voice echoed in the courtyard.

"Did I come at the wrong time?" Zhang Chen's hand hovered in the air, his eyes looking at the wooden door, revealing a hint of helplessness.

The fox spirit was also speechless.

The two stood outside the door waiting, until a quarter of an hour later, when the quarrel in the courtyard subsided, Zhang Chen braced himself and knocked on the wooden door, the sound of "dong, dong, dong" entering the courtyard.

"Who is it?" A gentle woman's voice came from the courtyard, and then the door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman dressed in coarse linen clothes, exuding an air of nobility.

Although the woman was dressed in coarse cloth, patched and mended countless times, and her skin was slightly dark and rough, it was still difficult to hide her innate nobility.

A person's temperament is very mysterious, some people really have an aura.

It was just that the woman's hair was slightly disheveled, and there was a red mark on her left cheek, which looked like four fingers, adding a touch of worldly flavor to her noble aura.

The woman's gaze fell on Zhang Chen's gift box, and then she looked at Zhang Chen's delicate skin and silk clothes, and her eyes lit up: "You are...?"

"My name is Zhang Chen, I heard that a noble person who reads and writes lives in Wang Family Alley, so I have prepared a small gift and come to visit, hoping to learn to read and write. I wonder if the gentleman will grant my wish?"

As he spoke, Zhang Chen opened the gift box, revealing a full box of gold cakes, as well as countless pearls and jade.

Logically speaking, he was not a person who didn't understand etiquette, and he would never open the gift box directly at the door, but special circumstances called for special measures. Since he knew that the other party's family was so poor that the couple had to quarrel, he naturally knew how to strike at the heart.

And the most important thing was that he felt that scholars were all sick, and if they were aloof and didn't give him a chance to open the gift box, wouldn't he be finished? The woman in front of him was a good opportunity for him to act!

The woman's gaze fell on the gift box, and she couldn't take her eyes off it.

To be honest, for her, she used to be a lady from a wealthy family, and these gold and silver, although plentiful, might not have caught her eye. But she couldn't bear the decades of poverty, which had long made her realize the reality that aloofness and fame-seeking couldn't fill her stomach.

"Oh, you want to learn to read and write? Then you've come to the right place, come in and talk," she said, taking the gift box and closing the lid, then opening the door to let Zhang Chen in.

Zhang Chen walked into the courtyard and found that the courtyard was very small, less than fifty square meters. In the courtyard sat a gentleman in simple clothes, patched all over but washed clean.

The gentleman looked to be in his fifties, but he was too thin and looked malnourished, especially the several scratch marks on his face, which looked very strange.

Zhang Chen was very strange in his heart, the two sides were clearly tearing at each other in the courtyard, how could they have tidied up their clothes so quickly?

"This is the gentleman you are looking for," the woman's voice was very gentle, with none of the fierce tone she had heard outside the door. If he hadn't heard it with his own ears, Zhang Chen was afraid that he would never dare to associate a shrew and a noblewoman with the same person.

"Disciple Zhang Chen pays respects to the teacher, disciple yearns for knowledge and admiration, and asks the teacher to teach disciple the great path of writing," Zhang Chen was not pretentious and knelt directly on the ground.

To ask for help, you must have the attitude of asking for help.

Learning to write is too difficult!

The man looked at Zhang Chen, sizing him up and down in silence, until the woman's impatient cough came from the side, and Chen Sanliang asked:

"Are you a commoner?"

"Indeed," Zhang Chen said.

He didn't want to hide it, because he couldn't hide many rules and etiquette.

Then the courtyard fell silent, and the gentleman stood in place, caught in a dilemma.

"Cough cough ~"

The woman on the side, holding the gift box, began to cough again.

Urged by the coughing, Chen Sanliang sighed and gritted his teeth: "I can't accept you as a disciple, you can go! Take the gift back too."

"I only seek to learn to read, I don't ask the teacher to accept me as a disciple, I hope the teacher will be merciful," Zhang Chen said quickly, lowering his request when he heard this.

Chen Sanliang seemed to have made up his mind this time, directly waving his hand to drive people away, while turning his back: "I can't break the rules of this world. Take your things and go!"

"Chen Sanliang!!!" The woman's eyes suddenly turned red, her voice lengthened and her tone raised, her anger undisguised.

Chen Sanliang did not speak.

Seeing this, the woman looked at Zhang Chen kneeling on the ground, and then said: "If you are only here to learn to read and write, I can teach you."

"Suzhen, you... you... the rules of the nobility cannot be broken!" Chen Sanliang heard this and became anxious.

"To hell with the rules, I don't want to starve to death with you, you idiot!" The woman pointed at Chen Sanliang's nose and cursed.