Chapter 403
The Playful Master Yun Fishing
Time flies like an arrow; spring comes and autumn goes.
In the blink of an eye, another season has passed.
For the people of Xunyang City, the biggest change should be that the Juxian Opera House, which had been abandoned for many years, has been renovated. The plaque on the door has not changed, but it has been repainted and gilded.
The newly opened Juxianlou has many young actors. They still have a bit of a youthful look on their faces, but their skills are extremely solid. Their melodious voices are quite pleasant to hear, and they are always greeted with cheers every time they take the stage.
As a result, tickets for the performances at Juxianlou became extremely difficult to obtain.
Strangely, for some reason, Juxianlou never puts on performances during the day, only at night, and the performances always end at midnight, never lasting all night.
Fortunately, with the Ghost Festival approaching, Juxianlou has started adding extra performances, and the frequency of opera performances seems to have increased significantly.
That night, the opera "Mulian" was performed, featuring all sorts of ghosts and monsters. The audience was terrified, yet they watched with rapt attention, afraid of missing a single scene.
After the show, the audience members went home in groups, but for some reason, they always felt like something was following them.
Backstage.
Several young actors were removing their makeup, chatting while looking in a bronze mirror.
"During the opera performance just now, I saw more than a dozen fierce ghosts sitting in the audience, which really startled me. One of the female ghosts even made eye contact with me. I was doing a 'lying fish' pose at the time, and I almost strained my back!"
"According to what Master and the others said, if this were during the Ghost Festival, you would have already died!"
"Luckily, Boss Zhou let us go on stage beforehand to get used to it and gain experience. Otherwise, if we had actually gone down there, I'm afraid none of us would have made it back..."
Upon hearing this, the group of people who were removing their makeup fell silent. Their young eyes held a fear of death that rippled like waves on water, and it took them a long time to calm down.
The oppressive atmosphere weighed heavily on everyone's hearts until someone changed the subject.
"I heard that when Boss Zhou performed ghost operas during the Ghost Festival, he caused a huge disturbance in the underworld, personally killing a judge and becoming a fearsome figure in the netherworld. Even now, many underworld officials tremble at the mere mention of Boss Zhou's name!"
Upon hearing this, the young actors' eyes lit up, revealing expressions of admiration and envy.
“My master said that he sang Ghost Opera with Boss Zhou back then and was assigned to the ninth stage. All the people on the first eight stages died, but they were the only ones who survived because of Boss Zhou’s protection!”
"Boss Zhou is really amazing. I hope we can work with someone like Boss Zhou this time."
"Don't overthink it. My master said that Boss Zhou is a once-in-a-millennium genius. Not long ago, he single-handedly defeated all the senior masters of Yin Opera and won the title of Opera Champion. He even defeated two grandmasters, Yu Tianheng and Yu Zhensheng..."
"The twenty-four-year-old opera master is now equivalent to the head of our Yin Opera lineage. With just one letter, he has brought all the disciples from both the North and South branches to Xunyang to perform at the Juxian Tower. Such influence is truly unprecedented!"
They all expressed their feelings and discussed the topic, but the core of their conversation always revolved around the name of Boss Zhou.
In fact, the Yinxi lineage has undergone tremendous changes in the past few months because of this person.
The two great masters from the North and South held a grand debate on opera, but the winner was a young man of twenty-four, and all the seniors were convinced of his defeat.
Even Yu Tianheng and Yu Zhensheng were defeated.
Afterwards, this young man overcame all opposition and persuaded the North and South to unite. He also spent a lot of money to renovate Juxianlou, allowing disciples from various sects who were about to graduate to come and study there.
They had been here for two months and had only met Boss Zhou a few times. He was a handsome man who left a deep impression, with a refined temperament and a touch of vicissitudes. He was tall and straight, with eyes like abysses, as if one would fall into them if they looked into them even once.
Every time he opened his mouth, he could pinpoint their problems incisively, every word a gem, enlightening them, and time seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye.
Even though they hadn't met often, many of the junior sisters had already fallen for him. Whenever Boss Zhou came to watch the show, they would put on their best performance, but unfortunately, they were all quite disappointed when they saw the celestial beauty, Yao Tai Feng Hou. "Speaking of which, our Yin Opera lineage has a rule that we can't perform for ordinary people, otherwise it's easy for them to be haunted by Yin Opera. Just now, several vengeful ghosts left with the audience. Is that really alright?"
"Hehe, you're late. You don't know yet, but Xunyang is Boss Zhou's territory. No matter how powerful the scoundrels are, they wouldn't dare to cause trouble."
……
That night.
A female ghost in red followed a man leaving the theater, hovering three feet behind him. Seemingly hesitant to attack immediately, she waited until they were some distance from the theater before approaching and clinging to the man.
The man suddenly felt his body become heavier, but he didn't pay much attention to it and continued walking forward.
But the next moment, he felt a sudden warmth on his back, followed by a feeling of ease. The man touched his head, somewhat puzzled, and then went home to sleep.
Under the bright moon, a figure in white sat cross-legged on a cloud, holding a fishing rod as if fishing in the sea of clouds. He wore a bamboo hat, his long robe was as white as snow, and a few strands of white hair at his temples fluttered in the wind.
"This is the seventeenth one. I didn't expect there to be so many vengeful ghosts hiding in Xunyang City. A little trickery has brought them all out."
Zhou Sheng slowly raised his eyes, his eyes, as cold as a deep pool, quietly gazing at the red-clad ghost on the fishhook. Divine light flowed deep within his pupils, as if illuminating its past and present lives.
In the eyes of the red-clothed ghost, Zhou Sheng was now ten thousand feet tall, while she herself was as small as dust, instinctively trembling with fear and powerless to resist.
"Liu Yinping was born into a wealthy salt merchant family in Jiangnan. When she was seven years old, a maid accidentally broke a glass cup. She laughed and pushed the maid into the dry well in the back garden, and then turned to her mother and said: Now it's quiet."
Hearing Zhou Sheng's words, the female ghost's pupils dilated.
"At fifteen, I plotted to disfigure my cousin by mixing the juice of a Western Region plant called 'Corrosive Herb' into her rouge, causing half of her face to ulcerate and expose the bone. Afterward, I pretended to visit her, hiding a mirror in my sleeve. When no one was around, I held it up to my cousin's eyes and said, 'Sister, look, this is my true face.' My cousin hanged herself that night."
Zhou Sheng recounted all the bad things she had done in her life, then shook his head, tossed her into Zhong Kui's gourd, and with a flick of his wrist, refined her with lightning and fire.
This female ghost is vicious and malevolent, far more so than Shen Jinhua back then, but she is nothing to him now.
"This magic is incredibly powerful—it can catch vengeful ghosts like fish!"
Yao Taifeng watched from the side with admiration in her eyes, praising the scene repeatedly.
"This is the Cloud Fishing Technique recorded in the Louguan Daoist school. I once saw the immortal Zhang Sanfeng perform a similar technique. If you want to learn it, I can teach you."
"No, this kind of magic is too profound. I'd rather just study opera."
Yao Taifeng smiled and said, "It's been three months already, and the Ghost Festival is just around the corner. Are you... ready?"
Zhou Sheng looked up at the stars and remained silent for a long time.
Is something still missing?
Yao Taifeng's heart tightened.
"No, I have successfully learned how to explore Yin Mountain, but the Zhou Family Troupe is still missing one person."
After a pause, Zhou Sheng gave her a deep look.
"Perhaps this is the last time our Zhou family troupe will perform together on the same stage."
...(End of this chapter)