The old scholar, known as Scholar Kong, raised the paper just enough to catch the daylight.
"Spring sale at the Funeral Shop: all incense candles and paper money are 20% off (members 30% off). Anyone attending a funeral or burial gets three years of burning services, a jar of oil, and three liters each of five grains..."
"..."
Beneath the flyer, there were price listings for each type of incense, candle, and paper money, as well as specifications for various funeral packages.
Peaceful Companionship Package: Affordable and resident at eight hundred coppers/twelve hundred coppers (optional);
Fortune and Auspice Package: Limited time offer at sixteen hundred coppers/twenty-five hundred coppers (optional);
Complete Gratitude Package: Comes with feng shui grave-determining service, sixteen pallbearers, mourning music for ten li, funeral gold of five taels.
Smile from Nine Springs Package: Comes with mourning music for twenty li, rituals by high monks and Taoist priests, funeral gold of ten taels.
Celestial Enjoyment Package: Comes with three generations of membership, permanent after-sales for gravesite, funeral gold of thirty taels.
There were also additional value-added items like underworld theater troupe and optional land, sea, or air burial projects, specifically adapted for the foreign burial methods of countries such as Western Regions, Nan Cuo, etc.
In short, whether available in the Grand Yan or not, both the Funeral Shop and Xu's Funeral House could handle it.
Even if there were exceptions, at the very bottom of the flyer, there was a section specifically for custom funeral services.
"Bad luck! This is really bad luck!"
Watching Scholar Kong clutching the flyer in anger, the attendant next to him spit out and crumpled his own flyer, throwing it away forcefully.
After tossing out the paper ball, the attendant turned to look at Scholar Kong and unexpectedly found his old friend angrily stuffing the flyer into his sleeve as he cursed.
"Brother Kong, what are you doing? If you find it unlucky, why don't you throw it far away? Why keep it?"
Scholar Kong hesitated for a while, finally speaking the truth: "It says here, if you take the flyer to the Funeral House, you can get a free pound of lamp oil and two candles."
"..."
The attendant, disappointed, said: "You, who are literate, how can you bend for a pound of lamp oil and a few candles?"
Scholar Kong gave the attendant a sidelong glance and retorted: "What do you understand? The price of incense and paper listed here is considerably cheaper than the candle paper shop. I'm currently short on paper for writing, and as long as the paper they sell is indeed authentic from the candle paper shop, why not visit the Funeral House every day?"
"..."
The attendant couldn't help but ask: "Don't you find it unlucky?"
"We scholars possess a spirit of righteousness; why should we fear ghosts and gods? Besides, talk of ghosts and gods is mostly imaginary, lacking substance!"
"Those operating the Funeral House are humans too, and the shopkeeper at the Funeral Shop couldn't possibly be a monster. I am a scholar of Holy Sage Scripture, also a human; why should I fear them?"
The attendant looked at Scholar Kong with a righteous demeanor, thinking to himself that it's merely due to being short of money; why bother talking about righteousness and wickedness!
Seeing Scholar Kong heading toward the Funeral House, the attendant looked around and, seeing no one noticing, hurriedly ran to the middle of the road to pick up the flyer lying next to the paper money.
After all, it's a pound of lamp oil!
...
Wujue Slope.
After handling burial affairs, once everyone had departed, Xu Qing sat alone in front of Wang Lingyuan's grave for quite a while.
Wang Lingyuan, originally from a forensic background, spent his life dealing with various cases and corpses at the Government Office. After consecrating him in the Spirit Hall, Xu Qing acquired a minor technique for seeing through minute details and revealing the truth.
This technique allowed him to see the informational trails left at the scene by living creatures, such as right now, he could observe numerous unusual fluctuations in color around Wang Lingyuan's grave.
These were traces and clues left by those who had come to pay respects.
According to Xu Qing's understanding, this minor technique essentially manifested abnormal energy flows and causal traces in the surroundings, making it almost omniscient.
Upon retracting the technique, the surrounding returned to normal, as if the previous scene belonged to another dimension.
Looking at the grave of his senior brother in front of him, Xu Qing, for the first time, began to contemplate the impact of a catastrophic era and the severed Heaven-Reaching Road.
With the imbalance of Yin and Yang and the control of the underworld reincarnation by corpses, could his senior brother Wang Lingyuan actually be consecrated by the Sutra of Salvation and sent to the proper place...
Before familiar people around him started leaving one by one, Xu Qing had never delved into this matter. He performed consecrations as if merely going through the motions, yet as for where the Sutra of Salvation sent the soul, and how the soul's belonging was determined, he never considered it.
Now, with the successive departures of Hu Baosong and Wang Lingyuan, Xu Qing suddenly wanted to uncover the true origin of the Sutra of Salvation and its significance.
And this feeling was unprecedentedly intense.
Besides the Sutra of Salvation, Xu Qing's thoughts sank into the Dharma Realm of Blood Lake, where above the lake, a scroll of the living scriptures emitted a faint glow.
Upon opening the living scriptures, names of children who had once been blessed by Lady Bao Sheng's Divine Power or had entanglements with her were shown.
The clearer and heavier the children's names, the healthier and more lively they were; the more vague and dim, the weaker or even dying in reality.
If a name fades and disappears, it represents the loss of a life.
Xu Qing looked at the thousands of names on it with an indescribable feeling.
Speaking of it, the origin of the living scriptures was also quite mysterious.
Appearances would suggest that the living scriptures originated from a nurturing manual, transformed through the support of incense fire wishing power in Blood Lake.
Yet, Xu Qing had never heard of any deity practicing cultivation with incense fire producing similar items.
"Demon Exorcism True Monarch, King Yama..."
Xu Qing suddenly recalled a past story told by the Demon Exorcism True Monarch, where King Yama, upon re-forging treasures of the underworld, split them in two and sent them into the vast mortal world, evading the Celestial Emperor's pursuit.