In some places, paper money is even printed with characters for added sophistication.
Fortunately, the paper money thrown by the corpse-driving Daoist had characters printed on it.
The reason Li Zhiyuan chose to draw paper money at two corners is that the paper money is divided into two types, designed exactly the same, but the script is different.
The left corner of the paper money reads on both sides: Yin people on the road, Yang people avoid.
The right corner of the paper money reads on both sides: Reward from the Jie family, little ghosts give thanks.
These two types of paper money should be interwoven and stacked, and when paper money is scattered, both are thrown out together.
The paper money on the left side is very simple in meaning, serving as a notice.
The tradition of corpse drivers is to travel at night since the day can cause disturbances and draw unnecessary trouble.
Moreover, people in this profession are usually considered unlucky by the secular world; they themselves prefer to stay away from the mainstream and know how to be quietly content.
This is quite similar to corpse recovery divers; Grandmaster's family usually doesn't have many visitors coming and going.
Even now, as employees of government-run funeral homes, when they introduce their work to strangers, they often encounter prejudiced looks.
But the wording on the right side of the paper doesn't seem quite right.
Reward from the Jie family, this points out the family legacy.
Little ghosts give thanks, this points out the social status.
It indicates that the Jie family holds a significant position on "Yin Yang Road," not just asking little ghosts not to cause trouble on the road, but rewarding them with money for staying out of the way.
Daring to print such words proves that the Jie family's status is real and not just self-aggrandizement.
Because in this line of work, the biggest taboo is pride; they generally keep a low profile, do more than they say they do, for fear of incurring trouble.
If you don't have the real foundation, venturing to scatter this paper money would invite those evil things to come and bring ruin to your family.
This is also why the word "roaming the Jianghu" belongs exclusively to the Dragon King family.
In the current circle of writers and performers, there can be internal self-amusement, scratching each other's backs to inflate their reputations shamelessly.
In ancient times, even within the Xuanmen, some played this way, but later they all sank under the river.
"The Jie family?"
Having a legacy makes things much easier, avoiding the needle-in-a-haystack search.
Li Zhiyuan lightly tapped his temple with his fingertip, there were indeed two records in his mind that matched with the Jie family.
One record came from a travel note mixed into the genealogy of the Yin family, describing an ancestor from the Yin family who stayed overnight at an inn on the outskirts of Dayong City while traveling.
In the evening, a corpse driver brought guests to stay.
In a regular inn, they naturally wouldn't dare to accommodate a corpse driver, but there are inns with that special background, and... perhaps some inns' business was so poor that bankruptcy was scarier than corpses.
The innkeeper at night would instruct other guests by lantern light not to go out before dawn, implying that a corpse driver was staying.
That ancestor of the Yin family was not included in this warning; he not only went out but sought out the corpse driver, and the two drank and chatted, becoming "soulmates."
Li Zhiyuan felt that this "soulmates" was exaggerated.
Because after Yin Changsheng, the family's power and status plummeted in a two-thousand-year decline.
However, because of Yin Changsheng's great fame and his vague identity as presumably Emperor Fengdu himself, whenever Yin family members traveled, they always managed to join the table for a drink by invoking their ancestor.
No matter how significant the other party's background, even if the Yin family no longer had the standing, they would still give Yin Changsheng some face.
Thus, the travel notes of the ancestors of the Yin family were quite interesting due to their access to high-end circles.
This Yin family ancestor considered himself a soulmate with a corpse-driver named Jie.
Regrettably, ancient writings were quite brief, and this ancestor simply mentioned this encounter as a minor anecdote without further elaboration.
Thus, Li Zhiyuan, as someone in later generations reading the record, could only learn the following:
He went to Dayong and drank with a Jie family corpse driver, bragging all night.
Dayong is now known as Zhangjiajie.
An additional record was from Wei Zhengdao's "Jianghu Chronicles," which covered a dead obstacle that had once been transformed from an Evil Cultivator, whose surname was Xie, and was mentioned alongside the Jie, Bu, and Wang families as the four major corpse-driving families of Old Heavenly Gate.
Xue Liangliang mentioned that Li Zhiyuan's mind was like an encyclopedia, a fact indeed true.
These records had been viewed and remembered, waiting for the time to digest their content for deeper insight.
Xie, Jie, Wang, Bu, the four major corpse-driving families of Old Heavenly Gate.
Old Heavenly Gate here likely referred to Tianmen County.
In 263, Gao Liang Mountain cracked, creating a door-like opening in the cliff's wall.
Emperor Jing of Wu, Sun Xiu, the sixth son of Sun Quan and the third Emperor of Eastern Wu, considered it a good omen, thus renaming Gao Liang Mountain to Tianmen Mountain and reassigning the northwest part of Wuling County to create Tianmen County with its administration in today's Zhangjiajie.
In 555 A.D, during the reign of Southern Dynasty Emperor Liang Jing, the court abolished Tianmen County and established Lizhou.
When Wei Zhengdao was writing his book, Tianmen County had already been renamed; hence, he referred to these four families as Old Heavenly Gate.
At that time, these four families were likely still using the old names, purely because...the old name sounded better.
Li Zhiyuan rubbed his brow; actually, there was a simpler method if the Qin and Liu Families had complete family histories available.
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