Sorry, Song-daozhang! Keep searching...
Yi City is such a fascinating arc. To this day I maintain that, if no one was able to point Song Lan in the right direction to Xiao Xingchen in the canon scenes, it is for one of these three reasons:
Option 1: Yi City is a massive community, and even something like a local blind cultivator who helps with night hunts isn't known to the general public. Puts Xue Yang massacring everyone later on in a more awesome perspective.
Option 2: Song Lan wasn't in Yi City when he asked, A-Qing just happened to be in a marketplace of a village far away enough from Yi City that the locals haven't heard of Xiao Xingchen and his exploits. How long away was it? Who knows!
And option 3: The man was LYING. He knows well enough who the local blind cultivator is, but he and the other citizens don't want to tell this sour stranger for... reasons? Perhaps he brings trouble. Perhaps he will cause the very useful resident supernatural pest control team to go away, or perhaps they will fight...
And yes, be honest, the townsfolk are DEFINITELY going to gossip about the two young men living together in that dingy yizhuang, how quaint, they look like young parents with that small child, don't they? Ui, and this dark daozhang, who is he? Why does he look like a husband searching for his missing wife? What kind of drama is brewing behind the scenes here?? Ah, but if he gets involved, won't the good daozhang or his "friend" get in trouble? What if they stop ridding us of the yao bats who swarm from the mountains now and then? Ui, no, no... better keep our eyes down, our nose clean, and our mouth shut. No, daozhang, sorry! We don't know anyone like that, no...
Today's post is for @veliseraptor, the first Yi City author I read, and the main culprit that I ended up neck-deep in love with this little arc of mdzs. Thanks to you I found courage to make an anthology Yi City game, then to write myself!! I hope one day I can give back as much to you, and to this fandom, as I have received in these last 3 years. THANK YOU!!!