Straw body, real head.
I have never seen this thing before. It is not only weird, but also scary.
Think about it, if a person is walking home at night and passes by a farmland, he sees a scarecrow on a stick swinging in the wind. A strong wind blows and he turns around, only to see a human face.
The air is humid, the light is dark, and the straw man hanging from the ceiling is swinging back and forth.
Xiaoxuan immediately covered her mouth to hold back from screaming.
Don't talk about me, Brother Yu subconsciously took two steps back.
"Here, what the hell is this?" Dou Sprout stammered.
Rao, who was well-informed, raised his head and took two deep breaths. He looked up at the roof of the cave and said, "Based on the rumors in Tianguang Cave Village, it may be that Chen Meiqing."
"The person is already dead, it's okay."
"Wen Bin, find a way to put her down."
After he recovered, Brother Yu thought of a way.
Those bright yellow cloths and ropes became brittle after a long time, and they would break if you hit them hard with a sharp Luoyang shovel.
We helped with lighting, and Brother Yu inserted the Luoyang shovel into the straw man and slowly picked it out.
After it was done, we stood around and looked at it.
I saw that the straw man was wearing an old-fashioned Taoist priest's uniform. The clothes were embroidered with Bagua auspicious cloud patterns. The collar was opened very small and stuck tightly around his neck.
Only when I put it down and took a closer look did I see clearly that it was not just dry straw, but also rattan braiding. Teng braiding was used to fix the head and the straw body together.
It has been so long that the head has turned into white bones, the teeth are leaking out, and the eyes are two black holes.
We are looking at it, and it seems to be staring at us.
"Wait.d."
"There seems to be something in the mouth."
He stretched out his head, groped for a while, and slowly took out something from the skull's mouth.
This is a white porcelain incense stick.
The Xianghe is covered with a lid, the glaze is as white as paper, and there are small sesame nails at the bottom. It is a first-class item. The Xiaoxianghe was made in white in the Northern Song Dynasty.
Open the Xianghe and find a pill of elixir wrapped in oil paper inside.
This elixir is not very round, it is dark black with a hint of gray, and looks like sheep excrement, which is a sheep dung egg.
"Is this an elixir made by a Taoist priest?
"Botou, what kind of medicine is this? Why is it hidden here?" I asked.
He looked at the pill carefully, shook his head and frowned, saying: "I don't know, we don't understand this thing, so we need to find someone to ask."
Douyazai whispered: "This woman's mouth is really big, she can even fit such a big piece of Xianghe into her mouth."
Brother Yu said: "That's not necessarily true. Maybe it was stuffed in by her apprentice after she died."
"Let's stop looking. This thing is so scary," Xiaoxuan said, somewhat resisting the straw man.
"Yunfeng, how many days have we been down?"
"This should be the third day. After tonight it will be the fourth day. What's wrong?"
He raised his head and frowned and said: "The place we are looking for is not here, it is Hu Cemetery. We need to speed up the progress. I am afraid that Junior Brother will come back suddenly."
We didn't find anything else here, so we got the incense and elixirs and followed the original path out.
Dou Sprout said that the pills have expired and should be thrown away as they are worthless.
This is something he doesn't understand.
Old elixirs, especially those made by famous Taoist priests, no matter whether they have expired or not, people are now willing to pay high prices to buy them. No matter what those rich people think, these things can indeed be sold for money.
I have heard that there were three Yushu Pills from the late Ming Dynasty a few years ago.
It was sold for more than 300,000 yuan, which is equivalent to 100,000 yuan per piece.
I don’t know if you can ascend to heaven after eating it. Anyway, I decided to take this thing out and ask someone after I get out.
A few hours later.
"careful!"
Dou Sprout has quick eyes and quick hands. He supports Dou Sprout with his head to stand firm.
We walked to a slope with our bags on our backs.
This place is too slippery. Where there are underground rivers flowing through, there will be caves. I roughly calculated that based on the distance we walked, we should be more than ten miles away from Tianguangdong Village.
"Head, the road was blocked before. Did we go the wrong way? Why is it getting harder and harder to go?" Dou Sprout asked doubtfully.
He stood his head steady and sighed and said: "In this environment, how can we tell the right way from the wrong way? It would be more convenient if our Echo Duck is still there. That thing has been trained and knows where to go.
It can help us lead the way in this environment.”
Xiaoxuan picked up a rotten branch. She leaned on a wooden stick and said, "It's useless now. Didn't the duck get lost? Besides, you said we have to pay for it."
"Stop talking about that, give me your hand."
I pulled Xiaoxuan and walked down carefully.
Halfway through, we could hear the sound of water flowing below. We had no other way to go. Other roads were basically dead ends and we couldn't pass.
"Hey, Mineko?"
"What?"
Dou Sprout licked his lips to the left to let me see.
I turned around and saw Brother Yu holding Ah Chun's hand.
Douyazai said: "Didn't they want to fight before? Why are they holding hands again?"
"Can you really think about it, it's hard to get down in this place alone, and if you're afraid of slipping, wouldn't it be normal for you to ask someone for help? Why don't you hold hands with me?"
"Oh shit, I don't want to be the leader, I also want to be a girl."
"Get out of here, follow the road, don't talk nonsense."
When we came down, we saw that it was an underground river with a very narrow surface.
The place where you can step on the shore is about one meter wide. There are gravels everywhere on the ground. Some of the stones are very sharp and will hurt your feet when you step on them.
He picked up a piece of the head casually, looked at it and said, "Look here, do you see it?"
"Judging from the edge marks, these crushed limestones should have been cut from large pieces of limestone."
"Is it a material not used for making statues of ghost cubs?" I asked.
"That's understandable," said Huotou.
I asked again: "Boss, this place is too remote and difficult to walk. If the masons who were imprisoned here once collected materials here, how did they transport it to the ground? After all, we all walked very easily with bags on our backs."
It takes a lot of effort.”
"Look." He suddenly pointed his head towards the underground river.
"Sir, you said we should take the water route?"
"Is it possible to row a boat on such a narrow river?"
He shook his head and said, "We can only guess that it may be a small boat that only transports good stones without passengers. It floats to the next place and then reverses the boat to deliver the stones."
"Botou! Fengzi! Stop talking!"
The bean sprouts in front of the head suddenly shouted: "Come here quickly! There is another stalactite hole ahead!"
They walked together on gravel, and when they got close to the cave, Dou Sprout flashed his flashlight.
I saw it seemed like two meters above the cave entrance
On the left and right, there are several large red characters.
Douyazai also saw it. He looked up in surprise for a while and said, "Panpansi hole?"
"What Pansi Cave,"
I raised my head and looked at it and said, "It's a seal script. It's indeed a character, but I can't see it clearly."
Because the cracks in the limestone itself are relatively large, water will seep in when it rains and the water rises. Over time and weathering, these seven or eight characters are really hard to read.
Xiaoxuan held up the flashlight and tried to say: "The cave is so green. Why is it so green?"
"Dongtian Paradise, Blue Falling Yellow Spring?" I blurted out almost subconsciously.
"Huh? It seems true."
Dou Yazai said doubtfully: "But it's also possible to read, blue cave sky, underworld blessed land."
I thought to myself, "The words "Blue Falling Yellow Spring" are mentioned on the temple stele of Guizai Temple. Could it be that this is the place it is referring to?"
We carried our bags on our backs, stepped on the gravel, and walked in with flashlights.
This cave is naturally formed, but it can be seen from the faint chisel marks on the wall that it has been artificially repaired.
Next to the underground river, you can hear the sound of "tick-tick-tock" water dripping from time to time.
There are some daily necessities made of limestone in the cave. I saw a small stone table and a stone bench.
Some stone benches fell to the ground, and a layer of dust fell on them.
There is an incense burner on the stone table, made of ordinary black pottery. Behind the incense burner, there is a tablet made of stone.
Behind the stone table, with its back to us, a white skeleton sat cross-legged.
We saw a lot of bones on the road before coming here. We were just startled but not scared.
The skeleton sitting cross-legged has a dark yellow futon under it. It can be seen that the clothes were worn before, but they were not preserved. They were turned into tattered strips of cloth and hung in various directions on the skeleton.
At the signal from his head, Douyazai boldly walked around carefully, lifted up the stone tablet and blew on the ashes.
After blowing off the thick layer of dust, you can see that there is a line of small words engraved on the tablet, and the knife edge is clearly visible.
It is written on the tablet,
"The place where Yanxiazi came into being, in the forty-second year of Kangxi's reign, there is an inscription."
"Yanxiaziyanxiaziyanxia?"
He muttered it twice, frowned and said, "It's such a familiar name. I seem to have heard it somewhere before."
"Don't make any noise, let me think."
"Tick tock, tick tock."
Listening to the sound of dripping water in the cave, I seemed to be trying hard to remember something.
We didn't dare to interrupt, for fear of interrupting the leader's train of thought.
Ask Dou Sprout to put down the stone tablet, raise his head and suddenly ask: "Dou Sprout, please recite to me the temple tablet we saw before."
Dou Sprout thought for a long time and said, "I forgot my head. I didn't remember it."
Look at me again.
I tried to recall: "Master Kun, Master Chen, went to Suidao County to search for the Blue Falling Yellow Spring, and finally found the Seven-Way Vajra Gate. However, he knew that the deadline had come, and all the Hu and Chen in the world were from the same ancestral lineage. After Shun and Yu, Master Chen also followed suit.
Master Chen Dazhen, with the underworld under his head and his body as a temple, it is not in vain for him to come to this world."
"right!"
"That's right!"
"It's all right!"
He looked at me with a startled expression on his face and said, "Looking for Biluo Huangquan in Suidao County, we should read Biluo and Huangquan separately."
"Yellow Spring represents death and burial.
The place where souls are buried.”
"The blue falls in the cave."
"That's the Taoist priest of that sect."
"It must be this way."
"Chen Dazhen, he is the only one who can bear the title of Dazhen."
After finishing speaking, he looked at the skeleton sitting cross-legged on the futon.
"I said the name Yanxiazi sounds a bit familiar."
With a solemn expression, he pointed at me and said, "Yunfeng, the two things you saw last time at the Daoxian Cultural Management Bureau were one with a face painted with red cinnabar, and that was the stone statue of a ghost with a severed hand."
He gestured with his little finger.
"The second thing, the stone tablet with the surname Chen that you saw, think carefully about the time when the stone tablet was signed, and also think about the names of the first people on the first line of the stone tablet."
I tried hard to recall in my mind the meeting with Wang Er that day at the Cultural Affairs Bureau.
"Boss, the name of the person in the first row seems to be Chen Yiqing."
"The time when the signature was signed was in the fifty-fifth year of Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty. At the end of the year, Jiayin and Meng Qiuyue recorded it."
"Yes, that's right."
The boss asked me again: "When was the inscription on the temple stele at Guizai Temple made?"
I said: "It was in the 21st year of Guangxu's reign, at the end of winter, Kun Lian master Chen, and his disciples left the engraving."
"good."
He raised his head and asked, "When are you looking at this stone tablet?"
As I watched, I listened to the boss saying:
"The engraving was made in the 42nd year of Kangxi's reign, which is 1703."
"Gui Zai Temple was established in 1895, which means that Chen Meiqing appeared in Tianguangdong Village that year."
"1895 minus 1703, more than 190 years. If we count three generations as 60 years, six generations will be almost 190 years."
"It should be that Chen Meiqing is a descendant of Chen Yiqing. This Chen Yiqing was a person from the Qianlong period and his master."
He pointed his head at the skull and said, "That's him."
"Then who is he?" I asked.
"call"
He took a deep breath and said, "No wonder the researchers couldn't figure it out. I didn't expect it to be so complicated."
"If we are unlucky and miss one of the inscriptions, we may not be able to solve the mystery."
At this time, Dou Sprout said anxiously: "Head! Don't show off. Who is it? You have confused me!"
Put your head out with one finger.
"These Taoist priests surnamed Chen are the last sacrificers in Guizailing."
"They all recognize the same ancestor, that is, Chen Manggong, the king of the state of Chen."
Seeing my mouth open, the boss glanced at the skeleton and continued:
"This person's name is Yanxia. He was a very talented scholar in his early years. He was awarded Jinshi when he was young. After he entered Taoism, he saw through the world of mortals. In the eighth year of Kangxi, that is, in 1669, he went to Qingcheng Mountain and became a Taoist Celestial Master."
"Eighteen years later, in 1687, he resigned as Qingcheng Celestial Master and went to Qingyang Palace to continue practicing Taoism."
"In 1702, the forty-first year of Kangxi's reign, Emperor Kangxi personally invited him to the palace to pray for his mother, and then rewarded him with a plaque on the Bidong Alchemy Terrace. He was also granted the title of Great Celestial Master and was given the title of True Master of Bidong."
"This man is the founder of the Bidong Sect."
"Back then, I single-handedly defeated the Taoist priests of Longhu Quanzhen."
"Chen Qingjue."
This chapter has been completed!