When Xing Baotou opened his eyelids again, what he saw was a clear moonlit sky.
He tried to get up, but the pain all over his body suddenly broke out, causing him to let out a breath of cold air.
"Hiss~"
"The boss is awake?"
With an exclamation, a circle of heads surrounded him in darkness.
There was an old wife who was crying with joy, a timid little girl next door, and even more, a group of brothers who came over after hearing the news. Their expressions were complicated, with joy, anxiety, and fear mixed on every face.
Lao Xing endured the weakness and severe pain and stared at the government officials.
"Where's the monster?"
he asked.
The atmosphere in the field was stagnant, and the government officials looked at each other in confusion.
"Where's the Taoist Priest?"
he asked again.
The government officials remained speechless, but all looked at the closed door opposite. There was no sound inside, except for the thin mist slowly flowing down from the wall.
Alas~ He sighed inwardly.
Looking at his appearance, he didn't know. These brothers heard the news from somewhere and rushed here in a hurry. Perhaps because of his former prestige or fear of being held accountable, they did not dare to leave easily. But on the other hand, they were even more afraid inside.
The monster is afraid of delaying Qingqing's life and dare not go in to help.
So, I became a spectator outside the wall with the woman, the child and myself, the injured person.
He shook his head and stood up with strength.
At this time.
"Crunch."
The door that had been closed suddenly opened.
Everyone present shuddered and looked towards the door in panic.
Immediately, they relaxed together again.
But at the intersection of mist and moonlight, the short-haired Taoist strode forward with a sword in one hand and a bloody head in the other.
…
"Can the head catcher recognize this monster?"
The head in Li Changan's hand looked quite miserable, not as ferocious as the one in the yard who wanted to devour others.
The short black hair covering the cheeks was wet and stiff with blood; the two dim yellow eyes protruded from their sockets like dead fish; one of the fangs was smashed by the hilt of the sword, leaving only half of it hanging at the corner of the mouth; the neck
The skin and flesh on the wound were jagged, dripping with smelly demon blood.
When Lao Xing saw it, he felt three parts happy, seven parts disgusted, and quite baffled.
After Taoist Li walked out of the house, without saying a word, he shoved the pickled stuff in front of his eyes, Lao Xing. What else was asked, did he recognize the monster?
Pooh!
I, Lao Xing, am an innocent person. How can I recognize any monsters?!
"It's because of the impudence."
The Taoist priest saw a strange expression on the other person's face, slapped his forehead, and asked for a torch from others.
But I heard the "sizzling" sound of roasting accompanied by the smell of burnt meat and meat.
Li Changan turned his "smooth and clean" face to Xing Captou again.
"What now?"
Lao Xing's eyes widened.
This... isn't this the woman next door who hired to take care of three little babies? How did she become a monster? How could she attack a child she had grown up with?
Xing Qiao's head was pounding, he was so angry that he couldn't control it, his blood surged up, and he fell over again.
…………
When Li Changan said goodbye to everyone and returned to his di shop.
The sky has become brighter.
But Xiaoshui City is still immersed in the exhaustion after the carnival, and has not yet woken up.
There were few pedestrians on the street, and the restaurant was deserted. Only the wisteria on the wall and the old locust trees in the courtyard added to the excitement.
The store owner yawned when he heard Li Changan push the door open and came up to greet him.
"Do you need to prepare some food for the Taoist priest?"
"No need." Li Changan said with a smile, "Father, just go to sleep."
The two of them sang and went back to their rooms.
As expected, the room was already empty.
The Taoist priest left a pile of food on the table, and there was not much movement. Only the small bag of wisteria cakes was eaten clean, and no residue was left. There was only a small note left in the oil paper bag.
Li Changan took it out and found a line of small words on it.
"Tonight at midnight, on top of the Dionysus' cave."
…………
The Bacchus Festival has come to the last day, and it is also the grandest and most important day.
According to tradition, today, in the Bacchus kiln, the best wine brewed in the last round should be selected and presented to the Bacchus God, so as to bless the wine with mellow wine and all the best in the future.
Starting today, old wine can be released from cellars and new wine can begin to be brewed. Xiaoshui, a city on the water and a city of wineries, will also begin to operate again, and the streets and alleys will once again be immersed in the fragrance of flowers and wine.
Therefore, as noon passed, people had already gathered their energy and once again put on their costumes and gathered towards the Dionysian kiln.
Officials, scholars, gentry, wealthy businessmen, wine shop owners, etc. can enter the kiln to observe the ceremony, while ordinary people have to wait outside.
Li Chang'an and the owner of the restaurant and his family took advantage of the reputation of the Yan family wine shop next door, and were able to sneak into the Dionysus Kiln to watch the Western scenery.
Entering the Bacchus Cellar or Temple of Bacchus, even a modern man like Li Changan could not help but be amazed by the architecture in front of him.
When he first arrived in Xiaoshui, the Taoist priest also wandered around a few times outside the Dionysus Cellar. At that time, looking from the outside, the Dionysus Kiln was just a circular hall built on a stone platform at the end of a long street, with gilded eaves.
Even though the green tiles and red lacquer are magnificent and exquisite, they are nothing extraordinary.
But I never expected that in this main hall, covered by bricks and tiles, the temple itself was actually a huge deep well, more than ten feet deep underground and more than thirty steps wide.
For example, it is like a nearly ten-story building falling upside down.
There are planks and stairs connected to each other on the walls of the well, and many stone chambers are cut out layer by layer, specifically for storing wine. According to the store, every year the wine brewed by various houses in the city is moved into the stone chambers and aged for at least one year.
With the blessing of the God of Dionysus, the wine stored in the cellar will be particularly fragrant, which is why Xiaoshui Niang is famous in the north and south.
Li Changan was noncommittal about this.
Anyway, he had been hanging out for a long time, and the name "Xiao Shui Nong" had never entered his ears.
So he learned a little about it and turned his attention to the bottom of the well.
There is nothing else at the bottom of the well except for a statue of the same height as a human being enshrined on a altar. Different from the ordinary solemn and solemn gods and Buddhas, this statue looks like a man with a light fur coat and a slow belt. He is reclining and drinking from a cup.
It's a birthday party, and the clothes are scattered, which is quite the style of the Wei and Jin Dynasties.
Should I say that he deserves to be called the God of Dionysus?
There was also a mage on the altar, leading a few children, to preside over the ceremony.
The mage holds a dragon horn and wears a divine forehead, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Lushan Dharma sect.
Li Changan looked carefully and saw that the mage was still a female crowned woman, with white hair shawl, a stooped figure, and layers of folds on her face, as if she had passed the age of octogenarians.
"Who is the old mage?"
"That's Zhenren Qingping." The shopkeeper saluted from afar and then explained to the Taoist priest, "The host of Shuiyue Temple outside the city is the famous Youdao Quanzhen nearby. The Taoist teachings are profound, and all the merchants who come and go seek this immortal.
Please pray for peace."
Li Changan nodded and continued reading.
After a strange ceremony, this year's wine master selected hundreds of new wines from dozens of wineries in the city and presented them to the God of Bacchus.
Unexpectedly, several large wineries in the city were not selected, but the Yan family's small winery got an advantage.
Master Yanfang was immediately overjoyed. He opened the kiln on the spot, dispersed most of the wine and drank with everyone. The restaurants present followed suit.
for a while.
The cups are flowing and the wine is flowing.
Soon, the wine was passed outside the cellar, to the long streets, to the bridges, and to the boats. The city toasted and drank together, cheering loudly.
But in the end.
After drinking all the wine, the sun sets in the west.
The prosperity is gone, and people go home drunkenly.
Of course, excluding Li Changan.
…………
Li Changan has always found it difficult to understand why these people in the world always choose strange places to meet.
For example, the top of the Temple of Dionysus.
It was dark, and after two nights of carnival, Xiaoshui City felt deserted.
The Taoist priest stood alone in a corner outside the temple, silently facing the thick and tall red lacquer beams.
a long time.
He sighed resignedly, rolled up his sleeves, and pressed himself against the smooth pillar, like a caterpillar, rising up bit by bit.
After spending a lot of effort, I finally managed to get myself to the roof, carefully avoiding the fragile glazed tiles, and stepped on the ridge all the way to the highest point in the center.
Lift your eyes and look around.
The moon hangs high and the fields are wide open.
There were only a few lights in the market, except for the wisteria, which cast a large swath of purple in the moonlight in the silent city.
Li Changan couldn't help groping for it in his arms.
Pity.
It's not the time of the full moon. Otherwise, wouldn't this situation make it appropriate to drink a cup of moon wine?
Suddenly, his expression changed and he turned around.
But on a corner of the cornice that was tilted into the night, I saw a ghost-faced man or a man with a crooked eyebrow standing quietly, and the night wind raised his red skirt, like a cluster of floating fireworks.
…………
The eyebrows stood in the wind without saying a word.
Li Changjing waited for a long time, but did not wait for her to speak.
The Taoist priest really didn't want to play the game of "who can speak first" and kept talking to himself.
"I killed a man-eating demon last night."
"After cutting off the head, the police officer from Xiaoshui told me that the monster's body shape and face were the same as those of the victim's mother-in-law."
"It just so happens that I also recognize such monsters."
"The name is called Grandma Xiong, or Grandma Wolf, Grandma Tiger, Grandma Tiger, but she is not a natural demon, but a monster that comes out of horror legends."
Although the word "monster" is often used interchangeably, it actually refers to two different types of monsters. "Monster" usually refers to a mortal creature that has gained spiritual intelligence and can deceive people. "Monster" refers to the dark side of people such as fear, jealousy, greed, and desire.
The monsters that are born are usually born from the legends and stories that are widely circulated. They also act completely according to the images in the stories, and they have no entity before they are born.
Although there are rare cases of people turning into monsters, Taoist priests have also heard of them. For example, people who were infected with corpse poison became a living corpse; or, in other words, they gradually became half-human and half-fox after marrying a fox. But turning from a human into a monster...
"I'm weird."
Li Changan raised his eyes.
"Can the demon plague or spell you mentioned also turn people into such illusory monsters?"
Yu Mei finally spoke out, but it was just one sentence.
"have no idea."
The Taoist priest unconsciously ground his molars and recited the Jingjing Sutra several times before suppressing the urge to draw his sword and kill people.
What the heck! Anyone who encounters this kind of communication barrier will have to waste more time talking.
The Taoist priest thought for a moment.
"How many people did the layman kill in Xiaoshui before?"
"Seven out of thirty."
This number is actually twice as much as what was announced by the Yamen. However, it can be regarded as an ancient and modern practice, and it is useless to go into details at this time.
"Is there any precedent for this kind of transformation into a 'monster'?"
"None of the people I killed have..." At this point, Yu Mei suddenly stopped hastily and abruptly changed the subject, "I haven't investigated many specific things."
"Since the Taoist priest has witnessed it with his own eyes, he must know that what I said is true. How did you think about my proposal last night?"
Taoist Li smiled, took off two oil paper bags and threw them over.
"What's this?"
"Let's consider it as a meeting gift for joining forces."
"What's this?"
"One pack of purple raspberry cakes and one pack are medicine to cure miasma."
Li Changan returned casually.
When they met last night, he had already discovered that this naughty eyebrow came to him for help because something was happening frequently. It was obvious that he had been tricked by a demon, contracted miasma, and was unable to survive.
After Yu Mei heard this, her movements suddenly froze. It took a while before she squeezed out two words from behind the mask.
"Thank you."
Then he accepted the purple rosy cake, but threw the herbs aside.
The Taoist priest was not angry that the other party wasted his "good intentions", he just smiled and said:
"We can be considered partners now. We should be honest about some things."
Yu Mei didn't say a word, just reached out to take off the mask from his face.
"The layman misunderstood." The Taoist priest waved his hand, "Is your mask beautiful or ugly, male or female, old or young? I have no intention of exploring. What I want to ask is..."
Li Changan said solemnly.
"The layman can always be the first to kill the demon-transformed person, but how do you determine this? How do you know it?"
"fog."
"fog?"
"People infected with the demon plague will only transform into demons at night, and a large amount of fog will appear around them. Just climb up and look down, and you will know at a glance."
This explanation is unexpected, but it is reasonable. The three nights of Qian Dazhi, the beggar and Xiong Gapo were indeed accompanied by the growth of fog. Looking back carefully, Xing Captou also said that the ghost-faced man will always take advantage of the mist.
Ye Wu kills people. It seems that it is not the eyebrows that attract Ye Wu, but the night fog that attracts the eyebrows.
"That being said, that's right..."
Li Changan's words suddenly stopped. He looked behind Yu Mei, then raised his eyes and looked around.
But he suddenly laughed and pointed around.
"Is this the mist that accompanies demonic transformations that lay people call it?"
But seeing the clear moonlight, Xiaoshui City was still immersed in sleep, but at the bridgehead, in the shops, in the long streets, at the end of the alleys, among the wisteria flowers, there was a very light and thin mist everywhere, curling up over the whole city.
Those fogs slowly surged in the dark and empty city, like the white fog rising from dry ice on the stage, waiting for the protagonist to come on stage.
Yu Mei seemed to be shocked by this change, and remained speechless for a long time under the mask.
until.
Ah~ A sudden miserable howl broke the silence of the city.