Chapter 114 The ancient house in Changqiu is empty and shadowy
Late at night, the streets and alleys were all quiet. The soldiers responsible for guarding Jipi Lane tonight had been transferred to the second shift.
"Watch carefully, and don't tremble when you see him. If something goes wrong, just scream, got it?"
The soldier at the previous post stood crookedly with a knife in his hand, and handed over the post that was most likely to make him sleepy to the new soldier. He didn't walk away step by step until he saw the other party taking the knife with a sad face, humming "The bright moon will shine on people" in his mouth.
minor tune.
After guarding it for the past few days, the Geng family sergeants have reached a consensus that this alley is very evil.
If the Yang Qi is strong during the day and the sky is clear, it will be fine, but once it gets dark, the alley is filled with a strange and unknown odor, which seems to be emanating from under every stone slab in Jipi Lane. No matter how much you splash and sweep,
It cannot be eliminated every time.
After there was no movement in the alley for the first few days, the soldiers responsible for guarding the alley were also changed. The old soldiers from Liaodong under King Jingnan were replaced by new soldiers recruited by the prince in Guangdong last year.
This battalion was divided into several rounds to guard day and night. Every day they could only look at the alley in despair, as if the old ink had been forgotten by the scholar in the bookcase, which was superfluous and despicable.
After the defense was changed, some people who thought they were well-informed went to inquire why those veterans who had experienced many battles were so secretive about the situation in the first few days and seemed to dare not look back when they fled on the day of the change of defense.
The old soldier didn't ask for meat or money, and he didn't take the opportunity to gamble. He only made some confusing requests.
Driven by curiosity, someone still spent half a month's salary to ask the gloomy old soldier to burn a bunch of paper candles at the Minshan Temple, and drank cold meat-sacrifice wine until he was very drunk. Only then did he tell him that in the alley
The smell is familiar to all veterans——
Especially when King Jingnan was at the gate of Guangzhou the year before last, he was angry that the people of the city had been resisting each other for a long time, and ordered to kill all the strong men in the city, even eating their flesh and sleeping on their skins to vent their anger.
In those days, the streets and alleys of Guangzhou City had the same smell as Jipi Alley. The stench lingered in the air, and dead maggots came out of the houses in the alleys.
The panicked meddler fled back to the camp and told his colleagues about the incident. The panicked comrades also told him that they had also heard some news.
The local residents, who were as cunning as jackals, deliberately told them that this Jibi Lane was originally a wasteland. It was not until the Five Dynasties period when Wang Shenzhi ruled Fujian and built Luo City that the origin of the village system was established. However, the houses in Jibi Lane were
It was built repeatedly and collapsed, injuring countless people. It was not completed until the Song Dynasty, until someone quietly drove piles into the ground...
When Jiang Wen came to Jipi Lane, he saw a sentry holding a waist knife and hunching his back, like a frightened old cat, staring at the dim lights diagonally across the alley, greedily trying to
These lights rushed to his side to build momentum, but suddenly he felt a cold wind blowing behind him.
The sentry saw a shadow appear on the tree. It was not just a tree monster but a wood charm.
His scalp suddenly exploded, and when he looked at the elegant Shanfang Quan Pavilion in Jipi Alley, he only felt vaguely vague. Then he slowly squatted down, simply closed his eyes and turned a deaf ear.
Under the bright moon and overcast wind, Jiang Wen stood on an ancient tree branch sticking out of the wall. His fingertips touched the high saddle wall and green talc carvings of the mansion, and his eyes quickly scanned the alley.
The buildings in Jipi Lane still have the tradition of building walls in sections in the late Tang Dynasty. They all have high and thick brick or earth walls. The walls follow the ups and downs of the wooden roof trusses to form a streamlined shape, covering this not-so-wide alley.
The corners of the house stick out like a saddle, preventing the moonlight from penetrating into the alleys.
"There must be something wrong here."
Jiang Wen looked out from a high place and had already made a conclusion in his heart.
Fuzhou official paper is suitable for government offices, but there is always someone responsible for printing it. The three lanes and seven alleys are dotted with local engraving and bookshops, including literati calligraphy and painting shops that identify and repair, as well as bookstores and pavilions that collect rare ancient books.
, the front shop and the back shop, printing and selling at the same time have become a common practice.
Eryouzhai, which was the first to cause trouble in Jipi Alley, was a bookstore that also sold calligraphy and painting on inscriptions, local songs, and Buddhist statues. The owner often went to other places to collect treasures and sold them to dignitaries.
Jiang Wen used Qinggong to quietly jump out, stepped across the door and stepped into the courtyard of the owner's courtyard of a single-entry Eryouzhai. He saw that the closed door had been barred, and the courtyard was also swept clean.
It is a pot of sweet-scented osmanthus growing toward the sky, with luxuriant branches and leaves.
But in the fragrance of flowers, a musty and old smell slowly emerged, and the unique smell of old wooden houses prevailed, just like this dimly lit courtyard house, standing proudly and contentedly.
In the darkness, Jiang Wen always felt that if he took a step forward, an old woman eating fast and chanting Buddha would come out of the house, or a child with cold skin would stumble from the corridor to meet her.
That strange feeling, that although everything in front of you is gone, it is not far away. Or perhaps, the people living here are indeed invisible. They are hiding in the darkness and coldly watching the uninvited guests. From now on, they will not need to breathe and will not see blood.
, turned into ephemera that live and die in this thousand-year-old house.
Fortunately, the rough ancient bronze sword hilt in his palm drove away his reverie. Jiang Wen glanced at the fact that it was already the middle of the moon, then slowed down and stepped into the corridor in front of the court, planning to search the houses one by one.
In the study, ink splattered and broken, and rice paper was scattered all over the floor. It seemed that someone was trying their best to write something down, but was unable to do so, so he lost his temper and left in despair.
Jiang Wen leaned his back against the wall and slowly squatted down. He picked up a pitch-black draft and found that it was covered with lines outlining the curves and was extremely messy. On the other hand, one side was covered with red mud.
The private seal seems to be the words engraved by a certain supervisor.
But the words in front of this seal are clearly the word "Netherworld" in Chongzhuan!
"This person seems to want to copy and use it for stereotype printing. He must be a supervisor? But I don't know why he lost his temper..."
Jiang Wen hid a piece of paper in his sleeve and walked into another room.
Futons were scattered in the Buddhist hall, and scriptures were all over the floor. They stepped on the dirt without scruples and left footprints. This was a clue that Jiang Wen had never thought of. He could immediately tell that this was a man of about the same height as Jiang Wen, wearing soft bottoms.
The cloth boots went in and out quickly, and there were only three and a half footprints in the house.
The clay-embodied Buddha statue had been smashed to pieces and fell to the ground in a hurry, with the Buddha's head missing.
Jiang Wen continued to walk into the inner hall and found that the exquisite craftsmanship of the window lattice and the beauty of the inlaid wood carvings had surpassed the exquisiteness of ordinary people. There were openwork and relief carvings in the wood-carved window sash, and the themes included birds, animals, figures and flowers, but the most
The most popular ones are "Vimalakīrti Sutra", "Dharma Diagram" and "Buddha's Jataka Story".
Jiang Wen couldn't help but ponder.
What happened to make an adult seal supervisor so crazy that he even ignored the Buddha who usually paid homage to him?
Oh, by the way, Jiang Wen also guessed that the other party should have another identity, that is, a local master who steals carvings from ancient houses and artifacts from tombs.
Since ancient times, it has been difficult to store ancient inscriptions and ancient books, and many of them have been damaged over the past dynasties. Only relatively closed ancient tombs and houses can still survive.
Just like in the last years of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, King Gong of the Han Dynasty and Lu obtained the "Old Classics" and other works left by Confucius from the wall of Confucius's former residence. It is also like the case in the fifth year of Qi Wuping, when people in Pengcheng opened the tomb of Xiang Yu's concubine and obtained the stone letter and silk version of the "Tao Te Ching".
》, all of which better preserve the information of ancient times.
Putting aside the nameless Buddha statue that the other party brought back, he must have found something even more mysterious and unknown - after all, the people who originally excavated Kong Zhai and Xiang Yu's concubine tomb also encountered many unexplainable things...
Jiang Wen stared at the carvings in the hall in a daze. He was hesitating whether to go to the library on the roof to find more clues. Suddenly, he heard a loud knock on the door of the courtyard.
Weird knocking sound.
Such a guarded alley, a dark house, and a heavily locked wooden door suddenly seemed like someone was visiting.
Don't be surprised, the blame will be lost. Jiang Wen didn't want to pay attention to the sound at first. But the knocking sound was light, crisp, short, and polite at first, and gradually became sporadic, and the movements began to be rough.
By the time Jiang Wen decided to go upstairs, the knocking on the door was so rapid and chaotic that it sounded like a thunderstorm, resounding throughout the deserted Jipi Lane. However, the person knocking outside remained silent, only not far away.
Somewhere, knocking on the door stubbornly and weirdly...
Jiang Wen quietly came to the door. Through the gap between the wooden doors, he first saw an eye as red as blood, and a tongueless mouth with blood flowing from it. They both approached the gap in the door and faced him within a short distance.
Behind the door, Jiang Wen also saw a tall figure, who seemed to be standing in the alley with a sharp boning knife. His head was covered in blood, with only a trace of skin connected to his neck, standing quietly.
In the middle of Jipi Alley, the severed head hung crookedly as if staring at the bright moon in the sky.
"Catch the head...Catch the head...it's coming..."
The tongueless mouth spoke indistinctly, and the sound was like a mosquito gnat, clearly exuding a strong aura of death.