Chapter 12. [Case 3] The snail came out of the grave
Less than 100 kilometers northwest of Chongqing, there is a small county town called Tongliang. Speaking of this place, I have deep feelings. Since I returned to Chongqing in 2002, I have
I concentrated on doing business in this area for half a year. Because there were too many masters in the main city area, trying to establish a foothold was basically the same as stepping on others' lines. So I decided to start with the districts and counties first, and finally started working in the districts and counties.
At least don't embarrass yourself in front of so many masters all at once.
Tongliang is a small town with outstanding people. It is the hometown of the hero Qiu Shaoyun. It is also a town that has been a county since the pre-Qin period. It has clean streets and fresh air. At least you can see the blue sky and white clouds here. In addition,
Tongliang's fish is also a major local delicacy. During more than half a year in Tongliang, I, a person who rarely eats fish because of fear of getting stuck, spent a lot of money in the fish farm here.
Not only that, this is the birthplace of Tongliang Dragon Dance. When I was a child, my parents would always pester me to take me to the street to watch the dragon and lion dance parades during the Chinese New Year. The dancers were dressed in bright red or bright yellow.
Silk clothes, tied with the same turban as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, one person is playing with the dragon in front, and a group of people follow it from the dragon's head to the dragon's tail like a juggling act. Every time there is such a performance, the streets are always full of people.
, the beating of gongs and drums and the sound of Suona from eastern Sichuan mixed with the sound of firecrackers filling the air. I had never seen all this until the ban on setting off fireworks and firecrackers many years ago.
The story I want to talk about today is related to the Tongliang Dragon Dance.
A week after returning to Chongqing from Suining, Hu Zongren called me again to tell me that a new case had arrived. This time it was still the same as the previous two times. The call was made by his employer to Ma Daoren's mobile phone, and then Xuanyuan Hui intercepted the call.
Maybe they sent people to do some easier cases themselves, screened out some difficult ones, and then asked the employer to contact Hu Zongren, thus forming twenty-four cases for us to test. Hu Zongren told me on the phone,
The employer this time is a Tongliang dragon dance family. The general situation is that their family recently received a notice that a road is going to pass in front of their hometown house in the countryside. Their home is included in the planned area.
Ancestral graves. So after private discussion, we still felt that road construction is a major event that benefits the country and the people, but we still have to burn incense with our ancestors. Starting from the night after the whole family burned incense for their ancestors, for several days, the family's
People in later generations had ghost encounters to varying degrees, so the employer wondered if the ancestor was unhappy and did not dare to move the grave casually, let alone call Taoist priests to kill the ancestor, so he called to find him.
Masters like Ma Daoren introduced several compromise methods, and thus contacted Hu Zongren.
Hu Zongren smiled on the phone and said, how did he know that I would not kill their ancestors? I, Hu Zongren, have been mainly learning ghost-killing skills since more than ten years ago. I said to Hu Zongren, since it is copper
Liang Wulong's family should be relatively wealthy. Have you negotiated the price with the other party? Hu Zongren has negotiated the price, but the other party is still very stubborn and insists that the tombs are to be moved for road construction, so
This remuneration should be paid by the contractor, but he also promised that I would go and get the money. Since the Xuanyuan Society has pushed it, it doesn't make any difference whether we have money or not. Don't we still have to go?
Hu Zongren gave a bitter smile. This bastard had known better now, so why did he do it in the first place? Didn't he bring all this on himself by trying to be quick? So I said to Hu Zongren, when do you plan to leave? Hu Zongren said, then
Just tomorrow.
Hu Zongren came to my house early the next morning to find me, and by the way, he cheated me into having breakfast at my house. We both went out after eating. The road to Tongliang is easy to walk, and we arrived in less than an hour.
We arrived in Tongliang County. I asked Hu Zongren where the employer of the dragon dance family lived. He said that the other party told him to call him when we arrived in Tongliang County and he would pick us up. So Hu Zongren took out his phone and called
The other party called me and called him Teacher Zhao from his conversation, so the employer’s surname this time was Zhao. After hanging up the phone, Hu Zongren told me that Teacher Zhao has been waiting for us in the city since last night. You see
, are you sincere enough? I said that this city is so big, and the distance from the east of the city to the west of the city is only about 20 minutes, so why wait? Hu Zongren told me to drive to a certain street on such-and-such road first.
In a certain building, Teacher Zhao is right there.
Although I have stayed in this place for half a year, after all, it was many years ago. The county has been undergoing rapid construction in recent years, and there are many new houses. I don’t know many of the roads, so I have to walk around and ask, but it didn’t take long.
I arrived at the building and turned on the double flashing lights. Then Hu Zongren called the other party and said that we had arrived. What was our license plate number? We were parked on the side of the road. Where are you? As soon as I finished speaking, my co-pilot
On the sidewalk in the direction, a man about 1.6 meters tall, who looked to be about forty years old, walked over. He was bald but proudly shook one side of his hair to block it. He was wearing a military green cloth coat similar to a Chinese tunic suit, and a dark blue dress on his lower body.
A man wearing trousers that look like trousers but not much like them, a pair of black cloth shoes on his feet, and holding a shopping bag from a certain supermarket in his hand.
To be honest, I was a little surprised when I saw him. It stands to reason that Tongliang dragon dance can be regarded as the essence of local culture. The status of dragon dance culture in Tongliang is the same as that of Sichuan Opera in the hearts of Sichuan people.
It cannot be replaced. Since he is from a dragon dancing family, why does Mr. Zhao dress like a migrant worker who has entered the city? He does not look like a disciple of the family at all. From Hu Zongren’s expression, I know that he has the same characteristics as me.
We were confused, but people shouldn’t be judged by their appearance, so we didn’t say anything. After getting in the car, Teacher Zhao sat in the back seat with a smile on his face, stretched out his hand to shake our hands, and kept saying hello, hello, you very politely.
Well, when I shook hands with him, I also noticed that these were a pair of calloused hands, so I guessed they might be from the dragon dance when I was young. Teacher Zhao’s voice was loud, maybe it was from being in the sun for too long.
, there were beads of sweat on his forehead all the time.
So I told him, Teacher Zhao, I have a tissue behind my car. Why don’t you wipe off the sweat first? Teacher Zhao said no, and stretched out his hand to wipe it with his sleeve. I said, why don’t you just tell us where your home is?
Why are you waiting here in the sun on such a hot day? Teacher Zhao said with a smile, their family lives far away, and because it was too far, they came to the county town last night and stayed in a hotel to wait for us. Hu Zongren
Then he said, so your family is not in this county? I thought you, the dragon dance family, should live in the city. Teacher Zhao said a little embarrassedly, well, don’t do those old things.
Having said that, there is nothing to show off about these old gadgets. Let’s set off now. It still takes an hour to drive from here to my house.
In fact, I felt that I was cheated, because I drove for an hour and forty minutes, and when I arrived at Teacher Zhao’s house, I was almost ready for lunch. It’s just that the mountain roads are not easy to walk, and I’m pretty good in the countryside anyway.
I often go back, but after I got off the bus, I was led by Teacher Zhao for more than 20 minutes on the mountain road, and it was uphill. I thought it was time to arrive at the miscellaneous talk this time, until I saw Teacher Zhao’s house.
When I saw it, I was completely dumbfounded.
In front of me is a house that looks like it is about to collapse. The walls made of red soil mixed with bamboo strips have become very dusty. There are chickens, ducks and dogs in the yard. The dog barked at me and Hu Zongren a few times, and then
It started to wag its tail vigorously, and it probably knew that we were here to help their family. On the wall of the main room hung a bamboo stick with silk faucet of various colors. The direction of the faucet was facing the entrance and exit door. You know, if this is
In ancient times, hanging a faucet in your home would cause you to lose your head. Teacher Zhao said that there are six people in their family, and their parents have passed away many years ago. He, his wife, and his brother each live in a room, but they are all crowded together in this place.
In the large mud house, the children of both families are studying abroad, one is in high school and the other is in college, and they are both sons. So now all four members of the family are here.
When the Zhao family saw us arriving, they put a square table in the yard, took out a few long stools, and handed out cigarettes and water. The two brothers sat and talked to us about how their family was poor.
Like that, the two daughters-in-law went to make lunch in the kitchen. Hu Zongren soon became friends with the Chinese pastoral dog. He squatted down and took out a cigarette and asked the dog brother, do you smoke? The dog said
, Wang. Hu Zongren asked again, do you think my fortune will be prosperous this year? The dog said again, Wang. Hu Zongren stretched out his hand to touch the dog's head, as if the other party had won his heart.
I asked Teacher Zhao what was going on at home now. I said that I understood the general situation. Isn’t it just that after you paid homage to your ancestors, you had troubles with ghosts one after another. How did you get into trouble? Teacher Zhao said with a sad face,
First of all, it was him. When he got up to pee in the middle of the night, as soon as he walked to the latrine, he felt that the joint above the heel of his left foot seemed to be pricked by something thin and painful. He thought it was a mouse, so he thought it was a mouse.
When I turned on the light in the hut, I saw a thin old man wearing a pony and a landlord's hat lying on the ground biting his heels. Teacher Zhao said that there was a door panel outside the hut, which meant that the old man's upper body was at that time.
Where he could see it, his lower body was blocked by the door panel, and he was lying on the ground with both hands grabbing Teacher Zhao's feet.
Teacher Zhao said that this scared him so much that he raised his leg and kicked without thinking. In the end, he didn't hit anything. It was like sand was thrown up on the sand for a while, and the old man disappeared.
That night he thought he had fallen asleep. Although he was scared, he couldn't believe it. When he got up the next morning, he heard his brother say that he felt a burning sensation in his throat when he fell asleep last night.
He pushed his wife next to him and asked her to get the water. After pushing her for many times, she still lay still, so he got angry and turned on the small lamp beside the bed. He was about to ask his wife why she called you but you didn't agree.
At that time, he discovered that there was an old man lying on his side between him and his wife. The old man held his face with one hand, just like a child sleeping next to him and listening to a story. His face was expressionless and his eyes were staring at each other.
Looking at him, he was frightened at that time and fell under the bed. But when he looked up again, he found nothing. Instead, my wife asked in a daze why you slept on the floor.
Teacher Zhao said that when his brother told him about it the next day, the two brothers discovered that the old man should be the same person, so they wondered if there was something wrong with ancestor worship a few days ago, so the two went to the ancestral grave.
I went to apologize to my ancestors, but found that many mountain snails the size of fingernails were crawling out from the cracks in the ancestors' graves.
I was alerted when I heard this. There are snails crawling in the graves. This is not a good thing.