The boatman who punted the boat was named Wang Sanliu.
What does the name mean? It’s very simple. He was born on the sixth day of March, so he is called Sanliu.
In those days, most children from poor families were given such names, firstly because the adults in their families had limited education, and secondly because they were really not suitable for those particularly noble names.
Think about it, for a fisherman whose family members are basically illiterate, you name him Zixuan, Zihan... Whether he can write is secondary. When he grows up, he may be called
laugh at.
For another example, there is a wealthy family. The master is a low-key man. His surname is Yu, his name is Qian, and he is also very humble. As a result, he has three servants named Long Aotian, one named Zhao Ritian, and one named Zhao Ritian.
Dong Batian...how do you think this master feels?
On weekdays, when asking them to do things, they would say: "Ritian, make me a pot of tea." "Batian, make me a basin of water to wash my feet." "Aotian, have you fed the dog today?"
How awkward do you think this gentleman is?
In addition, there is also a relatively superstitious saying among the people, which is the so-called "people with cheap names make a living easily".
One theory is that children with strong energy but immature minds are easily targeted by ghosts, so giving a name that even scares ghosts can ward off evil spirits; another theory is that when the king of hell turns over the book of life and death, he will be deeply impressed when he sees a name that is too distinctive.
, I got it if I said it, but names like Zhang San, Li Si, Goudaner Mazi, etc. are easy to be ignored.
But in the final analysis, it was because the level of medical care at that time was too low, and the probability of children dying of illness or becoming disabled due to illness was a bit high, so this type of statement had a market.
Wang Sanliu's family believed in that. When he was a child, he often heard his elders in the family...especially the old people talking about this.
Among the many stories he had heard, there was one that impressed him deeply, and that was the legend about the "Lanruo Temple" on the island in the middle of the lake.
According to legend, more than a thousand years ago, the Shihe River was not called the Shihe River, but the "Corpse River". There was a big monster living under the river, known as the "Ancestor of the Corpse Corpse".
What is "die"? "die" means to exterminate and waste.
Just by hearing the name, this monster has some pretty good habits...
At that time, countless people died on the corpse river every year, and these people, without exception, became the food of the corpse-killing ancestor. By torturing the bodies of these victims, the corpse-killing ancestor extracted the cries and sounds from the souls.
Drawing demonic power from resentment, until a person's three souls and seven souls are almost worn away, the ancestor of corpse-killing will devour his body and squeeze out the last bit of flesh and blood. It can be said to be a veritable "cannibalism without vomiting"
bone".
Needless to say, such a sinful thing will not last long.
One day, an old man came and didn't talk nonsense. He jumped into the river and started fighting with the monster. The man and the monster fought for three days and three nights. The fight was so dark that the sky was dark and the ghosts were crying and the gods were howling.
In the end, the old Taoist was slightly better and killed the dead ancestor at the bottom of the river.
However, this monster's body had accumulated too much flesh and blood and resentment from the souls of the unjustly dead corpses. As soon as it died, those things poured out and mixed together, transforming into thousands of walking corpses, evil ghosts, and evil eyes.
He was about to climb up from the bottom of the river.
When the old Taoist saw that something was about to happen, he quickly took out his magic weapon and used up his last bit of power to summon a mountain from the horizon and place it in the middle of the river, suppressing all the evil spirits at the bottom of the mountain.
Since then, there has been an island in the middle of the lake at the mouth of the three forks of the Shihe River, and the "Corpse River" has also been renamed "Shihe" in order to avoid the word "corpse" and prevent the things below from being destroyed.
Call it out.
In this way, hundreds of years passed in the blink of an eye, and it was at the end of the previous dynasty.
The situation in that year was characterized by a fatuous king, traitorous ministers everywhere, natural and man-made disasters, and the people were in dire straits.
There is a saying that officials force the people to rebel. If you want to rebel, you must go to war.
At that time, Taizu Taizu personally led the rebel army to fight with a certain tribe of the former dynasty. The latter retreated steadily to the south bank of the Shihe River.
The former general who was chased by Taizu was named Yelu Baoqi. This guy was greedy for life and afraid of death, and committed many evil deeds. He also knew that even if he surrendered, 80% of the rebels would not spare his life. Therefore, at the moment,
Seeing that he had been forced into a desperate situation, Yelu Baoqi did something extremely shameless - he actually took advantage of the night, took a dozen of his confidants and guards, took the few bamboo rafts and robbed
The fishing boat escaped.
All the soldiers in the army were left by him to die by the river.
I don't know if it was God's will. That night, as soon as Yelu Baoqi arrived at the middle of the river, a strong wind blew up on the river, causing the waves to become turbulent and the water to flow quickly.
Yelu Baoqi had no choice but to take refuge on the island in the center of the lake with his men.
Unexpectedly, at this moment, the rebel army robbed the camp at night and launched a surprise attack on the camp by the river.
An army in which the commander of the company had gone astray and all the soldiers were missing was like a headless chicken. After being beaten like this, it naturally fell into chaos and was quickly killed to a rout.
In this way, Yelu Baoqi watched the fire from across the bank in the dark night, watching the soldiers who followed him being slaughtered on the other bank dozens of meters away from him, and clearly heard the wails and screams.
But in his heart, he didn't feel any guilt at all about this. Instead, he was glad that he ran in time.
Soon, hundreds of lives disappeared, and their blood dyed the water of the Shihe River red.
The pain and resentment of being betrayed and abandoned connected their blood with another force pressing under the island in the middle of the lake...
At dawn the next day, Taizu led the rebel army to the island in the middle of the lake, preparing to capture Yelu Baoqi alive, but found that Yelu Baoqi and more than a dozen of his cronies were already dead.
The clothes and armor on the corpses were all intact, and there were no obvious injuries, but each corpse... had no flesh, blood or internal organs. Some were just a skeleton with a complete frame wrapped around it, and it had not rotted at all.
of human skin.
This thing is so evil.
Even though the army was full of big men and it was daytime, everyone felt a chill down their spines after seeing the death of Yelu Baoqi and others.
However, they couldn't control this kind of thing even if they wanted to, so they could only let it go.
It was not until many years later that Taizu conquered the country and established Dashu.
One night, he had a dream. He dreamed that he was back at the mouth of the Sancha River in the Shihe River, floating on a bamboo raft. Suddenly, hundreds of heads suddenly appeared on the water around him, and each one
The faces of each head were similar to that of Yelu Baoqi's dead body - bloodless and fleshless, with empty eyes, but the surface of the bones was covered with a piece of fresh human skin.
I woke up from a nightmare, soaked in sweat.
This dream frightened Taizu so much that he sent a national master to interpret the dream for him overnight.
What kind of person is the National Master?
Do you think he is just a royal fortune teller who can fool people?
impossible.
This position has very high requirements for literary attainments, knowledge of natural sciences, psychological abilities, knowledge of royal etiquette, and even appearance.
On weekdays, in addition to doing astronomy in Sitianjian, telling fortunes to the emperor and ladies, interpreting dreams, and providing healing services, etc., according to the requirements of different emperors, the imperial preceptor may also go to preach, lecture, treat diseases, and drive away disasters.
, pray for rain, catch monsters...
The most important thing is that even if we put aside additional factors such as changes in dynasties and the death of emperors, there is still at least one "sacrifice to heaven" to be held every year.
Sacrifice to heaven was a big deal in the feudal dynasty.
Big deal.
For the Imperial Master, hosting the Heavenly Sacrifice every year is like overcoming a calamity - today, even if you make a major mistake hosting the Spring Festival Gala, at most you will disappear from the TV screen next year; in ancient times, if you hosted the Heavenly Sacrifice, it would be a fool's errand.
, then you will disappear from the earth next year.
Therefore, those who can become national teachers, and those who can be sure of it, their IQ, their conversational skills, their psychological quality... are definitely not ordinary people.
The First Imperial Master of Taizu next to Taizu was undoubtedly such a person. As soon as he heard Taizu finish talking about the dream, he rolled his eyes and asked Taizu insinuatingly if he had been to that place before, so Taizu
Zu then told the story of how he annihilated Yelu Baoqi's troops.
The Imperial Master laughed after hearing this.
Why are you laughing? Firstly, he is happy and knows what to do. Secondly, smiling can show that he is confident.
After laughing, the imperial master told Taizu that the people who died in that place had great grievances, and they had something to do with you. In the past, you were still fighting for the country, and you had no time and ability to control them, and they didn't either.
It's your fault, but now that you are the king of a country, they feel that you should save them, so they come to complain in dreams.
When Taizu heard that it made sense, he asked again: "Then how can I help them?"
The Imperial Master said, "It's easy to do. Just build a temple there."
As soon as this idea came up, the "project funds" for building the temple were obtained. How could the Imperial Master not peel off the layers first? As for how the people below would subcontract the contracts layer by layer after he finished peeling off, that was another matter.
In short, the temple was built.
In addition, in order to build this temple, the engineering team also built a bridge on the south bank of the island in the middle of the lake (it was too time-consuming to transport building materials up by ship), and the cost suddenly increased a lot, so that later the National Master took this matter again
I asked the emperor to allocate a sum of money.
A few years later, the temple was built, and the imperial master named it "Lan Ruo", which means "a place of tranquility and no worries and troubles."
However, this temple has been an empty temple since the day it was built.
Originally, who would go to a temple built on an island in the middle of the lake? If there was a bridge on the north shore of the island, connecting to the other side of the river, that would be easy, and people would come and go, but now it is a dead end.
, where does the incense come from?
Furthermore, the island is so big that it is impossible to cultivate farmland to grow food. If someone were to stay in the temple permanently, would they have to keep buying food and daily necessities from outside and send them to the island?
Therefore, this Lanruo Temple is like many "face projects" created by bureaucracy. After spending a lot of money to build it, the actual meaning is just to show it to the leaders. By the way, it also allows some people to line their own pockets.
Fan.
A few years later, the bridge on the south bank of the island in the middle of the lake was also washed away by the current; of course, this is reasonable. When the temple was built, the cost was insufficient due to subcontracting, so the contractor who built the bridge was
I just thought: This bridge can be built with a little bit of rubbish, as long as it can last until the temple is completed.
I have to say that he was quite successful in his work. After the completion of Lanruo Temple, the bridge lasted several years before it collapsed.
Anyway, no one usually walks on this bridge at all, and a few years later Taizu had long forgotten what happened here, so no one took it seriously when the bridge collapsed.
Time flies by again, and two hundred years pass in the blink of an eye.
That is to say... thirty years ago.
That year, four sworn brothers appeared in the world, known as the "Four Bandits of the Central Plains"——
The boss, "The Gluttonous Thief" Han Li, could eat a lot of rice every day, weigh a thousand pounds, and had the best food and wine. It is said that 90% of the property he stole was spent on eating and drinking.
The second eldest son, "Longyang Pirate" Zhu Meng, his name is totally different from what he feels in person. He doesn't look "fierce" at all, and he has a delicate appearance, like a woman, and his voice is soft; this person is a "flower picker"
"Robber", or "Grass Picker", because he only picks men, and his taste is for tall and powerful men over thirty years old...
Lan Shuoli, the third "Zhuge Pirate", has a surname of Lan, not Zhuge, but he is called "Zhuge", which shows that he is talented and resourceful, but unfortunately his martial arts is inferior to that of the other three brothers; in addition, Lan
Shuoli's hobbies are quite special. He likes "ingenious things". In today's terms, they are small inventions similar to magic props, such as some exquisitely designed traps, smoke screens that can be used to deceive others, and flying needles used to plot against others.
Poison sacs, etc.
Finally, there is the fourth "Flying Thief" Li Yuan, who has reached the pinnacle of Qinggong. According to rumors, his Qinggong is at the level of "stepping on the left foot and spiraling to the sky with the right foot", which can only be achieved by those with extraordinary talents; Li Yuan's Qinggong
His hobbies are the most normal. He just loves money and has no quirks.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! These four people were very successful in the world in those few years, and they were rampant for a long time.
But after all, they were "thieves", and they were not "righteous thieves", so they didn't last long before they were hunted down by the enemies who had gathered to kill them.
That night, the four of them were chased until they had no way out. After arriving at the bank of the Shihe River, they got on a small boat and escaped to the island in the middle of the lake.
The people who were chasing them did not give up. The twenty or so people in the world also went to get boats to cross the river and chased them all the way to Lanruo Temple.
However, after the Four Bandits of the Central Plains and their enemies entered the temple, they never came out again...
The fishermen who had borrowed their boats had to get their boats back, so some people later went to the island to retrieve their boats; some boats were retrieved, while others had been washed away by wind and waves and were missing, so they had no choice but to give up.
Among those who went to pick up the boat, there were also some brave ones who quietly went to the entrance of Lanruo Temple and looked in, but they couldn't see even a ghost, only a gloomy draft coming out of the inside.
It was also a coincidence that the brothers who were blown away by the wind fell ill when they came back, and they died when they got sick.
From then on, the legend of Lanruo Temple's "cannibalism" began to spread nearby. Together with the two episodes from more than a thousand years ago and more than 200 years ago, it was told vividly by the people everywhere.
After listening to it outside, my scalp went numb, and then I went home to scare the children.
Wang Sanliu heard this story under such circumstances.
He was ten years old when he heard it. Now he is forty-seven, and he still remembers it clearly, and he really believes it.
Of course, in this violent storm, it was impossible for him to tell all the above words to the travelers on the boat. Even if he wanted to tell them, they would not stand in the rain and listen.
Therefore, he could only simply say something like, "That temple is haunted and can eat people." How could anyone believe it?
Seeing that he could not convince the other party, Wang Sanliu gave up. Anyway, he was determined not to go near Lanruo Temple, even if he was soaked to death in the rain.
Seeing that the boatman was so stubborn, everyone had no choice but to leave him and go on their own.
In addition to Wang Sanliu who was punting the boat, there were seven other people on this boat.
Everyone is already familiar with Sun Yixie, Huang Donglai and Lei Buji, but the other four are: a scholar, a charlatan, a traveling businessman, and an unidentified tall man.