Late at night, the streets and lanes were all silent. The soldiers responsible for guarding Jipi Lane have been transferred to the second shift.
"Watch carefully, and don't tremble when you see him. If something is wrong, just shout, got it!"
The soldier at the previous post stood crookedly with a knife in his hand, and handed the post where he was most prone to sleepiness to the newcomer. He watched him take the knife with a sad face, and then walked away step by step, humming "The moon shines on people". minor key.
After guarding it for the past few days, the Geng family sergeants have all reached a consensus, that is, this alley is very evil.
If the Yang Qi is strong and the world is bright during the day, it will be fine, but once it gets dark, the alley will be filled with a strange and unknown odor, which seems to be emanating from under every stone slab in Jipi Lane. No matter how many times it is splashed and washed, it will be Cannot be dissipated.
After the first few days of silence, the soldiers responsible for guarding the alley were also changed. The troops have also changed from the old soldiers from Liaodong under the command of King Jingnan to the new recruits recruited by the prince in Guangdong last year. A battalion of troops is divided into several rounds to guard day and night. They can only stare at the empty alleys in despair every day, as if they have been forgotten by the scholar. Old ink in a pocket bookcase.
After the change of defense, some well-informed people went to inquire why the veteran soldier who had experienced many battles was so secretive and didn't dare to look back as if he was running away.
The old soldier didn't ask for meat or money, and he didn't take the opportunity to gamble. His request made people confused.
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. He also drank cold wine and got very drunk. Only then did he tell him about the smell in the alley. All veterans are familiar with——
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. He ordered the people in the city to be killed frequently, even eating their flesh and sleeping on their skins to vent his anger.
In those days, the streets and alleys of Guangzhou City smelled the same as those in Jipi Alley. The stench lingered in the air and dead maggots left the homes 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 governed Fujian and built Luocheng that the beginning of the village system was established. However, the houses in Jipi Lane were built and collapsed many times, causing countless injuries to the people. They were not completed until the Song Dynasty, until someone quietly drove piles into the ground...
The sentry was hunched over with his sword in hand, like a frightened old cat. He stared at the dim lights diagonally across the alley, greedily trying to steal these lights to his side to strengthen his momentum, but suddenly he felt a burst of light behind him. A cold wind blew.
His scalp exploded instantly. Looking at the Shanfang Quan Pavilion in Jipi Lane, he only felt vague. Then he slowly squatted down, closed his eyes and turned a deaf ear.
In the bright moon and dark wind, Jiang Wen stood on the trunk of an ancient tree 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 horns stick out from the house like a saddle, preventing even the moonlight from penetrating into the alleys.
"The White Lotus Sect must be hiding 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 someone must be 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 bookshops and pavilions that collect rare ancient books. , it has become a common practice to shop in the front and sell at the same time.
The Eryouzhai where the accident happened in Jipi Lane was a bookshop 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 a single-entry courtyard. He saw that the gate was closed and the gate was bolted. The courtyard was also swept clean. In the small courtyard, a pot of sweet-scented osmanthus was turned up to the sky. Growing and flourishing.
But in the fragrance of flowers, a musty and old smell slowly emerged, and the smell unique to old wooden houses took over. Just like this dimly lit courtyard house, Jiang Wen always felt that he was taking another step forward. , an old woman who is eating fast and chanting Buddha will walk out from the corridor, and children with cold skin will stagger to meet her.
That feeling is that although everything is gone, it is not far away. Or maybe the people who live here are hiding in the darkness and watching the uninvited guests coldly, without breathing and without blood, just like the mayflies living and dying in this ancient house.
The rough ancient bronze sword hilt in the palm of his hand drove away his reverie. Jiang Wen glanced at the fact that the moon was in the middle of the sky, then slowed down and stepped into the corridor in front of the court, planning to search the houses one by one.
In the study, the ink was splashed and broken, and the floor was littered with rice paper. 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 scrolls and was extremely messy. The other one had a private seal covered with red clay, which seemed to be the words of 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 dirt without scruples and left footprints. This was a clue that Jiang Wen had never thought of. He could roughly tell that he was a man of about the same height as Jiang Wen, wearing soft-soled cloth boots. In and out quickly, there are only three and a half footprints in total.
The clay-embodied Buddha statue had been smashed to pieces and fell to the ground in a hurry. Only the Buddha's head was missing.
Jiang Wen continued to walk into the inner hall. The exquisiteness of the window lattice and the beauty of the inlaid wood carvings have surpassed the exquisiteness of ordinary people. There are openwork carvings and relief carvings in the wood carving style windows. The themes include birds and animals, figures and flowers, but the most Or "Vimalakīrti Sutra", "Dharma Diagram" and "Buddha's Jataka Story".
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 had another identity, that is, a local master who stole 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 tombs and ancient 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 Texts and Documents" 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 Wuping in the Qi Dynasty 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 discovered Kong Zhai and Xiang Yu's concubine's 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 look for more clues. Suddenly, he heard a loud knock on the door of the courtyard.
A guarded alley, a dark house, and a heavily locked wooden door suddenly seemed like someone was visiting.
It's not surprising that the strange thing is wrong. Jiang Wen didn't want to pay attention to this voice at first. But the knocking sounds were crisp, short, and polite at first, and then 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 thunder array, resounding throughout the deserted Jipi Lane. However, the person who knocked on the door remained silent and was not far away. , knocking on the door stubbornly and eccentrically...
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 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 flesh remaining connected to his neck. He was standing quietly. In the middle of Jipi Lane, the severed head seems to be staring at the bright moon in the sky...
"Catch the head...Catch the head...it's coming..."
