The boatman who punted the boat was named Wang Sanliu.
What does this name mean? It's very simple. He was born on the sixth day of March, so he was called Sanliu.
In those days, most children from poor families were given such names. Firstly, it was because the adults in their families had limited education, and secondly, they were not suitable for those particularly noble names.
Think about it, for a fisherman whose family members are basically illiterate, if you give him a name like Zixuan or Zihan... Whether he can write or not is secondary. When he grows up, he might 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 errands, they would say: "Ritian, make me a pot of tea." "Batian, make a basin of water for me 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 are easy to make a living".
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 by names that are too distinctive. , I checked it, but names like Zhang San, Li Si, Goudaner Mazi, etc. are easily 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 being disabled 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 the 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"? To die means to destroy or destroy.
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; the corpse-killing ancestor tortured the corpses of these victims, extracting from the lamentations and souls of the souls Drawing demonic power from resentment, until a person's three souls and seven souls have been almost consumed, the corpse-killing ancestor will devour the body and squeeze out the last bit of flesh and blood. It can be said to be a veritable "eating people 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 unjustly dead corpses. As soon as it died, those things poured out and mixed together, transforming into thousands of walking corpses, evil ghosts, and demons. 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.
In that year, the king was fatuous, traitors were everywhere, natural and man-made disasters occurred, and the people were in dire straits.
There is a saying that officials force the people to rebel. If they want to rebel, they 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, 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, and took a few bamboo rafts. Escaped with the stolen fishing boat.
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 reached the middle of the river, a monster wind blew up on the river, making the waves turbulent and the water fast.
Yelu Baoqi had no choice but to take refuge on the island in the middle 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 whose commander 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 wailing and screaming.
But in his heart, he didn't feel any guilt at all about this. Instead, he was glad that he ran in time.
Soon, thousands 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 sheet wrapped around it that had not rotted at all. 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. The faces of each head were similar to Yelu Baoqi's dead state - 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 his dream overnight.
What kind of person is the National Master?
Do you think he is just a royal fortune teller who can trick 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 the Si Tianjian, providing fortune telling, dream interpretation, and healing to the emperor and ladies, etc., according to the requirements of different emperors, the imperial preceptor may also preach, preach, 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 Heaven Sacrifice every year is like overcoming a calamity - today, even if you make a major mistake in hosting the Spring Festival Gala, you will disappear from the TV screen next year at most; in ancient times, if you hosted the Heaven 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 are reliable, 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 whether he had been to that place before, so Taizu asked him if he had ever been to that place before. Zu then told the story of how he annihilated Yelu Baoqi's troops.
The imperial master laughed after hearing this.
What laughing? One is that he is happy and knows what to do, and the other is that 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 were somehow related to you. In the past, you were still fighting for the country, and you had no time or ability to care about 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 use dreams to complain.
When Taizu heard that it made sense, he asked again: "Then how can I help them?"
The Imperial Master said: "It's easy to handle, just build a temple there."
As soon as this idea came up, the "project funds" for building the temple were obtained. How could the national master not peel off the skin first? As for how the people below him will subcontract after he is done, that is 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. The son 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 the temple built on the island in the middle of the lake? It would be nice if there was a building on the north shore of the island, connected to the other side of the river. Then people would come and go, but now it is a dead end. Where can the incense come from?
Furthermore, the island is so big that it is impossible to cultivate farmland to grow food. If someone stays in the temple permanently, will 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 originally 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. 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, eats a lot of rice every day, weighs a thousand pounds, and has the best food and wine. It is said that 90% of the property he stole was spent on eating and drinking.
The second eldest brother, "Longyang Pirate" Zhu Meng, his name is completely different from his own impression. He doesn't look "fierce" at all, and he has a delicate appearance, like a woman, and his voice is soft and 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...
The third "Zhuge Pirate" Lan Shuoli is named Lan, not Zhuge, but he is called "Zhuge", which shows that he is quick-thinking and resourceful. Unfortunately, his martial arts is a bit 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 as deceptions, and flying needles used to plot against others. Poison sacs and so on.
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 up to the sky with the right foot." It 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.
It was just these four people who enjoyed great success in the world during those few years and ran rampant for a while.
But after all, they were "thieves", and they were not "righteous thieves", so they didn't prosper for long before they were hunted down by the enemies and bitter masters who gathered together.
That night, the four of them were chased into despair. 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, and now he is forty-seven. He still remembers it clearly, and he really believes it.
Of course, in this stormy 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 say something like "that temple is haunted and can eat people." How could anyone believe it?
Seeing that he couldn't convince the other party, Wang Sanliu didn't care. 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.
