The uncle took out some money and handed it to the Taoist priest, but the Taoist priest waved his hand and did not accept it. He told his uncle, if this matter is resolved after today, just bring me a basket of eggs and chickens to thank me, money. I don't accept this. So my uncle could only thank me profusely, and then he took me back to the teahouse.
After my uncle and I arranged everything according to the Taoist instructions before the sun went down, I glued the charms with rice grains. Then my uncle cooked noodles for me to eat. Then we closed the doors and windows and hid in the room.
At about 11:30 in the evening, I was already dozing off. At this time, a rapid ringing of a bell rang.
Hearing the sound of the bell, I suddenly woke up and sat up straight. My uncle also looked nervous. The sound of the bell was exactly what the Taoist priest said. It lasted for about twenty or thirty seconds, and then suddenly there was a soft "click" sound, and there was no more movement.
But my uncle and I still didn't dare to go out rashly. What if the Taoist priest happened to calculate the wrong floor? What if we see the ghost standing at our door just after we open the door?
So that night neither my uncle nor I dared to go out, but we couldn't fall asleep. We just squinted intermittently for a while. The lobby was quiet, but the night wind blew the tiles on the roof from time to time. , which made my uncle and I feel terrified.
This is probably the first time I have encountered such a thing at close range. It only took a short time for me to go from not believing it at first, to slowly doubting my own knowledge, to being convinced of all this weirdness. One day, I don’t know why I was able to accept all this so easily. Being afraid is one thing, but I also felt an indescribable sense of excitement in my heart. This sense of excitement seemed to be telling me, you know too little. , there are still too many things in this world that you need to know.
So that night, my uncle and I stayed up until dawn intermittently, so that we dared to go out.
I poked my head into the lobby to take a look. It was basically the same as what we saw the night before. So I walked over to the stool with the bell attached and found that everything was intact and the same as last night, except for the one standing there. The wooden figure on the chopsticks fell into the water bowl. Not only that, there was also a trace of red liquid floating in the water, which did not faint in the water, just like the blood flowing from the wooden figure.
At this time, my uncle called me and asked me to go over and look at the talisman posted on the door. I leaned over and took a look, and found that the talisman I had just written down the day before had some signs of fading, and the edges of the talisman were still slightly curled. I reached out and touched it. It seemed that after being baked at high temperature, the originally soft and thin talisman paper became much harder and crisper.
It was a peaceful night, and other than these slight changes, there was nothing unusual about the scene. Although we cannot be sure that the ghost was really caught, at least these signs indicate that what the Taoist priest did has some effect.
So I told my uncle, should we visit the Taoist priest again? The uncle nodded and said of course he should go. So he took me out, bought a basket of eggs and a chicken while rushing to the morning market, and then walked towards the Taoist priest's house.
The Taoist priest accepted the things and asked me to explain the situation in detail. The Taoist priest smiled and said, don't worry now, that ghost will never appear in your home again. There is no need to take down the talisman posted on your door yet. You can wait until the seventh seventh day, which is the night of the last seven days of the dead soul, to take it off and burn it. But other than the water bowl, please Just bring it to me when you find time.
My uncle thanked me profusely, and then planned to take me away. When I walked to the door, the curiosity in my heart was unbearable, so I turned around and asked the priest, "Excuse me, what is going on here? How do you know that the ghost will be eliminated?" Already?
The Taoist priest looked at me blankly, and then said to me, first of all, the ghost was not destroyed, but taken away, and kept on the little wooden man. A series of transcendent rituals are also needed to make it stop causing mischief.
The small wooden figure is a kind of craftsmanship. The reason why it is carved into a human shape is actually a way to possess the dead souls or force the dead souls to be imprisoned in the wooden figure. These dead souls who have acted mischievously and been taken away will be collected and enshrined by me. , used as my soldiers and horses.
Soldiers and horses? What are soldiers and horses? I couldn't help but ask further questions. The Taoist priest probably hadn't asked him this carefully for a long time, and he looked a little happy. Perhaps the vast majority of people who find him encounter some troubles that they cannot solve, or even beyond their understanding. However, when the things are solved, they usually leave like my uncle after giving them a certain amount of compensation.
Judging from the Taoist priest's expression, although it was impolite for me to ask such a hasty question, he was very happy to accept my impoliteness.
The Taoist priest started to explain to me with excitement that the so-called soldiers and horses are divided into upper and lower altars, and the difference between Taoist priests and wizards lies in the upper and lower altars. Taoist priests have to master everything from "officers and soldiers" to "rampant soldiers", while wizards usually only have " Rampant soldiers".
The person who was shot to death in your family this time died violently first. That is to say, before he died, he did not think that he would die at this moment, so he died in such a way with strong anger. No, the head The seventh day should be the last chance for his soul to return to the human world. He did not go to his parents' house or his own home, but returned to the place where he died and acted strangely. This resentful soul, once subdued, would also A row of rampant soldiers.
In fact, what he said was so confusing to me that I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn’t even know how to write those words. The Taoist priest then told me that generally speaking, places with ghosts or dead people often have bad earth energy or very good earth energy. Divided into two extremes, it is easy to collect rampant soldiers and horses in such a place.
The wooden man is a tool to lure the upper body, because the soul of the dead has no body. If no one actively sacrifices himself to let it possess him at this time, it may eagerly get into any human-shaped thing. The talisman affixed to the door and the gossip pressed on the bottom of the bowl actually have a frightening and harmful effect on the deceased souls. However, the meaning of the talisman is indeed confusing the deceased soul, making it unable to see the gossip, otherwise it will definitely not He will dig in on his own.
Rice mixed with incense ash, because the incense ash is accumulated when I offer sacrifices to soldiers and horses. It is equivalent to the leftovers of the dead souls. These things can be noticed by the dead souls first. Soak the rice in clean water. , which takes the meaning of the unity of the five elements, to confuse the dead souls into forgetting the original danger of being caught, thus becoming more bold. The bolder it is, the more likely it is to go wrong.
The Taoist priests talked more and more enthusiastically. Although I couldn't understand most of them, I didn't know why. Although I didn't understand them, they felt very powerful.
He continued, and the chopsticks on the bowl were even simpler. After the traps were set one after another, the dead soul would definitely possess the wooden man, but as soon as it possessed it, the wooden man would be unable to step on it. It fell steadily, and the place where it fell happened to be the water bowl.
Water has the effect of imprisoning the soul. If the soul of the dead is in the water, it is really impossible to escape easily without some moral skills. This is why the drowned ghost will never appear alone in a place without water, but can only appear in a place with water. A place that harms people.
When the wooden man falls, the incense ash and rice in the water will cause harm to the ghost. At this time, it will want to struggle, but cannot escape from this small water bowl. When the ghost struggles, it will be triggered due to the amount of energy. The bell makes a sound, so we know that when the bell rings, if the ghost is not extremely powerful or profound, he will basically catch 99% of it.
I asked again, what happened to the wooden man bleeding? There wasn't even anything red in that bowl. The Taoist priest laughed and said, "Young man, that's not blood, that's the ghost trying to escape but couldn't, so it transformed into something that looked like blood to us, because by this time the ghost was already very aware of its own state of death. I I would like to ask you, when the big-headed soldier shot him that day, was the location where he was shot the same as where you saw the wooden man bleeding?
I thought about it and it seemed like that was really the case, so I nodded. The Taoist priest said, maybe the ringing of the bells you heard at that time was only for a short period of time, which is for us living people, but for the souls of the dead, that time is very long. Water is a relatively isolated environment. What is opened is the human world and the underworld. The wooden man bleeds in the end, which means that it never struggled and finally resigned to its fate. The acceptance of fate here shows that it clearly recalled what it was like when it died.
I was stunned for a long time. The Taoist priest's words seemed very profound, but after verifying them one by one, I found that everything was indeed as he expected. I couldn't help but admire him a little. Perhaps seeing my serious expression, the Taoist priest said proudly, "I am an older generation of Taoist priests in these ten miles and eight villages. If you don't have some real skills, how can you find me and know that I can help you?" Woolen cloth.
At this time, my uncle scolded me and said, brat, don't keep asking questions about this and that. You don't understand. Don't make the master upset! So I waved goodbye to the Taoist priest and walked towards my uncle. When I walked to the door, I asked the priest, "Can I come to your place often from now on?"
To this day, I still don’t understand what kind of motivation led me to say this sentence, and for many years after that, I never thought about whether I would regret it.
The Taoist priest hesitated for a moment and told me, whether you come to play or not, you are welcome to come.
