So I asked the child’s mother where there was a water source nearby, as long as it was clean water. The child's mother said that about fifty meters to the west from here, there is a mountain with spring water flowing out. So I dropped my bag, took the bowl and went to get the water. Yes, before summoning soldiers and horses, I need to perform the Water Bowl Circle Light Technique first so that I can roughly know what I should deal with this time.
Soon I got the water and returned to Captain Li and the child’s mother. Because the child gradually lost consciousness after he got into the gaps in the bamboo. So I chose the place to do the water technique in front of the big bamboos. After burning the charm and throwing it into the water, the paper ashes soon developed into a spiral shape. Maybe it's the paper dust itself. The spiral shape looks a lot like the shell of a snail that I caught when I was a child. I showed the development in the bowl to the child’s mother and asked her to think about whether she had noticed anything similar before and after the winter solstice.
The child's mother looked at it for a long time, but always shook her head and said, probably not. I have never been a careless person. If so, I should have made an impression.
So things got here, and they were temporarily stuck again. After asking to confirm whether the child's soul is here or still exists in the body, I started to throw rice and ask questions. The content of my question was probably that if Zhang Heping's soul is still here at this moment, it will float around. If it is still in itself, Inside the body, things are sinking and floating. The answer I gave showed that the child's soul was still in his body, which made me relieved, because in this way, even if I expelled the other ghosts in his body and let him recover on his own, Much easier.
But when I asked about this, I asked a little more, whether the ghost possessing Zhang Heping at the moment came to repay a favor or take revenge. It's not that I don't know the answer, but I need to confirm it myself. If it's revenge, there must be a reason. If there is no reason and he is possessed randomly, I will not forgive him.
The answer Mi Li told me in the water bowl was just as I expected, it was to take revenge.
Usually, the ghost's revenge is mostly directly related to the victim. For example, in the case of Tian Xiaofang before, although Tian Xiaofang was not the person who directly killed the landlord, the landlord's death was initially caused by her. So she became the only one seeking revenge. And Zhang Heping is just an 8-year-old child. What can he do to make a ghost take revenge on him? When I thought about this, I couldn't help but imagine another possibility in my mind. Could it be that before or after Zhang Heping, my parents had other children but failed to keep them? If this is the case, the child may also feel resentful about why his parents want older brothers and younger brothers but not me. But what was inconsistent with this idea was the aggression he had towards me at first at Zhang Heping's house. As the saying goes, every injustice has its own owner, and even if I come to hinder it, I won't be so hateful.
After being puzzled for a long time, I had no other solution. Based on the information currently available, I have predicted that we may be facing a fierce battle. So I summoned soldiers and horses, lit the incense of soldiers and horses, held the incense in one hand, and rang the bell in the other. Starting from the place where Zhang Heping got into the bamboo, I planned to look for some ghost clues related to this incident.
The direction we came from was probably from the southeast. But at this moment, Bing Ma Xiang's guidance was heading straight to the southwest. That was an area we didn't check at all. Occasionally there will be wind blowing in the bamboo forest, so you must pay special attention to judging the smoke. I walked toward the southwest for about ten minutes, and maybe in another ten minutes, I would come out of this bamboo forest. At this time, I saw a pile of dirty clothes on the ground.
When the child's mother saw it, she immediately stepped forward to pick it up and told me excitedly that this was the outfit Zhang Heping wore when he went out that day. I counted them carefully, and found that my underwear, jacket, pants, shoes and socks were all there. There was also a small bamboo basket and a small machete on the ground. There is no doubt that these things were all things that Zhang Heping had with him at that time. It was here that he took off his clothes. I picked up the bamboo basket and looked at it. Except for some bamboo, there was nothing else. The child's mother said that this small scimitar was the knife that Zhang Heping used to cut pig grass.
After taking inventory, I found that nothing else was missing. Zhang Heping had left all his belongings here after he went out that day. So I picked up those things and stuffed them into the bamboo basket. I originally thought that the investigation of Bingma Xiang was over. Just when I was wondering what the use of this pile of clothes was, the Bingma Xiang suddenly continued to float towards the southwest. passed.
To be honest, I was still a little surprised at the time. It wasn't because there were other clues, but because I realized that my military skills had reached a new level and I knew how to look for extra clues. So we continued to follow the smoke. After about a few minutes, next to a pile of slightly thicker bamboos, the smoke suddenly fell and rushed towards the grass pile at the roots of the bamboos.
I knew that there must be something else in the haystack now, but since it was relatively well covered, I took out a small scimitar from the bamboo basket and used it as a tool to push aside the haystack. This time, I was surprised.
What was in front of me was a large snake about one and a half meters long, covered in gray and black! The snake had been dead for a long time, and because the temperature was relatively low, the body had not decomposed yet. There is also a layer of gray-white snake skin near the snake's body.
I have always been afraid of snakes since I was a child, not because of their appearance, but because I cannot accept the feeling of being wet, greasy, and shiny. When I was a child, I once saw a small snake in the drainage ditch with Di Baotian on the back street of Baixiang Street. From that time on, I had an inexplicable repulsion towards this kind of animal. Every time they spit out the forked snake tongue, I can't help but feel creepy.
There is snake skin, which means that the snake must have just shed its skin before it died. Although my knowledge level is very poor, I know that animals like snakes shed their skin several times every year as their bodies grow. That's because I once saw a medicinal material called "Snake Slough" in Mo Langzhong's medicine shop. This is what Dr. Mo told me at that time. I used a machete to turn the snake over. The strange thing is that snakes, unlike humans, do not become particularly stiff after death. Instead, their entire bodies are soft. I saw an obvious wound about five inches behind his head. I gestured with the scimitar in my hand and compared the width of the wound. I found that this snake was probably killed by this scimitar.
In this way, things seem to be clear. I knew the big dead snake in front of me. It was a water snake. Since it was a water snake, it meant that there must be a pond not far from here. Although the winter solstice is already considered a cold winter, the temperature in the south does not drop to close to zero. In other words, during this period, many slightly larger snakes have not yet entered the hibernation period. The snake slough not far away on the ground indicates that it died shortly after shedding its skin. At the same time, I also know that after a snake has just shed its skin, it is like a person who has just been seriously ill. Its movements are slow and its reaction will be much slower. It was probably because of this that he was hacked to death by Zhang Heping.
I can't judge whether Zhang Heping killed the snake or not. Perhaps out of the instinct of self-protection, anyone who sees such a big black snake will be scared. But Zhang Heping did not choose to escape, but killed it directly. This knife, no more and no less, struck exactly seven inches from the snake. Now it seems that almost all the clues found are consistent with the hexagram I originally gave the child. It was around the winter solstice, in the bamboo forest due north, that Zhang Heping killed a big black water snake. In the fantasy Erma Youpo saw, Zhang Heping's hands, feet and waist were entangled and pulled by ropes. It is estimated that the "rope" was It should look like a snake, and the latest I saw was Zhang Heping's painting. The content in his painting was also a circle of things, just like the images in the water bowl, but I initially imagined them as mosquito coils and snails. Shell, in fact, still refers to the coiled snake.
The matter seems to have an answer, but if it is said that he is haunted by the ghost of the snake, then why is Zhang Heping still talking? Can you still get to know your neighbors and classmates? Why can I still draw by myself like an ordinary child? If you are possessed by the soul of an animal, these actions are absolutely impossible. At most, they will reveal some of the original attributes of the animal. Just like Granny Yang in the back of the village earlier, she was possessed by a cat and became a Cat virtues.
Fortunately, this trip was quite fruitful. Although many things were still unclear, the general direction was correct and so many clues were found. At the moment, I could just use some means to force the snake's ghost out of the child's body, and then capture it and deal with it, but I always feel that things are not as simple as I imagined. At this moment, the incense of soldiers and horses began to spread freely like normal incense, so I threw the incense on the ground and stamped it out before telling Captain Li and the mother of the child. The matter is basically clear. Now let's go down the mountain to the town, find a drug store to buy some realgar wine, and see if we can think of any other solutions.
Captain Li asked me, why do I need realgar wine? This snake is dead. I told him that the body is dead, but the soul of the dead is still in your nephew's body. Then the two of them knew that everything that happened to Zhang Heping, including the fact that he pounced on me and bit me as soon as he saw his true form in the Bagua Mirror, was precisely because it was a snake.
But what I learned is to catch ghosts and exorcise evil spirits. Can I really be sure about dealing with one of the five great families?
