In front of the front gatehouse, the plaque of Yichao Inn hangs above, and there are flags and flags on both sides blowing in the hot wind. There are often merchants and pedestrians staying outside the gate, and the high and wide gatehouse where carriages and livestock come in and out.
After entering the door, they went to the waiter to get the room key. After everyone settled in, they had the opportunity to observe the details of the guest house.
The round-shaped courtyard is built very thickly. Even the windshielding decorative wall in the corridor is at least half a meter thick. The huge windows are mostly square and painted with some kind of insect-proof white ash from top to bottom, forming a simple outline of the window. The window panels were firmly held up with sticks.
Through these huge windows, one can see at a glance the long clothes-drying racks, drinking water canals, millstones, and several old poplar trees in the courtyard, which finally add a touch of red dots of green to the earthy yellow courtyard.
Most of the guest rooms have a similar layout, in the form of three connected rooms. The overall space is shaped like the word "Dan" and is divided into three parts by three giant arched flower windows. The arched flower window in the middle is particularly large, extending almost from the top. At the bottom, the door opening is equivalent to opening in a window, allowing travelers to enter and exit, a bit like the door and window structure of Kangdong in Shaanxi Province.
When I walked in, I saw that the window facing the outside was very small. The light that came into the room, which was a light beam as wide as the basin, hit the ground to form a silvery white spot, which had no effect. The three flower windows in the corridor were the main source of lighting. Daylight Through the flower window, the room is not dark at all.
The stained glass above has a strong exotic flavor, and the neon light shining through the ground actually adds a lot of color to the room.
A rough calculation shows that the bed in the room is placed on the left side, separated by a screen from inside to outside. In the middle is a set of seats and tea stools against the wall. On the other side are desks, wardrobes, shelves, and basins. There are heavy curtains in front of the huge windows. , you can pull up the shading to block your view.
It does not look as decent as a hotel, but it is better than being cleaned enough. The loess walls are covered with poplar wood wainscoting, which is polished and soaked in oil. It looks smooth and slightly reflective.
Although it is not comparable to any professional hotel, it is considered a decent place to stay in Dunhuang City.
"How is it? The place I found is not bad!" Xu Xiake pulled Yue Guanchao to Song Siyuan's room.
"Yes, that's true, but I see there is a hotel in the South Market. Why do we want to stay here?" When Song Siyuan walked over just now, she could already see the hotel sign, which meant that there was a hotel in the modern building near the city wall. open.
Xu Xiake blinked: "You don't understand this. The safest building is this kind of building."
"Let's go, I'll take you to the top floor to see you."
After that, Xu Xiake led Song Siyuan and Yue Guanchao through the third and fourth floors to the top floor of the courtyard.
This is probably the drying area of the inn, where a lot of dry goods such as Elaeagnus, grapes, and preserved fruits are dried. Windows are opened from the ceiling in the corridor for ventilation.
Standing at this location, in addition to these modern buildings, you can see most of the streets and alleys of Dunhuang City. The aroma of delicious food wafts into your nostrils, and the atmosphere of the city hits your face.
Yue Guanchao asked: "Daozhang Xu, what do you want to do by bringing us here?"
"Look carefully, what are the windows on those modern buildings?"
Yue Guanchao followed Xu Xiake's instructions and looked at the hotels near the city wall. Their windows seemed to be fine. They looked really clean at first glance, but in fact they felt very strange.
In other words, a little too clean.
In towns near the Gobi desert, even if they are in an oasis, the buildings will still be eroded by wind and sand. There is often a layer of sand attached to the windows. Even if you clean up this sand, it will accumulate back in half a day. Local people often It will be cleaned every other day. Cleaning it every day like this is indeed a huge waste of manpower and material resources.
As the three of them looked carefully, their eyes widened as more details appeared.
The window closest to them clearly had blood stains between the cracks in the window and the wall. If it was blood stains that had been there for many years, it would definitely be dark red. This slightly bright blood stain was most likely produced recently. If you didn't even clean the window, it would be dark red. The treatment is not clean, which means that the windows are extremely frequently stained with blood.
This alone made the two of them curious. Yue Guanchao narrowed his eyes and asked, "What's going on? You don't want to tell us that these hotels are all black shops, do you?"
As the saying goes, a cart or boat shop should be killed even if it is not guilty. The "shop" in this old saying refers to ancient rest houses, cart shops, and traveling inns.
As a traveler, it is easy to encounter ordinary inns, with clearly marked prices and clear money. What is most afraid of is encountering a shady shop, especially a shady couple's shop with a bad conscience.
These black shops often watch people order food, and treat poor pedestrians as if nothing happened. If they meet a slightly wealthier pedestrian, they will be unlucky.
When it's late at night, these black shops will use secret passages to put incense into the house, directly knocking people out, and then lead people to search for property in the guest rooms to avoid revealing their handiwork. Once the property is completely plundered, they will They would kill the person and bury them in the backyard or cellar somewhere.
Those who stay in hotels outside are all travelers. They are far away from home and unfamiliar with the place. They really disappear, and no one comes to their doorstep. They just die in a foreign land.
If you encounter such a shady shop, where people are hiding and people are hiding, it is impossible to escape easily. Experienced travelers, even if they are wealthy, have to make up to look like a rustic to avoid being so conspicuous, so as not to become a certain person. Mouthful of fat.
Although Yue Guanchao has never encountered a black shop, he has heard a lot about this kind of thing in the countryside. The most vicious black shops only rob pedestrians of their belongings, not even leaving their bones, but directly chop them into pieces. The meat stuffing was made into steamed buns and sold to the coolies who came and went. Now there is no evidence of death, and even the whole body may not be preserved.
Now, when he saw blood on the window, he immediately wanted to go to the illegal shop of the couple who killed people and made meat buns.
Xu Xiake waved his hand: "What are you thinking? If there was a black shop in this place, it would have been smashed by the people nearby. These red marks were left by flying eagles, desert eagles, and desert pigeons."
Yue Guanchao saw that the blood stains were not human, and immediately became curious: "I thought you were going to say that these blood stains were caused by murders in black shops, but, for no reason, how could these birds die on the windows and leave a layer of blood? .”
Xu Xiake snapped his thumbs at them: "This is what I want to say. Although these buildings may seem modern and fashionable to you, they are actually not durable. This has something to do with the desert climate."
The desert is desolate and dry, and the temperature difference between day and night is also very large. The sand and soil absorb heat quickly and dissipate heat quickly. It can be hot to death in broad daylight, and at night, it may be so cold that people need to cover themselves with quilts.
Under the reality of this poor temperature difference, all houses in the northwest have at least the characteristics of small windows and thick walls. If there are windows, they must be completely sealed to prevent wind and sand from entering the room.
In this case, the houses of nearby people also built thick walls!
In this way, heat can be absorbed through the thick walls during the day. Even if it is hot outside, the inside can be cool and comfortable. At night, when the temperature drops, the heat accumulated by these thick walls during the day will slowly dissipate, which is equivalent to replacing the house. The insulation prevents the cold from outside from penetrating into the house easily.
Xu Xiake pointed to those modern buildings: "The thickness of these floors is not comparable to the courtyard. It is so hot during the day that you have to turn on the fan, and it is so cold at night that you have to cover yourself with a quilt. Because the walls are very thin, the strong wind and sand at night blow directly to the walls. It disturbs people so much that they can’t rest at all.”
"The other one is these birds that collide."
When Xu Xiake mentioned these birds, his tone became obviously mysterious: "If you walk a few dozen miles outside Dunhuang, you will basically reach the desert. Because it is close to the desert, there are many strange things happening here. At night, flying eagles Birds such as the desert eagle, the desert pigeon, etc. will hit the wall in Dunhuang City, and they will not leave until their heads are bruised and bloody."
"Especially I like to hit windows. Large glass windows like those in hotels are very accurate. By the next day, there will always be a lot of blood stains on the windows. These hotels can only ask the staff to clean them frequently, but These things are extremely difficult to clean once left in the gaps, so they are retained.”
The little Taoist priest paused and pointed to the building at their feet: "The windows of the courtyard where we live are closed at night to prevent these animals from hitting the walls and windows. These earthen walls are very thick, and the wooden boards are all old wood. It may not be able to move no matter how hard it is bumped, and since there is a corridor between the room and the bed, the impact will be even less."
"It does seem that the building is not respectable, but it is definitely better than these hotels. I only realized it after I suffered a loss in advance."
Song Siyuan nodded: "Forgetting other things, why do these birds hit the wall? Are they trying to attack a living person?"
Recalling the black cloth bags mentioned by Xu Xiake, they had to suspect that these birds were also some bloodthirsty birds.
Xu Xiake waved his hand: "That's not true. These birds are just ordinary desert birds. They are normal during the day, and they will start hitting the wall at night. This is not just the case in Dunhuang City, but also in the villages near Dunhuang. If someone Some birds accidentally kill themselves, and the next day their bodies appear on the ground."
"They didn't say they would attack people and animals. They would avoid people when they encountered them. It shows that they really didn't attack people and animals. They just hit the wall as if they were possessed. I don't know why."
Yue Guanchao held his chin and asked, "What do the local people say? If this situation is very common, then they must have an explanation."
Xu Xiake looked around and lowered his voice: "When I came to Dunhuang, I also asked the people nearby. They all said that this is a devil sealed in the desert, and the blood of animals is used to break the seal."
"Do you know why Dunhuang City was built at the western end of the Hexi Corridor?"
