Chapter 9 Chapter 6 Night visit to the haunted house

The Hakka people in Sichuan had a custom of summoning souls a long time ago.Hakka people treat ordinary minor diseases and think that they can be solved by calling their souls, but when they encounter serious illnesses or strange ailments, they think that the cause is lost souls, and they need to invite Duan Gong to hold a special soul-calling ceremony. Duan Gong first asked about the cause of the illness. Usually Hakka Duan Gong divides wandering spirits into four types: one is frequent swimming and is weak, which is called lost souls; The third is to curse the gods and cause the officials of the underworld to come to catch their lives, which is called seizing the soul;

Duan Gong asked the cause of the disease before he could "prescribe the right medicine".To treat lost souls and fascinated souls, Duan Gong only needs to ask the patient for a piece of close-fitting clothing, hang it on a nail on the wall, hold a water bowl in one hand, and hold a knife in the other, muttering words in his mouth. Draw a character, and then use your mouth to suck the water in the bowl and spray it on the clothes. At the same time, the family members opened the door, went out to the house, and called the sick person by name. When Duan Gong sprayed the clothes with water, the clothes swayed in the wind, wriggling as if something had been drilled into it.Duan Gong hurriedly took off his clothes, wrapped them into a ball, and covered them with the sick man's quilt.

When a god comes to seize the soul, the patient is hopeless. If it is a ghost that takes the soul, Duan Gong will go to the wild to hunt it down.Please ask the gods to send it to the end, Duan Gong knows the location of the soul in advance, grabs the sick person's clothes and "soul chasing eggs" and drives them out of the house, and chases them all over the wilderness under the night. The soul chasing egg is to knock a hole in a raw egg, pour out the egg white and egg yolk, and use it to hold the traced soul. After a long time, Duan Gong walked back out of breath, and presented the soul chasing egg wrapped in his clothes to the Patriarch.The head of the house took a look in front of the oil lamp, and there were crickets, grasshoppers, golden tortoises, and wild dogs indistinctly inside, in short, they were one of the small insects that could be caught in this season.

The owner of the house puts the egg next to the sick person's pillow, properly preserves the eggshell, and carefully raises the small animals.After seven days, if the condition improves, the patient will take the insects to the wild and release them. Going down to the fourth floor, I took a deep breath and opened the door of Tiantian's house with a tool. As soon as I entered the entrance, I found traces of this kind of soul-calling ceremony. And this kind of trace appeared after the police left.The door didn't show signs of being broken or forced open. Could it be that the person who came to summon the soul was an acquaintance of Tian Tian's family, or even a direct line?

Since it is an old building, Tiantian's house is similar to all the houses in this building. The furniture is covered with white oiled paper cloth, and the police cordon of Lingshan City Police Station still remains on the ground. On the shoe cabinet at the entrance, there is such a chasing soul egg. Wearing gloves, I picked up the egg and looked at it carefully, and then looked in through the hole on the egg. Inside are some insects that have long since died.It seems that this summoning must have failed, otherwise the eggs would have been taken away long ago, and those insects would have been released into the wild long ago.

I cracked the eggshells, poured out the bugs, and took a deep breath of cold air after just one glance. The bugs inside were completely inconsistent with the method of summoning souls. They turned out to be butterflies, scorpions, centipedes, poisonous bees, and a very small blue snake of unknown species.That snake looks very strange, even if it is dead, the skin of its whole body will give people a blue and gorgeous feeling, and it is definitely not weak in toxicity. Is this poisoning or evocation?I couldn't figure it out for a while. Those poisonous insects and snakes have been dried. Judging from the current weather conditions, the time for the ceremony should be ten days ago.I put those things into the bottle I carried with me, and then walked into the living room.

There is not much vegetation in the suburbs of Lingshan City, so there is a lot of dust. Even if all the doors and windows of this house that has been vacant for more than ten days are closed, it still cannot stop the dust from breaking in.A thin layer of dust accumulated on the white oiled paper cloth, and there were no footprints on the ground. It seemed that those people came here to hold a ceremony a day or two after the police left. Not much to discover in the living room, I continued on my way.The kitchen of the house is on the right side of the living room, and there is a narrow corridor on the way. It seems that not only the house is old, but also the owner has not maintained it properly. The walls on both sides are very old, and the light from the flashlight looks old.

Although it is the same model as the house that Zhang San lent us, the corridor of Tiantian's house is also one of the places I don't like.It is designed like a mouth, it seems that it will swallow me alive at any time. I adjusted the flashlight very brightly, but I still felt uneasy. I walked slowly up the corridor, passed the bathroom, and the moment I opened the kitchen, I was completely stunned.A chill suddenly rushed up from the soles of his feet, and his back felt chilly. In an instant, I seemed to feel something blowing on my back and blowing on the back of my ear. It seemed as if a child's laughter could be heard in his ears.But the only person in this house is myself, who is behind me?

I turned around slowly. Behind, nothing. Suddenly, the light of the flashlight in his hand flickered, making a "chi chi" sound. I shook it vigorously, the light finally stabilized, I opened the door and walked into the kitchen, I was stunned.On the floor of the kitchen, there were some strangely shaped symbols painted on them. Some looked like oracle bone inscriptions, and some looked like Sanskrit. They had a very nondescript feeling. A human figure was drawn in the center of the symbol, which should be drawn along the outline of the person. up. Those symbols were dark red in the light of the flashlight. I squatted down and scraped a little with my hands, looked at them carefully, and smelled them with my nose.

It was blood, dried blood, but it was not known whether it was human or other creatures. Suddenly, an idea popped into my mind.I suddenly stood up.spiritualism!Damn it, since I already guessed that it might be a soul-calling ceremony, then there should be someone to be summoned. According to the Hakka method of invoking spirits, the egg needs to be placed beside the pillow of the sick.Who is that patient?Is it related to the human figure drawn by those strange symbols, even, that person is placed in the middle of the human figure?I looked at those strange symbols again. The human-shaped space surrounded by the symbols is not large, only one meter long and more than thirty centimeters wide, it should be a child.

Could it be Tiantian who was summoned?Most likely, otherwise the ceremony would not have taken place in this house.After all, this is the home of the caster, and has the best environment and materials for casting spells. But the question came back again, who and for what purpose used the ancient spirit on Tian Tian?Isn't Tiantian already killed by her biological mother?Could it be that the ritual of evocation can bring a dead person back to life? Thinking of all the traces that do not conform to the Hakka style of evocation, the poison in the egg shells, these symbols, and the sweetness that I met at the door of the fourth floor not long ago, and the fourth floor that seems to have no end, I am more puzzled. I searched the house carefully again, and after I couldn't find any more clues, I returned to the room where I and Lin Zhiyan were temporarily staying with my head full of confusion. "Did you find anything?" Lin Zhiyan was sitting in front of the computer looking through something, when she saw me come back, she asked. "I found a lot of things, but the more I investigate, the more I don't understand." I sighed helplessly, and described what I found in Tiantian's room. Lin Zhiyan's head also became dilated, and she turned her head sideways to think for a long time, and finally managed to hold back a sentence: "Why does it feel like a certain cult organization is holding some kind of evil ceremony?" "What did you say?!" I opened my eyes suddenly and yelled. She was taken aback, and stammered and repeated: "I said it looks like a cult organization..." "By the way, this is it. I just said why it always feels strange!" I laughed excitedly: "According to that report, Tiantian's mother once said that the idea of ​​killing herself came out of nowhere. It is very likely that she had been hypnotized by an organization at that time. The organization used hypnosis to make her Born with hatred, killed her husband and daughter. This organization must be very large, and has strong connections and influence, so they were able to kill Tiantian's mother in the police station's detention center, and then cut off Her head. And steal sweet corpses from the autopsy room!" "However, according to the forensic examination, when her mother found her body the next day, the corpse had already decomposed, and how could she explain the strange situation that she had been dead for five days?" Lin Zhiyan asked, holding her head. "It's very simple. In fact, this trick has been used in many detective novels. The temperature difference effect can effectively accelerate the decay of the corpse. For example, put her in an air-conditioned room with a temperature of 39 degrees Celsius, or heat the corpse with high temperature Wrapped in a blanket, it can promote the decomposition of bacteria, speed up the decay of the corpse, and disrupt the forensic identification." I tapped the table lightly with my fingers. "There is another question, why did that organization spend so much manpower and material resources on this matter? What is their purpose?" she asked again. I shook my head, "I don't know about this, after all, the information collected now is too little. But since they have done that, there must be a motive for committing the crime, but we can't guess it now." After I finished speaking, I glanced at her computer, "What are you looking at?" Lin Zhiyan smiled mysteriously, and asked, "I'm going to ask you a question, do you know what is called the Matthew Effect?" "Of course I know." I sat down by the bed and replied, "The Matthew effect refers to a phenomenon in which the good gets better, the bad gets worse, the more gets more, and the less gets less. "Its name comes from a parable in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, in which there is such a sentence: 'Whoever has, more will be given to him, and he will be superfluous; take it.' "In 1973, Morton, a researcher on the history of science in the United States, summed up a social psychological phenomenon with this sentence: 'More and more honors are given to scientists who have made considerable scientific contributions, and more and more honors are given to scientists who have already made considerable reputations. Those unknown scientists do not recognize their achievements." Morton named this social and psychological phenomenon the 'Matthew Effect'. "The parable [KJV translation] says this: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who wanted to go to a foreign country, and he called his servants and gave them his possessions, and gave them money according to their ability, One gave five thousand, one gave two thousand, and one gave one thousand. Then the master left. "The one who had received five talents immediately traded with them and made another five; the one who had received two made another two in the same way; buried. "After a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. The one who had received the five talents came with the other five talents and said, 'Lord, you handed me five talents. See , I made another five thousand.' "The master said, 'Well, you good and faithful servant. If you have been faithful in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, and come in and enjoy your master's pleasure.' "The one who had received the two talents also said, 'Lord, you handed me two talents, and behold, I have earned two more talents.' "The master said, 'Well, you good and faithful servant. If you have been faithful in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, and come in and enjoy your master's pleasure.' "The one who received the one talent also said, 'Lord, I know that you are a hard man, reap where you have not sown, and gather where you have not scattered. I was afraid, so I went and buried your one talent In the field, behold, here is your original silver.' "The master replied, 'You wicked and lazy servant, since you know that I shall reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered. Put my silver to the money changers until I return. At that time, it can be recovered with interest. Come on, take the thousand from him and give it to the one who has 10,000.' The Matthew effect reveals a principle of increasing demand for personal and corporate resources, which is related to personal success and happiness in life, so it is an important law that affects business development and personal success.” "That's right! Some things in Lingshan City are affected by the Matthew Effect. Ever since a special celestial phenomenon appeared in this city, it seems that many things have started to happen frequently overnight." Lin Zhiyan counted with her fingers: "The mysterious disappearance of a child, the murder of a husband, son and daughter by a wife, the mysterious disappearance of a family, the gathering of wolves, etc., are endless." I was immediately interested and asked, "What kind of celestial phenomenon?" "look." She gave up the position of the monitor, only to see these words written at the beginning of a report: At twelve o'clock in the morning on December 27th, Lingshan City was startled by a red full moon, illuminating the entire Lingshan City. Thousands of citizens witnessed this spectacle Chiyue together!December twenty-seventh!Could it be that, as Lin Zhiyan said, that day was the beginning of all events?The old man Yang Junfei was entrusted by his client to go to Lingshan to investigate the incident of Mrs. Xiong just two weeks after Chiyue happened. Could it be that the case of Mrs. Xiong is also related to that Chi Yue? I always feel that the mystery is like a muddy pool of water. Some people behind us are trying their best to muddy this pool of stagnant water and hide the truth in the dirty and smelly water.However, the messy mystery finally has some clues.