Chapter 5 Chapter Four Ancient Temples in the Deep Mountains

It's strange to say that I originally walked in the opposite direction, so why did I go to this village?Could it be that the old man deliberately lured me into the trap, and then cooked me while I was asleep? Although this village also has some breath of the living, but the dead can also create this illusion, in short, I think it is wise to leave. At this time, Qiu Han who was behind him woke up again: "Brother, where have we been?" I put Qiu Han down and said, "I don't know, I'm afraid it's deep in the mountains and old forests." "I'm sorry, brother, I shouldn't be so capricious." Qiu Han said weakly.

I said, "Don't be like this, we are brothers of life and death, you will be offended if you say this." After I finished speaking, I took out the dagger from my boot and lightly cut Qiu Han's left index finger, black blood flowed down the blade flowed out. Qiu Han's reaction to the Xingxiu Knife was still very strong. After the knife was cut, he immediately trembled all over. When the blood stopped, he still coughed non-stop, but his complexion improved a lot. After resting for a while, it was almost 1 o'clock in the morning, and the first seven sacrificial ceremonies were coming to an end soon. I don't know if the old man can really ascend to heaven.But having said that, if it's a haunted place below, it doesn't matter if you ascend to heaven. Maybe the old man will come back every night to participate.

I picked up Qiu Han again, and walked in the opposite direction of the way I came.The opposite direction of this road is actually going to the village at the foot of the mountain. Since you can enter the village by going in the opposite direction, you will definitely not be able to return to the village by the right way.I thought so, and went along the mountain road.Sure enough, the road looked like it was going to the village below, but it turned around and went in another direction. After a while, the village disappeared. However, it's not a problem to go on like this, when will it be the end.

When I was thinking hard, a not-so-loud gong sounded into my ears. Although the gong didn't sound, it gave me direction. When Qiu Han and I were in trouble just now, we were saved thanks to the sound of the gong.Now we can't tell the direction, we can't tell the truth from the fake, the best way is to find the person who beat the gong. Thinking of this, I ran in that direction, and Qiu Han on my back seemed not as heavy as before. This search lasted for about an hour, and I finally found this gong at the entrance of a Taoist temple.The gong was placed in a pavilion, with a diameter of about 5 meters and a thickness of about 3 inches. I am afraid that the gongs I have seen piled up in this life are not as big as this one.On the front of the gong, there is a wooden stick as thick as a calf, presumably used to hit the gong.

I know that the Taoist priest in the Taoist temple should be asleep at this time, so I don't intend to knock on the door.Anyway, it's a safe place now.I put Qiu Han under the wall of the main entrance of the Taoist temple, and planned to sleep there.Unexpectedly, at 3 o'clock, a little Taoist priest found us when he was beating the gong. The little Taoist priest invited us into the house and woke up an older Taoist priest in charge.Seeing that Qiu Han was seriously ill, the priest in charge quickly woke up the priest.The master of the temple is an old Taoist priest who is nearly 60 years old. After checking Qiu Han's condition, he immediately woke up a few young Taoist priests and began to arrange the dojo.However, this dojo is a little simpler than the one on TV, just a table, an incense altar, and a mahogany sword.I saw the host wielding a peach-wood sword several times, and then chopped off the head of a big rooster with the peach-wood sword.Seeing that the chicken head was beheaded, the little Taoist immediately caught the chicken blood with a bowl, followed by another little Taoist who cut his own index finger with a dagger and dripped the blood into the bowl.

The temple master took the blood bowl, dipped the peach wood sword in the blood, and drew an extremely difficult-to-recognize talisman on a piece of yellow paper, and then burned the talisman in a bowl of clear water with words in his mouth.After the talisman was burned, the ashes fell into the porcelain bowl, and the priest stirred it with a mahogany sword for a while like stirring eggs, until it was like a bowl of ink, and then handed it to me to pour it into Qiu Han. Looking at this bowl of hard-won "ink", I hesitated.Can this drink?If you drink this, you will die if you don't die.But seeing the viewer was sweating profusely and everyone was working hard, I resolutely gave this thing to Qiu Han to drink.

Qiu Han was still in a coma at the time. After he drank this thing, his face continued to twitch, as if he had drunk poison.After a while, he brushed aside the crowd and ran out of the room, vomiting profusely outside the room, and it took half an hour before he stopped. I saw that Qiu Han's face was rosy and shiny for a while, and his face was as golden paper for a while, and his heart was also excited. However, when he stopped, his face had returned to its original complexion. I really didn't expect that this yellow talisman would have such an effect.Seeing that Qiu Han had recovered, I felt great gratitude to the temple master. I knelt on the ground and kowtowed to the old temple master a few times.The old monk showed a satisfied smile on his face, helped me up, and then asked a little Taoist priest to help Qiu Han back to the bed.The old temple master told everyone that everyone should sleep for now and continue tomorrow.

Hearing what the old temple master said, my heart felt at ease.At the moment, Qiu Han and I slept on the same bed, but because we were extremely sleepy today, we fell asleep quickly. The next day, when the sun was high, Qiu Han and I woke up from our sleep. "Brother, please, help me one more time." "Junior brother, this is not good. You can't find someone from me every time. If there is something wrong in their village, just solve it yourself." "If they can solve it, they won't beg me, and if I can solve it, I won't beg you." "Our Taoist temple has been unwilling to help this village, you know that."

"Isn't seeking the Tao just to save the world?" "That's what I said, but..." Listening to the middle tone of these words, it is a disciple of the temple master who has returned to secular life and asks the temple master for something, but the matter is difficult, and the temple master dare not agree. "Brother, this is our agreement for many years. I will continue to live in the village, you must help me." Qiu Han and I had already got up at this time, we heard the conversation between the two, and walked out from the inner room. Qiu Han said: "The Guanzhu doesn't know what the difficulty is, we two brothers will do our best to repay the Guanzhu's life-saving grace."

Unexpectedly, after Qiu Han finished speaking, Guanzhu didn't talk to him, but Guanzhu's younger brother did instead: "This little brother is extremely righteous, I think both of you are quite suitable." I turned around to look at this man, only to see that this man was of medium build, over forty years old, plainly dressed, like a farmer. Seeing Qiu Han's acceptance, the temple master said, "Well, it's not impossible for them to do it for you. It's just that this little benefactor is just recovering from a serious illness, so he is not suitable for this big task. This benefactor can do it for you." After finishing speaking, the temple master pointed point to me.

After hearing this, the man was overjoyed and led the two of us out of the Taoist temple. After leaving the Taoist temple, the man introduced: "My name is Wu Zheng, and I am the younger brother of the master of the Taiping Temple. I practiced together with the master of the Taiping Temple when I was young. When I became an adult, I returned to the vulgar and went to farm." "I'm Qiu Han, and this is my cousin Li Yishui." Qiu Han also introduced himself. "How did you get here?" Wu Zheng asked. "It's a long story. We were traveling and lost our way in the mountains. Later at night, we got an evil spirit and strayed into the temple. Fortunately, the old temple master saved us." Qiu Han said. "Come to travel? Bewitched?" Wu Zheng frowned, "Last night, two girls were also bewitched, but I poured a pot of ashes into them, and they were fine." "Ah!" Qiu Han and I couldn't help exclaiming, if nothing unexpected happened, these two girls would be Yan Yuwei and Shu Shan.Unexpectedly, they were also possessed by evil spirits. "Why, you know them?" Wu Zheng asked. "I saw it when I was traveling, but I got separated later." I lied. "Well, they also said that they got lost while traveling." Wu Zheng said. "How did you cure them with only pot ashes?" I asked in amazement. "This pot of ashes belongs to earth, governs yang, and governs life. It is transformed from fire. Of course, it is the most suitable for removing filth. Of course, there is another explanation here. It is dark and windy at night, and occasionally feels cold. Evil energy enters the body and accumulates filth. , The pot ash cannot be swallowed, and the person who swallows it will definitely vomit, as long as the dirt in the mouth is spit out, it will be cured. They slept last night, and they should be fine." Wu Zhengdao. "It wasn't like this when the old temple master treated Qiu Han." Right now, I told Wu Zheng the process of the old temple master treating Qiu Han. Wu Zheng laughed loudly after hearing this, and he said: "My brother is used to performing rituals, but in fact they are all bluffing. What really works is the ashes, the purpose is to make you spit it out, it's a pity that a big Rooster!" After speaking, Wu Zheng walked in front of us. After Wu Zheng finished speaking, Qiu Han and I sighed for a while. As I was walking, I suddenly remembered something, and chased after me: "Uncle Wu, what do you want us to do for you?" When Wu Zheng heard my question, he stopped immediately, stared at me for a while, and then said, "Lead the way." Hearing this, my head froze instantly. Guidance, this is not an unfamiliar term, it refers to the person who is being guided leading the deceased into heaven within a few days of his death.However, the customs of leading the way vary from place to place. In Wuzheng's village, the people who are led the way are those who have no family, which is commonly known as families without children and grandchildren.Because the deceased had no children, he could only find young unmarried men in the village to guide him.Ordinarily, nothing will happen to the guide, just like the first seven worships, but there are exceptions, and it is not uncommon for some guides to go crazy due to the pressure. Obviously, even the master of the Taiping Temple disagrees that what his disciples do must be dangerous. Now I feel that Qiu Han is a bit reckless.Qiu Han also knew that it was dangerous to lead the way. When he knew that Wu was asking me to lead the way, he hurriedly said that he was willing to go instead of me. But Wu Zheng said that to lead the way, one must find someone with weaker yang energy, otherwise the dead will not dare to follow, which will lead to the failure of leading the way.Now both of us have weak yang qi, but Qiu Han has just been affected by evil qi, and he is worried that his body will not be able to hold on.However, this creates another problem, since I am also weak, how does he know that I can bear it?This is like a medicine that is about to expire in a bottle. It looks like there is still a month before it expires, but the quality can no longer hold. Before I knew it, I chatted with Wu Zheng for more than half an hour. When I wanted to ask some more about Yan Yuwei and the two, I found a familiar scene: under a vast cliff, a small village Distributed in a pocket-shaped valley, it is the village I passed last night. Seeing my surprised expression, Wu Zheng said, "Why, have you been here?" Not only have I been here, I even had a shocking experience. Immediately, I told Wu Zheng about the experience of the old man I met last night. After listening to my words, Wu Zheng took a long breath and said, "It seems that your yang energy is not strong enough, and you can even see the dead people who go home the first seven times." "Yeah, when I saw the portrait of the deceased, I picked up my cousin and ran away. At first I thought this was a ghost village." "This is not a ghost village. I live in this village. There was a funeral last night. After saving two girls, I went to bed early. However, your behavior is understandable, after all, you have seen so many weird things Phenomena, and it is impossible to tell whether it is a human or a ghost.” Hearing what Wu Zheng said, I just remembered that everything in this village feels real, whether it is people or things, of course including the toilet and the village doctor, they are all real.And the people at the entrance of the village saw me talking into the air, so they must have closed their windows because they were frightened.It was only because my nerves were too tense at the time that I made a wrong judgment.Of course, even now, I regret my cautious behavior. Along the road that the old man took me last night, we walked a big roundabout downhill, and after half an hour, we came to this village again.Some people in the village had seen me and Qiu Han, and when they saw me coming back, they pointed at me and said, "Didn't this person disappear last night? Why did he reappear now?" Others saw us and said again: "Didn't you see those two young men and Wu are together?" It seems that Wu Zheng has a very special status in the hearts of the villagers, and he can even reasonably explain this sudden disappearance. They must have guessed that I sent him to Wu Zheng in order to save Qiu Han. Wu Zheng then took us to his home.Wu Zheng's home is no different from other peasant households. The two-story red brick building has not been painted, and there are some farm tools at the door.Wu Zheng's house is relatively spacious and bright, and the walls are not covered with all kinds of murals related to Taoism as imagined. Seeing Wu Zheng coming back, five or six of Wu Zheng's children ran out of the house, and they lined up like steps from tall to short.As soon as the children came out, they started to touch Qiu Han's and my pockets, and when they found nothing, they went back to the house disappointed. Wu Zheng said embarrassingly: "There are too many children, it's not easy to manage, forgive me!" Qiu Han and I laughed dryly, then looked at each other, and thought, finally understand why Wu Zheng wants to return to vulgarity. At this time, two girls came out of the room, one black and one white, they were Yan Yuwei and Shu Shan.The two girls looked surprised when they saw us. They never expected us to be here anyway. "Why are you here?" Yan Yu asked slightly. This is indeed a difficult question to answer, because we cannot say that we are following them. "We're here for an appointment." I laughed. The two girls laughed when they heard what I said.If I said that we got lost while traveling, they would definitely not believe it. Instead, it would be better to tell them indirectly that we followed them. We talked to each other about the scene after the farewell. It turned out that after Yan Yuwei and his wife entered the forest, they also heard singing and saw a woman in ancient costume.The reaction speed of the two people was faster than ours. They even took out their knives and wanted to fight the female ghost desperately.It's just that when their hands just reached their waists, their bodies couldn't move.Later, they broke through their minds and ran out of the mountain, almost dying on the mountain.Fortunately, they were rescued by the sound of the gong, but after the sound of the gong stopped, the two of them also fainted, and when they woke up, they were at Wu Zheng's house. Having said that, we couldn't help but ask what was going on with the sound of the gong.When Wu Zheng heard us ask about the origin of the gong, he explained the history of the gong.This gong is the treasure of the Taiping Temple, and it was there when the temple was built.There is a rule in Taiping Temple that the gong should be struck seven times every two hours.According to legend, this copper gong was left to deter the evil spirits on the mountain. As for whether it has any effect, he does not know. He only knows that the Taoist temple beats the copper gong twelve times a day.And because the gong is too noisy, there are no villages on the surrounding mountains for several kilometers. Wu Zheng's village is the nearest village to Taiping Temple. Although Wu Zheng didn't know the effect of the gong, we deeply realized the great effect of the gong.But why is there such a big evil at the foot of the mountain? Regarding this issue, Wu Zheng couldn't explain it either. He said that his family moved here a hundred years ago, and the specific situation needs to be inquired again. After talking about the gong, another question arose, why did Yan Yuwei and Shu Shan come here? When Wu Zheng asked this, both Yan Yuwei lowered their heads.After a while, Yan Yuwei said: "I am a tomb robber, and we have our own sect. The sect has regulations. Tomb robber apprentices need to complete the tomb robbery independently before leaving the teacher, and the parallel imports from the tomb robbery are used as the assessment standard. You can only become a teacher. If you don’t steal the funeral objects, you can’t be a teacher. Although Shu Shan is the same age as me, but my junior, I have already been a teacher, and this time I will mainly test Shu Shan.” After Yan Yuwei finished speaking, the three of us turned our attention to Shu Shan.Shu Shan nodded shyly, indicating that what Yan Yuwei said was true. At this time, Wu Zheng patted himself on the head and said with a smile: "Oh, if you talk about tomb robbers, my ancestors were also tomb robbers. It is said that it is still an important sect, but I am afraid that the things passed down by our ancestors will be lost here." After finishing speaking, Wu Zheng went to the room to take out something and handed it to us. Everyone was shocked when they saw it. Isn't that a spy token? Wu Zheng saw that my eyes were wide open, but I didn't speak. He thought we didn't recognize this thing. He pointed to the token and said, "This is the token of the secret agents of the Qing Dynasty. My ancestors have it, but later they all went to rob the tomb." At this time, Qiu Han and I both took out a fake token and said, "We have one too." "Isn't it?" Wu Zheng said, "It's a coincidence, it seems that we need to have a good chat." Just when we were surprised, Yan Yuwei and the two were also too surprised to speak.Shu Shan said: "I've seen this thing before." Who knew that just after Shu Shan finished speaking, Yan Yu slightly poked Shu Shan with her arm, and Shu Shan knew that she had made a mistake, so she stopped talking. "Wife, is dinner ready? We met an old friend, I have to have a good drink today." Wu Zheng shouted happily. "That's good." Wu Zheng's wife shouted. While speaking, everyone came to the dinner table. "Come, come, let's all have a drink!" Wu Zheng raised his glass and said. "Uncle, Auntie, let's have a drink!" Wu Zheng's group of children said holding their glasses. Seeing a few lovely children, we all laughed. "Just kidding, just kidding, I have something to say with your uncles and aunts, you go and play!" Wu Zheng said. "Why can't you go and talk about things? It's here to affect our meal!" Wu Zheng's youngest daughter said. "You..." Wu Zheng was speechless. "Uncle, it's okay, let's talk about our own business, and they will eat theirs." I laughed. "Just kidding, just kidding." Following Wu Zheng, he told us about his family experience.It turned out that a hundred years ago, Wu Zheng's great-grandfather was Wu Jingzu, a secret agent of the "Monkey" generation in the Qing Dynasty.It was the end of the Qing Dynasty when Wu Jingzu practiced Taoism at a young age and worked as a secret agent.After Cixi's death that year, Wu Jingzu, like other spies, left Beijing.In Wu Zheng's narration, it seems that Wu Jingzu was very passionate about cultivating Taoism. Even when Yuan Shikai summoned all the spies later, he couldn't find this spy who was obsessed with Taoism.Wu Jingzu was accustomed to freedom all his life and was unwilling to accept the constraints of sects, so he did not practice Taoism.Later, one day, Wu Jingzu wandered to Longhu Mountain. After observing the terrain of Longhu Mountain with a radius of 100 miles, he decided to settle here and lived in the current village. After Wu Zheng finished speaking, he took a sip of his wine and went down.He told us that for three generations of his family, all young and unmarried boys must practice in the Taoist temple.The four of us nodded and said it was fine.Wu Zheng patted the youngest son on the shoulder and said, "This is my youngest son. Both the eldest and the second child are practicing in the Taoist temple!" We were stunned. After drinking to this point, I asked Wu Zheng about leading the way.Wu Zheng told me that leading the way is not as difficult as imagined, but it is by no means so easy.He said that the person being led was an old lady. Ordinarily, there is no difficulty in leading the way, but this old lady lost her father in her early years, her father in her middle age, and her son in her old age. All three major misfortunes in life have taken place. Lead her way.After hearing what Wu Zheng said, I took a deep breath and said to myself, what a bitter old woman, I'm afraid I can't handle it myself. But when I was about to refuse, Wu Zheng said that my yang energy was weaker than that of ordinary people, and that the old lady dared to lean on me, which is an important condition for being a guide.I asked Wu Zheng again, since people with weak yang energy are not allowed, why would he go to a Taoist temple to find a little Taoist priest?Wu Zheng said that the little Taoist priest needs to use needles to remove the real fire to lead the way, and removing the real fire is not good for the body, and it takes three months to recover. Just as we were having a heated discussion, the village chief came in with a group of people. I saw that the village chief was none other than the person in charge of the funeral last night.