Mysterious Martial Arts: The Record of the Swordsman

Chapter 126 Tianya Road within Hengmen

Seeing Jiang Wen suddenly disappear through the high moss wall, the Chang brothers' eyes were full of horror, and they no longer dared to let Jiang Wen take the lead in stepping on the thunder.

At this time, there were alley walls on both sides, and the two of them didn't care about distinguishing their directions. They unanimously identified the wall on the left, and suddenly threw the flying claws around their waists to hook the eaves of the wall, and clambered upwards with both arms.

The high wall was crumbling on the outside and strong on the inside, and the two struggled several times on the slippery wall before finally stepping into the courtyard.

This ancient courtyard is as silent as an ascetic who has been sitting in the wilderness for a long time. As the vegetation withers and flourishes, the sun and the moon rise and fall, and finally the body is covered with dust and weeds are overgrown.

All the doors and plaques in the courtyard disappeared, leaving only the dark doors, leaning against the rotten wooden doorposts on both sides, like a toothless old man screaming hoarsely.

After landing, Chang Hezhi looked at the two tattered white paper lanterns vigilantly.

"I didn't expect such a scene inside the wall, it seems to be a righteous village..."

The younger brother Chang Bozhi also held a flying claw in the shape of a skeleton, and said in a low voice: "The entrance of the alley is a baby tower, and it makes sense that there is a Yizhuang inside. No wonder the locals never come here..."

"There seems to be a figure over there, I wonder if it is..."

Chang Hezhi spoke slowly, and looked into the distance.

In the cold night, two rows of dilapidated palaces could be vaguely seen behind them, all standing lightly in the cold wind and rain of the past, and will continue to witness until the end of this land.

Perhaps out of human self-protection, the Chang brothers subjectively ignored the dark clouds hovering over the courtyard, and also turned a blind eye to the faint blue phosphorescence shining from the doors and windows of the main hall.

This kind of feeling is like a severely scalded person who suddenly realizes that the hot water has become icy cold, which encourages them to walk into the courtyard in a daze.

It was also when they entered the gate that the Chang brothers realized that the screeching sound that was close at hand just now had quietly disappeared, and the whole world was utterly silent, not even a trace of noise existed.

As if they found that the breathing was too rough, the two began to divide their breath into more than a dozen segments and exhale slowly, hoping that the breath would not disturb the vocal cords or nasal cavity.

Then it seemed that the footsteps were too harsh, and they carefully searched for the landing point with each step, straightening the joints of the whole body to ensure that there was no friction sound.

The tranquility here is too abnormal, and the living people who are so abnormal that they would usually make a heartbeat sound have become incompatible existences in this environment.

My younger brother Chang Bozhi was full of thoughts, trying to imagine the bustling and crowded scene of this courtyard not long ago, as well as the experience of building bricks and tiles, to dispel the fear of this place of shelter.

But it was useless. Chang Bozhi soon discovered that in the extreme silence, even the act of "imagining" seemed to become unbearably noisy.

The action of looking for eyes is like tearing the cloth, and the current of thinking is like thunder, everything is too noisy.

When the two brothers resisted the repulsion in their hearts, followed a trance shadow and walked forward, took the last two steps and finally arrived at the main hall to find a little comfort in their hearts, they realized how rash a conclusion they had made ...

In the dimly lit hall, a strangely shaped Buddha sculpture had broken off its arm holding flowers, and also lost half of its smiling face. It seemed to be full of silence, sadness, and helplessness, looking down at the horrible remains in the whole room.

Dead people, countless dead people!

The Chang brothers have always prided themselves on being courageous and ruthless. It is common for them to spend the night with their master in barren hills and borrow ancient tombs along the way, but there has never been a place where the breath of death can be condensed so visible to the naked eye!

The hall is full of all kinds of coffins and dead bodies.

The coffin with black lacquered nanmu wood and gold thread carvings is painted with auspicious clouds stepping on lotus flowers, which seems to bless and carry the dead to the blissful rebirth.

There are thin cypress coffins and coffins painted with raw lacquer, and the dead are wrapped in a roll of gray sackcloth, showing a little filial piety in poverty.

There are also three boards made of unknown miscellaneous wood. The rotten wood is already covered with gaps bitten by moths and rats, barely giving the deceased a decent appearance without revealing his body.

Not to mention, there are straw mats and rolls inside, the dead who care about their feet and don't care about their heads, and there are rotting corpses tied to beating dog cakes and lying in broad daylight.

There are also many exposed ones, some with bruised skin, some swollen, some scorched, some dismembered, some chopped with knives and axes, some dried up...

With a gust of wind blowing in the hall, an indescribable stench nearly disabled their sense of smell, and their eyes were stung by the black air like needles.

The Chang brothers, who were just out of the arena, had never met, or even imagined, how dirty and despicable a person would be after death.Perhaps at the moment when the soul is shelled, this body is no longer a "person", but should be classified as a "thing".

Things can’t be used to their full potential, and they are between the good and the bad. Is this the end of “things”?
They didn't have time to think about such a problem. Chang Hezhi saw his younger brother hiding his face and seemed to want to back out of the door, stumbled and almost fell, so he quickly reached out his hand to stop him.

Don't retreat, don't advance. After retreating, both of them forgot how silent the current environment was, and both stepped on the ground dullly.

This kick made a loud sound like a morning bell on the ground where the bluestone slab was smashed and turned up by the weeds.They seemed to be able to feel an invisible sound wave spreading in all directions, breaking the long-locked atmosphere in the air layer by layer.

Something that was dead came back alive.

At that moment, the two brothers saw countless corpses on display in the main hall ahead, spewing out countless dim air currents like a volcano, blowing the dilapidated doors and windows in all directions.

Indescribably dark, sticky, gloomy, and ugly figures emerged in the airflow, carrying the resentment of life and the resentment of death, wearing the smell of corpses into colorful clothes, wearing silk shoes and spider webs with accumulated dust. Wrapped into a crown, insects and ants turned into beads, Shi Shiran stood in the hall!
…………

Jiang Wen passed through a hidden and grand door and entered a desolate bookstore.

In the era before Jiang Wen traveled, there was a technique called optical illusions that could be seen everywhere, such as using geometric patterns on the wall to make the plane three-dimensional, appear taller, or weirder, creating an architectural illusion effect.

In Jiang Wen's eyes, the elusiveness and fleetingness of people in the alley is no longer an inexplicable supernatural phenomenon-this alley is clearly the ingenuity of some people!
In other words, the moss, Hengmen, stone path, and depressing sky in Nether Lane are all deliberate designs of the builders.

Shusi studies pictorial characters, and obviously knows that images, as the most primitive language, can reach the effect of mutual recognition across different individuals.

It's like the doors on both sides of Nether Alley have always been there, but they are hidden somewhere between mildew spots in a magical way of light and shadow.

The location where the door appeared was exactly in the blind spot of vision.The nerves and blood vessels there converge into bundles leading to the brain. There are no photoreceptor cells and cannot receive light stimulation. The image of an object falling on this point cannot cause vision.

With the occlusion of light and shadow in the dark alleyway and the repeated flashing of the pillars of the Hengmen, this small door will be subconsciously ignored by people.

Those who deliberately search for the first time through Nether Alley often find nothing, and then they will try harder to look around the desolate and desolate scenery-the more they fall into the uncontrollable spiritual suggestion at this time.

Through geometric arrangement, visual imaging and other means, the builder deliberately creates the effect of visual deception to deceive the eyes, causing the visual illusion of the intruder, and achieving a magic-like hidden effect and psychological suggestion.

Until the self-suggestion erupts concentratedly, the ghosts and gods in the alley will appear in front of you at that moment...

If you want to use words to describe it, then the eight characters "leading to the nether world" and "no way to find" are the invisible elephants written on the Tiandi map by the person who built this nether alley.

Although there are no real ghosts in an alley, it can draw out the ghosts deep in people's hearts. Is there a ghost or no ghost?
Perhaps countless living people used to make trough plates, top wood, class plates, and frames here, and there were countless people who placed books, sorted, proofread, and printed here day and night, but now, there is only a stale and smelly stagnant water , soaking the wooden wheel that can no longer turn.

"The Nether world is engraved, and fierce ghosts come out at night, it seems to be a very reasonable thing..."

Jiang Wen stood among the printing presses where corpses stood like a forest, looking at the corpses full of severed heads and stiff and weird postures, he suddenly felt that everything was not so unacceptable.

　Happy New Year's Day 2022!

　
(End of this chapter)