Nightmare Apostle

"There is a foot-high wooden pole outside the door. When you hear the sudden change in the sound of singing and opera, and when you confirm that a ghost has appeared, you must immediately raise a red lantern to notify the people at the lake to take action. This is what you will do tonight."

After the task was arranged, Kuang Hongyi bowed his hands to the old man, turned around and walked out of the courtyard. The old man gave a final reminder that once you leave the courtyard, you must never look back.

"Don't worry, old gentleman." Kuang Hongyi replied loudly.

The old man turned around stiffly and looked at Yang Xiao. After a long while, he said: "Young man, what you are going to do tonight is the most dangerous thing. You have to sit on the stage with the lonely ghosts who were attracted to the show and replace them in time. If you eat all the incense and candle offerings, you will die without a burial place once your identity is discovered.”

Yang Xiao took a deep breath and nodded heavily, "I will be careful and ask the old gentleman for advice."

Raising his arm, the old man pointed to the stage and saw several plates of sacrifices placed immediately under the stage. From left to right, there were four categories: raw meat, rice noodles, melons and fruits, and candies and preserves.

There is also a triangular incense burner standing in front of each sacrifice. Under the incense burner is a thick stack of yellow paper money, and there are many unlit incense sticks in the burner.

"When you hear the sound of the gong, you should light up the incense in several incense burners as quickly as possible, then return to your seat and sit down."

Following the old man's guidance, Yang Xiao noticed that there was an empty seat on the far left of the first row of benches on the stage, and there was no paper man occupying it.

Under the bench, there are four bamboo baskets covered with red cloth.

"There are four kinds of sacrifices in the bamboo basket. When the sacrifices in the audience are almost finished, you have to replace them in time." The old man glanced at Yang Xiao meaningfully, "Remember, ghosts only eat the taste, which is the taste of food." The essence, or the smell of incense, cannot be seen from the appearance of the sacrifice. You have to observe it through the incense in the incense burner.”

"The faster the incense burns, the more ferocious the ghosts eat. At this time, you have to leave in advance to replace the sacrifices. Otherwise, when the ghosts finish eating the sacrifices, they will find something else to eat."

Looking at the incense in the incense burner, Yang Xiao remembered the old man's words in his heart, "What's the taboo about changing sacrifices?"

"Hang up your red boots and walk along the funeral route. Don't look back and don't open your mouth." The old man said sternly: "In addition, we must pay attention to the sacrifices. On the way to replace them with new sacrifices, we must not let the new sacrifices fall. On the ground, otherwise it would be disrespectful.”

After saying that, the old man took out a pair of red paper shoes from his arms like a magic trick. The paper shoes were very small, the kind that bound the feet. The two paper shoes were threaded together with a hemp rope. The old man conveniently hung the hemp rope on Yang Xiao's hand. On his neck, two red paper shoes drooped on his chest.

Yang Xiao had never heard of the idea of ​​hanging red boots, but only the dead wore paper shoes, presumably it was a way to hide the aura of the living.

Yang Xiao knew the rules of the funeral procession: the dead had stiff ankles and could not turn in an arc or lift their feet to walk, so they were often blocked by high thresholds or dead walls.

Walking on the funeral road is to imitate the walking of the dead. It is usually used to send some extremely resentful corpses to the funeral. It emphasizes the friction of the soles of the feet. Pay special attention to the width of each step. The heel should not exceed the toe of the other foot. , otherwise it would be disrespectful.

It’s easy to understand why you shouldn’t look back and don’t open your mouth. People who often walk at night know that don’t look back easily, otherwise it will easily blow out the Yang Fire on your shoulders. Yang Fire represents a person’s luck. People with low luck are more likely to be attracted by those ghosts. Something gets caught on.

But if you are among a pile of paper figurines, once you open your mouth, you will vent the anger of the living person, and you will be discovered, and you can imagine the consequences.

"People tend to bully the weak and fear the strong, and so do ghosts. Tonight's affairs cannot only be dealt with with caution, but also with courage and resourcefulness." The old man seemed to be very satisfied with Yang Xiao's reaction, and added a few extra words, "As for the scale, you yourself Make sure you have a good grasp of it. As the saying goes, wealth can only be found in danger. You are considered a half-person in the industry, so you should understand some truths."

While she was talking, the old lady walked out from behind the stage, still wearing that annoying stinky face. She instructed Yang Xiao to sit down, and then took out the rouge and gouache from the bamboo basket slung around her waist, and even applied makeup on Yang Xiao.

It's just that the action process was very rough, and it only lasted two minutes. When he raised a small bronze mirror for Yang Xiao to look at, Yang Xiao was completely stunned. The image of himself in the mirror had a white face and dark circles under his eyes, thicker than a brush. The eyebrows, the left eyebrow is more exaggerated than the right eyebrow, thicker and longer, and there are bright red lips, what a poor paper makeup!

At this moment, Yang Xiao remembered how good the paper maker was. If he was still alive, he should be the one to paint tonight, and it would definitely not be so ugly.

When the old lady saw Yang Xiao frowning, her tone became more and more impatient: "Not satisfied? If you are not satisfied, I can redraw it!"

"No, no, no, no, no trouble, that's it...that's it." Yang Xiao wanted to put on a satisfied smile, but his smile in the mirror was scarier than a ghost.

After packing up the rouge and gouache, the old lady put the bamboo basket back on her body, twisted her waist and walked out, "Remember, after the gong sounds, tonight's play will begin, and you still have time to burn incense."

It seemed that the old lady was still in a hurry to put on makeup for Kuang Hongyi outside the door. After all, they both had to pretend to be ghosts tonight.

The old man reached into his arms and took out a delicate cloth bag with several white lotus flowers embroidered on it. When he opened it, there was a crumpled yellow paper inside.

The yellow paper was wet and sticky. Before Yang Xiao could get closer to see it clearly, the old man picked up the yellow paper and slapped it on Yang Xiao's face.

Yang Xiao: "???"

"Don't move, this is a good thing." The old man pressed Yang Xiao's shoulder with one hand, and quickly smoothed the edge of the yellow paper with the other hand. The yellow paper was impartial and just covered Yang Xiao's right eye.

At this moment, Yang Xiao smelled a strange smell. The yellow paper was not water, but oil, wax.

"Try to see if you can open it."

Yang Xiao blinked his right eye gently and was able to open it, but the wax was dazzling and he could not keep his eyes open for a long time. If he closed his left eye, everything around him turned into a blurred outline through the translucent yellow paper.

"The left eye sees people, the right eye sees ghosts." Using a silver needle to pierce the skin above the eyebrow, the old man embroidered the yellow paper on Yang Xiao's face with a few stitches, "Young man, remember what I told you, no matter what happens, don't panic until this drama is over."

After doing all this, the old man left. At this moment, Yang Xiao was the only one left in the huge yard.

No, that's not right. There is also Su Tingting behind the white cloth.

But Yang Xiao couldn't see the shadow of Su Tingting left on the white cloth behind the stage at this moment. He guessed that Su Tingting either squatted down, or... or lay down. The white cloth was like two different worlds.

Calming himself, Yang Xiao walked to his seat. Standing there, he realized how strange those paper figures were. Each one had a different posture, and the makeup on their faces was hard to describe. Some of them didn't even have hands or feet. They were completely defective products that were hastily made.