The strange story of Huai'an Inn

"It's only been a few months, and he's already so serious that he needs to rely on that kind of tea to control the distortion. Do you want him to continue to mix in these things?"

Um?Who is talking?

Chong Liu's consciousness was chaotic, and he gradually awakened from nothingness.

"Even if I let him sit on the sidelines, looking at his current situation, is it possible? He has already been involved, and it is difficult to get out even if he wants to."

"He is a small running hall, how can there be such a heavy filth? Could it be that it was all infected from Xu Hanke? Impossible, although the filth on Xu Hanke's body is heavy, it has never reached this level."

"Well, there seems to be a strong filth on him..."

"Hidden? Could it be that someone from his parents brought the filth and passed it on to him? Didn't you check the situation at his home?"

"Can't find it."

"Why can't I find it? Isn't it enough to go to the county to find his household registration information?"

Chong Liu gradually realized that it was Song Mingzi talking to the shopkeeper.

He rubbed his eyes and turned over.Through the light red gauze curtain, I can vaguely see two figures sitting outside.

The shopkeeper didn't speak for a long time, Song Mingzi seemed to understand something, "His household registration is forged?"

"I will stay in this inn. How many people's household registration information is true?" The shopkeeper laughed.

"...Hey, is there something you didn't tell me? Is he really just a waiter?"

"He's doing the work of a waiter, of course he's just a waiter. Hey, he woke up later, don't ask questions, it's annoying."

"Hey, hey, it's starting to protect you? Why did you two enter the dream of the locust tree once, and your relationship suddenly developed by leaps and bounds?"

"What? Envious? Envious, go back and find your senior brother."

Chongliu realized that the shopkeeper was quietly talking about him with Song Mingzi...

He lifted the curtain and peeked out with his head exposed.I saw Song Mingzi sitting at the round table outside, chatting with the shopkeeper while peeling peanuts and eating them.Shopkeeper Zhu, on the other hand, held a pot for pounding medicine and kept grinding it with a medicine hammer.

Song Mingzi didn't realize that Chongliu had woken up, and was still gossiping over there, "You said why do you value this little Liuzi so much. After so many years, no one looks down on you like an ice bump, I thought What a stunning beauty you will choose in the end..."

"Isn't Liu'er quite innocent? Besides, I just think he is a useful helper. Don't talk nonsense in front of him."

Chong Liu coughed heavily.

This Song Mingzi... dare to speak ill of him behind his back? !

While thinking about it, I have already typed up thousands of drafts in my notes to scold this unscrupulous alchemist.

Song Mingzi almost jumped up in fright, looked back, patted his chest and said, "Why didn't you make a sound when you woke up?!"

"I heard what you said to me over there is very logical, how dare I interrupt it?" Chong Liuyu sarcastically opened the curtain with a rough movement, and pulled on the shoes.Huh?The clothes on my body have been changed...

Who changed it?It can't be the owner...

Then... the owner... looked at him all over again?

Chong Liu stretched the hem of his clothes, feeling embarrassed, but his heart jumped up again.

"I was joking!" Song Mingzi laughed dryly, drinking tea to cover it up.

The shopkeeper put down the medicine hammer in his hand, turned around and looked at him, "How do you feel?"

Chong Liu stretched out his hand and looked down at himself, "It seems to be completely healed, and the headache doesn't hurt anymore."

The shopkeeper nodded in relief, "That's good."

He checked six or four times, feeling a little embarrassed, "Master, should I change your quilt?"

Zhu Helan glanced at him with a smile, and continued to grind the contents of the medicine jar, "No, come and sit down. Song Mingzi found out a lot about those four people, I guess you want to hear it too?"

When Chong Liu heard it, he became nervous again.Those nine days... the curse that has been less than nine days has not been lifted, and the lives of half of the city's people are still hanging in the balance.

He walked to the round table, sat down beside the shopkeeper, and took a look into the medicine jar along the way.

A lump of sticky, snot-like, disgusting stuff.Chong Liu glanced at it and didn't want to look at it anymore, thankfully there was nothing in his stomach.

The shopkeeper pulled the pastry plate that was originally placed in front of Song Mingzi to Chong Liu, ignoring the protest of an unscrupulous alchemist.

"Eat something first. It's late at night, and the kitchen is already closed, so I probably won't find any leftovers."

Chongliu took out a piece of mung bean cake from the plate like a demonstration, opened his mouth wide and took a real bite, and Chong Songxuan winked his right eye triumphantly.

Song Mingzi rolled her eyes towards the sky.

"Song Huang, tell Chong Liu what happened to those four people."

Song Mingzi picked up the teacup, and while drinking tea, he told in detail the news he had searched all day.

The four people who claimed to be Luzhou residents were: Dai Yunshan, the daughter of Dai Yasi of the county government, who has not yet left the cabinet, but is quite talented.

Pei Lie, the leading singer of Cuixiu Pavilion on Pomegranate Street, can play the pipa well and write poems.

Tan Jun, a doctor in a medical center, is in his 50s this year and has both children.

Zhuang Cheng was born in a scholarly family, and his grandfather was a famous Confucian in Tianliang City.But when his father was in charge of the family, the family was in decline, and he himself failed many times, and now he makes a living as a ghostwriter on the street.

Chong Liuyi heard it, and immediately said, "It's the scholar who failed many times, I've seen it before, he was the first one to start!"

Song Mingzi nodded and said, "That's right, this Zhuang Cheng went to Yingzhou three years ago, saying it was for his grandmother's funeral. After returning, he started to feel abnormal."

Chong Liu actually knew this person.In the gossip he collected, this person also had a record, but not many.

He didn't intend to let Song Mingzi know his record, so he didn't interrupt and let Song Mingzi talk about it.

After Zhuang Cheng came back from Yingzhou in the north, he closed his doors, stopped setting up ghostwriting booths, and didn't even go out to buy necessities such as rice oil.His neighbors were kind-hearted, worried that he would be ill alone and no one would take care of him, so he knocked on the door of his house to see how he was doing.

No one opened the door several times in a row.Later, on one occasion, the door did open, but it frightened the neighbors.

Zhuang Cheng's cheeks were sunken, his eyes were black and blue, his body was wrapped up thickly, and he asked gloomily what he wanted from him.A neighbor said that he remembered a stinky smell emanating from Zhuang Cheng's body, as if someone had been soaked in a dirty ditch for several days.

A few days later, after a neighbor who got up early went out, he found that in the alley in front of the door, there were white papers full of words scattered everywhere on the ground, blown by the wind and flying all over the sky, as if someone had died. Like paper money.

He also picked up a few to look at.Although the neighbor didn't have much literacy, he could still recognize which ones were written in the Central Plains and which ones were written in the Western Regions, which he had never seen before.The characters of the Central Plains and the characters of an unknown dynasty in the Western Regions are mixed together, and there are many strange "paintings" mixed in between.

Song Mingzi brought back a piece of paper that the neighbor had put away, on which there was indeed a symbol composed of a few crooked lines and dots that seemed to be dotted randomly.

Chong Liu asked, "What's written on it?"

Zhu Helan said, "It's all broken words, and I can't understand them. But this mark...was left on an ancient inscription by a dirty god."

"The god of uncleanness?" Chong Liudao said, "Is it like the City God?"

"It's more primitive than City God, and it's also much more terrifying." The shopkeeper's expression was a little heavy, "I haven't seen this mark for a long time." Song Mingzi continued to narrate.

It was two months after Zhuang Cheng finished his first opera essay that he came back from Yingzhou.He gave the playbook to a child playing in a box, and asked him to send the playbook to the bookmaker.The play was staged in several small theaters, and it was an unexpected success.But many people who have watched the play said that they had nightmares for many days in a row.In their dreams, they could all see a huge figure in tattered yellow clothes standing on the desert.

Zhuang Cheng continued to write new scripts at a very fast speed.He gave up his writing booth completely and spent all his time writing non-stop.Every time it is finished, he always asks a child to deliver his manuscript.

The other three probably started to have an unusual... connection with him after watching his later plays.But the problem is, the four never met.

Up to now, Mingzi Song still couldn't understand how the four of them communicated.

Pei Le was probably the first to contact Zhuang Cheng.Then there was Dai Yunshan.It is likely that Tan Jun was "assimilated" by him during the process of diagnosing and treating a certain disease for him.

Listening to Song Mingzi's narration, Chong Liu felt that Zhuang Cheng's opera script was like some kind of disease that could be transmitted to others.Some strong people seem to be fine, but the disease is lurking.And some people who are not so strong, or have strong inspiration, will start to get sick.

Chong Liu also read a lot of his playbooks, and only when he saw Wutong Temple for the last time did he feel abnormal.

Was Zhuang Cheng conscious of this choice of the infected?Or is it that he is not in control of everything?

Chong Liu still remembered that he could see everything in the image passed to him by the locust tree.It's a very weird perspective, like when you're looking at the front of a person, you can also see the back and the inside of him.

At the same time, he could see the dense blisters and ulcers on Zhuang Cheng's face, as well as the yellow Tai Sui wriggling in his internal organs.

Chong Liu asked, "That unclean god...could it be the yellow Taisui Pagoda I saw?" Zhu Helan shook his head and said, "No, according to your description, the real unclean god will be much bigger than that... I suspect that this is just a part of the extended body that fell from it, trying to multiply and gather in this city. But I don't understand why it chose to expand its territory at this time? Why did it choose this place?"

Song Mingzi hesitated, "Could it be... because the locust tree has grown up recently?"

The locust tree... grows up...

Chongliu thinks it is too big to be bigger...

Do all these filthy things have to be so grand?

The shopkeeper sighed, "Anyway, I finally have some clues. The three of us will go to meet this... talented Luzhou layman tomorrow."