Placid Chang'an

"I just said that this old man doesn't look like a good thing. The village is haunted by ghosts. I think he has ghosts in his heart, and he wants to leave us to kill and steal!" Qu Ling'er threw the burden on her body and said angrily: "Let's go like this It's really cheap for him, you shouldn't stop me, let me tie him up and beat him up, and see if he dares to play tricks in the future!"

"I've made a lot of progress," Su Cen said with a smile, "I can use it to kill people, steal goods, and play tricks."

Qu Linger glared: "I'm serious!"

"It's better to be careful on other people's territory." Su Cen smiled, and looked back at the thatched cottage behind him. The sound of sharpening knives stopped at some point, but no one chased them out. The bright moonlight There is nowhere to hide under anything, but he still feels that this small hut is very mysterious, like a cloud of black mist, making it difficult for people to figure it out.

"Then what should we do now? Enter the village?" Qu Ling'er looked at the ups and downs of the village not far away, but she still resisted a little, and raised her head to seek Su Cen's opinion.

Su Cen narrowed his eyes slightly, and said after a few steps: "Go in at dawn."

"Where do we go now?"

Su Cen casually pointed to the distance: "Go there."

Qu Ling'er followed Su Cen's fingertips and looked over, and suddenly didn't want to leave.

Not far away, green smoke is lingering, fireflies are densely lit, lumps of soil rise from the ground, and there are many chaotic monuments, it is a mass burial cemetery.

The Yangzhai official post did not calm down until midnight, the Turkic guards were all drunk, and the post chief took a lot of effort to order people to send the burly men back to the room.

On the way back, I passed the backyard. The black box was still in the yard. It was different from the usual silence. Now there was a barren accent coming from the box. The out-of-tune tunes are especially clear, and even the small broken sounds at the transitions can be heard clearly.

A prisoner was still so arrogant, the postmaster mustered up his courage and stepped forward to kick the big box: "Stop singing!"

The person in the box actually giggled, "Does it sound good?"

"Sounds like a ghost!" Seeing that this person was not threatening, the postmaster gasped again cursingly, "It's so late at night, it's a ghost!"

The people in the box didn't mind, clicked their tongues, and continued to sing the previous tune.

"I told you to stop singing!" The postmaster made a gesture to start again, but before he touched the box, his movements froze suddenly.An icy cold climbed up the side of the neck, and a sharp knife came across from behind and pressed against the neck, within an inch of the blood vessels, and he could splatter blood on the spot with a slight movement.

"Don't move." The person behind said coldly.

Only then did the postmaster realize that a large number of men in black appeared from the darkness and came behind him unknowingly, but he didn't notice it at all.

The humming in the box didn't know when it stopped, let out a laugh, and asked: "Does it sound good?"

"……listen well."

"I just said I sang well," the person in the box was finally satisfied, heaved a long sigh, and knocked on the box, "Why are you still standing there?"

The leading man in black immediately stepped forward and knelt down on one knee: "Young master."

Su Cen found a bare coffin board and sat down, pulled out the weeds that got in the way of the grave, ignored Qu Ling'er's expression as if she had eaten a fly, and wrapped the official seal and quotations on her body with a piece of fur skin, and then A hole was dug and buried.

The old man may be an exception, or it may be the case in the whole village.He didn't dare to take the risk of taking these things with him again. There are troublesome people in the poor mountains and rivers. In this kind of place, his status can't be transferred to soldiers or generals. He may also anger the villagers here and cause death.

He had seen a similar case when he was sorting out the files in Dali Temple. In Qianzhou, the folk customs were aggressive, and the people's wisdom was not enlightened. There was a local tribe who beat someone to death outside. When there was a conflict, he was besieged by tribesmen and beaten to death.Although the imperial court also sent troops to encircle and suppress it later, it still caused quite a stir at that time. Local officials in remote areas were in danger, and when they encountered problems, they would directly write to the imperial court to increase their troops. The relationship between the officials and the people was not handled well. The tribes rebelled one after another. Although they couldn't achieve much success, they still made a lot of noise for more than half a year.

Although things can't be generalized, an old country man dares to think this way about them. Now he can only depend on the cowardly Qu Ling'er, so there is no harm in being cautious.

Qu Ling'er didn't dare to look around casually, for fear of seeing something she shouldn't see, she sat down next to Su Cen and asked tremblingly, "Brother Su, why do we stay in this kind of place?"

"Isn't this kind of place bad? The dead are safer than the living." Su Cen casually wiped the dust that had settled over the years on the stele beside him, and identified the dates of birth and death on the stele, "Wu De Seven Years... This person has been dead for more than 50 years, can he still stand up and bite you?"

Qu Ling'er pulled her neck and wanted to fight back, but she opened her mouth but closed it resentfully.The dead can borrow his coffin board to sit on, but the living get up in the middle of the night to sharpen their kitchen knives and try to kill him.One has to know the good and the bad, Qu Ling'er silently thanked the seniors in this circle first, and emphasized that she is a good young man who knows how to repay her kindness, and she will definitely repay the ghost grandpas with paper money and incense sticks when she goes back.

With Su Cen as his companion, Qu Ling'er felt a little more at ease. She yawned after sitting next to Su Cen for a while. He basically didn't fall asleep in the first half of the night, but now he felt drowsy and kept dozing off. .

Su Cen didn't feel sleepy for a while, she looked at the surrounding tombstones by the moonlight and wanted to look at the distant ones, but Qu Ling'er hugged her tightly and couldn't move away, so she had to push her awake, "Ling'er, you Sleep, I'll go over there and have a look."

Where is Qu Ling'er willing?

In desperation, Qu Ling'er could only let Qu Ling'er follow behind with one arm. Su Cen looked at the several tombstones in the cemetery from inside to outside, and finally stood in front of a stone tablet, thinking deeply.

Qu Linger's drowsiness almost faded away, she raised her head and asked, "What's wrong, Brother Su?"

Su Cen frowned slightly, "According to the time on the tombstone, these people all died before Yonglong 22 years ago."

Qu Ling'er frowned and thought for a while, then speculated: "Could it be that they moved to the cemetery later instead of being buried here?"

"This cemetery is not full, and there are still many places. Relocating graves is a major event. Normally, ancestral graves will not be easily changed." Su Cen pointed to the two graves in front of him, "And look at these two graves, the soil The color is new, which means that the burial was not long ago, which means that someone is still buried here, but there is no tombstone."

Qu Ling'er looked forward, and there were indeed only graves but no tombstones, and not only here, there were several more like this in the distance, she couldn't help wondering: "Could it be a child's grave? I heard that some places are small. When a child dies, no monument is erected."

"The monument is erected to facilitate the worship of future generations. Some places believe that the absence of a tombstone means that the ghost has no name and no surname. It is easy to become a lonely ghost and suffer a lot. It is true that monuments are not allowed to be erected," Su Cen paused for a while, and then continued: "But it doesn't explain why there are no monuments for people who died after 22 years of Yonglong. Could it be that all the people who died in this village after that year Is there a person who died suddenly, died young, and had no heir?"

Qu Ling'er thought for a while, then frowned: "Then what's going on?"

"This means that a major event happened in the village in the 22nd year of Yonglong, which caused them to stop burying people here." Su Cen slowly raised his head, his eyes condensed in the thick darkness, "or in other words, no one can bury people here." gone."

"There's no one to bury?" Qu Ling'er felt a chill in her heart, "What do you mean?"

"Everyone is dead, so naturally no one will come to worship, and it doesn't matter whether there is a monument or not." Su Cen looked at the dirt bag without a tombstone in front of him, and murmured: "Everyone is dead, so naturally there will be no more tombstones." There's no one to bury."

The night wind blew up for no reason, and the vermilion grass passed by, bringing a skin-penetrating coolness.

"Since there is Lu Xiaoliu in the corpse in the cave in Mount Fangshan, will there be other people from Lujiazhuang?" Su Cen pondered and said, "If the corpse whose identity cannot be found is really from Lujiazhuang, it means It is said that those people died as early as the 22nd year of Yonglong, so who are the people in the village now?"

Qu Ling'er was completely sleepy, she hugged her arms tightly and touched the goose bumps on her arms, then gently tugged at Su Cen's sleeve, "Brother Su...can you stop saying such a horrible thing in the cemetery with no expression on your face?" things."

"Scary?" Su Cen turned to Qu Ling'er and smiled, "I'll tell you something even scarier."

"What... what?"

Su Cen looked up at the sky, the moon was already falling, and said softly, "It's almost dawn."

Qu Linger: "What's wrong with dawn?"

Su Cen said: "At dawn, we will enter the village."

Eight hundred miles away, there is the Yangzhai official post.

With a "click", the lock on the iron box snapped, and the cell door opened to one side. First, a foot was stepped, and then a pair of pale hands supported the sides of the cell door. step out of the box.

Everyone was stunned.

The ice-carved young man was dressed in black clothes, raised a childish face and sneered at everyone, "Am I the young master you are looking for?"

The man in black froze for a moment and quickly retreated: "There is an ambush!"

In an instant, a large number of people emerged from the darkness, enclosing the small courtyard in an instant. The Turkic guards, who had pretended to be drunk before, all had their eyes lit up and their scimitars gleaming, obviously bloodthirsty for a long time.

"Following from Xuzhou to Yingchuan, I finally couldn't help but show up." Qi Lin slowly came out from behind the crowd, a trace of coldness flashed in his pale eyes, ready to go.

The man in black knew that he had been fooled, and quickly retreated to form a group, but Chen Ling behind him just flexed his muscles and held a pair of Emei thorns. , The move is fatal.

For a moment, blood stained Leng Yue red, and the wolf guards, not to be outdone, let out a long howl and roared up.