[Old Nine Gates] Homecoming

"Resurrection from death?" Qi Tiezui shook his head with his mouth flattened, "Qimen has been talking about it for hundreds of years, but there is no record of resurrection from death."

Yu Manli did not give up: "Haven't you even heard of it?"

Qi Tiezui touched his chin and opened his mouth: "I've heard it."

Yu Manli had a "whatever" look on her face.

"Liao Zhai. Do you believe it?" Qi Tiezui adjusted his glasses and looked proudly at Yu Manli, heartbroken.

Zhang Qishan coughed lightly: "Stop being so talkative." Changing a serious tone, his eyes were sharp, "Yu Manli, if you want to know something, you should first tell us what you know, otherwise we have no choice but to There's no reason to help you."

Yu Manli thought for a while, and finally picked out the main point: "This photo was taken by him yesterday morning when I was separated from him. It was about nine o'clock. Actually, at that time," Yu Manli said. After a pause, "I heard Boss Qi calling me, but I didn't answer at that time."

Qi Tie covered his heart with his mouth - he was indeed ignored.However, before he could cry, Zhang Qishan took the lead and asked: "So you mean, you met someone who died a few hours ago?"

Yu Manli nodded.

"You saw that too?"

Qi Tiezui also nodded.

"However," Zhang Qishan pointed to the case record, "the people who played chess at that time, and the people who watched chess with you, they didn't see it."

"Didn't... see?" Qi Tiezui was a little surprised.

Zhang Qishan repeated again: "Yes, I didn't see it."

Hearing this, Qi Tiezui's face suddenly turned pale, and the lines of his face became stiff.

Zhang Qishan pushed him: "Fortune teller, what's wrong?"

Qi Tiezui propped up his glasses frame: "Buddha, I have a secret, and I may tell you now."

-

2011, autumn, Xinjiang.

The crimson sun pierced through the clouds, not very blushing, but still making people uncomfortable.There are a few lonely trees planted outside the train station, and a few vendors selling cantaloupe and grapes gather in the shadows.Occasionally, when a train arrives at the station, men, women and children with large and small bags pour out from the exit, and the vendors who are leaning on the crooked side are refreshed, and they stand up one after another to sell sweet toothless melons, fruits and walnuts. .

The flow of people comes and goes quickly.

When the crowd had dispersed, Qi Tiezui limped out from the exit—his shoes had been trampled off just now, and it took him a long time to find them. It was just a shoehorn that barely fit on his feet. .

A little Uighur girl with thick eyebrows and big eyes and a beautiful braided hair greeted her warmly: "Walnut, do you want it? You are smart!" Her Chinese is not very good.

Qi Tiezui stared at her for a long time, and finally picked up a bag of walnuts: "Go home early today, don't hang around outside." After speaking, he casually gave her a red ticket, and got on the exit pipe of a car A Santana 2000 that is still smoldering.

As soon as he got in the car, the middle-aged uncle-like driver asked, "Are you Qi Jianmin's son?"

Qi Tiezui wiped his glasses, and smiled like a student with a slightly childish face: "Yes, Uncle Man, this is the first time I've seen you. My name is Qi Tiezui." As soon as he finished speaking, he crushed a thin-skinned walnut and came out stuff it in your mouth.

Uncle Man's skin is very dark, and he grinned all his white teeth when he smiled: "Hey, you are really the son of Qi Jianmin. He is just like Qi Jianmin, and he is very greedy. He came to archaeology earlier, so I made it for him. A local guide, he lived in Xinjiang for more than a month, who would have thought that looking at the white and clean scholars, he could eat better than me. You don’t know, he can eat three freshly picked cantaloupe a day!”

The more Uncle Man talked, the more excited he was, he didn't notice the slight redness in Qi Tiezui's eyes behind his glasses, which were covered by reflections.

He naturally didn't know that his grandfather and father were all burned to death when he was 13 years old, right in front of him.

The driver put Qi Tiezui at the door of a family hotel: "This is where you asked in the letter. That boy your father lived here. Don't tell me, the pigeons raised by your father are so fucking smart. It can fly so far. I saw it once when he sent you a letter before, and I didn’t believe it, but now that I have received the letter myself, I have to believe it.”

The oldest method of message transmission, the carrier pigeon, is also preserved in the Nine Gates.However, unlike traditional homing pigeons, Jiumen's homing pigeons not only know the way, but also recognize people.Never caught unless killed.And if someone hunted and killed halfway, the pigeon's blood would flow onto the letter paper, and when the paper turned black, no one would know the secret on the letter.

Qi Tiezui didn't answer: "Uncle Man, pick me up at 9:[-] tomorrow morning, I'm going to Tagetan tomorrow."

Uncle Man wiped the top of his head with stubble, and said through the car window: "In such a hurry? Don't take a day off? Tagetan can't come out for a few days." It's not so much that Uncle Man wants to let Qi Tiezui Take a day off, it's better to say that he wants to prepare first.Tagotan is still in an undeveloped state, desolate and uninhabited, and is generally blocked to prevent people from entering, unless there are special circumstances, or there are occasional people who are not afraid of death.Nine out of ten people who went in over the years were buried inside.

Qi Tiezui shook his head: "Uncle Man, I'm in a hurry. And I don't need you to accompany me in, just send me to the place where my father left you."

Uncle Man picked up the towel in the car and wiped the sweat off his face, gritted his teeth and said, "Okay, then at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, I'll go back and find out all the maps and navigation you can use. "

Qi Tiezui said respectfully: "Thank you, Uncle Man." What his father said was true, and Uncle Man was indeed righteous.

There was a warm light under the orange desk lamp, Qi Tiezui sat in front of the lamp, and opened the yellowed envelope by the light. Although the edge of the letter paper was worn out, the handwriting was still clear.

"Qi Tiezui, this name is by no means a good name. It's earthy and a bit vulgar. I believe no one will name their son Zui. Of course, this also reflects that my father is different from ordinary people and different from others. But, more importantly, since you were born, your grandfather and I have seen that you are a good fortune teller. Your mouth can tell not only the ups and downs of a person, but also the rise and fall of a country. Facts have also proved that you The talent of the Qi family is indeed extremely high, higher than any senior expert in the Qi family. Therefore, the important task of preserving the Qi family is entrusted to you. Our Qi family lives by divination, and the arithmetic of the Qi family has been passed down. In the past thousand years, among the existing Bu Suan families, there is almost no one whose history can surpass that of Qi Men Suan. But now, your grandfather and I have to do something, something we have to do. After this thing is done, I will He and your grandfather are likely to be gone. Therefore, you must continue to guard what the Qi family has been protecting. This is the mission of our Qi family. "

This is the first time Qi Tiezui has read this letter.But this time, his mood was even heavier, not only because of the content of the letter, but also because of the two things placed next to the letter—a map and a compass. The location marked on the map is in Tagetan, Xinjiang.

The letter was sent to Qi Jianmin by means of a carrier pigeon when he was in Xinjiang, but the map and compass were not.

These two things were given to him by his father himself when he went to Lijiang a few days ago to try to find clues about the Qi family along the route his father had taken during his lifetime.

He still remembered that the moon was very round that night, he read his father's diary, made a few marks and fell asleep.However, between half-dream and half-awake, a person shook him awake.

He rubbed his eyes for a long time to get rid of the bearded eyeballs before he realized that it was his father who came.He should have been surprised, but he really couldn't tell what kind of mood he was in, and he wasn't surprised at all, as if he saw him just yesterday.He later thought it might be because Qi Jianmin was holding an old-fashioned bong as usual, and his army green shirt was no different with dust all over it.

Qi Jianmin pointed to the desk not far away with a bong: "Boy, I put the things there. The address is on the map. When you get there, go down to the coffin and look for it. I have already adjusted the mechanism of the tomb for you." But there is only one chance, after you come out, the mechanism of the tomb will return to its original position, remember.”

Qi Tiezui wanted to ask another question, but Qi Jianmin just said: "You have grown taller." Then he turned and went out.

—

Driving through the rolling grasslands, through groups of cattle and sheep, Uncle Man parked the car and put it in gear, put on the handbrake: "Here we are." Getting out of the car, he took out a cigarette and took a deep breath: "Do you really want to go in?"

Qi Tiezui zipped up the windbreaker: "Enter."

Uncle Man blew his whistle, and a horse ran over happily in the distance. When it came to Uncle Man, it circled around Uncle Man before stopping.

Uncle Man brought the horse over and rubbed its brown hair vigorously: "This horse is very smart, you should ride it, it will take two days to walk with your feet."

Qi Tiezui pulled the horse's reins, and his heart suddenly felt a little heavy.The master of the Qi family once had an unwritten rule that if he went into a dangerous situation and had no way to survive, he would hang a bronze mirror on his horse's head and escape with the information he needed to let outsiders know.

Thinking of this, Lao Ba's immature face was covered with sweat: before, he only listened to his father telling him these stories, and he had gone to some graves and experienced some dangerous situations in these years, but until now, he has no An extremely dangerous feeling.

Maybe he has to use the method of his predecessors.

Qi Tiezui squeezed the bronze mirror in his backpack, feeling a little light standing on the ground.Suddenly, he felt that it was no big deal. If he really died here, wouldn't he have to worry about whether to continue going to school? It was hard to go to school, and he couldn't learn the bird's language no matter what.

He happily snapped his fingers at the horse: "Let's go, let's go in."

But the horse seemed to know that following Qi Tiezui would lead it to "death", it hesitated for a long time and refused to leave. It was Uncle Man who pretended to whip it a few times before it twisted its buttocks and walked towards the depths of the grassland full of ravines.

Qi Tiezui held two compasses in his hand, one was given to him by Qi Jianmin that day, and the other was a compass handed down by their Qi family.He decided to take the second compass on the spur of the moment this morning, because he found a very strange problem, the compass Qi Jianmin gave him could not point the direction correctly.He couldn't figure out the meaning of his father giving him such a compass, but since it was given to him, there must be his reasons.

But as he walked, Qi Tiezui found the result of this problem: except for the compass Qi Jianmin gave him, other navigations began to be unable to discern the direction, and another compass began to vibrate violently. His sense of direction and the ability to distinguish directions that he had trained in the Qimen Bagua Formation since he was a child are all invalid at this moment-his intuitive direction is completely opposite to the direction pointed by the compass!

Qi Tiezui followed the direction indicated by the compass, crossed the meandering river, gradually revealed the border of the grassland, and a yellow, bare mountain appeared in front of him.

The entrance to the tomb is at the foot of several shelters.Qi Tiezui tied the horse outside the mountain and entered the tomb by himself.Because he saw that all the organs in the tomb had indeed been moved, and all dangers had been temporarily isolated.

Qi Tiezui took a deep breath and walked into the tomb.

The tomb is an ancient tomb of the Western Han Dynasty. There are no murals or sculptures. You can only see a section of mud rafters sticking out at intervals, and a small bowl of clay sculpture is placed on it.

For a while, Qi Tiezui always felt that someone behind him was adding water to the bowl.

He thought that this person was his father, and his father was helping him move the organs in the tomb back.

But this was just his feeling, because he stopped deliberately, and when he looked back, there was no water in the bowl at all.

The experience of fighting this time was not as dangerous as imagined, and it can even be said to be very simple. He easily went to the place Qi Jianmin asked him to go, and got what Qi Jianmin asked him to take—a book and a array— - Reversing the universe array.

It turned out that for thousands of years, their family has been sticking to a mission: to help the tomb guards and guards guard the black corpse coffins in the tea village.

And the method used by the Qi family, which is proficient in Qimen shield technique, is to set up a universe formation, reverse the east, west, north, and make everyone who tries to approach the black corpse coffin lose their way.

-

"I always thought and believed that my father was still alive." Qi Tiezui did not touch his glasses. "It seems that he is indeed dead. The Qiankun Formation probably has another ability, which is to reverse yin and yang. So what I saw, It should be the father in the underworld."

The author has something to say: Long time no see~