Chapter 25: Hidden Legend
He opened his frail eyes, stared at the ceiling in a trance, and muttered, "At that time, the village was not in this hellish place. There were still many normal people... Darong Village was originally under the banyan tree two kilometers away."
His eyes were filled with nostalgia: "Since we were little, we knew there was a village two kilometers away... No, it's not really a village. There are no houses, just a dry well. Every night it emits a green light... The village chief said there are treasures hidden there. He told us not to disturb the gods... Later, we went there less often."
"Sir." Chu Ziyi suddenly interrupted the other party and raised his eyebrows and said, "Your Mandarin is very standard, right? There is no Xijing accent at all."
The old man's smile became more and more bitter: "Listen to me, and you will know."
Probably because of the glucose he had been given, he was in much better spirits. He continued, "At that time... there were more than 20 households in the village. Perhaps half of them were deformed. The others were relatively normal. The deformed were locked up in the house and fed every day. During every festival, the village chief would lead us to kneel down and pray to the current village, asking the gods to bless it and make the village better."
He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath: "1960... I remember it very clearly, the three-year famine... I saw clearly that Uncle Tian from the neighboring family was walking on the edge of the field and just fell down. When I rushed over, he had already died..."
"There was no food, not even tree bark. People starved to death one after another. On the contrary, those deformed people who didn't know what hunger was survived. There were fewer and fewer normal people in the village, and more and more deformed people... There was no one to watch over them. At night, they ran out like evil spirits, ran to your door, and scratched your door all night long!"
The flesh on his face began to tremble, as if he was recalling a nightmare from decades ago. His voice became sharp throughout the whole paragraph. Jiang Xian picked up a glass of water and handed it over, helping the other person to drink a sip.
After a few seconds, the old man's face finally recovered. There was no expression on his face, as if his emotions had been lost in the years of pain. He murmured, "I was scared... On the first day of the Chinese New Year in 1961, I woke up and wanted my father to take me away from here. But... my father didn't get up and slept forever on that cold bed."
"I didn't dare to stay there any longer. It was not a place for people to stay. I ran away without telling anyone, thinking that I might be able to find something to eat outside. Maybe I was lucky. I climbed over the mountains one after another without encountering any wild animals. I just found wild plants and drank stream water along the way... I actually survived."
"I originally thought that I would be lost in the mountains forever... I don't know how long I have been walking in the mountains. Unexpectedly, one day I actually walked out. When I came to Chang'an, I realized that I had spent almost a year in the mountains."
He suddenly laughed. Perhaps, he thought this was the most glorious moment in his life.
"The Great Famine was almost over by then, and there was a little bit of food on the market. I started working in Chang'an and slowly saved a little bit of money. Three years later, I heard that there were opportunities in Shanghai, so I bought a train ticket and set out on my first trip to the coast." He looked at Chu Ziyi: "It was there that I learned Mandarin."
He closed his eyes, his eyelids trembling violently: "It was there that I met the person who changed my life!"
Heavy breathing echoed in the ward, and no one urged him. After two minutes, he finally opened his dim eyes. He raised his hand tremblingly: "Do you see this painting?"
On the old man's arm, there was a picture engraved. Because the situation was too urgent, no one noticed it before.
I don't know what was used to carve it, but it is still very clear. Moreover, the images are crooked and have no meaning at all. Looking closely, each line is composed of something similar to words, as if... a book was carved on human skin.
Chu Ziyi looked at it for a while, but couldn't figure out what it was. Just as he stood up, he found Jiang Xian staring at the other person's arm. He was about to speak, but Jiang Xian raised his hand to stop him.
Five minutes... ten minutes... fifteen minutes later, Jiang Xian let out a long sigh and stood up, saying in a deep voice, "One is missing."
"Missing a subject?" Chu Ziyi frowned deeply, then immediately reacted, stood up suddenly, and raised his voice several degrees: "Lu Ban Book?!"
Jiang Xian nodded. "Lu Ban's book has long been lost. It is divided into two volumes. The upper volume is about Taoism, and the lower volume is about solutions and medical spells. But except for medical spells, there are no clear practice methods for other spells, only spells and talismans. It is said that after learning Lu Ban's book, you can choose one of the following: widower, widow, orphan, single, or disabled. Therefore, it is also called missing one."
Chu Ziyi looked at Jiang Xian as if he had seen a ghost: "How did you know?"
As soon as I asked, he sighed and said, "Yes, given your sect's thousands of years of tradition, it's not surprising that you know this. Then...what kind of characters are used on it? What's written on it?"
Jiang Xian licked his lips and said solemnly: "It uses the Lu script from the ancient texts of the Six Kingdoms. The Lu script and the ancient bronze inscriptions have many intersections. And there are very few ancient bronze inscriptions that have been passed down to this day. It's normal that you don't know about it."
"As for what it is written..." He pondered for a moment, then said word by word: "Six Dragon Wall, Yama's Eye. Breaking the Golden Wheel Lock, swaying the White Jade Bell. Exorcising evil spirits by stepping on the Clouds and Forgetting the River, looking at Penglai and leaving the Netherworld at night."
Six Dragon Wall, Yama's Eye!
Chu Ziyi's eyes flashed: "Under the dry well, there are hexagonal walls! There is a dragon head on each wall! This poem says..."
Jiang Xian glanced at him and said, "They are the keepers of the tomb. The marks engraved on their bodies are likely to be... the structural diagram of the entire tomb."
Chu Ziyi stood up suddenly, and paced quickly around the room with his hands behind his back. Suddenly he looked up and asked, "Where is the Lu Ban book?"
“Why does it appear and serve as a symbol to convey information?”
Jiang Xian looked at him deeply. "If this is the tomb of that person, then everything makes sense. It took nearly 800,000 people 40 years to build his tomb. Who would be in charge of such a huge project? Of course, it was the master craftsman of the time. And the best craftsmen at that time were none other than the descendants of Lu Ban."
Chu Ziyi took a deep breath, and the old muscles on his face turned red. "As for the construction of the imperial mausoleum, even in the history of China, only three emperors did not let the craftsmen be buried alive. So..."
"When they left, they knew they would die," Jiang Xian said calmly , "so they left behind a legacy. As for the evil spirits behind the poem...it might be the giant beasts I encountered in Wowo Pit. The Wangchuan River...maybe it's the underground river full of lampreys."
The old man stopped talking and looked at Jiang Xian in shock. After a long while, he breathed a sigh of relief and said, "You and that person... said almost the same thing."
He sighed and looked at the roof in a trance: "I don't know who he is. We just met by chance in the restaurant. He saw the tattoo on my arm and asked me a lot of questions... After that, I never saw him again."
He suddenly blinked: "By the way, there is a stick figure eye mark on the palm of his hand."
Jiang Xian secretly noted this and nodded, "Then what?"
"Then..." The old man smiled bitterly. "It was from him that I learned that we were the keepers of someone's tomb and that we had lived on that land for generations. He also told me that the uninhabited village two kilometers away from us, which is now the Darong Village, might be the real entrance to the tomb. At this time, it had been six years since I left the Darong Village... It was the first time that I had the idea of going back to take a look."
"I think... it's a curse. The curse of the cemetery! It's what made the villagers become neither human nor ghost." He was obviously a little excited, his face was a little pale, he covered his chest, and his breathing became rapid. Jiang Xian handed him a cup of water and patted him on the back gently: "Tell me slowly, don't be anxious."
The old man took a sip and gritted his teeth and said, "Thank you... Please let me finish. I have been holding these words in my heart for too long..."
He closed his eyes and said hoarsely, "I used up all my savings and returned to Darong Village with a lot of equipment. In order to convince the villagers and get them to leave, I started looking for a cemetery with them, and at the same time, looking for a place to relocate the village. Then... I, I..."
His chest rose and fell sharply, he bit his lip, and his voice trembled slightly: "I...saw the golden wheel lock!"
Swish - Jiang Xian and Chu Ziyi raised their eyes at the same time and looked deeply at the old man. No one expected that there would be such a development!
"Where did you see it?" Chu Ziyi asked immediately without waiting for Jiang Xian to speak.
"It's right below the room where I'm being held." The old man's face was distorted, as if he had fallen into a nightmare. He clutched the bed sheet tightly with his hands like chicken claws, his eyes bulging. "Remember... the door is not the entrance... the entrance is below... right below!"
"If...if any of the six walls rise up, don't go in. Inside...inside..."
His whole body was trembling, and his face was twitching with pain. Jiang Xian stopped immediately: "Rest first, it doesn't matter if you talk about these things later."
“No!” The old man grabbed his hand, raised his head and panted, “Listen to me… There is another space under the dry well. That is the real entrance!”
He spoke faster, as if he had returned to his prime: "There is a huge sculpture there, probably dozens of meters high. It has a human-like face, and behind it are carved auspicious clouds with nine suns hanging above. Its carved clothes are very gorgeous, but under its feet are three bird claws!"
"In his hands, he held a golden wheel... maybe five meters, or ten meters! This wheel... had a chain hanging down from it."
He suddenly grabbed Jiang Xian tightly, with such great strength that he even pulled him in front of him, his facial features distorted: "That should be the Golden Wheel Lock, but... before pulling it, you must pay attention... Be careful!"
"Above my head... Above my head..." His eyes began to lose focus, and his chest rose and fell like a bellows. In less than a second, his whole body began to tremble, and then he fell on the bed. He muttered a few words: "It's true... There is something above my head! It's... Really..."
"That... is not a statue... it's, it's an evil ghost..."
