Chapter 95 Scared the whole city
What does a serious immortal master usually do?
Performing rituals, refining elixirs, calling the wind and rain, holding sermons... and so on!
So what did Lu Sen, the true immortal master, do?
I grew some lettuce and fruit and shared them with others.
I put on a fairy shadow play and showed it to people all over the capital.
It is indeed novel, but it doesn't look like what a master should do at all.
What about the Taoist Conference?
What are the titles and rankings for civil and military officials in the fairy world?
There is absolutely no such plot that the public likes to watch, which makes them lose a lot of fun in watching the show.
Although the Xianjia shadow play is indeed fun to watch, it gets a bit boring after watching animals and scenery all day long .
I heard that tonight's Xianjia shadow play will show witch rituals from the pre-Han period, so almost everyone's interest was aroused.
After Lu Sen returned home, he did not talk about this with Yang Jinhua and others. After all, in his opinion, it was just a program about witch sacrifice.
Showing the people of the Song Dynasty the shamanic dance restored by modern people was only part of his plan.
First show some animals and foreign scenery, then some films about the lives of ancient people, and finally some more "deviant" content.
For example, show some truly popular science films.
"Why is the Earth Round?", "What is Gravitation?", etc.
Step by step, step by step, change the worldview of the Song people, distort... no, change their view of the world.
Not knowing what Lu Sen was going to show next, Yang Jinhua and Zhao Bilian wore beautiful colorful clothes when they went out.
After dinner and a hot spring bath, Lu Sen went to the west city wall, took the projector out of his system backpack, placed it in place, and then called up the content he wanted to play.
"Shenrenchang".
That was something Lu Sen accidentally saw a few years ago on a video website with a name beginning with the letter B. It had a tag of "Disco at the Mawangdui Han Tomb".
Among them, the song played was the ancient music "Shenren Chang", which innovatively added accompaniment of instruments such as drums and flutes.
There was also a young lady wearing Hanfu, dancing in imitation of the images in the murals of Han tombs.
Up to this point, there doesn't seem to be anything surprising, but the most amazing thing about this video is that its lighting effects are ghostly, the dance moves are very soft and ghostly, and the whole video looks eerie and mysterious, full of a strong sense of sacrifice.
Anyway, when Lu Sen saw it for the first time, he was shocked. How did these creators come up with such a horrible thing?
Want to drive the audience away with this hellish video?
Even Lu Sen, who has been through all kinds of horror videos and war special effects blockbusters, was moved by the artistic and witchcraft atmosphere in it. He believed that the Song people of this era should also have a lot of insights.
"I hope you don't get scared."
Lu Sen muttered to himself, then started playing with a slight smirk.
On the fourth floor of Fanlou, facing the west window sill, Yang Jinhua and Zhao Bilian were the center of attention.
There gathered a large group of women, both girls and women.
But now Yang Jinhua was a little depressed. The women around her were all wearing plain clothes, but she and Bilian were the only ones wearing brightly colored clothes. This was very wrong.
And the atmosphere today is a bit weird... How should I put it, it seems a bit solemn.
In the past, if a group of women gathered together, they would have started making noise, but now, they were very quiet.
In fact, these women were also wondering about the attire of Yang Jinhua and Bilian: Master Lu is going to preside over a sacrifice tonight, why are you two dressed like this? Is there any explanation?
Confused, a woman finally asked the two men a question.
Only then did Yang Jinhua and her husband realize that tonight was the day their husband would hold a memorial ceremony.
"But he didn't tell us." Zhao Bilian said immediately.
The women were silent. How could you two not know something that everyone knows?
"Maybe you are Master Lu's wives and concubines, so you don't need to know." A woman said.
Yeah!
Other women nearby immediately responded.
The women didn't want to be embarrassed by these two people. If they really made them angry, they might not be able to get out of the situation and would lose their share of the fairy fruit.
Although there are not many now, I can always get one or two every month. It is better to have hope than to have nothing at all .
Yang Jinhua and Zhao Bilian both breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the women around them had no intention of laughing at them.
At the same time, she also felt once again the "destructive power" of fairy fruit on women.
If it were in the past, the two of them, one the daughter of a general and the other the illegitimate daughter of a prince, would have been lucky not to be gossiped about in front of their faces by the women if they made such a mistake. Some even jumped on their faces and mocked them.
There is absolutely no way such a 'harmonious' situation as we see now can occur.
'So this is what the officials call a monopoly resource?'
This sentence popped up in Yang Jinhua's mind.
In fact, before the "Lady Diplomacy" began, Yang Jinhua had asked to what extent she could achieve and what kind of concerns she needed to have?
At that time, Lu Sen told her the meaning of the term "monopolizing resources".
Let her do her job, as long as she is not too ignorant of human nature and is not the kind of fool who tries to touch people's hearts and lungs. With such an important functional resource in her hands, there is no courtyard that she cannot "open".
Before, Yang Jinhua still lacked confidence. After all, she was the daughter of a general and was naturally inferior to the families of scholars. But now she has realized it!
Now she is not only the daughter of a general, but also the legal wife of an immortal. She was married with three letters and six ceremonies.
She instantly felt more confident. She planned to stop wearing such light clothes in the future and go back to wearing her original comfortable and slim-fitting clothes, which would make it much more convenient for her to move around.
Yang Jinhua's eyebrows became more and more curved as she smiled, and she became happier and happier.
It was at this time that the 'movie' began.
The fifth floor of Fan Tower was reserved by the Eight Wise Kings and others.
In the entire court, the Eighth Wise King was the oldest, followed by Grand Tutor Pang.
In an era when people rarely live to be sixty, he was considered to be very old, but he looked like Bao Zheng, who was a little over fifty years old.
Once a person is over sixty years old, he has many natural privileges and can be very willful.
For example, drinking alcohol is always accompanied by fried beans with a dish of salt.
In public, other civil and military officials had to use chopsticks to eat beans, but the Eighth Wise King did not need that. He simply grabbed a handful of salted beans and placed them in the palm of his left hand, then used his right hand to pinch the beans one by one and put them into his mouth to eat.
After eating, my hands were covered in stains. I was too lazy to get up and wipe them with a wet towel, so I just wiped them on myself.
When others saw this, they didn't dare to object.
While waiting for the sacrifice to begin, he ate two plates of salted beans and his body was covered with grease stains.
"Master Lu has finally started to do his work." The Eighth Sage King crunched his beans and said meaningfully, "Xiren, do you think he will do other work, such as refining the elixir?"
If a furnace was opened to refine elixirs, it would be a huge drain on the national treasury. There was a precedent for this. Moreover, whenever a master started to refine elixirs, it would be easy for the emperor to ignore state affairs.
Bao Zheng sat by the window, wearing plain white clothes, and his temperament became even more lonely.
He himself is the powerful governor of Kaifeng Prefecture, and now he is also the Privy Councilor. It can be said that he holds both civil and military official positions, and his actual power is astonishingly great.
After taking a sip of wine, he thought for a while, shook his head, and said, "It shouldn't be the case. With naturally produced fairy fruits and honey, why would Master Lu need to take those unreliable pills?"
"That's right." The Eighth Sage King nodded. "Then he will probably hold a ritual or a Taoist conference."
"That's possible."
According to the custom of traditional literati, spreading one's own theories and the ideas of one's own faction is what a "disciple" should do.
Otherwise, there would be no factional differences among the literati, and the Buddhist and Taoist schools would debate with each other at every turn!
The Eighth Sage King felt that the beans were a bit salty, so he took another sip of rice wine and said, "Now that he has begun to preside over the sacrifices, he will definitely lecture on the scriptures and the doctrines in the future. We will wait and see."
Bao Zheng was about to say something, but he saw a light on the other side of the city wall, so he said, "Let's talk later, it seems to have started."
The number of moviegoers tonight was at least twice as many as usual. People of all ages, big and small, crowded under the city wall, or some even sat in the restaurant.
The vast majority of people wore plain clothes. After all, the people of the Song Dynasty had enough respect for sacrifices, even if they were presented in the form of shadow puppetry.
Each of the pious faces looked at the scene on the city wall.
First, there was a very dark scene where almost nothing could be seen, but then the light gradually became brighter, and four men could be vaguely seen kneeling in a row, and next to them, there were several Han-style palace lanterns.
But even so, the four men could only be vaguely seen in outline, motionless, giving a rather weird feeling, and there was also a faint mist flowing in the picture.
At this time, many ordinary people were swallowing their saliva.
Unlike previous videos about animal survival and local customs and landscapes, the atmosphere of this thing is really scary.
Especially for Song people who are watching a 'horror movie' for the first time.
Then a woman in a dark red, Han-style straight skirt walked in, holding a palace lantern, and walked slowly, lightly, and carefully, as if she didn't dare to disturb anything.
Just as she was walking, a slow and deep flute sound suddenly rang out, accompanied by bursts of thunder.
The sudden noise frightened many people, and some young children started crying on the spot.
But his mouth was immediately covered by the elders, for fear of alarming the people on the screen.
As the woman approached, the light in her hand also illuminated the four men nearby. They all lowered their heads, and stood motionless like stone sculptures.
She gently put down the lamp in her hand, took two steps back, and bowed to the empty front. At this time, the woman's face could be seen clearly. Although she was not extremely beautiful, she was dignified and generous, with a fair face and smooth skin. At first glance, she was the daughter of a wealthy family.
The woman in Hanfu stood up, slowly raised her left hand, and there was a sound of thunder. She also raised her right palm, and there was another sound of thunder.
Every time he raised his hand, thunder roared and the picture became clearer. After repeating this twice, the picture was clear enough for people to see normally, but it was still dim, with a just right sense of eerie and heaviness.
At this time, the woman in Hanfu had raised her hands high up, and then slowly lowered them. The four male "stone sculptures" in the picture "came to life" amid the thunder, raised their heads and opened their eyes, and slowly twisted their shoulders, as if they had not moved for a long time.
The four of them each have their own musical instrument.
At this time, many people had turned pale.
What does a typical sacrifice look like in the eyes of ordinary people?
In dark or empty places, masked mages, gesticulating aimlessly, chanted scriptures that they could not understand!
They also burn some money and paper, draw some talismans and so on.
It does feel a bit mysterious.
But it was nothing compared to the image I saw before my eyes.
The dim, smoky scene, the expressionless witch, and the rumbling thunder that sounded from time to time seemed as if the gods had noticed this place. Everything was indicating that this was a real witch sacrifice that they could not access at all.
Whenever thunder sounds in the picture, almost all the people will subconsciously look up at the sky to see if it is thundering in the real world.
And every time there was thunder, their minds would collapse little by little.
The scene paused for about three breaths, and then one of the men in Hanfu began to play the guqin in front of him, and then the woman in Hanfu began to make gestures of worship in all directions.
Listening to the gentle and ethereal overtones, many people who are familiar with the music couldn't help but exclaimed: "God, how wonderful!"
This ancient song has been passed down for a long time. With the passage of time, the rhythm may have changed slightly, but not much, and people who are familiar with it can recognize it as soon as they hear it.
The ethereal overtones seemed to be used to communicate between heaven and earth. The woman's worship harmonized with the sound of the piano, causing the thunder in the sky to grow louder and louder.
The man on the far left added a sense of anxiety to the gloomy air with his increasingly rapid flute sounds.
With the sound of a medium-volume thunder, the woman in Hanfu who was worshipping in front of her suddenly seemed to faint. She squatted down, her body became limp, and her head tilted to one side, as if she had fallen asleep.
And at this moment, the piano music became slightly cheerful and the drum beats started.
Listening to this kind of performance, it seems to be expressing a happier time, but the atmosphere on the screen is dark and weird, and combined with this somewhat cheerful music, it does have a somewhat contradictory and weird feeling.
At the same time, the man playing the flute used the sound of the flute to simulate the cry of an owl in the dark night from time to time, which made the scene more terrifying.
What was even more wrong was the dancer. She started to dance with her sleeves and her movements were graceful, but there was always a sense of incongruity. If you looked more closely, you would find that the female dancer had her eyes closed. At the same time, there was a hint of unnatural stiffness in her movements. When she danced to certain points, she would pause unconsciously, as if she had no control over her body.
Also, when she danced, her head would occasionally droop to the left or right side, limp and powerless, like the instinctive movements of a sleeping person.
Almost everyone felt a chill run down their spines; they realized that the woman seemed to be controlled by something invisible.
While dancing with her body, I thought of the name of this song "Shenren Chang"!
They felt more and more frightened and terrified, but they were unwilling to look away.
Is this a divine descent?
The woman in Han costume seemed to be happier and happier as she danced. Her graceful dance had an unnatural and strange quality to it. In the end, the music became more and more joyful. At the final climax of the piece, with the last drum sound, the music suddenly stopped. There was a rumbling sound of thunder, and the woman, with her hands raised high as she danced, suddenly turned into light smoke and disappeared. Only a coat fell off the scene.
This was too sudden.
A sharp scream suddenly sounded from below the city wall, but then it also stopped abruptly.
Countless people suddenly covered their mouths or the mouths of others.
They were afraid that their shouting would alarm the invisible gods on the screen.
The thunder gradually faded away.
The picture darkened, and the four men's movements gradually slowed down, as if they had turned into stone sculptures again.
Long after the image on the projector completely disappeared, the entire scene was still quiet, and half of the city of Bianjing was silent.
It was not until half an incense stick had passed that someone tentatively stood up and walked home with a pale face.
All the civil and military officials who were watching the play were in a similar situation. They staggered down the restaurant and seemed a little unsteady on their feet.
Only a few officials stood very steadily and upright, such as Bao Zheng, the Eight Wise Kings, and Master Pang!
Then, men, women, old and young, returned home, took out the incense burners and performed various acts of worship.
When Lu Sen walked down from the city wall, he saw Yang Jinhua and Zhao Bilian coming towards him hand in hand. Yang Jinhua, who was usually fearless, now looked like a frightened little girl.
