Part 2 Chapter 9 Behind the Door
The house is in the suburbs, and it takes more than 40 minutes to drive there. If it were in the past, my heart would have jumped into my throat when I went to visit the house at night, but now I am considered to have experienced many battles, and even I didn't expect that I could be so calm now.
It was almost ten o'clock when we arrived. The house was bigger than I thought, with three rooms in total, one main room and two side rooms. It was not as compact as the Siheyuan in old Beijing. The overall design and decoration were completely antique, but it was just for show. The interior of the house was still modern in style and layout.
After entering the courtyard, I followed Qin Yiheng around and took a general look. Xu Chuanxiang was beside me and told me the details of the house. Finally, the three of us entered the main house.
The main house is not that big, roughly about 100 square meters, but it is decorated very luxuriously, with solid wood furniture, and looks a bit antique. The main house should be considered a two-bedroom and one-living room structure, with the living room at the entrance and two bedrooms on both sides.
After entering the room and turning on the light, Qin Yiheng immediately looked around, frowning, but remained silent. Xu Chuanxiang and I stood by like two personal eunuchs, not daring to speak. After a while, he turned around and asked Xu Chuanxiang to turn off the light, then took something out of his bag. It wasn't big, he took it out and held it in his hand, so I didn't see it clearly.
After turning off the lights, the room suddenly became pitch black. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw Qin Yiheng had already approached the door on the right, with his ear pressed against the door, listening to something.
I looked back at Xu Chuanxiang. I couldn't see his expression in the dark, but I could tell he was very nervous. I couldn't help but straighten my legs.
Qin Yiheng listened very carefully, listening to one place for a long time before switching to another. After listening for five or six minutes, he turned around and asked Xu Chuanxiang to turn on the light, pointing at the door and asking Xu Chuanxiang: "Did you hang this thing?"
The light suddenly turned on, and everything in front of my eyes was white. I closed my eyes for a while, and when I opened them, I saw that Qin Yiheng was pointing at a bunch of red peppers hanging on the door. The color of this bunch of red peppers was very bright, and it looked very festive. It was hung right in the middle of the door. The pepper string was very long, and it was dragging on the floor.
I heard Xu Chuanxiang say "hmm", which was considered an admission. I was very puzzled. In the north, people do buy bunches of red peppers or garlic for storage, but they are usually hung in the kitchen or outdoors. I have never seen them hung so casually in the living room. If it is for good luck, it is not a festival now. Judging from what Qin Yiheng said, the scratching sound is about this bunch of peppers?
I went over to take a look out of curiosity, and he didn't stop me, so I guessed it wasn't dangerous. I took a closer look and found that the peppers looked very strange, with the ends of each pepper cut off at the ends with scissors.
I pinched one with my hands and found that the pepper was hollow inside. It seemed that the pepper seeds had been taken out from the cut. Now I was even more confused. What does this mean? Is it a handicraft decoration? It doesn't look like that!
I instinctively turned my head to look at Qin Yiheng, wanting to ask him what the secret was.
Before I could open my mouth, he said "tsk", and asked Xu Chuanxiang: "Did you learn all this by yourself?" Xu Chuanxiang nodded, then shook his head and said: "I learned all this from others. If you say I learned it, it can only be considered stealing." Then he asked back: "This thing doesn't work?"
Qin Yiheng smiled when he heard his question and said, "It does work. This is called 'pan sui' in the art of alchemy. It originated from the ancient times when there were wars for many years. The men in the family were captured to fight and their lives were uncertain. The family would nail a nail in the middle of the door and hang a string of 'pan sui', which means that they were looking forward to their family members returning home year after year. The cruelty of war is obvious to all. Few people who went to war could come back alive. This thing eventually evolved into an object to attract the souls of family members to return home and to send dreams to relatives. First of all, you can't hang new peppers, that is, peppers grown in the field that year will not work. Only peppers left over from previous years will work. Cutting the head of the pepper is called opening. After the mouth is opened, it is said that the souls of distant family members can see the door of their own home at a glance, and even hear the calls of their relatives thousands of miles away. However, this is just people's subjective conjecture and does not have such a big effect. Souls can't come back even if there are rivers and mountains on the road . This has a lot to do with the geomancy of the earth veins."
Qin Yiheng pointed at the chili pepper and told Xu Chuanxiang: "The name 'Pan Sui' comes from the homonym 'la jiao' of the word 'chili pepper', which simply means to pull or call back the soul. You hang it up in your bedroom so ostentatiously, aren't you asking for trouble? Forget about giving it away, it's already good enough that you didn't bring back a few." As he spoke, he spread out his palms and asked us to look.
In his palm was a small ball the size of a fingernail, black and not like a sheep dung ball. He told us: "This is a 'harmful eye bead', made from the subcutaneous fat of newborn bats and mud from graveyards, specially used to listen to these evil things. In ancient times, this was a technique used by witch doctors who pretended to be gods and performed magic. It is said that if you put a 'harmful eye bead' into your ear, you can hear some filth, especially useful for distinguishing whether a person is possessed by a ghost, or what is possessed by him. According to legend, if a person is possessed, as long as you stick the 'harmful eye bead' on his back and listen, you can hear two heartbeats of different frequencies. If the person possessed is a fox spirit or a snake spirit, you can also distinguish it from the details of the heartbeat frequency. However, it takes an experienced person to do this. I am only at a very basic level, and today is the first time I use it, so I just tried it by imitating others. However, I don't know if my method is wrong, anyway, I didn't hear anything."
I didn't even dare to breathe, but he didn't hear anything after all the noise. I leaned over to listen, and sure enough, there was no unusual noise. If there was any, it was because solid materials conduct sound more easily, which amplified the sound of their footsteps in the room. Other than that, there was indeed dead silence on the other side of the door.
Xu Chuanxiang was very afraid of this door and didn't dare to come over at first. But when he saw how relaxed both of us looked, he couldn't help but feel curious, so he took the peppers off and stood against the door with me to listen.
Seeing this, Qin Yiheng handed the "eye-harming bead" in his hand to Xu Chuanxiang and stood aside smoking.
The door was not big to begin with, and Xu Chuanxiang pushed me aside as he approached. I simply retreated to the side and took a break with a cigarette. After standing for a long time, my waist began to ache.
Before he had taken two puffs of his cigarette, Xu Chuanxiang suddenly let out an "Ah!" and took two steps back, pointing at the door with his mouth open, unable to utter a word.
His startled movements almost frightened me to death. Seeing his expression, I secretly shouted in my heart: "Oh no, this guy is possessed, right?"
Qin Yiheng was also surprised and asked "What's wrong" twice.
Xu Chuanxiang took a long time to calm down, but he still couldn't make it clear. I guess he was helpless, so he simply took out the "eye-harming bead" and handed it to me, pointing to the door, meaning that you should go and listen for yourself.
The lights in the room were on and Qin Yiheng was right next to me. I wasn't scared because the beads were in my hands, so I went forward and listened.
I put my ear to the door and I noticed something was wrong. I don't know if it was a psychological effect, but there seemed to be some strange movement on the other side of the door. I couldn't tell what it was. If I had to describe it, it was a bit like the sound of horse hooves coming from far away, very rhythmic.
My heart started pounding wildly, and the sound was so small that I couldn't make it out for a moment.
I stood up and gave the place to Qin Yiheng. He took the beads and leaned over to listen. I kept observing his expression. At first, he was very calm, so I felt relieved. I guess we were a little bit nervous .
But before I could rejoice for a while, he began to frown and stared at the door with his eyes squinting, wondering what he was thinking. After a while, he stood up and carefully knocked on the door with his index finger, twisting the handle to open the door.
I suddenly felt the long-lost fear grip me. His behavior was really weird. We knew there was no one inside, so why was he knocking on the door? Need I even say who he was knocking for? I instinctively took a step back and bumped into Xu Chuanxiang. I looked back at him and saw beads of sweat on his face.
Qin Yiheng seemed to have unlocked the door, and I clearly heard the "click" of the lock cylinder. I waited for a while, but he didn't open the door. He had his back to us, so I couldn't see his expression, so I moved a little to see what he was doing.
When I looked at it from a different angle, I was even more puzzled. Qin Yiheng seemed to be trying to pull the door open. It was obvious that he was exerting force, but the door didn't move at all! I thought to myself: "Damn, is the filth in here so powerful that he actually pulled the door handle to compete with him?"
