Mysterious Martial Arts: The Record of the Swordsman

Chapter 115

In the middle of the night, the streets and alleys were completely silent, and the soldiers who were in charge of guarding Jipi Lane tonight had already been transferred to the second shift.

"Look carefully, and don't tremble when you see a head-to-head, and you will shout if something is wrong, you understand!"

The soldiers in the previous post stood crookedly with their knives in their arms, and handed over the post that was most likely to get sleepy to Xin Ding. They didn’t walk away step by step until they saw the other party accepting the waist knife with a mournful face, humming that the moon shines on people. the minor.

After being guarded for the past few days, the Geng family sergeants have reached a consensus, that is, this alley is very evil.

It’s okay if the sun is strong during the day and the universe is bright, but once it gets dark, there will be a strange and unknown smell in the alley, which seems to be emanating from under every stone slab in Jipi Lane, no matter how much you wash and sweep Can't get rid of it every time.

After there was no movement in the alley for the first few days, the soldiers in charge of guarding the alley also changed a wave. The troops also changed from old Liaodong soldiers under King Jingnan to new recruits recruited by the prince in Guangdong last year.

This battalion is divided into several rounds of day and night guards, and every day they can only look at the alley blankly, as if the old ink forgotten by the scholar in the pocket bookcase is superfluous and contemptible.

After the defense was changed, some people who thought they were well-informed asked why those veterans who had experienced many battles would be so secretive about the situation in the first few days.

The old pawn neither begged for meat, nor for money, nor took the opportunity to gamble, but only made some incomprehensible requests to people.

Driven by curiosity, someone still spent half a month's salary to invite the gloomy old soldier to burn a bunch of paper candles in Minshan Temple, and then drank until he was drunk with cold wine for sacrificial meat. The other party told him that in the alley As long as the veterans are familiar with the smell——

Especially the year before last, when King Jingnan was in the city of Guangzhou, he was angry with the people of the city for resisting for a long time, and ordered to kill the young and strong in the city, and even used their flesh and skin to vent their anger.

In those days, the streets and alleys of Guangzhou city wafted the same smell as Jipi Lane. The stench lingered in the air, and dead maggots came out of the alleys.

The panicked troublemaker fled back to the camp and told his comrades about it, and the panicked comrades also told him that he had also heard some news.

The local cunning people deliberately said in front of them that this Jipi Lane was originally a wasteland, and it was not until Wang Shenzhi ruled Fujian and built Luocheng in the Five Dynasties period that the Lifang system was established.However, the houses along Jipi Lane were repeatedly built and collapsed, causing countless injuries to the people. They were not completed until the Song Dynasty, until someone quietly laid piles in the ground...

When Jiang Wen came to Jipi Lane, he saw a sentry with a knife in his hand and bowed his back, like a frightened old cat. These lights rushed to his side with great momentum, but suddenly felt a gust of cold wind blowing behind him.

The sentinel saw a shadow appearing on the tree, not just a tree monster or a wood ghost.

His scalp exploded in an instant, and when he looked at the elegant Shanfangquan Pavilion in Jipi Lane, he only felt a shadow, and then he squatted down slowly, closing his eyes and turning a deaf ear.

Under the bright moon and cloudy wind, Jiang Wen stood on the branch of an ancient tree protruding from the wall, touching the high saddle wall and green talc carvings of the mansion with his fingertips, and his eyes quickly swept across the alley.

The buildings in Jipi Lane still have the tradition of building walls in sections in the late Tang Dynasty. They all have high and thick brick or earth walls.

The upturned corners protrude out of the house like a saddle, which also prevents the moonlight from penetrating into the alleys.

"There must be something wrong here."

Jiang Wen looked from afar, and already had a conclusion in his heart.

The papers of the Fuzhou government office are suitable for government offices, but someone has to be in charge of printing them. There are local engraving bookshops all over the three lanes and seven alleys. There are not only literati calligraphy and painting shops for identification and repair, but also bookstores and pavilions for collecting ancient rare books. , Shops in the front and workshops in the back, printing and selling at the same time have become common practice.

Eryou Zhai, which was the first to have an accident in Jipi Lane, is a book shop that also deals in calligraphy and painting on inscriptions, local singing books, and Wenwan Buddha statues. The owner often goes out to collect rare treasures and sells them to dignitaries.

Jiang Wen jumped out quietly with light work, stepped over the gate and stepped into the courtyard of the owner of Eryouzhai, a single family, and saw that the closed gate was locked, and the courtyard was cleaned very cleanly. It is a pot of sweet-scented osmanthus growing towards the sky, with luxuriant branches and leaves.

But in the fragrance of flowers, a moldy old smell slowly emerged, and the unique smell of the old wooden house prevailed, just like this dimly lit courtyard house, standing in its place.

In the dark, Jiang Wen always felt that if he took a step forward, some old woman who was eating vegetarian food and praying to Buddha would come out of the house, or a child with cold skin would stagger up from the corridor to meet him.

That strange feeling is that although everything in front of me is gone, it is not far away.Or maybe, the people who live here are really invisible. They are hiding in the dark and looking coldly at the uninvited guest. From now on, they don't need to breathe or see blood, and they will turn into life-and-death mayflies in this thousand-year-old house.

Fortunately, there was a rough ancient bronze sword hilt in his palm to drive away reveries. Jiang Wen took a look at the moon in the sky, and then slowed down and stepped into the promenade in front of the court, intending to search from house to house.

In the study, the ink was splashed and the pen was broken, and rice paper was scattered all over the floor. It seemed that someone tried his best to write a book, but he couldn't do it, so he lost his temper and left.

Jiang Wen squatted down slowly with his back against the wall, picked up a pitch-black draft, and found that it was covered with lines outlining the rolling, and it was messy.On the other hand, there is a private seal covered with red clay, which seems to be the words carved by a certain supervisor.

But the wording on the front of this seal is clearly the word "Netherworld" in insect script!
"This person seems to want to copy it for stereotype printing, and his identity should also be a supervisor? But I don't know why he lost his temper..."

Jiang Wen hid a piece of paper in his sleeve and walked into another room.

In the Buddhist hall, futons were scattered, scriptures were all over the floor, and footprints were stepped on without hesitation. This was a clue that Jiang Wen had never thought of. He could roughly judge immediately that this was a man of about the same stature as Jiang Wen, wearing soft bottoms. The cloth boots moved in and out quickly, and there were only three and a half footprints in the house.

At this time, the clay Buddha statue had been smashed to pieces, and the Buddha's head was missing.

Jiang Wen continued to walk into the inner hall, and found that the window lattices were exquisitely made, and the inlaid wood carvings were gorgeous, which had surpassed the exquisiteness of ordinary people. Among the wood-carved window sashes, there were openwork carvings, relief carvings, and the themes included birds and beasts, figures and flowers, but the most The best ones are "Vimalakirti Sutra Changes", "Pictures of Sayings" and "Stories of Buddha Jataka".

Jiang Wen couldn't help pondering.

What exactly happened that made an adult Yinfang supervisor so mad and bewildered that he even abandoned the Buddha, who he paid homage to every day?

Oh, by the way, Jiang Wen also guessed that the other party should have another identity, that is, the Tufuzi who stole the carvings of ancient houses and tomb artifacts from all over the world.

Since ancient times, inscriptions and ancient books have been difficult to store, and there have been many damages in the history of the past dynasties. Only the relatively closed tombs and ancient houses can survive.

Just like in the last years of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, King Gong of the Han Dynasty obtained the "Guwen Shangshu" and other works of Confucius from the wall of Confucius's former residence, and it is also like the fifth year of Qi Wuping, when the people of Pengcheng opened the tomb of Xiang Yu's concubine and obtained the "Tao Te Ching in stone letters and silk" ", have better preserved the information of the ancient times.

Leaving aside the nameless Buddha statue brought back by the other party, he must have found something even more mysterious and unknown—after all, the people who discovered Kong’s house and Xiang Yu’s concubine’s tomb also encountered many unexplainable things...

Jiang Wen looked at the carvings in the hall in a daze, and was hesitating whether to go up to the library on the roof to find more clues, when he suddenly heard a knock on the door of the courtyard.

There was a strange knock on the door.

Such a guarded alley, a dark house, and a heavily locked wooden door suddenly seemed to be visited by someone.

It's not surprising, it's self-defeating, Jiang Wen didn't want to pay attention to the voice at first.But the percussion sound was light, crisp, short, and polite at first, and gradually became fragmented, and the movements began to be rough.

When Jiang Wen decided to go upstairs, the sound of knocking on the door was so hurried and chaotic that it resounded like a thunderstorm, resounding through the deserted Jipi Lane, but the knocker outside still didn't say a word, only not far away. place, stubbornly and weirdly knocking on the door endlessly...

Jiang Wen quietly came to the door, through the gap between the wooden doors, first he saw a blood-red eye, and a bloody tongueless mouth, they both approached the gap and faced him within a short distance.

And behind this door, Jiang Wen also saw a tall figure, who seemed to be standing in the alley with a sharp knife for bone removal. A head was covered with blood, and only a trace of flesh was left connected to the neck, standing quietly. In the middle of Jipi Lane, the crooked severed head seems to be staring at the bright moon in the sky.

"Hold the head...the head...here it comes..."

The tongueless mouth was speaking indistinctly, the sound was like a mosquito gnat, clearly exuding a strong dead air.

Deep house and ancient alley.

Ghost worships the moon.

(End of this chapter)