Thousand Strangling Array

"I'm sorry...Brother...I'm so damned, how could I..."

Yun Qique was so filled with guilt and self-blame that he couldn't calm down. Tears of heartache kept flowing, and he felt so uncomfortable that he felt as if someone was pulling him so hard that he couldn't calm down.

"Qi Que, being attracted to someone is not something you need to apologize for. Okay, okay, don't cry, brother will hug you. And don't talk nonsense about death, my A Que, live a long life."

Holding her in his arms, Yun Jinglu kissed her shiny black hair and soothed her, "There's nothing to feel guilty about. Ignorance is not a crime. Besides, I can't impose my revenge on you just because of our relationship. Okay, okay, let's talk about it when we get back. Let's handle the case first."

"Alu, I..."

"Shh! Something dirty is coming out."

Yunqi Que quickly covered her mouth and kept silent, then let him go and looked in the direction he was looking, but saw nothing unusual.

"Don't look at it, it's gone."

"Brother, chase!"

Yun Qique had just entered the forest and hadn't walked far when she stepped on something soft and unidentified. Looking down, she saw countless red threads, like wriggling worms, emerging from the ground and climbing onto her shoes and trouser legs.

Yunqi Que couldn't move his feet, so he threw out a talisman to dispel evil spirits and chanted the spell skillfully.

She stuck the talisman paper on the shoe surface, and the wriggling red silk thread instantly retreated into the soil, with a faint tendency to break through the ground again.

"I'll teach you something more powerful."

Yun Jinglu took out four pieces of yellow talisman paper and slowly demonstrated to her the method of pinching the fingers and chanting the spells required to use the talisman. Then he folded it into a triangle and stuffed it into his shoe.

"Have you figured it out? Try it?"

Yunqi Que took the yellow talisman paper and successfully replicated what he had just taught in just one try.

His eyes flashed with amazement and admiration, "Amazing! You have a photographic memory. You really have the talent to be a monster catcher."

"Alu, you are really, even with amnesia you still compliment me."

"I'm not forcing the compliment. In my eyes, you are good in every way."

Yun Jinglu held her hand tightly and continued walking into the bayberry forest. On the way, Yun Qique secretly changed his gestures and interlocked his fingers with his.

The plan succeeded, and Yun Jinglu felt a little relieved.

He took a half step back, closing the gap between them. He leaned closer to her and whispered, "A Que, look, every puppet in this forest is actually a mechanical formation controlled by sorcery. If you want to break it, the most direct and effective way is to activate it and then wait for an opportunity to break it."

“How do I start it?”

Yun Jinglu pulled off the long ribbon on his clothes and intertwined their interlocked hands. She raised her chin and pointed at his other hand, "Use that hand to tie a knot with me. The stronger and tighter the knot, the better."

They had a tacit understanding, even though they had never done this before.

He pretended to be regretful and sighed, "We really have a tacit understanding..."

"Is the tacit understanding not good? My brother's tone seems to only contain sadness and loss."

"Okay, very good. I wish we could keep on understanding each other forever." He continued to pretend to be aggrieved and regretful.

From another perspective, he understood her too well, so much so that he knew how to imitate the person he had hated for a hundred years in order to control her heart and seek her love.

"Alu, you're right. Flowers can dazzle the eyes, but as long as the flowers are gone, the eyes will no longer be dazzled. From now on, Alu's revenge is my revenge, and whoever Alu wants to kill is whoever I want to kill."

He suppressed his inner ecstasy and desire, revealing only incredible surprise and surprise, "Qique, you don't have to do this for me..."

"We'll talk about it in detail when we get back. How do we activate it now?"

Yun Jinglu took him to the nearest human-shaped wooden stake beside him, raised his leg and kicked the wooden puppet hard.

All of a sudden, all the puppet costumes in the bayberry forest began to move on their own. Gusts of cold wind blew the leaves, rubbing them against each other, making a rustling sound. They also blew the soul flags up and down, making a sound like someone was deliberately swinging a cloth up and down.

In just a moment, the puppet moved on its own, pulling up countless dense red silk threads. The moonlight was dim, and if you didn't look carefully, you couldn't see the dense spider-web-like silk network at all.

Yun Qique raised her hand and flicked the silk thread in front of her twice with her fingernails. She found that it was very resilient and much stronger than any silk thread she had touched before.

The fingertips felt prickly, and blood oozed out from where the silk thread was touched, leaving a tiny red mark.

"It's bleeding! I have some medicine in my waist pouch, take it out and use it."

"It's okay. No need for medicine. This little wound will heal in a short while."

"Okay, I was too nervous. If I'm not mistaken, this kind of line is often called fishing line in folk opera troupes. Ordinary fishing line is transparent white. In the monster case records, there is a formation called Thousand Strangles, which involves soaking a fishing line in a person's heart blood for 49 days. Then, a small monster named Chu Yu will pass the line through its mouth from beginning to end. Once the fishing line is evenly stained with Chu Yu's saliva, it will become extremely strong. The formation set up with this line will cut off the limbs of living beings the moment they collide with it. The faster the collision, the more deadly the fishing line will be."

"In your opinion, how can we crack it?"

"Qi Que, no matter how bad others say I am, I will never be so bad to you. Do you believe me?"

"Of course I believe you, but why are you talking about this all of a sudden?"

Yun Jinglu said nothing and summoned a female demon without using the summoning talisman. She crawled out of the soil, floated into the air, and stopped steadily in front of him. He looked at her curiously.

The enchantress wore a dress that was long enough to cover her toes. She had an extremely beautiful and charming face, and her bright red lips made her skin look as white as porcelain.

A black-faced little monster with a human head and butterfly wings rested on her long silver-white hair. On the monster's face were outlined auspicious patterns with golden ink lines.

"Greetings, Master, Miss."

"Break the Thousand Strangling Formation and find the Boy Bodhisattva Temple."

"Why do you order me to work as soon as you come?"

The banshee smiled at her, waved hello to her, bowed and stepped back.

She spread her arms, and long black nails grew out from her fingertips at a speed visible to the naked eye. She waved her hands, touching the silk threads with her nails, and the threads broke wherever they passed.

The puppets began to move on their own again, as if they were invisibly injected with vitality. They looked no different from living people, with flexible limbs and agile bodies.

The red silk threads that were thrown out and pulled by the puppet were intertwined and entangled together to form a new Thousand Strangling Formation. The difference this time was that the silk threads kept moving and changing positions.

The banshee pulled out the little monster with a human head and butterfly wings that was stuck in her hair at the back of her head and threw it out like a dart.

The little monster spun around the forest and finally flew into Yun Jinglu's hands. Its wings were so large that they completely obscured the center of the human head. It looked like an enlarged version of an ordinary butterfly, beautiful and harmless.

So, when Yun Jinglu turned it over, a human face with a strange smile suddenly came into view. Its two egg-sized eyes rolled around and smiled with ill intent, which scared her and made her tremble.

Yun Jinglu quickly threw the little monster away. "Qingsan's companion monster is a bit weird and likes to make scary faces on purpose. Don't be afraid. Its name is Mimi, which means squinting. It's harmless and has the same temperament as a child."

Like a boomerang, Mimi returned to Yun Jinglu's hand again, with a resentful and angry look on her face. This time, Yun Jinglu quickly turned it over so that its back was facing Yun Qique.

The wailing sounds of ghosts and wolves filled the entire bayberry forest, which was like the sound of the ghost whistles placed in the woods outside the village blowing in the north wind.

The red thread floated in front of him. Yun Jinglu threw Mimi at the red thread that was coming straight towards them. Mimi's butterfly wings turned into a butterfly and passed through the thread, breaking the thread attacking them.

Mimi returned the wings to Yun Jinglu's hand, and Yun Qique saw that there were many small, bumpy and missing teeth on the edge of its wings.

Qingsan broke through the formation and made way. Almost all the human-shaped puppets in the bayberry forest were chopped in half by her hand knife, and fell to the ground in all directions.

In addition, with Mimi's protection, after Qingsan broke the formation, they were not even scratched, but Mimi's wings were badly damaged.

The bayberry forest has returned to tranquility, so tranquil that it makes people feel uneasy.

Yunqi Que carefully examined many of the coffin stones and found that not only were they crooked, but there were also gaps in the coffin lids, and some of them were directly overturned on the ground.

It turns out that the sarcophagus is not just a sculpture on the outside, the inside is also hollow and long like a coffin.

"The village chief said these coffin stones were carved into the shape of coffins to mark the presence of corpses. Lan Qu said the coffin stones were used to suppress evil spirits. I'm afraid they're not just for marking and suppressing, but are actually filled with something. What could it be?"

"What did Lan Qu tell you about the purpose of this white cloth banner?"

Yunqi Que repeated to him exactly what Lan Qu had said that night.

"He didn't lie, but he only told half of the story about the Soul Flag Stone's function. Besides suppressing the evil spirits, the Soul Flag also attracts evil spirits, and the evil spirits attracted naturally enter the stone coffin."

He randomly picked up an opened sarcophagus at his feet, turned it over, and showed her the talisman carved on the bottom of the coffin.

"What is this painting about? Hun... Chi... A Lu, what does this spell mean?"

Yun Jinglu threw away the heavy coffin stone, picked up the coffin lid, and showed her the inside, which also had extremely similar runes.

"The talisman at the bottom of the coffin suppresses the evil spirits underground. The talisman under the coffin lid seals and absorbs the evil spirits. Before the coffin is opened, a talisman is drawn on the bottom of the coffin with ashes. When the coffin lid is opened, the ashes will be blown away by the mountain wind. The evil spirits will escape, and the suppression will be ineffective. If most of the pressure stones here are shifted and opened, all the evil spirits under the bayberry forest will be catalyzed within half an hour."

"The evil corpse..."

There was no fear in Yunqi Que's eyes, only excitement and anticipation for the unknown.

A piercing pain came from his arm. Yun Qique lifted up his sleeve and saw a mark that seemed to be burned from the inside on the cloth that Lan Zhuochi had wrapped around him to cover the mark of the stone statue.