Chapter 20 Paper Man City 17
Except for the lack of a surname, that tablet was no different from the others. After searching for a long time and finding nothing, Leng Jing sighed, "Let's go out and check on them first."
Jiang Yuelu said nothing, staring at the altar.
There was an incense burner with a little ash leaking out, and a half-burned candle. Behind each tablet there was a small black jar, the size of a baby's palm, sealed with talisman paper.
"Oh." Leng Jing suddenly realized, "Speaking of which, the scope of the inspection is the Shengji Tomb. After entering, I didn't see anything related to the Shengji. I thought it was another word game played by the system..."
“So it’s here.”
Shengji Tomb?
He had only heard of Shengji. Business people were more superstitious. When they made enough money, they wanted to prolong their life, so they would think of changing their luck. But he had always disliked these things, and would always change the subject when someone mentioned them.
Seeing that Jiang Yuelu didn't quite understand, Leng Jing began to explain.
Shengji. The foundation of life. It sounds like a big concept, but it is easy to understand if you think of it as a person's innate energy.
When a person is alive, their fortunes rise and fall. If a person dies, their life base will not dissipate immediately, but will turn into another substance and spread throughout the world, only intertwined with their own relatives and descendants. This is why many people say that they can hear footsteps on the seventh day of vigil, and sometimes they can see deceased relatives and friends in dreams.
However, it is not quite accurate to regard Shengji as fortune or life span. But when people think of Shengji, they usually want to change their fortune or prolong their life span, so it is difficult not to equate them in description.
There have been some records in the past that said someone was about to die and did not want to, so he asked someone to calculate a good feng shui site, dug a tomb for himself, and then took his hair, nails, underwear, and birth date and time and buried them in the ground, hoping to deceive the immortal officials with a fake death and get a few more years of life.
A closer look will reveal that these legends are unreliable.
Is it true that the hair and horoscope are the only things that can replace a person's death? Besides, if there really is such a magical person as the Immortal Official, wouldn't he know that the person is still alive just by counting with his fingers? There are many loopholes.
"Are the Shengji and Shengji Tomb just bluffs?" Jiang Yuelu asked.
Leng Jing shook his head. "It's not that magical, but it can't be said to be completely useless."
Life base, energy, is like human attention. If you use more here, there will be less there. So-called "everything is the best arrangement".
Having said that, there are some people who can change their fortunes without planting a life base. Most of these people have suffered major changes, and they did not collapse miserably after the heavy blow. Instead, they straightened their backs, gritted their teeth, spat at the sky, and said, "I don't believe in God's will, and I will make you live like a human being."
Jiang Yuelu smiled slightly when she heard this, thinking that it was easier said than done.
Having an idea in mind is one thing, actually doing it is another, and being able to stick to it for ten years is another. There are many people who say "I just don't believe in evil", but in the end, there are only a few who can fulfill their promise to challenge the heaven and truly live like a human being.
Although it was a little off topic, he still understood the purpose of Leng Jing's words.
Jiang Yuelu said: "You mean to say that changing your fortune is very difficult, but it is not impossible."
Completely abandoning your past self and embracing a new life, isn't this changing your life?
But doing so requires a huge price. How many people can endure the torture day and night? In other words, there are few kings in history who have slept on straw and tasted gall like Gou Jian, the King of Yue.
Leng Jing looked at him with admiration in his eyes. He came from a traditional and strict wizard family. The elders attached great importance to the studies of the younger generation. A spiritual student like Jiang Yuelu would definitely be loved by them.
An idea slowly took shape. He wanted to introduce Jiang Yuelu to meet his relatives after he got out, so that he could take the initiative before being noticed by other families.
"Leng Jing?" Seeing him in a daze, Jiang Yuelu called out.
"… Sorry, where were we? Ah, yes. Planting a life base is difficult, but it is not impossible."
There are too many things involved and they are too complicated. It is a great test for both the victim and the wizard. Not to mention that once the life base is planted, it takes years and days to wait, and it is not something that can see the effect immediately.
"So some people came up with a convenient solution."
Jiang Yuelu whispered, "Borrow it for a while."
Hearing him say this suddenly, and he was right, Leng Jing was surprised for a moment, but it was within his expectations. He nodded and said, "That's right. I don't dare to rashly try my own horoscope, but it doesn't matter if it's someone else's."
"Besides, it's not very safe to try it on yourself. It's better to find ten or a hundred people with complementary horoscopes to start at the same time. If one fails, it's just a dud. It's not a pity to throw it away. There will be one out of a hundred that works, right?"
"ah."
"Wait a minute..." Leng Jing suddenly slapped his head, "I made a mistake, I made a mistake."
"What's wrong?"
"A burial mound, after all, is a place where the living treat the dead as if they were dead..." Leng Jing muttered as he glanced at the tablet of the deceased on the altar.
"All the people enshrined here are dead. This jar should not be used to grow life bases." Leng Jing felt that this mistake was unnecessary, so he felt very guilty: "Sorry. Because I suddenly thought of the scope of the exam, I got a little too proud..."
"That may not be the case."
Jiang Yuelu said casually: "It's very simple whether it is or not, just open it and you will know."
After saying that, he reached out and peeled off the talisman paper, which made Leng Jing open his mouth in surprise.
Even if what's in there isn't ashes, it's probably something of the deceased, which is no different from digging up someone's ancestral grave.
Leng Jing watched Jiang Yuelu open several black cans in succession with a few "biubiubiu" sounds like opening a can. Without even looking at the names on the tablets that were glaring at him, such as "Husband Huang Yusheng" and "Beloved Wife Lin Wan", he leaned over to look into the cans without changing his expression or heart beating.
"You're right." He turned around.
The cold light shone on the floc-like and pasty things in the jar - nails, hair, and paper fluff, and one could vaguely make out the words "Xu Ping" and "Zhang Hu" written on them.
Leng Jing was speechless: "This is..."
"Mrs. Xu, Butcher Zhang... I'm afraid they are all here."
Jiang Yuelu looked at the oppressive wall of dead tablets: "The whole town is dedicated to the graves of living people."
-
As soon as Jiang Yuelu came out of the ancestral hall, he heard Zhao Xiaoxuan's cheerful voice: "Look, we took down the wooden sign!"
Three cobblers are better than Zhuge Liang, and these three people have achieved a lot. I don't know how Zhao Xiaoxuan climbed up, but now there is a large area of "red" under the tree, which looks like a crimson flower bush from a distance, and is composed of small wooden signs when you look closely.
"Are these the red cards?" Jiang Yuelu thought to herself, picking up one of them and looking at it carefully.
The wooden sign was quite old, and wind, frost, rain and dew had left mottled marks on it, but the vermilion lacquer on the surface had not fallen off at all, and it looked particularly bright in the sunlight - so bright that it was a little dazzling.
"Um?"
Hearing his puzzled voice, Leng Jing leaned forward to see, "What's wrong?"
"Do you have a needle?"
Leng Jing fumbled in his golden pocket for a long time and took out a few silver needles wrapped in a cloth bag. Chen Chuan looked at it curiously, "Talisman paper and tortoise shell are fine, but how do you use these silver needles? Are you going to use them to stab ghosts?"
Leng Jing shook his head, "It's used to test poison."
Zhao Xiaoxuan was puzzled: "Ghosts can also poison people?"
"This is for dealing with people." Leng Jing whispered, "Wizards have to communicate with gods and deal with different people. Evil spirits are very cruel, but people's hearts are also sinister."
Jiang Yuelu didn't show any expression after hearing this. He was completely focused on the wooden sign. He took the silver needle and concentrated on tapping and prying on the wooden sign. Everyone was attracted.
The wooden sign seemed to be a whole piece, but after several attempts he found the right position and slowly pushed the needle in.
Jiang Xinhui was puzzled: "Without a rope tying them together...how could the two cards stick together so tightly?"
Jiang Yuelu said: "Then we have to ask Leng Jing, the only one among us who knows witchcraft, for help."
"No problem." Leng Jing took it with a smile. He turned the wooden card in his hand like a Rubik's Cube, and expressed his thoughts while studying it. "Witchcraft does not come into being out of thin air. It is not like chanting a spell and saying "put the cards together" and they will really become one. Witchcraft is not about supernatural powers. It has its own logic."
Jiang Yuelu suddenly remembered what Young Master Xia said last night when he raised the big rock.
Did he express the same meaning as Leng Jing?
Stones don't just appear out of thin air. Wizards either use spells to create a huge force, letting the wind drive the stone upwards, or like him, use a group of controlled paper figures to lift them up from below. In short, repairing the sky, moving mountains and seas like the ancient gods... this kind of divine power is too far away for humans. There are very few things that human power can do. Even humans like wizards, who are servants of gods, are just borrowing weak divine power to facilitate their actions.
Who exactly is that Young Master Xia?
“…That’s right!”
Leng Jing exclaimed, took out a fire talisman and wrapped it around the needle, muttering a few words: "...Hurry up and obey the command."
The flames instantly devoured the talisman paper, and as if it had life, they were sucked into the silver needle. The needle body showed alternating red light, and disappeared into the depths of the wooden sign like a stream of light. The other half of the needle tip that was deeply embedded in the wooden sign quickly took effect. After the sign body trembled for a while, it suddenly "clicked" and broke into two halves.
The inside of the two cards was also vermilion, but this side was not as smooth and neat as the back, and it seemed that some secret code was engraved on it.
Jiang Yuelu picked it up and asked, "Name?"
He turned the cards around so that the others could see clearly.
The separated wooden plaque was about the thickness of a little finger, and there was still some talisman paper inside that had not been burned clean. I think the reason why the two wooden plaques can be tightly attached together without external objects is because of the talisman paper in the middle, because it can only be loosened after being burned by Leng Jing.
Under the yellow talisman, there are human names engraved on the left and right.
The piece of paper that Jiang Yuelu was holding had three words written on it: Huang Yusheng.
"This name sounds so familiar, I seem to have seen it somewhere..." Zhao Xiaoxuan tried hard to recall.
Jiang Xinhui said, "Yes! It was in the ancestral hall. The grandmother surnamed Xu was holding a tablet with her husband's name written on it, Huang Yusheng!"
Chen Chuan asked: "What about the other piece?"
Jiang Yuelu picked it up and read out the name on it, "Xu Pingting."
Granny Xu's name.
He followed suit and took out another carved rosewood plaque. Leng Jing solved it using the same method as before and got two more names: "Zhang Hu, Lin Wan."
The butcher's surname was Zhang and his given name was Hu. He married his beloved woman, named Lin Wan.
"Xu Zhien, Fang Rongrong."
"Wang Lin, Wang Siyu."
"Hu Dongjin, Hu Dongxing."
The red cards were untied one by one, and these names that had been hugging each other for who knows how long seemed to be separated for the first time in their lives. If there were no external force to separate them, they would seem to be able to stay on this tree undisturbed, swaying forever.
Red cards were laid out in pairs under the tree, twice as many in number, and this time it really became a bush of crimson flowers with no gaps between them.
Jiang Yuelu knew half of the names, as they were recorded in the test paper. They were people who were still alive in Iron Town. But for the other half, he seemed...
wrong!
In a flash, he suddenly pulled out a scene from his memory.
Just now, not long ago, there was a scene.
He had taken a brief glimpse, but there, all the names of these people were recorded.
It’s those tablets standing up like a mountain inside the ancestral hall!
This is a tablet that only dead people can be named on!
He looked at the wooden signs again, and at that moment, a shiver ran through his body as if an electric shock had struck him - the two wooden signs were tightly pressed together, one belonging to a living person, and the other to a dead person.
In the Shengji tomb inside the ancestral hall, tablets are placed on the ground to honor the dead, while jars are used to bury the living.
Xu Pingting's husband is Huang Yusheng and Zhang Hu's wife is Lin Wan.
There is also Fang Rongrong of Xu Zhien, Wang Siyu of Wang Lin, Hu Dongxing of Hu Dongjin... These people, whether siblings or close friends and relatives, all died ten years ago.
Looking up, I look at the cards standing tall on the tree again. Each and every card is filled with the past written in cinnabar. When the wind blows, each pair of cards will hug and collide with each other, making soft clattering sounds, like bursts of laughter coming from a peaceful era.
Like weeping and complaining, the sunlight sings a elegy.
The crimson sea under the tree with the wooden sign surging was filled with resentment and evil because it was stained with the breath of death. Although there was no sunlight overhead at this moment and the sky was slowly getting dark, the red shadows under the tree were even more sad and deep.
"What are you...doing?"
Hearing the familiar voice, Jiang Yuelu looked up.
...It's over.
Countless figures walked out of the empty city. The townspeople who had disappeared last night suddenly appeared on the road. They looked at the opened red card under the tree in disbelief, their figures trembling uncontrollably in the dark sky.
Granny Xu's scream came from the ancestral hall: "Someone, someone moved my jar!"
After hearing this, the eyes of the residents of Flatiron Town almost gushed blood. Dozens of murderous gazes were staring at them, as if they wanted to eat them alive on the spot.
Butcher Zhang stared at the two words "Lin Wan" of his beloved wife under the tree, closed his eyes tightly, and turned around.
"How dare you touch our...our..."
“…Kill them.”
"Leave no one behind!"
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