Chapter 042: Ancient House Transfiguration (14)
Tao Xing: "I seemed to hear something vaguely, I thought it was Xianyue who made the noise."
080: "Then you should open your eyes and see."
Tao Xing: "I can't move anyway, so what does it matter whether I watch or not?"
Just like now, with this large group of people coming in, he still can't move.
He looked up, facing the translucent red shadow, and mouthed, "What are you doing?"
The man on the beam glanced at it and mouthed a response: "None of your business."
Tao Xing: "Let me go."
"You wish." The breeze blew past my ears, bringing these words, and then the figure of the man in red could no longer be found.
A room full of people were still gathered around the sofa, whispering, "Master, are you...are you sleeping?"
"Uh, yeah, take a nap."
As everyone saw, he was lying peacefully, and even though so many people came, he had no intention of getting up.
They hesitated and said, "The house god let us in, what are we doing?"
"Well..." Tao Xing had no idea why Xianyue let them in. "I asked you to come here because I have something important to tell you."
Everyone looked around, but couldn't see the House God. They were a little panicked: "Master, are you... still sleeping?"
"Well, I didn't sleep well."
"Then you..."
"I'll continue sleeping." Tao Xing smiled calmly.
The visitors were a little uneasy, confused and bewildered: "Master, the house god said he doesn't like us..."
Before he could finish his words, a strong wind suddenly blew in from the roof.
The people who were already worried were shocked and huddled together, still surrounding Tao Xing. They had seen the abilities of the patriarch and at this time couldn't help but get closer to the powerful person.
Tao Xing: “…”
This means that no matter how sleepy you are, you can’t fall asleep.
The wind blew past everyone, and everyone looked around shivering. Suddenly, the scenery in front of them changed one by one. The TV and refrigerator disappeared, and the tables, chairs and benches lost their modern feel and were all replaced with the old appearance.
Tao Xing narrowed her eyes slightly: Illusion.
The idle moon is casting an illusion.
080 was shocked: "Host, host, why is he casting illusions again? He wants to kill these people. That's not right. The mission has been completed. The program has determined that he will not do this again. What's going on?"
Tao Xing: "Do you believe in your program?"
"I believe that the program will not make a wrong judgment, but..."
"That's all." Tao Xing said.
The surrounding scenery changed as if time had gone backwards, but his sofa remained unchanged. Perhaps Xianyue still needed to use this sofa to clamp him.
He lay there, watching the horror gradually appear on other people's faces.
He was a little curious. What did he see?
Why not take a look? He can automatically block illusions. However, it is easy to see if you want to. Just suppress the power of spiritual intelligence.
Gathering his strength, he opened his eyes again.
Then, in an instant, my hair stood on end, my back felt cold, and my head was buzzing.
It turns out that people really can’t be too curious!
The magnificent house before my eyes had become dilapidated, revealing the desolation of having been neglected for a long time.
There was blood dripping from the rotten railing.
On the dim third floor, on the ruined corridor floor, a long-haired man was crawling slowly. His body was covered in blood, staining his white clothes. The ground he crawled on also left thick bloodstains.
The man seemed to have seen the group of people, climbed up to the railing and grinned.
"Ah..." Before Tao Xing could even scream, chaos had already broken out around her, with people running everywhere, "Ghost! A ghost with a broken leg..."
Amid the screams and footsteps, there was a creaking sound, and a figure suddenly fell from the beam, with a white silk tied around his neck, swaying in the air.
It looked like a woman with a broken neck, bulging eyes, a protruding tongue, and embroidered shoes on her feet that fell just in front of the running person.
The woman moved her broken neck and raised the corners of her mouth to the people below.
The man stopped, screamed, stepped back suddenly, and fell on his butt.
The others wanted to escape but couldn't. They were like a ghost trapped in a wall and couldn't find the direction of the door. They could only wander around inside. Some ran too fast and bumped into each other.
They just stood up, touching their dazed heads, when they heard screams from the other side of the stairs and someone tumbling and crawling down.
Behind him, a female ghost in red floated over, her red lips slightly parted, smiling at everyone in the room.
The whole room was in chaos. Some people were running away frantically, while others were shrinking to Tao Xing's side. "Master, how can you still lie down? Can you please get up..."
Amid the shouting, someone suddenly yelled, "This is the ghost I saw last time."
The person who was shouting was Tao Yiming. He held onto the edge of the sofa tightly and said with wide eyes: "This was the ghost I saw when I came back to get the plaque last time. The female ghost in red, it was her..."
Tao Erxian also remembered: "I also saw that hanged ghost last time."
"I saw the ghost with a broken leg. It was him." Tao Sansi also remembered and pointed tremblingly upstairs.
"We saw the same ghost, which means ghosts really exist." Someone shouted, "Master, Master, please get up, don't sleep anymore, there are ghosts..."
Tao Xing lay there calmly, not saying a word.
He did remember.
Not to mention being trapped and unable to get up, even if he wasn't trapped, his legs would have been numb from fear.
Although I know it is an illusion, it is still creepy.
However, he also saw that although these people were very frightened, they were not out of their minds.
Xianyue extracted the confusing power in the illusion and just asked these people to see the illusion, which would not disturb their minds. No matter what they saw, they would be normal when they came out and would not go crazy.
As for fear, that is a normal human reaction.
At this moment, chaotic screams resounded throughout the house. Some people gathered around Tao Xing and begged for protection, some hugged each other and cried, some hid under the table, and some knelt on the ground and called for help from the gods...
The wind blew by, and suddenly, the light and shadows flickered, and the dilapidated house changed again, the decay and dampness gradually receded, and it turned into a bright and luxurious house with antique furnishings, just like the courtyard of a wealthy family in the old days. People came and went, passing through Tao Xing's sofa and also through a room full of modern people, as if two time and space overlapped and did not disturb each other.
There were no ghosts, only this bustling courtyard, decorated with lights and colorful ribbons, bright red silk hanging under the eaves of the corridor, maids and servants happily carrying all kinds of dishes, and the sound of stringed instruments coming from the air, the music was full of joy.
This was in stark contrast to the scene just now. The joy reduced people's fear a little, and they gathered around the sofa and watched quietly.
Look, a handsome man in ancient costume walks in, wearing a gauze hat, a red flower on his body, with flying eyebrows and eyes, full of vigor and vitality.
People in the room came forward to congratulate him: "Congratulations, young master. Today is the day that Tao's opens and you get married. It's a double happiness."
"Yes, the young master resigned and returned to his hometown. The emperor was reluctant to let him go and personally wrote a name for this house. This honor belongs to the young master alone."
The man bowed and said, "Thank you very much, everyone. I would like to invite you all to witness the hanging of the plaque in this house in a moment."
Everyone laughed: "Okay, please." As they were talking, people went out.
Someone among the people watching by the sofa recognized him and said, "That's our ancestor."
"Yes, it's the ancestor who founded the Tao brand."
"Are you... letting me see the Tao family's past? These are real events, right?"
"It must be true."
Bursts of firecrackers were heard, and the light and shadow changed again. Time left traces in the house. The Dow brand became famous, and the ancestor became the richest man. Soon, he had a child. A few years later, he had a second child. Time passed, and decades later, the young master became an old master. He had fame and wealth in his life, and he and his wife lived in harmony and had a happy family. Later, he and his wife died of old age and left one after another.
This scene seemed like a passing scene to the onlookers, but the people involved actually lived a happy life, which made the onlookers feel their deep happiness.
After the couple passed away, the light suddenly dimmed, as if dark clouds blocked the sky.
Onlookers saw that their sons, the two brothers, quarreled over the family property, and their faces turned red with anger. In the end, the eldest son left home and never came back, and the second son inherited Tao.
When everyone saw him inherit the house, they all kowtowed in front of the plaque.
Some onlookers also recognized him: "This is our second-generation ancestor."
Time flies, and the second generation ancestor also grew from a young and vigorous man to a man with a head full of white hair. On the day he was taken out of the coffin and buried, only his wife came to see him off. They had a son, but that son was still playing with others in the restaurant at that time.
The son only learned the bad news when he returned home. It was no use feeling upset. He knelt under the plaque, lost in thought.
The onlooker frowned and said, "This is the third generation ancestor."
The third generation was a playboy and could not support the Tao family. In the end, he gave up on himself and didn't care about anything. He spent his days in debauchery and drinking, and his body gradually became weak. He passed away in his forties.
The scene changes again, and a young man is kneeling under the plaque in front of the house. The boy looks underage, is taciturn, and looks cold to people, but he is very efficient.
"The fourth generation ancestor." The onlooker said, "This is the youngest among our ancestors." Judging from the age at which they inherited the family business, this one is indeed the youngest.
But it cannot be said that he inherited the family business. Instead, he shouldered the family burden early on. The dissolute ancestor of the third generation had almost squandered all the money of the Tao family.
This young fourth-generation head of the family worked extremely hard to turn the tide and toiled for half his life to keep the Tao family brand. However, he was only able to keep the business going. The business was difficult to recover and its performance went from bad to worse. I am afraid that in a few years, the Tao family that he had worked so hard to keep would eventually disappear.
Seeing this, bystanders sighed, the situation then was so similar to the present.
The only difference is that now it is not someone who has lost his family fortune, but the rapid development of technology that has impacted traditional craftsmanship. It will be difficult to survive if one keeps relying on old technologies without innovating and improving.
Looking back in time, the fourth generation head of the family is already middle-aged, his face is full of fatigue, but his eyes are still extremely cold.
Next, the onlookers' faces gradually changed and they began to tremble.
They saw that one day, this ancestor jumped up and jumped into the lava furnace in the backyard.
The Tao family makes candles. There is a stove in the backyard. It has been hundreds of years since the first generation. The stove is built on the ground and is square like a small swimming pool, but of course there is no water inside, but boiling candle oil.
The flesh and blood body jumped into the gurgling and boiling candle oil. His skin was burned in an instant, and his flesh and blood were blurred. For some reason, he did not die. He screamed miserably, climbed out of the stove, and walked forward crookedly.
There was boiling candle wax hanging on his body, and the burning flesh was emitting black steam. Blood was oozing out from everywhere. His face was no longer a face. The skin had been peeled off, and his eyes, nose, and mouth were all blurred.
“It hurts so much, it hurts so much…” He shouted as he walked forward. In front of the door, his family members retreated in horror, kneeling on the ground and crying bitterly.
"I will sacrifice my body to ensure that the Tao family will be passed down through generations." He walked forward step by step. "After I die, bury my bones here, bury them here..." He leaned over to look at his children, his voice like a ghost, "Sacrifice, sacrifice! In each generation, there must be a descendant of the Tao family who will sacrifice himself. This way, the Tao family can be passed down. My bones will stay here and will watch over you, stare at you. Sacrifice, sacrifice!!"
He screamed sharply: "It hurts so much, it hurts so much, it hurts..."
He fell by the door, his bloody eyes wide open, and finally he died.
The family members burst into tears.
After a moment of silence, the onlookers also screamed.
"It's so scary. It's much scarier than a ghost..."
"Did the two dead branches go crazy after seeing this scene? Yes, they also committed suicide by throwing themselves into the furnace. They must have seen a scene like this, ah..."
They began to run around in panic again, their eyes wide open, and they no longer felt anything when they bumped into people or walls. Some of them fell to the ground and vomited, while others had lost control of their bladders and looked pale.
Fortunately, Tao Xing was "tied" to the sofa and couldn't move, so she maintained her dignity.
It does match the two dead branches, so the fixed illusion in the backyard must be this.
This illusion... was not made up by Xianyue, it really happened!
The shocked bystanders could not hold on any longer and collapsed to the ground, lying all over the house, and no one was able to get up.
At this time, some people felt that the head of the family still had foresight and had already lay down.
The picture finally changed, and the collapsed people had to watch even though they dared not to.
The shrill sound continued, and chaos and war continued before their eyes.
Those present had never heard of any rumors of sacrifice by the Tao family, but they saw in their visions that this sacrificial system continued.
In the fifth generation, the youngest son in the family was taken away to be sacrificed.
He was still a little boy, with bright eyes and white teeth, very cute and well-behaved.
The onlookers were a little surprised. The young man looked familiar, but he was not the fifth-generation head of the family. The current head of the family was the young man's elder brother. They all saw his elder brother go to worship the plaque when he succeeded.
But they didn't understand why it looked familiar.
They looked at the young man, his face filled with fear when he heard that he was going to be sacrificed. He would rather die than do it, so he ran away in the dead of night with his bag on his back.
But he couldn't outrun the Tao family. His legs were broken and he was dragged back home.
He was then thrown into the furnace.
The screams rang out again, but the boy did not crawl out and disappeared in the candle wax.
Tao Sansi raised his head suddenly: "It's the ghost with the broken leg!"
Everyone turned around in shock, their eyes swept across the railing on the third floor. The ghostly figure crawling with blood trails was no longer there, but they remembered, yes, it was him.
His legs were broken when he was alive. Did he crawl hopelessly in that corridor?
Returning to the screen, the Tao family's business is surprisingly getting better and better, so the Tao family believes more in the power of sacrifice.
When the sixth generation head of the family took over, he no longer worshipped the plaque because they no longer believed in the plaque.
The sacrifice of this generation was a girl. The girl hanged herself the day before she was thrown into the furnace.
In her opinion, hanging was much less painful than being thrown into a furnace.
Although she committed suicide, her body was thrown into the furnace the next day.
Instead of hearing screams, people felt bitter relief.
The place where the girl hanged herself was the beam in the hall.
Without anyone reminding them, people have already figured out that the hanged person they just saw was her.
In the seventh generation, the young man who was designated to be sacrificed accepted his fate and waited obediently for death.
However, when he jumped into the stove, a woman in red rushed in and cried bitterly in front of the stove.
They were childhood sweethearts and later fell in love with each other, but the young man was chosen as a sacrifice and was powerless to resist.
On the day of his sacrifice, the woman came in her wedding dress and wanted to jump into the furnace to be with her lover, but she was stopped by the Tao family on the grounds that outsiders were not allowed to jump because it would pollute the pool.
The girl sat by the stove like a zombie. Later, when the candle oil stopped boiling, she stood up and banged her head against the wall, dying.
Among the crowd of onlookers collapsed on the ground, Tao Yiming looked at the stairs with trembling hands. It turned out that the red dress of the female ghost was a wedding dress?
Actually... they are not ghosts, they are just scenes that once existed in the house.
The room was silent, the illusion changed again, and the people who lowered their eyes were awakened by a loud bang.
Looking up, I saw a person slamming the table angrily in the picture.
This is the eighth generation ancestor, and he was also the one who sealed the plaque and closed the old house. Thinking that this house is spiritual, everyone can't help but worry.
After the ancestor slammed the table, he angrily said, "I will never allow sacrifices to happen again. As the head of the family, I officially declare that sacrifices are over. I made my own business. What does it have to do with ghosts and gods?"
When the onlookers heard this, they suddenly felt relieved, because it turned out that he was the one who ended the sacrifice.
He then added: "It's not just this kind of supernatural sacrifice, there's also that plaque."
The onlookers' worries, which had just been relieved, were lifted again.
He climbed up the ladder, took down the plaque on the door, and threw it to the ground: "None of you are allowed to believe in ghosts and gods anymore. The plaque that was consecrated and the plaque that protected the Tao family are all nonsense. I want to show you that without the sacrifice and the plaque, I can still make the Tao family prosperous."
Although he made such a guarantee, his family members were unable to change their minds for a while.
So, the head of the family got angry and used the method of "fighting poison with poison". He asked someone to make a seal to seal the plaque in the wall.
"Whether it has a spirit or not, this plaque can't protect us, so forget about it," he said.
Not long after, he led his family to move away from the eight-hundred-year-old house. Before leaving, he destroyed the stove in the backyard and prohibited its use.
As for the corpse that was once buried here, perhaps some mysterious magic was used to prevent it from rotting. But, who cares? If it won’t rot, just dig it out and bury it in the ancestral tomb.
He also forbade people to mention ghosts and gods anymore. Most of the people watching knew nothing about the sacrifice. The matter of the plaque became known to everyone only after the old man said that whoever found it would become the head of the family.
The old man was quite accurate in his prediction. The plaque is really spiritual.
From this perspective, this house god, oh, no, he said he is not a god, then he is a house spirit, actually he is quite good, the seal did not seal him at all, but he did not come out to cause trouble.
The eighth generation head of the family abolished the horrific sacrificial system, which was a real achievement in the eyes of everyone.
Later, even without seeing the illusions, they knew many things. The head of the family really made his business prosperous, and the family members gradually stopped caring about those matters of gods and ghosts.
By the ninth generation, things were also going smoothly, business was good, the head of the family was humble and kind, and the family was harmonious.
However, the tenth generation, that is, the old man’s generation, began to go downhill again.
History seemed to be repeating itself. They saw the old man running around and working hard, just like the fourth generation head of the family who had worked tirelessly to invent sacrifice.
"Like him!" When everyone thought of this, they suddenly felt a chill in their hearts.
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