The symbol looked as if it had been carved with dried blood.
"What kind of weird talisman is this?"
Luo Tianhe asked in a low voice.
I stared at the symbol for a few seconds, my heart sinking: "It looks like a 'trapping' character, but these things are usually drawn with cinnabar ink on yellow talismans..."
Professor Tan chimed in, "There might have been something locked behind that door."
Luo Tianhe didn't care about anything else. He put his ear close to the wooden door, listened for a while, and then reached out and pushed the door open.
"What time is it? Who cares what he was locked up before? As long as nothing happens now, that's fine!"
Suddenly, the door hinges creaked with a teeth-grinding groan, and I realized that our guess might be wrong. This door hadn't been used for a long time, and that passage wasn't one that servants often used.
Otherwise, the door hinges wouldn't have decayed to this extent!
But Luo Tianhe didn't think much of it and shone his flashlight inside.
Inside was a small room that looked like an abandoned storage room, piled with old tables and chairs, bottles and jars, and several dusty burlap sacks in the corner.
Am I overthinking it?
We went in, gently closed the door, and scanned the room with our flashlights.
Suddenly, the beam of light fixed on the innermost corner of the room, where a person was sitting against the wall!
He was wearing a gray, short jacket similar to a servant's uniform, his head bowed, motionless, with a similarly tattered hat covering most of his face.
We held our breath. Luo Tianhe shone his flashlight intently on the man, while his other hand reached for his baton. After waiting for more than ten seconds, the man remained motionless.
"Dead, dead?"
Li Huai's voice trembled.
After all, as long as it's alive, whatever it is, if it's been in the dark and suddenly exposed to strong light for so long, it should react in some way.
Luo Tianhe glanced at me, then slowly moved over and gently poked the man's shoulder with his baton.
"Hello!"
There was still no response.
"It feels very hard, so it's probably not a living person or a corpse, but more like a clay sculpture or wax figure."
Luo Tianhe spoke up, and then used his baton to pry off the man's hat.
He wanted to see what this thing was all about.
Beneath the hat was a pale, stiff face with blurred features. There were three black holes where the eyes and mouth should have been, and the face was covered with fine cracks, like a failed terracotta figurine.
What is this thing?
Li Huai couldn't help but take two steps back.
I couldn't help but frown. I felt like I'd heard of this somewhere before, but I couldn't quite place it.
Professor Tan gasped, clearly recognizing it. Seeing us all looking at him, he said, "This is a substitute figurine! In folk sorcery, it's used to take the place of a living person to suffer calamities, or as a vessel for certain sorcery rituals. How could it be here?"
"It startled me; it turns out they were just terracotta figurines."
Li Huai breathed a sigh of relief, subconsciously ignoring the second half of Professor Tan's sentence.
When I heard Professor Tan say that, I suddenly remembered and said with a grim face, "What terracotta figurines? Do you even know how these things are made?!"
Li Huai was a little puzzled and said, "How else can terracotta figurines be made? Just use those special clays, right?"
"Hehe, these are not ordinary terracotta figurines. They are made of human material! First, a living person is burned to ashes, and then the ashes are mixed with soil from the underworld to make the terracotta figurine. The material is different from the clay used to make terracotta figurines, so there are often cracks."
After hearing my explanation, Li Huai turned pale.
"That's right, this thing is not simple. It is said that during the process of burning a person to ashes, a special method is used to keep him conscious and to infuse him with resentment. This is how the substitute terracotta figure is made."
"Let's not talk about that now. Look, there seem to be words on the back."
Luo Tianhe interrupted us.
He accidentally swept his flashlight across the wall behind the dummy and noticed something written on it. We were taken aback, then went closer to take a look. It wasn't written with a pen; it must have been carved into the wall with something sharp, like a fingernail, bit by bit.
It's called a fingernail because the mark was covered in bloodstains and densely packed writing, all of which was the same sentence, repeated over and over, covering that small patch of wall.
"Let me out! The master lied to me! Orchids eat people..."
The words convey a chilling sense of despair and resentment.
"Orchids eat people? Master, you're lying to me?"
Li Huai read it aloud and couldn't help but shiver.
"Is this gentleman referring to Zeng, the richest man? The orchids in his yard...?"
"It seems that this substitute figurine may not be meant to bear the calamity for someone else."
Professor Tan lowered his voice.
"It's more likely that it was a pitiful person who was sacrificed, whose resentment lingered after death, and part of it was sealed in this terracotta figure, while the rest was carved into the wall."
I stared at the handwriting, then looked at the expressionless terracotta warrior, and suddenly felt that the three dark holes seemed to be watching us eerily.
I couldn't help but feel a chill run down my spine and took two steps back.
Just then, a very faint but unusually clear rustling sound came from the passage we had just walked through!
The sound was like many feet moving lightly along the ground—no, not feet, but more like many slender, soft things crawling quickly, rubbing against the ground!
The sounds grew closer and more frequent.
We couldn't help but exchange a glance, our eyes filled with horror. Just then, the powerful flashlight in Luo Tianhe's hand suddenly flashed!
Then, with a "pop," it went out!
With that last glimmer of light, I could see several dusty burlap sacks in the corner of the room, one of which had its opening come undone at some point!
It looked like a pale hand was reaching out from inside!
I couldn't help but swallow. Was that just my imagination?
"Slap, slap!"
Luo Tianhe pounded on the flashlight, trying to restore its light, cursing under his breath: "What a piece of junk! How could it break at such a crucial moment? Damn it!"
"Never mind it, it's probably not a problem with the flashlight's quality."
I spoke slowly, the question itself being self-evident.
I turned my head about ten degrees to try and see what was in the sack out of the corner of my eye.
Suddenly, I saw that the bag was indeed open, but I couldn't tell whether the pale hand had retracted or had already come out!
My heart started pounding, and the coldness and stinging in my right arm were overwhelmed by extreme fear at that moment!
In the darkness, I felt Luo Tianhe and Li Huai move closer to me.
Li Huai grabbed my arm; his palms were sweaty, and his teeth were chattering.
Professor Tan seemed to be rapidly muttering something to himself, his voice extremely low.
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