"Get lost! It's all your fault!"
At the end of March in early spring. The tree sprouts.
Lu Yangyang was squatting on the side of the stone steps, spreading corn to feed the birds, and a few birds surrounded her without fear of people, shaking their heads and shaking their heads in a very comfortable way. One person and one group of birds looked peaceful.
Unexpectedly, there was such an angry curse all of a sudden, and the birds fluttered in fright. The smallest bird even got dizzy and crashed into Lu Yangyang's arms.
Lu Yangyang hurriedly stretched out her hand, trying to support it, but she didn't expect to be scratched by its sharp claws that fluttered wildly. Lu Yangyang let out a "hiss" in pain, the little sparrow who had hurt someone had no conscience, and took revenge on her, pecking her again before flying away with her head up.
After blowing on the red mark on her fingertips, Lu Yangyang didn't care about it. She glanced at the room where the sound came from, then lowered her head and picked up the leftover corn on the ground one by one into the cloth bag.
Sitting in the front seat of the room was an overly rich woman in costumes.
She was the one who uttered the scolding just now.
As for the matter, Lu Yangyang also heard about it outside the house. The reason was that a few days ago, the wife of the wealthy Mr. Liu in the town lost her most beloved pet, Ah Xiang——
"After searching all over the house, I immediately asked people to post notices offering high prices all over the town. I even found a lot of strange people and strangers. I tried all kinds of methods, but there was still no news of it! I now every day I am always in fear, afraid that it will have an accident outside..."
In this way, the more Mrs. Liu talked, the more worried she became. She always felt that something unexpected might happen to Axiang at any time, and she couldn't help but choked up before she finished speaking.
Just at this time, a maid came forward with hot tea.
Madam Liu took a look. Isn't this the maid who took care of Ah Xiang when she ran away? ! Immediately, he got all angry at the maid, and dropped the teacup while cursing.
Thus, the scene of Lu Yangyang being scratched by a bird appeared.
But when a man in the room saw this, he was neither in a hurry nor in a hurry, as if he hadn't seen the embarrassed look of the maid kneeling beside her in a hurry.
He stood up and said, "Ma'am, please don't worry, there is a kind of talisman in our Wangfeng Gate, called Xunling, which is specially used to find objects and people, and try all kinds of spirits. As long as Ah Xiang is still alive, it will be a matter of time before we find it."
The man is the new "strange man" invited by Mrs. Liu to look for Ah Xiang today.
His facial features are quite correct, and he is dressed in a clean and decent blue cloth robe. Although he looks only in his early twenties, his appearance when he speaks is quite convincing. Compared with yesterday's Ye Luzi "Witch" who was covered in rags and copper rings, bluffing and dancing madly, it was like heaven and mud.
Therefore, Mrs. Liu quickly put away her tears and expressed her high hopes: "Mr. Lao is in this way. If you can find Ah Xiang, our Liu family will be very grateful!"
The precious stones inlaid on any carved enamel vase in Liu's mansion are as big as a palm, and large pieces of agate stones are sprinkled in the carp pond. Home chewing for a year.
This kind of thank you from others made the man's smile more sincere.
He said: "I don't know if Madam can give Ah Xiang something that she uses in daily life, so it will be convenient for us to find."
After finishing speaking, he turned his head: "Ah Yang!"
As he turned his head, the other people in the room realized that there was a young girl waiting in the yard outside.
Looking at his stature, he is about fourteen or fifteen years old. Like the man in the room, she was wearing a blue cloth robe, her hair was all gathered up and tied high on top of her head with a white cloth, revealing her clean forehead neatly. It's just that on her hair, there are always some curly little hairs raised up in disobedience, and her round face is white and shiny, like a bunny raised at home, she is very beautiful.
But when I took a closer look, I found that although the girl's facial features were excellent, her eyebrows and eyes were drooping, and she looked very non-existent. After looking at her for a long time, she gradually became inconspicuous.
And this unremarkable girl, Lu Yangyang, was slowly tying the rope of the cloth bag containing corn at this time, and she didn't worry about being called out. She didn't take a step into the house until the small cloth bag was tied and installed properly. Walk.
In the room, Mrs. Liu's accompanying maid also took out a portrait and a box of gadgets that had been prepared, and handed them to the man.
The portrait depicts a slender young girl holding a young fragrant pig in her arms.
Inside the box were seven or eight hollow balls made of rattan, all about the size of a palm, looking delicate, but each of the rattans had worn rough edges.
After finishing the portrait, the man took out a small ball from the small box, and then walked to Lu Yangyang who had just entered the room.
"Quick." He ordered in a low voice, "Draw the talisman you used to help Zhang Yuanwai find the canary last time."
After hearing this, Lu Yangyang wanted to untie the burden on her shoulders.
But halfway through the solution, she seemed to have thought of something, and looked at the man cautiously: "Brother Xie, the teacher has not allowed me to come out and sell talismans."
"Teaching?"
Received disobedience, brother Xie's face was suddenly clouded.
"What teaching?"
Turning his back to the lady and maid in the room, he changed his face and put on a mean face: "I called you to draw a talisman last time, why didn't you come out and talk back to me with your lessons? Don't think you learned a little bit in the outer door. , You will be able to go to heaven if you get two words of praise from the teacher, don't forget, if I hadn't picked you up, you would have starved to death and fed the wild dogs on the side of the road a long time ago!"
Seeing that he was spitting, and even wanted to twist her arm to teach her a lesson, Lu Yangyang immediately didn't want to argue with him. She took a step away without any trace, and took out the brush, cinnabar and yellow talisman paper from the bag.
While holding her, he asked, "What are you looking for this time?"
Senior Brother Xie: "Little Fragrant Pig. The one that can be held in your arms is only as long as your forearm."
"oh."
It's easier to find than a flying canary.
After everything was ready, Lu Yangyang's face became serious. She wiped the talisman paper on the takraw ball twice vigorously, then dipped the brush into the cinnabar vigorously, and with a wave of her arm, she wrote heavily on the talisman with a "slap"!
However, don't look at her full posture before she wrote the pen, she was full of thunder, the moment she wrote the pen, her wrist immediately softened, a piece of talisman was written crookedly like a lump of earthworm, and her expression was even more sluggish and loose in a trance , as if the energy and spirit are about to be drained...
Brother Xie didn't care.
He turned around and walked forward, explaining earnestly to the puzzled lady: "Madam, don't worry, that's how talisman masters write talismans. You need to infuse spiritual power into the talismans to make them effective. Some talisman masters want to write Zhang Weili A powerful talisman, the face of the talisman master may be several years old. But the spirit-seeking talisman written by my junior sister is just a low-level talisman, which does not use much spiritual power, at most it consumes some mind, go back to sleep, eat Just take care of it, and you'll be fine."
His words bluffed Madam Liu, who had never had much contact with Taoism.
As soon as she heard that drawing this talisman would deplete her mind and she needed to eat something good to nourish her, she immediately asked the maid to bring a box of fresh bird's nest, and asked Brother Xie to take it back, and let Lu Yangyang stew it to replenish her body.
It was for this purpose that he said what he said just now. After receiving a good tonic, Senior Brother Xie was satisfied, so he pretended to decline and thanked him for accepting it.
As for whether it will be stewed to nourish Lu Yangyang...
Ah. This kind of thing, he has never even thought about "removing the skin".
Seeing Lu Yangyang put down the pen, he stretched out two fingers and shouted at the talisman paper: "Get up!"
The yellow talisman floated up in response!
Floating into the air, faint red threads of light diffused like fine sand from the cinnabar of the yellow talisman, and slowly drifted outward like melon flakes, and finally intertwined and formed strands, extending in one direction.
Brother Xie looked at the red line and walked out.
Lu Yangyang packed up her things, picked up her bag and followed, and trotted down the stone steps lightly.
But as soon as her heels hit the ground, she remembered that she had written a talisman with "exhaustion" just now, and her heart was wrong, so she quickly went back in a slump.
However, no one noticed what was wrong with her. Everyone was attracted by the red line in the sky.
Seeing this strange scene, Madam got up with the help of the maid and wanted to follow.
But her body was too bloated. When she lowered her head, her sight was blocked by her chest and abdomen, and she couldn't see the path under her feet. It was especially difficult when going down the stone steps.
Seeing that she was about to be left behind by that Mr. Xie, she hurriedly called out: "Bring my chariot here!"
The servant waiting outside quickly let her get into the chariot, and a group of people followed closely behind Mr. Jie.
...
Following the guidance of the red line, they crossed more than half of Liu's mansion, and everyone came to a row of towering camphor trees.
The branches and leaves of the tall trees are connected, covering the sky and the sun, standing upright and majestic.
Before Senior Brother Xie got close, he felt that this row of camphor trees was scary for some reason, and he subconsciously didn't want to get close.
But Mrs. Liu was still behind him, he couldn't show his timidity, he could only suppress his discomfort, and stepped forward to take a closer look.
The moment he passed through the trees, the scene in front of everyone behind him suddenly became clear like a mist!
"Why?"
A young maid rubbed her eyes.
"Sister, there used to be a wall behind this tree. I passed by it many times, but I didn't notice it once."
Behind these trees, there is indeed a long wall.
But is there such a wall here?
The eldest maid looked at the wall with a dazed expression, and fell into thinking suspiciously.
But she didn't forget to pat the little maid and reprimanded her: "No noise is allowed in front of Madam."
But the little maid obviously didn't listen to what the big maid said. She shook her head curiously and continued to look at the wall, then suddenly pointed to one place and said, "There is a hole!"
Following her fingers, there was really a hole in one part of the wall.
Madam Liu, who was getting off the chariot, was so startled that she almost fell down: "Where did this hole come from?!"
She looked to the left and right, but the maids and servants also looked at each other in blank dismay, and no one could tell what was going on.
Brother Xie walked up to the hole: "This hole should have been smashed open from the inside of the wall, and all the broken stones fell outside."
As he spoke, he bent down and leaned half his body in from the entrance of the cave, but all he could see were weeds as tall as half a person, and he could only stretch out his hand to push aside the thick and dense grass blades.
Immediately afterwards, he paused, showing an expression of surprise.
He stepped back and asked Mrs. Liu, "Is this a courtyard?"
He originally thought that this wall was the enclosure of Liu's house, and the outside of the wall should be outside the house, but he didn't expect that there was a separate courtyard sealed behind the wall, and it looked deserted for a long time.
After hearing Mr. Liu's question, Mrs. Liu's face was in a daze for a moment, and then she recalled it slowly.
"This was originally a wasteland of our house. In the early spring of last year, almost this month, my master bought this house. Seeing that the soil in this land is still fertile, he wanted to grow some melons, fruits and vegetables. The seeds were sown, and after more than half a year, none of them germinated."
She spoke more and more fluently: "I just got married at that time, so it was not easy to ask about these things, and I only heard a few words from the master, but I don't know the specifics. I only know that the master invited many capable people to see, and no one said For no reason, he finally invited a talisman master from Wangfeng Gate, and only then did he realize that the reason why this piece of soil did not grow any grass was because there were bad things buried in the soil. Later, the talisman master put the bad things However, our master did not want to grow food on such dirty land, so he enclosed this land in this small courtyard, built a wall to seal it, and became a mansion. There is no such land here. It has been a long time, and I have forgotten this place too."
After finishing speaking, she couldn't wait to ask what she really cared about: "Mr. Xie, Axiang?"
Brother Xie: "You have to go in first to know."
The hole is not too small, even an adult can get in by bending down.
Senior Brother Xie cautiously took out a talisman, read a few words and saw that it shimmered slightly, so he stood it in front of him, and then slowly walked into the yard.
This talisman is called "Danger Warning", if there is danger in front of it, it will burn instantly, telling you not to move forward.
So when he was completely standing in the yard and the yellow talisman didn't move at all, Senior Brother Xie felt relieved and motioned for others to come in as well.
Not long after, everyone entered the yard, and even Mrs. Liu, who was overly plump, struggled to squeeze in, being dragged back and forth by the maid.
She clutched her chest, took a few breaths, then looked up into the air, and said strangely, "Mr. Xie, why did the red line stop here?"
Brother Xie also noticed just now that the red line extending from the spirit-seeking talisman no longer extended, and was floating and stopped in the sky above the courtyard. And when the red line of the spirit-seeking talisman stopped, it always had only one meaning——
The thing I'm looking for is here.
In other words, Ah Xiang is somewhere in this yard.
When Mrs. Liu heard this, she couldn't wait to order the servants: "Quick, everyone go in and find Ah Xiang!"
The servants were ordered to go deep into the deserted garden one after another, pushing aside the vegetation blocking the way with their arms, and began to grope forward to find Axiang.
As soon as they dispersed, Lu Yangyang, who had been standing behind the crowd holding her little bundle, was revealed.
To be lazy!
The eyes of "Untie Papi" suddenly turned sideways!
Lu Yangyang could only stop fishing, and followed everyone into the wild grass.
But she is really short. The other servants walked into the weeds, and the weeds just passed their chests and abdomens. Although walking was hindered, they could still walk by pulling. But as soon as Lu Yangyang went in, it was as if she fell into the sea and was almost drowned, and she could only poke her head out while standing on tiptoe!
The worst thing is that some of the tough plants didn't even pass Lu Yangyang's chin, and the grass spikes swept across the tip of her nose, making her nose itchy. After holding it for a long time, she still couldn't hold it back, "Sneeze!" There was a loud sneeze all at once.
Unexpectedly, as soon as she sneezed, the red silky light from the spirit-seeking talisman shattered in response, turning into countless strands of red powder and dissipating in the air.
Brother Xie immediately glared over again!
Lu Yangyang: "It's not me..."
But before she could finish speaking, suddenly there was a gust of wind, the sky darkened, and the damp smell of scarlet earth rushed over her face!
Lu Yangyang stopped talking instantly.
Vigilantly, she put her right hand on the old red rope worn on her left wrist, always feeling that there was some ominous force waiting to be released around her.