Brother Yaozi did not stay with me. After giving me a few instructions, he left in a hurry to pursue my master. He looked a little uneasy, as if he was anxious to discuss something with my master.
This was naturally related to the shocking change in the Yinren Inn.
I am not a fool. I can guess that this is a big deal, but I have only so much ability now. It doesn't make much difference to me whether it is big or small. Anyway, I can't solve it alone, so I don't feel too much pressure. On the contrary, since I saw the ferryman, I always think of Zhiniang in my heart.
The woman dancing in the light rain really gave me the biggest shock in my life.
"Remember, my name is Wangqing, from Guangchuan Xindu. I hope you can find me in the vast sea of people. We... meet again if we are destined."
I was distracted, muttering to myself, repeating the last words she said to me before she collapsed. In my mind, her stunning appearance before her death and her shattered and hideous face after death alternated back and forth.
"What did you say?"
The ferryman yelled, waking me up. I looked up and found that he had approached me without knowing when. His dark face was deeply wrinkled. When I got closer, I could see that the gullies were still piled with old mud. In addition, he had stayed in the broken house for several days, and there was a strange smell on his body, which was very irritating.
Instantly, the image in my head was shattered, and I immediately stepped back: "Don't get so close, we are not that familiar."
"Oh, you still dislike me."
The old guy curled his lips, maybe because my master left, he suddenly became particularly unrestrained, leaning on the altar of the mountain god, taking off his shoes and picking his feet, as if a jar of pickled cabbage was opened, and said nonchalantly: "I don't know who was chased by the ghost a while ago like a stray dog, and had to hold my thigh to save his life? Boy, let me tell you, if you enter this business, you can't care about cleanliness. It's safer to be dirty. Haven't you heard the saying? If you have a smell on your body, dogs will dislike ghosts and don't like you. If you really meet an old ghost who wants to swallow your essence, it has to be unrestrained."
I said, if I hadn't remembered that you saved my life, I would have hit you on the temple with a stick while you were sleeping, and you would have been killed. In the wilderness, who would remember that there is such a person as you in the world? How can you say that I am ungrateful?
I didn't have time to argue with him. He was so dirty that I would rather be sucked dry by the ghost. I waved my hand and said straight to the point: "Tao Wangqing, that is, the painted Rakshasa, she said that there was a painting left here with you, so she asked me to come to you for it.
Moreover, before she left, she said that she wanted me to do something with you, you know what it is."
When the old guy heard this, he immediately sat up, no longer slacking off, as if he had just met me for the first time, looking at me from head to toe with squinting eyes, one after another, and then fell silent.
I felt uneasy at his attitude, and couldn't help asking, "Where is the painting that Tao Wangqing mentioned? Didn't you lose it, old man?"
"How could it be lost if it was a mortgage?"
The old guy suddenly became unfathomable, tidied up his messy hair, and immediately put his face close to me, wanting to look directly at my face.
The old guy's eyes only had whites, no pupils, and he was so close that his eyelids flickered, which was very creepy.
I retreated a little again and frowned, saying, "Just say it if you have something to say!"
"Don't talk."
The old guy shouted in a low voice, which scared me. I thought he had seen something wrong, but I really didn't dare to move. I let him look at me from a close distance, which made me feel creepy.
Then, the old man spitted on his right thumb and then pressed towards my philtrum. His nails were long and the cracks were full of black mud. I was curious about what he was doing and refused to move until his thumb poked me. I got goose bumps all over my body.
"Interesting, it seems that girl thinks highly of you."
The old man pinched my philtrum seven times with his nails before retracting them. He sighed and said, "There is a fierce curse on your forehead. There are lonely ghosts thinking about you day and night. This is a Yin debt. You owe them and they will settle with you sooner or later. Ordinary people who get involved in this curse will probably cry for their parents. You have your master, so it should be fine. But if you are involved in Tao Wangqing's matter, the cause and effect will be great. This is also a Yin debt, and it is the deepest Yin debt. It will haunt you for a lifetime. Have you really thought it through?"
The fierce curse he mentioned should have been left behind when I followed my master to suppress the evil spirits.
At first, there was still a blue gas on my forehead, but it disappeared later. I was in danger recently. If he hadn't mentioned this, I would have almost forgotten it.
I think he was comparing the curse with Tao Wangqing's matter to tell me the seriousness.
This was a kind reminder, but I didn't think about it. I said that Tao Wangqing had done me a favor. If she hadn't risked her life to protect me, I might have died in the old ditch in Luliang Mountain. It's okay to be selfish, but you can't be an ungrateful person.
After saying that, I wiped my philtrum hard. The saliva was gone, but the taste was left, and it hit my nostrils. It went in with every breath. The good impression I had just accumulated on the old guy disappeared without a trace.
"You are a man. No wonder Tao Wangqing's daughter finally entrusted this matter to you. I have known her for many years. I know her very well. She is arrogant. I have never seen her entrust anyone, including me. She wanted to speak several times over the years, but finally held it back. Maybe she thought I was unreliable and could not hold on to the end."
The old man gave me a thumbs up, then took out a bundle from under the altar of the mountain god, took out a scroll of painting from it, and tied it with a red rope: "Hey, this is it."
I took it half-believingly, opened the scroll and took a look.
Then... I closed it immediately.
The woman in the painting is naturally Tao Wangqing. She was smiling like a flower in the painting.
However, this painting was exactly the one that made her famous, and her disaster back then also came from this! !
This painting... was actually preserved?
After a little thought, I roughly understood that Zhao Xin harmed Wang Qing because Wang Qing was unfaithful to her husband, had an affair with the painter, and cuckolded Liu Qu, the Prince of Guangchuan. Wasn't this painting challenging the secular world the best evidence of uncleanness at the time? Zhao Xin would naturally not destroy it.
"Why do you still carry it with you?"
I glanced at the old man, a little suspicious.
The other party sat upright, looking like a gentleman: "Tao Wang Qing will not be terrified, this painting is her foundation, since she entrusted it to me, I naturally have to keep it well for her. If it is lost, wouldn't it harm her?"
He spoke righteously, but I became more and more suspicious.
"You were driven out of the Yinren Inn. With so many demons and ghosts seeking your life, how can you care about this?"
I looked at the old man with a slanted eye. The more I looked at him, the more he looked frivolous. I teased him, "Well, old man, I finally understand. You are not hanging it on the bedside to look at it every day, are you?"
"I am already a big old man, what am I looking at?"
The old man became irritable, puffed his beard and glared, almost jumped up and fought with me. At the end, he pushed me hard and said, "Let's talk about business. Don't you want to know what Tao Wangqing asked you to do?"
When I mentioned this, I stopped arguing with him, put away the painting, and listened quietly.
The old man said, "She wants you to help her find her reincarnation body!"
"Reincarnation body?"
I said in shock, "Isn't her soul in the painting? She didn't go to the underworld to reincarnate, so how could she have a reincarnation body?"
"How was the painted Rakshasa formed?"
The old man said, "The ghost was too resentful, and the heaven and earth could not tolerate it. Five thunders struck her head, and only a wisp of soul escaped. Because there was a portrait of her in the world as a sacrifice, the remaining soul was led to hide in it. People in later generations saw the portrait and thought of her, so they blessed her with their thoughts and made her come back, which is the painted Rakshasa!"
I still don't quite understand it.
"To put it bluntly, the one in the painting is just a remnant of her soul!!"
The old man patiently explained: "She still had a large part of her soul left behind by the five thunderbolts. As far as I know, that part of her soul survived because of its excessive resentment, and the thunderbolts did not wipe it out. However, the resentment was wiped out, and she was eventually taken into the underworld, and the remnant of her soul was sent to reincarnation!!"
The remnant of the soul reincarnates?
This is a new thing. I have never heard of anyone who can reincarnate without three souls and seven spirits!
"That's right. I've been running the Yinren Inn for many years, and this is the first time I've heard of this! If my master hadn't taken pity on her and secretly checked the Book of Life and Death in the underworld for her, this would have been an unsolved case. No one would have known that someone's residual soul could survive the five thunderbolts!"
The old man sighed and said, "I can only say that her resentment is too great, and it's hard for the sky to destroy it, and it's hard for the earth to bury it! However, since then, she has been thinking about finding her reincarnation body!"
I asked, "Then... what are the consequences of this residual soul reincarnation?"
"It's congenital lack of soul!"
The old man said, "I said this is the first time I've heard of this kind of thing. What exactly is the reincarnation body? No one can say for sure, but it must be different from normal people. It will be very pitiful. This congenital lack of something, think about it, can it be cured?"
I thought about it and it seemed to be the case, so I asked, "Just looking for a reincarnation body?"
"It's not that simple!"
The old man curled his lips and said, "Now that you have found her reincarnation body, you have to make her soul complete, otherwise you have been looking for her in vain?"
I felt a headache. How difficult is it to find someone in such a vast sea of people? Moreover, I have to send the remaining soul back, which makes me even more confused. So I humbly asked the old man, if I can find it, how can I make it complete?
The old man said that making the soul complete can be divided into two steps.
You must know that Tao Wangqing's soul escaped into the painting and entered the reincarnation, and they were separated for a thousand years. This is the collision of past and present lives.
The soul in the painting is her past life, and the person in this world is her present life.
If you want to put them together, you must first resolve the cause and effect of the past life.
Wang Qing was cooked and chopped into meat paste in her previous life, but Zhao Xin was too vicious and still refused to let her go. Maybe he asked a sorcerer to do something to Wang Qing's body, but the old man didn't know what method was used. He said that Wang Qing could feel that her body was suppressed in every life. Zhao Xin was telling her that even if she died, the matter was not over.
Resolving this kind of thing is exactly what the ritual officer is good at.
Tao Wang Qing came to me with this consideration.
So, the first step I have to do is to find Wang Qing's body in her previous life and crack the method the sorcerer used on her.
This is to resolve the previous life.
Resolving the previous life means sending the soul of the previous life into the current body, so that Tao Wang Qing can complete her soul. This step is not difficult. Once the previous life is resolved, the gap will be gone. My master knows how to do it.
"This is what Tao Wangqing has been thinking about."
The old man sighed softly: "In fact, she has long stopped hating him, but it's a pity that Zhao Xin didn't let her go. She also said that she was pitiful enough in her last life. If she can't blame the soul, then her reincarnation body will suffer for generations, and she doesn't want this."
I spread my hands: "But where can I find this reincarnation body?"
"Don't worry, you can always find it. There are no two identical flowers in the world, but there are always similar flowers. One flower withers and another blooms. Even if you reincarnate for thousands of generations, if you are interested, you can always recognize it."
The old man said slowly: "We in the Yinren Inn collect strange souls from all over the world. My master said before that if we talk about strangeness, Tao Wangqing can be said to be the first strangeness in the Yinren Inn. He has studied it more than once and concluded that the residual soul can't be a beast in reincarnation, but can only be a human, and it must be not far from another residual soul, and will instinctively approach its other residual soul.
My master didn't dare to tell Tao Wangqing about this, for fear that she would leave and do something impulsive.
Now that you know it, it doesn't matter. You must know that the Yinren Inn is a place with no fixed address and is elusive. This painting is placed in the Yinren Inn, and Tao Wangqing's reincarnation body is difficult to get close to it. But if you carry it with you day and night, or keep it at home, one day, she will come.
Remember, there are no identical flowers in the world, but there are similar flowers. You just need to find the similar one. "
He said so much, all of which are secrets in the Yinren Inn. It is rare. I stood up and bowed deeply to him immediately, turning around to leave.
"It's not difficult to save people, it's not difficult to make her soul complete, but it's difficult to pass the heaven's way. This matter has lasted for thousands of years. How do you know that it's not destined by heaven?"
The old guy said leisurely behind me as if he was drunk: "The way of heaven is to reduce the surplus and make up for the deficiency. A wisp of residual soul from a thousand years ago escaped the five thunders. It's hard for heaven to destroy it and hard for earth to bury it. This person must not be in the five elements. It may be a good thing that he is incomplete. Maybe it's the jealousy of heaven, or more likely... the taboo of heaven!
Now, if you help her complete her soul, the consequences are unpredictable. I don't know if she is okay, but you are the one who made this happen. The wrath of heaven must be on you.
Boy, can you... bear it?"