Seventy-two Changes of the Evil Spirits

When Xing Catou opened his eyelids again, he saw a clear moon sky.

He tried to get up, but the pain all over his body broke out violently, making him let out a sigh of relief.

"His~"

"The boss is awake?"

With a cry of exclamation, a circle of heads came up in black.

There are old wives weeping with joy, the timid little girl next door, and more of them are a group of brothers who have come after hearing the news. They have complex expressions, joy, anxiety, and fear mixed in every face.

Lao Xing endured weakness and severe pain, staring at the officials.

"Where is the monster?"

He asked.

The atmosphere in the field stagnated, and the officials looked at each other.

"Where is the Taoist?"

He asked again.

The servants were still speechless, but cast their eyes together at the closed door on the opposite side. There was no sound inside, only the thin mist slowly flowing down the wall.

Alas~ he sighed in his heart.

Looking at the appearance, he didn't know how. These brothers didn't know where they heard the movement and rushed to this place, either because of his prestige in the past, or because they were afraid of being held accountable afterwards, they didn't dare to leave easily. But on the other hand, he was even more afraid of the monsters inside, afraid that Qingqing's life would be delayed, so he didn't dare to go in and help.

So, just like this, with the woman, the child, and the wounded myself, I was a spectator outside the wall.

He shook his head and stood up forcibly.

At this time.

"Crunch."

The door that had been closed suddenly opened.

Everyone in the court shivered and looked at the door in a panic.

Soon, but relax together.

But seeing the intersection of mist and moonlight, the short-haired Taoist strode forward with a sword in one hand and a **** head in the other.

…

"Does the head catcher recognize this demon?"

The head in Li Changan's hands looked rather miserable, without the hideous appearance of choosing people in the yard.

The black short hairs covering the cheeks are hardened by being wet with dirty blood; two dim eyes protruding out of the eye sockets like dead fish; one fang is smashed by the hilt of the sword, leaving only half of the neck drooping at the corner of the mouth; The skin and flesh on the upper part are ragged, dripping with foul blood.

In Lao Xing's eyes, there are three points of joy, seven points of disgust, and very inexplicable.

After the Daoist Li hit the door, without saying anything, he stuffed the pickled stuff into Lao Xing's eyes, and asked what else, do you recognize this monster?

Pooh!

Lao Xing is a Qing white man, how can I recognize any monsters? !

"It's abrupt and poor."

The Taoist priest saw that he was different from his side, and he patted his forehead and asked the others for a torch.

But the "sizzling" grilling sound was accompanied by burnt smell and meaty smell.

Li Chang'an turned his head "clean and fresh" to Xing Catu's head.

"now what?"

Lao Xing's eyes widened.

This... isn't this the woman next door who invited to take care of the three little babies? How did she become a monster? How can you start with a baby who has seen a big baby since childhood?

Xing Chu's head thundered, and his anger was overwhelmed for a while, and his blood surged, and he overturned again.

...

When Li Changan bid farewell to everyone and returned to Didian.

The sky is already bright.

But Xiaoshuicheng was still immersed in the exhaustion after the carnival, and he was not awake.

There are few pedestrians on the street, and the restaurant is also deserted. Only the vines on the wall and the old locust tree in the courtyard reflect a bit of liveliness.

Listening to the movement of Li Changan pushing the door, the store yawned and came up to meet him.

"Do you need to prepare food for the Dao Master?"

"No." Li Changan smiled, "The layman is going to sleep by himself."

The two sang and went back to their rooms.

Unsurprisingly, people in the room were already empty.

Taoist priests left the pile of food on the table, nothing else was moving, only the small bag of wisteria cake was eaten clean, and the dross was not left. There was only a small note left in the oil paper bag.

Li Changan fetched it, with a line of fine print above it.

"Tonight, at the top of the Dionysus kiln."

...

The Bacchus Festival has reached its last day, and it is also the most solemn and most important day.

According to the usual practice, today, in the Dionysus kiln, the best wine made in the last round should be selected and presented to the Dionysus, in order to protect the future wines with mellow and good luck.

Starting today, old wine can be taken out of the cellar and new wine will be brewed. Xiaoshui, a city on the water and a city of wine shops, has also started to operate again, and the streets and lanes will be immersed in the fragrance of flowers and wine.

Therefore, after noon, people have already got their energy, and once again dressed up to gather towards the Dionysus kiln.

Officials, scholars, gentry, wealthy businessmen, and wine shop owners can enter the kiln to watch the ceremony, and the common people have to wait outside.

Li Chang'an and the owner's family were soaked in the light of the Yanjia wine shop next door, and they were able to enter the Dionysian kiln to see the western scene.

Entering the distillery cellar or distillery temple, it is Li Changan, a modern man, who can't help but be amazed by the building in front of him.

When he first arrived at Xiaoshui, the Taoist priests also wandered around outside the Dionysus Cellar. At that time, only from the outside, the Dionysian Kiln was just a round hall built on a stone platform at the end of the long street, with gilt eaves and green tiles and vermilion lacquer, even if it was magnificent and exquisite, it was nothing surprising.

But I never expected that in this hall, under the cover of bricks and tiles, the main body of the temple was actually a huge deep well, which was more than ten feet deep underground and could be more than thirty steps wide.

For example, it's like falling down from the same building with nearly ten floors.

There are plank roads and stairs on the wall of the well, which are connected to each other, and many stone chambers are cut out layer by layer to store wine. According to the store, every year the wine produced by various houses in the city will be moved into the stone room and aged for at least one year.

Thanks to the blessings of Bacchus, the wine in the cellar will be exceptionally mellow, which is why Xiaoshui Niang is famous in the north and the south.

Li Changan was uncomfortable about this.

Anyway, he has been hanging around for a long time, and the so-called "Xiaoshui Niang" has never been in his ears.

So he got a little understanding and cast his eyes to the bottom of the well.

There is nothing at the bottom of the well, only a statue of a person is enshrined on a Buddhist platform. Unlike the ordinary and solemn gods and Buddhas, this idol looks like a gentle man, lying on a toast and swigging. For birthdays, the skirts of the clothes are scattered, quite a bit of Wei and Jin style.

Should I say, is it worthy of being a Bacchus?

There is also a mage on the altar with a few young boys to preside over the ceremony.

The mage is holding a dragon horn and wearing a **** forehead, which is a bit of Lushan School's meaning.

Li Changan looked more closely, and this wizard turned out to be a female crown, with a white-haired shawl, a rickety figure, and layers of folds on his face, as if he had already passed the age of old age.

"Who is that old mage?"

"That's real Qingping." The shopkeeper saluted him before explaining to the Taoist priest, "The presiding officer of Shuiyueguan outside the city, the famous Youdao Quanzhen in the vicinity. The Taoism is advanced, and all the merchants who come and go look for this immortal leader. Please pray for peace."

Li Changan nodded and kept watching.

After some weird rituals, this year's wine chief, which was selected from hundreds of new wines from dozens of wineries in the city, was finally released for the **** of wine.

Unexpectedly, several large wine shops in the city were not selected, but the small wine shop of Yan's family got a bargain.

The host of Yanfang was overjoyed immediately, and he opened the kiln on the spot, scattered the wine and drank most of it with the others, and the restaurants present followed suit.

For a time.

The cups and cups are flowing, and the wine is soaring.

After a short while, the fine wine will be delivered to the outside of the cellar, to the long street, to the bridge, to the boat, and the city is toasted and drunk, cheering the sky.

But to the end.

The wine drank, and the sun swayed.

The prosperity is gone, and people go back individually with a sense of drunkenness.

Of course, Li Changan is not included.

...

Li Changan has always been unable to understand why the places where these people from all walks of life choose to meet are always weird.

For example, the top of the temple of wine.

The night was deep, and after two nights of carnival, Xiaoshui City felt very deserted.

The Taoist priest stood alone in a corner outside the temple, relatively speechless with the thick and tall vermilion lacquered beams.

a long time.

He sighed in resignation, rolled up his sleeves, and stuck himself on the smooth pillar like a caterpillar, shrugging up little by little.

After spending a lot of effort, I finally tossed myself to the roof, carefully avoiding the fragile glazed tiles, and stepped on the roof ridge all the way to the highest point in the center.

Look around.

Gouyue hangs high, and the four fields are wide open.

In the street market, the lights are sparsely lit, and only the wisteria casts a large purple in the quiet city under the moonlight.

Li Changan couldn't help but fumble into his arms.

Pity.

It's not when the moon is full, otherwise, in this situation, would it be inappropriate to drink a moon wine?

Suddenly, his expression changed and he turned around.

But on the cornice slanting into the night at one corner, the ghost-faced man or eyebrow stood quietly, and the night breeze raised the red skirt, like a cluster of floating fireworks.

...

Yu Mei stood in the wind and said nothing.

Li Chang waited quietly for a long time without waiting for her to speak.

The Taoist priest really didn't want to play the game of "speaking before anyone else", and said to himself.

"I killed a man-eater last night."

"After the head was cut off, Xiao Shui's arrest quickly told me that the figure and face of the demon was the same as the victim's wife."

"It just so happens that I also recognize such monsters."

"The name Xiong Ga Po, or grandmother wolf, cannibal woman, or grandmother tiger, is not a spontaneous fairy, but a monster from a horrible legend."

Although the word monster is often used interchangeably, it actually refers to two different types of monsters. "Demon" usually refers to mortals that have gained wisdom and can deceive people. The "weirds" are monsters born from the dark side of people's fear, jealousy, greed, desire, etc. They are usually born from the spreading legends and stories, and they also act completely according to the images in the stories. Before they are born, there is no entity.

Although there are few cases of people turning into monsters, Taoist priests have heard of them, such as being infected with corpse poison and becoming a living corpse; in other words, entering Zuhuhu's house has gradually become half-human and half-fox. But from human to strange...

"I'm weird."

Li Changan raised his eyes.

"Can the monsters or spells you talk about turn people into such illusory monsters?"

Yu Mei finally said aloud, but it was just a sentence.

"do not know."

The Taoist priest unconsciously grinded his molars and read the Qingjing Jing several times before he suppressed the urge to draw swords and cut people.

What a special thing! Those who encounter this kind of communication barriers have to spend more saliva.

The Taoist thought for a moment.

"How did the layman kill Yu Xiaoshui before?"

"Thirty is seven."

This number is more than double the number announced by the Yamen. However, it is also considered ancient and modern practice, and it is useless at this time.

"Is there a precedent for this kind of "weird"?"

"None of the people I killed..." At this point, Yu Mei suddenly stopped and changed the subject abruptly, "I didn't investigate much about specific matters."

"Since the Taoist priest has seen it with his own eyes, he must know what I said is true. How did I consider my proposal last night?"

Li Daoshi smiled, untied the two oil paper bags and threw them over.

"what is this?"

"For the time being, it counts as a joint meeting ceremony."

"what is this?"

"One pack of Ziluo crisp, one pack is the medicine for miasma."

Li Changan returned casually.

When he saw each other last night, he had already discovered that Yu Mei was looking for his help. What happened frequently, it was clearly a trick of the miasma, and he was powerless to continue.

When Yu Mei heard it, her movements froze. After a long time, two words were squeezed out from behind the mask.

"Thanks a lot."

Then he took Ziluo crisp, but threw the herbs aside.

The other party wasted his "kindness", the Taoist priest was not upset, just smiled:

"Let's count as companions for the time being. There are certain things that should be honest."

Yu Mei didn't say a word, just probing his hand to take the mask on his face.

"The layman has misunderstood." The Taoist priest waved his hand. "Under your mask is beauty or ugliness, male or female, old and young, poor Dao has no intention of exploring, what I want to ask is..."

Li Changan said solemnly.

"The layman is always the first step to kill the demon-changed person, but how do you determine it? How do you know it?"

"fog."

"fog?"

"A person infected with the demon plague only transforms in the night, and there will be a large fog in the surrounding area. Just ascend and overlook, you can see it at a glance."

This explanation is unexpected but reasonable. During the three nights of Qian Dazhi, the beggar, and Xiong Gapo, it was indeed accompanied by fog. If you think about it in detail, Xing Tautou also said that Ghost Face will always kill people in the night fog. It seemed that it was not Yu Mei that caused the night mist, but the night mist.

"Speaking of which, it's also..."

Li Changan's words stopped abruptly. He looked behind his eyebrows, then raised his eyes and looked around.

He burst into laughter and pointed to the surroundings.

"Is this the fog associated with the demonization that the layman said?"

But seeing the clear moonlight, Xiaoshui City is still immersed in sleep, but at the bridgehead, in the middle of the street, in the long street, in the end of the alley, in the wisteria flowers, there is a very light and thin mist everywhere, which wraps around the city.

The fog slowly surging in the dim and empty city, like a white fog rising from dry ice on the stage, waiting for the protagonist to come on stage.

Yu Mei seemed to be horrified by this change, and he was silent for a long time under the mask.

until.

Ah~ the sudden miserable howl broke the silence of the city.

Just like a gong sounded.

The show begins.