Human dimension reduction

When we met for the first time, we walked down Huangquan Road arm in arm, which is the genuine Huangquan Road. This kind of thing will never happen to ordinary people once in a lifetime. Unfortunately, neither Qiao Zhou nor Lan Yin can be classified as ordinary people. Therefore, neither of them felt that the current situation was inappropriate.

Huangquan Road is really an overly plain yellow dirt road. Qiao Zhou's walking stick will poke small round holes on it. Lan Yin illuminates the road with that strangely colored palace lantern. A few steps away is the thick fog, the blue-gray fog is like a curtain, covering all prying eyes, and there are faint figures moving forward, like a gloomy illusion.

Time lost its meaning here, they kept walking for an unknown amount of time, it seemed as long as a lifetime and as short as an instant, Lan Yin exerted a little strength on his arms, leading Qiao Zhou to the side At one o'clock, the mist that filled the eyes suddenly dissipated, and a simple and naive city gate appeared in front of the eyes. The city walls of blue bricks and earth stones surrounded a circle, enveloping a city.

"The gate of hell is closed." Lan Yin turned her face and explained to Qiao Zhou.

The city gate looks really simple and unpretentious, like a low and fat building in the Spring and Autumn Period, with wood, stone and soil, and the city gate is also pieced together with thick wood. The two doors are wide open, walking on the yellow mud road The ghosts who came down looked numb and cold, and walked forward in a line.

They were barefoot and dressed in white linen mourning clothes. They were all yellow and thin and withered. Occasionally, there would be a brightly colored man wearing a silk shroud in the team, even his body was larger than the surrounding people.

This line was so long that it couldn't see the end, and the end stretched into the endless mist, as if the mist would condense countless people, walking forward numbly and stiffly.

Lan Yin walked over with Qiao Zhou on her arm, ignoring the long line, the palace lanterns illuminated the small area under their feet, and none of the ghosts with white and numb faces turned their faces to look at them, as if Yes they don't exist the same.

He walked all the way to the two big city gates, and a man in a dark black robe stood there with a mourning stick in his hand, collecting silver notes, ingots, and a thin guide from every passing ghost. Putting the banknote into his sleeve, Lu Yin casually threw it into the paper basket on the side. The paper basket seemed to be filled no matter what, and there was only one bottom.

In the joy of collecting money, he suddenly turned his head ninety degrees, stared straight at them, and clicked his tongue: "Ask the Yin master?"

Lan Yin looked at him calmly, with a calm expression.

The errand laughed strangely, didn't ask him for money or directions, and waved him in. After Lan Yin passed by him, he said in that erratic voice, "Wait for your lamp." If it is destroyed, I will accept you as a little devil."

This was obviously not a good word, but Lan Yin didn't respond to it, and walked out of the city gate with a lamp in his hand, with condensed silence in the corners of his eyes and brows.

Qiao Zhou looked at him, and Lan Yin sensed his gaze, and turned to look at Qiao Zhou, with a question mark vividly appearing in his eyes.

Qiao Zhou shook his head with a smile, and asked casually, "Is that how they talk to you?"

Lan Yin paused for a moment before realizing what he was referring to, but he didn't think there was anything wrong: "Ghosts are not good things, just don't listen or believe."

Qiao Zhou asked again, "Then what did he mean when the lights went out?"

This time Lan Yin paused for a long time, and let out a muffled "uh" in his nasal cavity, before saying: "The lamp illuminates the road to fix the soul, and when it goes out, he dies."

He spoke very briefly. Even though he was gentle and wanted to communicate with people, he was a bit cold and impersonal because of the short sentences. Qiao Zhou put his cold left hand in his arm and bent slightly: "I heard that Chinese people are very restrained and reserved, but this is the first time I've seen someone as reserved as you... Is this how you usually talk? Are you still not happy to talk to me?"

The young doctor with long silver-gray hair tilted his head and stared at him, with an ambiguous smile on his face, both like a harmless joke and a serious question hidden under polite words.

Lan Yin, who rarely communicated with living people, could not distinguish his emotions.

"I...no," the phoenix-eyed immortal defended himself blankly and aggrievedly, "I seldom speak..."

After he finished speaking, after a few seconds, he slowly continued: "The morticians have many taboos, so it's better to talk less."

While talking, they were already standing on a bustling street, and the bustling was only compared to the yellow mud road outside. Small buildings were built on both sides of the street in imitation of the world of living people, and there were shops with paper sheds on the left and right sides of the street. , but what is sold is not vegetables, vegetables, wine, meat, and daily necessities, but the same shroud paper, as well as hearts, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys.

It's creepy to watch.

The stall owners all wore inhuman, overly attentive smiles, the smiles were too slick and forceful, and on the contrary showed a bit of eerie horror. In addition, their faces were pale and blue, just like a dead body under the blanket. There was a bit of liveliness, but it was this liveliness that made their smiles even more creepy.

The surrounding light is dim, and there is no loud voice in the whole market, only the ubiquitous whispering, like countless insects gathering together, the conversations are also like whispers, and the conversations are also hidden, and the eyes of the godless It was full of greed, eager to peel off a layer of skin from every ghost that passed by.

Looking at this scene, Qiao Zhou felt what it meant to be spooky like never before.

It's not the scary kind of ghosts rushing to the face, but it's more bleak and terrifying than that. Everything around is announcing that this is another world, and the living people retreat.

Every ghost that walks by their side will stir up some dark wind, the wind is not strong, but it can blow directly into the bone marrow through the skin, sucking the temperature in the skin and flesh of the bones with small mouthfuls.

Lan Yin lifted the lantern slightly, and a ghost passing by them subconsciously bypassed the light blue light and walked forward unconsciously. In this cold and frightening world everywhere, light Instead, the blue light became clear and ethereal.

An old man in ragged clothes stopped in front of a shop with a shroud sign. The stall owner, Ge Shi, was a middle-aged man. Seeing someone patronizing, he immediately stretched his neck, stretched the thin neck by a foot and a half, and showed a huge smile that reached to the ears: "Buy clothes?"

The old man took half a step back in embarrassment, and seemed to be still hesitating: "Hmm..."

The stall owner stretched his neck a few more inches: "The one who just died?"

He was obviously asking the question knowingly, the old man still had some soil stains from the yellow mud road on his body, and more importantly, compared with the skinny and lifeless stall owner, the old man's face still retained a bit of freshness similar to that of a stranger , and behave more humanely.

The stall owner twisted his neck and grinned: "You should buy clothes after you die, otherwise you will drive in front of the Hall of Yama with disheveled clothes, maybe you will be punished for being disrespectful, and you will be a dog and a pig in the next life!"

"You can't eat enough to eat and don't wear good clothes while you're alive, and you can't walk around in a decent way when you die. Why do you spend your whole life here?"

The old man was moved slightly by what he said, but Qiao Zhou who was not far away saw that the head attached to the slender neck turned slightly and moved closer to the back of the old man's neck. Showing a bit of intoxicated joy like a living person smoking opium cream.

"I, I have no money..." The old man was finally persuaded, but he could only embarrassingly refuse because his pockets were empty.

"No money? It's easy to have no money. Everyone is a dead ghost. What can you do with money? Come, let me breathe a few breaths, and I will give you a shroud."

The stall owner whispered, and the elongated nonsense floated faintly and thinly, winding and winding like silk, making people shudder from the back to the top of the head.

"Live?" The old man repeated suspiciously.

"It's not worth anything. It's just that I've been dead for too long. I want to be angry with the new ghost. I'm at a disadvantage. Do you want to change?"

The stall owner asked lightly, but stared straight at the old man, his greedy eyes almost shot out a hook to hook the prey in front of him.

"Then..." The old man hesitated for a moment, but still couldn't resist the threatening words of the stall owner, and nodded in confusion, "Change!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the stall owner pounced on him like a spider, leaned over his head and took a big breath. The breath was so long that it seemed to squeeze out the cavity in the whole body and fill it up from the old man. The "liveness" snatched there.

After taking a sip, the stall owner's neck shortened, and a bit of regret appeared on his face: "I'm old after all, I only have so much vitality..."

He casually grabbed a dark blue flowered shroud from the stall, threw it in front of the old man, and said impatiently, "Let's go."

The old man who had been sucked out of his vitality bent down to pick up the shroud, and when he raised his head again, the freshness of human nature just now had completely disappeared. There was a faint blue on his dull and numb face, and his eyes were rounded occasionally, showing ghostly greed. Viciousness flowed from the corners of his eyes.

Qiao Zhou looked at this short-lived transaction, Lan Yin didn't rush him, and patiently watched it with him, and finally said softly: "There are so many nonsense stories that are unbelievable, ghosts are happy, and new ghosts still have vitality. It will be better than these Old ghosts are more popular with ghosts, and there are many benefits."

Qiao Zhou then looked at him: "Do you often see this kind of thing?"

Lane nodded.

"Then you don't care?"

Lan Yin was stunned for a moment, her expression filled with confusion of "I'm going to take care of this?", and said slowly for a long while: "Ghosts do ghost things, people walk in human ways, each has his own destiny."

The implication is that it's none of my business, why should I care.

Qiao Zhou couldn't help laughing, this sentence is very interesting.

He thought that Lan Yin was the kind of person with a cold face and a soft heart. It turned out that this kind of cold face and soft heart was fake. This person just had his own code of conduct.

They didn't talk about it again, and Lan Yin led him along with a lamp, and came to a small temple at the end. The temple had no door or window, and the front was wide open. A statue as tall as a man was enshrined. Hanging green, with green face and long fangs, extremely ferocious and majestic, holding the demon pestle and lotus bowl in his hand, glaring at the outside world.

There was a small altar under the statue, but it was empty, and nothing was placed on it.

Lan Yin walked in with Qiao Zhou, put the palace lantern on the altar, took out a thick stack of Ming coins and tin foil from his sleeve, and leaned against the altar to quickly fold ingots.

His hands were nimble and nimble, and the speed at which the ingots were folded was so fast that Qiao Zhou's eyes were dazzled. The folded ingots were all plump and swollen, as if real ingots had fallen on the ground.

In just a few minutes, he folded out dozens of ingots, put the ingots and Ming coins on the altar table together, took out a thin needle and pricked his finger, a drop of bright red blood fell into the fireworks of the palace lantern, and the light blue candlelight Suddenly, vermilion light burst out, and the mist rolled into the small temple. Qiao Zhou vaguely saw that those thin paper ingots seemed to have a solid body in an instant, each of them glowed with a silvery metal cold light, together with the pile of ghosts. The coin is also much thicker.

In another moment, most of the fog cleared away, and all the ingots and paper money on the table disappeared. A thin and short figure appeared in the fog, with empty and numb eyes, wearing linen clothes, and a slightly round face. It seems to be scattered.

Qiao Zhou's right hand, which was pressing on the cane, tightened for a second, and then let it go immediately.

Lan Yin actually recruited the soul of that child.