Paintings of Terror

This is an ancient temple made of stone, with a very simple construction style, which makes it difficult to tell the age for a while.

"Although I don't have much research on ancient architecture, this stone temple seems to have been built in the Sui and Tang Dynasties." Yue Cen was pushed by Ke Xun to the entrance of the temple. The sun's beams penetrated into the temple, and there were stone priests standing inside. Altar, but the position of the statue is empty.

The ancient temple covered by trees was really weird. Ke Xun was about to go in to see what happened alone, but he heard Yue Cen say, "Let's go in and have a look." There seemed to be no fear in his voice.

No wonder Huatui chose Yue Cen to be in the painting at the beginning, this person is really a rare "talent for painting".

There is no real temple gate in this temple, only an illegible stone tablet stands not far from the gate.Even if two people go in together, there should be no danger. In other words, even if Ke Xun goes in alone and something happens, with the power of Yue Cen in a wheelchair, I'm afraid he won't be able to help.

Instead of looking forward and backward, it is better to go together.

The temple is very shady, the sun shines through the darkness, and there are countless lights dancing in the bright place.

There is a stone platform behind the sacrificial altar, which obviously should be the place where the god statue is enshrined, but it is not known who the god is.

Yue Cen shook the wheel of the wheelchair with his hands, and looked around in the temple. At this time, his gaze stayed on the stone platforms on both sides of the altar.

Ke Xun also noticed the stone platforms on both sides: "The stone platforms in the center are used to enshrine the statues of gods, so what are the stone platforms on the two sides for?"

"It should also be used to worship gods." Yue Cen said.

Ke Xun only went to temples when he was a child. Looking back carefully, it seems that some temples are indeed arranged like this: "That is to say, this temple enshrines more than one god?"

"I think there are at least five, or even seven." Yue Cen guessed based on the size of the stone platform.

"But, why are the places for these statues empty? Where have the gods gone?" Ke Xun thought to himself that he had entered a lot of paintings, and had seen such things as paper figurines in Lijiacun, Tongzilou Wraith, and ghosts in the Oak Mountain Research Institute. ghosts, but rarely deal with gods.

"The situation in the temple is probably like this, let's go out and talk about it." Yue Cen shook the wheelchair and turned around, planning to leave the temple first.

Ke Xun followed, pushed Yue Cen out of the temple gate, just now he spoke in the temple, there was a heavy echo, as if his words were repeated by someone, which made people uneasy.

Outside is still the familiar natural scenery, the two stopped temporarily under a big tree next to the temple.

"Xiao Ke, have you encountered gods in previous paintings?" Yue Cen asked.

"I met once. It was a god who was both good and evil. When we produced the painting, we finally saw the good side of that god." What Ke Xun was talking about was the Heishitian in "Faith".

Yue Cen heard Ke Xun's brief talk about the painting "Faith", and felt that it had no similarities with the world the two of them currently lived in: "We found this place because of the moss, but the stone platform in the temple And the stone steps under the eaves are very dry, and no trace of moss was found."

Ke Xun tried to figure out a way of thinking: "When we first came here, we watched a shadow puppet show "A Mouse Married a Daughter". At that time, your legs were not very comfortable. After dawn, you found that your legs were petrified, and moss grew on them. , came all the way here in order to find the source of moss, and found this temple. The temple is empty, and the granary we saw just now is also empty. The granary is empty because the grain in it has been eaten up by the mice; Kong, why, where did the gods go? Is there any connection between these gods and the "mice married daughter"?"

Yue Cen had been listening carefully to Ke Xun's words, and some inspiration flashed in his heart, but he didn't have enough basis.

At this time, I heard Ke Xun say: "Worshiping rats? Didn't you just say that 'mice marrying daughters' is actually a folk activity of worshiping rats? The sacrifice of rats should also be a kind of sacrifice? Could it be that what is enshrined here is actually a kind of sacrifice?" yes……"

mouse?

This statement made both of them a little uncomfortable.

Yue Cen said: "Although I haven't figured out the reason for this, I still have a certain understanding of traditional New Year customs. I have never heard of this kind of sacrifice method, which is really not in line with tradition."

Ke Xun also thought that what he said just now was a bit absurd. If this painting is known for absurdity, it would make sense, but it happens to be based on traditional New Year pictures, so it should still focus on traditional Chinese New Year customs.

"Sister Cen, let's go and have a look at that big stone tablet. Although the handwriting is blurred, some strokes can still be seen clearly." Ke Xun pushed Yue Cen closer to the entrance of the temple again.

The stele was so tall that it almost blocked the gate of the temple. Because of its age, there were many deep cracks on the stele, and many characters on it were illegible.

It can be vaguely seen from the arrangement of the characters that the above seems to be a poem with four characters and one sentence.

"It's a four-character poem." Yue Cen identified it carefully, and could see that there seemed to be a word "xian" in the last sentence.

"Four-character poem, is there any explanation for this kind of poem?" Ke Xun also recognized a "Yi" character. Although the font is complicated, this character can be said to be the most complete character on the entire stone tablet.

"Four-character poems can be regarded as the earliest poetry genre in ancient my country. The "Book of Songs" is dominated by four-character characters. If you push forward, four-character characters can be seen in ancient ballads and "Book of Changes." Yue Cen's gaze I scanned every word on the stone tablet, but I was sure that there were only four or five words.

"Wei", "Ding", "Zunyi", "Ling", "Salty".

The most important title and the first line of the poem, because of a horizontal crack on the surface of the stele, completely disappeared the handwriting.

"If I had seen this poem before, I could only guess that it was a poem about ancient sacrifices, but since we started to study things like painting, I think this poem must not be that simple." Ke Xun's eyes fell on the one he was most familiar with. On the two characters of "Wei" and "Ding".

Diwei, Jiuding.

Is this poem related to Ruhua?

Yue Cen wrote something on the palm of his hand with his fingers, and he was still muttering something. The two of them had long since lost their bags when they came to this world, and they couldn't even find the pens and paper.

Ke Xun saw that Yue Cen seemed to be no stranger to this poem, so he simply picked up a branch and squatted on the dirt: "Sister Cen, tell me, I'll write it, and if you don't know how to write, just tell me the strokes." composition."

Yue Cen was very impressed by Ke Xun's quick response: "I have indeed seen this poem, but I can't say whether I can recite it completely. I used to participate in the shooting of a documentary about ancient customs. There is a group of "Songs of the Suburban Temple" in the Tang Dynasty. This poem is the poem to welcome the gods. I taught him to recite word by word."

Ke Xun didn't have time to feel the coincidence of this incident, holding the branch in his hand and said: "That's great, you memorize it, I'll write it!"

Yue Cen recited from memory: "Songs of the Suburban Temple · Wax Hundred Gods Movement · Greeting the Gods."

Ke Xun: "'Spicy Baishen'? Which 'spicy' is it?"

"Candle wax." When Yue Cen said this, he couldn't help looking at the scene in the temple again, as if he had thought of something.

Ke Xun has already finished writing this series of titles: "My handwriting is ugly, you just read it."

"The writing is not ugly, it can be seen that it was written by an open-minded person," Yue Cen commented, and continued to recite:

The eight waxes are opened for sacrifice, and all things are sacrificed together.

The upper pole is Tianwei, and the lower is Qiongkun Ji.

Ding Zu Liufen, Zun Yi recommends beauty.

There are spirits and only ones, and Xianxi will come and stop.

After Yue Cen's prompting and correction, Ke Xun finally wrote down the poem completely.

The recognizable words on the stele can also be determined according to the location. This four-character poem is exactly the "Songs of the Suburban Temple · Wax Hundred Gods Music · Welcome God" recited by Yue Cen.

"It seems that I judged a little too little before. In fact, there are eight gods enshrined in this temple." Yue Cen said.

"Eight? Could it be the 'Eight Wax' mentioned in this poem?" Ke Xun asked.

"Yes, this poem to welcome the gods starts with the Eight Wax God, so there is a line at the beginning of 'Eight Wax Opens the Sacrifice, All Things Come Together'."

Ke Xun looked at the poem he wrote with the branches on the ground, and sensitively found the two words he cared about most before: "The 'dimensional' here is not the dimension of the earth, but the dimension of the sky. The 'ding' here should be It is also the thing that holds the sacrificial food."

"Perhaps these two words just happened to appear here. In fact, the two sentences 'upper extremely Tianwei, lower Qiongkunji' refer to everything in the world, which coincides with the previous sentence 'all things are sacrificed together'."

Ke Xun put aside the ultimate proposition of "into the painting" for the time being, and focused on his eyes: "Bawa God, which eight gods are they?"

Yue Cen frowned: "I may not be complete, if Director Hua came in..."

It is useless to say more, everything else is a false proposition.

Yue Cen tried to recall the content about Bawa: "Bawa is an ancient god related to agriculture in ancient times. The 'rat plague' we mentioned before is actually under the control of Bawa. People often worship Bawa to pray 'There are no insects in the field, no rats in the barn, the five grains are harvested, and people live and work in peace and contentment'. The Eight Wax Gods are respectively——Xian Sie; Si Sie; Nong; Cat Tiger; Square; Shui Yong;

Ke Xun: It sounds like they are all Chinese characters, why can't I understand a single word except for 'cat tiger' and 'insect'?

Ke Xun: "Well, is there one less? Sister Cen, you just said seven?"

Yue Cen: "Yes, there's another one, the wording is very complicated and difficult to understand, it's called 'Post Biao'."

"W-what? Oil what?"

"Postiaogan," Yue Cen said again slowly, "these three characters have their own meanings, 'post' refers to a farmhouse hut, 'biao' refers to a field, and '畷' refers to a well. There is a further explanation of these three words in the collections written by the descendants of the Ming and Qing Dynasties: The place where the Biaobiao Tianbian is connected to the farm was built as a post house, and the Tiangan lived in it to supervise the farming, so it is called the post.

"..., the posterity said that it is even more cloudy and misty. Which god is this?"

"There is a mention of 'Tian Jian', which refers to the official in charge of slave farming during the Western Zhou Dynasty in China, which is what later generations call the 'supervisor of farming'."

Ke Xun finally understood [-]% to [-]%: "Speaking of which, the gods worshiped in ancient times were also very simple. There were officials who supervised the cultivation, insects, and cats and tigers. The meowing of cats last night should not be ordinary. Cat, is the cat and tiger spirit appearing?"

"Very likely." Yue Cen said.

"What kind of gods are the Xian Sie and Si Sie you mentioned before? These two are at the top of the list, so they should be relatively high-ranking gods."

"Yes, I think these two should be the gods enshrined in the main gods of the temple: Xian Sie is Shen Nong; Si Sie is Hou Ji."