48 Chapter 48

The night sky was the same as the first day they entered the dungeon, with dark clouds and gloomy clouds, and no moonlight could be seen.

Fortunately, it would rain tomorrow night, so nothing serious would happen on the first night, so it could be a buffer for a while.

This night was quite a bit of panic.

What happened before dark was exactly the same as the last reincarnation.

This time, in full view of everyone, Lao Qiang's body was not hung on the old locust tree, but was quite smartly hung on another roof. Of course, there was no sign of any change in the miserable death.

Xu Su was stunned, "This body is so smart, do you know if anyone is watching him?"

In this regard, Zong Jiu basically confirmed an idea in his mind through this incident.

The team in the earth house was fine, everyone was well fed and well-drinking, and the previous tension was diluted.

Many times, people's confidence and courage must be obtained from the outside. Apart from anything else, the magician's omnipotent attitude, as if he didn't take everything seriously, also gave them great confidence.

After Lao Qiang's incident, there were no special events tonight.

Zong Jiu asked everyone to sleep well and save enough energy tomorrow. Not only did they have to rescue the woman, but they also had to fight against the villagers. This was not an easy task.

Xu Sen raised his hand, "So what are our specific actions tomorrow?"

Zong Jiu touched his chin, "We will wait outside the house first, and take the woman away when we see her."

"Once we succeed, retreat to the woods immediately, don't delay."

Everyone had no objection to this action plan.

They only knew two breakthrough points, one was the woman, and the other was the Yin Po in the temple.

No one knew what happened on the night when the mission failed. Now all they could do was to quickly gather clues to avoid a tragedy like the last reincarnation.

The next morning, before dawn, everyone got up.

Here we have to say that Zhuge An's Tai Chi Bagua Plate is really a good thing. It can attack and defend, and it can also light fires and estimate time.

At 7:45 in the morning, the trainees were ready and filed out of the adobe house.

The old people who were guarding outside the adobe house and had also lit a fire like them looked at them one by one with vigilant eyes.

After the incident at the head of the village where Zong Jiu was unwilling to lend a hand, the atmosphere between the two teams was now tense. The old people felt that the newcomers had no attitude and were unwilling to help. Now they were even more unwilling to give a good face and snorted coldly.

"Hide, you go to guard around Wang Shou's house first."

Zong Jiu turned around and asked Zhuge An to take the newcomers away first, and he turned around and walked to another team.

Anthony and others were the first to show unfriendly looks.

"Why are you nervous? I'm not looking for you. I'm looking for senior No. 4."

Zong Jiu deliberately emphasized the words "No. 4" and nodded to Azan in black, "Senior, can you lend me a step to talk?"

Azan in black silently accepted his proposal and turned to walk aside.

The Elders' Alliance was originally a loose organization. Although Azan in black stood with them, he was very independent. The other party was not the kind of petty person who held grudges. He did not take Zong Jiu's incident at the entrance of the village to heart, and the others were even less concerned.

[Ah, they actually want to talk alone! Damn, why is the live camera of this copy public?]

[That's right, we also want to know what the two bosses talked about in private.]

[I feel that the S-level seniors are actually quite easy to talk to. I always thought that Azan in black raised a ghost and shaved his head, which was scary. Who would have thought that he was actually a good person! 】

After walking aside, Azan in black spoke first: "What do you want to talk to me about?"

Zong Jiu, "It's not a big deal, I just have a guess."

"I heard from my senior before that the Bodhisattva soil in front of the temple at the entrance of the village is extremely cold and yin?"

"Yes."

Azan in black nodded, "That villager once said that any plant transplanted there could not survive because the soil was too cold and yin. But this kind of cold and yin is not caused by the existence of supernatural beings, but a natural cold and yin thing."

Things that are naturally cold and yin are as rare as things that are naturally pure yang. If he hadn't seen the Bodhisattva soil in Tongbai Village with his own eyes, Azan in black could not imagine that there would be such pure soil in the world without any other cold and yin soil.

"If you have to say..."

He pointed out obscurely, "It really looks like the method of immortals. Because such soil cannot be born naturally in the world, even the soil of Huangquan will inevitably have flaws or impurities."

Of course, this conclusion was drawn more because Azan in black felt the feeling of being enveloped by Buddha's light in the temple of Tongbai Village. Otherwise, he would not dare to jump to conclusions.

Zong Jiu pondered, "How can plants grow on this kind of soil?"

The black-clothed Azan replied, "Only pure yang plants can grow without being affected by yin and cold."

The probability is as rare as before, which can be ignored.

Zong Jiu decided to skip this topic for the time being.

"I have another question. If a normal person eats such soil for many years, will there be any effect?"

The black-clothed Azan frowned deeply, "Humans are yang, and soil is yin. If you eat it for many years, it will definitely cause serious damage to the yang body. If you use external force... it is very likely to achieve a semi-yin physique, and it is not impossible to force the yin and yang eyes to open."

"I see."

Zong Jiu let out a long breath, "Thank you for your answer. I wonder what you think of the human heart turning into a ghost after hearing these causes and conditions?"

Zong Jiu had this guess a long time ago.

First, he saw the pupils of the people in the village turn black from time to time, and each time it was only a moment and then quickly recovered.

Secondly, when he and Yi Ruisi encountered ghosts in the corridor, the ghost obviously still had room for thinking, and did not directly degenerate into an irrational ghost.

Finally, the human heart turning into a ghost is not an isolated case. Similar examples have been recorded in ancient and modern Chinese and foreign strange stories. But perhaps, as the black-robed Ajaan said, the required conditions are too harsh.

Now, the most demanding condition has been unintentionally met.

"If you take Bodhisattva soil for a long time, and then assist with the evil thoughts of the human heart, it is indeed very possible."

The black-robed Ajaan frowned and thought, "But that requires extremely terrible evil thoughts, not only terrible, but also huge."

He stopped talking halfway.

He had seen how evil the people in this village were. The fact that they like to eat human flesh alone is enough to scare people.

As for why the black-robed Ajaan kept saying that the people in Tongbai Village have a habit of eating human flesh, rather than eating human flesh when they are forced to have no other choice. It is because he found fresh human flesh soaked in blood in the water tanks of almost every household. Even if some villagers have surplus food, they also have water tanks for human flesh. And when he went to the butcher's house, he found that the butcher's woodshed was full of frozen corpses, and many of them had even the meat on the bones picked clean, not willing to waste it at all.

The only thing to be thankful for is that there is no resentment in these corpses. They may be ordinary people who starved to death on the roadside, whose bodies were picked up and their flesh was cut off and hung for sale. They have not yet reached the point of killing people and cutting their flesh.

If they were killing people and cutting their flesh, the black-clothed Azan might have noticed it as soon as he entered the village, and there was really no need to wait until now.

It can be seen that the people in the village are completely addicted to eating human flesh. Because there are still many trees in the woods behind the village with bark hanging on them, plus the edible Bodhisattva soil, they clearly have room for choice.

Even if the people in this village have this evil habit and have Bodhisattva soil as a catalyst, to be fair, the black-clothed Azan believes that the conditions for human hearts to turn into ghosts have not been met.

Zong Jiu did not argue with him about this topic, and instead said: "It is indeed necessary to have more evidence or facts to prove it, but since there is this possibility, we should be prepared for the worst. What do you think, senior?"

The black-clothed Azan relaxed his brows, "Of course."

If it is really as the worst guess, then the situation in this village will undoubtedly be much more difficult.

The black-clothed Azan knows better than anyone how difficult it is to turn a human heart into a ghost. What's more terrifying is that it is not a one-time thing for a human heart to turn into a ghost. Ghosts will always hide in the human heart, and only when they accumulate to a certain amount will they break out of the body, devour the soul by endless evil thoughts, and become evil ghosts in human skin.

After getting the information he wanted, Zong Jiu rushed to the village chief's earth house in the north of the village without stopping.

In the last reincarnation, Wang Shou rushed out with injuries at dawn. Since they know the necessary information this time, of course they have to hurry up.

When Zong Jiu arrived in front of the adobe house, Xu Sen, who was guarding the door, hurriedly reported to him in a low voice, "We haven't found any movement yet."

Everyone felt strange when he said this.

According to the information, the woman should have sneaked into the house before dawn today, probably to see if her daughter was still there, but she met Wang Shou and stabbed him with a hairpin in a hurry, so she hurriedly escaped.

So everyone waited for the rabbit to come. The best solution was to stop the woman before she entered the adobe house, so as to avoid direct conflict with the villagers and leave room for a buffer.

"Keep watching, it should be around this time."

Zong Jiu looked up at the sky and squatted in the corner.

More than a dozen people surrounded the village chief's house densely, and no one could escape their eyes as long as someone rushed out or went in.

About ten minutes later, footsteps suddenly came from the grove behind the adobe house.

All the trainees looked at each other and walked towards that side.

By the time they got there, several trainees had already subdued the woman.

In order to prevent the villagers from hearing the noise, they had no choice but to cover the woman's mouth with a cloth and take her to a place far away from the mud house.

Going to the other side, the vermilion roof of the temple was faintly visible under the shade of the trees.

After they walked into the woods, they untied the strips of cloth and formed a circle.

Not only Zong Jiu's team, but the other team also had the same purpose as them. After seeing them subdue the woman, they followed.

The woman had a panic on her face and shouted, "Someone come! Someone come! You lechers!"

"Madam, we have no ill intentions."

Xu Sen hurried to comfort her. But it was obvious that the other party was very excited. Not only was she excited, but she also tried to break through.

After this chaos lasted for almost an incense stick, the woman calmed down a little.

"You really didn't lie to me? Were you not sent by Wang Shou, that bastard?"

Seeing that her attitude finally loosened, everyone was relieved, "We really weren't."

It seemed that the woman believed it, and looked at the trainees suspiciously, "Then you get out of the way first, I still have to find my daughter."

When it came to this topic, everyone was silent for a while.

"Your daughter was..."

After a while, someone was about to speak, but Zong Jiu interrupted him directly.

"Auntie, we want to ask you something. If you are willing to tell us, we will naturally send you back intact."

The woman sneered, "I knew you had bad intentions."

The white-haired young man pretended not to hear her accusation.

He stared at the woman's eyes, "Three years ago, how did the old woman who lived behind the old locust tree in the east of the village die?"

The woman's face changed slightly, "You, what are you talking about, I don't understand."

"Don't understand?" Zong Jiu chuckled, "My daughter is six or seven years old, and she has been married for three or four years. How can she not understand?"

He continued, "In the past few days, there have been villagers who died inexplicably in the village. You came from your mother's home alone, so you must have heard about it. Others can say that the old woman came back to ask for your life."

At this point, the emotional fluctuations on the woman's face became more obvious.

This time, other road trainees also saw something wrong.

Because her expression was not anything else, but dodging, mixed with obvious fear.

Obviously, the woman was really afraid that the evil spirit that Zong Jiu had mentioned would come to claim her life.

Everyone knew that something was going to happen. This was obviously the reaction of someone who had done something wrong.

She opened her mouth, "If that woman is really found, what's the point of telling you?"

This time it was the black-clothed Azan who spoke.

"If you have done nothing wrong, you are naturally not afraid of ghosts knocking on your door. If you have done something wrong... the sea of ​​suffering is endless. If you have a sincere heart of repentance, the ghosts may let you go."

These words seemed to give the woman a reassurance, so after hesitating for a moment, she finally let go.

"... Three years ago, I had just married to this village with my daughter."

The woman was originally a widow from the next village. She was beautiful, but her husband's family unexpectedly died early, and she became a widow at a young age.

Her husband's family had little money, and a widow could not get anything good in the village. Her parents' family was even less likely to take care of a married daughter, so life became more and more difficult.

It just so happened that the son of the village chief of Tongbai Village was also a widower. His ex-wife died of dystocia after giving birth to a son. It happened that there was a matchmaker in the two villages who took money to make a match and made a connection. After Wang Shou saw the widow, he coveted her beauty, and the two of them half-heartedly got married.

But after the marriage, the woman was not pregnant and could not give birth. Her status in her husband's family became lower and lower. She had to beg the old village chief for a living every day, and Wang Shou often scolded her.

The village chief's family had the final say in Tongbai Village. It happened that the famine started that year, and the people were living in poverty. She had no food to eat at home.

"That old woman was also childless. Her husband died early. But she was old and lived alone in that old mud house."

The old woman believed in Buddhism.

The woman said that before the Bodhisattva appeared in Tongbai Village three years ago, the old grandmother was the only one in the village who believed in Buddhism.

Before that, no one cared about the Bodhisattva soil in front of the temple. The temple was also short and dilapidated, and its original appearance could not be seen. After all, Bodhisattva soil could not grow plants. There was already famine, so who would care about a piece of land that couldn't even grow anything?

"Only the grandmother believed in Buddhism. She took care of the Bodhisattva soil day after day, watered it day and night, and often went to the temple with a broom to clean it."

Speaking of this, the woman hesitated, "Not only that, she also had a habit of eating the Bodhisattva soil, and even ate only the soil all day."

"But she was kind-hearted. During the famine, she ate the soil herself, and gave the remaining food to the villagers. But later the villagers found out about her eating the soil, so the villagers also took the soil back and learned to eat it like her."

"The Bodhisattva soil was originally only a shallow layer, not much. If everyone in the village ate it, she would not have enough to eat. Because of this, she quarreled with everyone for a while, complaining that others had eaten the food she gave and wanted to snatch the soil from her."

"Later, there was not enough Bodhisattva soil, and she starved to death in the old earth house."

Her eyes flickered, "The villagers found it more than ten days later, and her body was already smelly by then."

"Although the villagers did something unkind, when there is a famine, no one cares about anything else. They just want to survive. The old woman was treated unfairly. No one brought her food. Maybe because of this, she was resentful, and now... Alas."

The woman looked a little angry, "But later the village also raised funds to build a memorial for her. If they still want to kill her, it would be too much."

Many trainees showed a look of sudden enlightenment.

Only Zong Jiu and the black-clothed Azan still frowned.

"Okay, you want me to tell you, I have told you everything, now you can let me go."

Zong Jiu said lightly, "Okay, let's go."

After that, he signaled Xu Su and the others to loosen the shackles and follow him.

Although the latter were confused, they had become accustomed to obeying Zong Jiu's instructions in the past few days, so they followed the white-haired young man out of the woods without asking any questions.

On the other hand, the old people in Anthony's team obviously wanted to get more information from this woman, and did not come up to interfere, but watched the newcomers leave with cold eyes.

It is worth mentioning that the black-clothed Azan whispered a few words and left alone from the group of old people.

Zong Jiu did not intend to delay, and directly led the newcomers to the temple behind the village.

Xu Sen asked in a low voice, "Brother Jiu, is there anything wrong with what the woman said just now?"

They did not hear the conversation between the old village chief and Yin Po in the temple like Zong Jiu did, and could not distinguish the contradictions in the two people's stories. In fact, if no other clues were collected before, what the woman said could generally fit all the questions.

"If the old woman turned into a ghost and came back to take revenge on the village, it is not impossible."

Xu Su pondered, "Whether it is the timeline she said or the question of why the villagers rushed to eat the Buddha's soil, it can be solved, but..."

He thought of the scratches on half of the wall of the old earth house, and felt that something was wrong. Xu Su couldn't tell what was wrong.

"There is a problem, of course there is a problem."

Zong Jiu shrugged, "She is lying, it's too obvious."

"As for why it is difficult for you to detect, it's because her lies are extremely clever. They are not false from beginning to end, but half true and half false."

[Fuck, I knew she was lying]

[Yes, that woman kept saying that she cared about her daughter, why didn't she take her daughter with her when she escaped? ]

[Alas, it's too difficult. I finally found a clue, but it turned out to be false. There is no particularly clear clue in this copy now. It really drives people crazy]

When the woman was talking just now, Zong Jiu had been carefully observing her micro-expressions.

When a person lies, his micro-expressions will change to a certain extent, not to mention that she obviously concealed something very important.

"So my guess is that she not only lied, but may also be an accomplice."

"Okay, we have this clue. Since the living can no longer provide more information, next... we have to find the dead to get information."

After hearing what he said, the others remembered that the Yin Po in the temple had said that she would try to go to the underworld in the next few days.

Going to the underworld means walking in the underworld, also known as passing through the underworld or going down to the underworld, which roughly means walking from the living world to the underworld.

There are two ways to go to the underworld. One is that the person who walks to the underworld goes to the underworld alone to find a designated ghost, and then asks the ghost to possess her body for the living who miss the deceased to talk and communicate.

Another way is similar to the way of watching the underworld, taking living people to the underworld together. But this method is extremely difficult and risky. Unless it is a Taoist priest with strong magic power, he will not try it.

Zong Jiu is very sure that the current situation in Tongbai Village is definitely not the old woman Huacheng evil ghost who came back to settle accounts with them as the villagers said.

Since the old woman did not turn into a ghost, it is possible to try to find the old woman's soul by walking in the underworld.

The people in the village are full of lies and have done bad things. It is more convenient to ask the person directly than to ask anything.

Even the black-clothed Azan who followed them silently nodded, thinking that this method is very feasible and coincides with his opinion.

Perhaps because they made too much noise before dawn, the village finally showed some signs of awakening.

In the distance, the villagers carried hoes in their hands, gathered in front of Wang Shou's mud house, and migrated towards the woods.

Xu Sen was worried, "They seem to have been discovered, what should we do?"

"It's just dawn, will the temple open so early?"

"Who knows, I only know that if you don't take the props, we may be here."

Unconsciously, the huge forest suddenly became quiet.

The trainees also realized that something was wrong, and each of them took out their life-saving props at lightning speed and looked around vigilantly.

In the gaps between the leaves, layers of ghostly shadows suddenly appeared.

Not far away, another team of trainees was running fast. Behind them, a large group of villagers gathered and cursed.

Zong Jiu gave an order, "Run!"