Chen Ling closed his eyes. The room, which was originally dimly illuminated by the moonlight, was now filled with darkness.
Perhaps he felt something in his dream, he pursed his lips, raised his hand and scratched his forehead twice. Feeling the cold, he hunched his shoulders and hid in the quilt.
Little did they know that the ferocious beast was lurking patiently, quietly waiting for its prey to relax its vigilance and fall into a deep sleep.
When the breathing in the quilt became calm again, a human figure condensed in the void, lying on its side, hugging the man tightly from behind, lowering its head, and gently resting the tip of its nose on the top of the young man's head.
The smell of shampoo rushed into his nostrils. Jiang Yu tightened his arms, sighed with satisfaction, and closed his eyes.
Chen Ling slept soundly that night, but not peacefully.
It was as if a thick and wide belt was wrapped around his waist, tightly holding him and making it impossible for him to break free. It was as if there was a wall blocking his back, making it impossible for him to turn over and adjust his posture.
He was half asleep and half awake, and was groggy. He couldn't shake off the sleepiness and sit up to check the situation. When he woke up in the morning and rubbed his left shoulder which was slightly sore due to his posture, he realized something was wrong.
Chen Ling woke up instantly and lay on the edge of the bed looking down.
The slippers were neatly placed on the ground, with the toes pointing neatly towards the door, nothing unusual.
He sat up again and shouted, "Five baht coins, come here."
The five-zhu coin hanging on the door frame began to swing by itself. As it swung higher and higher, it and the rope together broke away from the nail on the door frame and fell onto the bed.
Chen Ling asked: "Was there anyone in my room last night?"
Although it was a question, the expression on his face was very certain, with a hint of threat, implying that Wuzhuqian was not allowed to lie.
Wu Zhu Qian saw through everything last night. The boss was intimidating without being angry, and even more murderous when he didn't restrain his momentum. But the young man in front of him was obviously the boss's weak spot, so it went without saying who he should listen to.
"Yes, it's Jiang..." Not daring to call him by his name, it imitated how Chen Ling privately addressed Jiang Yu and changed its words to "Ancestor."
Chen Ling: “…” I knew it was him!
There was a Sanqing Bell next to his pillow, and the Yellow God Yue Zhang Seal was pressed under his pillow. Not far away, Zhao Xunchang was also in charge. Which demon or monster who didn't want to live dared to get on his bed? !
Even if the Wuzhu coin wasn't mentioned, he would have been the first one to suspect Jiang Yu.
But unlike last time, the ancestor had learned his lesson and actually knew to help him put the messed up shoes back.
If it were any other ordinary ghost, it would have been wrapped into a ball with the ink line and kicked away.
Chen Ling clenched his fists and thought for a moment. When he made a decision, he got up from the bed.
After washing up and walking out of the room, I found that Zhao Xunchang had already gotten up and was practicing Tai Chi in the yard. The macaw was squatting on the stone table, watching blankly, with its legs and neck tucked in.
Well, like an old hen laying eggs.
Chen Ling walked over and flicked its butt with his finger: "You squat so ungracefully, your wife will leave you."
When Xiao Lan heard the name "wife", she stood up straight with a start, raised her neck proudly, and stared at Chen Ling with her round eyes: "Wife, wife, little wife."
Zhao Xunchang took the time to glance over and snorted coldly: "Wait, I'll take you there later."
After that, he turned around and complained to his little apprentice: "It's really hard to keep a grown-up child. Since the first time he went to the base, he has been thinking about going there all day. You don't know, as soon as he arrived at the base, he flew straight in like crazy, and after entering the breeding room, he refused to come out after entering the bird's nest. I don't know what the two birds are doing in there."
The macaw seemed to know that the old man was talking about it. It turned its back and its tail feathers trembled up and down in protest.
Chen Ling burst out laughing, picked up the parrot and went to the kitchen.
Wu Weiwei goes to bed early and gets up early. He is now taking the steamed buns he bought earlier from the freezer and preparing to steam them.
Seeing his brother Chen come in, he grinned, showing his white teeth: "Good morning, brother Chen."
"Morning, let me help you make breakfast." Chen Ling put the parrot down, took out an orange from the refrigerator, peeled it and cut it into small pieces, put them in a bowl and placed it in front of the parrot.
The macaw ate happily, with no expression on its face, but one could still feel that its unhappiness turned into happiness because of its master's complaints.
Wu Weiwei took out a few melon seeds from his pocket, put them next to it, and said to Chen Ling: "No, I can do it alone."
Chen Ling nodded and said, "Let's take out the bowls and chopsticks for the three of them first." As soon as he opened the cupboard, a gray shadow stood in the corner, holding a piece of shiny braised pork in both hands.
Covered by the human's shadow, the mouse suddenly turned its head and looked up.
Its eyes were dull for a moment, its front paws dropped, and it ran for its life on all fours.
Wu Weiwei also saw it and shouted to the outside of the door: "Great Immortal!"
The light orange furry ball came running over and caught the destructive mouse in the blink of an eye.
Chen Ling: "… He is really an expert at catching mice."
Thinking of the one or two arrogant gray mice he had seen recently, Wu Weiwei sighed and said, "Brother Chen, there are quite a lot of mice in our yard recently, especially at night. It's all thanks to Wong Tai Sin."
"Is it the same for other families?" Chen Ling asked.
"It should be about the same. During the days when you were sleeping, I happened to run into Li Guifang when I went out to buy groceries. She was the one who came to ask about the tomb before."
Chen Ling remembered, "You mean Aunt Guifang? What happened to her?"
"He was carrying a plastic bag with several boxes of rat poison in it, saying it was for his neighbors," Wu Weiwei said. "The grass on the mountain had grown almost an inch long and was green. The rats on the next hill saw that the environment was good here, so some of them came over."
Speaking of Li Guifang, Chen Ling asked, "Didn't she tell you about the cemetery?"
Wu Weiwei curled his lips and said, "I told you, I thought she really didn't plan to buy a cemetery here because she left so angrily last time."
The parrot's beak and tongue are very powerful, and it eats very quickly. Little Blue ate the orange cleanly, and then leisurely picked up some melon seeds with his claws and started to eat them. His life was so beautiful.
Chen Ling couldn't help but touch its little head and asked, "Did she mention it to you again?"
"Yeah." Wu Weiwei blinked and asked in confusion, "Brother Chen, how did you know?"
"The last time she came to ask about the tomb, she obviously had some ulterior motive, otherwise why wouldn't she tell the truth." Her acting is so bad that anyone can tell at a glance.
"Actually, apart from the time I saw her buying rat poison, she came here twice during the days you were in a coma, and each time she was turned away by Mr. Zhao on the pretext that you were not there." Wu Weiwei was very unhappy when he thought of Li Guifang's face and attitude. "I don't know what provoked her. She said that her bad attitude last time was because her relative's child was seriously ill and she was too anxious. She also asked me to convey her apologies. I hope you don't take it to heart."
Chen Ling would never take such trivial matters to heart. There is so little space in his heart that even thinking about happy things would not be enough.
"After all, she still wants to buy Yu Heshan's tomb?"
"More than that." Wu Weiwei put the washed eggs into cold water to boil, his brows almost wrinkled, "She instigated me to say something good for her, to help her lower the price, and then give me a kickback."
Chen Ling: “…” Shocked.
Fearing misunderstanding, Wu Weiwei hurriedly said, "I didn't agree to her. I left before she finished her words."
"I know, I believe you." Chen Ling comforted her and continued, "So she wants to be a middleman?"
When facing buyers, she deliberately quoted a high price, and when facing sellers, she tried to push the price down to earn the highest possible difference.
Wu Weiwei: “Probably.”
Chen Ling: "It's true that there are people who can make money from anything. Isn't she afraid of being blamed by the deceased and getting into bad luck?"
"I looked at Li Guifang's face carefully. She has high cheekbones, a narrow forehead, a small nose with a pointed tip, and three white spots in her eyes..." Wu Weiwei said, "People with this kind of face have a tough life and are unlucky in marriage. Naturally, they are not afraid of ghosts and gods."
Chen Ling was silent for a moment. Li Guifang was really that kind of person.
When he and Zhao Xunchang first moved here, the other families were basically unable to relocate due to insufficient financial conditions.
Li Guifang was not like that. Apart from wanting to save money for resettling down, the main reason she stayed was that she did not believe in evil.
I don't believe that Yuheshan's bad luck is really so bad that it can offend people.
"Don't worry about her. Next time you meet her, just pretend you didn't see her and don't have any contact with her." Chen Ling rubbed his stomach, feeling a little hungry.
He took out the dishes from the cupboard, soaked them in disinfectant, and then washed them twice with detergent. Only then did he feel less disgusted.
The breakfast was quite pleasant. Soon after the meal, Chen Ling hung the five-zhu coin on his wrist and prepared to go out.
Wu Weiwei wiped his hands clean, grabbed the door frame and asked, "Brother Chen, are you going out? Can you take me with you?"
"I'm going to the antique market to pick out an incense burner. If you want to go, come with me." Thinking that he was not going out to work today, Chen Ling only wore the Huangshen Yuezhang Seal and two ordinary exorcism talismans, and did not bring his universal backpack.
Wu Weiwei changed out of his home clothes, put his cell phone and wallet in his pocket and followed.
The antique city is located in the old city and has been open for more than 20 years. Thinking that this place is not far from Ding Junyuan's carving studio, Chen Ling plans to go to the carving studio after buying things to see if the two stone tablets of children are finished.
Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer old items circulating in the market, and fewer and fewer stall owners have old items. Nine out of ten stalls sell counterfeits.
Chen Ling and Wu Weiwei were strangers and looked relatively young, so they became the targets of deception by the stall owners.
The stall owner said: "Brother, you want to buy an incense burner? That's great. I just happened to get a good one here. Look at the three-legged shape and the patina. It's amazing!"
Chen Ling raised his hand to cover his head which was scorched by the sun, and a five-zhu coin fell into his ear and muttered, "It's fake, it's only three months old."
Hearing this, he took Wu Weiwei and turned away.
Wu Weiwei was confused: "No, I think it's pretty good."
Chen Ling held the Wuzhu coin to his ear. After listening, Wu Weiwei was silent for a long time. Modern counterfeiting technology can really make the fake look real.
The two of them visited at least thirty stalls in the morning, if not forty, and finally found the item they liked in front of the last stall, which was placed in the corner.
The small incense burner is a square brass design with double animal ears. It looks serious yet has a hint of dominance, and is a natural match for our ancestor.
Chen Ling bargained with the stall owner and finally bought it for three thousand yuan.
There was a middle-aged man squatting next to the stall owner, who was about the same age as him. Judging from his expression and tone of voice, he should be an old friend of the stall owner and was gossiping.
"Old Qian, do you think it's because the Mid-Autumn Festival is coming and those dirty things are restless? As far as I know, this is the second suicide recently."
The stall owner pulled out a newspaper from the box behind him and carefully wrapped up the small incense burner. He noticed that the two young men opposite were staring at him curiously. He smiled awkwardly and turned back to his friend and said, "Let's talk about it later. I'm still doing business."
Chen Ling smiled nonchalantly: "It's okay, we are both fans of the supernatural."
The stall owner's friend chuckled, with an exaggerated expression as if he had met a bosom friend: "These days, there aren't many young people your age who believe in ghosts and gods. Even my kid's head is full of Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism."
Chen Ling thought to himself, more than two years ago, I was also one of them.
Just a while ago, I was reading the criminal law repeatedly because I encountered a ghost.
He was somewhat interested in the jumping incident mentioned by the stall owner's friend, so he walked over and sat down on the steps next to him: "Uncle, what did you just say about jumping off a building?"
"The police investigation said that the deceased committed suicide due to excessive stress, but I don't think so." The stall owner's friend lowered his voice, and his hoarse voice seemed a bit abrupt in the noisy street.
"The first suicide happened a week ago. It happened in our neighborhood. It was a nice girl who was about to enter her third year of high school. Suddenly one night, she ran into the kitchen and cut the artery in her neck with a kitchen knife."
The neck is mainly composed of the carotid artery and vertebral artery, which are the main channels for transporting blood and oxygen to the heart and brain. Injury to either one is extremely critical.
Chen Ling could almost imagine the scene, blood gushing out from the neck, staining the clothes on the shoulders and chest red. The girl might also be choked by her own blood, and the blood would come out of her nose and mouth, covering her face.
Although he knew the chances of saving the person were slim, he still asked, "Didn't the person come back?"
"There was no way she could be saved," the stall owner's friend said with regret, "her parents only found out something had happened when they woke up to make her breakfast. Her body was already cold."
Chen Ling: "What about the second one?"
"The second one was even more bizarre. The person who died was a male office worker in his twenties. It was said to have happened yesterday. The man was taking the subway after get off work and fell off the tracks for unknown reasons. Fortunately, someone nearby reacted in time and pulled him up after hearing his terrified cry for help. But he still couldn't escape. After getting off the subway, he fell while going upstairs and hit his head on the steps and died."
"Falling on the tracks and stairs could be accidents," said Chen Ling.
"I haven't told you the weird part yet." The stall owner's friend waved at Chen Ling, as if afraid of being heard, and motioned him to come closer.
Chen Ling approached and tilted his ear. Wu Weiwei also wanted to listen, so he could only stick his butt out to steal some information from behind the two people.
"He killed himself."
When the man was found, he was kneeling on the concrete stairs, his hands behind his legs, and his forehead pressed against the corner of the stairs.
This alone is not enough to judge that he committed suicide.
Coincidentally, there was an aerial photography enthusiast living in the building opposite to the one where the crime occurred, and he just bought a drone.
That day, he was testing his newly bought drone and happened to take a picture of the incident, and then he called the police. When the police arrived, the man's forehead was bruised, but he had a happy and peaceful smile on his face.
It seemed that such a painful death brought him supreme happiness.
Wu Weiwei shuddered: "What about the first one, did he laugh too?"
"I laughed. I forgot to say this just now. My two little brothers, the two people who died were so tragic and their expressions were so weird. Do you think this couldn't be done by a ghost?"
"What ghost? Have you ever seen one?" The stall owner elbowed his friend away and handed the incense burner to Chen Ling. "Okay, go back and put some rice in it, and you can burn incense directly."
"Thank you, boss." Chen Ling walked away holding the newly bought small incense burner, and turned back to Wu Weiwei and said, "Ask about those two suicides. I feel something is not right."
Wu Weiwei's information sharing group was as quiet as a chicken, with all group members lurking. But when Wu Weiwei sent out the message asking for information, the group immediately exploded.
Didn't this happen on TV news? Didn't you see it
No… I don’t pay much attention to current affairs. This is Wu Weiwei’s reply.
The half-baked people in the group began to pass on relevant information:
The news report said that the girl had excellent grades and was a student in the Rocket Class of the Experimental Middle School, a key talent to be developed in the grade... Maybe because she thought that typing was too much and too troublesome, and she was too lazy to make voice calls, she simply found a link and sent it to the group.
Wu Weiwei looked at it carefully.
The girl has a cheerful personality, many friends, is very popular in school, and shows no signs of suffering from school violence.
And according to her parents, just three days ago, the girl happily told them about her favorite university and vowed to work harder in the coming school year.
No matter how you look at it, she is a positive girl.
It shouldn't be associated with the word suicide at all.
Wu Weiwei handed the message to Chen Ling and asked him, "How do you reply?"
Chen Ling handed him the incense burner, took the phone, and sent a message asking: Are you sure you don't have any psychological problems? Could it be that you are under too much pressure from studying and are suppressing it in your heart without showing it
Someone replied: Probably not, this girl is a talented player with good memory and comprehension ability. Anyway, according to her parents, their daughter does not spend too much time on studying. In her spare time, she will do some handicrafts to adjust her mood and cultivate her sentiments.
The case is really strange. If it is really the work of ghosts, it is definitely beyond our ability to handle.
Maybe someone was committing the crime in an unseen place. After all, he experienced so much pain before death. Even if he was possessed by a ghost, how could he not wake up from the pain
That's the truth. However, if one's luck has been bad recently and one has been infected with bad luck, one's yin energy may overwhelm one's yang energy, causing one to become unconscious and may not be able to wake up.
Have you ever heard the song "Mid-July Nursery Rhyme"
On the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, ghosts come to accompany you, hand you a knife, cut your throat, pull your hand, let you jump off the building, push you away, and enter the gate of hell. On the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, ghosts come to accompany you, the living die, and the dead rejoice.
… The person above wanted to ask if this case is related to the Mid-Autumn Festival? But the ghost gate has not officially opened yet.
Then someone flooded the screen with the lyrics of the nursery rhyme.
Chen Ling typed quickly: What about the second person