Old Zhang looked at Zhou Ze hesitantly.
It seems that he is giving his boss some time to think and regret, and also asking for an opportunity for himself.
But I saw the chopsticks were always placed next to my mouth.
Lao Zhang took a deep breath.
He actually opened his mouth.
“Bang!”
Boss Zhou threw the chopsticks and the beef on them to the ground.
Shake your head,
Laughing:
“I really eat it.”
Old Zhang breathed a sigh of relief. It was obvious that he was also very nervous.
It's a bit helpless. It seems that although Lao Zhang has gone out to do several missions to solve evil spirit incidents in the past year, in fact, his progress in some specific aspects is indeed not enough.
I was also somewhat relieved that during the year I was in a coma, other people in the bookstore also knew how to protect this statue of political correctness.
Of course.
Zhou Ze also knew that
The main reason was that Lao Zhang started to eat only after I gestured to him to eat.
"These things cannot be eaten. At the beginning, Lao Xu was a little upset. When the ghosts invited us to dinner, I didn't dare to touch a chopstick. Lao Xu, on the other hand, turned his grief and anger into appetite and ate a lot."
If you don't reveal your good friend's dark history, then what's the point of having good friends
"Oh, really? What's that food?"
Old Zhang still seemed a little curious.
“They look like chicken, duck, fish and meat, but they are actually snakes, insects, rats and ants. This is still considered conscientious, because many barbecue stalls now sell snakes, insects, rats and ants anyway.
For those who don’t care, or who really don’t have much raw material lying around, it’s not impossible for them to just use shit to make Dongpo pork for you.”
As they were talking,
Zhou Ze couldn't help laughing.
When I was picking up the meat with chopsticks and giving it to Lao Zhang,
Is it really:
Come, open your mouth and let me feed you shit.
These things were actually just minor episodes. Zhou Ze didn't pay attention to the chopsticks and the piece of beef on the ground. Instead, he bent down and stomped hard on the hole that Lao Zhang had just dug.
"Bang..."
There was a crisp crashing sound, as if some wooden board with metal sheets underneath was crushed, and the surrounding surface immediately sank a lot.
The female ghost standing nearby was stunned. She just came here to visit her grandmother's grave and picked up some money, but she never expected that there was another world here.
Zhou Ze was prepared in advance, so he was able to steady his body, while Lao Zhang fell directly on his buttocks to the ground.
When he stood up, he supported himself on the ground with his hands, paused for a moment, and actually took out a wooden sign.
“Is this a spiritual tablet?”
Old Zhang is still knowledgeable. In fact, this is nothing. Most Chinese people know what it is. However, with the promotion of newer ways of memorializing the dead, this kind of wooden tablet is rarely seen in real life, except in a few rural ancestral halls.
Zhou Ze took the tablet from Lao Zhang.
As Lao Zhang climbed up, he said, "This tablet looks very new. It should not have been there for long."
Zhou Ze smiled without comment.
Then he brought the tablet close to his nose and smelled it.
Immediately,
A smell of decay was captured.
“Almost thirty years.”
"How is that possible? I just touched it. It's very new."
"Old Zhang."
"Um?"
"I know you're a very good detective."
"Um… "
"But this is not a criminal case. It was a dark and windy night in a desolate cemetery. The fresh and steaming beef stew with potatoes was all I saw.
Why haven't you switched your mind back yet?"
"I see."
Lao Zhang nodded vigorously.
Zhou Ze took out his cell phone and turned on the flashlight. Although the moonlight was good tonight, it was still difficult to see the words clearly.
After the phone is illuminated,
The words on the tablet are clear:
"Thank you, old man"
"Lao Zhang, do you know this name?" Zhou Ze asked.
Old Zhang frowned slightly, probably thinking about something. After a while, he shook his head and said, "I have no impression."
"I… I know."
The female ghost suddenly spoke.
"Tell me." Zhou Ze looked at the female ghost.
"That was thirty years ago. When I came to visit my grandmother in my hometown, I heard her talk about a man named Xie Laosan. At that time, my grandmother was chatting with the neighboring aunties in the village.
This Xie Laosan was a cook when he was alive. He was from this village and was probably the third child in the family, so he was called Xie Laosan.
Moreover, at that time, in the countryside, a person’s nickname would often be remembered, but that person’s real name would be easily forgotten.”
"Get to the point."
Zhou Ze spoke with some impatience.
"Oh well."
The female ghost was very afraid of Zhou Ze. Even during the day, she was still thinking about absorbing the energy from this sickly guy. But now, she knew that she could not afford to mess with a man who was called boss by so many scary guys in that bookstore.
"About thirty years ago, a few bandits came to the village."
"Bandit?" Boss Zhou repeated with some surprise and looked at Lao Zhang at the same time.
Lao Zhang explained: "It should be a gang that commits crimes on the move."
Zhou Ze nodded.
"That group of people entered a family in our village and killed the son and father in the family, leaving the daughter-in-law and the old woman behind, and then... ruined them."
It's a very clichéd story, where the gangsters break into a house and start committing crimes.
"Is it Xie Laosan's home?" asked Lao Zhang.
"No, it's next door to him."
"Go on."
"Those people stayed at that family's house for a day."
He killed two men and took possession of two women, living there for a day.
"Xie Laosan was a cook for buffets in several nearby villages. He seemed to have heard the noise from his neighbors next door and came to check it out, but he was discovered and captured by the bandits.
The bandits didn't kill him, but asked him to cook for them.
Xie Laosan agreed and said he would go back to get some vegetables as there was some pork and other things at home.
Afterwards, Xie Laosan went back home, took the chef's belongings and came here again. At that time, being a chef was not as cushy as it is now. In addition, my grandmother said that Xie Laosan had a bad temper and was ugly, so he never got a wife. He had separated from his two brothers a long time ago and had been single and living alone.
He treated the bandits like brothers and cooked for them. The bandits even said they would take him with them when they went to the next place.
"Then what?"
Zhou Ze asked. Instinctively, Zhou Ze felt that there should be a reversal in this story.
"Grandma said that those bandits were very alert and asked Xie Lao San to cook, but before eating, they always let Xie Lao San eat first.
Just like the emperors in ancient palaces, he would let the eunuchs taste the food before eating to see if it was poisonous.
But Xie Laosan still put rat poison, and then he ate it, and in the end, he poisoned himself and the three bandits to death. "
The ghost girl finished her story.
The story she told was a retelling of what she heard from her grandmother when she was alive. There may be some logical flaws, but the image of the cook Xie Laosan suddenly came to life.
At this time, Lao Zhang tapped his forehead with his hand and said, "I think when I first joined the police force, I heard the old seniors talk about this case when they were drinking, but they didn't mention the specific names.
It was indeed a bit chaotic at that time, and then the country began to crack down severely.”
Boss Zhou picked up the tablet in his hand again, looked at it, and said to the female ghost:
"Did the two women in the victim's family survive?"
"She survived. The old woman died a long time ago, but my daughter-in-law has been living in this village. When I returned to the village a few years ago before I died, I saw her scavenging for a living."
That story from thirty years ago was bloody. Xie Laosan was indeed a manly man. He did something that only a real man would dare to do at the right time.
But for the two women, it was an extremely painful nightmare.
… …
All other residents in the village have already moved into spacious buildings, and this family is the only one that still lives in a bungalow.
There is no courtyard wall, only a fence, and there is a lot of waste piled up inside, all of which has been collected and tied up.
Zhou Ze pushed open the door and walked in. Lao Zhang hesitated for a moment, and without saying anything about trespassing, he followed him in.
After entering the yard, Boss Zhou pushed open the door. The door was not locked. To be precise, there was nothing in this house worth a thief's attention.
Do thieves come to steal scrap and sell it
There was an old wooden bed inside the door, on which lay an old woman, sleeping.
Zhou Ze walked to the bedside. The old woman was in a light sleep and seemed to sense something. But before she woke up, Boss Zhou scratched the old woman's neck with his fingernails.
No harm done, let her sleep on for a while.
When it comes to using the power of nails, Boss Zhou can be said to have reached perfection today.
Opening the door of the bedroom, you will see the living room in the middle area of the bungalow, which is also filled with a lot of waste.
Inside the dilapidated hall is an old-fashioned long cabinet.
This is a very common furnishing in rural houses. The cabinet can be used to store grain and other sundries, and there is usually an offering table on top.
Some are used to place portraits of ancestors, some are used to place portraits of Bodhisattva, and some are used to place the Chairman.
And on this long cabinet, there are four tablets.
One of them is my late husband...
There are two more put together, one male and one female, they should be the names of my father-in-law and mother-in-law.
There is a fourth one,
It’s “Xie Laosan”.
More than 30 years have passed.
Many people will forget, and because the media was not so developed in that era, some things did not spread.
But others forget,
This old woman, the "daughter-in-law" in the original story, has always been remembered.
Turn your head again,
I noticed a lot of paper money piled up in the corner.
I think,
The traces of paper money found at Xie Laosan's grave should have been from the old woman who went to pay tribute to Xie Laosan.
Xie Laosan was a bachelor with no children. Decades had passed, and apart from her, no one would visit his grave.
The money burned when visiting the grave was transformed into ghost money at an extremely terrifying ratio, and was taken away by the female ghost who turned into a fierce ghost after her death and returned to the village to visit her grandmother's grave.
A line was drawn in this way.
When the two men and the ghost walked out of the yard,
Lao Zhang was a little confused and asked, "What on earth is going on?"
Zhou Ze gritted his teeth and stepped lightly on the ground.
Then,
Slowly said:
"Xie Laosan is about to become a spirit."
"A spirit?" Lao Zhang tried to think like a "ghost messenger" instead of a criminal police officer, and asked in confusion, "Isn't he a good person?"
A man fought to the death with three criminals. He acted heroically and died with honor.
How could such a person...
"Maybe my choice of words is a little inaccurate." Zhou Ze shook his head and continued: "Instead of calling it a spirit, you can use words like Land God, Mountain God, City God, River God, etc."
Old Zhang was stunned.
Zhou Ze pursed his lips.
The changes of yin and yang,
Has it started yet