This is how people in the underworld are. They will always consider what is best for themselves. Even if they trust you the moment before, once they encounter something that is not favorable to them, they will quickly turn against you on the spot.
After I looked at Lao Qiao twice, I couldn't help but shook my head: "If you don't believe it, forget it!"
Just as I was about to turn around, Old Qiao suddenly shouted, "Mr. Wu, go slowly. I, Old Qiao, trust you! I leave my life to you."
As I turned around suddenly, Xue Wuchang sneered, "Since you believe in him, just go ahead and do whatever you want! No matter what you do, Hell Gate will not take any action."
After Xue Wuchang finished speaking, he led the people from Hell Gate to pack up their things and move away. Gu Piaoran's people quickly walked towards the camping place of Hell Gate and gave up our tent alone. Gu Piaoran's attitude was of course self-evident.
They are trying to isolate us.
As I watched them move the camp in silence, I heard Tong Xiaoyao say, "You Ran, why don't you pack your things? Mr. Gu and the others are about to leave."
Su Youran shook her head and said, “I believe in Mr. Wu. We should stay here.”
"You believe him?" Tong Xiaoyao's eyes widened. "Why do you believe him?"
“He kept his promise. If you’re scared, just go with them!” Su Youran didn’t wait for Tong Xiaoyao to say anything else before walking towards me. “Mr. Wu, do you mind if we stay?”
I was slightly surprised and said, "You will be in danger if you stay with me."
Su Youran shook her head and said, “I don’t think so. I trust my intuition.”
“Okay then!” I wasn’t sure why Su Youran wanted to stay, but I couldn’t just reject her at this moment.
We quickly set up the tent. I asked Ye Jin to look after the others, and Lao Qiao and I went to a distant place to build a fire. Lao Qiao took out a bottle of wine from his bag and took two big gulps: "It's almost midnight, right?"
"Almost." I knew what Lao Qiao meant. According to legend, the government killed people at 15:30, but the criminal leader killed people at 15:30. At that time, the yin energy was the heaviest, which was conducive to the cultivation of the criminal leader.
The more time went by, the calmer Old Joe seemed, as if he was not afraid anymore when the time came.
I looked at Lao Qiao and said, "Why aren't you afraid now?"
Old Qiao smiled bitterly and said, "My two nephews are no good. Without someone to watch over them, they can be cheated to death. If I were gone, they would have retired from the underworld. Now that I have entrusted them to others, what else do they have to be afraid of?"
Old Qiao turned around and looked around, then lowered his voice and said, "Mr. Wu, I can see that you have a chivalrous spirit in your bones. But you will easily suffer if you do this! There is something fishy in our team."
In the Northeastern dialect, the meanings of "鬼" and "鬼儿" are different. The word "鬼" has an erhua sound, which means that someone is making trouble in secret.
I pretended to be confused and asked, "What do you mean?"
Seeing that no one was paying attention nearby, Old Qiao said, "Half of my ability lies in my ears. I can hear if there are zombies below through the soil. Before we got off the boat, someone was talking to that silly girl Tong Xiaoyao, did you know that?"
I also lowered my voice and asked, "Can you tell who it is?"
Old Joe whispered, "I can't hear it clearly, and the man's voice moves. He's always running around."
Transmitting sound through the air
When martial arts masters have reached a certain level of cultivation, they can transmit sound through the air. In order to prevent the opponent from discovering their location, the sound transmitted by the opponent is often erratic and fluctuates. This is probably what Lao Qiao meant when he said that the man's voice could travel.
Old Qiao continued, “That voice came from three people in total. One was Su Youran, one was that Hai Gouzi named Chen, and the other was the silent guy in black.”
The taciturn guy that Lao Qiao mentioned has not spoken since he boarded the ship. He has always hidden himself in a black cloak. I have never seen his true face, and I can't even tell whether he is a man or a woman. According to Gu Piaoran's introduction, he should be a mechanical engineer.
Seeing that I didn't say anything, Old Joe said again, "I couldn't tell who was making the noise, but I'm sure the person who was speaking was a woman."
woman
There were only two women in the entire team. One was Su Youran, and the other was Tong Xiaoyao. As for the mechanical engineer, judging from the way he walked, he didn’t look like a woman.
Could it be that the person who sent the message to Tong Xiaoyao was Su Youran? If so, the reason why she suddenly decided to stay was quite intriguing.
When Old Joe was about to speak, there was a sound of iron chains hitting rocks near the coast, and a bloody wind swept from the sea to the camp. The bonfire in front of us suddenly grew three feet taller, and the tip of the flame that rushed to the sky instantly turned into a terrifying green. The space near the fire was covered with a layer of green light under the illumination of the flames.
Flames that swell rapidly and turn green at the tips are a sign of ghosts.
"It's really coming!" The bottle in Old Joe's hand fell to the ground and shattered. The originally clear and transparent wine turned bright red like blood and filled with a fishy smell the moment it splashed out.
Seeing that alcohol turning into blood was a bad omen, Old Qiao's face turned extremely pale: "Mr. Wu... Mr. Wu, I'm leaving first, take care of yourself!"
When Lao Qiao was about to stand up and walk to the open space, I pulled him back: "Don't move, you may not be the one to die."
"What?" Old Joe was both surprised and happy. I whispered, "Don't say anything. Let's see who dies."
As I spoke, the sound of chains hitting the rocks began to come wave after wave. At first, there was only one direction where the chains made a sound. After a short moment, the sound of iron chains suddenly came from three sides. At first it sounded like hundreds of people holding iron chains at the same time and striking the rocks rhythmically around the island.
Old Qiao couldn't help it and asked in a trembling voice: "Mr. Wu, what's going on?"
I said in a deep voice, "The ghost is knocking on the prison door. Hold on tight, you are really scared, just think that you will not die as long as I am here. Don't stand up and be the first to speak out, otherwise you will really die."
Ancient prisons had their own set of rules, many of which may sound strange today, and knocking on the prison door was one of them.
Knocking on the prison door is also called "head-smashing stick". According to legend, before each execution, a jailer would lead the way, and two to four jailers would follow behind with iron sticks, knocking on the prison doors along the way. One reason was to remind the prisoners that "killing is going to happen", and the other was to deter the prisoners from making trouble.
There is another situation in which people knock on the prison door, and that is to find someone to die with.
In ancient times, the executioner did not necessarily know what the prisoner to be beheaded looked like, which provided people with the opportunity to find a prisoner to die in his place. How to replace the prisoner on death row is one thing, and who to replace him with is another.
When the jailer was looking for someone to die with, he would also knock on the prison door, but he would not knock while walking, but would stand at the door and knock on the prison bars. This might not be a big deal, but in that environment it would cause unbearable psychological pressure on the prisoners. Once a prisoner could not bear the pressure and shouted or simply stood up to beg for mercy, he would be pushed out to die with.
In the eyes of the jailer, anyone who can stand up when the door is knocked is about to die. As to whether this saying comes from the art of Taoism or the jailer deliberately creates an excuse for psychological comfort, it is unknown.
Now there is a constant sound of chains on the beach. Isn't that just knocking on the prison door
Before long, the knocking sound began to become more and more frequent and urgent. At first glance, it sounded like the iron locks replaced the sea water constantly hitting the coast. Old Joe beside me almost curled himself up, gritting his teeth desperately to keep himself from making any sound, for fear that ghosts would come to the door.
Although I knew that the other party was knocking on the prison door, I couldn't help but become more and more annoyed. My hands hanging by my side touched the hilt of Rakshasa's knife again and again. I wished I could stand up immediately and kill all the ghosts on the beach.
Just when I was about to lose control of my emotions, Tong Xiaoyao suddenly covered her head and screamed, "Stop knocking, it's so annoying, stop now!"
not good!
I was startled when I heard the sound of the iron chains on the seashore suddenly stop. Just a moment later, the sound of chains dragging on the ground gathered into a torrent and rushed towards the tent where Ye Jin and the others were.
Just as I was about to stand up, a roar suddenly came from the direction of the Hell Gate: "Qiao, what are you doing? Why don't you do it?"
The man's roar was like a signal to the ghosts. The iron chain that was originally rushing towards Ye Jin suddenly turned around and rushed towards the gate of hell.
When I turned around, I saw a Hell Gate Warlock who had stood up at some point and rushed to the edge of the camp. The roar just now came from his mouth, but after the roar, the man seemed to be stupid and stood there motionless.
A moment later, a group of ghosts dressed in red and dressed like yamen runners suddenly appeared outside the camp. Two of the ghosts shook the chains in their hands violently, put them around the man's neck, knocked him to the ground in an instant, and dragged him to the island.
The group of yamen runners were heading past the Hell Gate camp. Xue Wuchang would not just watch them take people away, so he immediately led his men towards the direction of the ghost.
The leading sorcerers did not dare to directly engage the ghost, but scattered the talismans from a distance of several meters. When the talismans blessed by the inner force were sprinkled on the ghost like a rain of flowers, the yamen runners standing behind suddenly turned around, stood shoulder to shoulder, grabbed the iron rods from behind, raised them in the air, and hit them forward without even looking.
The dozen iron rods were still some distance away from the talismans, but the airflow from the rods was like a whirlwind, pushing countless talismans back toward the gate of hell. (To be continued)