Cen Jin retracted his feet, and the laughter disappeared instantly, like a hallucination, but he knew it wasn't.
After a two-second pause, he took two steps forward, standing under the shadow of the Shinto Pillar, listening intently, there was no laughter or gloomy wind from children, and there was an eerie silence around him.
Cen Jin looked at the first Shinto pillar. Two circular stone pillars were two meters apart, opposite each other. The pillars were two meters high and about forty centimeters in diameter. The body of the pillar is carved with vertical lines, the stone slab on which the text is engraved at the head of the pillar is engraved with unfamiliar runes, and the crouching beast on the stone slab is a vicious tomb-suppressing beast.
The tomb-suppressing beast was shaped like a child, with elephant ears, long arms, red claws, and a dark body. Its fangs gnawed at half the corpse of the child, and its image was very grotesque and evil.
The so-called Shinto pillars use stone pillars as symbols to clear the way. It means that crossing the Shinto pillars means walking the way of heaven, walking the road of the dead, leading to temples or mausoleums, and is the only way to go before the gods or the dead return.
Therefore, in the test questions, 'to clear the way before the tomb, one step to the mythical creature, one step to the realm of the gods' is what it means.
The problem is that the squatting beasts at the head of the pillars of Shinto are generally auspicious, but here are the tomb-suppressing beasts.
Tomb-suppressing beasts are usually placed in mausoleums to suppress evil spirits and protect tomb owners. One tomb has one owner.
Only one tomb-suppressing beast can be placed in a mausoleum, otherwise it will kill each other and there will be no peace.
However, there are countless Shinto pillars and countless tomb-suppressing beasts here, which are bizarre and unreasonable. I feel that this warning area is like a large mass burial cemetery. Each Shinto pillar represents an ancient tomb, and the tomb is sealed with horror. Ferocious alien.
Cen Jin stared at the recorded text on the slate. There were four lines in total. They were not the traditional Chinese characters he was familiar with, but large seal characters with more rounded and complicated strokes.
The difference between the big seal script and the modern traditional Chinese script is a bit big. Cen Jin even guessed the meaning of the translation: This is a rich land, and the people depend on it to survive, but there is some kind of evil in the forest that is very cruel, and cast Shinto pillars and tomb-suppressing beasts for suppression , hoping to eradicate harmful things.
But when each Shinto Pillar is about to be completed, it will always collapse inexplicably. In order to solve this problem, we specially follow the practices of our ancestors and finally restore a peaceful and healthy life.
Column time, the third year of the Republic of China in March.
"The way of the ancestors... what way?"
The recorded text describes the ins and outs of the construction of the Shinto pillars in three words, but it is vague in the 'ancestral practice', which is briefly mentioned.
Cen Jin recalled the topic, not wanting to be what he guessed.
He walked to the second Shinto pillar, the content of the slate was the same, the time spanned from the Republic of China to March of the 45th year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, then the third and fourth pillars... until the thirteenth Shinto pillar, the time stopped at a certain period in the Yuan Dynasty. In February of this year, the content of the slate has a new change.
"The Prophet is wise, and I'm going to tell you... What to send a boy? Put a pile in the center and pour lime on it. The people are fighting over it, and the people are running around." Cen Jin frowned: "It means that a prophet told the local people that someone pretending to be a ghost... It is also possible that it is a foreign object pretending to be a god. 'He' wants to choose boys and girls to sacrifice to help suppress evil. People think it is a good thing, and they are rushing to send their children?"
The meaning is similar, except that some key pronouns cannot be recognized or guessed, such as what Zongmu refers to, who the prophet refers to, and what image of the 'god' who chooses the boy... With his lack of knowledge, he can't see it yet.
Counting upwards from this Shinto pillar, each Shinto pillar recorded slate has the phrase 'prophetic wisdom', indicating that this is the 'ancestral practice' referred to in the first twelve Shinto pillar slates.
Cen Jin stopped in the middle of the Shinto column corridor. There were beautiful Shinto columns in front of him and behind him. If he didn't ponder the horror behind them, this building could be called magnificent and of great value for historical research.
Each Shinto pillar represents a certain dynasty, and dozens of Shinto pillars stand side by side like a corridor of time.
One advance and one retreat is a hundred years.
If this Shinto column corridor is open to the public, it will definitely cause a sensation in the archaeological world.
Cen Jin sighed, and when he came here, he had almost mastered the information, and he was ready to break the game and save himself.
The content of the slate recorded text is combined with the analysis of the test questions. Since ancient times, the people living in this land have suppressed the ferocious evil by ramming Shinto pillars and tomb-suppressing beasts.
But the ramming process failed repeatedly, so a prophet appeared and told the people to sacrifice children, and finally the pillar was successfully erected.
There is a bad habit in the ancient industry of construction. If the project fails for no reason, it means that the land has been disturbed, and it is necessary to sacrifice living people. Among them, children are innocent and pure, which is the most suitable sacrifice for living people.
Commonly known as 'Making pilgrims', it spreads all over Asia and is also known as 'human pillars' or 'living people's foundation'. It is said that piling pilgrims originated from the lost second volume of "Luban Book", of course, the truth is unknown.
There are more than 100 Shinto pillars in this corridor, and it is estimated that more than 200 children died from the bad habits of piling, but it is unknown which dynasty the earliest Shinto pillar originated from.
Cen Jin clenched the cleaver tightly, and walked forward, while thinking in his heart: The times are long and the resentment is deep, no matter how you look at it, it is the most difficult to deal with. This warning area is called crying child, and it is related to children everywhere. It is 100% human-like foreign objects.
Humanoids can talk, think, communicate and negotiate friendly, which is a good thing for mutual benefit. I hope the 'crying child' knows how to choose.
"Of course the chance of being killed is higher." Cen Jin whispered.
He straightened his neck and felt that his neck was stiff and his back was heavy, as if there was something heavy on his shoulders causing the back and spine to be sore.
Counting to the nineteenth Shinto Pillar, Cen Jin was so tired that he was out of breath. A gust of overcast wind was blowing on his face. He was shivering from the cold. difficulty.
The forest is dense, and all sounds are silent. The Shinto pillars are like towering tombstones. It seems that there are undead sitting on the tombstones, watching the human beings silently, waiting for an opportunity to pull him into the tomb to become a new member of them.
The already grotesque tomb-suppressing beast became even more ferocious and frightening in the twilight.
The cold wind blew through his ears, and he could hear laughter wrapped in the wind.
It was a child's laughter, if it seemed like nothing, from far to near, at first glance, it felt like it was in the ear.
"whee… "
A series of laughter poured into the ears with the yin wind, the laughter of a child can still be praised as cute and sweet, but the laughter of a group of children is harsh.
Especially this burst of laughter is getting sharper and louder. When Cen Jin counted to the twenty-first Shinto pillar, the laughter went straight into his head, like a mad scream and a shrill howl from a cassette radio. Crying, the eardrum came from the sharp pain of being pierced, like a saw cutting the brain back and forth.
Cen Jin was sweating coldly in pain, and his face was pale.
Darkness, loneliness, and gloom, extreme pain and resentment poured into his brain along with laughter, and the violent impact made Cen Jin instantly hallucinate.
On the black mountain, a group of ancient people walked along the back of the mountain, either carrying building materials, or holding long bamboo pieces in their hands. After walking for a long time, they finally stopped in an open space.
Cen Jin stood in the crowd in a trance, surrounded by adults, next to a girl with a happy face. The adults placed him and the girl in the center of the two stone pillars on the left and right. An old man knelt down frantically and listened with Cen Jin. He murmured an old saying he didn't understand, and a group of people behind him fell to their knees, their faces full of fanatical expressions.
In the front is a middle-aged man with a goatee. His face is not clear. He is wearing a relatively simple shamanic sacrificial costume. He wears a brightly colored ghost face on the top of his head. The ghost face has prominent eyes and looks like an erection. .
He raised his hands in a prayer-like gesture, and chanted the strange old sayings in a gentle tone. Immediately, the dark clouds rolled and the wind was blowing.
The roar shook Cen Jin's soul, but other people present didn't care, and even regarded the vision as a miracle, and highly respected the goatee prophet as a god.
Seeing this, the children laughed.
The adults were ecstatic, kneeling three times and knocking nine times.
Cen Jin felt absurd in his heart and wanted to escape, but he couldn't control his hands and feet. He clearly felt his throat vibrate and heard his own laughter.
Then two middle-aged men stepped forward, holding wooden funnels and inserting them into Cen Jin's mouth. Cen Jin knew what they wanted to do. The real self struggled and screamed, but was trapped in a small body. This body Curiously and joyfully looking forward to the next ceremony.
Because his parents told him that he was going to the fairyland, where everything was available, and he would reach bliss forever.
Another middle-aged man poured the muddy white lime mortar into the funnel, poured it into the mouth and throat along the mouth of the funnel, flowed through the esophagus, and entered the stomach, until the bucket of lime mortar was filled, and the internal organs were full of lime mortar. , rapidly solidified and hardened, quickly destroyed the function of the intestines and internal organs, and turned a living person into a sculpture, and the terrible torture stopped.
Someone shouted, it was still an old saying, Cen Jin understood it this time, he was shouting: "Drop the pile—"
Do not! He's not dead yet!
You have been deceived, we have been deceived, you have deceived us!
It hurts!
Cen Jin's consciousness was screaming. As early as when the lime mortar was poured into his throat, he and the girl opposite him screamed in pain and struggled frantically, but to no avail. How could a child be against a group of adults
The thick lime mortar was poured over, and the surrounding area was tightly sealed. After a long time, people receded like a tide, and death came over. They were forgotten here for hundreds of years, more and more pain, more and more hatred, until One day I suddenly opened my eyes-
"Cough cough!"
Cen Jin knelt on the ground, clutching his chest and coughing piercingly. The origin of the Shinto pillar and the piling pile was the same as he guessed. The 'evil' they suppressed at first was something in the underground reservoir. Later, he was deceived by the prophet to think Being a person is sending your children to the fairyland.
This bad habit continued until the Republic of China, when the things in the underground reservoir entered an active period, polluting the grievances formed over the years in the corridor of Shinto pillars, thus giving birth to a foreign object called 'crying child'.
Crying child, the correct name should be complaining child, is mainly composed of the severe pain when the child is poured into lime mortar, with the child's body in the stone pillar as the carrier.
No wonder the foreign objects in such a thousand-year-old Shinto pillar like a large mass tomb are only a second-level danger, and they were only contaminated during the Republic of China.
Cen Jin's back suddenly felt cold, his eyes were down, and he caught a glimpse of his neck being surrounded by a pair of small blue-gray hands. Through the back of the bone cutter's dazzling light, he saw a crow-blue child crawling on his back. His eyes were all gray, and his face had numerous cracked black lines, like a broken porcelain doll.
Cen Jin, who was frantically pursued by the forest ranger and the two foreign objects in the hut in the woods, said that he was pretty good-looking.
Resentful boy: "Hee hee." A sharp black tooth appeared.
Cen Jin mourned his face: "Don't laugh, your teeth are leaking."
Resentful Child: "?"
Cen Jin: "It's really beautiful to smile without showing your teeth."
Resentful Child: "… "
It crawled forward, trying to lure Cen Jin back, but Cen Jin's eyes were straight, which made it a little confused, and the people he met before would turn back frequently in fright, collapse and try to get rid of it.
Resentment Tong was a little curious, stretched his neck, his head almost touched Cen Jin's cheek, his hands firmly pinched his neck, and when he was about to climb up to the front and let the human look directly at it, he suddenly stopped, looked down, Zhenghe cut him. The reflection of the back of the bone knife is facing each other.
Cen Jin smiled awkwardly, "I'm the cook, do you believe it?"
The resentful boy was suddenly angry, opened his mouth and screamed: "Ah ah-"
Cen Jin almost couldn't hold the cleaver, and he had another severe headache. What frightened him was a bluish-gray-skinned resentful boy crawling out of every Shinto pillar, with a crying and laughing expression on his face, vicious and crazy. Staring at him, as if ready to pounce on the hyena to eat him.
He remembered that in the inscription, "Carry the baby, don't look back, ninety-nine steps to the world" is probably the current situation.
If you can barely hold on to ninety-nine steps with just one grievance boy on your back, if a group of grievance boys on both sides stare at you with resentful eyes and gather around you slowly, then it really takes a lot of courage to pass the level.
"I'm not malicious." Cen Jin thought about the pain or resentment, the contaminated foreign body was a human-like foreign body, and tried to communicate with the words: "I have also been poured lime mortar, and I have tasted the same pain as you. ."
The pain was unbearable, but I almost choked to death.
When the group of examiners at the University of Michigan was crying, they left out such important information that it would pull people into the illusion of death. Logically speaking, this kind of mistake should not be made, or is this also part of the exam
Cen Jin was a little puzzled, but he didn't know that apart from him, no examinee in the security zone had ever seen the illusion of death.
"I know you guys and I think we can be good partners. And I'm a good guy with so much love that there's nowhere to put it."
The complaining boy stopped screaming, but the hand that was pinching Cen Jin's neck quickly closed.
Cen Jin, who was having difficulty breathing, spoke quickly: "I can help you get rid of the hut in the woods - the one-eyed monster and the long-haired faceless woman who often poach you."