The man lying on the paper bed was stunned when he heard the words "Zhu Hongcai".
He opened his mouth and seemed to want to speak, but there was a muffled guttural sound in his throat.
"Oh, I forgot."
Beiquan quickly drew a simple spell and photographed it on Zhu Hongcao.
"Most of the souls who have gone to the underworld are unwilling, and they are complaining about each other, so they can't talk casually in Zhicheng."
Beiquan explained to Wei Fuyuan:
"Only before a judge are they allowed to appeal their grievances."
Wei Fuyuan let out an "oh" and finally understood the reason why Beiquan told him not to speak.
Beiquan turned to Zhu Hongcai again:
"Now, you can speak."
Zhu Hongcai tried to clear his throat.
"Cough! Mmmm, cough!"
The articulation was clear, and it was indeed his own voice.
Zhu Hongcao raised his head with the words "unbelievable" written all over his face.
"You... who are you?"
After not speaking for a long time, Zhu Hongcai seemed to be about to forget how to speak.
His articulation is slow, his pronunciation is a bit slurred, and his phrasing is unnatural:
"Why do you know... my, name?"
"To answer your second question first."
Beiquan smiled, "Because we are looking for you."
Saying that, he pulled Wei Fuyuan and put his hand on his little boyfriend's shoulder, "As for us, we came down from above to ask you something."
Zhu Hongcai stared at them fixedly, and after a while, he gasped.
Of course, the soul doesn't need to breathe, this is just a habit he still retains as a newly dead person.
"You mean...that you...are actually living beings?"
Beiquan smiled and nodded.
This answer is too exciting, and Zhu Hongcai's expression finally has a clear crack.
He stood up, staggered two steps forward, and reached out to the two of them, as if he wanted to feel the body temperature of a "living person".
But he suddenly woke up before he touched Beiquan and Wei Fuyuan, and hurriedly shrank back.
"Are you here to find me?"
After recovering from the shock, the words that came out of Zhu Hongzhe's mouth were obviously a lot smoother, "Do you know... what happened to me?"
"Know a little bit."
Beiquan smiled:
"Then, other things, you have to tell us."
&&& &&& &&&
"I didn't expect that something like that would happen to me..."
Zhu Hongcai's self-reporting takes this as the opening remarks.
As a folklorist, Zhu Hongcha spends at least six months a year in the mountains and the countryside, collecting and recording local folk customs everywhere.
This work is simple and romantic in the imagination of many laymen. It seems that it is enough to chat with fellow villagers, listen to stories and write a few articles.
However, who knows who does it, folklore research is actually very hard work.
The research institute where Zhu Hongcai works arranged a small team for him, including himself, a total of three people.
The other two, one is a researcher in the institute, and the other is a graduate student studying archaeology.
Since about three years ago, Zhu Hongcai and the others have been conducting a folklore research project in the southwest region, specifically investigating the local ancestor worship and sacrificial customs.
The project has been carried out for three years, and the three-person team has also traveled all over the poor mountains and bad waters in the southwest region.
However, about a year ago, the postgraduate students in the team graduated, and another researcher also took a temporary leave of absence for two months due to family affairs. Only Zhu Hongchao was left to continue his unfinished rural investigation.
Zhu Hongcai sat on the lame chair and showed Beiquan and Wei Fuyuan the records he still wrote in the underworld.
Beiquan took it and turned the pages.
Wei Fuyuan leaned over curiously, and immediately frowned when he saw the paper.
The paper is crumpled white rice paper, which looks like it has been torn from a scrap of paper. liquid.
What was written on it was something Wei Fuyuan couldn't understand at all, a real ghost painting talisman.
In Young Master Wei's view, these are just curves and ink dots sketched on paper, which are no different from the graffiti of a three-year-old child, and cannot be called "words" at all.
He glanced at Beiquan quietly, and found that Beiquan seemed to be able to read these strange lines, and looked at it very seriously.
After Beiquan read the stack of "records", Zhu Hongcai continued.
"I remember... it should have been May 8 last year."
Zhu Hongcai said:
"At that time, I was alone in a small village about 60 kilometers south of Qixian County to investigate local folk customs. A fellow villager told me that a "land shovel" "boss" came to the next village and seemed to have received two good goods in his hand. ."
"Shoveling the land" is a jargon among cultural relics dealers, referring to the behavior of scavenging leaks from farmers' homes and buying antiques at low prices from people who don't know the goods.
And "boss" refers of course to the antique dealer who came to pick up the leaks.
In the early days of reform and opening up, the antique market prospered again. With market demand, there will be merchants that emerge as the times require. The dealers of cultural relics ran to the countryside one after another, shoveling the "land" over and over again, regardless of whether they were genuine or fake cultural relics, as long as there was such a possibility, even the sauerkraut jars of the fellow villagers would not be spared. , fifty dollars tied to a trolley and pulled away.
But there are many valuable antiquities. After many trips back and forth, even if you search all the corners and corners, it is difficult to "shovel" out any valuable objects.
Therefore, there are not many antique dealers who go to “shovel the land” in person. Most of them go there every now and then to dig up ancient tombs, and there are bright artifacts left in the countryside.
Zhu Hongcai, a folklore scholar, certainly does not work as an antique dealer, but he is very curious about the "good goods" in the hands of the "boss".
Sadly, curiosity tends to kill the cat.
This time Zhu Hongcai became the poor cat.
"I was afraid that the person would leave after receiving the goods, so I drove to the neighboring village on the same day... I saw that person."
It is said that the "boss" who just received the "good goods" is a middle-aged man in his fifties, about 1.6 meters tall, dark and thin. Clearly more like a malnourished Southeast Asian stowaways.
Generally speaking, for outsiders who don't know the details, these antique dealers who are on the edge of law and morality are quite vigilant.
However, Zhu Hongcai, a folklorist, has been walking in the countryside all the year round, and has very rich experience in dealing with the three religions and nine streams. He asked himself that he should be able to make friendship with the other party smoothly, and maybe have a chance to take a look at the "good goods" the other party received.
It was just beyond Zhu Hong's expectation that the "boss" was surprisingly good at talking.
After Zhu Hongcai revealed his identity, the other party not only showed no disgust, but also offered to make friends with him, and asked him to eat and drink at the restaurant owned by the villagers in the evening.
"I was... actually feeling a little weird."
Zhu Hongzhe lowered his head and shook his head helplessly:
"But I thought at the time that the place to eat is a restaurant where people come and go, and I don't have much cash or valuables on me. What can a skinny man over fifty years old do with me?"
Having said that, he let out a long sigh:
"Then I paid dearly for my negligence..."
That black and thin antique dealer claimed his surname was Chen Mingchao. As for whether it was true or not, Zhu Hongchao had no way of verifying it.
The two chatted very well.
In Zhu Hongcai's view, although Chen Chao is not very good-looking, his knowledge is surprisingly broad, and he has a bit of the folk style of Bai Xiaosheng.
He knows astronomy from the top, geography from the bottom, people in the middle, and yin and yang gossip.
They chatted for hours.
It was not until after three rounds of wine that Zhu Hongcai felt that he was drinking, Chen Chao took out a black velvet box and showed him the "good stuff" in his hand.
Hearing this, Beiquan smiled:
"I guess, it's a gold and silk auspicious cloud pattern Dongzhu bracelet, right?"
Zhu Hongcai was stunned, "How did you know?"
After a second thought, he realized:
"Could it be... have you found that bracelet?"
"We did get the bracelet."
Beiquan confirmed Zhu Hongcai's guess.
"Do you know what 'thing' that bracelet is?"
Beiquan put emphasis on the word "things", and he thought that Zhu Hongcai would understand what he meant.
Sure enough, Zhu Hongcai shook his head, "I don't know."
He said:
"I just glanced at the bracelet and never even touched it, let alone...know what 'thing' it was."
Beiquan smiled and didn't ask any further questions, just motioned for the other party to continue.
So Zhu Hongcai went on to say:
"Then, I got drunk... My last memory is when I was lying on the table, stumbled and unconscious."
He pointed to himself:
"When I regained consciousness, I was already on a dark alley... I was dead."
Having said that, Zhu Hongcai laughed, and the laughter was very bitter.
"At that time, I didn't know that I was dead, and I didn't even know that I was walking on the legendary 'Huangquan Road'. I just instinctively followed the light ahead and kept walking... until I came to this city."
Zhu Hongcai told Beiquan and Wei Fuyuan that when he first arrived, he had no possessions, and he couldn't understand his situation, and he couldn't speak. Wild ghost.
Fortunately, he was good at writing, and he met a kind-hearted old couple, so he managed to figure out the ins and outs and accept the fact that he was "dead".
"It's funny, isn't it?"
Zhu Hongcai laughed at himself:
"I don't even know when and how I died... I just acted like a fool who didn't understand."
He thought about it and added:
"And, there's one thing that's really weird."