Seventy-two Changes of the Evil Spirits

"It's in the middle of the tea shed."

Taoist language is complete.

The monk sitting at the same table raised his eyes.

His eyes were calm as water, but his hands held the cold crescent shovel in his arms.

Everyone just felt a little bit in their hearts, and their eyes firmly surrounded the monk, and even all the noise outside the tea shed seemed to be gradually disappearing.

The rain stopped, and the wind, insects, and bird calls from the mountains gradually disappeared, and even the sound of the "snake creek" surging by the tea shed became smaller and smaller.

It's getting quieter.

"Don't do it yet!"

Suddenly.

He screamed.

It actually came from the old shopkeeper who was full of peace and good fortune, and when he spoke, he looked at him, not a monk or a Taoist, but the few country men at the gate behind the Taoist.

Everyone's gazes immediately turned toward him, but they saw the men clenched their axes, shovel, sledgehammers...Even though they were all craftsmen eating, they might not be able to use them to kill!

Are they also bandits who blocked the road and looted? !

The horrified gazes flooded in, but the guys hadn't been "hands-on" as the shopkeeper said, but they were all at a loss. Some of them responded quickly, a guy who Ji Ling dropped his hand, waved his hand again and again:

"No, we are not..."

The words are halfway through.

The monk stood out abruptly.

The crescent shovel cast with iron in his hand held high.

The cold light from the edge of the blade made the room full of cold, so that everyone suddenly inhaled a big breath of cold air, turned into an exclaim, and was still brewing in the belly.

The crescent shovel has been smashed violently under the wind and thunder.

The axe passed by, and a body was cut off by the waist.

However, something strange came.

This should have been a brutal scene, but no blood was sprayed.

The corpse fell to the ground lightly like two paper balls, and then quickly dried up, and the appearance of the skin can be seen vaguely, exactly what the old shop looked like.

Under the tea shed, everyone's exclamation was already gushing out, but this strange scene stuck the exclamation in the throat, neither swallowing nor vomiting.

When in a daze.

A yellow gas burst out of the shriveled skin abruptly and shot out the window.

But I don't know when, that person was already blocked in front of the window, stretched out his hand, and suddenly caught the yellow gas in his hand.

Take a closer look.

"Yellow Qi" turned out to be a short and childlike man with a weird appearance. He was dressed in big pants and a short shirt. His hands and feet were covered with thick gray and yellow hair, and even his hair was yellow.

The Taoist pinched the back of his neck and couldn't help struggling.

The Taoist priest simply grabbed his head and feet with both hands, folds in the middle, and then crunches.

She squeezed it in her hands and kneaded it vigorously, and finally squeezed it into a big ball at the bottom of the bowl, pressed it into the wine jar, and then "slapped" it with a yellow symbol to seal it.

…

Things turned around again and again, dazzling people.

Everyone didn't turn their heads, the exclamation in his throat was already running off.

There was a burst of coughs in the room.

This is the head.

The wine jar shook.

Still the voice of the store.

"Master Dao is forgiving! Master Dao is forgiving! The little devil is innocent, but he has never done anything to hurt the heavens and reason!"

"innocent?"

The Taoist returned to his seat, sat down, and shook the half-full wine jar.

"Are you using rotten leaves as tea and yellow mud soup as wine to fool the innocent pedestrians? Or do you use other people's new ignorance and obsession to change innocent people?"

"Master Dao! Wronged!"

Huang Maogui was stunned to cry out some grievances to himself.

"I'm a ghost. Isn't this rotten leaf the tea for our lonely souls? Isn't the yellow mud soup just the wine for our wild ghosts?"

"Furthermore, these little ghosts, I just watched them confused and pitiful, thinking about borrowing their land to earn some hard money, and then sharing it, so that everyone has money on the road to the dark and less painful."

"Master Dao Mingjian, I am a good ghost!"

"What a ghost? Talk to Lord Chenghuang!"

People here are slurring their mouths, but the people who have recovered over there are more and more weird.

Taoist priests are hunting ghosts, shopkeepers are ghosts, and the new ghosts in the shop's words are...After looking at each other, the old shopkeepers came out to take the lead.

He respectfully crosses his hand to make a salute, and expects Ai Ai to ask carefully:

"I didn't think this shop was turned into a demon. The Dao Master and Master were able to surrender it. It really made me grateful. But the inside and outside of this demon's words also made me bewildered. Can Dao Master help me? Wait for the puzzle?"

The Taoist hesitated a little when he heard the words, looked at the monk, and saw that he was chanting with his eyes closed again.

So smoothed the corners of the talisman paper, completely sealed off the noise of the yellow-haired ghost.

Then I looked around everyone in the field of view, especially the country guys who were still stuck in front of the door.

"You all refused to leave, why not sit down and listen to the poor Taoist telling a story."

...

"Half a month ago, the same weird thing happened with the state.

It was said that a group of wealthy children went to Tieping Mountain to look for immortals and visit you, but there was a sudden illness in the middle of the road, and the companion had to send him back to the city for treatment. Unexpectedly, when he arrived at the gate of the city, the patient suddenly vomited and healed without medicine. A doctor in the city checked it and found that the sudden illness was caused by him accidentally ingesting poisonous fruit, and the vomiting healed spontaneously because he had taken vomiting herbs.

But the wealthy children swear by themselves that the patient has not eaten anything after being poisoned. At most, due to thirst, he drank a bowl of tea in a roadside tea shed.

To verify that the words were true, several people returned to their hometowns, but they did not see where the tea shed was. Some of them were just large mounds left by the collapse of the roadside mountains, just like huge graves.

When this strange story was widely circulated in the city, people were surprised to find that there was more than one similar strange thing during this period.

Some people had abdominal pain after passing through the snake, and vomited a few bunches of rotten leaves; some people took out the good wine on the road and turned into yellow mud soup; some people were resting in a tea shed, but the guests at the same table inadvertently showed horror It was so frightened that he left his salute and fled in panic...All of these, because ghosts and gods were involved, the parties were afraid of incurring revenge, so they didn't make a loud noise.

Shexing is an important route for business travel, and since the local government knows it, it has to pay attention to it. After several inspections, it was found that all the strange incidents pointed to a tea shed, and this tea shed happened to be opened by a villager in the state, and even more coincidentally, some people have seen the shop owner haunt the countryside recently.

At first, the government believed that the shop owner had colluded with the bandits to pretend to be deceitful to obtain money. When they were about to arrest the owner of the shop and return to the yamen, after several tortures, they got a completely different confession.

It turned out that a month ago, the heavy rain collapsed the hillside and the collapsed soil buried the tea shed. The shop was fortunate to escape from the latrine outside the tea shed at that time, but was overwhelmed by the mud and passed out.

I don't know how long it has passed. The store heard someone calling his name. It turned out that the family came to look for him because of something. They arrived in time and got him out.

After the store was saved, he thought that there were still customers in the tea shed before he could escape, and he was trying to save people, but...

At that time, it was sunset, yin and yang were handed over, the heavy rain continued, and the world was dizzy.

The buried tea shed appeared in front of the shop. Through the windows, you could see the guests who should have been buried in the mud chatting and talking in the tea shed. In front of the tea shed, an old man who was exactly the same as the shop was smiling. Beckoned to them.

The family was so scared that they ran away. Because they were afraid of ghosts and gods coming to kill them, they hid in their hometown. They didn't dare to go out until a month later. As a result, they were arrested by the yamen as soon as they showed up.

The county magistrate asked the mage in the city about this matter.

The mage said: The new death of a ghost is like the new life of a human being. Before the first seven, they are ignorant and muddled. Some can't remember where their homes are, some don't know their surnames and their first names, and some don't even know that they have never left the Yang world and become dead...

Most of the strange things in the tea shed are the ghosts and ghosts who used the ignorance of the new ghosts and the resentment of death to form a party of ghosts, and they would come out to cause trouble every time it rains. "

After speaking in one breath, the Taoist took a sip of the rice wine in the water sac, and then slowly spit out a white mist.

As he talked about it, the rain outside the tea shed was getting heavier, the humidity infiltrated the house, and the temperature inside the house seemed to drop by ten to twenty degrees.

He looked around again.

Skip the monks who are still chanting sutras.

The country guys at the same table started talking and laughing loudly again; the scholars approached the window to face the rain, shaking their heads and expressing poetry; the younger salesmen were muttering words to themselves; the children were laughing and playing in the loving eyes of their parents.

Everything seemed to be back to the beginning, except for the old shopkeeper in front of the Taoist.

His figure became more and more rickety, his face seemed to be stripped of a layer of color and turned gray, and his two eyes couldn't help shaking in his eye sockets:

"Snakes are long and narrow, and there are many tea sheds and wine houses. I don't know which one of the tourists suffered such misfortune."

"It's easy to say."

The Taoist put down the water bag and looked directly at the past.

"It was heavy rain that day, and there were very few guests passing by. The guards checked repeatedly and found out the identities of the victims."

The cold wind opened the door curtain, and the air was unusually cold.

Taoists are unmoved.

"First, I went to Xuanzhou to repair the bridge with a group of stone masons from the state, introduced by my hometown."

The chatting and laughter of the guys at the table stopped abruptly, and they suddenly lowered their eyes and lowered their hands, sitting opposite each other like puppets.

"A bunch of scholars who come together from other places again, they are going to Yuhang to watch the tide on August 18th."

The poetry near the window subsided, only a few dripping muddy back figures stood silently facing the window.

"Then the family who fled. Poor finally escaped from the famine and bandits, but fell on the eve of ushering in a new life."

The child's laughter and ranting stopped, only the hollow eyes of a family of four looked over.

"Finally, there are two salesmen who are going to Yuhang to do business."

"They are all ordinary people, life and death misfortune, no surprises."

"Nothing unusual?"

The old man murmured and repeated.

At this moment, his expression is very strange, like a smile like crying like doubt and panic.

"Don't want to laugh at Dao Master, these people you are talking about are just like... Huh?"

As he said, the corners of his eyes slid out of coldness for no apparent reason, and when he touched his fingers, his tears were mixed with roughness. Looking down, it turned out that it was all mud and sand.

He showed a sad look, looked at the Taoist, and wanted to say something, but when he spoke, he vomited mud and mud.

And also at this time.

There was a sudden heavy rain outside the house.

The room was dim like night.

I heard the inexplicable strange sound in the bleak, the Taoist still remembered this, it was the abnormal sound of the disintegration of the soil before the landslide.

Ugh.

The Taoist sighed, already holding down the long sword.

At this time.

"Amitabha."

The monk opposite stood up suddenly.

He put his palms together, and the clapping sound resounded like Hong Zhong Dalu inside and outside the tea shed.

The face is angry with King Kong.

"Not yet awake?!"

Immediately continue chanting, but no longer silently chanting, but chanting loudly...no! In fact, in the ears of Taoists, monks chanting sutras are never silent, and there is always a sound of sutras in their ears.

It's not that the Buddha sang silently, but that the "audience" in the field did not want to listen.

But now the monk's chanting is clear and vocal.

"The Buddha told Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva: It is the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, and there is a great cause for it in Yanfuti. If you say that all living beings have seen, heard, and benefited, you can say that you can't do it. All beings in the world of Sao Po will be happy forever..."

There are no flowers falling randomly, and there is no ground blooming golden lotus.

on the contrary.

The monk's speech still carries a little local accent.

However, under such unsurprising chanting, the violent storm outside the house gradually subsided, and the bleak faces of the ghosts in the house gradually calmed down.

They slowly became nothingness, slowly escaping the white light, the light joined together, filling the whole tea shed.

Finally, like the thin ice under the warm winter sun, it slowly melted, then shattered and annihilated.

The world reappears before our eyes.

The mountains and forests are still the same, the rivers are still the same, only the tea shed where the two are in is gone, replaced by a huge mound like a grave.

…

"What do you call the master?"

"The little monk has strict laws."

"The surname is Li, the surname is Xuanxiao."

Under the mound, Li Changan lifted the jar of ghosts and shook the monk.

"This old ghost rewards half of your silver. I want to go back to get the money and go with it?"

The monk named Fa Yan gently shook his head.

"The little monk doesn't know about bonuses, and he doesn't come to offer a reward. If the Taoist leader is willing, he will meet each other in the future, and he will be willing to give some fast food, and the little monk will be grateful."

"The monk is looking for a Taoist alms? It's really weird."

Li Changan shook his head and laughed.

"It's up to you."

It's not about collecting New Year's money for the New Year, you push me to make it meaningless.

When this happened, the Taoist priests had to rush back to Hezhou in the north of the mountain and exchange the old tortoise in the jar and the human head on the back of the donkey for silver.

Before leaving.

But saw the monk wave a crescent shovel on the mound.

The Taoist priest was curious: "What are you going to do?"

"The little monk wants to bury the bones of several donors."

Li Changan blinked his eyes, looked at the monk, and then at the big mound.

It took a long time to clarify the meaning of the strict language.

"You mean you are going to dig the body out of the soil, then change the place and bury it in the soil?"

"Exactly."

"..."

Li Changan was speechless and led the donkey away.

...

It was already the next day when Li Changan returned here.

But he saw that Fa Yan was still digging.

Li Changan noticed that most of the mound had been dug up by him, and he could see the debris of the building buried in the mud. Several unknown graves were added to the side of the road. On the other hand, the law was strict, but he almost wrapped himself up as a mud monkey.

When the Taoist asked, he knew that he had never stopped from yesterday to reunion today.

"I think you are also an accomplished person, why don't you use some magical spells?"

"The magical powers are only used to protect the road, just like walking with your feet, so why bother with your hands?"

Li Changan disagrees very much.

As a lazy person, he has always been how convenient and how to come.

But at the same time, as a lazy person, he doesn't bother to make irresponsible remarks about other people's ideas.

So, he just stroked the donkey's head and let it go to the roadside to graze. I saw a pile of mud-stained tools next to the monk, presumably the relics of those country men, went up to pick a shovel, and hummed together with Fa Yan to dig up the soil.

About an hour or two later, the two of them worked together to dig out the dead bodies of the victims and bury them again.

The Taoist priest knew that the monk had not touched the grain of rice since yesterday, so he took out the dry food and water bag from the bag and handed it to him. This time the monk did not refuse, but said "thank you", took the things, and after unscrewing the water sac, he smiled and handed it back.

The Taoist suddenly remembered that his water bag was filled with wine.

It's not that he is greedy and drunk, but that he is away from home, and the water is easy to rot.

The monk picked up half a pottery bowl and walked to the river, skimming the dregs from the water, and scooping up half a bowl of clear water. He was about to mix with raw underwater steamed buns, and looked up at the sky abruptly.

Then he drank a few bowls of river water in silence, and returned the steamed buns to the Taoist priest.

Li Changan was a little surprised.

The steamed buns have no meat, right?

Fa Yan did not answer, and pointed at the sky with a smile, the sun had crossed the center.

have to.

Buddhism precepts, do not eat after lunch.

...

The destination of Law Yan was in Yuhang, and Li Changan followed the Yellow Paper's guidance all the way to the southeast.

The same direction is just the same.

But to be honest, the two did not agree.

Although Fa Yan looked wild and unruly on the outside, it was just that he regarded his body as a skin for the world and didn't care about it, but he didn't dare to relax in the practice of precepts.

As for Li Changan...clear rules and precepts? what is that?

Fortunately, the two of them are not competitive temperaments, and they do not interfere with each other along the way.

today.

Go east along Snake Creek.

Suddenly, I saw a large crowd of people in front of me, blowing gongs and drums, so it was so lively.

I caught the villager and asked.

It is said that the rich man here is inexplicably benevolent and wants to build a new bridge in the village. Right now, he is inviting a wizard to worship the Dragon Lord.

Dragon?

Li Changan's expression moved.

Lead the donkey to join in the fun.