Mystery Leaks

Chapter 221 The Night Watch (2)

Hang up the phone, Cao Nan and I told Huang Mao about the shift the next day, and they both agreed to let us go.

It is said that since the ancestors of the three families of Meng, Feng and Cao have guarded the mausoleum here for generations, they must have laid out some things, but they would not have thought that such things as clocks would appear in later generations, which made clockwork superfluous, and gradually the profession of watchmen declined until it disappeared. .

There must be a deep level of attention to playing the watch.

Otherwise, it doesn't make sense for the Cao family to go out and fight people from generation to generation.

With their nods, Cao Nan and I finally stopped hesitating and started to prepare immediately. Of course, it was mainly Cao Nan who prepared.

He has been taught by his grandma since he was a child that he knows exactly what a watchdog needs and how to play a watch, and it is only a matter of practice.

After dark at night, I didn't know how to play even more.

First of all, according to what Cao Nan's grandma explained, since ancient times, there have been two people in Dageng, fire prevention, burglar prevention and exorcism. One person is too easy to be attacked, and there must be someone to take care of it.

What's more, it's not the golden gong that tells the time, but the bamboo clapper, which is a bamboo tube, and the gong hammer is struck on it, making a "duk-duk" sound, which is not loud, but it can be heard far away.The gong is used for alarming and expelling ghosts, and it is only sounded before telling the time and in case of emergencies.

"The bamboo clapper tells the time, and the golden gong sounds auspicious", which means that the bamboo clapper tells the time, and the golden gong ensures safety.

In addition, a sackcloth bag and a horse lamp are needed. The horse lamp is used for lighting, and the cloth bag contains paper money, incense, and wax.

It is more sophisticated and sophisticated than the watchman's outfits shown in TV dramas.

Winter nights always come very fast, and it is already dark at six o'clock.

According to tradition, the first watch is at [-] o'clock in the evening. The village closes its doors early, and there is no one outside. Recently, the village is not peaceful, and some strange things always happen at night. Although no one is killed, it also scares many people.

At seven o'clock in the evening, Cao Nan and I were going to go out.

I was walking in the front with a lantern and a linen bag. Cao Nan held a bamboo clapper in his left hand, a golden gong hanging from below, and a hammer in his right hand, and rang the Luogeng gong.

The so-called Luogeng gong is struck before the time is announced, which acts as a warning.

"Boom!"

The golden gong sounded golden, and after a few breaths, Cao Nan knocked on the bamboo clapper again, and with a "du" sound, he sang again: "One watch, the cold wave is coming, close the doors and windows!"

The voice is still not loud, but the tail sound is a bit long, and it spreads far away.

Playing watch, telling the time and singing watch are not random, and the sound and rhythm are very particular.First of all, it needs to spread far and be heard clearly, but it should not be too loud, so as not to startle people and animals. It must also be based on the environment. When it is windy or rainy, the sound is different; The work of beating more people is not enough.

After walking about a hundred or so steps, Cao Nan rang the bamboo clapper again, and continued to sing: "One watch, close the doors and windows, and be careful of the candles!"

It is winter now, and the main reminder is to close doors and windows to prevent cold and frost. If it is dry and hot summer, you should shout "the sky is dry and the things are dry, be careful of fire and candles".

In short, close the doors and windows to prevent theft, be careful with fire and candles to prevent fire, and golden gongs and gold to drive away ghosts.

Exorcising ghosts is also very particular. If there is no accident, it is only sounded when the watch is dropped and received. That is to say, only two golden gongs are sounded for the first watch.

Cao Nan explained to me that the essence of golden gong exorcising ghosts lies in the word "exorcism", which means to drive away.

This is a bit like stopping a thief, just cough lightly to let him stop, pointing at the thief's nose and scolding, a dog jumps over a wall in a hurry, or a rabbit bites a person in a hurry, it is easy to cause bad luck.

The two sides reached a tacit agreement that enough is enough, I won't scare you, and you don't want to murder me.

Be careful about everything in the middle of the night, and the paper money and incense candles in the sack are the same. If you encounter the blackmailing ghosts and ghosts who can't deal with them, you have to bribe them.

Also, the burlap bag and the clothes on the paper money must be worn out, preferably with patches. The unspoken meaning is that I am poor and have no oil and water. If I want to steal it, I have to find someone else, not me.

All of the above are the way to survive for the gangsters. It is not worthwhile to go out safely and return home safely.

Some people may see this and say that watchmen are afraid of others, and that it is against professional ethics to be a monk for a day.

But for the ancients, the word “professional ethics” hasn’t come out yet. Gazing is a way of making a living. It’s enough to complete the task to gain a sense of presence. Fire prevention is the common people’s business, and theft prevention is the government’s business. As for exorcising ghosts , It’s best if you can get rid of it, if you can’t get rid of it, forget it, there’s no need to offend those wandering ghosts and wild ghosts, your own life is the most important thing.

……

The fair is not big, and the three streets roughly form a triangle, and it takes only a quarter of an hour to walk around.

Returning to the new house from another direction, Cao Nan rang the watch gong with a bang, and the one-watch patrol was over.

Perhaps because it was still early, nothing strange happened.

One watch lasts for two hours, and the next watch is at nine o'clock.

Huang Mao and Hu Lai were still awake, and when they saw us, they smiled and said, "Okay, we look good!"

"Joke, this is an ancestral handicraft!" Cao Nan clapped and laughed.

I smiled, and suddenly there was a caller. I may not know what will be spread in the village tomorrow, and I am afraid that I will have to come forward to explain it.

Master Hu is still a gold-lettered signboard in the village. Cao Nan and Hu Lai get tired of being together every day, and no one will say anything.Moreover, people of the older generation know the saying of playing watch to drive out ghosts. If someone calls watch, they will feel more at ease if they spend the night at night.

Two hours passed quickly, and at nine o'clock, we went out again.

This time it was the second watch, and after the watch gong fell, there were two sounds of bamboo clappers.

I lead the way with a lantern in front, look left and right, and look back, paying attention to the surrounding environment, while Cao Nan looks forward almost all the time, not looking around.

This is also the rule. I carry a lantern to illuminate, so naturally I have to pay more attention to the surroundings, but the watchman is not good, because the watchman needs to be courageous, and can't be timid like a coward, otherwise it is easy to be in danger.

There is an old saying that it is ominous to turn back at night. There is a sun fire on the top of the person's head and shoulders, and one fire will be extinguished at a time when the watchman turns his head. , to go straight, to go straight.

There is a division of labor between the two.

The lantern is made of turpentine laced with rooster blood, which can drive away yin and evil spirits, and the light is good. If it is broken, it will not explode and catch fire, and light the house.

At nine o'clock, the night is slowly getting dark. People in the village have developed the habit of going to bed early in the past year. In the whole fair, there are only a handful of households with lights on. A few dim street lights flickered continuously, as if they were about to go out at any moment.

I was a little nervous instinctively, and my intuition told me that there were things in the dark, but I just couldn't find where they were.Ever since the ominous imprint on his left hand can spew out fire, this feeling has become more acute, much like a sixth sense.

Sure enough, in the middle of the walk, you could hear rustling in some dark places that the lanterns couldn't illuminate, and you could hear the sound of something running away from time to time.I don't know if it's a wild cat or a mouse, or a ghost.

Although the atmosphere of this lap was not as good as before, it was still completed safely.After that is the third watch, eleven o'clock; the fourth watch, one o'clock in the morning; the fifth watch, three o'clock in the morning.

After the fifth watch, we called it a day and had a safe night.

The watch is only called until the fifth watch.

Because the cock crowed before the sixth watch, the ancients went to bed early and got up early, and they woke up almost at the sixth watch.

In addition, there is another saying, that is, after the sixth watch, the ghosts will come and go. Don’t startle them. Otherwise, if they miss the hour and don’t go back, they should hide in the living people’s house, and the dead souls are even more worrying. And bad.

If they are disturbed and the dead souls fail to enter the underworld in time and become ghosts, the evil will be serious, and if they startle the underworld, it will be even worse.

I slept until the sun was three poles, and I made up for seven hours of sleep.

When I got up, I saw that there were indeed discussions everywhere in the village about the watchman's "taking up the post", which was related to exorcising ghosts, and even Feng Daniu called to inquire.

For the next two days, nothing happened.

It wasn't until the third day that something finally happened. It was after eleven o'clock in the third watch.

Suddenly we heard a cry.

"Woooo..." It was a woman crying, looking very sad. The strange thing was that the voice was very ethereal, as if it was blown by the wind. If you didn't listen carefully, you couldn't tell the direction of the voice.

Cao Nan and I changed countenance, the voice was probably not someone crying.

"Go and have a look!" Cao Nan said.

I nodded, and the lantern followed the general direction to find it.

If it was an ordinary watchman, he might shrink back immediately when he heard this sound, but we are different.Beforehand, Cao Nan said that since he was a watchman, he could not hide when something unusual happened, otherwise the meaning of the watchman would be lost. This was explained by Cao Nan's grandmother.

A little closer, the sound became louder.

Soon, we found an obviously illusory sound in the corner. It was a woman with her back facing us, wearing a thin summer dress, two long braids, and a pair of white embroidered shoes on her feet.

The lantern shone on it, but there was no shadow.

I don't know why, but those white embroidered shoes make me feel a little familiar, as if I've seen them somewhere.

This is obviously not a living person, or a ghost, or a dead soul who has not yet had time to reincarnate after death.

Cao Nan and I tensed up and were ready to go all out at any time. Fortunately, the last time we fought ghosts in the secret vault of the Zongqi Office gave us a little confidence, otherwise we would have fled long ago according to our previous courage.

"Who are you and why are you crying here?" I asked.

As soon as the woman heard the sound, her crying slowly subsided, and she said: "I... I don't know what to do, I'm so cold, I want to get out of here."

"Why can't you leave?" I asked cautiously.

"I don't know either, woo woo woo..." She started crying again.

"It's a dead soul!" Cao Nan mouthed me.

I nodded. Ghosts have ghost aura, which is very cold, but dead souls don't. If there is and we don't notice it, then it's not normal, and we deserve it if we encounter it.

"What's your name, turn around!" I said again, the woman looks very young, no one has died in Jinpen Township recently, let alone such a young woman, she looks only 20 years old from the back, which is really strange.

The woman turned around slowly after hearing the words, and the face she revealed surprised us.

Feng Daniu's wife!

I was shocked, Feng Daniu's wife was bitten to death on the second night of Feng Deliang's fraudulent corpse, and her blood was also sucked dry.

It has been half a year, and she is still staying in the world, not reincarnated, nor turned into a ghost.

You know, ghosts usually don't leave the yang world to go to the underworld for seven days, so they can easily turn into ghosts. After all, Yin Qi is everywhere in the world, even if they are passively sucked, they should turn into ghosts.

"How could it be you?"

I couldn't believe my eyes. Seeing Cao Nan also looked shocked and puzzled, I was sure I was right.

"You've been dead for so long, why don't you go to the underworld?" Cao Nan also asked.

Under normal circumstances, the souls of the dead after death are ignorant, attracted by the underworld, they will go on their own, if seven days have not arrived, the ghosts of the underworld will come up to seduce the soul.

Of course, there are also people who are alive and kicking when the time limit is up, and they are not polite. The cause of death of such people is often sudden illness without warning.

"The errand said that my yang life is not over, so I can't go to reincarnation." She said, and cried again after speaking.

Thousands of alpacas ran past in my heart, does Feng Daniu know about this, he is still fighting with Wang Shi.

And Feng Deliang, he was also bitten to death, is it possible that his dead soul still stays in the world?
If so, this is a major breakthrough.

……

(End of this chapter)