Qiao Heng opened his eyes in the dark.

He's probably lying down now.

Qiao Heng could sense that he was being confined in a small space, the familiar smell of raw lacquer lingering between his noses, and he moved his fingers, feeling that he had encountered some obstacles, which was the unique touch of wooden boards.

He was lying in a coffin. Qiao Heng conjectured in hindsight.

This is a situation that is absolutely not pleasant to the heart, ordinary people encounter this situation, they are afraid that they will be so anxious that they will go crazy, but Qiao Heng seems to have completely ignored the dangerous situation that he may fall into next, he did not take any measures, and still lay down honestly.

There was no light in his field of vision, and he couldn't see anything. If there is a little firefly illuminating his face, you will find that there is no sparkle in his eyes, not the lack of focus of a blind person, but the emptiness that he is clearly sane, but he is unwilling to think or do anything.

No, he's still thinking about something.

He's dead.

But he's still alive.

He stabbed a sharp sword into his heart with his own hands, and he ended his own life himself.

Of course he wants to live, not only to live simply, but also to live well. For him, who has a slight perfectionist tendency, if he can't do this, then it is better to let him simply plunge into eternal sleep.

This kind of suicide is not common for him who has a strong desire to survive. The only few times he did it were only forced to do it - in the face of endless imprisonment/imprisonment, or in the face of some annoying punishment, Qiao Heng believed that there would be no fewer people who made the same choice as him.

But what was he doing this time? It wasn't the worst compared to what had happened to him in the past.

Maybe it's just because I don't want to endure it anymore...... That's barely a decent answer.

There were four porters standing outside the coffin, and in the middle of the night, they were dragged out of the bed, and the man asked them to hand over the coffin to a man named Master Shangguan in person. The man gave them four taels of silver, and told them to send the coffin to the "noble hall" of the Ruyun Inn the next day, and Master Shangguan was there.

To tell the truth, when they are sleeping soundly at night, no one wants to be inexplicably woken up, but no one has trouble with silver, right? That's a whole four taels of silver! Each person has one tael of silver, enough for each of them to exchange two stones of rice, and the whole family will eat for three months. And that person is not an ordinary person at first glance, he came to their room unconsciously, how can they afford such a Jianghu person, whether to accept or not to accept this business, which is up to them little people to decide.

This place is a ruined temple located outside the city, the moon hangs on the treetops, and the cries of gnats are heard from time to time outside the temple.

"Come on, come on, let's lift this coffin, Ruyun Inn is not close, it won't be good if you miss the hour. ”

"This coffin is not light, there are people in it? This is a good 'Nanshou', I don't know who the person lying in it is, it seems that the family is blessed. The man said, glancing at the coffin with envy, how good it would be if he could use such a Nanmu coffin after he died. Thinking of this, he was even more curious about who the person lying in the coffin was, as far as he knew, none of the big families in the city had relatives at home.

The air became thinner, and Qiao Heng closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, he raised his hand and tentatively pushed it up, but luckily, the coffin was not nailed. With great skill, he lifted the lid of the coffin to the ground.

"Ah!" the four porters, who were about to lift the coffin, exclaimed, startled by the sudden turn of events, and let go of their hands, and the coffin, which had just been lifted a corner, fell heavily to the ground.

Qiao Heng sat up with his body still in a state of weakness.

The four porters looked at a young man of seventeen or eighteen years old and sat up from the coffin with his hands on the rim. His face was terrifyingly white, and he was wearing a shroud with dark embroidered gold trim, and he got up from the coffin, stepped over the coffin with the soles of his shoes, and the sound of stepping on the ground was unusually clear. A porter couldn't control his trembling legs, and suddenly knelt down.

In the dead of night, the ruined temple outside the city, the people who came out of the coffin, this scene is combined, and it is really difficult for the porters not to think about it.

They have also heard stories from the mouths of the old people in the family, such as picking up corpses and cheating corpses, although they don't believe in these things very much in their hearts, but when they really encounter similar things, they still can't help but be afraid. If the other party is a living person, it will be even more terrifying, but a big living person was put in a coffin, and then connected with the fact that he was forced to be screamed from home before, and was half-forced to come to carry the coffin, after thinking about it for a while, he knew that they were probably accidentally involved in the private affairs of these Jianghu people. Those things in the rivers and lakes can be mixed with by these porters, I really met ghosts, it's a big deal to go to see Lord Yama by myself, if you provoke these people in the rivers and lakes, it will be full of people at every turn.

The older porter held back the uneasiness in his heart, and he glanced at his companion. The group saw Qiao Heng standing in place, as if he was looking around at an extremely slow speed.

The older porter said flatteringly: "I don't want to disturb the little officials, so let's go first." ”

Seeing that Qiao Heng didn't look at them at all, they hurriedly left the broken temple.

Qiao Heng looked around.

The surroundings were quiet, and he suddenly felt a cramp in his stomach, and his already weak body, at first encountering this violent colic, made him have to hold the coffin and kneel on the ground.

The statue of the god that had fallen to the ground had cracks all over its body, and its wooden eyes were staring at Qiao Heng. The wide, solemn smile on its face, under the cover of dust, looked like it was sneering at something at such an oblique angle.

In the deathly silence, Qiao Heng picked up a stone from the ground and bounced it towards the top of the idol's head. The head of the clay statue shattered in an instant when the stone fell on it.

He smiled self-deprecatingly, thanking this body for its internal strength and intact meridian dantian.

Ignoring the dust on the ground, he turned over and sat down against the coffin, one leg stretched flat on the stone bricks, the other leg bent, tilted his head slightly, and looked at the cobweb-covered beams by the faint moonlight, his quiet eyes did not blink.

......

In the water town south of the Yangtze River, the warm breeze is slightly drunk, the weeping willows are fluttering, and the boats are rippling under the white arch bridge.

This town, which is full of lingering and beautiful atmosphere, does not have much fame in the rivers and lakes. The bloody wind and rain in the rivers and lakes seem to be dissolved in the clear water and dissolved under the light wind. What Li Xunhuan, who is "a seven-jinshi family, father and son three flowers", and the plum blossom thief who stirred up trouble in the rivers and lakes in the past came out of the rivers and lakes, all of them have just turned into a conversation in the mouth of the storyteller.

A few months ago, the bookstore in the north of the city changed owners.

The previous boss had a son, who was said to have joined a sect, and he was mixing well at the moment, so he came to pick up his relatives and go over to enjoy the blessings.

The current takeover of the bookstore is a young man from out of town, who looks to be less than twenty years old. He looks quite delicate, speaks gently, and is very polite, but his temperament is a little cold, but this has not affected his senses in the minds of outsiders, on the contrary, his popularity is not bad.

Most people always have a bit of a rebellious mentality, to put it more vulgarly and ugly, that is, with a bit of cheap bones, when you want to get close to the other party, they are afraid to avoid it, you are estranged from it, and some people take the initiative to come up. This point is especially applicable to some corrupt and sour Confucians who disliked the previous boss for defiling Wenqu Xingjun with copper stench when the previous boss was still there, and if you think about it carefully, it can't help but make people feel embarrassed and ironic. Qiao Heng was a little unaware of this qiē, in fact, he didn't mean to deal with people specifically.

When the morning light was faint and the streets were still foggy, the bookstore had already opened its doors.

Qiao Heng sat at a wooden table in the store, holding a book in his hand.

If one approached him and looked closely, one would find a very thin and shallow scar on his neck, which was the mark left by the sharp and precise piercing of the throat with an extremely thin sharp weapon, and the original owner of the body had lost his life because of this fatal wound. As for why the two used the same body, the original owner of the body had to die, but he was able to survive safely, rather than praise the "miracle of life", Qiao Heng preferred to use "the malice of the world" to describe this unbelievable thing.

The wound may have hurt his vocal cords, and he still feels sick from time to time to this day. Loud talking, shouting, or speaking too fast will cause him to feel a tearing sting. He should also pay more attention to eating, those foods that are easy to catch fire and irritating, once he eats it, he will be so painful that he can't say a word for several days. Fortunately, he was not a person who liked to speak loudly, and he did not have a favorite taste in food, which had little influence on him.

Qiao Heng flipped through the pages of the book in his hand, and he had already memorized the content on it. He reads books very quickly, and ten lines at a glance is not an exaggeration for him, but a description that could not be more accurate. Yet even though he had memorized the contents of the book, he still did not replace it, he held it because he needed to pretend to use it, and it was the same in every book.

He always thinks about so much, but he suddenly discovers that the most relaxed and carefree person in the world is actually not the so-called extremely smart person in people's mouths, but a fool who is ignorant and ignorant of everything. It was an obvious thing, but he understood it too late to learn.

By reading books, he could avoid a lot of harassment that he didn't want to pay attention to, and avoid a lot of unnecessary conversations, and he silently recited "rare confusion" in his heart, and finally smiled at himself, and there was no warmth in his smile.

That's when the man stepped into the bookstore.

The visitor was very tall, and he was wearing a golden shirt, a color that would only look tacky and dazzling on ordinary people, but on the body of the comer, it showed a metallic coldness. His robe was very long, the corners of his robe touched the top of his feet, and the way he walked up should have been step-by-step, but his robe did not move at all.

His gaze is like a knife, and you'd probably hard-sighted look like this. Just this pair of eyes is enough to make countless heroes of the rivers and lakes vent their whole body courage, and they can no longer raise any courage.

This is not a person who has come to buy books.

Anyone who sees this man will come to such a conclusion.

Such a man should not have come to such a bookish place, but he did appear here.

The man didn't say much after he came in, he walked over step by step, his footsteps were not light or heavy, but they were so gratuitous that people felt that there was a crisis in them. He stood in front of Qiao Heng and lowered his head to look at Qiao Heng who was reading.

A shadow hit the page, forcing Qiao Heng to raise his head. There is a strangeness in his eyes when facing people he doesn't know, and a friendliness that is too polite. He made a gesture in a gesture that would not cause any offense, motioned for the other party to stand aside for a moment, and said politely: "Labor, borrow light." ”

The man didn't seem to hear him at all, he just looked straight into Qiao Heng's eyes, as if he was examining something. The look in the young man's eyes that looked at the stranger could not have been more clearly reflected in the man's eyes.

The face of the visitor was the same as when he first walked in, there was no expression, but it inexplicably made people feel that his face had changed greatly at a certain moment, no, his expression did not change, but others had an illusion that he was wearing a transparent mask for no reason.

When do people put on a mask for themselves?

Naturally, when it is to cover up his true inner feelings, he will wear such an invisible mask.

Looking at the entire rivers and lakes, there are very few people who can compare with him in terms of martial arts, power, and financial resources, and he could have acted unscrupulously, laughed to his heart's content, and was angry to his heart's content, unless this was a sentiment that needed to be concealed, which he considered weak, unable to show, and had to hide.

Is it sadness, fear, or plain disbelief?

The visitor looked at Qiao Heng and asked, "Do you know who I am?"

Qiao Heng replied: "I'm sorry, I don't know. He looked as if he really thought the two had met before, but he was apologizing for not recognizing each other.

This is not a lie, it is the original owner of the body who knows who the other party is, and if it is Qiao Heng, he really shouldn't know the other party's name.

"You should know. The visitor said, "Shangguan Jinhong, I am Shangguan Jinhong." ”

There are too many people in this world who pretend to be other people's identities and lie about other people's names, but there are always some names that others are afraid to avoid and never dare to recognize. In the entire rivers and lakes, no one knows that Shangguan Jinhong is in second place, and even the old man of Tianji, who was originally in the first place, has died at his hands. If Bai Xiaosheng, who was discharged here, is still alive, I am afraid that this ranking will change again.

Being a man always has to be courteous, others tell you their name, you always have to tell the other party their name. Qiao Heng said: "Pay Hong Qiao by mistake, Hengyang Yan is broken." My surname is Qiao, and my single name takes a Heng character. ”

Shangguan Jinhong's face seemed to have another layer of mask on his face, and his gaze looked even more gloomy, and he said, "No, your name is not Qiao Heng." ”