In the evening.

Marina City.

A taxi came to a slow stop.

"Old man, can you use me to carry it for you? The taxi driver asked enthusiastically.

"Hehe, it's okay, it's not sinking, I can still carry it, thank you. A thin, good-looking old man smiled and waved his hand, and got out of the car with a small suitcase.

Judging from his appearance, the old man was at least eighty years old, with a gray beard on his chin, and although the passers-by around him had changed into a thin shirt, he was wearing an old-fashioned cotton robe as if he was afraid of the cold, and he looked like he had just come out of the troupe. However, in stark contrast to his age and his old dress, he still paid the taxi fare with his mobile phone, which surprised the driver, because many middle-aged and elderly people in their forties and fifties would only pay in cash.

The driver would have been even more surprised if he knew that there was another cat he couldn't see was sitting all the way in the back seat and got out of the car with the old man.

The taxi drove away, and the old man dusted off his cotton robe, looked around, and saw that everything around him didn't seem to have changed significantly from before he left.

Meow.

The cat barked quietly.

The old man lowered his head and asked with concern, "What's wrong?"

It was a Persian cat, with a black top, a black back, and a black tail, but other than that, it was snow-white, but if it was measured by the standard of modern Persian cats, this cat would undoubtedly be evaluated as disqualified, after all, it was not a cat from modern times, and the most popular cat in high society during the Song Dynasty was a cat from Persia.

It ran to the old man's feet on its short legs, as if it was about to take refuge in the cotton robe, staring at the street in the twilight with wide eyes, and the trembling of its body made the old man's cotton robe tremble slightly, as if it was extremely frightened.

The unusual behavior of his cat made the old man frown, and he looked suspiciously into the depths of the half-light and half-dark street, but found nothing unusual.

Off-duty office workers dragged their tired bodies home, children after school rode their bicycles like the wind, and small traders and vendors who only set up their stalls at night to avoid the chengguan and started to open their businesses.

He looked up at the two-story antique building in front of him, the front of the store was a vermilion lacquer door inlaid with brass nails, flanked by a pair of buckets of fine vermilion lacquer columns, and directly above hung a plaque with a blue background gilt, writing the words "Morning Things and Evening Picks".

The vermilion door was closed and locked.

There is a layer of ash on the knocker.

This is his first return to Marina City in months since leaving last fall.

What has happened in the city of Marina in the space of a few months?

When he is old and his body is not hardy, he will always choose to lock the door of the store when winter comes, go to the southern villa Maodong farther away, and come back when the spring flowers bloom the next year, anyway, he does not point to this shop to make money.

Binhai City is his own choice of retirement city, it is not as noisy as big cities, not as inconvenient as small cities, except for some cold winters, the climate is quite pleasant. There is more than one city with comparable conditions, and he drew lots in several candidate cities, and happened to be selected for Coastal City, and since then he has settled here for half of the year.

This is not the first time his cat has shown abnormality, the last time it showed abnormality was that someone gave him a bronze imitation cat god statue, when it saw the cat god statue, it seemed extremely frightened, and always hid far away, afraid to approach.

The old man likes cats very much, and he also likes things related to cats, and he is very happy after receiving the cat god statue, because he has been exposed to many antiquities, and he can see that this cat god statue is not just an imitation.

However, his cat's fear of the statue of the cat god made him wary.

He has come into contact with a lot of antiquities and collected a lot of antiquities, and the antiquities in this shop are just a drop in the ocean, and no one will put the really valuable antiquities outside for anyone to enjoy.

Perhaps because the ancients poured too much emotion, or perhaps because they had gone through too many years, some very few antiquities occasionally showed abnormalities that were difficult to explain with common sense, in other words, "psychic".

Psychic is not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes you can feel a magical tacit understanding from the psychic antiquities, and the mind seems to meet the original owner of the antiquity across time and space at that moment.

However, among these very few psychic antiquities, there are a very few antiquities whose original owners are not good ones, but seem to be evil spirits.

Whenever this happens, his cat will always behave abnormally, warning him in time to stay away from the antiquities that are haunted by evil spirits.

Other psychic antiquities have some peculiar phenomena, such as abnormal noises, abnormal movements, strange changes in light and shadow, etc., but he did not notice that the cat god statue had similar signs at first, just a very vivid work of art, thinking that his cat's nerves were a little allergic, so he temporarily left the statue in the store as soon as he entered the door, not to let his cat approach.

He used to feed the stray cats in the neighborhood, but since the cat statue came to the store, the stray cats were afraid to approach it, which made him reconsider the question - perhaps the cat god statue was completely different from the psychic things he had encountered before, and could not be judged by previous experience.

But what to do with this cat god statue?

He was conflicted.

On the one hand, Confucius said: If you can't do anything, you can't do ghosts. Unknown life, unknown death. The teachings of the saints are ignored when it comes to ghosts and gods, because there are many more important things to be explored in heaven and earth, and how can there be time to pursue the ethereal theories of ghosts and gods?

On the other hand, Zhu Zi also said: Scholars must know how the heavens can be high, how the earth can be thick, how ghosts and gods can be revealed, and how the mountains can be fused. Zhu Zi's advocacy of learning from objects also requires scholars to be curious about everything in the world and give scientific and reasonable explanations to ghosts and gods in the form of philosophical speculation.

The two sages had a subtle disagreement on this part, not to mention him, and even Zhu Zi, who had inherited the past and the future in the history of Confucianism, was haunted by this question for the rest of his life.

He searched for a lot of information, but there was so little credible information about ancient Egypt that only a handful of them have survived to this day, and he never understood why the statue of the cat god, which represented the god of good, in ancient Egypt, was so angry.

Zhu Zi said that if it is a demon, most of them will not die, and their qi will not dissipate, so they will become demons. According to this theory, the cat god statue does not have the prerequisites for becoming a demon - to be killed by a man.

Those who stretch out the qi are called gods, and those who bend the qi are called ghosts. The so-called ghosts and gods are originally just the growth and decline of yin and yang. The same is true of the human body, so when the heart moves, it can be connected with the ghosts and gods.

I think it can only be attributed to the fact that the cat god statue has been buried underground for a long time and has been impregnated by too much yin qi.

The cat god statue itself is very precious, if it is destroyed, it will inevitably destroy the heavenly things, the statue is not abnormal at present, it is better to leave it to the destined people who can control it.

What's more, Zhu Zi also said: The qi of the gods is often bent and stretched, and the qi of humans and ghosts dissipates and there is no left. There is also a difference in the speed at which it dissipates. People have people who do not ambush their dead, so they are dead and this breath does not disperse, and they are monsters.

The cat god statue was contaminated with a lot of yin energy when it was buried underground, but the yin energy will eventually dissipate, it is only a matter of time. So he often pushed the statue of the cat god into the sun at noon, so that its yin energy would quickly dissipate.

Everything in the world is formed by the two qi of yin and yang, and human and ghost are of the same origin, in addition to using the yang energy of the sun to dispel the yin energy, the yang energy of human beings can also play the same role. He felt that if the statue of the cat god was placed in a shop with a strong flow of people, it might further accelerate the dissipation of its yin energy. But his shop is definitely not good, this second-hand antique shop is too high and low to wait for a few customers.

When he met the lively and cheerful female anchor, he heard from her that she wanted to give away the cat god statue as a gift for opening the store, and the other party's shop was prosperous, which seemed to be a good place to borrow the yang to drive away the yin, so he sold the cat god statue to her at a very low price, and especially told her some taboos.

Whether it's the female anchor or her gift object, she doesn't seem to care too much about the ghosts and gods, especially her gift object, who actually claims that even if the yin qi attacks people, it will only be used as an air conditioner, which is really big-hearted......

But this is also good, "unbelief" is the best means to avoid evil, but the old man himself has long been unable to "disbelief", after all, even the ancient sages "believe", how dare he go against the ancient sages?

It was getting darker and darker, and his cat was still staring at the darkness in the distance, meowing incessantly, and constantly pulling at his cotton robe with its paws, warning him to leave the city quickly, and it was a hundred times more panicked than the last time the cat god statue appeared.

"The cat god statue has already been given away, what are you afraid of?" he asked gently.

However, his cat could not speak clearly, and could only tell him that a great evil had descended on the city, and that it was best to leave quickly for safety.

He groaned slightly, if evil was around, such as some antiquities that were connected to evil spirits, he would definitely try to send them away, bury them deeply, or destroy them, but since the scope of evil was so wide, it seemed that there was no urgent need, no matter how serious the situation was, with his cat, he would always be one step ahead of evil.

"After a long journey, let's go and rest for a while, at least after tonight, and then decide where to go. He reassured, then pulled out the key, unlocked it, and slammed the door open.

The turbid air that had not circulated in the store for months was quickly blown away by the influx of night winds.

Everything was exactly the same as when he left, including the half-opened "Zhu Zi's Collected Works and Occasional Reading Comics" on the table, which was densely marked with his annotations and reading experiences.

The pages of the book were blown and turned in the night, and finally stopped on one of the pages.

The four-legged base, head to end, eyes are not instantaneous, and there is no other thought in the heart. But if it doesn't move, the rat will not escape.