Team Cao didn't answer Xiao Lei's question, opened his eyes, turned his head, and asked me: "Old Chang, under what circumstances do you say this cat will make that kind of purring sound?" Our family likes to raise some small animals at home or something, my house is now like a small zoo, there are three cats, I can still distinguish this sound, but I rarely hear cats make such a sound, only once, our cat in the yard bumped into a large Chow Chow, startled, all the hair stood up, made such a sound. ”

"My family told me that cats only purr under their throats when they are very frightened or injured, and the recording of the cat is obviously a sound at the footsteps that are approaching it. ”

Team Cao's words suddenly touched something in the depths of my memory, although I couldn't have any hints and interpretations of the recording, but I was still used to accepting this kind of guidance and expressing my feelings first.

"We often say that cats have nine lives, and most people think that this means that cats have a big life, falling from a height, if the average animal has already fallen into a meatloaf, and the cat has nothing to do. Actually, cats have nine lives, which is not exactly what it means. I continued Team Cao's words.

The phrase "cats have nine lives" is found in Eastern and Western legends, but the meaning of the representation is completely different, perhaps due to the cultural differences between the East and the West. The saying that the Western cat has nine lives comes from ancient witchcraft, which means that the witch can occupy the body of the cat she raises, which can be understood as possessing her soul to the cat's body to obtain the cat's spiritual power, and you can also use the cat's body to avoid disasters, but a cat can only be possessed nine times, and then it will refuse the witch to enter its body again, which is the origin of the nine lives. ”

In the East, the saying that cats have nine lives comes from the Buddhist scripture "Shang Quotations", which says: "Cats have nine lives, which are Tong, Spirit, Tranquility, Righteousness, Enlightenment, Light, Essence, Qi, and God." Refers to the nine spiritual powers of cats. There is also a legend in this, I remember that it is said that cats can cultivate into immortals, and every twenty years of cultivation and doing good deeds, they will grow a new tail, and when the cat grows to eight tails, it will get a warning to help his master fulfill a wish, and when the wish is fulfilled and the ninth new tail grows, the merit will be complete. ”

"But when cats often cultivate to the ninth tail, one of the old tails will be broken, becoming a dead cycle of cause and effect, and they can't make up nine tails and can't really become immortals. That legend tells that there was a persistent cat who didn't know how many years he had cultivated, and he didn't know how many tails he had broken, but he always insisted on his cultivation without regrets. Once, he rescued a young man from the wolf's paws, who became his new owner. But when the cat asks the boy about his wishes, the boy always laughs and doesn't answer, saying that he hasn't thought about it yet. ”

After many years, the boy grew up and learned the story of the nine-tailed cat, and finally one day, when the cat asked the boy again, the boy told him that his wish was to have nine tails. Because the boy abandoned his selfish desires and was grateful for his good wishes, the cat finally cultivated the ninth tail and became an immortal. What this story tells is that the heavenly opportunity of cultivation, the ultimate cultivation of a cultivator, is actually to meet a person who is willing to let him cultivate to perfection. ”

After the story was told, everyone was silent, and they didn't seem to understand what this Buddhist scripture story had to do with Lao Zhang's matter, but they all realized some mysteries from the story.

"But at least the Eastern and Western statements about cats have nine lives, which proves one point, that is, cats have psychic powers that can change the course of events, but we don't know, why did Xiang Yuanlin use such a cruel method to kill these cats, and what was the purpose of doing so?"

"Uncle Chang, can I understand the story you just told me like this, maybe Xiang Yuanlin is the cat that cultivates, and Lao Zhang gave it the last tail?" Xiao Lei asked thoughtfully.

"Who knows, but if this is really the way to cultivate to Yuanlin, it is also the way of demons. Since ancient times, those who know the heavens have lost their lives, and those who leak the heavens have been sent by heaven, and the Xiang family will not be ignorant, but each generation is as persistent as a cultivator, and there must be a huge temptation in this. The key is Lao Zhang, who fought for his own life, and also wanted to poison himself, I really can't think of any magic power in this heavenly machine. ”

We came out of the technical department, and Xiao Lei took a paper full of numbers to find a colleague who was good at code breaking. Team Cao drove me home, and when I was about to reach the entrance of the alley, Team Cao stopped the car, and forced me to find a small restaurant to sit down and ask for food and drinks. This small restaurant is in the alley, and the business is usually very light, but now there is only one table of customers for us.

I knew that Team Cao had something to say to me, so I simply opened the lid of the wine bottle, drank a few glasses with him, and waited for his next step.

After a few glasses of wine, Team Cao's face glowed red, but I felt that since he went to Shijiazhuang, he had become a little preoccupied, and before I could ask, Team Cao had already opened the conversation.

"Lao Chang, do you still remember the demon building case in the western suburbs a few years ago?"

I nodded, of course I remember this incident deeply, but behind this case, the strict family rules of cultivating the Immortal Family and the strange thinking beyond common sense are only half-understood to Team Cao, and I don't know the deep meaning of him bringing up the old things at this moment.

"That time, we went to the building, in a half-renovated room, close to the water pipe to listen to the sound in the building, Xiao Duan said that he had heard mahjong playing, erhu, singing, but that day, I didn't hear these from the water pipe, but heard a kind of footsteps. ”

"You told me about this, and I heard it at the time, but Lao Cao, your hearing is professionally trained, much better than me, I don't hear as well as you hear, but the footsteps do exist. What's wrong? What does it have to do with Lao Zhang?" Looking at Team Cao's heart, I was still very curious, the Team Cao in front of me today was obviously different from the past, but I didn't know what the problem was.

"You know, I am a staunch materialist, and I have been educated since I was a child. Later, I came into contact with more things and met more weirdos, but I was still looking for reasonable and scientific explanations for those weird things. But that time in the Demon Tower, after hearing that footsteps, I actually changed a lot, I don't know what the reason is, but I felt that the footsteps were very familiar at the time, but we both knew that it was impossible. ”

"Fortunately, the case was over soon after, and I naturally never took the footsteps to heart again, but after that, I began to have frequent nightmares, in which there was actually nothing, it was dark, there was no light, and the only thing I could hear was the footsteps, although I couldn't see anything, but the footsteps seemed to be around, but no matter how I distinguished, how I groped, there was nothing, I had to carefully distinguish the footsteps again. ”

"This dream lasted for a few years, every ten days and half a month, I also looked for Zhou Cheng for this, he thought that I was just under the pressure of work, plus what stimulation I had in my childhood, such as being locked in a small black room or being trapped in some small space, but you know, my father was strict and severe, punished and beaten or something, but I never remember being locked up in a small black room. Zhou Cheng prescribed me some medicine to help me sleep, and after taking it, I got better, and the number of dreams decreased, but the dream still appeared. ”

"In the last year, although I have not dreamed much, perhaps because I have listened carefully every time, I have begun to slowly sketch the appearance of the walker in the darkness that I can't see, not tall, in his fifties, with a little hunched back and a little lame on his left foot, so he walks with one foot deep and one foot shallow, and his stride is very small, and his cadence is also very slow. It's just that I can't imagine what he will look like, but I always feel that I am very close to that day. ”

These words came out of Team Cao's mouth, and I was shocked. It had nothing to do with his materialism, but rather the state of his dreams that surprised me immensely. A person's dreams are actually very different, but most of them are composed of scenes and characters in the scenes, and our brain's memory of dreams is more fragmented, and more dream plots are actually the brain's memories of the scene, which is why we often feel that dreams are like movies and not real.

But in my impression, there seems to be no sound in the dream, although there will be the dialogue of the characters in the dream, there will be the waves crashing on the shore, there will be the deep valley birdsong, there will be the ancient temple bells, but those neurons that are obviously not the eardrum really receive the vibration of the sound and transmit it to the brain, in fact, it is still the brain's imagination of those scenes, which is the sound we are familiar with.

But like Team Cao, there was nothing in the whole dream, it was dark, and his whole dream was listening to the footsteps in the dark, which was really unheard of, and I had never experienced it. But what really shocked me was, why did Team Cao tell me this, and did his dream still have something to do with Lao Zhang?

Seeing that I was lying on the side and didn't speak, Team Cao laughed twice, picked up a beer glass and touched it with me, and said, "Don't mention this, let's continue to talk about Lao Zhang." ”

"Wait, Team Cao, you don't mean that the footsteps you hear on the tape are the same as the ones you hear in your dreams, do you?" I asked, unable to hide my surprise any longer.

(All come to the things in front of you, those who are content are in the fairyland, and those who are not content are in the mortal realm; there is always a cause in the world, those who make good use of it are vigorous, and those who are not good at use are killed.) --"Caigen Tan")