There are many river valleys in the eastern part of Shudong, high mountains, rugged terrain, and weak winds, so many places are perennially foggy.

The two of them walked straight in the direction that the left hand had guided, passing a small village.

Several circles of fences surrounded the thatched-roofed earthen houses, a flock of hens and chicks of mixed colors pecked in and out of the yard, and a large rooster with bright feathers stood on the roof, shaking the comb, standing on one foot, turning his neck vigilantly, and scanning in all directions.

Thankfully, no one has a dog. It is estimated that these villagers themselves do not have enough meat to eat all year round, let alone extra bones to feed the dogs.

There is a fork in the road in front of the village, which turns in three different directions. Two of the roads are bare, with a lot of footprints, and you can see that people often walk on them. The last one was overgrown with weeds, and a thick layer covered the road, and a square stone slab stood crookedly in the direction of the road. The slate was old and weather-beaten, and a large crack was cracked from head to foot, and dead grass came out of the crack.

Two large characters are carved on the stone slab, which seem to be the names of places where this road leads. The word below can barely be seen to be the word "city", and the word above has a lot of strokes, and the shape of the character is complicated, and it happens to be pierced by the crack, peeling off many fine stones. Wei Wuxian bent down to brush away the mess of grass and dust, but he still couldn't tell what it was.

But the direction that the left arm is pointing in is this road.

Wei Wuxian said, "Why don't you go and ask these villagers?" ”

Lan Wangji nodded, Wei Wuxian certainly wouldn't expect him to ask, and walked towards the peasant girls who were sprinkling rice and feeding the chickens with a smile on his face.

The women, young and old, nervous when they saw a strange young man approaching, and seemed to want to throw away the dustpan and flee into the house. Wei Wuxian smiled and said a few words before they slowly calmed down and replied a little shyly.

Wei Wuxian pointed to the stele and asked, their faces changed first, and they hesitated for a long time before they began to talk to him intermittently and pointingly. During this period, he didn't dare to look at Lan Wangji standing next to the stone tablet. Wei Wuxian listened carefully for a while, the corners of his mouth kept rising, and at the end, it seemed to change the subject, causing the peasant girls to stretch their colors and relax again, smiling at him unskillfully.

Lan Wangji stared at it from afar, and after waiting for a long time, he didn't see Wei Wuxian have any intention of coming back. He slowly lowered his head and kicked a pebble next to his foot.

Turned this innocent pebble over and over again for a while. Raising his head again, Wei Wuxian still didn't come back, but instead took something out of his arms and handed it to the peasant girl who talked the most.

Lan Wangji stood in place, he couldn't help it. Just as he was about to take a step forward, Wei Wuxian finally walked back with his hands in his hands.

He stood back beside Lan Wangji and said, "Hanguang-kun, you should go over." They have rabbits! ”

Lan Wangji didn't react to his ridicule, and said coldly, "Ask what's wrong." ”

Wei Wuxian said, "This road leads to Yicheng. The first word on the stele is the word 'righteousness'. ”

Lan Wangji said: "Chivalrous righteousness? ”

Wei Wuxian said, "That's what I asked. Yes and no. ”

Lan Wangji said: "What do you understand." ”

Wei Wuxian said: "The word is indeed that word, but the meaning is wrong. It is not the righteousness of chivalry, but the righteousness of Yizhuang. ”

They walked up the fork in the road through the weeds, leaving the stele behind them. Wei Wuxian continued: "These girls said that since ancient times, five or six out of ten people living in that city have a short life, either a short lifespan or a horizontal death, there are a lot of Yizhuang in the city for the corpse, and the local specialty coffin paper money and other funeral offerings, whether it is to make a coffin or tie paper, are all skillful, so it is called this name." ”

Lan Wangji didn't ask why the residents of the city didn't abandon the city and leave. They all understand that if the people of a place are rooted in it for generations, it is very difficult to get them to leave. Only five or six out of ten people have a short life, and it seems that they can bear it, maybe they are the other four or five out of ten. Moreover, born in such a poor and remote country, most of them don't know where to go when they leave their hometown.

In addition to the dead grass and rocks on the road, there are also ravines that are not easy to detect. Lan Wangji's eyes kept an eye on Wei Wuxian's feet, and Wei Wuxian said as he walked: "They said that the people here rarely go to Yicheng, and the people inside rarely leave except for delivering goods. In recent years, there has been almost no one to be seen. The road has been abandoned for several years and no one has walked it. It's really hard to walk. ”

Lan Wangji: "There's more. ”

Wei Wuxian: "What else?" ”

Lan Wangji said, "What did you give them?" ”

Wei Wuxian said, "Oh. That's what you say? It's rouge. ”

When he was in Qinghe, he bought a small box of rouge from the fake Taoist priest who inquired about Xingluling, and kept it with him. Wei Wuxian said: "When you ask people about things, you have to give some thanks." I was going to give the money, but the people were so frightened that they didn't dare to take it. Seeing that they liked the smell of rouge so much that they had never used such a thing, they gave it away. ”

After a pause, he said again: "Hanguang-jun, what are you looking at me like this." That box of rouge is not good. But now I am not as good as before, and I carry a bunch of flowers and plants all day long to send girls everywhere. There's really nothing else to give, it's better than nothing. ”

As if he had been awakened to some very unpleasant memory, Lan Wangji twitched his eyebrows and slowly turned his head.

Walking along this difficult road, the weeds gradually thinned out, and they crawled back to both sides, and the road gradually opened up. The fog is getting thicker and thicker.

As his left arm folded into a fist, a ruined gate appeared at the end of the long road.

The corner tower at the head of the city lacks tiles and paint, and a corner is lost, which is extremely dilapidated and ugly. The walls are covered with graffiti drawn by unknown people. The red of the gate had almost faded to white, the nails were rusted and blackened one by one, and the two doors were hidden, as if someone had just pushed open a crack and slipped in.

Before I even entered it, it made people feel that this must be a ghost place where a group of demons danced.

As Wei Wuxian walked along the road, he kept looking around, and when he arrived at the city gate, he commented, "Feng Shui is really bad. ”

Lan Wangji nodded slowly: "The mountains are poor and the water is evil." ”

This righteous city is surrounded by high mountains and cliffs, and the mountains are sloping towards the center, showing an overwhelming and coercive trend, as if they will collapse at any time. Surrounded on all sides by such a huge black mountain rock, in the miserable white fog, there are more demons and monsters than demons and monsters.

Just standing here makes people feel stuffy in their chests, panicked, and have a strong sense of threat.

Since ancient times, there has been a saying that "outstanding people are spiritual", and there is also a saying that the reverse is true. In some places, due to the terrain and location, the feng shui is bad, and the natural musty smell lingers, and the people who live here are prone to short-lived deaths, and everything goes wrong. If the ancestors have been rooted here for generations, it will be moldy to the bones. Moreover, it often breeds visions, and events such as corpse mutinies and ghosts may be several times more likely to occur in other places. Obviously, Yicheng is such a place.

This kind of place is generally located in a remote location, and the Xianmen family can't manage it, of course, they don't want to take care of it, it's very troublesome. It's more troublesome than the water abyss. Shui Xingyuan can also be driven away, but Feng Shui is difficult to change. If no one cries and begs for the door, the families will turn a blind eye and treat it as if they don't know.

The two walked to the city gate, exchanged a look, and pushed open the city gate one by one.

"Squeak-", the overwhelmed bearing shaft, carrying two unaligned gates, slowly opened.

As far as I could see, there was no traffic, and there were no murderous corpses.

Only overwhelming white.

The fog was thick, several times thicker than the fog outside the city, and I could barely see a long straight street ahead, and there was no one on the street. On both sides are erected houses.

The two naturally took a few steps closer to each other and walked inside together.

It was still daytime, but the city was silent, not only was there no one to speak, but not even the roosters and dogs barked, which was very strange.

However, since it is the place designated by the left arm, it is strange if it is not weird.

After walking along the long street for a while, the deeper you go into the city, the thicker the white fog becomes, as if it is full of demonic energy. At first, I could barely see ten steps away, then I couldn't make out the outline five steps away, and then I could barely see my fingers. The more Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walked, the closer they got together, and they could only see each other's faces shoulder to shoulder.

A thought sprang into Wei Wuxian's heart: "If someone takes advantage of this fog and quietly intervenes between us, and the two people become three, I'm afraid I don't know if they will be discovered." ”

At this moment, he kicked something under his foot, and when he looked down, he couldn't make out what it was. Wei Wuxian grabbed Lan Wangji's hand and told him not to go alone, leaning down and squinting. An angry-eyed skull burst through the fog and crashed into his sight.

The head was a man's face, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and two unusually abrupt blush on his cheeks.

Wei Wuxian had just kicked this head and almost kicked it away, knowing how many catties and taels this thing had. Such a light is definitely not a real head. When he lifted it up, a large chunk of the man's cheek collapsed, and a piece of blush was wiped off.

It turned out to be a human head made of paper.

This paper head is made vividly, the makeup is exaggerated, but the facial features are more exquisite. Yicheng's specialty funeral and funeral objects, the craftsmanship of the paper people is naturally good. There are stand-in paper figures in the paper figures, and the folk believe that if they are burned to the dead, they can go to the oil pot in hell and go to the knife mountain for the ancestors to endure hardships; There are maids and beautiful women who serve their ancestors in the underworld. Of course, these are just the living asking for comfort for themselves.

This paper head should be a "Yin Lishi", saying that after going down, it can protect the paper money received by the souls of the ancestors from being robbed and bullied by other evil spirits. Originally, it must have been equipped with a tall and solid paper body, but someone dragged it down and threw it into the street.

The bun of the paper man's head was jet black, strands by strands, quite shiny, and he reached out and touched it, sticking tightly to the scalp, as if it was really the hair that grew from it. Wei Wuxian said: "The craftsmanship is really good, is it glued with real human hair?" ”

Suddenly, a thin black shadow swept past him.

The shadow came very suddenly, ran close to his side, and disappeared into the thick fog in an instant. Dust-avoidance automatically came out of the sheath, chased the figure, and then retracted and closed into the sheath.

The thing that slipped past him just now was running too fast, definitely not a speed that a human could reach!

Lan Wangji said: "Be careful, be vigilant." ”

Although it was just passing by, it is hard to guarantee that next time, it will not do anything else.

Wei Wuxian said, "Did you hear that just now?" ”

Lan Wangji said: "Footsteps, bamboo poles." ”

Yes, in that short moment, in addition to the sound of hurried footsteps, they also heard another strange sound. Da Da is very crisp, similar to a bamboo pole beating on the ground quickly. I don't know why there is this sound.

At this moment, in the fog ahead, there was another sound of footsteps.

This time the footsteps were soft, many, miscellaneous, and slow. It was as if many people were cautiously walking towards this side, but not saying a word. Wei Wuxian flipped over his hand and pulled out a burning talisman and threw it forward lightly. If there is something resentful in front of it, it will burn, and the light of the fire will more or less illuminate a place.

The visitor on the opposite side also noticed that someone was throwing something here, and immediately counterattacked, and suddenly attacked!

Several sword rays of different colors of light and color struck at the face, and the dust flew out of the sheath and swam in front of Wei Wuxian, knocking back all the swords. There was a burst of people on their backs and shouting. Lan Wangji retracted the dust, and Wei Wuxian said, "Jin Ling?!" Thinking about chasing?! ”

Jin Ling's voice sounded through the white mist: "Why are you again?!" ”

Wei Wuxian said, "I still want to ask why it's you again!" ”

Lan Sichai tried his best to restrain himself, but his voice was full of joy: "Young Master Mo, are you also there?" Is that Hanguang-kun also here? ”

As soon as he heard that Lan Wangji might also be coming, Jin Ling immediately shut up, as if he had suddenly been banned again. Lan Jingyi said: "It must be here!" That's a dusty avoidance! ”

Wei Wuxian said, "Well, here, by my side." Come here, all of you. ”

A group of teenagers learned that the other side was a friend and not an enemy, and they surrounded them as if they had been amnestied. In addition to a group of juniors from Jin Ling and the Lan family, there were also seven or eight teenagers wearing other family costumes, and their vigilance had not faded, and they should also be children of the Xianmen family with a high status. Wei Wuxian said, "Why are you all here?" As soon as he made a move, he was so ruthless, fortunately, it was Hanguang-jun on my side, otherwise what would I do if I hurt ordinary people. ”

Jin Ling retorted: "There are no ordinary people here at all. There is no one in this city at all! ”

Lan Sichai nodded and said, "The sky is blue and white, the demon fog is filled, and there is not a single store open. ”

Wei Wuxian said, "How did you get together?" Out on a night hunt together? "Jin Ling's horizontal nature, which is not pleasing to the eye and has to fight with everyone, and has a little friction with the juniors of the Lan family, how can it be possible to meet together for night hunting. Lan Si answered all questions and explained: "We were originally ......"

At this moment, there was a sound of rattle, clicking, and piercing bamboo poles hitting the ground in the fog.

All the juniors' faces changed in shock: "Here we go again!" ”