"If there is a gap, it will not be easy to repair." Professor Zhao put down the statue in his hand and raised his glasses. The specific seat of the gap is on the placket of the Fudo Ming King, which looks like a corner is missing, although it is not big, it can be seen. Professor Zhao's eyes were still on the statue, and he still seemed to feel that something was wrong.

The crowd was silent. After checking everything, everyone walked out of the East Building. Nick and Ye Jiahe went to their company together, I think it's not important to go back to the office now, it's rare to have free time at work, so let's stay at N University for a while.

After hearing that I was the editor-in-chief of Persona, Professor Zhao seemed to be particularly interested in my column and took the initiative to invite me to their faculty cafeteria. There are several N University faculty restaurants, and the one we went to is not far from the East Building, and there is also an exhibition center next to it, where the works of students from the university's Academy of Fine Arts are placed. After eating, Professor Zhao and I went for a walk in the exhibition center to talk about cultural relics.

Professor Zhao looked to be in his sixties, wore a pair of glasses, was in good spirits, and was a kind person. He is not only a researcher at the institute, but also a teacher of most courses, and he has participated in the excavation and exploration of national cultural relics before teaching, and is also a scholar who studies ancient mysterious cultures. The interest in Persona also stems from this.

"Professor Zhao, in your colorful career, have you ever encountered anything that cannot be explained by common sense?" I asked.

Hearing me say this, he suddenly became interested: "Editor-in-Chief Wu, I don't know where to start when you ask like this." I've had that kind of thing before, and one of them was about a colleague of mine. ”

I slowed down and began to listen to him tell the following story.

Professor Zhao has only been working for a few years and has received a task. He would not disclose the exact location, except that it was a hilly area with many low hills. The local village has a small population, about twenty or thirty households, and lives a subsistence farming life. Once, when a farmer was burying his livestock in his field, he dug up many pieces of ancient clothing. Professor Zhao and his entourage, who received the task, rushed to the scene and prepared to carry out exploration and excavation.

After inspection, it was indeed a small ancient tomb, and the regulations were very special, not like the tombs prepared by later generations for the ancestors, but more like the relics of some kind of worship culture. There are four burial pits in total, arranged in the shape of a cross. The center of the cross is where the owner of the tomb is placed, and there are some burial goods in the two pits on the left and right, and the front and rear pits are empty, which look like they were dug in a hurry, and there is no time to put things in. It is said that it is a burial item, but in fact, there is nothing special, just some daily necessities such as clothes and bowls and bottles, and some of these things have been rotted and broken, and have lost their archaeological value. The only things of value are a bronze jar buried next to the owner of the tomb and twelve bronze humanoid carvings in the burial pit.

For the sake of convenience, Professor Zhao and his party all lived in the homes of local villagers, and they all ate and lived together. They worked around the clock and within a few days they had everything cleaned. On the last day, after everyone finished their work, they decided to hold a celebration party temporarily, so they bought food and drinks from the villagers, and lit a bonfire by the nearby stream while drinking and singing and dancing, and the fuss lasted until midnight.

There were six people in their group, the leader and five team members, four men and two women. After the celebration party, everyone went back to their respective villagers' houses to sleep, and the team leader counted the number of cultural relics before going to bed to ensure that the task was successfully completed at the last minute, and prepared for the next day's transportation.

It doesn't matter if you don't count it, as soon as you count it, you can count what went wrong. The twelve humanoid carvings that were originally placed well were actually missing one. The team leader was nervous at the time, although the cultural relics were not transported, but the number was reported in advance, and now there is one less, what should I do.

So, before dawn, the team leader woke up all the team members one by one to see if there was a problem with the insiders. The three big men all slept in the same house, and woke up one of the others. The group leader then went to a house a little further away to call out to the girl who lived there. As a result, before the team leader could walk to the door of the house, a girl with a disheveled face and a frightened face ran towards him.

The girl was out of breath, trembling and said to the team leader that another girl named Qiuxia in the group had not come back, and she was going to sleep first, but the more she thought about it, the more scared she became, so she decided to report to the team leader first, but she didn't expect to meet him on the road.

Now the situation is even more serious, one cultural relic is missing, there is one less team member, and some people say that Qiu Xia sneaked away with the cultural relics. However, the team leader strenuously denied this situation, because Qiu Xia, like them, had experienced several excavation tasks, and the things excavated this time were nothing compared to before, and they were not worth mentioning. Besides, Qiuxia's parents are both well-known figures in the archaeological field, so it is impossible to teach such a daughter who can steal.

It was already late at night, and the moon was obscured by thick clouds, and it was pitch black outside, and I couldn't see my fingers. The group leader ordered the two male team members to be in a group with the remaining girls, and he and another male team member in a group, and went to the vicinity with a flashlight to check if there were any traces of autumn glow. This area is hilly, and there are occasional wild beasts, and although the possibility of people being taken away by wild beasts is small, there is no guarantee that this will not happen at all, especially since their bonfire today may attract the attention of wild beasts. In addition to flashlights, the team leader also distributed some self-defense tools to the others, and then agreed to meet here.

Assigned to the group leader is Professor Zhao. They went west, and the other group went east, and circled the village a full circle, but found no trace of autumn sunset. After searching for most of the night, seeing that the sky was about to dawn, the team leader decided to let everyone go back to rest first, and then continue to look for it when it was dawn.

It wasn't long before the sun rose in the east, and the canopy began to whiten. Before the group leader and the team members could get up, they were woken up by the shouts of the villagers. It turned out that the chickens raised by these twenty or thirty villages disappeared overnight. Now the team leader believes in the fact that the beast exists even more. After telling the villagers about Qiuxia's disappearance, dozens of people in the village were formed to go into the mountains to look for Qiuxia.

There was only one way into the mountain, and everyone walked carefully into the mountain with their heels and hind feet. About half an hour later, the villagers who walked in front reported seeing blood stains on the ground. The blood stains are still fresh, they must have been left last night. Hearing the news, everyone's hearts were pinched, and Qiu Xia's hope of still being alive was a little slim. Following the bloodstains, everyone quickened their pace, and finally found a low cave in the mountain, and the bloodstains finally led to the cave.

Although this cave is not big, it is dark inside, you can't really see it, and you can faintly smell some blood. The village chief and the group leader each picked a sturdy man, and the four of them lit torches and carried short knives into the cave. They hadn't gone far when the sound of a rooster crowing in the cave proved that everyone was right, so they were bold enough to move on. The chicken's screams were getting closer and closer, and the sharp sound continued to echo in the cave, and the knife slashed against the eardrums of the four people, and a strong smell of blood came to the nostrils, almost drenching the air around them. The four of them followed closely together, holding their breath, and finally found Qiuxia at the end of the cave.

At this time, Qiu Xia was unkempt, covered in blood, sitting on the ground with her feet crossed, muttering something in her mouth. There were many chicken carcasses piled up next to her, all of which had been disemboweled. The few remaining living chickens croaked weakly on the side, as if they knew their fate next. Qiu Xia, who was sitting on the ground, lifted a live chicken with one hand, forcefully twisted the chicken head to the side, plucked the feathers on the chicken's chest, and then pulled straight into the chicken's chest with her hand, and took out the chicken heart that was still pulsating vigorously. The blood in the chicken's artery spurted onto Qiuxia's face at once, but she seemed unmoved, and said in a low voice, the number was wrong, and then repeated the work at hand. The ground was covered with chicken blood, and Qiu Xia's clothes were congealed with blood on the ground.

The four big men were stunned, they didn't know what to do at all, they just felt a deep fear spread from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads, and it wasn't until Qiuxia's chicken screamed that they reacted, and they endured the fear and disgust in their hearts and took her out. The lost figure was clutched tightly in Qiu Xia's other hand, and the blood stuck to her hand.

Upon hearing the news, the villagers suddenly became frightened, and they all ran to the tomb to kneel and kowtow, saying that the legend of the older generation had been fulfilled, and someone had offended the chicken goddess, and the chicken goddess had come to punish everyone.

Professor Zhao and his entourage are just bloody, and of course they won't believe the claims of these bulls, ghosts, snakes, and gods. They carried their things back overnight and left the village. As for Qiu Xia, she was later sent to a psychiatric hospital, and at the moment she was sent away, she was still muttering that the number was wrong. Why Qiu Xia took the humanoid carving, how she brought so many chickens up the mountain, and how she later became that terrifying appearance is still a mystery.

After Professor Zhao told this story, I already wanted to spit out the bowl chicken I had eaten at noon. I swallowed hard and asked curiously, "Do you know the legends of the older generation of the local people?" ”

"I'm the one who likes to get to the bottom of things, so of course I'll look into this matter."

There is indeed a story about the chicken goddess in the local area. A long, long time ago, a family in the village was robbed in the middle of the night, and the robbers killed the whole family and fled before dawn. The family had a little daughter who survived after being pierced in the heart by the gangsters, turned into a chicken, and chirped from house to house before dawn, so that everyone found the corpses of the whole family in time. With the help of the girl who turned into a chicken, everyone recovers the twelve treasures that were stolen from her family, and the robbers also die one after another for no apparent reason. After her death, the locals worshipped her and the twelve treasures as gods. It is said that the girl was not killed because she had two hearts, and the other heart has been kept by the locals.

No wonder Qiuxia has been shouting that the number is not right, could it be that she is looking for a chicken with two hearts? I was deeply immersed in the story and thought about all kinds of questions.

"That's right!" Professor Zhao suddenly shouted, "The number is wrong!" ”