It is now past the third watch of the night, and the inner courtyard of the palace of Qingqiu Country is dimly lit, and it looks uneasy in the wind. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 Suddenly, a complaining and cruel cry pierced the sky, startling several lights.

"Why are you so flustered?" Queen Cui Pheasant leaned lazily on the collapse, just woken up by Liuzhu, with a slight anger on her face, but there was a hint of ominous premonition in her heart. Liuzhu has always been cautious, and it will not be a trivial matter to wake her up in the middle of the night.

"Niangniang, there is some movement over there in the cold palace." Liuzhu carefully considered the words and reported to her.

The queen's sleepy eyes widened suddenly, and her eyes were cold, and the latter nodded slightly at her, confirming her premonition without words. A delicate figure was always entwined in her heart like a ghost, and she said a little tiredly: "Go on." ”

"There have been strange cries from the Palace of Eternal Silence since childhood. The voice was like the cry of a bird and the cry of a woman, and it was bitter and angry, and it was terrible. Many of the ladies and palace people who lived on the west side heard it. The father-in-law of Ping'an, who is the governor of the capital, has sent someone to check on him, saying that there is a vision, and then he will return to you. ”

"What's the vision?"

"There are so many birds, and all the birds in this house have flown there. Every time the ghost cried, all the birds flew around the palace of eternal silence for a quarter of an hour. The palace is said to be a ...... Hundreds of birds and phoenixes. The sound of the beads became quieter and quieter.

A Fushou tea cup quickly flew to the corner of the wall, and it was shattered in an instant, and the porcelain piece bounced onto the bead's hand, and it hurt.

The ivory Buddha beads are turned in the palm of the hand, and the gold silk butterfly enamel armor set is "gurgling". After a while, the queen asked in a deep voice: "Have you caught anyone who is making trouble?" ”

"I went to the twelve eunuchs and turned over the Palace of Eternal Silence, but I only heard a voice, but I didn't see anyone."

The queen sneered: "Hmph! Pretending to be a ghost, this palace will not be spared. Tear down the Palace of Eternal Silence for me. Not a single piece of wood, not a single brick remained. They all moved away and burned them to see where she was hiding. ”

"No." Liuzhu responded, but didn't do it immediately, and carefully mentioned: "Niangniang, the palace people privately say that the dead concubine Niangniang is back, and there is such a vision of a hundred birds, I am afraid that it is for Niangniang." ”

"What is there to fear?" The queen lowered her eyes and calmly dialed the Buddha beads: "Whether she is a human or a ghost, this palace will kill her." Now Hongu doesn't mind killing her again. After thinking about it, he said fiercely: "Tomorrow, dig Su Yuwen out of the grave, pull her to the Xuanwu Gate, and ask Master Hongyang to do a ritual to break the bones and scatter ashes." Let everyone see this Qingqiu** can't tolerate lonely souls and wild ghosts! With that, he began to chant in a low voice.

Fourteen years ago, the extremely favored concubine who was pregnant with Liujia took advantage of the emperor's sleep to tighten his neck with a rope, but fortunately was discovered by the palace people in time to escape. The concubine was sent to prison for the crime of rebellion. After all, the emperor remembered the old love and couldn't bear to kill her, so he only imprisoned her in the palace of eternal silence. There are many people in the palace who judge the situation and understand in their hearts that concubines are just victims of the ** competition for favor. Behind the rope case, there must be a foreign relative force that even the emperor is afraid of, so that the emperor can only send his beloved to the cold palace and dare not speak.

Six years ago, the concubine died violently in the Palace of Eternal Silence, and since then, there are often palace people on duty at night who meet the wandering spirits of the concubines in the cold palace wandering around. The whole palace knows that the queen is the most taboo to mention concubines, and no one dares to speak. Now there is such a vision, like a fire igniting a field, which makes the fear of the whole ** quickly magnified. Only a silver-haired old woman, leaning over, shook the washed clothes in her hand vigorously, and looked up at the flock of birds hovering in the sky, revealing unbelievable anticipation.

The dilapidated Palace of Eternal Silence had lost its owner early, isolated in the silent cold palace, and had never been so brightly lit. Knowing that the prison manpower was insufficient, a team of Yulin troops was deployed. Hundreds of people surrounded the place, and a hundred and ten torches and octagonal palace lamps illuminated the sky as hot as day.

Tables, chairs, cabinets, and all furniture are numbered and lifted out in turn. The carved doors and windows were removed, the brick kang stove was knocked down, and the only pear tree was also cut down and carried away, scattering pear blossoms like rain all over the ground. In the end, twenty people formed a group, shouting trumpets and pulling the thick hemp rope tied to the beam of the house, and the whole palace collapsed. The thunderous roar startled the thousands of birds hovering over the Palace of Eternal Silence into fleeing in all directions.

The closed stone chamber dragged wildly with a loud noise, falling sand and dust like snow, covering up the faint cry for help of the light song.

It's been a long time since she woke up in this strange secret room. The last picture in her mind is still stuck - half a month of high-intensity work that only sleeps four hours a day, completing the most exciting project of her career, at the celebration banquet, Shama, who has been in love with her for ten years, looks at her deeply, and wants to stop talking. When the fireworks burst into the sky, he whispered in her ear, "Let's break up." She laughed and wept at the same time, and a glass of vermouth as green as an elf went down her stomach, and the world swirled, so that she let go of herself - the older science and engineering woman who only had work in her eyes and a tendon in her head, and was abandoned by her boyfriend when she just turned thirty.

She didn't know why she was here, but she felt inexplicably unfamiliar from her body to her heart, as if her soul was difficult to merge with this body, and when she thought about it, her mind ached jerkyly.

In this ancient chamber, time seems to stand still. The empty room was filled with only a large, cold, rough stone bed on which she had woken up. Other than that, there is nothing, no doors or windows, only thick stone walls that isolate this place from the world. Each of the four corners of the room has a claw-shaped light holder, holding a smooth cobblestone the size of a fist. The cobblestone is bright and glows softly day and night.

Every once in a while, a plague-like pain swept through her nerves. She felt a bright light in front of her, and watched as her body was pierced and torn apart by the blinding and sharp light, and an irrepressible scream burst out of her chest, like an uncontrollable soul screaming wildly in her body. She roared wildly, and at the same time marveled at how she could let out such a horrible scream.

How many times did she wake up and be in pain to the point of losing consciousness. Time seems to replay again and again, the same scene, the same pain, endless torture. She felt like she was lying in an ancient coffin, forgotten forever.

Until a warm, soft object pressed to her lips, and the clear spring water, mixed with the smell of unfamiliar herbs, flowed into her mouth little by little. She suddenly felt more hearty than ever. The scorching fire in his chest was slowly extinguished, and there was silence.

After each seizure, that flowery lip will appear at the right time. She tried to open her eyes, but there was always a transparent and sticky object in front of her, and the whole world took on a distorted state. The only thing that imprinted into her heart was the special smell, like fermented aged sandalwood, with an intoxicating woody sweetness, sprinkled on her face, lips and teeth. Every time she woke up from her stupor, the man was gone.

Gradually, she found that she was awake for longer and longer, and her body could move slowly. Leaning against the rough stone wall covered with mysterious patterns, she groped for the exit of the secret room. Until he was exhausted, there was no clue.

She examined the stone bed that had been lying again, sticky as if it had grown out of the ground. Overstretched, she quickly lay back on the stone bed, and the hard and cold stone wall reached the vest. Her teeth chattered, and she knew that she was going to have another seizure, and a huge wave began to roll in front of her eyes......

The first rays of sunlight in the morning pierced through a layer of mist that diffused in mid-air, and between the light smoke dyed into pale pink, a magnificent figure was lost in the vast clearing.

After only one night, the Palace of Eternal Silence disappeared completely, like a porcelain plate that had been licked by the tongue, leaving only the smooth marble floor to reflect the figures of the visitors.

Liuzhu stepped forward from the vermilion wall and whispered: "Niangniang, the dew is too heavy, watch your body, let's go back." ”

The queen retracted the myth, smiled sadly, and said, "That's fine. ”

Suddenly, a terrible chirp broke out like a blade, cascading through the mist, unable to distinguish the direction of the comer. The queen's expression changed in shock, and she spun, looking left and right, trying to find out the source of the sound, but the sun was blind, the fog was very thick, and everything was in vain.

"Niangniang, be careful, let's go quickly." Liuzhu hid behind the queen, looking up at the sky in a broken army, countless birds hovering and wailing in the air, blocking the sun, and the huge shadows seemed to swallow the people on the ground.

At noon in the middle of summer, the sun is already very hot, and a group of pink butterfly-like concubines dressed in light shirts and soft yarn gather in the shade of a row of plane trees in Xuanwu Gate. Digging up the corpses of people who have been dead for six years makes everyone realize that the most unoffending person is the queen who eats fast and recites the Buddha's kindness.

Liuzhu glanced at it from afar, turned around and walked through the small side door on the west side, pushed the door into a dim wing, and returned: "Niangniang, the concubines have arrived." You see......"

"There's no news from Ping An yet?" I didn't sleep all night, and the queen's face on the soft collapse was a little haggard.

"I have urged it three times, saying that Qingshangang has added a lot of graves over the years, the tombstones are destroyed, broken, and it is difficult to identify, and five graves have been dug up, none of which are not."

"Then wait. Give them a seat. ”

Liuzhu responded to the call, and not long after leaving, Zhang Bao, the little eunuch under Ping An, hurriedly pushed the door in: "Niangniang, the concubine's grave has been dug up, you better go and see it yourself."

"Why?"

"It's kind of weird. The crowd is afraid to move, waiting for you to decide. ”

A four-person blue and gray sedan chair quietly drove out of the side gate on the north side of the palace and went straight to Qingshan Gang outside the palace wall.

Qingshan Gang, the place where the soul is broken. Surrounded by mountains on three sides, the pale yellow hills like the bottom of a bottle are shrouded in a dark green fog all year round. It seems to fall from a bright spring day to a bleak autumn in an instant. The plain sedan chair moved silently in a withered yellow, only the squeaky sound of "squeaking" was solitary.

There are no roads and no signs here, and there are lonely souls everywhere. The lowly palace people in the palace were buried with their souls when the concubines who were beaten into the cold palace died of illness or sin.

The sedan chair struggled forward for three quarters of an hour, and finally stopped. Ping An stretched out his thin hand, carefully picked up the queen in the sedan chair, raised her legs step by step in the tall barren grass, and walked towards the dug cemetery.

On the new soil stood ten little eunuchs with shovels in hand. Everyone remained silent in tacitly, as if the slightest noise would alarm the wandering spirits everywhere.

Walking to the tomb, everyone retreated, leaving only the queen and peace. She looked coldly at the remnants of the monument with only the broken base left, and couldn't help but sigh in her heart. However, in just six years, the stunning woman who was the only favorite in the world was wiped out in this mass grave.

She stepped over the remnants of the bones, and looked at the heavy coffin hidden in the fresh wounds of the earth.

"Queen Mother!" Ping An held the limp queen with one hand.

Fine beads of sweat oozed from her pale face, and her bright red nails dug deep into her palms.