Torture touched the painting and said, "When I see this painting, I am reminded of a legend. ”

Tang Qianlin said: "Could it be related to the corpse painter?" ”

Xingshu turned his head to look at Tang Qianlin: "You also know that legend?" ”

Tang Qianlin said: "That legend is forbidden to talk about in the other way, and in a certain period of time, if someone in the other way wants to find the legendary location, they will even be hunted down by the city god, of course, we call it extinction." ”

Wei Chiran asked, "What legend?" ”

"Another city," Tang Qianlin said as he looked at the wall in front of him, "It is the city of the different way, also known as the different capital, for a period of time, the other way has always wanted to establish its own city, a place that will not be disturbed, where you are not afraid of being questioned, you can do what you want to do, and study the mystery you want to study." ”

Wei Chiran asked, "Is there such a place?" ”

"I don't know, there shouldn't be, but this legend was born after the legend of the celestials, now think about it, it should be the celestial incident that caused the heretics of that era to have such thoughts, but one thing is certain, when this matter was still in the dream stage, I commissioned the corpse painter faction to draw a picture of another city." ”

According to rumors, the picture scroll is 30 centimeters wide and 6 meters long, but the specific content is not known. Torture had seen a so-called picture of another city in the underworld, but it was not possible to determine if it was real. Because there is no record left, no one knows what dynasty painted this painting. Under this premise, it is not difficult for future generations to forge a forged painting, even if you can go to the paper to test the forged painting, because there is no evidence, it cannot prove anything.

However, the picture scroll of the different city seen by the criminal art is very exquisite, and its exquisiteness is no less than that of the Qingming Riverside map, so it was purchased by a cargo chaser at a high price and became another strange commodity in the strange way.

Wei Chi was curious: "What is drawn on that painting you see?" ”

"A city is divided into twelve districts, each representing a sect, and the characters drawn are also doing the things that are hallmarks of their sect. ”

Tang Qianlin shook his head and said: "That's definitely not, the picture scroll of another city I have heard depicts a place that is completely different from the normal world, and the reason why it is designed like this is because people from other ways in the past did not think of themselves as ordinary people at all, and they were another kind of existence between people, ghosts, demons, and gods." ”

Wei Chiran thought it was funny: "This is deliberately unusual, right?" ”

"Actually, the heretics in the past did think so," Tang Qianlin frowned, "They rejected everything except heretics, and deliberately distinguished themselves from others. ”

Torture looked at the left and right roads: "How to go?" Left or right? ”

Tang Qianlin thought for a moment and said, "On the left." ”

So the three of them chose the road on the left, which was actually an alley, and after walking out, they found a bridge, the so-called bridge was only one meter wide, and the buildings were next to each other on both sides, but when they approached the small bridge, they could clearly hear the sound of running water under the bridge.

The buildings below seemed to be deliberately crowded together, next to each other, and there was only one alley between the houses for people to walk, but along the way they saw many dolls, dressed as ordinary people, and some of the vendors hung their own goods on the walls, otherwise there would be no place for stalls.

After walking for a while, the torture suddenly stopped and said, "Oh no. ”

Tang Qianlin also realized: "This is a labyrinth. ”

Because the three of them returned to the position of the small bridge before, they could still see the puppet dressed by the woman on the bridge, the puppet was standing there, raising its hands, and I didn't know what it was doing.

In this place, the compass is completely useless, even if you can distinguish between east and west, north and south, you don't know where the entrance is, although I remember that the place where they came down is the north, but after crossing the small bridge, you find that the road has completely changed, the original narrow alley has disappeared without a trace, and all that remains is a snow-white wall.

The original plan was to return to the place where he came, and then leave marks along the way and move forward, but he never thought that he would get lost, which was undoubtedly the greatest irony for Tang Qianlin and the two experienced adventurers. Because it is too short here, the drone is not useful, and it cannot fly high into the air to show them the right way.

The three of them didn't dare to walk around anymore, so they first found a building to rest and discussed what to do next.

The building they walked into was a restaurant, and the restaurant was almost full of dolls, and there were meals in front of the dolls, and those meals were only painted on the table, but the painters were so skilled that they thought they were real when they were far away.

Because the upstairs and downstairs were full of dolls, the three of them really couldn't find a place to sit, so they had to check at a table of dolls in the nearest corner, and after making sure that there was no mechanism, they moved it out, at least there must be a place to rest.

Who knows, when the three of them checked the dolls, they found that each puppet only had a head, not a body, and only a bracket inside the clothes. The scaffold is like a human shape, the position on the chest is a square wooden card, the upper wooden bar supports the head, the left and right wooden bars connect the arms, and the lower two represent the legs, no wonder it is so strange to look at these puppets.

After a criminal examination, he said: "These are not puppets, this thing is called evil spirit." ”

"To remove evil or to exorcise evil?" Wei Chi asked, and Tang Qianlin immediately told him to call the evil spirit.

Legend has it that during the existence of shamanism, people had the tradition of making evil spirits, mainly standing around their own places of residence, like other ethnic groups and animals to declare that it was their own territory. During the Warring States Period, the Chu State had a tradition of making evil spirits, and later after Qin unified the world, this tradition was forcibly abolished, and it is rumored that it was because someone used evil to practice witchcraft and curse the first emperor.

The reason why it is called to remove evil spirits and make it so simple is because people at that time found that after people die, hair and flesh will die, and the only immortal thing seems to be flesh and bones, so the method they made to remove evil is simple, in fact, they are imitating human bones, thinking that human bones have the effect of driving away evil spirits.

He reached out and grabbed it, and found that he couldn't take it off, so he went around the back of the doll, and after uncovering his clothes, he found that there seemed to be something behind the wooden card, and there was a live buckle there, as long as the live buckle was opened, the wooden card could be removed.

When the Torture Technique removed the wooden tablet, it was found that it appeared to be a map, and that it was an incomplete map. Seeing this, the torture technique suddenly understood, and quickly asked Tang Qianlin and Wei Chiran to concoct the same method, and took off the wooden cards on the chests of the other puppets in the teahouse.

There are a total of 30 dolls in the whole hotel, and there are 30 wooden plaques, but when these wooden plaques are combined, it is impossible to piece together a complete map, because 25 of them are blank, and it can only be judged from the incomplete map that this should be the floor plan of this labyrinth city.

Tang Qianlin picked up the piece on the lower left, because there were a lot of dense small characters on it, most of the words were written in heterogeneous ciphertext, and the three of them couldn't understand it at all, but only three slightly larger characters could understand it.

"Return to the City of Souls." Wei Chiran read those three words, "What does this mean?" ”

Tang Qianlin said: "A place in folklore, and this legend was only circulated in the Song Dynasty, originated from a folk ghost and god romance, and does not belong to any religious record. ”

Torture thought for a while and said, "Is it "Soul Return"? I have a copy and it's wonderfully written. ”

Wei Chiran asked, "What kind of story is written?" ”

"The book is written about a scholar and a fisherman, the scholar crossed the river on the fisherman's boat, and when crossing the river, he had an argument with the fisherman because of some trivial matters, the scholar was too excited and fell into the river and drowned, and the fisherman went to save the scholar, who knew that he was also drowned." When they went to the underworld after their deaths, they both claimed that the other had killed them, and the king of Hades sentenced them to return to the sun, and whoever died first this time would be judged. ”

Wei Chi came to be interested: "And then? And what was written? ”

Xingshu smiled: "After returning to the sun, both of them were avoiding each other at first, but then they felt that they should strike first, after all, the king of Hades said who died first, and he didn't say that he was not allowed to kill each other, and then they both tried to kill each other, and then they repeated the situation for the first time, both of them died, but after they died, they found that they did not go to the underworld, because they had been in the underworld all along, and the so-called return to the yang, it was only that the king of Hades arranged for them to go to the Soul City." ”

Wei Chi pondered for a while and said, "Soul City is in the underworld, is it a place in the underworld that simulates the yang world?" ”

Tang Qianlin nodded and said: "Yes, that's what it means, but this legend arose from that romance, there is no other religious foundation, and this place does not exist in ancient mythology, and I don't know which person who is full and has nothing to do makes up such a place." ”

But what do the people who built it want to do? Is it just to hide the myths? That's all?

They don't know how many puppets there are in Soul City, but the clues at the moment have shown that as long as you gather the wooden cards, you can get the complete map here.

The torture technique took out a few dice-sized things: "This is a locator, the receiving range is within 300 meters, and there is no need for a network." Then the torture technique took out the timer given by Zhan Tianya, "There is a screen behind the timer, which can show the approximate distance between you and the locator placed before, we can put down the locator along the way, and then go to find those wooden cards, but the range can't be too big and can't go too far." ”

Only 300 meters? Wei Chiran counted the number of locators, 10 per person, but he didn't know how big this Soul City was. Because the road outside the door was only left and right in two directions, Tang Qianlin naturally didn't worry about Wei Chiran acting alone, so he proposed that he and Wei Chiran should be in a group, and the torture technique should be in a separate group, looking for wooden signs along the way, and at the same time, he also took off the clothes of the puppet to reveal the evil spirits in it, which is also equivalent to leaving a mark on the road.

However, because the wooden signs were inconvenient to carry, they had to leave the wooden cards in the restaurant, using the restaurant as a temporary base, looking for a circle and then returning here.

After Tang Qianlin and Wei Chi got on the bridge, they took off the clothes of the woman's doll and took off the wooden plaque, but regretfully found that it was a blank wooden plaque. Wei Chiran originally wanted to throw away the wooden card, but Tang Qianlin stopped him, because he felt that maybe the blank wooden card was also useful.