"I see that you are not very old, why do you go to such lengths to pretend to be the village chief?" I couldn't hold back for a while, so I had to continue asking. Lin Liding waited for a while, looking a little unspeakable, I thought he had something unspeakable, so he waved his hand: "Hey! I'm just going to ask, if you don't want to say it, forget it. "After all, everyone has their own secrets, and since he doesn't want to say it, I can't force it.

Lin Liding panicked when he heard this: "Lord, Liding didn't mean this, it's just that it's not comfortable in this skin, and I want to ask the Venerable Lord to allow Liding to come out and tell you in detail." ”

It turned out that he meant this, and he was used to seeing his original face, and I saw that it was a little awkward now, especially when the opening on his stomach was still open, so I quickly let him come out of it. After Lin Liding came out, he carefully put the "village chief" on the table before he began to tell the truth.

It turned out that Lin Liding borrowed this body of skin, and it was really a helpless move. This place is called Eight Banners Village, in fact, there were no villagers in the earliest days, only Eight Banners guarded here. These villagers are said to have been displaced by the war, but they were rescued and brought back here by the then lord and the first lord of the Eight Banners. Soon after, the Lord left, and since then it has been managed by someone else.

With these villagers, there are slowly beginning to have fireworks here, and it has slowly become what the village is today, but the village chiefs of the past generations have been served by the Eight Banners guards, and they are the fourth generation to Lin Liding. Originally, Lin Liding thought that he would always guard this place, watching himself grow old day by day, until he finally stayed here forever, but suddenly one day he found that he began to grow backwards, his beard slowly disappeared, his hair slowly turned black, and even his skin began to become smoother and smoother.

After listening to him, I couldn't help but reach out and pinch his face, it really looked like a child's skin from the touch, I stared at him for a while, it didn't look like he was lying, not to mention that from his narration I could feel his awe of the lord, and it was impossible to lie to me, so I had to let myself believe what he said.

"What the hell is the Eight Banners Guard you have been talking about, and why did that Lord leave you here?" Just now Lin Liding said that he is the fourth generation, it should be that he has been here for a long time, what is there that is worth them staying here for so long?

"Look, Lord." Lin Liding said as he stretched out his finger and pointed to the big flag on the wall.

I looked up and wondered, I saw this flag when I came in, is there something wrong?

"Lord, this is the Departure Flag." As soon as Lin Liding said, I suddenly remembered, before he seemed to be the fourth-generation flag owner of the Lizi Banner, and the village chief was also the fourth generation of him, could it be that there was any connection between the two?

Lin Liding walked towards the door without waiting for me to speak, and when he reached the door, he turned around and leaned over and said, "Lord, please come here." ”

Although I still know very little about Lin Liding now, I don't have such a heavy defense, so I walked out of the room with Shen Muhan.

Lin Liding pointed to the other rooms and said, "Lord, the so-called Eight Banner Guards refer to the Eight Banners of Qian, Kun, Xun, Zhen, Kan, Li, Gen, and Dui, and there is a flag hanging in every room you see. The Eight Banner Guards were created by the Lord, and there are eight Banner Lords under the Lord to manage on their behalf. The Eight Banners respect the Lord, so when the Lord is not there, the Lord of the Flag of Lizi will act on behalf of the Lord of the Banner, so when the Lord leaves, the Order of the Lord will be handed over to the Flag of Departure. ”

After listening to Lin Liding's narration, I realized that the Eight Banners originally meant this, and at first I thought it had something to do with the Manchu Dynasty.

"Yes, since the Lizi Banner is the highest status among the Eight Banner Guards, don't you have a lot of power in your hands?" I patted him on the shoulder and said half-jokingly, but I didn't expect Lin Liding to suddenly feel like he had done something wrong, and he knelt on one knee and almost buried his face in the ground.

"Lord, I don't dare to leave Ding, I am just carrying out the orders left by the lord back then, and I have never thought about the rights of the Eight Banners."

As soon as I saw this stance, the joke just now scared him a lot, and I regretted it a little, and quickly pulled him up from the ground.

"Oops, I'm just kidding, you're serious." I saw that he still looked terrified, and I secretly wondered what kind of person the Venerable Lord he mentioned was, and it had left such a deep shadow in their hearts after so many years.

"Tell me about the Lord."

Lin Liding recovered a little before he began to say: "Back to the Venerable Lord, Liding doesn't know the origin of the first Venerable Lord, only knows that the Venerable Lord's surname is Lin, and his name is Yi'an. ”

"Lin Yi'an?"

As soon as I heard the name Lin Yi'an, there was a "boom" in my head, as if it had exploded. This name has appeared more than once, and it is still deeply engraved in my mind. The first time was when I came back from the bottom of the sea and hallucinated, and the second time was when I saw the illusion in Ghost Wind Valley, but the weakness after the loss of my relatives was the entanglement of children's love, so I couldn't connect with the Lord of the Eight Banners Guard.

"Are you sure it's Lin Yi'an?" I asked again.

"Sure, the name of the Venerable Lord is not a mistake, let alone ......" Lin Liding suddenly raised his head and looked at me halfway through speaking.

"What's more?" I was waiting for the second half of the sentence, and I quickly urged him to continue.

"The Lord and you both have the same token, which is only owned by the Lin family." After Lin Liding finished speaking, he lowered his head and stopped looking at me.

"Tokens?" I muttered and began to rummage up and down, I had tokens on me and I didn't know.

"Wood, it should be the pendant." Shen Muhan watched me rummaging vigorously, and leaned into my ear to remind me quietly.

I pulled off the pendant around my neck and put it in front of Lin Liding: "Is this the token you said?" ”

Lin Liding looked at it and nodded affirmatively.

I looked at the pendant in my hand, and suddenly felt that everything I didn't understand made sense. It should be that when I was in a coma, Lin Liding accidentally saw this pendant, and only then did he recognize me as the Lin family, and because Lin Yi'an also had this pendant at that time, so Lin Liding would treat me as the lord, and he handed over the lord order to me, thinking that I came here to guard the mission of the Eight Banners back then. After thinking about this, I couldn't help but shake my head helplessly, Lin Liding had waited for so many years, and finally waited for me, but I didn't know anything.

Anyway, Lin Liding is also a hard-working person, although I don't know what the mission of the Eight Banners Guards was to stay here back then, if I can have a chance to let him let go of those and live a normal life, it can be regarded as a relief. Thinking so, I deliberately began to move the topic away from Lin Yi'an.

"By the way, where did you get your name? The owner of the flag is separated from the word, and there is a departure in the name, it can't be a coincidence, right? ”

"The eight flag guards are divided into eight banners, each flag has nine people, except for the flag owner, the names of other people are taken from the sixty-four hexagrams of Zhou Yi, the second word of the flag owner's name is taken from the flag name, and the third place is taken from the heavenly stem, because Liding is the fourth generation of the flag owner, so it is named Lin Liding." I counted it on my fingers, A, B, C, D, it seems to be much better than one, two, three, and four, and there are so many more elaborate names to choose from.

"There are a total of eight banners, nine people in each flag, which means that there are a total of seventy-two people in the eight banner guards, why are you here by yourself, and what about the others?"

At the mention of this topic, Lin Liding seemed to be a little sad, and his voice was a little choked: "Everyone else is no longer there, if it weren't for Liding getting this strange disease, I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to wait for the Lord to come." ”

"And what about their families?"

"The Eight Banners guard will never marry for life, and he has no family heirs."

When I heard this, I don't know why my heart suddenly felt like a blockage, and I felt uncomfortable. After Lin Yi'an left, he left these seventy-two people to stay here, and after he didn't get married or stayed, he just watched himself grow old little by little, and the people around him died one by one, what a cruel process it should be. Although I don't know what the relationship between me and Lin Yi'an is, I looked at the pendant in my hand and suddenly felt sorry for these people who died here.

The pendant has been on me since I was a child, and all kinds of things before it also show that I have an inseparable relationship with the Lin family, if I am really the descendant of the Lin family, then the debt to these seventy-two people should naturally have my share.

"Where are they, can you show me around?" Although it was a foregone conclusion, I couldn't change anything, at most I could only pay tribute to them, but this was the only way I could think of to ease the guilt in my heart.

Lin Liding didn't speak, turned around and walked in front, I looked at his lonely figure, my eyes were red, and I quickly took a deep breath and followed.

Lin Liding took me to the door of the Kunzi room, and said while groping on the wall: "Lord, the Eight Banners guard has a special identity, and he can't let outsiders know, and he can't go out to set up a grave after he dies, so he can only put it here. ”

As soon as the door of the room opened, I was stunned by the sight of the room, which was densely packed with skeletons, each supported by a brace behind them, allowing them to stand at all times.

"Why do you want them to stand?" I'm a little puzzled, and even a little angry, could it be Lin Yi'an again, it's against human nature that the Eight Banners guard can't be buried when he dies, and now he has to stand, in traditional Chinese concepts, it is very taboo for the dead to stand and be buried.

"This is their own choice before they die, they say that even if they die, they will stand and wait for the Lord to return."

As soon as Lin Liding's words came out, I couldn't hold back my tears at all, I thought at first that they were erected after death, and I heard Lin Liding mean that they had been here to prepare for the afterlife before they died.

Looking at the skeletons in front of me, I seemed to see an old man trembling to this door, stretching out a trembling hand to touch the mechanism on the wall, waiting for the door to open and slowly walking in, looking at the skeletons next to him one by one, and maybe even chatting with them for a while, and then finding his place quietly waiting for the arrival of death, maybe when death comes, he will quietly say "old guys, I am here to accompany you".

I didn't know how to speak for a while, what kind of belief made them choose to spend their lives for it so firmly? And it is impossible for them to stand to the end by themselves in their dying state, it is likely that there will be hooks and something like that on the stand, but I don't want to be sure, there is only one thought in my heart: the Lin family owes them too much.