Moonlight woke up and reached out to touch the charming rouge. So, the safety of a flower was scattered all over the ground.

Xing Ruyi looked at the girl standing in front of her, she was not tall and thin, but she was wearing a huge men's robe. The dark cyan clothes still smelled of rotting corpses. Those eyes, cold as silk, slender and pale fingers, gently pointed to a certain lattice on the counter behind him.

"Rouge is charming, ordinary rouge, but it is better in color, and it is excellent to modify the sick face or too pale face." Xing Ruyi took off the box of rouge and handed it to the girl, and stretched out three fingers at the same time: "If the girl wants it, three pennies!" ”

The girl nodded, took out three copper plates from the cloth pocket she was carrying, and handed them to Xing Ruyi.

Xing Ruyi could see that the cloth pocket was also for men, and it was a little abrupt when it hung on the girl's body. She smiled, took the copper plate, and placed it on the counter.

The girl turned around to leave, and Xing Ruyi raised her voice and asked, "I don't know if you, girl, what to call you?" ”

"Rouge!" The girl raised her eyes, looked at Xing Ruyi, and said, "That rouge is charming!" ”

"Rouge!" Xing Ruyi looked at the girl's distant back and said, "This name is not bad." ”

"What's not bad?" The fox lifted the curtain and walked to Xing Ruyi's side, stood side by side with her, and also glanced at the girl's back, and said, "Strange! ”

"You see that, too?" Xing Ruyi raised his eyebrows and asked, leaning on the fox naturally.

The fox stretched out a finger and pressed it against Xing Ruyi's lips, saying, "Don't be curious, don't be nosy!" ”

Xing Ruyi snorted and rolled her eyes at the fox.

In the palace, Chang Tai's face was calm, but there was some dissatisfaction hidden under his calm expression.

He looked at his adults and asked, "Why?" I've been chasing this bandit for months, and I'm about to be arrested. ”

"Haven't you already mastered his trajectory and whereabouts? The nets have been scattered, and as for when to take them back, just leave them to Xiao Shengzi. They've been with you for so many years, and you still can't believe it? I can trust you. ”

"But adults"

"Don't be an adult, I can't help it, my lord, this is an order from the military department, you must do it by name, what can I do." I look at you, don't keep holding on to that bandit, hurry up and get this matter done, it's the right thing. We can't afford to mess with those people in the military department. ”

The lord said, handing a letter to Chang Tai: "Go, bring these generals back!" ”

In the first year of Tianzhu, that is, in 690 A.D., in order to suppress the rebellion of Xu Jingye, the former assassin of Meizhou, and the kings of the Tang clan, Li Chong and Li Zhen, and resist the attack of the external Turks and Tibetans, the imperial court had to use troops year after year. Most of those with low positions are buried on the spot, and those with slightly higher positions are also sent back after being incinerated locally, and those with some prestige in the capital or prominent families will be invited to drive away corpses to go to the border to transport the bodies back and hand them over to their families for burial.

Chang Tai's task to assist this time is to help several important people in Beijing and transport back their relatives who died in battle. Judging from the list listed in the letter, there are a total of eight people, one is the main general, and the rest are deputy generals, joining the army or something, and their positions in the army are not low.

"It's a long way, and there are many wars at the border, plus the weather today"

"You don't have to worry about this, the military department has already selected a corpse chaser, and at this time it is waiting for you in the Yizhuang in the south of the city, you are responsible for the cover. To put it bluntly, just follow along, they are all dead people, no matter how brilliant they are in life, no matter how prominent their family background is, they are all gone, who will not be able to get along with these dead people. As he spoke, he took out another letter and handed it to Chang Tai: "This is the second secret letter that Lord Li, the squire of the military department, asked me to pass on to you, and I will open it when I get to the place, don't show it to others." ”

"Yes!" Chang Tai took the secret letter and said no more.

Yizhuang in the south of the city, located in Luoyang City outside the south of ten miles, was originally a Taoist temple, and later because the master was sentenced to autumn beheading, since then it has been defeated. Because the Taoist temple is located between the river bank and the village, those who drowned in the river, and the children who died unexplained or died early in the village, were temporarily parked here by their families, so gradually, this Taoist temple also became a righteous village.

When Chang Tai arrived at Yizhuang, he only saw a girl who was not tall, wearing a set of ill-fitting Taoist clothes, sitting cross-legged, looking at herself without any emotion in her cold eyes.

"Lord Chang!"

"The girl is the master who was found by the Ministry of War?" Chang Tai was a little surprised.

As for the corpse chaser, although Chang Tai had never seen it before, he had also heard of it.

It is said that in the early years, if you complained in a mysterious mountain village inn in Tanzhou, you were very likely to see dead bodies walking. Before dawn, a line of corpses staggered in front of the inn, all draped in a wide black corpse cloth. In front of these corpses draped in black corpse cloth, there was a living person holding a gong, and this living person was called the "corpse chaser".

In fact, it is better to say that it is a "corpse chaser", but rather a "corpse leader" who leads the corpses to walk, because this living person is beating the small yin gong in his hand while leading the group of corpses forward. Usually, these corpse bearers do not carry lanterns, but shake a soul bell in their hands to keep night walkers avoided, and by the way, notify those who have dogs to lock up their dogs.

It is said that cats and dogs are shocked by corpses, whether it is true or not, it is unknown.

Chang Tai also heard that to learn this profession, you must have two conditions: one is bold, and the other is good health. It is also said that the people who learn to drive corpses are basically ugly-looking men. Men are full of yang energy, can block yin and evil, ugly appearance, and can shock evil ghosts. But the master in front of him, although he was wearing a men's robe, was an out-and-out girl, and her body was thin and beautiful.

The girl in a Taoist robe, when she heard Chang Tai's inquiry, lowered her head and said softly: "It's good for adults to call me rouge." ”

Chang Tai coughed lightly, and seeing that it was not early, he said, "Rouge, let's go on the road." ”

"Yes!" Rouge said, getting up, and the sound of metal objects colliding could be heard in the wide cloth pocket.

Chang Tai looked at Rouge's half-hidden hand in the cuff, and thought to himself, what was resting in the cloth bag should be the rumored Dementor Bell and the Little Yin Gong.

Because the other party is a girl, after Chang Tai leaves, let Rouge go forward, so that he can take care of it. What Chang Tai didn't expect was that although Rouge was thin and small, his feet were not slow at all. Whether it is riding a horse or climbing a mountain on foot, it is like walking on the ground, and even the frequency of breathing has not changed.

Half a month later, when they passed through a village called Grave Village, there was an accident.

At that time, it was late at night, the road was rough and not easy to walk, and the day before, it had just rained lightly, the air was humid, and the road was muddy, so every step required more effort than usual. Walking, walking, Rouge suddenly stopped, pointed ahead, and said, "Ghost fire!" ”

Chang Tai looked in the direction of Rouge's finger, and sure enough, there was a blue fire not far away. Chang Tai is a fast arrester, and when he was investigating and chasing the murderer, he also passed through a lot of places such as mass graves, and he usually listened to the nagging of the torture Ruyi, so he also had a little understanding of this ghost fire. The so-called ghost fire is not the fire spewed by the ghosts, but the phosphorus fire produced when the white bones rot.

Looking at Rouge's expression again, it seems that it is just a reminder, not a fear, Chang Tai hummed lightly, indicating that he had seen it himself, but he didn't say anything superfluous.

Rouge continued: "That place is a grave, and the east side is buried with an old man who is dying, and the west side is buried with a lady with a different head. ”

When Chang Tai heard Rouge say the words "The head is different", the flesh on his face jumped unconsciously. At this moment, he suddenly heard another cat meow, followed by the blue ghost fire flickering a few times, and then extinguished.

Rouge turned around, looked into Chang Tai's eyes, and asked him, "Have you ever heard of cats frightening corpses?" ”

"What's that?" Chang Tai asked rhetorically, and the corner of his eye unconsciously swept towards the tomb to the west. Because it was dark and the stars were dim, he could not see the exact situation of the grave, but he could see that the tomb seemed to have no head.

Rouge did not answer Chang Tai directly, but told a story at an even pace: "Three years ago, the imperial court repaired the reservoir in Taohuadian, it was summer, the weather was hot, and a man on the construction site took advantage of the caretaker's nap to wash the reservoir and drowned. Because he drowned, and his facial expression was distorted when he died, he looked terrible, so according to local rules, he could not be buried properly.

In the evening, the man's family erected a simple straw hut on the road, removed the wooden door of the house where the man lived, laid some clean straw, and put him on it. According to Mr. Feng Shui, the family put another layer of straw mat on the man's body, leaving only the man's hair bun and feet outside. The man had an old mother, a wife and children, and that night, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and a child who had nothing to do were on the side, crying and crying. Just after the hour, a strange wind blew, and the wind blew the straw mat away, revealing the man's face. The wife remembered what Mr. Feng Shui had said before leaving, and hurriedly stepped forward to pull the straw mat, but saw that her husband's eyes were open.

At this time, the mother-in-law heard a cat meow, and looked down to see that it was a wild cat running from nowhere, lying under the door panel, staring at the mother-in-law with green eyes. As soon as the mother-in-law wanted to scream, the wild cat screamed and pounced, biting her mother-in-law's throat. It was also thanks to the mother-in-law's cleverness that she pushed her little grandson away at the moment when she was bitten by a wild cat.

Seeing this, the daughter-in-law didn't care about anything, so she hurriedly picked up the child, took a few steps back, stared at the scene in front of her with fearful eyes, but remembered the three words she had heard in her childhood: cat shocked corpse!

At this moment, the corpse sat up suddenly, its eyelids rolled up, revealing only the whites of its eyes, and then stared at his wife and children, the corners of his mouth slightly raised, and a strange smile was drawn. The mother-in-law finally ran out of breath, and the wild cat let go of her mouth with satisfaction, licking her bloodstained lips, and her green eyes were also aimed at the mother and son

(Education 123 Literature Network)