When I ripped open the placket, I saw that the old man also had a human face tattooed on his chest.

When I saw this face, my scalp was numb, because this face was exactly the same as the face on Wang Qianmo's back.

The old man smiled at me: "Young man, it's a surprise, isn't it?" In fact, this face was tattooed 100 days after I was born, and it has been 73 years now. ”

I was even more confused, and I wanted to say something, but I didn't know how to say it.

How is that possible? He said the face was tattooed......

"You...... The totem on your chest was tattooed by someone else? Still is...... Or as a child? ”

"That's right! A hundred days after I was born, not only myself, but the men of our entire stockade, a hundred days after I was born, would have this totem tattooed......"

Yes? This time, even Wang Qianmo was stunned......

I forcibly held back the doubts in my heart, took a deep breath, and asked again, "Could it be ...... Mr. Fei is not a local, but a ...... But from Miaojiang? ”

The old man smiled again and nodded slightly.

"Young man, I won't tell you the truth, I am a Miao person, and my father's generation is a Miao ...... upwards."

Seedlings? I was about to ask what "seedlings" were, but the old man waved his hand to stop me.

"I know you're very curious, and today is also our fate—it seems that all the prophecies of the master during his lifetime have come true—if you want to understand this totem, you must first understand the history of the old Miao people......"

For the sake of narrative convenience, I will tell these unbelievable things in a direct way:

First of all, the old man told a legend about the origin of the old Miao people.

According to legend, a long, long time ago, the ancestor of the Miao people, Chiyou, lived in North China and Shandong, where the land was fertile, the water and grass were abundant, the cattle and sheep were flocked, and the people lived a prosperous life.

Not only because Chiyou governed the country well, but also because he was brave and good at fighting and caring for his subjects. At the same time, it is also because he has a very good secret weapon - he knows Gu art and has a "Jinduo Sword".

This sword is not only extremely sharp, but also infinitely powerful, even if thousands of troops are as strong as a forest, as long as you swing the "Jinduo Sword", no matter how strong the enemy is, how many times my strength will fall under its power in pieces. As a result, Chiyou has a prominent reputation. The people loved him, and other patriarchs came to pay tribute to him, signed friendship treaties with him, and some even took the initiative to form a "good relationship with Qin and Jin" with him.

As Chi You's prestige and status expanded day by day, some people were bent on defeating him and then taking over his large tracts of fertile land, and the Yellow Emperor was one of them. In order to defeat Chi You, he pretended to go to get close to Chi You, and also married one of his daughters who looked like flowers to Chi You's concubine. The purpose is to let his daughter act as a "spy", spy on Chiyou's military deployment and steal his secret weapon, the "Jinduo Sword".

After the Yellow Emperor's daughter married Chi You, she pretended to be very docile and hardworking on the surface, but secretly paralyzed Chi You, and at the same time secretly observed where Chi You stored his sword.

Three years have passed, and the daughter of the Yellow Emperor has never been able to find a place where Chiyou hides his sword. Another three years passed, and they gave birth to a little boy. One day, Chi You went out for something, and only the daughter of the Yellow Emperor was left at home to take care of the children. On this day, the little boy cried all day long, no matter how the Yellow Emperor's daughter coaxed and coaxed, the child just couldn't stop crying and couldn't stop pointing to the ceiling with his little hands.

The daughter of the Yellow Emperor felt strange and went upstairs to take a look, and it turned out that Chiyou's secret weapon "Jianduo Sword" was hidden here. Overjoyed, the Yellow Emperor's daughter quickly took out the sword, splashed it with dog blood and women's urine (folklore, dog blood and women's urine can make divine power ineffective), and then quietly put it back in its place.

After doing all this, the Yellow Emperor did everything possible to tell the news to her father, and asked her father to lead troops to attack Chiyou. But how do you get the letter out of the way when it's so far? So she came up with a solution, which was to put the letter in the compartment of the sole, and put a needle on the compartment, and pierce her foot when she put it on. After doing all this, the Yellow Emperor's daughter entrusted someone to bring the shoes to her father.

After receiving the shoes, the Yellow Emperor immediately put them on his feet, and he couldn't stop stabbing his feet when he walked. The Yellow Emperor felt strange and opened his shoes. As soon as I opened my shoes, I could clearly see the contents of the letter. So, the Yellow Emperor came with a large number of troops to attack Chiyou.

When the black army surrounded Chiyou's troops, the guards hurriedly reported to Chiyou that the Yellow Emperor's army had come over. Chi You thought that he had a lot of swords in his hand, so he said confidently: "Don't be afraid, wait until they get closer." ”

The Yellow Emperor's army was getting closer and closer, and Chi You took out a strong sword, but no matter how hard he swung it, none of the enemies fell...... In this way, Chiyou was defeated.

After the defeat, the god of war was divided into four pieces and buried in the four directions of the southeast, northwest and northwest of the land of China.

After the defeat of the Jiuli tribe of Chiyou, they were scattered, some stayed in the Central Plains and gradually merged into the Chinese Han people, while others migrated to the southwestern frontiers such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Hunan provinces, and gradually formed today's Miao people.

Judging from the trajectory of the later migration of the Chiyou tribe, it is logical to say that Chiyou is the ancestor of the Miao people.

In addition, a large number of folk word-of-mouth materials can also provide support for this assertion.

For a long time, some ancient stories and customs have been circulated and preserved in many places of the Miao people, and they are closely related to Chiyou.

The Miao people in some places in Yunnan have the custom of "stepping on the flower mountain" (also called "zha mountain"). Legend has it that the Miao people originally worshipped their ancestor Chiyou: Chiyou led the Miao ancestors to resist the Yellow Emperor's eastward advance, and after the defeat in the battle, the tribes were broken up and lost contact, and some of them retreated into the mountains. In order to gather the other tribes, this group of people erected a high wooden pole on the mountain, and the wooden pole was tied with a red belt, and young men and women sang and danced around the pole and blew the reed sheng. In this way, the separated tribesmen were reunited, and everyone reunited and went back to fighting.

This act was later passed down as a regular singing and dancing event, and evolved into a traditional Miao festival. In this sacrificial activity, a "flower pole" should be erected in the Huashan field, on which a red cloth three feet and six inches long is hung, and the Miao people call it "Chiyou Banner". When erecting the "flower pole", the host has to recite a mantra to recount how the ancestor of the Miao people, Chiyou, fought with the Yellow Emperor, and was later defeated and killed, and the Miao ancestors were driven away.

In today's funeral ceremonies of the Miao people in various places, the ghost master will be arranged to sing the "Guide Song", and the Miao people say that in this way, the souls of the dead can be traced back to their hometown along the ancient migration route of the Miao ancestors, and the hometown is in the east "the place where the sun rises at the mouth of the Yellow River".

Experts believe that the hometown mentioned by the Miao people is the place where the Chiyou Jiuli tribe was active in ancient times - that is, the area of Hebei and Shandong.

From the local dialects of the Miao people in various places, you can also find the shadow of Chiyou. Although the Miao people are distributed in the three major dialect areas of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Hunan provinces, and there are many linguistic branches, the Miao people everywhere are surprisingly consistent in calling their ancestors "You Gong". In the southeastern Guizhou dialect, the ancestor is called "Bangxiangyou", the western Hunan dialect area is called "Caiyou" and "Jiuli Chiyou", and the western Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan dialect area is called "Chiyou".

In the south of the Guizhou Industrial Zone, there is also the Miao epic "Bang Chi You" sung among the people, singing the story of the ancestor Xiang Yougong. When Miao Min was singing or talking, he was in awe when he heard the name of "Bang Xiangyou". In some places in Yunnan-Guichuan, there is also a Chiyou Temple, and people often hold a grand ceremony to worship Chiyou.

In addition, whenever people are not prosperous and seriously ill, the Miao people must first sacrifice to the thirty-six ghosts, and if it is still ineffective, they will finally sacrifice the ancestor god Chiyou in order to bless them.

Experts who study folklore believe that although folklore and legends have the fantasy element of mythological thinking, they often coincide with ancient documents, which fully shows that they have high historical value and are more vivid historical materials. The folk word-of-mouth information of the Miao people is tortuously reflecting the historical relationship between the Chiyou Jiuli tribe and the Miao people, from which we can see the mottled light and shadow cast by the ancient history in the long river of time.

The reason why the Miao people live in the remote Miao Xinjiang area, in addition to avoiding the persecution of the Yellow Emperor tribe, is also a very important reason - they have taken the witchcraft of the Jiuli tribe to the extreme.

In the old society, Gu was commonly known as the "grass ghost" in the Miao area, and according to legend, it was attached to women and harmed others. Those so-called women with Gu are called "grass ghost women". After investigation, some Miao scholars believe that almost the entire Miao nationality believes in Gu, but the severity is different in different places.

They believe that in addition to some of the above-mentioned sudden symptoms, some chronic diseases that are difficult to treat such as long-term cough, hemoptysis, blue complexion and emaciation, as well as symptoms such as visceral discomfort, bowel sound, abdominal distention, and loss of appetite, are all caused by Gu. If it is sudden, you can use the method of shouting to let the so-called Gu person take it back by himself; If you are a chronic patient, you have to ask a wizard to do "detoxification".

This kind of intimidating Gu is not the patent of the Miao people. Gu art has long been widely spread in the Jiangnan region of ancient China. Originally, Gu referred to insects that were born in utensils, and later, moths and other objects born after grain decay were also called Gu.

The ancients believed that Gu had mysterious properties and great toxicity, so it was also called poisonous Gu, which could enter the human body through diet and cause diseases. The patient seems to be bewitched by a ghost and is delirious.

Most of the Gu insects mentioned by the pre-Qin people refer to naturally occurring mysterious poisonous insects. The long-term poisonous superstition has also developed the concept and practice of creating Gu and harming people. According to scholars' research, during the Warring States Period, people in the Central Plains had already used and taught the method of creating Gu and harming people.

Legend has it that the method of creating poisonous Gu is generally to put a variety of highly poisonous poisonous insects such as snakes and scorpions, such as scorpions, scorpions, etc., into the same utensil, so that they can eat and kill each other, and the only remaining poisonous insects are Gu.

There are many types of Gu, and the ones with great influence are snake Gu, dog Gu, cat ghost Gu, scorpion Gu, toad Gu, insect Gu, flying Gu, etc. Although Gu seems to be a tangible thing on the surface, since ancient times, Gu has been considered a mysterious thing that can fly, change, glow, and come and go like a ghost.

Gu makers can use spells to remotely control Gu worms to bring various diseases to the target and even kill them. The ancients believed in the spell of poison Gu to cause disease.

The Compendium of Materia Medica says: The person who creates Gu catches a hundred worms and puts them in a vessel. The big ones of these hundred insects eat the small ones, and the last big insect that lives in the vessel is called Gu. This is the same way I saw the blind man refining Gu before.

Poisonous scams are mostly cultivated in the southern provinces of Chinese mainland, and there are many types, including dung crickets, horse locusts, golden silkworms, grass clams, and picky clams. When others are not paying attention, the person who releases the Gu puts the Gu into the food, and after eating it, he will be infected with the Gu poison, and the person who is infected with the Gu poison will be infected with a chronic disease. From a modern point of view, this is a man-made disease caused by the poison of many protozoa.

Gu is a mysterious witchcraft inherited from the ancient Jiuli people in China; In the past, in China's southern villages, there used to be a lot of trouble, and no one dared to think that it was fake.

As for whether the Gu technique was really so awesome, I couldn't help but interject and ask the old man.

The old man smiled, got up, poured himself a glass of water, and poured a glass for each of us, before slowly speaking.

In fact, in the past 100 years, with the changes of the times, the Miao people have also been divided into two factions.

One of them still adheres to the way of life of the old Miao people in the past, and still reveres the Gu gods, and follows the customs passed down by the old Miao people for thousands of years, and even does not contact the outside world.

Over time, in the eyes of outsiders, this part became more and more mysterious. This group of Miao people is Shengmiao - most of them live in more remote mountainous areas.

The other part of the Miao people is just the opposite, they like to accept new things from the outside world, and they are gradually assimilated by the foreigners, and this part of the Miao people is the mature Miao.

The old man said that in some of the villages where the seedlings lived, people outside the village could not enter. They will set up a circle according to the terrain and the mountain, and only those who are familiar with the route can enter it. And they did not recognize the laws of the outside world, and in the village, if anyone broke the law, then the patriarch had the right to put that person to death.

As for the "Gu Miao" in the "Sheng Miao", it is even more mysterious, it is said that the "Gu Miao" branch, everyone is a master of raising Gu, in the village, everyone has terrible tattoos on their bodies, and they will also raise toads, snakes, spiders and other poisons at home, and they will also worship these poisons.

In Gu Miao's village, there will be a woman who is called the archmage, and this archmage will respect her very much. Because she is the guardian of the entire stockade, she has a high and inviolable status, and her mana is also the highest in the stockade.

At last, the old man stopped, got up again, and walked behind me.

I only felt a chill on my back, but I didn't expect the old man to silently lift the clothes on my back.

"In addition to the archmage, there is also a person with a high status in the Shengmiao tribe, that is the Miao doctor in the village, my father and grandfather are Miao doctors, sixty years ago I saw a person who was covered in cracks, crying and begging grandpa to save his life, this person is the same as us, and he was also cursed!"

Wang Qianmo took several steps back with an "ah" sound.

"Old man, the man...... Is the man dead? ”

"Dead - only died half a year later, the only person in the world who can break this curse is the archmage or Miao Doctor, and without the patriarch's order, Miao Doctor will never lift the curse for people privately......"

"O'...... Half a year later...... It's all cracked, and you can live for half a year! ”

Wang Qianmo asked in surprise.

"He wants to die, but the problem is that he can't die! That's where the curse comes in. ”