Seeing this scene, Zhou Daoran suddenly understood in his heart that these Dongying Onmyoji were actually using the souls of the Chinese people to conduct plague experiments.

When many people think of plague, they may think of an epidemic, or a concentrated outbreak of a highly contagious disease.

Moreover, plagues are generally caused by some strongly pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses, and generally after natural disasters, poor environmental sanitation is caused, and many people or other species are infected in a wide area.

However, what about the Onmyoji doing plague experiments on the soul?

In fact, plague can be transmitted not only from person to person, livestock to livestock, and from person to livestock, but also from soul to soul.

It's just that because the plague between souls is too rare, and this so-called soul plague is just a general term, no one has explored what it should be called, but because the soul plague is the same as the infectious plague that we see on weekdays, it is called so.

And the soul plague, ancient and modern China and foreign have happened a lot, far away, let's talk about ancient China, only in the late Eastern Han Dynasty in the era of Emperor Ling, in 171 AD, 173, 179, 182, 185, there were five major plagues.

It was at this time that Zhang Jiao, the leader of the peasant rebel army "Yellow Turban Army" in the late Eastern Han Dynasty of China, and the founder of Taiping Dao, began to appear on the stage of history.

After Zhang Jiao obtained the "Taiping Qing Lingshu" (i.e., the "Taiping Sutra") handed down by the Taoist priest Yu Ji and others, he found that the plagues in the later period were not actually physical diseases that we are familiar with, but a special plague that directly infected the soul of people.

After Zhang Jiao discovered this problem, he immediately took religious salvation as his own responsibility, used some religious concepts and social and political ideas in the Taiping Sutra to organize the masses, and began to preach in the early years of Jianning.

Around 183 A.D., the three brothers Zhang Jiao, Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang relied on the Taoism in the "Taiping Sutra" to "teach with witchcraft, set up the 'Taiping Dao', and the spell water was used to cure people's diseases, and the people believed in it." In more than ten years, hundreds of thousands of disciples have been followed."

After the standby matured, they declared that "the sky is dead, the yellow sky should stand, the year is in Jiazi, and the world is auspicious", and launched the famous "Yellow Turban Uprising." ”

Zhang Jiao called himself "General Tiangong" and led the masses to launch an uprising, but in 184 AD, soon Zhang Jiao lacked a systematic understanding of the soul plague, so instead of curing the soul plague, he caused himself to die of illness, and the rebel army was quickly suppressed by the Han Dynasty.

However, because Zhang Jiao opened the beginning of the soul plague, since then, the "medical saint" was born, and the religion of Qing Tan and metaphysics flourished for a while, and there were also special cultivators who went down the mountain to study the problem of soul plague.

Therefore, from 204 to 219 AD, when the great plague occurred again at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the cultivators went to the north of the Yangtze River, where the plague was concentrated, to investigate the disease.

They discovered a plague that was suspected to be similar to what modern people would say, such as hemorrhage, which killed more than 20 million people at the time.

And the rapid spread of this plague has directly caused the situation that many places are inaccessible and overgrown.

In the face of this miserable scene, when Cao Cao, a generation of heroes, passed by here, he couldn't help but write down the poems that have been passed down through the ages, which read, "The white bones are exposed in the wild, and there is no rooster crowing for thousands of miles." The people are left behind, and the thought breaks people's intestines".

The cultivators also felt the seriousness of the problem, and immediately invested a lot of manpower to study the incident of the soul plague, and finally they found out.

It turned out that the source of infection of this soul plague was still due to the previous plagues, which caused a large number of people and animals to die, causing their souls to have no time to reincarnate and thus remain in the human world.

Under the accumulation of a large amount, a kind of mutation is generated, which leads to the decay of one's soul, and then it is transmitted from ten to hundred, and it is caused by continuous infection.

At that time, the cultivators hurriedly found the source of the disease, and sent those souls that had decayed or were about to begin to decay to the underworld in time.

As for those who are still alive, they are doing their best to save them in the hope that their lives will be extended.

Since then, cultivators have believed that it is the right way to practice by not only caring for oneself and cultivating the Tao alone, so as to live in the mountain gate for a long time to escape from the world, but to help the world often.

Therefore, after the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Buddhism and Taoism flourished again, and many cultivators also took this opportunity to start a sect.

It was also under the influence of this historical background that the topics discussed by the literati at that time quickly changed from the theme of classics and political ethics in the Han and Han dynasties to the focus on the meaning of existence and the authenticity of life in the Wei and Jin dynasties, which further promoted the rise of Qing talk and metaphysics.

As for the other time, the soul plague incident that is very famous in Chinese history is the Beijing epidemic in February of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, a disease called "pimple disease".

According to the documents of the time, "The great epidemic is a mixture of people and ghosts. Twilight screen is not good. Traders get more paper money, put water into it, sound money, silent paper. They even walked on the walls and roofs during the day, teasing the inhabitants. Every night they weep and roar, hear the sound and chase the shadow."

Roughly speaking, "This great plague has caused a mixture of the living and the dead, and it is difficult to distinguish between them." In the evening, people abandon it. The trader gets more paper money, and if he pours water into it, he will pay if there is a sound, and if there is no sound, he will pay for it. Even the sun is in a show, walking from the walls to the roofs, teasing people's dwellings. Every night he wept and roared, and heard a voice and chased away a shadow."

The plague in February of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen was also a soul plague, and the reason for its occurrence was the same as that of the soul plague in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

It is due to several large-scale plagues that occurred in succession in the sixth year of Chongzhen, the eighth year of Chongzhen, the tenth year of Chongzhen, the twelfth year of Chongzhen, and the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, which led to too many deaths of people and animals, and the accumulation of souls in the human world, and the difficulty of sending them to the underworld in time.

Another plague of the Americas, which is very famous abroad, was the arrival of European invaders in the Americas, where four million to five million native Americans lived, but the vast majority of them died indirectly in the sixteenth century.

Of course, the American plague is naturally not a soul plague, it is only due to the European invaders, while invading the Americas, they brought some European bacteria and viruses to the locals, resulting in the inability of the indigenous Indians to resist, resulting in a plague and a large number of deaths.

But if you think that when the Europeans invaded the Americas, the Europeans did not suffer casualties due to the plague, you are very wrong.