After that, my master ignored me and said to Senior Brother Zhuang, "Most of the people have arrived, you can take them to Zhenmentang." ”

Senior Brother Zhuang hugged his fist at my master and led us towards the bridge.

When I passed by the bridge, I asked Master, "Master, aren't you going with you?" ”

The master lit a dry cigarette and said to me, "I want to guard here, let's keep the right line, in ancient times, it was the doorman of the Soul Village." This kind of thing is still our responsibility. Hehe, in a few years, it will be you who is watching this road. ”

As Master spoke, he pointed to a path behind me, which did not lead to the bamboo forest we had walked through earlier, but directly to the direction of the restaurant.

I asked Master, "Every time someone comes over, do you have to say that kind of thing?" ”

My master took a puff of cigarette in his mouth and asked me in a daze, "What words?" ”

I said, "That's it, who's coming?" ”

The master nodded: "That's right, I want to say it." Every time someone comes over, they have to shout this sentence, and then check the soul ticket on their body, the ghost market, only people with soul tickets can enter. ”

Actually, I don't mean anything else, I just feel that the phrase "who is coming" is quite hypocritical to say, but I think this may be a rule handed down from ancient times, and it is not easy for us to change it as a descendant.

I asked Master again, "What is a soul ticket?" ”

As I spoke, there was a sound of footsteps in the distance on the path leading to the restaurant, and my master hurriedly waved his hand at my senior brother Zhuang: "There are people here, there are students, take them to the secret passage quickly." ”

So Senior Brother Zhuang called me away.

We walked not on the drawbridge, but on the dry river below the drawbridge, and on the south side of the river wall was covered with caves one man wide, and there were more than a hundred of them as far as my eyes could see.

Brother Zhuang carefully counted the river wall for a while, and then led us into one of the caves, in the hole there is a moving stone door, when Brother Zhuang pushed open this stone door, I felt a little damp air flow blowing out of it, although this air flow is a little damp, but it gives people a very fresh and comfortable feeling.

When I got into the hole, I looked back and saw that three or five people had just stepped onto the suspension bridge, and the bridge was swaying slightly with the frequency of their movements.

After entering through the hole, there is a very wide corridor, and the walls on both sides of the corridor are made of large square stone bricks, but they are not tightly built, and there are large gaps between each brick, and from time to time you can see the thick roots of trees emerging from those gaps.

The corridor was damp, and the moisture from the top of the corridor condensed into water droplets from time to time, and then slid down to the ground, making a light "ticking" sound.

Senior Brother Zhuang led us away, and turned back to me and said, "This road, in ancient times, was the foot market in the ghost market, and there was a well not far away, and that well was connected to the spiritual veins in our soul village. ”

The spiritual vein in Senior Brother Zhuang's mouth is the spiritual spring under the Soul Village.

We had not gone far in the corridor when five forks in the road appeared in front of us. I thought that Senior Brother Zhuang would choose one of them, but he came to the stone wall of the corridor, pressed it with his hand, and heard a "click", but nothing happened, and after about a minute, Senior Brother Zhuang pressed on the wall five times in a row, and the wall suddenly collapsed, and an open secret door appeared in front of my eyes.

Senior Brother Feng smiled at me, pointed to the five forks next to him, and said to me, "These five roads all lead to the outside, and none of them can lead to the ghost market." ”

After a few of us entered the stone gate in turn, Senior Brother Zhuang also turned back to me and said: "At the end of the Sui Dynasty, the ghost market was found once by someone with a heart, and at that time, the imperial court did not trust the Soul Village, and sent troops to recruit and suppress it. It was only then that the old ghost market was converted into a secret passage, and the new ghost market was located in the cliff across the river. ”

I also wondered: "Since it's on the other side of the river, why bother with the suspension bridge for a short time?" ”

Senior Brother Feng patted me on the shoulder and said with a smile: "The suspension bridge is for the guests to walk, and the people inside the Soul Village are to take the secret passage, which is the rule set by the ancestors. Besides, if we take the suspension bridge, the heavy load may not be able to hold up. ”

I was puzzled and said to Liang Houzai: "It's just a suspension bridge, what can I hold on." ”

When I said the word "suspension bridge", Liang Houzai's expression suddenly became very complicated, and his face was slightly pale.

It was from this time that I learned that Liang Hou had a fear of heights, including his fear of flying, which was also a fear of heights.

After following Senior Brother Zhuang for a while, I heard the sound of running water not far away, and Senior Brother Zhuang said, "It should be there." He came to the stone wall again and beckoned to me again: "There is a way, there is the former market." ”

When I approached Senior Brother Zhuang, I found that there was a very dark glass on this wall.

Senior Brother Zhuang said that this glass-like thing is called cat's eye glass, and it looks like a thin piece, because it is embedded in the wall, in fact, the thickness of this glazed stone is the same as the wall, at least about 20 meters thick.

On this side of the cat's eye glass, you can clearly see the scenery outside the wall, but the people outside the wall can't see inside.

I leaned over to Brother Zhuang, and through the glazed stone, I could see a wide field at the end of the suspension bridge.

The vision has been distorted by the glazed stone, and it has become a little strange, and the things I see in my eyes are somewhat curved, and the glazed stone has a hint of green in it, so that what I see seems to be covered with a pale green cloth.

I could see that the floor of the site was covered with irregularly shaped stone bricks, and I could occasionally see some weeds in the cracks of the bricks, but I couldn't tell if the dark green things were moss or grass, but just a little bit of green growing along the cracks in the bricks.

Then I saw the men who had been walking on the drawbridge before, and they looked at the clearing, until one of them came to the corner of the field and nodded to the others, and then I saw another man bring some cloth and wooden shelves, and several of them worked together to build a small tarnished tent with great speed, and then they hung a lantern on the top of the canopy.

The lantern was dark red, and the candle inside gave off a little yellow light, and I saw that there were two words written on the leather surface of the lantern with a black brush: "Over the shade".

Senior Brother Zhuang whispered to me next to him, "This is their stall. ”

It was only then that I noticed that there were a few small stalls like this in the open space, and they were scattered in a very messy dark corner that was difficult to detect, but not all of them were such simple tents, and occasionally I could see one or two houses built of earth.

Whether it is the top of the tent or the door beam of the earthen house, there is a dark red lantern hanging like that, and there are three kinds of words written on it: passing through the yin, inviting the gods, and ghost children.

Senior Brother Zhuang said that the words on the lanterns are the business run by those vendors, and there is an unwritten rule in the former market, the more people who come first, the more unsuitable it is to set up stalls in obvious places. On the surface, this is a kind of humility to latecomers, but in fact, in the former market, the more unobtrusive the stall, the better it is to do business.

Behind this vacant lot in the former city, there was a mountain wall at least ten stories high, which seemed to have been cut open, and was almost straight from the top to the bottom, and if it were not for the fact that it was overgrown with oblique trees and weeds, I would not have suspected that this mountain wall was simply an artificial wall.

On the mountain wall, a wooden house was also built in the air, because the vision was distorted, and the wooden house was far away, I could not judge its size, nor could I see its appearance, only that it was an old house, and directly below the house, there was a spiral hanging staircase.

At this time, I saw a person along the hanging ladder to the door of the wooden house, someone opened the door from the inside, although I couldn't see it very clearly, but just by seeing the navy blue wide-sleeved jacket, I also knew that the person who opened the door was Uncle Liu of the Tunmeng lineage.

Uncle Liu seemed to have talked with that person for a while, and then invited him into the house.

At this time, Senior Brother Zhuang said to me, "There is a secret passage in that house, which leads to the ghost market. ”

A gateway to a ghost market?

I was very puzzled, pointed to the open space outside the cat's eye glass, and asked my senior brother Zhuang, "Isn't this a ghost market?" ”

Senior Brother Zhuang smiled and said, "It's also a ghost market, but this is the former market." To put it bluntly, it's just a façade of the ghost market outside. ”

When I leaned in front of the glazed stone and looked outside, Liang Houzai kept standing far away, and he didn't seem to be interested in the ghost market.

After about ten minutes, the stone wall on my left suddenly collapsed, no one touched it, it collapsed by itself, and I watched the large stone bricks on it split into very small stones in an instant, and then a large hole appeared in the wall that was two people high.

This sudden scene really startled me, but Senior Brother Zhuang and Senior Brother Feng both looked calm, as if they had expected this kind of thing to happen.

Even Liang Houzai was unexpectedly calm, and to be honest, when I noticed that the expression on Liang Houzai's face had hardly changed, I suddenly felt a little inferior in my heart.

Am I making too much fuss, or am I being too timid?

As I thought so, I looked at Liang Houzai in confusion.

It wasn't until Liang Houzai came into contact with my eyes that he said to me: "Master brought me here once when I was a child. ”

After a while, he added, "Although I was too young when Master brought me here, I still have a little impression of many things. If I'm not mistaken, someone should pick us up later, so be careful. ”

Be careful?

Liang Houzai told me this, as if I was mentally prepared in advance, and what happened later may surprise me again.