Hong Ban has lived in the village for many years, and the farthest place is to Kunming twice, and the place he usually goes to the most is Tengchong, and he has never dealt with such complicated people, so he believes it. He didn't think about why this Mandan came to the village, but he was able to find the vicinity of Hongxia's cemetery, he just thought that he was really lost.

Bringing Mandan to the house, Hongban's wife gave him a warm welcome, and his young daughter also liked this beautiful big sister and followed Mandan to the front and back. During the meal, Mandan said that her father was a famous local shaman, and she also learned from her father since she was a child, and now that her father died early, she heard that there are many powerful Miao sorcerers in Yunnan, so she wanted to come and learn, and she can also use the ancient Shan method of Myanmar to exchange for something.

Hong Ban didn't want to, he felt that it was a waste of time, because the Hong family's witchcraft was passed down from generation to generation and could not be passed on to outsiders, and he didn't want to learn other people's witchcraft. But in line with the principle of hospitality and helping others, Hong Ban still told Mandan some knowledge about the origin, method and type of witchcraft of the ancestors of the Hong family, of course, he did not go too deep to avoid leaking secrets.

Mandan was very happy, pestering Hong Ban to learn from him and worship him as a teacher. Hong Ban repeatedly emphasized: "The witchcraft of the Hong family is only taught in the family and cannot be passed on to outsiders, which is a rule set by the ancestors." ”

Unexpectedly, Mandan was very disapproving, and said: "Practicing witchcraft is not to become an immortal, but to exorcise evil spirits and cure diseases, if it must be passed down from family to family, but your daughter may not be willing to learn it when she grows up." And there are very few female wizards, because of the physical characteristics of women, they will progress very quickly when they start to learn witchcraft, but once they get married and have children, the spells will be discounted or even disappear, and then who will you pass on the witchcraft of the Hong family to? The most important thing is that the children born to your daughter after marriage are to follow her husband's family name, and he may not be willing to let his children practice witchcraft again, isn't that going to be broken? ”

These words were actually what Hong Ban was worried about, and he was a little moved. Mandan is very good at observing words and feelings, she proposed to help in the Hong family for a few months, and when Hong Ban is willing to teach, she will stay, and she can also change her name to Hong, and she can become a Chinese citizen. If Hong Ban was unwilling, she didn't say a word and went back to Myanmar directly. Hong Ban felt that there was no reason to refuse, so he agreed, and Mandan lived in an empty room in the backyard of Hong's house, helping him and his wife with work every day, and also collecting rocks and using Miao Wushu to make powder.

It didn't take long for Hong Ban to discover that this Mandan girl was indeed a good material for practicing witchcraft, she knew everything thoroughly, she was very smart, and her hands and feet were also diligent. Moreover, she herself has mastered a variety of methods, and some Hong Ban have never even heard of them. Whenever there is a need for a spell casting ritual in the village, Mandan assists Hong Ban to come forward, and sometimes she is too busy, so she simply runs around instead of Hong Ban to exorcise evil spirits and relieve misfortune for the people in the village, and everyone has a good impression of her.

Mandan studied at the Hung family for half a year, and she also taught Hung Ban some Burmese witchcraft techniques, such as induction, spiritual attraction and blessings. Although they are all entry-level, after all, Hong Ban has a foundation in cultivating the Fa, so he learns quickly, but he rarely uses it, and he doesn't want Mandan to feel that he has taken a big advantage.

Half a year later, Hong Ban decided to officially take her as an apprentice and began to teach her the witch spells and Sanming soul arresting techniques of the ancestors of the Hong family. Mandan studied very hard, she often went to the back mountains in the middle of the night to practice the Fa, wandering around by the way, every time she sensed the lonely souls and wild ghosts in the barren mountains, she blessed them with witch spells, but she suffered from the lack of a carrier of spiritual possession.

One day she told Hong Ban that many people in Southeast Asia wear Buddha cards, which are made of certain raw materials that can attach mana and yin spirits, and then use the ancient Burmese method she has mastered to inject the yin spirit or mana into it, and this Buddha card can be worn by people, and the mana or yin spirit inside can bless the wearer's safety, wealth and transfer. She can often sense the wandering yin spirits in the barren mountains, and these yin spirits are not small, so she wants to bless them into the amulet card, and the wearer's usual offerings to them can also surpass these yin spirits.

Hong Ban asked, "How can there be so many wild ghosts in the barren mountains?" Even if there were, they were all buried in the cemetery by the villagers, and they would often go to worship, how could there be resentment? ”

Mandan replied: "Either he was picking herbs and digging grass in the mountains and accidentally fell off the cliff; Either they were hastily buried after death, but the body was taken out and eaten by wild beasts; Or for some other reason, such as homicide, suicide, etc. Hong Ban was silent, if so, Hong Xia is a typical example.

"I've heard of Southeast Asian amulets, but I've never touched them." Hongban replied that with his approval, Mandan began to make amulets from the existing materials. Those witch book fans are of course the most basic good materials, and they have all been written hundreds of times by Hong Ban with his fingers, and his mind is strong. Mandan uses witch book powder and water to make pieces of plaques, on which are made of wooden molds or mantras, or seals, and then ask the carpenters of the village to make delicate small wooden frames with chains, and embed the plaques into the wooden frames.

In this way, Mandan often went to the deep mountains, sensed the yin spirits everywhere, and then blessed them into the Buddha card, and then she gave the Buddha card to the villagers to wear, and then told them the mantra. Whenever Mandan senses and blesses the Yin Spirit in the deep mountains, because of the consumption of mana, he will get sick slightly, lie on the bed and pant for breath, and fall into a semi-coma at night, and he will have to rest for two or three days to recover. Hong Ban persuaded her not to work so hard, but Mandan felt that there were more than a dozen villages in the vicinity, and there must have been a lot of unjust deaths in the mountains over the years, and she had to help them as soon as possible, not wanting to see them wandering in the barren mountains all the time. Hong Ban felt that Mandan's heart was good, so he had to let her.

Hong Ban's daughter likes Mandan, and even wants to follow her when she wants to go to the mountains in the middle of the night to practice the Fa. He and his wife couldn't persuade him, Mandan said: "The night is cloudy, and the barren mountains are even more unclean, don't let her follow me." "Hong Ban asked his wife to take good care of her daughter, and don't let her run around.

But something went wrong.

In the middle of the night, it was raining outside, Hong Ban felt tightness in his chest and shortness of breath, he woke up in his sleep, and saw his wife sleeping soundly beside him, but he always felt uneasy, and then looked closely, the other side of his wife's body was empty, and there should be a daughter sleeping there. He sat up, looked at the clock on the wall, it was already half past one in the morning, got up and went to the yard to look for it, thinking that his daughter had gone to the toilet. But I didn't find it, and then I went to the backyard, and sometimes my daughter would run to the backyard to find Mandan to play.

The doors and windows of the room where Mandan lived were closed, and Hong Ban could not enter directly, so he had to knock on the door outside. There was no light in the window, indicating that either there was no one or Mandan had slept, but it should have been the latter tonight. Because Mandan had just blessed a Buddha card two days ago, the mana consumed a lot, and he would fall asleep at night, and no one would be able to wake up at this time.

knocked for a while and didn't respond, which means that the daughter is not in the house, and the daughter has a problem, she likes to like it, but she only sleeps with her mother, and it is unlikely that she will spend the night in the Mandan room, the key is that before going to bed last night, the daughter was obviously coaxed to sleep by her wife, and Hong Ban and her wife had to look around.

They first looked for a toilet in the yard for fear of falling in, but later determined that there was none. I searched for more than half an hour in the village in the rain, but I couldn't find any trace of my daughter. Two villagers heard the sound and came out to see, and when they saw Hongban and his wife in a hurry, they learned that their daughter was missing, and hurriedly helped to find them.

Later, the villagers gathered more and more, and almost half of the village came to help, but Hongban's daughter seemed to evaporate from the air, and there was nowhere to go. Hongban's wife cried into tears, and the village chief advised her not to rush and asked her all the possibilities of where her daughter could go. Could it be that Hongban was really in Mandan's room, maybe he climbed in through the window?

When everyone returned to Hong's house, the village chief asked the closed window to be pried open and shined a flashlight inside, and saw Mandan lying on the bed and sleeping, and there was no Hongban's daughter. For fear of slipping through the net, the village chief also asked a young woman to jump out of the window and rummage through the house, but to no avail.

In the end, the village chief ordered the whole village to divide into dozens of groups and go to the woods and barren mountains in front of the village and behind the village to conduct a dragnet search. The rain gradually stopped until dawn, and all the villagers searched the barren mountains to no avail. Hong Ban pounded his head vigorously, and his wife was already crying and fainting on the ground.