As soon as the bitter cold wind blew the dark night into the air, it was dispersed into the air by the sound of gunfire.

People live for seventy years, if the life is a little harder to seventy-seven, the age can be connected on the paper to form a happy word, it is really a good thing. If you put it on the doorstep of a poor family, you have to do it in order to continue your long life, not to mention the rich family. Therefore, the entire Li Mansion has been busy up and down for more than half a month since the beginning of winter, just to prepare a birthday banquet for the old lady of the rich man's family.

The people who worshiped Shou came one after another with the sound of cannons, and no matter whether they were rich or poor, they all entered the gate of the Li Mansion today. The bright red cannon suit was smashed in front of the door with smoke, reflecting the longevity of the people at both ends of the door, and the longevity post of "the sky increases the years, and the blessings are full of the door". Entering the door, there is a large pot facing the shadow wall, in which the bones are boiled, a slender noodle is thrown into the pot, cooked, filtered through the water with a large colander and scooped into the bowl, with condiments, and then a white flowered egg, sprinkled with green onion leaves, is a hot longevity noodles.

The people in the village ate longevity noodles hotly, which can be regarded as the blessing of the old birthday star, and can add a few more years of longevity to their life and death books. The person who eats the noodles rests the bowl on the table next to the cauldron and walks straight along the shadow wall, which is the place where the birthday ceremony is registered. Further inside is the large courtyard of the Li Mansion, neatly arranged with several rows of tables and benches, and on the table are freshly fried fruits, longevity peaches and sugar noodles.

When it was almost noon, the tables that could not be placed in the courtyard were moved to the open space in front of the Li Mansion, and the invited troupe also set up a stage next to the gate, babbling and singing "Hitting the Golden Branch".

Mrs. Li sat in the center of the hall wearing a big wedding robe made of red silk, and nodded at the people who walked into the house to pay homage to her birthday.

Suddenly, there was the sound of blowing a trumpet and beating a big drum at the door, and everyone followed the sound to look, and it turned out to be the rich man Wang from the neighboring village who came to celebrate his birthday. Wang and Li have always been good friends, and the two rich men are even more in-laws. Mrs. Li is too old, and the Wang family is determined to come, but they are looking forward to it left and right, but they didn't expect that the people in the palace who have always liked to hold the morning show will come at noon today.

Looking at the birthday procession of the palace, the big pie made people smack their lips. A long line, the head is the palace housekeeper Zhao Si, followed by four trumpeters, and then two tambourines, followed by two gongs, followed by a team of people, all holding a large disc in their hands, a red shou cloth on the plate, and the cloth is placed on the shou peach, shou people, shou man, shou banner; But the most striking thing is the end of the line, where eight sturdy men are slowly moving forward carrying a seven-foot-long and wide box. The box is covered with a red cloth, the edge of the cloth is slightly touching the ground, and the color is purple, which makes this birthday gift, which seems to be heavy enough, even more mysterious.

As soon as the rich man Li and the old birthday star, who were sitting in the hall, heard the news, they saw the mighty birthday procession, and their mouths couldn't close immediately. If a person lives for a lifetime, don't he just want to live with a light on his face and a hanging face? How can the old lady not be happy to have such a big birthday party for her birthday.

Seeing that the rich man Li and the old birthday star were standing at the door, Zhao Si hurriedly trotted over, and said to the two people in front of the door: "Old Mrs. Li, look at your old complexion, live and stand up as a bodhisattva, look at the little one, you say a hundred, you live to one hundred and one is not a problem at all." There is an old lady, a living bodhisattva who adds blessings and gathers qi to the house, Master Li, you must also be older than Nanshan's body and bones, and gather blessings and longevity of the immortal life. The little one is here on behalf of my lord and Mrs. Li to wish Mrs. Li the blessing of the East China Sea, the year is safe, the sea house is raised, the house is full of gold and jade, and the back is the birthday gift sent to me by my lord. ”

The old lady was overjoyed, and she didn't think much about it, so she agreed, and the three of them exchanged a few words, and after a polite exchange, the follow-up team also came to the gate.

The big box was put on the ground with a "bang", shaking up the scattered gun clothes a few feet high, and the people who worshiped Shou formed a big circle around the box, and they all stretched their necks and squeezed to look inside, trying to see what kind of rare things were contained in such a large box.

The old lady walked to the box tremblingly with a dragon head cane on one side, and the other side was held by the rich man Li, and ripped off the red silk little by little, revealing the whole box, the body of the box was made of fine birch wood, brushed with a layer of red paint, the edge of the box was inlaid with silver, and the lid of the box was carved with the carving of the dragon and phoenix. Printed with the winter sun, the whole box actually gave people the feeling that it was about to drip blood.

There is a padlock bolt on one side of the box body, there is no lock, the old lady holds the top corner of the box lid with one hand, and holds the buckle bolt with the other hand, trying to lift the box cover, but the box cover is surprisingly heavy, the old lady has not been able to lift it up several times, and the rich man Li saw this and hurriedly stood on the other side of the box and put a handle, only to lift the box cover.

The lid of the box was lifted, but the birthday gift inside was really exposed, which made everyone dumbfounded: there was a coffin in the box, and the color was not ordinary red, but the dark green that seeped people, soaked in oil, and the wet answer made people feel sick to their stomachs, and the coffin body also fell a lot of soil, which looked like it had just been dug out of the ground.

The crowd of onlookers exploded at once, and the people in the front row exclaimed and exchanged all kinds of words; The people behind couldn't see the box, and they were in a hurry, stretching out their heads and squeezing in, and for a while they were noisy and shouting, crowding and making noise, and it was even more lively than the artillery battle that had been set off all day.

The old lady thought about it for a long time, but she didn't expect that there was such a strange coffin in the box, and her brain suddenly couldn't turn around, and the whole person stood there in a daze, and after a while, she slowly came back to her senses, staring at the coffin lid with her eyes, her face was first white, and then red, and finally turned blue violently, it was really more wonderful than changing her face, the flesh on her face trembled with her body, and then her eyes rolled up, and the whole person fell to the ground straight and straight.

The rich man Li was also in a daze, thinking about what was going on with this birthday gift, when he saw the old lady fall to the ground, he suddenly came back to his senses, and hurriedly squatted down to help the old lady.

The rich man Li couldn't feel his breath, his eyes suddenly darkened, and he almost fainted, he was stunned to survive, lying on the old lady and beating his chest, pinching and pressing his temples, but he couldn't snatch the old lady back from the hands of Lord Yama.

The rich man Li cried on the old lady for a long time, stood up, pushed away the crowd of onlookers, ran into the house, and when he came out again, he carried a big axe for chopping wood in the firewood room, found Zhao Si's position in the crowd, and rushed over to cut it.

As soon as Zhao Si saw that the situation was wrong, he turned around and ran away in fright, and while squeezing into a crowded place, he turned around and explained: "Master Li, you are wronged." The little one really doesn't know what's in the box.,It's my lord's explanation.,Even the box was brought by the lord himself.,The small one just does what the lord tells me to do.,I really don't know anything else.。 ”

The rich man Li died of his mother in vain, his eyes were already red, and he still listened to the words of the people, not only did he not slow down, but chased Zhao Si more and more desperately.

The crowd that had gathered together rushed over when they saw the rich man Li carrying an axe, and they were all frightened to hide in Tibet, and later saw that the target of the rich man Li was only Zhao Si, and several bold villagers saw the opportunity and hugged the rich man Li from behind, wanting to snatch his axe, but I didn't expect the rich man Li to really go crazy, and the strength was terrifying, and he threw out the three or four villagers who were holding him.

Taking advantage of this moment, Zhao Si hurriedly squeezed into the crack of the person, for fear that he would be chopped into meat by an axe if he hesitated for a second. The rich man Li finally got rid of the shackles, looked at the crowd, but could no longer find Zhao Si's shadow, for a while he was sad and angry, and instead vented his anger on the dark green coffin, lifted the axe and slashed at the coffin.

It's strange to say, although this green coffin is painted dark green, but it is not made of bronze, not only is it not bronze, but the texture is extremely soft, an axe to split down the coffin body to split a big hole, this split does not matter, the coffin with rotten holes is like a cracked pig urine bubble, gurgling out of red water, sticky and fishy, I don't know if it's blood or something weird.

The rich man Li was all about the coffin, and he didn't care about anything flowing out, he still tied all the strength of his body to his arm, and cut down with an axe, eager to hammer a big hole in the ground, smash the coffin and bury it inside. The red water that came out of the crack was squeezed by the axe that was draped in, and most of it splashed on the body of the rich man Li.

After all, the rich man Li is a person who has never done hard work, although he relied on the brute force under the anger to drive everyone and unload the coffin with the axe, but after a little time, after a breath of spirit and spirit were dispersed, he could no longer lift the axe, and he didn't care what the coffin was split into at all, he sat down on the ground, hugged the old lady and began to cry loudly.

A good birthday banquet was made like this, and everyone who worshiped the birthday was also shocked and afraid. Seeing that the situation of the rich man Li eased a little, several women in the village pulled and persuaded him, dragged the rich man Li to the house, sat on the bed in the inner room, and wrapped the old lady's body in a sheet, put it in the yard first, and was busy cleaning up, and the door suddenly exploded like a pot, coaxing and shouting, mixed with bursts of screams, which made people feel that their scalp was numb when they heard it.

It turned out that the coffin in the box was broken by the rich man Li, and the stinky red water in the coffin flowed clean along the hole, but why did such foul-smelling red water flow out of the coffin, and what was in the coffin, it was really curious.

But now this scene is really weird: the old birthday star who was angry to death, the half-crazy and half-stupid rich man Li, the palace housekeeper who hid, and the strange coffin that appeared on Xishou now exudes a foul smell, and the blood is like a strange red water flowing all over the ground, and the tattered coffin is still dripping scarlet liquid from time to time, even if he pulls the prince of Yama over, he may not dare to take a second look here.

If you want to say that people who are not afraid of death, there are always one or two in a village, there is a "Li Dasha" in Lijia Village, and above the parents are all coffin shops and do dead business, but it has been passed on to his generation, a coffin board is stunned that even a rivet can't be knocked in, how can he inherit this craft, Dasha's father saw that the craftsmanship handed down by his ancestors was going to be buried under the loess with him, and his hair fell out in a hurry, but he had no choice but to blame himself for giving birth to such a stupid son.

I couldn't learn the skills of my ancestors, so I had to go around looking for a livelihood for Dasha, but people who do the business of the dead, where to find a job makes people feel unlucky, and they look for eight times, and finally end up with a job guarding the tomb. At night, they live in a thatched hut next to the ancestral grave, ordinary people either disdain to take this job, or dare not take this job, but Dasha is very satisfied, do this work only need to hang a few times around the small mound with a lantern every night, than sawing wood and cutting corners and hammering nails to make coffins I don't know how many times easier, where can I find a better livelihood than this.

Now there is a coffin in front of him, although the color is strange, dirty, and smelly, but Dasha has seen his father make a coffin since he was a child, and he has no fear of this thing, relying on curiosity, he opened half of the coffin at once, poked his head in, and waited until he saw the things inside, he screamed in fright, took three or four steps back, stumbled on a stone and fell to the ground, pointing to the coffin and shouting: "Trouble, trouble, trouble, haunted!" There's a man with a head on his belly! ”

As soon as people heard about the haunting, they were frightened and retreated, for fear of being dragged into the coffin by the ghost, and it was noisy and noisy, but no one was willing to leave. Li Dasha was frightened, sat on the ground and hummed and chirped, suddenly stood up like a jumping god, rushed to the coffin, picked up the coffin lid and ran in the direction of the ancestral grave.

The lid of the coffin was taken away by Dasha, and the person with the head on the stomach in Dasha's mouth was exposed. It turned out that a person's head was cut off, and the corpse was held with two hands and placed on the stomach. There was a black dead cat in the place where the head was originally placed, and the two eyeballs were gouged out, and the black hole hole was soaked in the red blood water for a long time, becoming black and red, making people break out in a cold sweat.

Zhao Si, who was originally hiding in the pile, glanced at the head in the coffin and was stunned for a moment. Jumping in front of the coffin was also a bitter cry: "Master, you died so miserably." Who made you like this......"

The head in the coffin actually belonged to the rich man, which was really strange. This Zhao Si has been an orphan since he was a child, raised by the rich man Wang from childhood to adulthood, and was ordered by the director of the rich man Wang to become the housekeeper of the palace.

Wan Nian was afraid of nothing under the ashes, so he grabbed the dead cat out of the coffin with one hand and threw it on the acacia tree a few feet away; He took the head from the corpse, took off his clothes and put it on the neck of the rich man, and pushed the box containing the coffin to push the old man home, regardless of whether he could push it or not.

The birthday celebration team of the palace, which was originally stupid to stand on the side and not to leave, saw that Steward Zhao had a plan to leave and return to the house, so he hurriedly lifted the coffin with his hand, wanting to escape from this place of right and wrong as soon as possible. The coffin was carried in front, and the crowd of onlookers followed behind, all wanting to see what kind of sensation the coffin would cause when it was delivered to the palace.

Zhao Si really cried all the way, he felt sorry for his master, and he was worried that he didn't know how to explain to his wife and the old lady when he went back, an old lady died in the Li Mansion, and the old man didn't know if he could recover from such a big stimulus, the onlookers had seen enough of the excitement, but he Zhao Si was really going to be a person inside and out. The more Zhao Si thought about it, the more sad he became, and he didn't notice when he had arrived in front of the palace.

It is said that there is a lot of noise in front of the door, and at least one person in the Wang family's house must come out to see the situation, but the door is empty, as if the commotion outside cannot be heard at all. Only the door was open, like the blood basin of a giant beast, and it wanted to swallow all the people who came to it.

It wasn't until the person next to him patted his shoulder and said that the palace had arrived, that Zhao Si came to his senses, afraid that he would report the bad news alone, and if the old lady heard that he was angry, it would not be easy to appease, so he asked people to put the coffin in the open space in front of the door, and walked to the house with enough people.

Zhao Si stood at the door and shouted inside with a crying voice: "Madam, old lady, the little one is back." I shouted three or four times, but there was no response. Not only was Mrs. Lao Taijun silent, but the long-term workers in the house couldn't even see a shadow, and when Zhao Si went out with a birthday gift in the morning, the big mansion was still lively and lively, and when he turned around, he came back as cold and silent as a ghost house.

Unable to find a figure, Zhao Si had to take people into the house first, looking for people one by one, room by room, and entering several rooms in a row, everything was neatly arranged, and some tables still had teacups full of water, but no one could be seen.

When I found it, I went to the bedroom of the rich man, and when I stood at the door, I felt the wind gusting, and my body trembled. When I opened the door, the shocked eyes of the people present fell to the ground: the whole palace was "in" this room, up to the old lady Wang, down to the man who boiled water in the house, the heads were cut off, neatly lined up on the ground from left to right, the middle of the skull was nailed with peach nails, and the tongue stretched out like a hanged ghost; The arms with the whole body are tied to the left and the right by two ropes and hung on the beams, the ropes are tied to the armpits, the arms are spread out to both sides of the body by gravity, the whole shape is like a huge "T" shape, the chest is hollow, the heart has been removed, and the wounds are uneven, it is like some beast has taken out the heart with its claws.

A head is placed in front of each hanging corpse, just like the offerings are placed in the temple. But the strangest thing is that so many people have had their heads cut off, and there is not a single drop of blood in the entire room, neither on the ground nor on the clothes of the corpses, not even a trace of blood can be found.

A few of them couldn't help it, so they bent down and vomited, and the rest of the people were all frightened. The whole scene was the same as the execution ground of the eighteenth layer of hell, and the troupe owner who came to join in the fun was frightened, pointed to a pile of corpses in front of him, and whispered: "Didn't this family provoke any powerful ghosts, right?" Didn't the blood of these individuals suck up all the ghosts? But no one dared to talk to him.

At this time, I heard something in the yard as if it was banging on the door, making a loud knocking sound, and the sound became louder and louder; The more it spread, the closer it became, it turned out that Dasha who had gone crazy ran in from nowhere, and was still holding the coffin board with both hands, and the sound of the knock was made when the coffin board collided with the door and the pillar, Dasha walked into the bedroom, and blocked the door with the coffin lid.

Dasha blocked the door, as if he had done something happy, and let out a burst of giggling laughter, not to mention how ugly this laughter was. This Li Dasha was crying and crying at the door, laughing and screaming, and no one dared to step forward and push open the lid of the coffin blocked at the door.

After a while, Dasha turned around and held on to the coffin board, insisting that the lid was pressed against the walls on both sides of the door, leaving no cracks at all. While moving the coffin lid, he hummed and chirped to close the coffin lid a little tighter, so as not to let the blood inside flow out.

Everyone first felt that this Li Dasha was really crazy, and there was no blood to shed here; Looking back on the word coffin in the words, I immediately thought of the coffin at the birthday banquet, and then thought of the scarlet liquid that flowed out when the rich man Li split the coffin. Is it all the blood in the coffin from the corpses in front of you?

Among the people who were surrounded in the bedroom, there was a job of blowing a trumpet in the birthday procession, and he immediately stood up and denied: "This, how is this possible." In the morning, when we prepared our birthday gifts and went out, everyone was still in the house. The lady also said that the old man had a headache and was lying down to rest, so he didn't go with us. How could the coffin contain the blood of the lady and the old lady who were still alive at the time? “

The stupid and crazy people didn't know if they could listen to people's words, squatting on the ground and counting one, two, three, four, and counting how many heads there were on the ground, and everyone was stunned again.

The guy who blew the trumpet seemed to suddenly see something, tremblingly pointed to a head on the ground, and asked everyone with a crying voice: "This, this, is this head Zhao Si's?" Everyone was stunned, they didn't understand too much about the words of the trumpeter, and when they looked at the place where they fingered, there was a head with Zhao Si's face in the pile of heads lined up; Standing upright on the ground, his expression seemed to be smiling rather than smiling, three points colder than Prime Minister Wen Cheng's smile in "Flower Pavilion Meeting", not at all like the expression of a person who has lost his head.

Seeing Zhao Si's head standing on the ground, everyone was stunned, and felt a gust of cold wind blowing straight from the soles of their feet to Tianling Gai'er: it was Zhao Si who came to Li Mansion with the coffin to worship his birthday, it was Zhao Si who carried the coffin back to the palace, and it was Zhao Si who led everyone into the palace door. But if Zhao Si had died in this room a long time ago, who was the person who was running around with the big guy along the way?

Everyone secretly looked towards the place where Zhao Si, who didn't lose his head, and saw that Zhao Si was also stunned there, staring at the head on the ground with wide eyes, wondering which evil he had bumped into today, looking at the head on the ground, the more he looked at it, the more he felt that it was himself, and muttered in his heart Could it be that he was fake?

I wanted to pinch my face with my hand, this pinch was not tight, I actually ripped off my face, the flesh on my face flowed straight down like a melted candle, and the whole body began to wilt rapidly like a deflated balloon, and in less than a moment a big living person was stuck to the ground like a piece of paper, and after a while, I couldn't even see the human skin, only to see a small figure cut of yellow paper standing on the pile of clothes. Blood flowed everywhere along the flat ground, and was stopped by the coffin board that Dasha had placed at the door, and when he really answered the words, not a drop could flow out of this room.

The frightened crowd, you look at me, I look at you, I don't know what to do, everyone is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, only to feel that the tense nerves will be broken if there is a little more wind and grass, and they are all thinking in their hearts that this day is a lifetime of evil things have been encountered.

Suddenly, I felt a cold in my chest, and hurriedly looked down to see that there was a skinny, black-haired strange hand on everyone's chest, carrying the heart that was still pounding in my body and pulling it out; Then I felt that the scene in front of me was getting more and more blurry, getting darker and darker, and I vaguely saw a head that I didn't know who slowly rose from the ground into the air, and let out a miserable cry like a cat being thrown into a hot pot to cook alive, and they all lost their instincts and died completely.