Early the next morning, Fan Li and Jialan knelt in front of the wooden house. They were kneeling there when the boy went down the hill to fetch water, and they were still there when he reappeared with his heavy burden. Last night the grandfather saw through the trick, and the grandfather angrily brushed his sleeves away, and the two apologized in this way, and at noon the old man came out lazily and sat down on the stool in front of them.

"You think I'm an old fool? I was shrewd, I thought that the two of you would become husband and wife, but then I heard that you broke up because of the matter of going to the tomb, and I deeply regretted it, and yesterday I saw the two of you coming together, and I knew that it must be no good. I slept last night, just to lure out the two of you flower intestines, and I really let me run into it. ”

"Your old lion is not only shrewd, but also has good ears." Jialan looked up and smiled. Fan Yi picked up Jialan and Fan Li, and after the child finished making tea, he picked up the wine glass and sighed.

"Alas, those who can't hide can't hide after all." Fan Yi took a sip of tea. "You must have something to ask when you came this time."

"Grandpa, this time I was invited to enter the hidden capital and saw four corpses, you once told us that when you took my father to the tomb before, there should be six people in addition to you, but I only saw four, did you hide something from us." Fan Li asked boldly this time, he saw that his grandfather had compromised, and felt a little surprised, according to his grandfather's violent temper more than ten years ago, he had already hung the two of them up and beaten them. Now that my grandfather is also old, I have seen through a lot of things in the past ten years, and I shouldn't worry about anything with future generations because of these old things. But Fan Li still felt weird, grandpa's performance today was not like a person at all as he remembered.

"Ugh." Fan Qi sighed again. "Something should be told to you." He walked into the house, rummaged through the cabinets and searched for a long time, and finally came out with a very thick dictionary-like book, put it on the table in front of Fan Li and Jialan, and then took out a strip of cloth from it, on which was painted a dagger engraved with carvings, Fan Li recognized at a glance, it was the dagger he saw when he entered the temple in his dream.

"When your father and I entered the secluded capital, we walked a long distance, passed many temples, and finally came to the deepest part of the secluded capital, which is the place called the pylorus by the ancients. Indeed, you are right, I did not come out alone, and there was also a man named Wang Qing who came out with me, who was a good friend of your father, and because of the blow of this accident, he felt that he was no longer suitable for the profession of spirit thief, so he went incognito. ”

"And what about the other one? Could it be that the father did not die, but secretly left by himself. Fan Li's words made Fan Qi tremble slightly, he stared at Fan Li for a while, and finally shook his head.

"Impossible." The old man shook his head and sighed. "You don't have to ask about this, do you know what that nine-tailed spell spirit is?"

Fan Li and Jialan shook their heads together.

"When I was younger, I went around asking for advice on the art of soul thieves, and at that time there were many and large number of spirit thieves, and they were generally called Mr. Feng Shui or exorcists. It was when I was about twenty-six years old, and the first time I went to the grave after the coming-of-age ceremony, it was my master who took me to the grave. It is a tomb from the late Ming Dynasty, and there are many funerary goods in it. At that time, I saw a mural in the coffin of the owner of the tomb, which showed a white fox standing in the darkness, and this fox had nine tails. I knew it might be the Nine Birds, but when I looked down, I found that it wasn't simply pitch black, but layers of black bugs. My master told me that this thing is called the Nine-Tails Spell Spirit. ”

According to mythology, since Pangu opened the world, the world was divided into heaven and earth, and at that time, heaven and earth were divided by the air in the middle, which looked like two worlds, so there was a "nature" that was responsible for connecting the two. Later, plants were born naturally, oxygen was produced, and then birds, fish and insects were produced, and these creatures went to the sky and the sea, everywhere, and merged heaven and earth into one. Nature is not the creator, but the guardian of living things, because everything evolves, and there is no such thing as creating things and not creating things, and nature is nothing more than maintaining the balance of the world. At that time, the oxygen concentration in the world was high, and huge ancient giant insects began to appear, these insects opened up mountains and rivers, shocking power, disturbing many ancient beasts, and also caused a series of demons and monsters to wake up from their sleep during that time, endangering the world. Naturally, he felt that if this continued, all the living beings in the world would be ruined, so he rained down a milky white stone. This stone is like an egg, when it descends on the earth, it is guarded by eight white rabbits, and there are twenty giant pythons intertwined on the outer layer of the white rabbit, wrapping the stone eggs tightly. After about seven hundred and forty-nine days, a half-meter-long scorpion passed by, bypassed the python and the white rabbit to the center, knocked on the stone egg, and the stone egg actually split on its own, and a white fox appeared. After the fox appeared, the surrounding white rabbit and python all retreated, it moved in front of the scorpion, and the nine tails disappeared from time to time, and when it saw this, the scorpion immediately leaned down. It turned out that this was a scorpion king, and the scorpion was still a social insect at that time, with a heavily guarded hierarchy, so the fox had a group of scorpions as slaves. Then came all the crawlers. Later, when the catastrophe of heaven and earth was encountered, these giant insects could not withstand the changes in temperature and oxygen content and died, and the nine-tailed white fox gradually lost its strength, so the scorpion king took it deep into the soil and wrapped the white fox with his body, and over time, they gathered into one. ”

Fan Yi took the Nine-Tails Spell Spirit. "You see this black represents the Scorpion King."

"This nine-tailed spell spirit is often used by the emperor as a protector, and some emperors even wear white robes, so that the soldiers wear black helmets and black armor, just like the black scorpion that protects the white fox, symbolizing the unity of the monarch and the ministers, commanding the world. But later, as the tombs of the major emperors were opened, many nine-tailed spell spirits were unearthed, and no one could identify the real nine-tailed spell spirit. Archaeologists say that this thing is just an accessory mysteriously created by the emperor, with symbolic meaning, some of them are carved in stone, some are fired out of ceramics, after thousands of years of circulation, the appearance of some spells has also changed, especially the tail of the white fox, the white fox only shows three tails in a spell spirit in the Han Dynasty, and in a stone unearthed in the Warring States period, the nine tails of the white fox are connected into a fan-like appearance. ”

"In this way, this nine-tailed spell spirit is actually a myth of apotheosis, and over time it has become a cultural tradition passed down among emperors, and there is no magic in itself." Fan Li took the stone and looked at it carefully, and the thing in his hand looked very shiny, not like an antiquity that had been placed for thousands of years, but like a fake that had just been baked. ”

"It's not all, the ancestors of our Fan family will always tell this story when they pass on the lineage. We have an ancestor named Fan Jiao, this person is a person in the period of the Ten Kingdoms, it is said that when he was born, there was a dragon descended from the sky, and disappeared when he fell to their household, so he was named Fan Jiao. At that time, the army needed to be fed with a lot of money, and he naturally became a tomb robber, and he visited a tomb of the Shang Dynasty, which was so large and extremely dangerous that he injured more than a thousand of his men. Our ancestors knew how to hear the voice of the spirit, and they were able to save their lives and finally come to the main burial chamber. But when he saw a painting, he suddenly vomited blood from his mouth and fell to the ground. The companions brought him back, he was bedridden for about a month or so, even if the master asked him to speak, and then the country perished, the enemy entered his home, a general heard of his reputation, and went forward to ask for advice, hoping that he could serve his country, but Fan Jiao just snorted with a faint breath: "Nine-tailed fox...... I can't move, I ......', and I'm dying. According to later generations, the painting is "The Scorpion Protector", and the white fox surrounded by black scorpions in the middle flashes with a dazzling white light, deterring all unscrupulous people who come to seize their property. ”

Later, the Fan family called this kind of picture "Scorpion Protector", and the related spirit stone became the "Nine-Tailed Curse Spirit", when the descendants saw these two treasures, no matter which tomb they entered, they should kowtow and leave, because there is not an evil spirit stored here, but the imperial spirit guarded by the scorpion. In ancient times, many emperors pursued immortality and reincarnation, and if they took their souls in a disorderly manner, they could not be reincarnated or reborn, and the spirit thieves would also be retaliated by them. ”

Fan Yi stroked the surface of the nine-tailed spell spirit with his thumb, the black object on it was shiny and shiny, there were no scratches or damage, and the white fox showed nine tails, but this tail was not fan-shaped, but like a cloud, each with four tails facing both sides, and the middle tail rose to the top of the head, tying a knot in the air. After Grandpa said this, Fan Li stared at the black background to see the mystery, but unfortunately this is all black, and he can't see any faint scorpion patterns in it, let alone a group of scorpions.

"I heard your conversation last night, if this stone is really taken out of the secluded capital, and there is a group of scorpions lying next to it, then there must be something peculiar, but it looks like this workmanship is a forgery of modern people, and it has the same effect as this dagger."

Dagger? Fan Li's whole time listening to his grandfather's story forgot about the dagger. He remembered that he had dreamed of entering the temple and encountering a dagger in the hidden capital. But as soon as he mentioned the dagger, he thought of the four corpses next to the dagger, and the grandfather said that he and Wang Qing had escaped, so there were still five corpses inside. Fan Li thought about it along this line of thought, and suddenly couldn't help but shiver. The corpse behind the pylorus is black, and the corpse sitting inside the coffin in the flame temple is also black, is there a connection between them, or is there a ...... The body inside the coffin was originally one of the seven of them.

"What's wrong with you?" Jialan and Grandpa were both aware of Fan Li's expression that seemed to cry but not cry and laugh.

"Grandpa, I have a question." Fan Li ignored Jialan and turned to Fan Qi instead. "Grandpa, back then, you said that the seven of you went into the tomb and encountered some accidents, and my father unfortunately died, I want to know if any of these encounters are related to flames."