On August 22, 2010, there was exactly one month before the Mid-Autumn Festival appointment between the Xuanyuan Huimen with the northern Sichuan accent and Hu Zongren. Judging from the information we had before, the other party's meaning seems to be that Hu Zongren must pass all the tests on the Eight Extremes Seal before the Mid-Autumn Festival, before it is possible to meet him, otherwise, Hu Zongren doesn't even know if Lu Dao can live to that time. On that day, I sent Hu Zongren home first, and then I went home myself. What Zhilu Dao will encounter next may be far beyond our expectations, so I also have some things that I don't usually use on my body.

According to the habit of many years in the past, whenever I go out to run errands, I am always used to carry a waist bag or a small satchel, compass red rope grave these things are indispensable, as for the first craft taught to me by the master in the early years, using the dice to ask for directions, which has been with the accumulation of experience, I gradually do not use. And this time, I not only brought the cow bone dice that the master passed on to me in my early years, but also the lightning strike peach wood token that the master gave me when I left the school. The rest of the stuff was also quite a bit, bells, gossip mirrors, and I even brought a boy straw man that I rarely use.

These things are said slowly, so be prepared. Because there were too many things, the original bag couldn't fit anymore, so I specially packed all these messy things in a shoulder bag that I bought with Sister Cai during a trip. When I was ready, I swept a lot of incense ash in front of the statue of my ancestor enshrined in my house, and put it in a small cloth bag. Before I went out, I called Hu Zongren and said that I would not pick him up and asked him to take a taxi by himself, and then called Master Tie Songzi again, saying that we were leaving, and when would we arrive. When I was changing my shoes and preparing to go out, Sister Cai stood at the door with her hands in her hands, and looked at me for a long time before saying to me, remember to come back early.

I ran away from her eyes, and then replied lightly that she was so good, she might not come back for dinner, and I will bring you whatever supper you want. Sister Cai told me, remember to call when you go back. It is generally known that when I am doing errands, Sister Cai will not call me, so I have never had the opportunity to experience the distress of other men who are killed by their wives, on the contrary, this is precisely her actions to show the greatest respect for my work.

When I arrived at the East Water Gate, it was almost noon. Iron Songzi was the closest, so he was the first to arrive. Since he was said to have been dressed in a Taoist robe for decades, I could see him from afar. I don't come to Dongshuimen very often, the nearby Huguang Guild Hall, but I will come every once in a while, one is because many friends from other places come to Chongqing, the general Huguang Guild Hall is a sightseeing place that I think I can handle, and secondly, there is a private Jianghu restaurant opened by a friend of my friend near here, which is generally the place where we solve the problem of eating.

I walked up to Master Tie Songzi, and he was standing at the staircase below the doorway of the East Water Gate, and saw from a distance a few long-legged girls in hot denim shorts coming out of the door. When they saw Master Tie Songzi, they couldn't help but take a few more looks, so Master Tie Songzi unexpectedly stretched out his orchid finger and stroked his hanging sideburns. I jokingly said to Chef Tie Songzi, your old man has a wide range of hobbies, I thought this kind of girl was my dish. Master Tie Songzi covered his mouth and laughed.

About ten minutes later, Hu Zongren and Fu Yunni also arrived, Hu Zongren looked very relaxed, wearing a yellow T-shirt, but the whistle hanging around his neck looked a little nondescript. He happily greeted me and Master Tie Songzi, but Fu Yunni couldn't hide her worries, holding the Buddha beads in her hand, standing beside us with a little anxiety but a smile.

Master Tie Songzi said, since everyone is here, let's go up and have a look. So we started walking towards the East Water Gate. Master Tie Songzi said that the old man Situ had explained to him that since the cave in the Hongya Cave in front of him specifically refers to the real hole, then the door of the East Water Gate here should also refer to this door. And Situ said that this East Water Gate was the south gate of the ancient city of Chongqing in ancient times, that is to say, if you want to go out of the city from the south, this gate was the only way to pass at first. It's just that later the country was defeated, the city walls collapsed a lot, and people had many choices to get out of the city, so this East Water Gate gradually became less necessary. Master Tie Songzi said that this gate is an open door, Hu Zongren's back on the eight pole seal, the so-called eight poles actually correspond to the eight heavenly gates, which has to be said to be one of the coincidences, and other city gates are different, because of the special terrain, the East Water Gate is close to the mountains and water, if the enemy attacks the city, it is easy to defend and difficult to attack. Moreover, the water in the south happens to be the Yangtze River, and the river is very wide, and if the enemy attackes, I am afraid that it will be sunk by artillery fire before it reaches half of the river. Therefore, the East Water Gate did not set up an urn city. The so-called urn city is a small city inside the city gate, which is usually used as a place for the defenders to rest on duty, and is also used to store weapons and explosives. Therefore, despite the repeated attacks on Chongqing for thousands of years, this gate is still very well preserved, because almost no enemy is stupid enough to attack from this gate.

As he walked, he soon walked to the bottom of the door hole, where there was a stone tablet, which was specially set up by the cultural relics management unit after the founding of the People's Republic of China in order to protect this one of the few ancient city gates in Chongqing. Master Tie Songzi told us, before you come, I took a closer look at the content of this stele, because the age is earlier, so there should not be any valuable clues, at least as early as the establishment of this stele, no one would expect that a small Hu Zongren between heaven and earth and Xuanyuan would have friction, the content of this stele, roughly is to introduce the history of this gate, nothing unusual. And I have also checked the inside of the door hole, in the early days, it was made of large stones, which belonged to the type of stone roll top city gate hole, and later it was probably because of the reinforcement and repair, the gaps were filled with cement, so even if the people of the Xuanyuan Society hid things, they definitely didn't have a chance to stuff them into the stone cracks. I checked this door inside and out before you came, and there was nothing.

As soon as Master Tie Songzi finished saying this, I began to get a little depressed. So I said to him, otherwise, I'll wait and try to look around here with a compass to see if there are any supernatural effects, and if there is, I should be able to find what they are hiding. Master Tie Songzi sneered and said, why are you so sure, the other party must have hidden something here?

I was a little puzzled, I said, if we don't hide something, then what are we doing here? Master Tie Songzi shook his head and said, this is the biggest headache for your old man Situ. It stands to reason that this place has a very strong cultural atmosphere, and usually such a place will have a large flow of people, but it seems that this area is a little deserted. Tie Songzi said, for example, you see the Yangtze River below, Dongshuimen Wharf, many porters and wholesalers are gathered in this area, from this angle to see the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Jialing River, but there are many people passing by here, but there are very few people who can cross this gate. And on the top, the Huguang Guild Hall, there are not many people on weekdays, and even if someone comes, most of them choose the street above, after all, the people who climb the Huguang Guild Hall from the East Water Gate are also a minority, the two streets are almost in a parallel state, and the popularity is prosperous, but only the East Water Gate between these two popular places is very deserted.

Tie Songzi sighed and said, This shows that the guys from the Xuanyuan Society definitely didn't choose here on a whim. Because this place, firstly, is a back slope, and there are slopes and bumps, it seems to be a fault that is incompatible with the surrounding environment, and the place of such a fault is precisely the place where it is relatively easy to gather yin qi. Master Tie Songzi continued, in the early years, I had heard that there was a phenomenon of ghosts gathering in the area of the Huguang Guild Hall, but that was many years ago, and it had already been cleaned up, this door hole is so big, and the city wall is only so long and a short section, if you really want to hide something here, the door hole is really not a good choice.

Everyone stopped talking, and after a while, Fu Yunni suddenly asked Master Tie Songzi, would that have anything to do with the incident at the Huguang Guild Hall back then? We were all stunned, because I personally had never heard of any chaos in this area, and it was even more impossible for Hu Zongren, a foreigner, to know the Tao. Sure enough, Tie Songzi asked Fu Yunni, do you know what happened back then? Your dad was a kid back then. Fu Yunni said that these things were told to her by Granny Huang.

Fu Yunni said that when Granny Huang was young in her early years, she used to be a participant in dealing with that big ghost incident. This is related to the historical origin of the Huguang Hall itself, which is to say that in the early years, Zhang Xianzhong slaughtered Sichuan and killed less than 100,000 people in the entire Sichuan, so in the Qing Dynasty, a large number of people from Huguang Province and other places moved into other provinces, and the roots of these people were not in Sichuan. Hu Zongren interjected and said, I also know this, Huguang fills Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, and Guangxi! I gave him a blank look and said It seems that it is not for no reason that you can't get into college, Huguang refers to Huguang Province, and at that time it was not divided into Hunan and Hubei. Hu Zongren scratched his head embarrassedly. Fu Yunni continued, and in the year of the accident, it happened to be the relationship between the phases of the moon, which led to the extremely heavy yin qi of that year, the heaviest was the ghost month of the middle of the year, so a large number of people who were born in other places but were buried in Chongqing gathered together, people are homesick, and death itself is a pity, not to mention that it is a guest death, not to mention that it was so coincidental that year, when it met the ghost moon, it broke out intensively.

Tie Songzi suddenly interrupted Fu Yunni, as if she had noticed something, and then her eyebrows fluttered happily and lightly, like a little girl who had bought a scratch card and won a colorful head rope. When we didn't know what this thin Taoist priest was doing suddenly became very high, he suddenly said, "Ghost moon, ghost moon."

Hu Zongren and I glanced at each other and looked at the days. August 22, July 13 of the lunar calendar. Isn't this the Ghost Moon? And tomorrow is the summer heat, but all the solar terms rotate, it is a time when yin and yang are confused, and from tomorrow for three consecutive days, it is the Midyear Festival, the day when the ghost door is wide open!