Chapter 8: Master and Apprentice (2)

The next day, in a minibus bound for the mountainous areas of rural Hubei, a man and a little boy sat side by side.

The man looked at the little boy and saw that he had been looking out the window of the car all the time. The man had always lived a solitary life and rarely talked to people, but this time, suddenly a little boy sat beside him, and although the little boy was very quiet and barely said a word, the man still felt extremely uncomfortable.

In order to break this embarrassing situation, the man made some attempts, and he felt that it was always strange to be with this little guy, and he asked the little boy, "Hey, little thing, what is your name?" ”

The little boy withdrew his gaze from the car window, raised his head to look at the man, and said, "Uncle Jiang called me a little bit." ”

"Small?" The man was full of excitement and said, "This name is really numb, it gives me goosebumps, you better change the name." ”

The little boy said, "Uncle Jiang told me that my father's surname is Fan. ”

"That's not going to work," said the man, "and you are so easy to reveal your identity, alas, you are too young to tell you this." ”

"And what's your name?" The little boy asked.

The man was stunned for a moment, when he first came into contact with this little boy, he found that this little boy was not particularly talkative, but as the time spent with each other increased little by little, he found that this little boy just didn't want to talk nonsense. In the eyes of others, maybe such a child is not likeable, but this man gradually likes the character of this little boy, and he even finds his own shadow in the little boy.

The man told the boy, "My surname is Liang, but no one calls me by my name." ”

"And what do they call you?" The little boy asked.

"They call me Mr. Ghost, or just call me Old Ghost."

"Oh." The little boy agreed.

The man named Old Ghost was stunned again, he originally thought that seven or eight-year-old children would usually show a very frightened look when they heard something like a ghost, but the little boy didn't seem to take the nickname Mr. Ghost in his eyes at all, and in order to make sure that the little boy understood his words, he repeated it again, "They all call me Mr. Ghost." ”

The little boy raised his head, looked at the old ghost suspiciously, and said, "I know what I know, Mr. Ghost." ”

The old ghost was silent, he gave up, he felt that he was still not suitable to communicate with the living, he was too tired.

The minibus came to a remote mountainous area in Hubei, which is not a long-term residence for the old ghost. To be precise, the old ghost has no concept of home in his heart at all, he is wandering around, everything is doing research for a spell called the Yin Soldier Ghost Array, and recently, he chose to live in the old mountain village in Hubei, naturally there is a reason for him.

The old ghost bought a small bungalow in a small mountain village at a very high price, and the conditions were very difficult, but the little boy did not complain.

At the beginning, the two lived a very peaceful life, and the old ghost was equivalent to a jobless vagrant in the eyes of the little boy. The old ghost stays at home almost every day during the day, and usually sleeps, and when he wakes up, he makes some of the simplest food for two people.

Gradually, however, the little boy discovered the strange behavior of the old ghost, first of all, a room in the bungalow, which was usually locked by the old ghost with a padlock, and the old ghost repeatedly told the little boy not to enter the house, but such advice only aroused the curiosity of the little children. The little boy tried several times, but to no avail.

After about three months of getting along with each other, the little boy gradually discovered that the old ghost was not actually a jobless vagrant, he did not stay at home all day and night, the little boy found that every time it was dark, the old ghost would tiptoe out of the house, about two or three o'clock in the morning, the old ghost would come back once, and then work in the locked room for a while, and only come back in the early morning.

After the little boy found out about the old ghost's behavior, he began to be a little scared, at night, he didn't dare to sleep alone, so he wore a quilt and waited for the old ghost to come back early in the morning to sleep with the old ghost. What the little boy never understood was that the old ghost always had a very strong rancid smell when he came back in the morning, but the little boy never pierced the window paper.

One night, the little boy did not sleep as usual, and in the middle of the night he suddenly had an urgent need to urinate, so he went out and peed. After going out to pee, as soon as he returned to the bedroom, he heard the sound of the door being opened, and he was so frightened that he immediately got into the bed and did not dare to come out, until the house remembered the sound of unlocking, and the little boy realized that it was the old ghost who had returned.

That day, the little boy somehow, probably because his curiosity had been suppressed for a long time, he almost uncontrollably wanted to see what the old ghost was doing in that room.

He tiptoed to the door of the room and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not completely closed, but left a gap.

The little boy climbed on the crack of the door and looked in, and when he saw the situation in the room, he felt a cool breeze behind him, and his whole body began to tremble.

I saw that there was a coffin in that room, and the old ghost brought a small bench and sat next to the coffin. The old ghost's two hands kept pulling in the coffin, and after a while, the body of a woman not long after her death was pulled out of the coffin by the old ghost.

It was the first time in the boy's life that he had seen a dead body, and he saw that the female corpse's face was swollen and ugly, her skin was grayish-blue, and she was wearing an eerie shroud, the woman seemed to have not been dead for long, but even so, large areas of corpse spots and decomposing marks began to appear on her face.

A strong stench instantly hit his nose, and in an instant, the little boy understood where the old ghost's stench came from every morning, and it turned out that he had been dealing with dead corpses all along.

The little boy tried to suppress his fear, but he began to tremble, and he tried to go back to the bed, but he found that his feet were struggling to get on the ground, and he made a lot of noise.

At this time, the old ghost who was originally sitting in the room said, "Little thing, is it you?" ”

The little boy was stunned for a moment, and he didn't know how to answer for a while, but he still agreed.

He heard the old ghost sigh heavily in the house, and said, "Well, forget it, come in." ”

Get in? Mr. Ghost won't kill me, will he? This was the first thing that came to the boy's mind.

The old ghost inside saw that the little boy did not react, and said, "Don't worry, I just asked you to do me a favor." ”

Hearing this, the little boy trembled into the house and came to the old ghost's side, this time the little boy saw the whole picture of the corpse, although the female corpse was wearing a wide shroud, but the abdomen was high and swollen, and it could still be seen at a glance that the female corpse was pregnant with a child before her death.

"Are you scared?" The old ghost asked the little boy.

The little boy nodded sneeringly.

The old ghost asked again: "You little thing is really different from other people, since you are afraid, why don't you cry?" ”

The little boy looked up at the old ghost and asked, "What's the use of crying?" ”

The old ghost was stunned by this sentence, and after a while, an appreciative smile appeared on the old ghost's face. The old ghost was a loner and arrogant, and he almost never appreciated a certain person, but the words of the seven-year-old child in front of him were enough to make him dumbfounded and praised. Because of his life experience, the mental age of this little boy has far surpassed that of his peers, and what is even more commendable is that this little boy knows what is useful and what is useless, and for useless things, the little boy will not do it. Fear is human nature, and it cannot be changed.

The old ghost once swore not to accept apprentices, but the little boy in front of him made him moved, but the old ghost didn't want to break his oath like this, he had to continue to test the little boy.

The old ghost said to the little boy, "Okay, it's best if you don't cry, then you come and help me carry this lamp." ”

The little boy took the lamp, which was a very old oil lamp, which looked to be some years old. The little boy couldn't help but wonder: "Mr. Ghost, the light is on in this room, why do you want to hold this oil lamp?" ”

"Little brat, what do you know," the old ghost said deliberately harshly, "to tell you, it is not an easy job for you to hold this lamp, no matter what happens for a while, don't let the light go out, otherwise the two of us will not want to stay in this mountain village any longer." ”

The little boy took the lamp and nodded heavily. Even if he didn't know what the old ghost was going to do.

What happened next could no longer be described as terrifying, although the little boy was still young, he already felt in the dark that what the old ghost was doing was contrary to normal human ethics and respect for the dead.

I saw the old ghost put the female corpse on the ground, and then began to unbutton the shroud on the dead corpse little by little, and in the blink of an eye, he actually stripped the clothes off the corpse. Then, the old ghost took out a sharp knife, slashed twice at the abdomen of the female corpse, and then cut the belly of the female corpse without even blinking an eye.

At that moment, the flame of the oil lamp in the little boy's hand suddenly shook and almost went out, and the little boy hurriedly protected the flame with his hand to prevent it from being extinguished. He felt disgusted, but he had promised the old ghost to hold the oil lamp and not let it go out, he had to fulfill his promise, he guarded the oil lamp, and tried to keep his eyes on the flames of the oil lamp and not look at the corpses on the ground.

The corpse's blood had already coagulated, but the molten bodily fluids from the internal organs of the corpse still spurted out at once, it was a translucent liquid with a faint yellow glow, fishy and smelly.

"Stubborn, evil little ghost." The old ghost muttered, the little boy didn't understand what it meant at all, but he knew how and then the old ghost made an even more outrageous move, he put his hands into the belly of the female corpse, groped in it for a while, and then raised the corners of his mouth, revealing a strange smile, and said, "Found it." ”

Then, the old ghost pulled hard, only to see a rotten, stinking, corpse baby covered with corpse spots being dragged out of the woman's stomach alive, and even the fishy liquid splashed all over the ground. The little boy was about to vomit, but he noticed that an evil wind suddenly blew in the room, and went straight to the oil lamp in his hand.

"Little thing, watch the lights." The old ghost reminded him.

The little boy nodded, and hurriedly protected it with his hand, but even so, the flame of the oil lamp became extremely faint in an instant.

The old ghost looked back and forth at the corpse baby, then lifted the corpse baby to a table, making the corpse baby's body stand upright. He took out two yellow runes and pasted them under the soles of the corpse baby's two feet, so that the yin wind just now was greatly weakened. Then, the old ghost took out another string of copper coins, and shook it, muttering some incantation in his mouth. When all these preparations were ready, he beckoned the little boy again.

The old ghost said, "Go and get a bowl." ”

The little boy said yes and brought a bowl.

The old ghost said, "Take him and put the bowl on the baby's chin." ”

The little boy did so, and he was now at the mercy of the old ghost as if he had been hypnotized by the old ghost. Then, the old ghost took the oil lamp in the little boy's hand just now, put it on the little boy's chin, and used the faint flame to burn the little boy's chin.

The original yellow flame immediately turned blue as soon as it touched the corpse baby, and some kind of baby's cry could be heard in the air. The old ghost advised: "But you can't look left or right when you hear anything, so you don't hear it." ”

The little boy nodded. Gradually, the corpse baby began to change under the scorching of the oil lamp, and drops of golden liquid slowly flowed down the corpse baby's chin into the rice bowl in the little boy's hand. And the corpse baby's expression seemed to change, and the corpse baby gradually became hideous, but the old ghost didn't care about it at all.

By the time it was all over, the little boy had already taken half a bowl of golden liquid.

The old ghost threw the corpse baby back into the coffin, looked at the little boy, and said, "Do you know that when I was your age, I would cry when I saw these things. ”

The little boy didn't pay attention to this, but asked the old ghost, "Mr. Ghost, why are you doing these things?" ”

"Refining corpse oil and raising imps." The old ghost said, "It's a kind of black magic. From today onwards, you don't call me Mr. Ghost anymore. ”

"And what do I call you?"

"Call me Master."

The little boy looked at the two corpses on the ground, shook his head desperately, and said, "I don't want to learn these things." ”

The old ghost's jaw almost didn't fall off in surprise, and he said angrily: "You little ghost, do you know how many people in my life come to worship me as a teacher with a lot of money, and I don't teach him?" ”

"It's disgusting."

"Disgusting?" The old ghost snorted coldly and said, "The day my Yin Soldier Ghost Formation is formed will be you'll know how powerful this technique is." ”

"Then I don't want to learn either." The little boy was a little stubborn.

The old ghost's eyes widened, and after a while, he calmed down, and said to the little boy in a serious voice: "Listen, when you grow up, you may face many dangers, and what I gave you is likely to save your life at a critical time, do you understand?" ”

The little boy was stunned, hesitated for a moment, and said, "Can learning these things save my life?" ”

"That's right," the old ghost said, "Moreover, although I am proficient in the art of raising ghosts, I also have a high attainment in some other techniques, and looking at today's big and small wizards and Taoists, they all have to respect me for three points." You worship me as a teacher, don't say it, once you say it, there will be a lot of people who look at you with admiration, of course...... Forehead...... There will be a lot of people who hate you, but that doesn't matter. ”

After speaking, the old ghost took out a copper coin from the string of copper coins just now and handed it to the little boy, saying: "This copper coin is the mouth money of the ancient corpse, gathering yin and dispersing yang, which is very suitable for practicing an ancient witchcraft called 'mouth and closing the corpse', this witchcraft can save your life when you are attacked by evil ghosts." However, you also have to be prepared for the other side, you follow me, do these things, for a long time, your body will definitely be affected by the corpse, over time, your body will be contaminated with the qi of old yin, which itself is easy to cause harm, however, everything in this world is like this, both good and bad. Have you decided? ”

The little boy thought for a while, took the copper coin, and said, "Master Xie Lu." ”

When the old ghost saw that the little boy called himself master, he was also quite happy and said: "Since you are my apprentice, you can't be nameless and surnameless, from now on, you can follow my surname, I guess Fan Jiyun He won't care about these things, from now on, I will give you a name, and you will be called Ryazan." ”