Twelve angels, none of them have eyes.

But at first glance, the twelve angels seem to be "staring" at the person looking at the pattern.

At least, that's how Zhang Xiaoman felt when he saw this picture.

Ten minutes ago, after he dialed that number, he hurried to the antique collection store that the other party had mentioned.

But strangely, he pushed the door and walked in, and found that the antique collection store was empty, so he wandered around the store at random, and suddenly noticed a sketchbook on a table, and the book depicted a door, and the door was engraved with this strange pattern of twelve angels.

Zhang Xiaoman looked at the pattern of the twelve angels, and was a little engrossed, when he suddenly heard the sound of sparse footsteps behind a screen, and immediately put down the sketchbook and carefully placed it back in its original position, which was exactly the same.

At this moment, a delicately dressed woman with a thin scar on her wrist supported an old man with a red cloth over her eyes, slowly walked out from behind the screen, glanced at Zhang Xiaoman, who was full of vigilance, and said with a slight smile, "Professor Zhang, I am the editor of the publishing house you contacted...... Speaking of which, you are still my boss, but we haven't talked much in person, and even phone contact is rare, it seems that we are all social fears. ”

Zhang Xiaoman looked at the editor Guocha, then at the old man with a red cloth over his eyes, and frowned, "There is no need for false greetings, you haven't been in the publishing house for a long time, and we are not familiar with each other, so let's get down to business...... Now that the whereabouts of Long You and Sima Bei are unknown, and I am also wanted by the police, since you can anticipate all this in advance, you should know a lot of inside information, and at worst, you should know who the two people who pretended to be Zhang Hai and his wife are, right? ”

Guocha smiled and said lightly, "Don't worry, I will tell you everything you want to know...... But before that, let me introduce you first...... "Stretching out his palm, pointing to the old man next to him, "This is a well-known folklore expert in Luteng City, Mr. Bi Cang." ”

Zhang Xiaoman felt that this name was a little familiar, as if he had heard someone mention it somewhere, frowned, pondered for a moment, and muttered two sentences in Luteng City, and suddenly realized, remembering that after Sima Bei investigated a certain secret room murder case in Luteng City before, he had told himself that it was thanks to the help of a blind folklore expert at that time, and then his face turned solemn, and he nodded respectfully to the old man with red cloth and saluted, "I didn't expect to see Mr. Bi here, I am glad to meet him." ”

Bi Cang coughed heavily, waved his hand and said, "No need to be polite, I can't see it, there's no need for that...... At this point, Sima Bei has to have a better appetite for me, and that guy won't be as restrained and bold as you. ”

Zhang Xiaoman smiled, "My personality is different from his, my natural personality is different, and my way of doing things is even more different, but there are still commonalities in our bones, otherwise we would not be very good friends...... Sir, with all due respect, why did you come to City D, and what does it have to do with the current case? ”

"You are really as rumored, cold like a machine, you do everything too directly, and you ask so many questions as soon as you come up, it's not cute at all!" Bi Cang shook off Guocha's hand, lowered his head, hunched his back, slowly groped his way to the table and sat down, and said with a long breath, "I'm here mainly to help a good friend deal with the things in this antique shop, which is usually called a clearance sale......

As he spoke, Bi Cang took out a horn from under the table and gently pressed the switch.

Immediately, there was a cacophony of hawking in the antique shop.

"Clearance sale, ten yuan is the same, everything is ten yuan! Ten dollars is not much, you can't go to Hong Kong, you can't go to Singapore! Ten dollars is not expensive, you can't buy a refrigerator, you can't buy a freezer! Ten dollars is really good, and you don't need to have a family meeting...... Don't miss your chance! ”

Zhang Xiaoman's face twitched unnaturally, and his expression was strange, "Are you sure these are antiques you sell?" ”

Bi Cang turned off the noisy horn, coughed, nodded and said, "Of course it's an antique, I'm old, how can I deceive people...... It's just that these things are modern antiques, and the traces of history are not obvious. ”

Zhang Xiaoman picked up a blue jade bowl on the table, looked at the words microwave oven with red paint printed on the bottom, rolled his eyes and said, "There is really no history, it will only be ten years at most, and then go forward...... There are no microwave ovens in the country. ”

Bi Cang pursed his lips, "At this price, do you really want to buy a Tang Sancai?" His fingers clicked a few times on the sketchbook that Zhang Xiaoman had taken before, and suddenly changed the subject, "You should have seen the pattern on it, right?" ”

Zhang Xiaoman touched his nose and said, "I haven't seen it, I'll wait here as soon as I come in...... The host's house is not there, how can I be embarrassed to look at it at will! ”

"Don't pretend, do you think there's no surveillance in this store?" Guocha next to him sneered, pointed to the spherical monitor above the corner on the right side of the store, and pouted, "Men are really the same, there is no truth in their mouths, even you, a well-known mathematics professor." ”

Zhang Xiaoman smiled awkwardly, "I'm sorry, it's really wrong to lie, I will pay attention to it in the future and try to be sincere...... After all, sincerity is nirvana. ”

Without waiting for Guocha to say something, Bi Cang shrugged his nose and said preemptively, "It's here, it's for you to see, don't be embarrassed...... Now that you've seen it, let's talk about your thoughts? ”

Zhang Xiaoman was stunned for a moment, and said with a puzzled face, "What kind of thoughts?" ”

Guocha blinked and said, "Of course it's the idea of that painting, could it be my idea?" You should also know that I have a boyfriend. ”

Zhang Xiaoman pursed his lips, stared at the sketchbook in Bi Cang's hand, and said, "It's hard to say...... It felt a little weird, like some kind of mythological allusion to Western perversion, but I carefully recalled that there was nothing like it in all Western mythological stories, and in related spin-offs. ”

"Have you seen a lot of Western mythological allusions?" Bi Cang tilted his head and asked with some surprise.

Zhang Xiaoman nodded and said, "A lot...... I told my daughter about the Thousand and One Nights. ”

Guocha covered her mouth and smiled, "Children's books...... Then you must not know the story of the twelve angels, whose names appear in the Bible: Euphil, Arnar, Landkill, Samael, Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Andre, Azlar, Heman, Kafkil, and Gisep. But in fact, the twelve angels in this book are not them, but their incarnation in the world......"

Zhang Xiaoman saw that Guocha wanted to tell the names of the twelve angel incarnations again, and immediately interrupted, "There is no need to describe the names anymore, I can't remember you if you say so much in one breath...... To put it simply, just use the pronouns of the eldest and the second, the third and the fourth, and tell them in detail. ”

Bi Cang snorted unhappily, "You are also a teacher, why don't you have any curiosity at all...... Folklore mythology is a very interesting university question, you can only understand the folklore of a place to understand the people of that place, otherwise you will recklessly break into other people's world, and the end will be very miserable...... I'm the best example of that. ”

Zhang Xiaoman stared at the red cloth on Bi Cang's eyes, hesitated for a moment, and finally spit out the words he wanted to ask before, "Isn't your eyes blind because of this?" ”

"What is blindness, I simply don't have it......" Bi Cang slowly untied the red cloth on his face, revealing two black hollow eye sockets, and the corners of his mouth hooked up a somewhat hideous and terrifying smile, "But I fortunately saved my ears, otherwise we wouldn't be able to communicate so easily today, and many things would have been lost." ”

Zhang Xiaoman's face froze, he looked at Bi Cang's eyes blankly, and said in shock, "What's the matter?" ”

Bi Cang let out a long sigh, as if he was thinking about how to tell the unbearable past, and as if he was afraid of something.

"What happened to Mr. Bi Cang is somewhat related to the disappearance of Long You and Sima Bei, so I will ask you to meet here......" Guocha seemed to see Bi Cang's embarrassment, pursed her lips, and said softly, "All this is also closely related to Zhang Tao, Zhang Hai and his wife, and it is also related to the many missing girls in D City over the years...... Of course, there is also some constant relationship with me. ”

After saying this, Guocha stretched out his right hand, showed the scar on his wrist, and said unhurriedly, "More than ten years ago, I was also one of the twelve angels who were selected for sacrifice. ”

Zhang Xiaoman was startled, looked directly at Guocha's wrist, and asked in a low voice, "To whom?" What is the sacrificial method? ”

Bi Cang sighed as he heard Guocha mention those girls, as if he had finally made up his mind, and said slowly, "About twenty years ago, there was a strange church in D City, which used some miraculous means to defraud many people's property, such as rejuvenating a person with Alzheimer's disease, for example, without using a knife, taking out the diseased internal organs of cancer patients in the air...... Oh, and there's the idea of getting a woman who has been paralyzed in bed all year round back on her feet. ”

Zhang Xiaoman frowned and said, "It sounds like a magic stick, but anyone who knows a little scientific knowledge will not be fooled......"

On the contrary, many of the followers of that church were intellectuals...... The woman who has been paralyzed all the year round is a writer, the one who suffers from Alzheimer's disease is the founder of a group company, and the cancer patient is a famous old actor. Guocha shook her head and sighed, helping to explain, "It is precisely because of the examples of the three of them that many people firmly believe in the church, contribute their life's money, and even go against their families and embark on the road of crime. ”

Zhang Xiaoman touched his chin and said, "I guess those three people are nurseries, this is a bureau at all, the script is written by the writer, the actors are responsible for teaching everyone to rehearse, and the founder of the group is the rich man behind this church, in order to harvest more leeks, of course he has to go out in person!" ”

Bi Cang coughed vigorously again, nodded and said, "You guessed right, the founder of the group is the largest shareholder of the church, and he usually likes to collect antiques, and by chance he knew that I was studying the folklore of the Twelve Angels, so he deceived me out of a lot of information to add bricks and tiles to his fraud career, and after I heard about it, he has become the largest real estate developer in D City, bought an island in the Dome Sea, and started the business of cultural tourism city......"