When Xing Zhutou opened his eyelids again, he saw a clear moonlit sky.

He tried to get up, but the pain around him flares up violently, causing him to breathe a sigh of relief.

"Hiss~"

"The boss is awake?"

With an exclamation, a circle of heads surrounded him.

There are old wives crying with joy, timid little girls next door, and more are a group of brothers who rushed to hear the news, their expressions are complicated, joy, apprehension, and worry are mixed on every face.

Lao Xing endured weakness and severe pain, staring at the officials.

"Where's the youkai?"

He asked.

The atmosphere in the field was stagnant, and the officials looked at each other.

"Where's the Dao Chief?"

He asked again.

The officials remained silent, but looked at the closed door opposite, and there was no sound inside, except for a thin mist slowly flowing down the wall.

Alas~ He sighed inwardly.

Looking at the appearance, he didn't know. The brothers, who did not know where they heard the movement, hurried to this place, either because of his former prestige or because they were afraid of being investigated afterwards, and did not dare to leave easily. But on the other hand, he was more afraid of the monsters inside, for fear of delaying Qingqing's life, and he didn't dare to go in to help.

So, together with the woman, the child, and himself, the wounded, he became a visitor outside the wall.

He shook his head and forced himself to his feet.

Then.

"Crunch. ”

The door that had been closed suddenly opened.

Everyone in the field shivered and looked at the door in a panic.

Immediately, they relaxed together.

But seeing the intersection of mist and moonlight, the short-haired Taoist strode forward with a sword in one hand and a bloody head in the other.

......

"Can the head catcher recognize this demon?"

The head in Li Changan's hand looked quite miserable, and it did not have the hideous appearance of choosing people in the courtyard.

The short black hairs covering his cheeks were clumped by the stained blood, the two dim eyes protruded from the sockets like dead fish, the fangs of his fangs were smashed by the hilt of the sword, and only half of them hung down at the corners of his mouth, and the flesh of the broken neck was jagged and dripping with foul demon blood.

Lao Xing saw it in his eyes, there were three points of pleasure, seven points of disgust, and ten points of inexplicability.

After this Li Daoren went out, he didn't say a word, he stuffed this pickled thing in front of his old Xing's eyes, and asked what, do you recognize this monster?

Bah!

My old Xing is a pure white family, where would I recognize any demons and monsters?!

"It's a poor road. ”

The Taoist priest saw that the other party had a different look, slapped his head, and asked others for a torch.

But I can hear the "sizzle" sound of roasting, accompanied by the smell of burnt and the aroma of meat.

Li Changan turned the "clean and new" face of his head to Xing Zhutou.

"And now?"

Lao Xing's eyes widened.

This...... Isn't this the mother-in-law next door who asked to take care of the three little dolls? How did she become a monster? How can she do something to the baby she grew up with?

Xing Zhu's mind boomed, and he was angry for a while, and his blood surged, and he fell over again.

............

Li Changan said goodbye to everyone and returned to the palace.

The sky was already bright.

But Xiaoshui City was still immersed in the exhaustion after the carnival, and he did not wake up from sleep.

There are few pedestrians on the street, and the shop is also deserted, only the vine on the wall and the old acacia in the courtyard reflect each other a little lively.

The shopkeeper listened to Li Changan pushing the door, yawned and came up to salute.

"Do you need to prepare a morning meal for the Taoist chief?"

"No, I don't. Li Changan smiled, "Let's go to sleep." ”

The two sang and went back to their rooms.

Not surprisingly, the room was empty.

The pile of food left by the Taoist priest on the table was eaten, and nothing else moved, except for the small bag of wisteria crisp that was eaten clean, and there was no dregs left. The only thing left in the oily paper bag was a small note.

Li Changan took it, and there was a line of small characters on it.

"Tonight, on the top of the Dionysian kiln. ”

............

The Dionysian festival has reached its last day, and it is also the most solemn and important day.

According to the convention, today, in the Dionysian kiln, the best liquor brewed in the last round should be selected and presented to the Dionysus, so as to bless the mellow and good luck of the wine in the future.

From today, old sake can be released from the cellar and new sake can be brewed. Xiaoshui, a city on the water and a city of wineries, has also started to operate from scratch, and the streets and alleys will be immersed in the fragrance of flowers and wine.

Therefore, after noon, people were already in good spirits, and they gathered towards the Dionysian kiln in their costumes again.

Officials, scholars, gentry, wealthy merchants, and winery owners could enter the kiln to observe the ceremony, while the common people had to wait outside.

Li Chang'an and the owner of the Di shop were stained with the light of the Yan family wine shop next door, and were able to blend into the Dionysian kiln to see the Western scenery.

After entering the Bacchus Cellar or the Temple of Wine, Rao is a modern person like Li Changan, and he can't help but be amazed by the architecture in front of him.

When he first arrived in Xiaoshui, the Taoist priest also walked around a few times outside the Dionysian cellar. At that time, only from the outside, the Dionysian kiln was nothing more than a round hall built on a stone platform at the end of the long street, with gilt cornices and blue tile lacquer, even though it was magnificent and exquisite, but it was not very surprising.

But I never expected that in this hall, under the cover of bricks and tiles, the body of the temple is actually a huge deep well, more than ten zhang deep underground, and more than 30 steps wide.

To use an analogy, it's like a building with nearly 10 floors falling upside down.

The walls of the well are built with plank roads and stairs, which are connected to each other, and many stone chambers are carved out layer by layer, which are specially used to store wine. According to the shopkeeper, every year, the sake brewed by each family in the city is moved to a stone chamber and aged for at least one year.

With the blessing of the god of wine, the wine in the cellar will be extraordinarily mellow, which is also the reason why Xiaoshui is famous in the north and south.

Li Changan was noncommittal.

Anyway, he has been messing around outside for a long time, and the name of the so-called "Xiaoshui Brew" has never entered his ears.

So he understood a little and set his sights on the bottom of the well.

There is nothing else at the bottom of the well, only a Dharma platform is enshrined with a statue of a god of the same height, different from the ordinary solemn and solemn gods and Buddhas, this god is a man with a light fur and a slow belt, is lying on the back and raising a glass to drink, the posture is free, the clothes are scattered, quite a bit of Wei and Jin style.

Should I say, is it worthy of being the god of wine?

There was also a mage on the altar, with a few little boys, presiding over the ceremony.

The mage is holding a dragon horn and wearing a divine forehead, which has the meaning of the Lushan Sect.

Li Changan looked carefully, this mage was still a female crown, with white hair and a shawl, a rickety posture, and layers of folds on his face, as if he had passed his old age.

"Who is the old mage?"

"That's Qingping's real person. The shopkeeper saluted before explaining to the Taoist priest, "The host of the Water Moon Temple outside the city is a well-known Taoist in the left. The Taoism is profound, and the merchants who come and go are looking for this immortal chief to pray for peace. ”

Li Changan nodded and continued to read.

After a strange ceremony, this year's wine is finally baked from hundreds of new wineries in dozens of wineries in the city.

Unexpectedly, several large wineries in the city were not selected, but the Yan family's small winery got cheap.

The owner of Yan Fang was immediately overjoyed, opened the kiln on the spot, dispersed most of the wine and drank it with everyone, and the restaurants present followed suit.

Time.

The cups are circulating, and the wine is soaring.

In a short time, the wine will be passed outside the cellar, to the long street, to the bridge, to the boat, the city toasts together, cheering and shaking the sky.

But in the end.

The wine is drunk and the sun is setting.

The prosperity is gone, and people go home with smoke and drunkenness.

Not including, of course, Li Changan.

............

Li Changan has always been unable to understand why the places where these people choose to meet are always strange.

For example, the roof of the Temple of Dionysus.

The night was deep, and after two nights of carnival, Xiaoshui City felt deserted.

The Taoist priest stood alone in a corner of the temple, relatively speechless with the thick and tall vermilion lacquer beams.

Long.

He sighed resignedly, rolled up his sleeves, and pressed himself to the smooth pillar, like a caterpillar, and shrugged it up little by little.

It took a lot of effort to finally toss myself to the roof, carefully avoiding the fragile glazed tiles, and stepping all the way to the top of the top in the center.

Look around.

The moon hangs high, and the four fields are open.

In the streets, the lights are sparse, only the wisteria glows in the moonlight, and the purple color in the silent city is bright.

Li Changan couldn't help but grope into his arms.

It's a pity.

It's not the time of the full moon, otherwise, wouldn't it be appropriate to drink a lamp of moon wine in this situation?

Suddenly, his expression moved, and he turned around.

But on the cornices that are obliquely lifted into the night, the ghost-faced man or Yu Mei stands quietly, and the night wind raises the red skirt, like a cluster of floating fireworks.

............

Yu Mei stood in the wind, not saying a word.

Li Chang waited quietly for a long time, and did not wait for her to speak.

The Taoist priest really didn't want to play the game of "who speaks first", so he said to himself.

"I killed an ogre demon last night. ”

"After cutting off the head, Xiaoshui's catcher told me that the demon's body and face were the same as the victim's mother-in-law. ”

"As it happens, I recognize such demons too. ”

"The name is Xiong Ga Po, or Wolf Grandmother, Cannibal Woman, and Tiger Aunt, but it is not a naturally incarnated goblin, but a monster that has come out of a horror legend. ”

Although the word yokai is often used interchangeably, it actually refers to two different types of demons. "Demon" usually refers to the fact that everything has gained spiritual wisdom and is able to deceive people. "Monsters" are demons born from the dark side of human fear, jealousy, greed, lust, etc., they are usually born from the legends and stories that have been spread deeply, and they also act according to the images in the stories, and before they are born, they have no substance.

Although there are few cases of changing from a human to a demon, Taoist priests have also heard of it, such as being infected with corpse poison and becoming a living jumping corpse; But from a human to a strange ......

"I'm weird. ”

Li Changan raised his eyes.

"Can the said plague or spell also turn people into such illusory monsters?"

Yu Mei finally spoke up, but it was a sentence.

"I don't know. ”

The Taoist priest unconsciously sharpened his back molars and recited the Qingjing Sutra several times before he suppressed the urge to draw his sword and cut people.

Anyone who encounters such a communication barrier will have to spend a lot of time salivaing.

The Taoist priest pondered for a moment.

"How did the layman kill people in Xiaoshui before?"

"Seven out of thirty. ”

This is twice as much as the number announced by the Yamen. However, it is also an ancient and modern practice, and it is useless to delve into it at this time.

"Is there a precedent for this kind of transformation to become 'weird'?"

"None of the people I have killed have been ......" Speaking of this, Yu frowned and stopped in a hurry, and changed the topic stiffly, "I haven't investigated much specific things. ”

"Now that the Taoist priest has seen it with his own eyes, he must know that what I said is true. How did I think about my proposal last night?"

Daoist Li smiled, untied the two oil paper bags and threw them over.

"What is this?"

"Let's count it as a joint gift. ”

"What is this?"

"A pack of purple carrot crisp, a pack is a medicine for miasma. ”

Li Changan returned nonchalantly.

When he met him last night, he had already found that this Yu Mei was looking for him to help, where there were frequent incidents, and it was clear that he had fallen into the trick of the charm, and he was infected with miasma, and he was unable to continue.

Yu Mei listened, and his movements froze. It took a long time to squeeze out two words from behind the mask.

"Thank you. ”

Then he took the purple carrot cake, but threw the herbs aside.

The other party wasted his "kindness", and the Taoist priest was not annoyed, but just smiled:

"Let's count ourselves as companions now, and some things should be open and honest. ”

Yu Mei didn't say a word, just reached out to take the mask on his face.

"The layman misunderstood. The Taoist priest waved his hand, "Under the mask, is it beautiful or ugly, male or female, old or young, poor Dao has no intention of exploring, what I want to ask is ......"

Li Changan said solemnly.

"Laymen can always kill the demon mutant one step ahead, but how do they determine it?

"Fog. ”

"Fog?"

"Those infected with the plague only mutate at night, and there is a large fog around them. Just climb up and look down, and you can see it at a glance. ”

This explanation is unexpected, but plausible. In the three nights of Qian Dazhi, the beggar and Xiong Gava, it was indeed accompanied by fog. Thinking about it carefully, Xing Zhutou also said that ghost-faced people will always take advantage of the night fog to kill people. It seems that it was not Yu Mei who attracted the night fog, but the night fog that attracted Yu Mei.

"In that case, it's ......"

Li Changan's words suddenly stopped, he looked behind Yu Mei, and then raised his eyes to look around.

But he laughed and pointed around.

"This is the mist associated with the demon transformation that the layman said?"

But seeing the clear moonlight, Xiaoshui City is still immersed in sleep, but at the bridge, in the streets, in the long street, in the alleys, in the wisteria flowers, everywhere there is a very light and thin mist, enveloping the city.

The fog slowly surged through the dark and empty city, like a white mist rising from dry ice on the stage, waiting for the protagonist to come on the stage.

Yu Mei also seemed to be shocked by this change, and was speechless under the mask for a long time.

Until.

Ah~ A sudden howl broke the silence of the city.

Just like a gong.

The show begins.