The temple at night.
secluded.
Weird.
Horrifying.
Every carved detail on the clay statue of the headless woman in front of me is vivid and lifelike.
It doesn't seem to be a clay sculpture.
But there was really just a person standing there.
It was pitch black outside.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh.
The night wind, mixed with the cold and damp air from the mountains, blew into the temple.
The bonfire flickered.
It seems like it will be blown out at any time.
Just like Jin'an, who felt as if his body was falling into an ice cellar, was trembling with fear.
Jin An wanted to turn around and run away, but he was worried that he would upset Wang Tiegen who was crying at his feet. He was in a dilemma for a moment.
I was so anxious that cold sweat broke out on my forehead.
Sudden!
A hand stretched out from the darkness behind Jin An and rested silently on his shoulder.
Jin An was shocked. He was about to swing his knife behind him to save himself, but his mouth was covered by another hand behind his back, and he was quietly and silently led out of this terrifying wild temple.
The pale moonlight penetrated the heavy shadows of the trees, turning into mottled fragments that scattered across this ghostly forest.
Night rain in the mountains.
I don't know when it stopped.
In the shattered moonlight beside him, Jin An finally saw clearly that it was a middle-aged Taoist priest who saved him.
The Taoist priest had his hair in a Taoist bun with an ordinary bamboo hairpin inserted in it. He wore a five-colored Taoist robe and a pair of blue and white ten-direction shoes on his feet.
Jin An heaved a sigh of relief from his tense body, and hurriedly thanked the Taoist priest: "Thank you, Taoist priest, for saving my life today."
However, this Taoist priest in the five-colored robe whom I met in the deep mountains had a very strange temper.
"Evil things like people with weak horoscopes and small zodiac signs. You don't need to thank me. The reason you didn't die in this coffin temple with a trumpet jar is because you have a strong horoscope."
After the Taoist priest finished speaking, he turned around and left, leaving Jin'an alone without caring whether he lived or died, as if he had not been the one to rescue Jin'an from the wild temple.
In the wilderness of the night, everything was silent, with only Jin'an left all alone.
Jin'an turned his head and looked in the direction of the wild temple. There was no bonfire or crying in the wild temple. The door was open, and there was dead silence, darkness, and terrifying tranquility.
Jin'an shuddered and hurriedly chased after the Taoist priest in two steps.
…
The mountain road is not easy to walk on after the rain.
Especially when traveling at night.
Jin'an walked in the mountains, one foot deep and one foot shallow. His feet were covered with mud and became heavier as he walked.
Jin An followed the Taoist priest quietly for a while, but eventually, unable to resist his curiosity, he cautiously asked, "Master Taoist, why did you just say that the wild temple was a coffin temple?"
"And what do you mean by the trumpet jar?"
The Taoist priest who had been walking in front paused, and Jinan also stopped.
At this time, the two had walked out of the sunken basin and stood on a high mountain where an old pine tree grew. Their vision suddenly became clear.
Under the silver moonlight overhead, the Taoist pointed to the dark, quiet temple in the basin below. Without a word, he asked Jin'an, "Look closely at the temple below. It has a door but no windows. Also, look at the temple's beams—they're higher at the left and right ends and lower in the middle. Doesn't it look like a coffin and a coffin lid?"
"Coffins come in five colors: red, white, black, and gold. Black represents Xuanshui, which can suppress evil spirits. It's used specifically for burying those who died suddenly, unjustly, or unjustly. Look at this coffin temple, it's all built of black stone. Doesn't it look like a black coffin?"
Without waiting for Jin'an to reply, the Taoist priest continued, "Look at the mountains surrounding the temple. They're narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, pressing the temple into a basin where it never sees sunlight. Doesn't it look like a trumpet jar?"
"It's a coffin temple with black coffins, and they specially found a basin with a natural trumpet-shaped terrain. The person who built this temple was definitely not an ordinary temple builder, but a Taoist master who understands feng shui and astrology, and is good at finding mountains and burying graves."
After listening to the Taoist's explanation, Jin'an looked carefully at the basin at the foot of the mountain.
I don’t know if it was due to psychological suggestion this time, but wow, the wild temple really looks like a black coffin.
The basin also looks like an inverted trumpet, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom.
The Taoist priest continued expressionlessly, "The Trumpet Jar is also called the place where Yin gathers."
"That's definitely not a good sign."
"The trumpet urn burial method originated from well burial, which can be traced back to before the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Well burials require a wide top and narrow bottom, meant to gather yang and disperse resentment. In feng shui, snakes, insects, rats, and ants all fear yang, so centipedes, insects, snakes, and other yin creatures are not allowed to inhabit the ancestral tomb and disturb the ancestors' sleep. When the ancestors sleep peacefully, their blessings flourish, ensuring that their descendants live in peace."
"But everything that has yang must have yin, such as heaven and earth, sun and moon, day and night, cold and heat, men and women, up and down. Since there are well burials, which are wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, to gather yang and dissipate resentment, there are naturally trumpet-shaped urn well burials, which are narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, to gather yin and block the sun."
"This kind of well burial is a place where yin gathers. After a person dies, the yin energy gathers there all year round and is difficult to dissipate. If the person buried there died a sudden, unjust, or unjust death, then the yin energy will be even more serious after it is gathered."
"This kind of burial method, which damages one's virtue and shortens one's lifespan, is either used to suppress extremely evil spirits or to bury the remains of an enemy, fearing they might come out to seek revenge after death, causing unrest and preventing the enemy's soul from escaping and having a chance to reincarnate."
"It was originally a trumpet urn that was a gathering place for Yin. Now they built a coffin temple underneath it. I wonder what hatred or grudge could have caused the temple builder to mobilize so many people back then."
"However, the original builders of the temple didn't do anything too bad. With the Great Dao being fifty and the Heavenly Deviation being forty-nine, they knew to leave a glimmer of hope for the Coffin Temple and didn't completely seal it off. This wouldn't have left those buried there without descendants, preventing all her relatives from meeting a tragic end."
"It's just a pity..."
"Now, this only way out has been broken by some master. The resentment in the Coffin Temple is rising to the sky. I am afraid that in a few years, this place will become a forbidden place for the living."
"I see the damage is still quite recent. Someone must have broken through the life gate not long ago."
The more Jin An listened, the more frightened he became.
He felt that the more he listened to this story, the more bizarre it sounded, just like the Feng Shui and metaphysics taught in roadside fortune-telling stalls.
A valley basin that looks ordinary to the naked eye actually hides such a great mystery.
"What if we just blow up the mountain, demolish it, or make the basin bigger to let the sunlight in, and turn the terrain here into the place that the Taoist priest just mentioned, where yang gathers and resentment disperses?" Jin An put forward his idea.
"When the time comes, all the snakes, insects, rats, ants, and other dirty creatures will naturally be burned to ashes by the sun's ultraviolet rays."
Unexpectedly, the Taoist priest glanced at Jin'an with his eyelids slightly raised, and his eyes seemed to say that the young people nowadays are like newborn calves who are not afraid of tigers and don't know how to write the word death.
"Feng Shui corresponds to the stars, sun, and moon above, and the mountains, rivers, and earth veins beneath. It also corresponds to the interplay of yin and yang, the five elements, the stems and branches, and the eight trigrams and nine palaces. A single move affects the entire body."
"The mountains surrounding the Coffin Temple serve as both a trumpet jar and a screen. If these four walls were to be torn down, it would only aid and abet the evil, freeing the things suppressed within the Coffin Temple. If that were to happen, more people would die, and the nearby residents would be forced to flee the city."
Jin An was still a little unwilling: "Is there no other way?"
The Taoist shook his head.
This has already been answered.
Taoist priest: "With this coffin temple and the trumpet jar, it's like a magic needle that can fix the hole in the place where Yin gathers. As long as we tell our descendants to avoid it, it will not cause any disaster."
The Taoist priest seemed to have thought of something and added solemnly, "I saw the head of a clay statue in the temple disappear. Be careful of women with scars on their necks in the future."
"Remember, stay away from it if you encounter it."
"?"
“!”
Jinan is cold again.
Did women in ancient times also know how to change their heads?
/
Ps: Guys, I’m back again!
Actually, I originally wanted to take a small slump and then, after three years of ups and downs, announce my return with the first 10 chapters of a new book. On April 24, I told the editor that I was going to start a new book and publish it on May 10. On April 26, I submitted the 3-chapter manuscript for review, which passed the review in seconds. I successfully signed the contract in advance on the same day, and the remaining 15 days were enough for me to slowly accumulate the manuscripts.
But the reality is too harsh. The manuscript for the new book was reviewed for 3 chapters. With a 15-day buffer period, I only wrote 3 chapters. As of May 11th, I only had 6 chapters in hand. I haven't written a word for a year, but my hand is not so good. I can only give up my lofty ambitions. My editor-in-chief stood down on the first release of the new book =. =
Phew, this feels like a bit of a setback. I hope "White Bone Great Sage" can break the record of "There Are Monsters Here" with 2,000 words updated per day during its new book period. QAQ.
