Volume 5 Chapter 35 Xizhao

Now that I think about it, I was so serious when I said these words and used lip-reading to make sure the ghost didn’t hear me, that I don’t know what state my nerves were in. If I were normally, or if I were under less pressure, I would never have thought of this.

This is actually inevitable. How much time and how many things did we spend before we reached this point? We were in a desperate situation with no reason to find, not to mention the long way ahead and how to get back. The things in front of us had already blocked our thinking, and we couldn’t think of many problems.

When I thought about it later, I could actually think of many solutions. For example, I could take a compass and follow the change in the index to find the tomb passage. As long as we reversed, the compass needle would definitely move. However, at that time, apart from a few fixed thoughts in my head, it was a complete blank, so much so that I would point to the possibility of being trapped by ghosts.

Fatso and Shunzi were even worse than I was. At this point, they were completely affected by my expression, and almost one by one, they turned pale and swallowed their saliva. Fatso also said in sign language, “Are you sure? I told you so… so what do we do now?”

My thoughts at the time were that the logical basis for this tomb passage was not valid, so the reason for this phenomenon must have nothing to do with logic. However, if it wasn’t a dream, then nothing else could escape the shackles of logic. In other words, what we are seeing or hearing now may very well be an illusion. It is hard to say what the scene around us is like, and I think that only the power of “evil spirits” can make four people have the same illusion at the same time. Only “evil spirits” can be illogical and trap people in such a way without any flaws.

Here, evil spirits are actually a more understandable proxy term, referring to all the forces that we cannot understand. This kind of power obviously exists inevitably.

But if there really are “ghosts,” we are at a loss, because we can’t see them at all, and naturally we can’t deal with them. Even if we scold them or use any other method, it will be useless to them. This becomes the second situation I hate the most. We know that the problem is all around us, but we can’t deal with it, and there is nowhere to focus our efforts.

At that time, I also had a very naive idea, and I didn’t know what kind of power it was. If it was unconscious, it would be troublesome. It didn’t have its own thoughts, so even if we used tricks, it wouldn’t work. If it was a ghost, it would be easy. It could think, so we could force it out and make it make some mistakes.

After much deliberation, the fat man was adamant that the ghost was most likely one of the mummies in front of us. Perhaps the soul of someone who couldn’t let go of the mundane world was still wandering around here, and seeing that someone had come to keep it company, it naturally wanted to play a trick, but it didn’t know which one.

The fat man first ruled out Shunzi’s father. The father hadn’t seen his son in ten years, so he naturally wouldn’t joke about his son’s life. That left the other six mummies.

At this point, I already felt a bit ridiculous, but we had no other choice. We had to try everything. So I walked up to the corpses, made them kneel down, and then folded some gold ingots out of scrap paper and burned them for each of them. As I burned them, I bowed my head: “I am the nephew of Wu Sanxian. I am looking for my uncle in a hurry. Which of you is casting spells? Please accept the paper money and let us go. We are really in a hurry. Otherwise, leave this fat guy to play with you, and let the others let us out.”

The fat man was furious when he heard this. Pan Zi and Shun Zi immediately grabbed him one by one, not letting him move. The fat man yelled, “Wu Xie, you despicable little man, I’ll bite you to death!”

After I finished reading, I looked around. There was no change in the surroundings, and the bodies had not changed either. I realized that it was useless, so I waved for them to let go of the fat man. The fat man stared nervously around, and when he saw that nothing had changed, he sneered, “You see, Uncle Ghost is still fair. He doesn’t care about your stinking money.”

I said, “Maybe they don’t like you, really.”

Shunzi said at this time, “No, shouldn’t we think like this? Look at my father. Even if someone is against us, my father will help. Now it’s useless. Are these people the ones who did the evil?

If it were normal, I would have laughed at such childish talk, but now I listened to him seriously and considered the possibility. After thinking about it, I said, “Maybe your father has already left, or there are more than one person doing evil, and he can’t beat him. But I also feel that it may not be these few people here. These people are all adults, and they all have a good relationship with my third uncle. I don’t think they would play tricks and do this kind of trick. It may be a ghost. The corpse is not here.”

I said that, but if it really is as I said, it would be difficult, because we can’t see where the ghost is. It might be lying on our backs, and we wouldn’t know. We can’t do anything if we can’t see it. Thinking about it, I sighed and asked, “Does anyone have any ideas? Even if it’s a folk remedy, does anyone know how to see ghosts?”

Pan Zidao said, “I heard that if you put cow tears on your eyes, you can see ghosts.”

The fat guy laughed and said, “Then the task of finding the cow is entrusted to you.”

“No, maybe you don’t need the tears of a cow to see it.“ I suddenly thought of a way: ‘But the fat man has to sacrifice himself.’

The fat man became nervous again. ‘You’re not going to kill me and let my soul negotiate with the ghost, I won’t do it. If you kill me, I’ll definitely conspire with the ghost and make you even worse!’

This guy came up with another idea. I was furious. ‘Where are you going with this? I want to use your talisman.’

”What do you want to do?” The fat guy covered his chest: “This is the real thing. Can you afford to pay for it if it gets damaged?”

“The talisman is the most powerful thing against evil spirits. If it were real, how could we have ended up in such a situation? I’ve already seen it. This thing is fake.” I said, “Give it to me quickly.”

“Fake?” The fat guy took it off and looked at it carefully: “Are you sure?”

“Of course. This is made of rhino horn. I’m a professional in this field. How could I not know? Look, the talisman of the pangolin gets darker and darker the more you wear it. Look at your rhino horn, it’s already turning green. I’m not going to lie to you.“

”Damn it! I said why am I so unlucky!” The fat man was furious: ”That son of a bitch tricked me again. No wonder it never works. If I survive this time, I’m going to tear down his shop.

I took the talisman from the fat man and comforted him a little. He asked me how I planned to use it. Is it used to press on the corpse’s forehead?

I said, “There is an old legend called ‘Rhino’s Light’, have you heard of it?”

The fat man said, “Isn’t it a Hong Kong movie released a few years ago?”

“Almost, that’s the idea.” I nodded, “As long as you burn this thing and use this light, you can see ghosts. Of course, I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know if it’s true.

I thought it was ridiculous, but I had already said it all out loud, so I didn’t know why not. It was a desperate attempt to find a cure, and before the fat guy appeared, my idea was the only one that seemed feasible.

There is a record in the Jin Shu (Book of Jin): “Qiao Xuan was in Wuchang, and when he arrived at Niuzhu Islet, the water was so deep that it was impossible to measure it. There were many monsters under the water, so Qiao lit the horn of a rhinoceros and shone it. In a moment, he saw the water creatures emerge, all with strange shapes and forms. That night, he dreamed that someone said to him, ‘I am parting with you in the dark, and we agree to shine on each other!’” The general idea is that the ancients of China could see gods and monsters by burning the horns of rhinoceroses and using the light they emitted. The ancients’ sayings can always be of some use.

I took out the smokeless stove and put the talisman on it to burn it. At first it wouldn’t burn, but then a strange smell came out and a strange light flashed in the green flame.

I held up the smokeless stove and held it high to illuminate as much as possible. We all turned around to look for anything that had not appeared before. I walked around the tomb chamber, but I didn’t see anything. The others didn’t see anything either.

“Maybe the ghost is hiding far away,” said Shunzi.

“No, the legend says that if it’s a ghost hitting the wall, the ghost is lying on the back of a person.”

We looked at each other’s backs again, but still nothing. The fat man muttered, “I told you that the legend was nonsense. It was a waste of my talisman. It was a fake, but it was still rhinoceros horn. In the end, it was a waste of nothing.”

Pan Zi let out a sigh of relief: “It seems that this trick is useless. I’m afraid there is no ghost. What we encountered was the fifth situation, which is unreasonable and has no clue. There is no reference at all. What should we do now? This time I’m afraid it’s really over.”

I sighed, just about to speak, when suddenly the fat man gave me a gesture to keep quiet, and Pan Zi also made a gesture to keep quiet. I jumped, and looked up at the fat man’s eyes. I saw a black ‘child’ looming above us, on the ceiling of the tomb.