Chapter 16 Caller ID

Chapter 16 Caller ID

Chapter 16 Caller ID
"Writing red words on white paper, how strange." Ning Zhe supported his chin with one hand and watched with interest as the bald old man wrote the couplet with great ease.

Several villagers who had been waiting for a long time came forward immediately, four men and one woman. The men worked together, picked up the upper and lower couplets and walked forward, while the woman held the horizontal scroll alone. The five of them walked towards the entrance of the ancestral hall together, apparently to paste the newly written couplet on the entrance.

Ning Zhe had lived in the countryside since he was a child. During major festivals such as the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, the prestigious elders in the village would pick up their pens and write a few couplets, which they would either give directly to the villagers or post on the Dragon King Temple by the river. He was no longer surprised by such scenes.

Traditional couplets, spring festival couplets, etc. are generally written on red paper with ink. This is the first time Ning Zhe has seen white paper with red words in Hejiacun. It looks creepy.

Especially the content of this couplet:

First couplet: [Pearls and jades on the Bashe case testify to the ancestor]

Second line: [Descendants add fragrance to the lotus hall]

Horizontal banner: [Long history]

"This couplet doesn't look like something that would be used for a festive occasion. There is no praise for the snake god between the lines. The contents of the upper and lower couplets and the horizontal scroll are just explaining one thing." Ning Zhe looked down at the bald old man who had written the couplet and washed his hands with a copper basin. He whispered to himself, "Why do the descendants of the He family add incense in front of the Lotus Hall and offer pearls and jade in front of the Bashe Altar to commemorate their ancestors?"

As expected, Lotus Hall refers to this ancestral hall, and Bashean... probably refers to the round table where the wooden carving of the snake god is enshrined.

The incomprehensible couplet and ambiguous words make it impossible to tell what it is trying to express. Could it be that the villagers gathered here early in the morning without eating breakfast just to get close to the snake god?

Don't tell me, it's really possible.

In addition, there are many more abnormalities in Hejiacun.

Generally speaking, the more backward and isolated a region is, the more traditional and conservative its customs are, the stronger its clan concept is, and the more importance it places on symbolic face-building.

But the ancestral hall in Hejia Village was quite dilapidated and looked extremely shabby due to years of disrepair. There were spider webs in the corners of the walls and two or three tiles had fallen off the corners of the roof. No one had come to repair them for who knows how long. It was raining heavily outside and drizzling inside. Ning Zhe felt that the tablets of the He family's ancestors and the snake god statue would probably get moldy if they were placed in such an environment.

However, despite this, this ancestral hall is still the most imposing building in this neighborhood. At least it is tall and has two more pillars. It can be seen that great attention was paid to its construction. The other houses around it are shorter than the ancestral hall, and it is the most spacious.

After posting the couplets, the people in front of the ancestral hall knelt down again, repeating the sacrificial words over and over again in a low voice. This large-scale collective sacrificial activity lasted until the sun rose in the sky. At 06:28 in the morning, the gathered crowd finally showed signs of dispersing.

Watching the crowd gradually dispersing, Ning Zhe said nothing and fell into silent thought.

Feng Yusu tactfully did not interrupt. The peaceful, pious and orderly collective sacrifice just now had given her a great shock and psychological pressure, which was indescribably strange.

"I say, Auntie, have you noticed something wrong?" Ning Zhe suddenly asked.

"Well... what's wrong?" Feng Yusu was a little uncertain. In fact, she felt that there was nothing right about this sacrifice from the very beginning.

Ning Zhe raised his hand and pointed at the backs of the villagers leaving the street one by one in an orderly manner: "From gathering to dispersing, this group of people showed extraordinary coordination. It was such a large-scale gathering of people, but there was no bumping or crowding among the people who were shoulder to shoulder. Everyone strictly abided by a certain order that I didn't know about. To be honest, my classmates and I didn't have such strong discipline during the military training in high school."

Not only are these villagers disciplined, their level of personnel coordination and consistency of action are even comparable to that of the military.

"It's as if everyone is one person." Ning Zhe suddenly said this without any context. "One person?" Feng Yushu didn't quite understand what he was talking about.

Just as I was wondering, I suddenly felt a buzzing sensation on my thigh. It was my cell phone ringing.

Feng Yusu quickly took out her cell phone from under her skirt, and when she looked down, her already alert expression suddenly froze.

The caller is: [Lin Zhiyuan]

"How is it possible..." Feng Yuxu's lips trembled slightly, her shoulders shrank, and her hands shook, as if what she was holding in her hands was not a mobile phone but the head of a ghost that came to take her life. She wished she could throw this hot potato away immediately.

But Ning Zhe stopped her from doing so.

"Calm down." Ning Zhe grabbed Feng Yuxu's cold wrist, ran his fingers across the buzzing screen of the phone in her hand, and hung up the call.

"Ning Zhe..." Feng Yushu's panic suddenly dissipated, as if she had found a backbone she could rely on. She let him take the phone from her and asked nervously, "What's going on? Ning Zhe, isn't Lin Zhiyuan dead? Why is he calling me?"

How did a dead person know her phone number?
"You also know that the dead can't move, so why do you think it was Lin Zhiyuan himself who called you?" Ning Zhe asked back, "Maybe someone else was using his phone to call you."

Just like Xie Si Ning who had died in the river at that time.

Feng Yuxu bit her lip lightly, and after a brief panic she calmed down. In fact, she could more or less understand what Ning Zhe meant, but the possibility he hinted at might be even more terrifying than Lin Zhiyuan coming back to life, and it was hard to accept.

"Is that the ghost calling me?" Feng Yusu asked in a trembling voice.

Ning Zhe was noncommittal: "Maybe, who knows?"

After the crowd dispersed, Ning Zhe took Feng Yusu off the roof of the ancestral hall and back to the ground.

At the same time, between 6 and 7 in the morning, in the central area of ​​Hejia Village, in the quaint mansion with a plaque of "He Mansion" hanging high, a middle-aged man in a suit and tie was walking among the empty flowers.

A strand of half-wet, half-dry hair fell on his forehead, making him feel a little itchy. Zhang Yangxu casually pulled the strand of hair that was disobedient without the hairspray back and listened attentively to the footsteps outside the wall. It was the sound of the villagers who had left the He Mansion to "worship the gods" and returned.

The sound of footsteps meant that he didn't have much time left.

"Ye Miaozhu is too emotional. Is there any point in me going through so much trouble to find her?" Zhang Yangxu couldn't help but ask himself.

Just as he was hesitating, suddenly, Zhang Yangxu's coat pocket began to vibrate.

He took out his cell phone and looked down. The caller ID read:
【Gu Yunqing】

(End of this chapter)