Chapter 161 Foundation Laying
Chapter 161 Foundation Laying
"Oh." Ning Zhe nodded and casually put the makeup mirror into his pocket.
Xia Yubing was stunned. No? Do you really want it...
She became even more convinced that Ning Zhe was a psychopath.
Not only is he mentally abnormal, he's also physically abnormal. Sometimes he's a man, sometimes he's a woman. I don't know where this Ditto jumped out of the bushes on the side of the road.
Because after disproving the first conjecture, Ning Zhe once again switched his body to that of Feng Yusu. With his beautiful hands like white jade, he held up a purple parasol with lace, and walked gracefully on the quiet street where the moonlight was like water, with an elegant posture and graceful manners.
Xia Yubing discovered that this guy who called himself "Ningzhe" changed his image every time, it was not just his figure, clothing and other physical appearance that changed, but all-round changes including voice, behavior, and personality and temperament.
Feng Yusu's gentleness and dignity, Yu Ziqian's rebelliousness, Lin Zhiyuan's optimism and moderation...
It's not just a clumsy act of putting on human skin and pretending to be a ghost, but it's truly becoming another person from the inside out.
"So that's why he said... 'we' then?" Xia Yubing was nervous. She glanced at Ning Zhe's sexy back and suddenly had this thought in her mind:
"Is he one person or a group of people?"
Ning Zhe had no idea about Xia Yubing's thoughts and didn't care.
He held an umbrella in both hands and walked briskly along the street. The buildings in Zanju Town were mainly wooden-structured earthen brick and tile houses. As they had been uninhabited for a long time and lacked maintenance, they had collapsed due to wind and rain.
Only a few modern houses built by well-off families are still well preserved, scattered like shrubs on the wasteland.
In the bright moonlight, two hunched figures could be vaguely seen leaning out from a collapsed gap in a courtyard wall not far away. Upon closer inspection, they were two blurry human-shaped stone statues with moss covering their heads and shoulders.
There are two stone statues. One is of an old man wearing ancient Ming Dynasty costume, with wide robe and big sleeves, and an immortal look. The facial features have been blurred by wind and rain, and only the outlines of eyebrows and beard can be vaguely distinguished.
The old man's right hand is behind his back, his left hand is stretched out, and his index finger points in the direction across the street. It is a statue of "immortal pointing the way", which is usually placed at the entrance of scenic spots and on mountain roads.
Another statue is of a girl wearing a ballet skirt with a stone white dove perched on her shoulder and the hem of her skirt fluttering like a dove's wings.
Ning Zhe had seen ballet dancer-like statues before, every day. The flower beds of the town-run primary and secondary schools in Gubei Town and several surrounding towns were filled with statues exactly like the one before him. They were ordered in bulk before Zanju Town was abandoned, when the old schools were being renovated and wholesale discounts were available.
There is also a statue of a male dancer who is holding the girl's arm and dancing with her around her waist, but it is not seen here. The female dancer in front of us should be a defective product from the original order.
Although I knew in my heart that the two figures were nothing more than shaped stones, but seeing them standing side by side in the gap of the courtyard wall late at night, facing the street, at first glance, it looked like two living people clinging to the window sill, sticking their heads out of the window, silently peeking at the outside world.
Even Ning Zhe, who had a strong mental state, couldn't help but frown slightly, and Xia Yubing's face turned pale - she didn't believe in ghosts and gods at first, but thanks to Ning Zhe, she now believed in it a little.
I really want to thank your whole family... Xia Yubing took two steps at a time to close the distance between herself and Ning Zhe, and hurried forward following closely behind him, leaving behind the old man and the female dancer standing on the street.
"It's like this again..."
When she got closer, Xia Yubing heard low whispers coming from under the parasol.
"What's wrong?" Xia Yubing asked nervously.
"Something is going on. Don't stay too far away from me. Otherwise, if you die, I may not be able to save you in time." Ning Zhe said calmly.
Xia Yubing nodded and was about to take another step forward when Ning Zhe stopped her with a gesture.
"Don't get too close, don't approach me suddenly, or I will kill you."
He is now using the identity of Feng Yusu, and if someone steps on his shadow, he will die.
...Although the rules of Ye Yao can almost perfectly make up for this shortcoming of Te Rang, Ning Zhe feels that he should still be cautious.
"Oh..." Xia Yubing was dissatisfied in her heart, but did not show it. She was used to Ning Zhe's neurosis and capriciousness.
This is a psychopath. Normal people should not bother with psychopaths, especially psychopaths with guns. "By the way, I also saw a strange statue before..." Xia Yubing remembered that Ning Zhe was squatting on the street as if observing something, so she asked.
"You mean the stone sculpture of a child lying upside down on the street, with only one foot sticking out." Ning Zhe looked back at her while holding an umbrella: "Are you interested in that?"
Xia Yubing nodded.
"It's just a sacrifice." Ning Zhe said softly:
"This is an ancient custom. Before construction begins, at least one living person must be buried in each of the four corners of the foundation. The ancients believed that only by sacrificing human lives to the land could the building be stable and able to withstand natural disasters and not collapse. This behavior was called 'laying the foundation'.
In modern society, the practice of living human sacrifices is rarely seen. Generally, symbolic objects such as paper dolls, straw dolls, talismans, and animal bones are used instead. In the northern part of Qinzhou, clay dolls are used to replace living people, while in the southern part, stone sculptures are used.
The stone foot you saw earlier is located at the east corner of the courtyard on the street. I have also seen the other three corners, west, south, and north. There are stone statues like this buried at all four corners of the house."
Very few? That means there are still some... Xia Yubing's face changed slightly, wondering why someone would kill someone just to build a house.
Ning Zhe was too lazy to pay attention to Xia Yubing's expression changes. At this moment, his eyes were slightly narrowed and he made a soft "tsk" sound.
"Gone again." He said to himself.
He was using the identity of Feng Yusu at the moment. Perhaps because it was a fake rule that was too easy to simulate, the range of his vision and perception when using 'Special Allowance' was not as large as Feng Yusu's own, and could not cover the entire Zanju Town. This situation was more like exploring in a dark cave with a torch.
As the two approached the town center, the four-faced Buddha statue that was 5-6 stories high came into the lighting range of the "torch", which was within Terang's field of vision.
Ning Zhe could clearly feel a hurried figure running out from under a dark building, coming to the center of the town, and then disappearing.
That person was probably the anchor who had spoken to Xia Yubing on the phone before, whose name was Diaodu Hanjiang Du.
After reaching the center of the town, his shadow suddenly disappeared. Either he was dead, or he ran under the lotus platform of the Four-Faced Buddha and was covered by the shadow of the Buddha statue. Ning Zhe thought it was the latter.
But Jiang Han was not the only shadow that appeared within Te Rang’s perception range.
As Ning Zhe led Xia Yubing forward, from time to time, he could sense groups of figures entering Te Rang's perception range from the edge of the field of vision illuminated by the 'torches'. Those figures were tall, short, strong, and thin.
As Ning Zhe moved forward, the figures continued to increase and entered Te Rang's field of vision.
But strangely, once the shadows of those people entered Terang's "field of vision", they would quickly disappear.
It was not like Jiang Han's disappearance, where he hid under the shadows of buildings such as the Erawan Shrine - this type of loss of vision was a process, and one could clearly feel that one of Jiang Han's feet disappeared first, then his hand, half of his body, and the other foot... until everything disappeared from sight.
That was the process of Jiang Han running from the open space to the bottom of the Four-Faced Buddha.
As for those shadows that came in groups of two or three and entered the special perception range from the edge of the field of vision, their disappearance was without any warning. There was no process like Jiang Han's "running from the light into the darkness". They just disappeared out of thin air.
Like a drop of ink melting into the vast ocean.
He remembered clearly that the place where two of the shadows disappeared was right next to the gap in the courtyard wall.
Ning Zhe held up the parasol with both hands and walked forward a short distance in silence. In the direction he was moving, at the end of his field of vision, five more figures appeared quietly.
And disappeared quietly again.
"what happened……"
(End of this chapter)