Chu Li is a very dull teenager. He is much younger than me, but he is also very withdrawn, which is not in line with his age. This withdrawnness is definitely not the kind of autism that teenagers usually have, and they don't have the ability to communicate with others. I have a strong curiosity about Chu Li. After all, compared with Fang Zhuo, I know very little about him.
Arriving at the town of Tucheng, I thought Fang Zhuo and Chu Li would take me to find He Chongli immediately.
He Chongli is from a family of corpse-carrying people; Song Yinhua is from the Miao family who releases poisonous insects.
I think that anyone would feel a little scared and excited when they knew they were going to meet the mysterious figure of Xiangxi witchcraft in the legend.
But Fang Zhuo didn't take me to the ghost street in the mountains right away, but found a hotel in the town to stay in. We each had a room, ate, and went back to our rooms to rest. Fang Zhuo didn't tell me anything else.
Chu Li didn't say anything the whole time. He didn't even look at me a few times after spending a day with me. They were both worried, and I could understand that.
I took a shower early and prepared to go to bed. Lying on the bed, I turned on the TV. The programs on TV were very boring, so I kept changing channels. In fact, my mind was not on watching TV, but on the things that bothered me the most.
In my life, my family and friends thought I had disappeared suddenly. I wonder if they would feel that my disappearance without reason would cause any panic. After I decided to follow Fang Zhuo to Tucheng, I called my family on the way and lied , saying that I had been informed that the Hubei Federation of Literary and Art Circles invited me to attend a meeting in Lichuan, Enshi. My mother did not question it at all and told me that Lichuan was a bit cold and asked me to go there and buy some clothes by myself. Then the phone was hung up.
I did receive an invitation from the Federation of Literary and Art Circles to attend a meeting in Lichuan, and they just let me make an excuse. It was also to prevent my family from worrying about my safety. What I was going to face must be very dangerous, I had no doubt about it, even though Fang Zhuo was cautious about my safety. This just proved the danger of this matter.
Now I am lying in bed, thinking about my current situation.
First of all, my understanding of them comes only from the notes left for me by Xu Yunfeng, Wang Kunpeng and Fang Zhuo. Because I read them so carefully, I was able to abandon my own worldview and accept the existence of this world.
Secondly, in their world, I must be a person who knows nothing.
Thirdly, my identity is logically problematic. In Fang Zhuo's world, Xu Yunfeng is real, and I am a copy of Xu Yunfeng. I cannot accept this. I think the opposite is true. Xu Yunfeng is a fictitious person who does not exist, just a memory in everyone's mind.
Okay, I can't go into this logic question. If I think about it any further, my brain will short-circuit as an engineering student. I jumped to the next question. According to Fang Zhuo's description, according to their world, I am a dark star position left by Wang Kunpeng. This dark star was deliberately ignored when Wang Kunpeng arranged the Seven Eyes Spring. According to Wang Kunpeng's IQ, it is very reasonable for him to leave such a cut. And the cut of this dark star was beyond everyone's expectation. But it has a subversive effect.
Or maybe Wang Kunpeng's purpose of leaving the Dark Star was not to find me to replace Xu Yunfeng. After all, Xu Yunfeng and Zhang Ziran were trapped in the Three Gorges Ancient Road and happened to encounter an earthquake. Even if Wang Kunpeng had the ability to see through the sky and the earth, he couldn't calculate this.
So he left the dark star behind for some other purpose. It just happened to fall on me now. And according to what I saw in "Grandmaster", when the three coppers are gathered, it must be Wang Kunpeng and Xu Yunfeng of the treacherous way who use the three coppers to break the reincarnation.
So I was found by Fang Zhuo, which was something Fang Zhuo had decided in 2009, otherwise how could she find me at the airport by chance? The reason why she formally invited me to participate so many years later was that Fang Zhuo had not prepared for many things.
And now, Fang Zhuo is fully prepared.
The plan with me as the protagonist has begun to be implemented. However, I still don’t know what I, a key figure, should do in this plan.
When I thought of this, I suddenly for no reason thought of the story I wrote about Xu Yunfeng. He was dragged into various tasks by Wang Kunpeng again and again, and he was as confused as I was.
This thought gave me a chill in my heart, and I began to question everything I perceived about the universe.
I can't think about it any further. As Fang Zhuo said, I should just think of it as a very long nightmare. Since it's a dream, I will definitely wake up.
I was thinking vaguely, and then I fell asleep half lying on the bed. Between half dreaming and half awake, I could still barely perceive the TV screen in front of me. But the TV did not make any sound.
I should have fallen asleep, but I could suddenly see the window of the room again. I don't know why I couldn't help but look at the window in a daze.
I couldn't tell whether I was awake or dreaming. I just stared at the window.
What I saw next confirmed my anxiety: a long arm was swinging outside the window. The arm had its sleeves rolled up, and its fingers were groping outside the window little by little. Then it found the gap in the window.
I suddenly felt the pain, but my body could not move. I watched the hand of that arm pry open the window. I really regretted not closing all the windows before going to bed.
After prying the window open with his arm, he reached his hand in and groped around inside the window, not knowing what he was touching.
I wanted to stand up and call Chu Li and Fang Zhuo from next door, but my body couldn't move and was pressed down on the bed by an invisible force.
I told myself that I was being pressed down on my bed. This is a normal psychological phenomenon. When a person is in a shallow sleep, the brain is still functioning but the nerves are dormant, which leads to this horrible psychological movement.
But what about the arm I see in front of me now?
The arm opened all the latches on the inside of the window one by one. I didn't know why the arm did this, but in this situation, I couldn't use common sense to explain everything I saw.
Then the owner of the arm climbed in from the window. I saw it was a woman. She was not very old, about the same age as me. After she came in, the temperature in the room immediately became cold, and I felt a chill.
Then a burly man came in, emitting a foul odor and with a gnarled beard. A dirty Taoist priest also came in, and finally a teenager with an overbite that made him look particularly uncomfortable.
The four men came in, stood still, walked up to me, and then put their hands on my body. I didn't know what they were going to do, but I resisted with all my might. But I couldn't defeat them.
Suddenly, I remembered that when I was in school, I had copied a calligraphy copybook, which contained the "Heart Sutra of Prajnaparamita". I copied it so many times that I could recite it by heart. I also heard that this Heart Sutra has the power to exorcise evil spirits. So I started to recite it silently in my heart: "When I see the Bodhisattva's deep Prajnaparamita, I see that the five aggregates are empty…"
When I recited the Heart Sutra in my heart, the strength of these four people weakened immediately. I turned the tables and beat them up against four of them at one time without any chance of fighting back.
I fought more and more bravely, and the four people couldn't resist. They all ran out of the window.
I was panting and heard a dong, dong, dong sound. My eyes suddenly opened and I found myself still lying in bed, the TV was still on, the door of the room was still donging, and all the windows were open.
The door was pushed open. I looked at the door carefully and saw Chu Li walking in. The fear and tension I had just felt suddenly subsided.
Fang Zhuo also followed Chu Li in.
Chu Li walked around the room quickly, and Fang Zhuo walked up to me, "Brother Xu, did you see it?"
I am now exhausted and can only nod my head continuously.
Chu Li stopped moving, and the other party said, "They have been here."
Fang Zhuo nodded.
Chu Li didn't look at me, and continued to say, "He can't do it, he is not Uncle Xu."
I know what Chu Li means. I am not Xu Yunfeng. If Xu Yunfeng were here, he would not let these four people run away. But on the other hand, if Xu Yunfeng was really here, would these four people dare to approach?
Chu Li regained his composure, stopped talking, and left the room.
Fang Zhuo and I were left alone. Seeing that I had returned to normal, Fang Zhuo said, "Brother Xu, you have to understand that this is not the world you used to live in."
"I understand." I nodded. "I just haven't fully adapted to it yet."
"But it's already pretty good that you can do this." Fang Zhuo added, "He Chongli has been dealing with them for many years. They are indeed very powerful, and they can't do anything to you."
"Don't comfort me." I tried to relax myself, "I will try my best to dress up as I am."
Fang Zhuo looked at me for a long time before he spoke: "You are indeed different from him. You have a better temper than him. If it were him, he would have jumped up and cursed by now."
I know who Fang Zhuo is talking about, and it makes me feel embarrassed. No one likes to think that there is a copy that follows them everywhere and needs to be compared.
Fang Zhuo sighed, "I'll take you to see He Chongli. He's waiting for you too."
What reason do I have to refuse?
Fang Zhuo finished speaking and walked out of the room. I immediately put on my clothes and walked out the door. Fang Zhuo was waiting for me outside. Chu Li was not there, so I did not ask. Fang Zhuo took me to the streets of Tucheng, a small town.
Then I saw the shops on both sides of the street, all of them were funeral shops, without exception.