"I really want to see who this guy is…" Holding the compass, he walked to the pile of stones and walked around it twice. After making sure there was no danger, Old Liu rolled up his sleeves and quickly moved a few stones on the top of the pile.
"Ms. Zhuang. It's okay…" Zhang Guozhong squatted down and patted Zhuang Ning's shoulder. At this time, Zhuang Ning was still lying on the ground with her head in her hands, shivering.
"Mr. Zhang… Could it be that Mr. Liu put explosives in there?" Zhuang Ning was still in shock and asked, "It's just a pile of rocks, why did you mobilize so many people?"
"Hehe… This isn't explosives, and it's not a big deal. I'll explain it to you if I get a chance. If Mr. Tiantong wakes up, you can ask him to explain it to you!"
"Guo Hu… also knows these things?" Zhuang Ning seemed a little surprised, "He… is also a Feng Shui master?"
"These have nothing to do with Feng Shui! This is Taoism." At this time, Zhang Guozhong had already walked to the side of the pile of stones and started to move the stones with Old Liu. The pile of stones looked quite large, but it took only a few moves to move them. Before they moved a few stones, an iron rod as thick as a thumb appeared in the middle of the pile, about one foot above the ground. It did not move at all when I tried to move it with my hands, as if it was nailed in deeply.
"This… doesn't seem to be some kind of witchcraft…" Zhang Guozhong squatted down and carefully observed the iron rod. Seeing that the corrosion level was not high, it didn't look like something from a hundred years ago. "Brother, there are no bugs at all, it's just an iron rod!"
"Dig down!" Seeing that all the stones had been moved away and the ground was exposed, but there was still only an iron rod, Old Liu naturally did not give up. "Where did the iron rod come from? There must be something underneath!" After saying that, he simply took a folding shovel from his bag and began to dig down along the iron rod. As a result, he hit a hard piece after just a few digs. It was too hard to say the least. Judging from the feeling on the shovel handle, it did not seem to be stone or metal.
"Buried underground? Could it be that earthworms are used in witchcraft?" Zhang Guozhong didn't know what to do, so he could only pick up the folding shovel and dig with Old Liu. Old Liu dug in the middle and Zhang Guozhong dug around. After a while, a pair of white hand bones were dug out. Judging from the outline of the bones buried in the soil, they should be two hands stacked together, and then riveted into the soil with an iron rod.
"This… Mr. Zhang… Mr. Zhang, let's… let's call the police…" Zhuang Ning was so scared that his face turned pale when he found out that the object nailed by the iron rod was actually human bones.
"Ms. Zhuang, please rest assured, this is not something from modern times…" Qin Ge squatted down, picked up a piece of bone that had been dug out by a shovel from the pit, put it in front of his nose and smelled it, and then flicked it a few times with his fingers, "This piece of bone has basically been calcified. Judging from the climate and humidity here, it has been buried underground for at least fifty years!"
"Fifty years?" Zhang Guozhong was also stunned. "The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, that was more than a hundred years ago…"
"I mean at least fifty years…" Qin Ge frowned when he said this, and picked up a larger finger bone from the pit, looking at it repeatedly in front of his eyes, "but definitely less than a hundred years!"
"Less than a hundred years?" Zhang Guozhong was stunned. "So, it is very likely to be the Republic of China?"
"Look what this is." Zhuang Ning squatted in the grass about ten meters away and seemed to have discovered something.
"Let me see…" Zhang Guozhong walked to the opposite side of Zhuang Ning, pulled aside the grass, and saw a small square stone pile exposed on the ground, less than half an inch, which was difficult to find without careful observation. In terms of the size and quality of the stone pile, it looked very much like the "Fire Bureau" encountered in Li Village that year. The only difference was that there was no inscription on the top of the stone pile.
"Brother!" Zhang Guozhong dug out the stone pile with just a few shovels. The part buried underground was only about a foot long at most. "Look at this!"
"What is this?" Looking at the stone pile that Zhang Guozhong dug out from the ground, Zhuang Ning was a little confused. "A Taoist totem?"
"It's not a totem!" Zhang Guozhong shook his head, "It's a spell… could it be…" Although Zhang Guozhong had a sense of déjà vu about the precious words carved on the stone pillar, he couldn't remember where he had seen it for a moment.
"Red Flow Curse! This is a thing from Zhengyi!" At this time, Old Liu and Qin Ge also trotted over. When they saw the stone pile in Zhang Guozhong's hand, they were a little dumbfounded. They saw that the extermination text carved on the side of the stone pile was actually the "Red Flow Curse" that Zhengyi had banned for a long time.
"Red Flow Curse!" Zhang Guosi suddenly realized what Old Liu said, and his hands went limp and he almost dropped the stone pile on the ground…
The so-called "Red Flow Curse" was originally part of the "Red Flow Formation" of the Zhengyi Forbidden Formation, and the name of the spell was also derived from the name of the formation. The Zhengyi Sect has always been one of the most famous and upright sects in the Central Plains. The taboo standards for formations and spells are also the most stringent. From the big tomb formations to the small spells and rituals, as long as there is a slight flaw in the moral level, there is no substantial harm but only violates traditional etiquette, it is very likely to be banned. It is precisely because of this that the forbidden formations and spells of the Zhengyi Sect are more numerous and more diverse than those of other sects.
As the saying goes, "If you show off, you are not afraid of being stolen. If you hide, you are sure to lose it." The more you forbid, the more likely you are to attract the attention of someone with ulterior motives. According to legend, in the second year of Tianshou in the Wu Zhou Dynasty of the Tang Dynasty (691 AD), the Sutra Library of the Zhengyi Zu Temple was stolen. Almost all the books and diagrams that recorded the taboo formations had traces of being read, but they were all safe and sound, and nothing was lost. Because the things were not lost, they did not receive enough attention from the temple. Unexpectedly, just three months later, a shocking "headless case" occurred in Luoyang, the capital of the gods. The so-called "headless" does not only refer to the scarcity of clues, but is truly "headless" based on the physical level. The newly appointed Sima Lu Sitong and his family of 37 people were strangely killed overnight. Without exception, the heads of the deceased were pulled out of their bodies alive, with such great force that it was like the punishment of being torn apart by five horses. For a time, rumors spread in Luoyang City, and people were in panic. Wu Zetian had to hand over the case to her son, Prime Minister Di Renjie, to investigate personally.
For ordinary people, this kind of "headless case" with real evidence would be absolutely impossible to investigate. But Di Renjie is Di Renjie after all. He knows astronomy and geography, and is proficient in yin and yang and the five elements. He is proficient in medicine, Taoism and Buddhism. After examining the remains of the victims, he quickly ruled out the possibility of ordinary people committing the crime and locked all the suspects in the category of unorthodox methods. He first conducted a carpet-style investigation of Taoist temples and monasteries near Luoyang, and then conducted a comprehensive secret investigation of all places selling Buddhist instruments and scriptures around Luoyang. After all the results were fruitless, he simply prepared to call all the stonemasons, jade craftsmen and blacksmiths in the city to the government office for questioning. As a result, although the questioning did not reveal any clues, the questioning led to a series of suspicious plots; the investigators discovered when they distributed the questioning notice. A blacksmith named Wang Ergou and a stonemason named Li Youcheng in the city died suddenly at home almost at the same time three days before the incident. After visiting their families. Di Renjie learned that these two people had taken over the business of the same person before their death. This person called himself Zhang Liang, and commissioned Wang and Li to make a batch of iron chisels and carve a batch of small stone piles respectively.
Although the case had been basically determined, in order to ensure that there was no mistake, Di Renjie still wrote a letter to the then Zhengyi Tianshi Master Zhang Luchen, hoping that Zhang could send a capable disciple down the mountain to help solve the case. Upon seeing the letter, Zhang immediately thought of the theft in the Sutra Library not long ago. He immediately jumped forward: According to Di Renjie's description in the letter, the so-called unorthodox methods used by the criminal were actually the Zhengyi School's absolute forbidden formation – the Red Flow Formation.
This formation originated in the Western Jin Dynasty. It was not originally a formation of the Zhengyi School, but a unique formation of a small Taoist school called "Qingchen School". Strictly speaking, the Qingchen School was not a very legitimate Taoist school, but a strange school founded by a group of unsuccessful court sorcerers in the Later Han Dynasty. Because the court valued Taoism at that time, they also raised the banner of Taoism. By the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Qingchen School's inheritance was declining, and seeing that it could not survive, they found the Zhengyi School to surrender. Zhengyi accepted them. Although they accepted the people, the formations of the Qingchen School were all listed as forbidden formations by Zhengyi without exception. The reason was simple. What kind of legitimate formations could a group of court sorcerers study? The palace is full of intrigues and fratricide, and at least half of the so-called formations of the Qingchen Sect are seemingly orthodox, but with a little modification, they can harm people invisibly. For example, the Red Flow Formation in front of us, even the Heavenly Master cannot imagine what the consequences will be if this formation is used as a basis for research. This kind of marginal formation that can easily become a disaster is not banned in Zhengyi, which is a new thing.
In order to restore the bad influence, Zhang Zhenren went down the mountain to plead guilty to Di Renjie, truthfully explained the causes and consequences of the theft of the Zhengyi Sutra Library, and assisted Di Renjie in finding the iron chisel and stone pile buried in the lower reaches of the Luo River. Until the case was finally solved, Di Renjie did not trouble the Zhengyi School for the leakage of the forbidden formation, but only handed over the iron chisel and stone pile used for the formation to the court as evidence of the crime. Of course, Di Renjie was not a fool. The fewer people who knew about this kind of Xingmen stuff, the better. In the later stage of the case, not many people had actually seen the iron chisel and stone pile. And Di Renjie also personally issued a gag order to all relevant people who had contact with the case, but a small part of the content carved on the stone pile was inexplicably leaked and has been circulated to this day. This small part of the leaked content is the "Red Flow Curse" carved on the stone pile dug out by Zhang Guozhong at this moment…