In a short while, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai took advantage of the moonlight to quietly climb over the wall and sneak out of the Zeng Mansion.
In those days, when it got dark, there was almost no one on the street, and there were no such things as street lights, so they didn't worry about anyone discovering them.
Mingjiao Temple is very close to Zeng Mansion, just two streets away. It can be said that it is just a walk away. It only took Sun and Huang five minutes to arrive at the back wall of the temple, and they met Zhou Wu smoothly. .
Because they had already planned in advance, the three of them did not need to talk too much after meeting. They exchanged a few words in a low voice before climbing over the wall and entering the temple.
The body of the second wife of the Zeng family had been embalmed yesterday, and the shroud and coffin were also prepared. At the moment, the coffin is parked in an unused room in the temple.
It is not allowed to place corpses in Buddhist halls. Dead bodies, which are sinister things, must not enter the Mahavira Hall without being cremated. This is a rule, not to mention Mr. Zeng, even the emperor. mess around.
Therefore, after the corpses of the second wife of the Zeng family were transported, they were kept in a room without Buddha statues for monks to chant sutras and achieve salvation.
Monks are also human beings and they also need to rest. At night, they rested, leaving only a young novice monk, fifteen or sixteen years old, looking at the coffin and keeping a symbolic vigil.
Sun Huang came to the door of the morgue room on Wednesday (the mortuary room cannot be closed), took a look inside, and found the young monk sitting cross-legged with his back to the door, his head lowered. , already dozing off.
Seeing this, the three of them just exchanged glances without saying anything. Huang Donglai took the lead and walked in; I saw that he used Qinggong to silently approach behind the other party and took a piece from his arms. The cloth dipped in the potion was placed over the other person's mouth and nose. At that time, the young monk lay down and fell unconscious.
Sun Yihe and Zhou Wu followed closely behind and also stepped through the door.
"Brother Huang, your medicine is pretty good." Sun Yixie joked in a low voice as soon as he came in, "Is it for picking flowers?"
"I'll pick your sister!" Huang Donglai He replied, "This is a genuine inhaled quick-acting sleeping pill produced by Huangmen. It has a secret recipe! Do you know the secret recipe?"
"Okay, you can also get me a pack of ten or eight packs another day. I don't sleep well either," Sun Yixie said.
"Get lost." Huang Donglai said, "If you don't sleep well, call me one day, and I will knock you out with a stick."
Huang Donglai still knows Brother Sun, in order to prevent brothers He went astray, so he firmly rejected Sun Yixie.
While they were saying these words, Zhou Wu on the side had already quickly opened the coffin lid (the coffin lid would not be nailed before burial).
After all, Zhou Wu is also the leader of Luzhou City. Even though he is not a top expert, his strength is not comparable to ordinary people; even Sun Yixie can use brute force to move his family's sarcophagus. As for the lid, it was no problem for Zhou Wu to open an ordinary wooden coffin.
“It’s still there.” After Zhou Wu opened the coffin, he glanced inside, and then he said this.
After hearing this, Sun and Huang stopped joking with each other. Instead, they both came to the coffin and looked inside.
Yes, it is indeed "still there" - the glass fish is still firmly held by the second wife of the Zeng family with both hands and covering her chest.
"Huh... Sure enough." After a little observation, Huang Donglai said with a smile, "The second lady was also poisoned to death." He paused and said eloquently, "She This kind of poison is called "Binding Immortal Suspense"; when this poison attacks, the person's heart and lungs will be like being tied up by a rope, making it difficult to pulse and breathe, leading to suffocation and sudden death in a short period of time; and the other side of this poison is The characteristic is that the "rigor mortis" phenomenon of the deceased will occur very quickly and severely, as if the whole body is 'tied up'... Therefore, as long as the glass fish is put into her hand shortly after her death, it will There is this illusion of 'dead people clinging to things'."
"Brother Huang Xian," Zhou Wu continued, "In this case, can we..."
"Of course." Huang Donglai knew what he was going to ask, so he answered directly, "Just force it."
"Huh?" Zhou Wu couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, "Is it that simple?"
"Nonsense, no matter how stiff it is, it's just skin and bones, not made of iron." Huang Donglai said, "Why can't it be broken apart?"
As he spoke, he reached into the coffin, and with a little force, he opened the second lady's hand.
Seeing Huang Donglai take out the glass fish so easily, Zhou Wu also smiled bitterly. Only then did he realize: In fact, in the past three days, as long as there is a bold person, , People who are not afraid of desecrating the deceased dare to break it off directly like Huang Donglai, and the fish will be taken out. Precisely because they are all afraid of ghosts and gods and believe in ghosts and gods, they take it for granted that the deceased is resentful and needs to find a monk to chant sutras and pray for salvation before she can let go of her hands.
Of course...if they really have the patience to wait like this, the hands will indeed loosen up when the rigor mortis time passes.
"Okay, done, let's go." Huang Donglai took out the glass fish, put it in his arms, and walked out.
Zhou Wu and Sun Yixie did not waste any time. They quickly walked to both ends of the coffin, one at the end and the other at the end. They took the opportunity to carry out the body of the second lady and followed them out...
…………
At three o’clock in the ugly hour, housekeeper Zeng Su was lying on the bed, tossing and turning, having nightmares one after another.
As the saying goes, a thief has a guilty conscience.
Although Zeng Su is already a habitual criminal with several lives on his hands, and his psychological quality is not bad, after all... he is not a professional killer, nor is he a member of the world. , he is just a butler of a wealthy family. In just half a month, a person cannot change so completely.
If things calm down this time, Zeng Su may be able to survive in another year and a half... By then, he will be used to this kind of thing.The mentality of living with human life on his back, but he is obviously not good enough now.
So, in his dream, everything was back to the beginning...
That day, the second wife of the Zeng family suddenly called him into the room, cried and questioned him When can he take himself far away?
Zeng Su was speechless.
The second wife of the Zeng family is thirty-two years old this year, and Mr. Zeng is sixty. It is said that the pear blossoms overwhelm the begonias. It is reasonable for this big family, with an old man and a young wife, to have such a thing happen. .
In fact, Zeng Su is not young, he is already forty-three this year, but compared to Master Zeng, he is still young and powerful.
The adultery between him and the Second Madam was well concealed. Apart from the person involved, only the Second Madam’s personal maid knew about it; at first, the maid was coerced and lured by them to help them fight. But as time went by, the maid became a grasshopper on a rope. After all, the deal was already done at that time. Once the matter was exposed, the adulterer would naturally go to the pig cage, and she, the maid, would definitely be punished. Beaten to death by his boss.
As long as they kept a low profile, they could continue to live like this. After Master Zeng died in a few years, they might be able to be bolder.
But the second lady is still young and has not accepted her fate... She has a pursuit, and she doesn't want to be so sneaky. She wants to get a group of Zeng family's young people and let Zeng Su run away with her.
As for Zeng Su, it’s not that he doesn’t have the courage, but he doesn’t have the brains—he doesn’t have such a stupid brain.
What are you thinking about? Zeng family, is that an ordinary family? Are you taking the master's second wife and running away? Can you run? Unless you can run out of Daojiangshan, you will definitely be captured.
Faced with the second wife’s repeated cries and threats, Zeng Su knew that this matter would be difficult to resolve, so he decided to... run away by himself.
He had already made a plan, so he left a letter to Mr. Zeng, saying that he was sorry for the Zeng Mansion, became greedy, and stole a hundred taels of silver from the cabinet. Because he had no face to see the master, he could only write it down. This letter then ran away, asking the master to remember the friendship for many years, not to report the official to pursue him, and let him go.
Zeng Su calculated it very accurately. This amount of money was neither too much nor too little. It was not so much that Mr. Zeng would have trouble letting go, and it was not so little that his escape seemed false.
When the time comes, he takes the money and flies away, and his life will not be a problem in the future, and the second lady can only stop thinking about it. If that woman really wants to make trouble again, she is just looking for death, and it has nothing to do with Zeng Su. .
Originally, he was ready to implement this plan, but unexpectedly... just the day before he was going to run away, he met a person.
That's a woman.
A "faceless" woman.
Every time she appeared in front of Zeng Su, she would have a different face.
Sometimes she is a graceful young woman, sometimes she is a hunched old woman, and sometimes she becomes a beautiful girl.
That day, this woman took the initiative to find Zeng Su; she knew martial arts and was good at talking.
She knew everything about Zeng Su, including Zeng Su’s affair with the second wife and Zeng Su’s plan to escape alone.
She told Zeng Su that she had a way to make Zeng Su stay in the Zeng Mansion as a housekeeper, and to make the second lady "shut up forever."
Zeng Su did not agree at first, but he soon discovered that the other party was not giving him a "choice", but threatening him...
And after being accused of Zeng Su did not hesitate for too long between the pig cage and killing the second wife and continuing to be the housekeeper of Zeng Mansion.
According to the woman's instructions, he placed the "glazed fish" at the appropriate time in a place where He Dahe Er often walked, deliberately letting them find and pick it up.
He cooperated with the woman to pretend to be a ghost, which frightened Zhao Daqiang.
He used the medicinal powder given by the woman to trick He Er out at night, knocked him unconscious, took the glass fish from him, and pushed He Er into the pond.
He put the woman's poison into the water that Zhao Daqiang drank, causing Zhao Daqiang to die.
Then, the woman pretended to be He Er's voice, put the glass fish in He Da's room, and pretended to be a ghost again to scare He Da; Zeng Su followed closely behind and brought the servants to rescue him. field.
He Da was too scared and told everything he saw and heard. Zeng Su used this as evidence to report to Mr. Zeng. He connected all the events before and after, and said, "glazed fish is an evil thing and attracts evil spirits." The "ghost" thing was confirmed, and the responsibility was put on the He brothers.
After that, He Da left the Zeng Mansion, and Zeng Su followed Master Zeng’s instructions and led people to bury the glass fish in the barren mountains.
But that night, he quietly went back and dug things back up.
After completing this, it is finally time to take action against the second lady; anyway, as long as the dead body has glass fish in its hands, the second lady's death will be attributed to the same nature as those previous "haunted incidents" .
After killing the second wife, Zeng Su told Zhou Captou all the "ghost stories" in front of all the government officials, thereby spreading the story to the streets.
On the other hand, after He Da left Zeng Mansion, he felt that things were strange no matter how much he thought about it; he was not interested in the truth, but was afraid that evil things would find him again, so he went to the pawn shop again. , I want to ask the pawnshop owner what happened to the glass fish.
But he didn’t know that the shopkeeper was also bribed by the woman, and he was just playing tricks.
As a result, He Da’s behavior brought about his own death. Zeng Su received the woman’s instructions and ran to the inn to find He Da. While talking to him, he quietly The tea was poisoned and he was successfully silenced.
At this point, Zeng Su already had four lives in his hands.
He was indeed not caught and kept his position as the housekeeper of the Zeng Mansion; he was not afraid of "Jade-Faced Flying Dragon Sun Honglei" and "Xudong"Old Immortal, Huang Xiaose", he only thought that they were charlatan sorcerers.
But Zeng Su was afraid of ghosts. He was afraid that there really were ghosts in the world, and he was afraid that those who were killed by him would come to seek his life. ; He is also afraid of that "shameless" woman, because he still doesn't know why the other party taught him all this behind the scenes.
Hiss—hiss—
The strange sound woke Zeng Su from his sleep.
He hesitated for a moment and confirmed that the sound was not an illusion. Then he quickly got up and lit the oil lamp on the table in the dark.
p>“Ah! "The moment the room lit up, Zeng Su was so frightened that he screamed.
Because he saw a glass fish on his table.
Hiss! ——Hiss——
The sound outside the door seemed to remind him that the fish was not the most terrifying thing.
Zeng Su turned his head dully and followed the sound towards the window. Looking around, he saw... a familiar female shadow standing there, as if looking at him through the window.
He recognized that it was the shadow of the second lady...
p>Actually, even if Sun and Huang didn't bring the second lady's body over today, and just randomly found a woman to stop there, Zeng Su would automatically think of her as two in this environment. Madam.
"Namo Amitabha, Namo Amitabha..." In extreme fear, Zeng Su retreated to the corner farthest from the door and window, closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to recite the only sentence he knew. Buddhist scriptures, praying that the ghosts would disappear because of this.
He thought too much...
After a few seconds, there was only a "cheep-"
His door was pushed open through a gap.
The housekeeper is also a servant, and the door of a servant is not allowed to be locked. It can be opened by pushing it from the outside...
In fact, Sun Yixie had already done it once when he quietly came in to release the glass fish, but Zeng Su hadn’t woken up at that time, so he didn’t know.
“Namo Amitabha! Namo Amitabha..." With the opening of the door, Zeng Su chanted sutras faster and faster, but he did not close his eyes again, because he was afraid that if he closed his eyes, he would not be able to see anything terrible. Danger is approaching.
Unexpectedly, after the door opened a crack, it suddenly became quiet outside, and the woman's shadow disappeared, as if everything just now was just an illusion...
If the glass fish on the table was not there, maybe Zeng Su would really start to wonder if it was just the wind.
Zeng Su felt a little relaxed in his heart. At that moment, suddenly! The second lady's head was tilted and she poked through the gap in the door, staring straight at Zeng Su with her unblinking eyes.