【Wine Ci】Ksitigarbha Statue

It was getting dark.There is a tower in the west of the city. There were several fires in Nara, and it was built three times. The flames of the last fire completely devoured the nearby houses and people who had no time to escape, but the tower was safe and sound.Gradually, rumors of evil spirits in the building spread, and the land near the tower in the west of the city was also regarded as unknown—the undead who died of long-term resentment due to the fire, and the monsters entrenched in the shadows. The accumulated dust, every spider thread in every corner of the wall, every shriveled plant, collapsed masonry, gloom, unknown and past death, all the lonely details are rooted into the deepest fear and nightmare of the people in this city .During the day, there are few people in the west of the city, and at night, even robbers and beggars dare not rest here.

There was a lit lantern hanging at the gate of the tower.

The firelight circled a boundary in the darkness, and the man's shadow swam silently from the darkness, climbed up the stairs, and traced back to the deeper darkness in the tower.There was no wind, but the lantern swayed and turned half a circle abruptly. Suddenly, two bright yellow eyes appeared on the dull and tattered red skin worn by the wind and rain. The treacherous eyes stared silently. Looking at the back of the ronin.This man looks like a pure ronin from all angles, wearing straw sandals, with his hair tied casually, with a knife and a wine gourd hanging on his shoulders, his clothes are shabby, and most of his strong chest is exposed; his expression is lazy, and his posture is common to all ronin Arrogant and supercilious.The only difference is that the man is carrying a sleeping child on his back.The child buried his head on the man's neck, and tightly grabbed the man's skirt with both hands; just such a small difference made the ronin very different.

A ball of fire floated down from the tower, suspended in mid-air for a moment, and turned into a child's face.The child whispered softly, "Lantern ghost, do you think he is a human or a ghost?"

"Whether it's a human or a ghost, it doesn't matter if you enter here."

Huoqiu - You Chizi giggled, "The kid he's carrying is a devil."

The lantern ghost wobbled and said, "That's a human being. If he comes out soon, he'll throw the devil here; if he doesn't come out for a long time, he'll just wait for the ghost market to trade the devil for something."

You Chizi twirled in the air: "It's so fun, it's so fun——"

A gust of wind blew over, and the two little monsters fell silent for an instant.You Chizi extinguished the fire and hid away, and the lantern ghost obediently closed his tongue and eyes, obediently making a shining lantern.

Sake go to the top floor.The wooden corridors and railings were already rotten. With one hand, he used his strength to jump up to the roof; the rotten wooden railing collapsed instantly under the force, and the moment Jiu Tun withdrew, he cracked and fell into the darkness .Shuten took the child off his back and sat cross-legged on the roof tiles.After switching positions, the child turned around anxiously in his arms and grabbed his neckline.Jiu Tun, dumbfounded, turned the child's face out and pinched his nose: "Hey, don't sleep, get up."

The child opened his eyes sleepily from a half-drunk, half-dream sleep.

The first thing he saw was Shuten's face.Jiu Tun glanced at him, then looked up to the front.He saw the contours and lines of Jiu Tun's jaw and neck, which were as quiet and smooth as the night.The child turned over and sat up, and saw a bright moon hanging in the sky.Shuten seemed to be looking at the moon—they were too high up.When he was in the village, the child also liked to climb to high places, just on the ridge with few trees, sitting there looking down, the village that accepted him, excluded him, whipped him and shouted at him looked like a small village. Toy.And it's the same now; the road divides the town into several pieces, and he can see the roof ridges, gray roof ridges, gray trees, and farther away are gray distant mountains and gray moonlight.

The wine swallowed the back of his head: "Are you sober?"

The child pursed his lips and ignored him.Jiu Tun just laughed: "Okay, Bonk Gourd is back again. It looks like he's sober." The man's lazy, casual voice sounded like dark gray clouds in the sky, "Now that I'm awake, let me show you what it is. Really ghost."

The child lowered his head and whispered, "Aren't you a ghost?"

"Since you know it, are you still so bold?"

The child quickly made a face at Shuten.Jiu Tun thumped his head: "Okay, what I'm showing you is completely different from my uncle. As for a half-ghost monster like you, I haven't seen many real monsters before. Do you dare to say boldly and say 'I don't want to be a ghost'?"

Hearing his words, the child seemed to have eaten something sour, his brows twisted and he became depressed.

"It's the Night Walk of the Hundred Ghosts." Jiu Tun said.The child subconsciously followed his gaze, looking into the vast and empty night.

It's like an open door.

Even the moonlight has been shrouded by dark clouds since midnight.The world was impenetrably dark for a moment, and the child stared in vain in the overwhelming night.The temperature of Jiu Tun's palm covered him, and the little monster couldn't see clearly.In the darkness that was reassuring as warm water, the little monster heard the sound of the wind, the sound of waka in the distance, the sound of flutes, bells—yes, bells.

"Look up." Jiu Tun's voice came over, like a hot and humid wind on the water in summer.

Hundred ghosts at night—ghosts, miasma, undead, chaotic obsession, this is the carnival of all the ghosts and monsters that were born from all the dark sides of the world and crawled out of the underworld.

A huge procession is walking on the street.

In the front is a bell-carrier almost as tall as a house. It is completely black, but its eyes are red in the hair.A cloud of black mist made up of several skulls flew far and near in the sky.The children could hear their high-pitched laughter as they emerged from the shadows and reintroduced into the obscure mist.This miasma-wrapped team is getting closer and closer.A blue worm with a human head crawled across the sandy ground, its jointed limbs rubbing against the ground, making a bone-numbing sound; a woman in a cherry-colored kimono hung her head down at the end, and a blue-faced, fangs-and-one-horned ghost grinned grinningly from behind her. Rolling over, the woman's neck stretched suddenly, like a snake stretched from the end of the line to the air half way across the street, grinning.

The child stared at the white fangs and opened his eyes wide.

"Oops, a kid—"

A fiery temperature brushed his cheek.The child turned his head suddenly, and saw a skinny, wrinkled face floating in the night sky very close to him, with white hair scattered in all directions, red flames surrounding it, and its cold eyeballs froze. Staring at the child intently, he squeezed out a half-hearted smile.

"Child, do you want grandma's candy—oh, this is actually a devil..."

In the middle of the conversation, it suddenly seemed to be scalded by something, and it fell away like a deflated ball.With a smile on the corner of Jiu Tun's mouth, he rested his arms idly on the raised knee and nodded a little, lazily said: "Things that don't have eyes, my uncle dares to tease."

The little monster turned around and asked, "What is that?"

"Grandma Huo." Jiu Tun replied lazily, "There are some old and useless old women among human beings who were discarded on the mountain and died, and the resentful spirits were condensed into this thing."

"What about that?" The child pointed to the other side.

"Corner wash. Fusangshin created by throwing away unused basins, likes to eat human faces."

"Over there...?"

"Tang Umbrella Monk, Ancient Cage Fire, Sanwei, Bai Rongyi. They are all Fu Sangshen. You are so curious, huh?"

The child fell silent.The ghosts in the night are as frightening as the night.He looked at it for a while, and then asked suddenly: "Do people always throw away things that are useless?"

"Ok?"

"Fu Sangshen are all monsters turned from discarded things, right?"

Jiu Tun looked at him, as if he had expected what the child would say.

"But I'm not useless." There was no reply, but the child still said as if talking to himself, "I'm strong and powerful. Maybe I was weak when I was born, but I'm very strong now. Put I lost it, they must be stupid."

Jiu Tun said coldly: "Even if you get what you want, if you don't become a little monster, you won't be able to survive after being discarded."

The child pursed his lips and asked, "Will the lost child become a monster like grandma?"

Jiu Tun sneered: "Almost. Is there any difference between becoming a ghost after dying or becoming a ghost while alive?"

"I'm not going to die." The child said firmly, "I'm living a good life now. I'm living a good life, so I can insist that I don't turn into a ghost."

Jiu Tun's expression turned cold for a moment.He rubbed his temples, partly as if to comfort himself, but also as if admonishing the ignorant little monster: "What do I tell you about this now. Who knows when you will change your mind and start stubbornly wanting to be a monster." King of Ghosts He flipped down the roof with agility, stood firmly in the tall building, leaned out halfway and said to the child, "Jump down, I'll follow you."

The little monster lay on the roof and looked into the floor.He climbed down the eaves with one hand and jumped down, but Jiu Tun didn't catch him, the child purposely jumped in the wrong direction, and landed firmly beside Jiu Tun, grinning at Jiu Tun.

The dilapidated and dilapidated building was bustling like a different world.The child held Shuten's fingers and followed behind him, looking left and right at this place that changed its appearance almost instantly.There are people sitting on both sides covered with dust, gray-robed people wearing wide bamboo hats whose faces cannot be seen clearly, or just a civet cat lazily holding wine.The doors were all open, and the fireflies with a faint blue light flew from one end of the room to the other; a spider thread hung from the eaves, and the spider that fell down in the next moment turned into a charming woman with a smile. Yingying bowed to the ronin who was transformed into Shuten, and went to another room lightly.

"Ghost market." Jiu Tun told the child, he seemed a little careless, "It's been this way for a long time. I promised another friend to go shopping with him before, but I didn't expect to go shopping with him first. It’s you and the one who fulfilled the agreement. Drinking is also—well, it’s not considered that my uncle has missed the appointment, after all, there is no difference.”

The child saw a person wearing a mask half squatting on the side passing by, negotiating with a red-haired woman half kneeling on the ground with her hands holding her wings.The child took a second look and asked Jiu Tun, "Are there human beings in the ghost market?"

The Ghost King laughed and said, "How do you know he is human?"

The child couldn't speak for a while, then he heard Jiu Tun say: "It's indeed a human. It's too boring to come to the ghost market only with ghosts. There are often mage onmyojis who come here to buy goods. The business here is exchanged—— He suddenly stopped, looked the child up and down, "You devil, enough for my uncle to drink a year's worth of good wine."

The little monster was taken aback, and suddenly raised his head to look at Jiu Tun, and he was relieved when he saw the other party's half-smile, which was clearly a joke.He tugged at Jiu Tun's sleeve, and said angrily, "Don't scare me with this."

Ghost King laughed.After laughing, he said: "I exchange a year's good wine for you, and I will lose."

The child got angry with him: "You will trade me for more than a year?"

Jiu Tun pondered for a while, then laughed again after a while.His smile suddenly looked good, and the child stared at him in a daze, and saw Jiu Tun bent down, and whispered in his ear: "I keep you, because there are excellent wines to drink every day. This business , no matter how much you give, you will lose."

On the side, a short, gray-haired old woman leaned on a cane and was talking about a white human bone in her hand.No other goblins were listening to her, but the old man didn't seem to care about the audience either.She seemed to be chanting what should be chanted, to herself and to that bone.This bone is strangely long, with sharp bony spurs.The child stopped, and Jiu Tun also folded his arms and waited.

"...The family is in ruins and she is alone. This woman can only find her lover who has not returned for a long time. In the world where bandits are roaming around, a woman who is alone on the road is naturally bullied; She didn't want to die. The bandit dragged her back to the village, and she saw at a glance that the head of the bandit's den - holding another woman in love, was her husband. After the woman died in despair, only a pile of Bones, obsession and resentment have never dissipated. The bone in the old man's hand is the hand bone that the bone girl left behind when she was lingering with her husband when she was a skeleton. This is delusion, greed, lust, resentment And the love that has not yet dissipated——all the most extreme obsessions are condensed on this bone..."

Seeing the child staring at him motionless, Jiu Tun asked him, "Want?"

The child stared at Jiu Tun for a while with his dark eyes, then looked to the other side under the old woman's feet, and he whispered, "I want that."

It is several golden copper bells strung together by a string of red ropes.Jiu Tun picked it up and weighed it in his palm.He glanced at the child, and the little monster was looking at him anxiously.Jiu Tun's mood was a bit inexplicable; the string of copper bells on Ibaraki's feet was also given to him casually.He seemed to be interested in the jingle itself.

Jiu Tun called to the old woman: "Hey, Huo Xiaopo, this bunch of things—"

"It came from the iron mouse, and it is useless as a magic weapon."

Shuten poured a drop of wine from the wine gourd in exchange for the string of bells.After thinking for a while, he went to the man who had negotiated with Yin Moluo before, and exchanged for him a few feathers in Yin Moluo's hand, and asked for a clean jade pendant in his hand, and tied the jade pendant to the jade pendant with a chain. The bells were strung together and hung around the children's necks.

The child was very happy, raised his head and said to Jiu Tun: "This way, when I approach you, you will know it's me."

Ibaraki also said something similar - after all, it was a person, Shuten patted the child's head with complicated emotions.

Huo Xiaopo started to chatter about another thing over there.It was a cracked statue of Ksitigarbha, with moss growing on the incomplete stone sculpture. I don’t know how many years it has been broken, how long it has been lying in the soil and grass, and unconscious insects crawled over it, and then it was dug up. He took it out and put it in front of the monster—it was ironic.

"This kind of thing that gathers the power of human thoughts is not a real Buddha, but a stone statue, but it is also particularly terrifying." Huo Xiaopo murmured slowly, "Thousands of human beings have knelt in front of this stone statue and prayed for years. Talking about it for many months, their desires, sorrows, pains, and momentary joys are all shared with it. If they bear too many emotions, the Ksitigarbha image will be shattered—even if it is shattered, the power of thought still remains. It exists. This power of thought is too powerful, maybe it is easy enough for them to reverse time and change time and space..."

Shuten stopped suddenly.His aura was too terrifying, the surrounding air seemed to be stagnant, and the faint blue fireflies fled one after another. The area soon became dark, and Jiu Tun's piercing gaze was as sharp as a blade.

"—reverse time?"

He spoke hoarsely.