"Find that person!" This was the last thing Cha Wenbin said before he went to sleep that night.

  I don't know who he was looking for, but I knew the impact of this matter had far-reaching consequences and was spreading everywhere. It was a relatively closed era at that time, and rumors about ghosts were passed down through word of mouth. This person's mouth would inevitably lead to information leakage and exaggeration when speaking out. As a result, it was later rumored outside that seven people died in Hongcun Village overnight, and another seven died the next night. The whole village was in an uproar, with everyone who could run away fleeing.

  Cha Wenbin is on fire, and everyone is talking about this person. Some people describe him as an old man with a goat beard, some say he is the reincarnation of Zhang Tian Shi, and others say he came from Sanqing Mountain to exorcise demons and evil spirits. In short, there are all sorts of rumors, and in the end, even stories about him flying through the sky and turning beans into soldiers were described in vivid detail.

  The next day, on the way to Zhuangyuan Village, we sat in a rickety minibus. Zhuangyuan Village is located within Anhui Province, and at that time, the provincial highway at the border of Zhejiang and Anhui was still a mountain road. The minibus had to climb over the Tianmu Mountains, which are over 1,000 meters above sea level. It had snowed those few days, and the road was not easy to walk on. If it weren't for the good business during the first month of the year, I reckon we wouldn't have even been able to find a vehicle.

  We two squeezed into the last row, and that day my dad also followed, saying he wanted to go over and take a look, after all, it's always good to have some relatives and friends.

  "Haha, Cha Ye, why don't we open a shop and put up your nameplate? We can charge 50 yuan for fortune-telling, 200 yuan for Feng Shui, 300 yuan for Yang house, and 500 yuan for Yin house. What do you think?"

  "Now that we've got the fat guy, this matter is nothing between us two. How could that thin-skinned root of yours possibly handle that kind of business?"

  Cha Wenbin just smiled and didn't answer. This time going to Zhuangyuan Village was his idea, he wanted to go take a look at the ancestral hall I mentioned.

  Zhuangyuan Village, the name is not in vain. This remote village in southern Anhui requires a transfer to a medium-sized bus and then a small bus, finally taking a tricycle. It took more than four hours to cover over 100 kilometers.

  At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jin army broke into Bianjing City and took away Huizong and Qinzong. The Zhao family of the Song Dynasty moved their capital to Lin'an, which is now Hangzhou, and established the Southern Song Dynasty. Zhou Ziyuan, a scholar of the Jixian Hall in the Northern Song Dynasty, thought that since the emperor had been taken captive, the Southern Song Dynasty was isolated in Hangzhou, indulging in drinking and pleasure every day, with poetry and music flourishing, as if it were a prosperous era without chaos.

  Zhou Ziyuan, a scholar of the imperial court, was an advisor to the emperor. Unable to bear the actions of the Southern Song Dynasty's emperor, he resigned and returned to his hometown. Knowing that the emperor had a heavy heart, he imitated Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Spring and brought his family to southern Anhui, where he built a village, established a private school, and made a living by farming and teaching.

  This village was extremely famous during the Ming and Qing dynasties, with four zhuangyuan emerging one after another. During the Qing dynasty, someone from this village was appointed as a first-class scholar of the imperial court. In the 20th year of Kangxi's reign, Emperor Kangxi heard that the villagers were quite cultured and had produced so many talents, so he sent someone to bestow upon the scholar a stone archway with four large characters: "Learning has no bounds!" And bestowed upon the local place name: Zhuangyuan Village!

  The village was built around the mountain, it's a place with seven mountains, two rivers and one field. When we went there, the plaque on the gate at the entrance of the village with Kangxi's inscription had already disappeared. It is said that it was smashed by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. It has been almost ten years since I last came here. My father inquired about it and found my uncle-in-law's home, his name is Zhou Bocai. Presumably, the family originally hoped he would be knowledgeable and talented, but didn't expect him to end up like this.

  His house is easy to find, that big mansion is still majestic today, although it has been occupied by a few people, but after all, it was the home of a wealthy family in the past. The camel that starved to death is bigger than a horse, and at first glance, the lotus stone carving on the corner of the wall made two eyes shine brightly.

  "Oh my, the stuff here is so valuable that if you were to take some of it to Guangzhou, those Hong Kong people would go crazy. It's really a waste, these are all stone carvings from the Southern Song Dynasty. What? You're telling me that person is actually a current university scholar?"

  I nodded and said: "Yes, university scholar, if it were now, that would be the emperor's secretary."

  The fat man crouched in the corner, his saliva almost dripping out: "That's definitely a product of the official kiln, and this craftsmanship is at least from the imperial court at that time. I saw a similar stone pedestal in the Hangzhou Museum last year, which was said to be left over when the Southern Song Dynasty Imperial Street was excavated."

  I lifted one foot and kicked him in the butt: "Don't drool all over the place at the sight of anything, look at your behavior, you're so shameless."

  The fatty patted the dust off his body, stood up and scolded me: "You don't know anything, this thing is worth more than ten of your broken TVs put together! You deserve to spend your whole life selling junk!"

  "Hey, hey, you learned to sell junk from me too, and you're still a master of junk. This quarrel will pass, but business is still to be done. If Fatty found treasure, I'd still complain about having too much money?"

  I whispered in Fatso's ear: "I'll tell you, this kind of thing is all over the place here. If we really have an idea, let's think about it for a while?"

  The fat guy flashed a big white tooth and said to me in Henan dialect: "Zhōng!"

  My maternal uncle Zhou Bo's home is located in the corner of the village, although the location is not ideal, but that piece of land is the best in the village. In mountainous areas, building a house has several key elements: first, it must have good sunlight, as the sun rises late and sets early in the mountains. My uncle's home is situated at the highest point in the entire village, facing south and sitting north, so during winter, the first ray of sunlight that enters the village will definitely shine directly into his living room.

  The second one has a flat terrain, this piece of land is as big as half a football field, the house only occupies one-third of it, and the remaining two-thirds are their own private land, with an open view, even Cha Wenbin couldn't help but praise it as a good place.

  It's a good place, with good feng shui. Good feng shui can gather energy, and when the energy is strong, the family will be prosperous too. Logically speaking, such an unfortunate event shouldn't have happened to his household. When we went there, as soon as the villagers heard that we were going to Zhou Bocai's house, they would immediately shut their doors and refuse to talk to us. In the end, we had to find a little kid to show us the way.

  The wreaths scattered all over the ground at the entrance indicated that there had been a funeral here not long ago. The originally white snowy ground was also in disarray, with all sorts of colorful things everywhere. The door was closed, and it's said that my aunt fled in fear overnight.

  Why run away?

  Hey, I'm telling you!

  The neighbor next door to my maternal uncle's house was someone my dad knew, and he told us about what happened that day.

  My wife's uncle, Zhou Bo, has just died. He and his elder cousin died almost at the same time, both in the first month of the year, so they can't hold a funeral. According to custom, he should be kept at home, which means carrying him to bed and covering him with a quilt, pretending he's asleep. In fact, everyone knows, but no one wants to go to his house to help during the first month, it's unlucky.

  It's said that after we started dealing with the funeral arrangements on our side, this side also hesitated a bit. To say it's strange is indeed quite strange. The weather was so cold that if you stuck your five fingers out for half a minute, they'd freeze like carrots. The dead body should have been kept at home just like in an icebox, and during this time when even a piece of pork wouldn't go bad after being left in a jar for a week, the corpse actually started to stink!

  My uncle-in-law died by falling into a cesspit, and when he was fished out, they had to use tap water to rinse him for over an hour. Logically speaking, even if he was dead, it should have been drowning, and there would be some stench. But my uncle-in-law allegedly had all seven orifices emitting yellow liquid, which was completely different from the smell of feces, and very much like the smell of rotting pork in summer, unbearable to smell.

  Several elders at home counted together, and it's so smelly that people can't stay alive. Let's hurry up and bury it. Fortunately, the old Zhou family still has a few thin faces in the local area. It turns out that this is also a family affair, and they are all descendants of Zhou University Scholar back then. Every household has some kind of kinship. By asking people to talk about their relationships from door to door, this matter was settled.

  On the evening of the third day of the first month, people were still in the house when a newly painted coffin was delivered. There was an undertaker in their village who was responsible for dressing the body. During the day, several women covered their noses and pulled Zhou Bo into the wooden bucket to wash him all over, and it is said that they also applied some snowflake cream used by women's families to cover up the smell.

  The scene was strange. Originally intended to open the coffin and bury it, but unexpectedly, when entering the house, hey, the corpse disappeared without a trace.

  This is great, just a moment ago more than ten pairs of eyes were staring at the corpse that was sent into the house an hour ago after being washed clean, and now it's gone during the time they were eating together to help out?

  It's hard to say how this thing got so weird.

  The corpse, he was still wearing his funeral clothes and hadn't even finished dressing. The banquet for the funeral had been divided into several rounds. After the funeral procession returned, that round was considered the main wine, and the previous few rounds were just helping with the feast. At the beginning of this helping feast, the person in charge of dressing the corpse was called out to drink. He thought it would be fine to come back after drinking, so he only put pants on the corpse, and the clothes were still laid out on the bed.

  Take a look inside the house, hey, the clothes are gone! Ask around again, no one has entered before, it's impossible for the dead person to wear and run away by himself. The even more bizarre thing is that a pair of shoes placed beside the bed also disappeared without a trace.

  Everyone panicked, this matter must be made public, and if someone dies, their body must be seen!

  The young and strong men in the village were immediately called together, several hunting dogs were led into the house to sniff out the scent and then rushed out. That night happened to be a heavy snowfall. A string of footprints outside the house was very strange, attracting everyone's attention.

  Those footprints alternated between front and back, but only half of the shoe print was left, with no heel, leaving only the sole.

  At that time, the clever people rushed back home and closed their doors and windows. Those who didn't know continued to carry flashlights and torches, wandering around. The hunting dogs stopped in front of the ancestral hall and barked incessantly. This made everyone difficult, as this ancestral hall was not always accessible. Every month on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar calendar, the ancestral hall could be opened to the public, allowing descendants to go in and burn incense for worship. At ordinary times, the gate was tightly closed, which was a rule left by the village of Zhuangyuan for thousands of years.

  The key is only one, in the hands of the clan leader. The door is locked, but there are indeed footprints at the entrance.

  The clan leader was over 80 years old, and with the support of several elderly men, he slowly opened the door, scolding "unfilial son" as he pushed it open. He fell to the ground on the spot, and it is said that he didn't even have time to gasp for breath before his spirit left him.

  "Dead?" Cha Wenbin furrowed his brow upon hearing this.

  That neighbor said: "It's true, he died on the spot. The old clan leader originally had heart disease, and seeing that scene would have scared him to death."

  The fat boy listened with relish, knocking on the melon seeds and perking up his ears: "How's that?"

  That man said this when even the whiskers on his mouth were about to turn up: "What! Zhou Bo is standing right inside! I saw it with my own eyes, he was standing next to the incense burner in the courtyard. When the old clan leader fell, one of our militia comrades raised his hand and fired a shot, hitting Zhou Bo's chest, that's how he fell..."