The deceased's surname is Gao, and his name is Cheng. As it happens, I actually know this person because his daughter was my elementary school classmate.

  Gao Cheng is about the same age as my father, and like other villagers, he goes up and down the mountain, in the fields and at home. His family lives at the foot of Mao Cao Bay Mountain, with their gate facing the highway, so they inevitably greet others when coming and going, making him well-known in that area.

  The accident in Gaotai happened two days ago, when Cha Wenbin and I were on our way back from Gansu. At that time, all the rural areas used vegetable oil, which was made by pressing the seeds of their own oil crops after harvest. The smell was really good, now the edible oil is simply garbage compared to it. Gaotai was on his way back from making oil when the accident happened.

  The oil mill is in the town, and more than a dozen villages around it have to go there to press oil. They sell the vegetable seeds they harvested from their own fields to the oil mill, and the boss will give you an oil ticket. One hundred kilograms of vegetable seeds can be exchanged for forty kilograms of oil, which can be collected at any time with the ticket. Gaicheng is busy during the day, preparing for spring plowing, so the oil pressing work is done at night.

  The rural highway, which was still a dirt road at that time, had no streetlights. Within two kilometers down from the direction of Mao Cao Bay, there were no farmhouses. The roadsides were lined with chestnut trees as thick as water buckets. When we were young, we also went to pick up chestnuts over there.

  Gao Cheng had dinner and left, it was around 5 o'clock in the evening, the sky wasn't completely dark yet. From his home to the oil factory is a twenty-mile round trip, which takes an hour by bike. He brought two plastic bottles with him, each can hold ten kilograms of oil, he had oil tickets in his pocket and a flashlight on his body.

  The boss of the oil workshop said that he finished his work and went back home immediately, according to the time, he should have arrived near his home around 7 o'clock, but in fact, he didn't return home until the early morning of the next day.

  What happened during this time? The only clue is a hunter's testimony.

  The mountain behind Cao Cao Bay is high and densely forested, which was a relatively ideal hunting spot at the time. Wild boars and deer often appeared. At that time, the hunter decided to go up the mountain only after hearing the deer calling in the evening. In our place, there is a saying that if a deer calls in the evening, someone will die, similar to the meaning of an old owl calling for a funeral.

  The hunter was on the mountain at eight o'clock, walking along a small ditch between the mountains. At the waist of the mountain, he saw movement in the grass and initially thought it was prey, raising his gun to shoot before realizing it was a person, who turned out to be Gao Cheng.

  These two people knew each other but didn't have much of a relationship. Running into each other at this place late at night was just a coincidence, so they naturally greeted each other. The hunter spoke first.

  "What's wrong with you? I almost took you for a pig and beat you, luckily."

  Gao Cheng didn't respond, and instead smiled wickedly at the hunter from across the three or four meters of road.

  "Just like a clown in an opera troupe, his whole face was twisted." The hunter said to Cha Wenbin: "I was startled at the time and thought that he looked a bit strange, so I called out to him again."

  "What are you doing? Climbing up here so late at night, do you have a light?" The hunter saw that Gao Cheng was holding two oil lamps and nothing else, neither hunting nor just finishing farm work, and not even having any lighting.

  "It's visible." Gao Cheng's response was very soft and sharp.

  "Now that I think about it, his voice was a bit off, similar to a woman's. It's strange that I didn't notice at the time." The hunter continued: "I was very surprised at the time, it was so dark, how did he manage to climb up here? I thought he would go down the mountain, but after we met face-to-face, he just kept walking into the woods."

  "Didn't you catch up?" I asked.

  The hunter said, "No, it's not good to have many people when hunting deer. That thing is very startled. He went in that direction, so I had to change direction. However, the road he took was indeed the direction where the deer called at dusk."

  This was the only clue that night, and then it was the next morning in the yard, Gao Cheng's body was covered with a red silk quilt, this quilt is what is used to cover the corpse when buried after death, commonly known as: Red Shroud!

  Because his daughter and I were classmates, he agreed to go with Liu Lao Da to take a look. The people in the Gao family were crying hysterically, and Gao Cheng, who was lying on the door plank and had not yet been placed in a coffin for the funeral, was already dressed in his longevity clothes and shoes, with three layers of yellow mourning paper covering his face. The person in charge of the Gao family was Gao Cheng's older brother, and with the pillar of the family suddenly gone, the remaining mother and daughter were completely at a loss. Because Gao Cheng had died from a sudden loss of breath in the courtyard, the red funeral quilt on his body was particularly eye-catching, and everyone said that he had been possessed by an evil spirit.

  The biggest manifestation of those who were frightened to death was that their eyes were dull, they lost control of their bowels and bladder, their lips trembled and they couldn't speak clearly, fearing everything. All these symptoms were present in Gao Cheng before his death. After being discovered by his family members, he was carried into the house for less than a minute before he died, during which time he couldn't say a word, with both upper and lower lips trembling like a sieve.

  Later, Gao Cheng's brother invited Liu Lao Da to preside over the funeral because the death was unclear and he wanted him to calculate it. This Liu Lao Da is half-ignorant but still understands some superficial knowledge, after calculating, this is a big evil spirit, he himself is afraid of not being able to handle it, and if things go wrong, he will bring disaster upon himself, so he pulled in Cha Wen Bin to try.

  My classmate is called Gao Cai Feng, she was at the door giving a bow to the guests. It's been many years since we last met, but I could still recognize her at a glance. After I told her my intention, her family members just said that it's up to Master Liu to decide. We exchanged greetings, but actually, people outside had already started gossiping, more than half of them were here because they heard that Old Man Liu had arrived and wanted to see the commotion.

  In rural areas, people who die under the age of sixty, or less than a full cycle, are considered unlucky and died in vain. Most of them have evil spirits, so adults will warn children to stay away from such occasions.

  Outside, they were burning things, all the deceased's personal belongings, clothes, quilts and everything was going with the deceased. A pair of Liberation shoes covered in yellow mud at the door caught Cha Wenbin's attention.

  "What is this?"

  "My elder brother said: 'My family's brothers, he is the one who went out wearing this pair of shoes.'"

  Zha Wenbin picked up the shoe and took a look. The sole was covered with a layer of black soil, which gave off a strong stench when he brought it to his nose. The soil in this area was mostly yellow, so where did the black soil come from? It was rare to find such soil quality in the south, and the smell of death was unmistakable. Therefore, he inferred that Gao Cheng must have gone to the grave.

  "Is there a grave behind the mountain?"

  "There are many graves." The people who came to attend the funeral began to talk one after another: "The graves in Mao Cao Bay are layered, made of stone and mud, new and old, and it's unknown how many there are. The whole mountain is full of them. In those camphor forests, the big graves occupy about half an acre of land. The small earth mounds are connected one after another, too numerous to count. No one knows which dynasty they belong to, nor has anyone seen anyone visiting these graves."

  Indeed, as they say, Maocao Bay is the same as the historical era of the entire northwest Zhejiang. Since the Qin Dynasty, there have been written records here, and archaeological excavations have also unearthed a large number of Warring States noble tombs. However, the history here is as clean as the sky. What's missing is the memory of the past, but what remains is layer upon layer of mystery.

  Zha Wenbin and Liu Laodai are two kinds of Taoists, the former wants to know why, while the latter is just going through the motions. Zha Wenbin saw that Gao Cheng's death was suspicious, as a Taoist, he feared that there would be another Gao Cheng, a third Gao Cheng.

  "All things have spiritual nature, ghosts and spirits are no exception. If you can avoid them, don't encounter them; if you can cross over, don't collect them. But for those that harm human life, no matter how evil, they must be exterminated." This is the rule left by the ancestors of Tianzheng Dao, which Zhang Wenbin has always followed as a sect doctrine.

  Before leaving, Cha Wenbin went to the palm tree and picked some palm leaves to cover the face of Gao Cheng, who had died. It is said that doing so can prevent him from seeing the people around him, as it is believed that the dead are most afraid of resentment affecting the living.

  The weather was exceptionally good that day, and walking on the grassy bay felt like a leisurely stroll without any pressure. There were just two of us, me and Cha Wenbin, following that hunter, who took us to the place we saw the high city that day. It's a sunken valley with chestnut forests on both sides, and the direction of the high city should be on our right-hand side. The hunter said that mountain also has a place name called "Xianrenzang" (Fairy Burial).

  Why is it called Xianrenmu? Nobody can explain, some people say that there is a fairy buried on the mountain top over there. Anyway, the place names in rural areas generally have origins and will not be taken randomly. As soon as this was mentioned, Wenbin felt that there might be something to it.

  Climbing up the mountain valley really opened my eyes. What's an old grave? This is what a real old grave looks like!

  Under your feet, the stone you borrowed to climb, you lower your head, you raise your head, everywhere are tombs. Those broken green bricks are as wide as a chest, those fallen long stones are like children's building blocks, scattered all over the ground. On the layer of dry leaves left from previous years, stepping on them is like stepping on packages one by one, and there are countless half-exposed tombstones on the ground, which have been tightly wrapped in ivy and twigs for a long time, making it look like a filming location for a horror movie.

  "The twenty-four mountains are divided into five elements, with different orientations and opposing directions. Among them, the mysterious aperture transforms energy into form, and the dragon's pulse arrives at the palace to combine with the trigrams. No wonder so many people have chosen this land - in my opinion, this place is not inferior to Mount Meng, it's truly a treasured land."

  "Really?" Miao Shan I knew that, where almost the people buried from Xia Shang Zhou Dynasty to Qing Dynasty, from emperors to generals, were considered as the first Fengshui treasure land of China.

  "There's a similar yet different kind of ingenuity here, only this place is slightly smaller than Mengshan, but it's enough to hold its own. This Tianmu Dragon Vein still has dragon energy remaining, and this mountain happens to be located at the neck of the entire Southern Dragon, where the dragon turns its head to gaze, coincidentally fulfilling the principle of yin and yang mutual protection. The 'prosperity' here isn't without reason."