Xu Ziming tore off a corner of his clothes to cover his mouth and nose, gently pushed open the two wooden doors, and flashed into the door on one side.
There were more than 20 corpses covered in white cloth in the barren courtyard, and under the background of the dark night, the miserable white color was even more shocking, and Xu Ziming panicked.
Once upon a time, he was strewn with mutilated corpses, horrible shapes and distorted faces, and he should have been lying with them in that valley, but he survived, alone, and destitute in the twilight.
Xu Ziming shook his head vigorously, squeezing the painful memory out of his mind, he looked at the nearest corpse to him, walked forward and squatted down, and gently pulled up the white cloth covering it.
A woman's face met his eyes, her eyes slightly open, her eyeballs bulging, and there was unwillingness and fear in them.
There was a broken piece at the center of the eyebrows, which should have been pecked by the fish in the lotus pond, and the flesh inside was black and red, and it was emitting a rancid smell outward.
Xu Ziming's body shook, put the white cloth on her face again, and said in his mouth: "I have offended a lot, I hope to forgive me, but if you want to find out the real culprit, Xu can only do this, there is no other way." ” After speaking, he walked over to another corpse, trembling and lifted the white cloth on it, and when he saw a man underneath the cloth, he breathed a sigh of relief, and then, his body suddenly tightened, and he reached out and took out a short dagger from his waist.
He swallowed his saliva, kowtowed three times in front of the man, and said, "Offended," but when his body stood upright, he slammed his hand hard, and the belly of the man's corpse was cut open with a "swish".
A foul smell came out of the abdomen of the male corpse, Xu Ziming held back the nausea in his throat, stretched his hands into it, and groped carefully in the blurred flesh.
Suddenly, his hands froze, his face was terrified, and his already pale face was like a layer of hoarfrost, a little frighteningly white.
Oh, he slowly stretched out his hand from the abdomen of the male corpse, but between the two fingers of his right hand, there was an extra red thread.
Xu Ziming lowered his head and looked at the ordinary red line, which was less than a foot long, soaked in dark red by blood, although he added it between his two fingers, it was still gently twisting and struggling, and the end of the line was still upturned, like a snake that had been choked by seven inches.
Xu Ziming snorted lightly, threw the red thread to the ground, and poked it a few times with a dagger, breaking it into several pieces.
But the broken thread still didn't want to live in peace, and writhed desperately on the ground, like ugly maggots.
Seeing this, Xu Ziming stomped on the ground a few more times before they were completely quiet.
He gasped heavily, the muscles on his face twitched a few times, stared at the threads below, and muttered, "It turned out to be you, it turned out to be really you" The memories swept over, he closed his eyes, and his thoughts returned to the summer of thirty years ago, after the death of the disciple of the third lady, their family, according to the custom, should break his abdomen with a blade, take the stomach and cleanse it, and sew it with incense and salt alum, and sew it with colors; And he pierced the skin with a pointed reed, drained the blood of the anointed blood, and used gold and silver as a mask, and wrapped his hands and feet with copper wire, and then put it in a coffin and buried it.
Of course, this custom is not Han Chinese, but a burial custom only followed by Liao nobles.
Xu Ziming was not called Xu Ziming back then, his name was Xiao Lu, and he was a helper in the Liao Taiwei Mansion.
On that day, he heard that after the man had been disemboweled, a red thread crawled out of his stomach, and he writhed on the ground like a demonic possession, and he was so frightened that he fled in all directions.
Everyone said that the man was caught in the evil art, so he died so miserably, Xiao Lu also believed it, but even if it was evil magic, someone had to drive it, he thought of those eyes, those fierce eyes that were swallowed by the flames of revenge, and his heart was terrified.
Even if he later left the Taiwei Mansion and became a soldier in the army, he would still think of that person's eyes, so dark, so gloomy, like a dark river that could not see the sun all year round, unfathomable, and cruel.
It's just that this is Liaoyang, the territory of the Great Song Dynasty, although it was also disturbed by the war, but in the final analysis, it was just an ordinary small county town, why did that person come all the way here to kill people after many years?
Thinking of this, Xu Ziming couldn't help but shudder, he stood up tremblingly, but his heart was entangled: Do you want to tell Cheng Muyou the truth?
Tell him that his identity will be revealed, and if you don't tell him, will they be in danger in the face of this unknown enemy?
After thinking about it for a while, his little selfishness finally prevailed, so he made up his mind not to tell the matter.
He comforted himself: up to now, he only knows who is killing people, but he doesn't know how that person killed people, even if he tells the truth now, it won't play much role, it is better to remind Cheng Muyou to be more careful and not to act rashly.
Thinking like this, Xu Ziming felt a lot more comfortable, he put the white cloth on the corpse again, and tiptoed towards the courtyard gate, but as soon as he walked to the door, a gust of wind suddenly blew behind him, the wind blew so quickly and violently that the white cloth on the corpse crackled, and even more, the white cloth was rolled up entirely, like a ghost in the dark night, floating in the air for a while, and slammed on the ground.
Xu Ziming raised his head, he saw that the yellow moon with a rough edge had been covered by dark clouds, and the black clouds were still coming from afar, seeing that a heavy rain was about to pour.
"You have to leave quickly, if you get wet, you won't be able to explain it when you go back in a while."
Thinking of this, he pulled the door and was about to go out, but before his hand touched the door, he heard a small sound of footsteps outside, the sound was very small, but it was very fast, and it rustled on the ground, and only a very small child could provoke such a movement.
Xu Ziming didn't dare to move, put his face on the door panel, held his breath and listened carefully, but the questions in his heart were piling up higher and higher: How could there be children in this Liaoyang County Ya, and even if there were, why did they come out and run in the middle of the night?
But the sound was only for a while, and no matter how carefully he listened, it did not reappear, and it seemed as if it had run past the door, and then had been sucked into the darkness, and there was no trace of it.
Xu Ziming didn't dare to delay any longer, wiped the sweat from his forehead, pushed the door and walked out of the yard, sped up his pace and ran to the wall, turned over with great effort, and ran in the direction of the inn without looking back.
If he hadn't been in such a hurry, he should have noticed that the stench in the air was getting heavier and heavier, mixed with the smell of dirt, and it covered the entire county office.