??

  The pattern on the ground was very peculiar, Ye Qiu restored it according to the candle holder's shape, a headless woman with her hands holding up a tray and kneeling on both knees...

  "Come on, follow me back!" As soon as he finished speaking, Cha Wenbin turned his head and walked back hastily. Pangzi saw how anxious he was and thought that Cha Wenbin was going to the cave again, which made him extremely happy. He gave Ye Qiu a thumbs up and said: "You're still the best, you can just use a tree branch to stir up some trouble on the ground and get him under control."

  What are these two patterns? The first diagram, Cha Wenbin didn't understand it either, but the second candle holder understood at a glance, that thing is called "Female Ugly"!

  So where did he turn back and go? Was it really what Baozi thought, that Baozi was disappointed because he went straight to Lao Xia's house.

  As soon as he entered the door, Wen Bin asked: "Sixth Uncle, I heard you mention before that people often come to ask for rain in this area, is that true?"

  "Yes, in previous years when there was a severe drought, people from other places would come to pray for rain. There were dozens of them, all from Anhui province, I heard. Why are you asking this?"

  "Do you know any of them?"

  "This is really unknown." Xia Laoliu recalled those people who came to ask for rain, only knowing that they seemed to be from Anhui, but where exactly and what kind of people they were, no one knew. Xia Laoliu continued: "It was last year, wasn't it a severe drought last summer? Another group of people came, when our family's old master was still alive, he could explain clearly. Those people were all bare-shouldered, with the young man in front carrying a wine jug on his back, said to have walked from the place where they asked for rain, all the way to Longtan Mountain..."

  People who come to Hongcun to pray for rain are all from the same place, but no one knows exactly where they come from. Many people speculate that they may be the original inhabitants of Hongcun. They sing songs that no one can understand along the way, with various offerings and colorful flags. They won't talk to passersby or stay overnight anywhere. After arriving at the destination, they begin a tedious ritual, the climax of which is throwing a rooster into a deep pool of water. Xia Laoliu described it vividly: "If you want to know more, I can take you to find Old Lu inside. He's the best swimmer and every year when those people come to throw in the rooster, he dives down to retrieve it and takes it back to eat."

  "In the end, that gourd will be filled with water." Old Lu was also an interesting person who liked to drink. Cha Wenbin specially brought two bottles of wine to chat with him. Once he opened his mouth, it was unclear what was true and what was false. He patted Cha Wenbin's arm and said: "Young brother, you haven't seen it with your own eyes, have you? When they put that gourd on the shore, they would chant scriptures. I saw with my own eyes how the water in the pool slowly climbed up along the gourd until it was full. Those people then went down the mountain. The strong man carrying the gourd had deep scars on his shoulders and walked with great difficulty. It's said that the water in the gourd is the rainwater given to them by the Dragon King. As long as they can carry it home and pour out the water, it will immediately start raining. It's really effective."

  "Is it really that amazing?"

  The old man looked at the fatty with disdain and said, "Hey, you little guy, don't you know that those people come here every year? They're really capable of enduring hardships, walking barefoot, not bringing anything to eat or drink, and even carrying a woman wrapped in white cloth. I wonder how that girl can bear it."

  "Women?" This information was very important to Cha Wenbin, he hastily asked: "Uncle, what happened to those women later?"

  Old Lu said with a wave of his hand: "I don't know, they won't let us look. There are people blocking the way outside, muttering to themselves and looking very fierce."

  After saying goodbye to Old Lu and then to Old Xia, Cha Wenbin finally returned home with a heart full of worries. Now it's Fatty's turn to get anxious, what are you doing... I've taken off my pants, and you're showing me this? No way! Fatty hastily ran to the front of Cha Wenbin and blocked his path: "Master Cha, please give us some instructions, when can we go down again?"

  Cha Wenbin glared at the fatty and said, "Going down now is equivalent to seeking death! If Ye Qiu hadn't been there that day, do you think you could have come back? You don't even know what that thing is, yet you dare to go down. Autumn told you it's dangerous, but you didn't listen. You must figure out who those people are who are praying for rain, otherwise, if you rashly enter, there's a possibility you won't be able to come out."

  Fatso was puzzled: "What does this have to do with those people?"

  "Do you know what that candle holder is called? It's called a female ugly! I kind of understand why the girl we met that day couldn't leave even after all those years, she was actually used as a sacrifice by the priest."

  What is a female ugly? Cha Wenbin has read ancient books, and in the Western Wilderness of Shan Hai Jing, it is recorded: The corpse of a female ugly, born for ten days, was killed by heat. In the north of her husband, she covered her face with her right hand. Ten days later, the female ugly lived on the mountain.

  What does it mean? It says that between the mountains and the sea, there was once a small country unknown to people called Husband Country. In its northern mountain top, the corpse of Female Ugly was imprisoned. Female Ugly was the witch of that country, who covered her face with her right sleeve every day, blocking the sunlight on her head.

  The heavenly god was killed, and the group of witches came to rescue him, but ultimately failed, and he died. As a female witch, the female clown performed a sacrificial dance that provoked the god who killed the heavenly god, inviting the ten suns to come out. The ten suns shone fiercely in the sky, surrounding the mountain top where the sacrifice was held, and the female clown's physical strength was exhausted, gradually dying, her corpse unable to leave for years, covering her face and staying on the mountain top waiting for the ten suns to depart.

  The "Shan Hai Jing" records many things that sound absurd, but the female ugly in folklore is closely related to a very important ritual activity of praying for rain. Cha Wenbin once saw a very strange record of praying for rain, which was also found in Ma Su's collection of ancient books. It said that in a very secretive small country, there existed a very cruel ritual ceremony.

  When the sky is dry and doesn't rain, a female ugly person will come out to ask for rain, and the process is very scary. These female uglies are all selected by the clan leader when they were very young, these women must be beautiful in appearance, after being chosen, they are all locked in dark rooms without windows, illuminated with mouse oil lamps and fed with rice used to sacrifice to the mountain god.

  The girl must be at least thirteen years old, and when the time of sacrifice comes, in the dead of night at three o'clock, she is led to a secret altar with her eyes covered with red cloth. The shaman strips off the girl's clothes, leaving only the eye mask on, and smears centipede blood all over her body. As the centipede blood gradually congeals, it tightly pulls on the skin, causing great pain.

  The sorcerer then puts a mature cobra into the woman's lower body, this snake is good at absorbing the woman's virgin blood, and when it comes out, its whole body is green. The woman will also faint from pain. The sorcerer then uses heavenly water to revive the woman, uses bamboo to carve a spell called "Shi Yu Jue" on the woman's body, applies sulfur and secret medicine on top, and that's the end of this segment.

  By the next day at noon, under the scorching sun, with extremely fast speed, pulling open the woman's eye mask, her eyeballs would instantly rupture, and after the blood in her eyes had congealed, it would react with the sulfur, centipede blood, and secret medicine on her body, burning her to death.

  When dying, the woman's abdomen is cut open and a snake is put inside before being sewn up again. She is then dressed in green clothes and placed in a specially made coffin with spells carved on it. The coffin is buried at the "gate of death" according to the eight trigrams, and nine cows and nine deer are slaughtered at this location. After reciting incantations for three days, one can begin to pray for rain.

  This is a record of ancient books. When Ling Zhengyang collected these things, he also made notes, and each book would indicate where it came from. Only this article recorded various cruel witchcraft books that could not be traced back to their source. At first, Cha Wenbin read such books as stories. Until one day, when he went to Hongcun to attend elementary school, he personally saw a group of people praying for rain. At that time, the children were hiding on both sides of the road, looking at the novelty. At that time, he gradually understood that the stories recorded in the ancient books had evolved into the rituals of later generations. The overly bloody parts may have been simplified, but they do not represent their disappearance.

  So when Ye Qiu drew the candle holder, Cha Wenbin's first reaction was ugly girl, and then thought of the rain-seeking team he had seen as a child and went to find Xia Lao Liu immediately.

  That night, Cha Wenbin did not return home but went to the town. He sent a telegram to Gu Qinghe who was far away in America. The next morning, the telegram was transmitted back, asking him to go to the provincial city to find a teacher with the surname Leng. There, Cha Wenbin got some legends about his husband's country.

  Leng Lao introduced: "The husband country described in the 'Shan Hai Jing' has never been clearly located, and historians have different opinions about its existence. Some people found a passage in the 'Biao Di Zhi' edited by Han Tang Dili Shu that reads: Emperor Yin Da Wu sent Wang Meng to pick herbs from the Western Queen Mother, where he ran out of food, ate wood fruit, wore wood skin, and lived without a wife for his whole life. He had two sons born from his back, which became the husband country. It is 20,000 miles away from Yumen."

  It was during the Shang Dynasty that King Meng was sent by the king to Queen Mother of the West to collect the elixir of immortality. Later, he ran out of food and got stranded halfway, so he could only eat fruits from trees, wear tree bark, and live in a desolate mountain. He never had a wife his whole life, but Heaven pitied him for having no descendants, so while he was asleep, two sons jumped out from between his ribs. After the birth of his sons, King Meng passed away. His sons also gave birth to their next generation using this method, and all of them were males. Gradually, there were more and more men in that place, forming a country called Husband's Country. This Husband's Country was over 20,000 li away from the Jade Gate at that time, so according to the Han Dynasty's one li being approximately equal to 400 meters, it would be at least 8,000 kilometers away, which is already beyond our modern borders. However, ancient people often exaggerated and did not have the ability to accurately calculate long distances, so there was a debate among historians about this place, with some saying it was in the northwest of present-day Xinjiang, while others said it was in the south, in the Zhejiang-Anhui region.

  Provide pop-up window full text online, update speed faster article quality better, if you think the web is good just share this site more! Thank you for your support readers!

  High-speed premiere of the last Taoist 2 latest chapter, this chapter is the address if you think this chapter is not bad please don't forget to recommend it to your QQ group and Weibo friends!