manynovel Chapter 294: Shocking Everywhere
Chapter 294: Shocking Everywhere
Chapter 294: Shocking Everywhere
In the midsummer evening, when the familiar night gradually falls, lights are lit up one after another along the Chongyang River, like flowing paint. In the distance, the Chong'an Bridge spans the river, carrying the colorful light strips flowing on the bridge, which also creates a unique scenery among the vast mountains.
In a milk tea shop downstairs in Yintai Garden on Huandao East Road, a man who looked like a student was holding up two cups of jasmine milk tea and waving at a tall girl standing alone across the street. Then, taking advantage of a brief gap in the traffic, he successfully came to the girl's side and stuffed the milk tea and straw into her hand without saying a word.
"Tell me quickly, what's the matter with you asking me to come out after dark?"
The girls seemed to deliberately maintain a friendly distance, even though the boys' behavior could be considered ambiguous.
The boy chuckled, grabbed his hair and looked at the other person, his face mostly showing cunning, mixed with a little bit of relief for having foreseen the situation. He pointed to a small path on the side and said.
"I called you out alone, of course it's something important - do you want to see something great that no one else has seen?"
The girl looked at the other person unkindly and dodged slightly.
Although the two were in the same history department, they were not in the same class. Even if their course selections overlapped, they rarely had any interactions. It was only during the summer vacation of their junior year that they ran into each other by chance.
Those who signed up for this summer course would form groups of three or four, with each group responsible for a village or brigade, and go around collecting valuable materials from the area. Of course, since the materials in each place include many types, such as inscriptions, temples, and family trees, some people would copy inscriptions, some would interview, and some would shamelessly go to the villagers' homes to borrow family trees.
The group they are in now is responsible for copying the inscriptions.
Today, during the day, their team braved the temperature of 37 or 38 degrees to climb mountains and cross ridges to find a three-meter-high water conservancy stele from the Jiajing period that the villagers talked about. When the stele was discovered, it had been smashed into four or five pieces and used to pave the road in the mud. Although the content recorded on it was simple, it involved the flood and drought disasters in the local area in those years and was quite valuable to collect. Considering that the text was lost, the team leader happily told everyone to copy the stele quickly.
The so-called copying of the stele is probably to use flour to paste on the surface of the stele. The originally unclear inscriptions will be spread with flour, and the blurred traces of the characters will emerge. People can rely on the traces to speculate and restore the original engraved content.
But with the advancement of technology, nowadays people can just take a picture with a mobile phone or camera. It has to be content of considerable historical value for them to spend the flour.
When the team members saw how excited their teacher was, they naturally realized that they had come across an ancient stele that had previously escaped the search - you know, most of the ancient monuments in the province have been thoroughly investigated by their school's seniors, and it is now extremely difficult to find something new.
This time, their group's luck lies in this muddy field. If they can hand in a complete paper report, the grade of this course will surely be the best among all the students.
But just when everyone was ready to work hard, the boy in front of him took out a bag of rice noodles from his backpack, handed it to the teacher with great expectation, and asked him how to paste the stone tablet...
So, after returning empty-handed, they had a hotpot, during which they did not forget to eat the bag of rice noodles, and then went back to the hotel to have a rest. However, due to their negligence, they would have to cross mountains and rivers to run back to be food for the mountain mosquitoes tomorrow.
Seeing the girl's increasingly hostile look, the boy quickly raised the milk tea in his hand, motioning her not to mention the embarrassing thing for the sake of apology, and then spoke to the girl confidently.
"Don't worry! I'm a local of Nanping. If you want to find some ancient stone tablet, why don't you ask the wise men for advice? Why do you have to pick on that broken stone in the mud?"
The tall girl looked at him sideways and took a big sip of milk tea.
"I really don't know where you get your confidence from. Our seniors said that last year, they were really desperate for this course, and finally ran to the mountains to copy tombstones. You don't want to..."
At this point she shuddered, remembering some scenes from old Hong Kong movies, and quickly shook her head to refuse, "Then I definitely won't go. Perhaps you are all locals, so it would be better for you to discuss it yourselves."
"Of course not! Who would copy tombstones in the middle of the night?"
The boy quickly refuted to prove his innocence, and then explained with a smile: "Come over here with me first, I will tell you about this slowly."
The boy said that he grew up in this area and chose this course because he wanted to be closer to home. Not far away from the night sky are the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, Wuyishan People's Court, Transportation Bureau and other government departments. At the end of the line of sight is Yuqing Primary School where he studied. Naturally, his classmates are all children of local residents.
When he was very young, he heard the security guard at the elementary school mention that a brutal battle had taken place on the land under their feet a long time ago. The battle was so bloody that the scales of the river fish in Chongyang Creek were covered with a layer of reddish-brown color, which gradually faded after several decades.
But for some reason, people who knew about the bloody battle seemed to be very secretive about it, and there was not a single word about it in the county annals. It can only be passed down to this day through the verbal records of local residents.
When the old security guard mentioned this incident, he wanted to prevent students from staying in school after school. He threatened that there would be headless corpses of those who were slaughtered that year running around in the playground at night, and if they were caught, they would be dragged into the deep underground spring.
"You know what? Because of this old man's threats, I didn't dare stay in school for too long throughout my elementary school career. In the end, I didn't even dare to attend the graduation party, for fear that I would be dragged away by a headless corpse and disappear."
The girl looked at him in confusion: "Oh? I didn't expect you were so timid when you were a kid?"
The boy blushed and retorted, "That's not the point. I'm talking about the story behind it! And you know, when I was in the third grade, there was a group of classmates who played football after school. In the end, a child really went missing. His parents thought he was abducted by human traffickers, so they ran away and called the police like crazy and searched for him for four or five years."
"But the classmates who played football with us that day secretly told us that they actually saw the child running to the corner to pick up the ball, and then he was dragged away by a pair of big hands without any warning! And that wall was the bulletin board wall of each class, and behind it was the experimental kindergarten next door. It was impossible for the human traffickers to hide there. Unless the man's head was chopped off, he could hide under such a low wall and reach out to catch people!"
The girl became more and more horrified as she listened, and immediately stopped following him. She replied in a rather stern tone: "If you keep scaring people with nonsense like this, I will go back to the hotel immediately!"
The boy also stopped talking immediately, waved his hands and said, "No, no, our elementary school is not here, it's several blocks away, and the police also filed a case of trafficking in the end. This is just the kids exaggerating."
They had now come to a small road just across the Chongyang River. Next to it were an iron and bamboo wood products store and a consignment shop. The signs were already a bit mottled and old. If they hadn't looked up and seen the Chong'an Bridge that stretched across the building, they would have looked more like they had accidentally walked into the eye of a typhoon that was calm because of the passage of time.
"To be honest, my interest in history may have something to do with this. Every time I hear the security guard talk about the great war a long time ago, I cover my ears in fear, but at the same time I tremble with excitement. In the end, I don't know whether it is fear or excitement. It seems that history itself carries the power of gods and strange things, like a dead body sleeping peacefully, and I am a tomb robber. Just to see half a claw of Yunlong is enough to make me explore without hesitation. I can remember all kinds of historical events about the Ming and Qing dynasties!"
The girl had heard of this before. This boy was the type who was seriously biased in his studies. He had no research on the analysis and argumentation of modern history, but was very interested in the research of various historical events. His head was like a sophisticated machine, loaded with inventory data collected from various corners. When he was only a junior, a professor who studied the economic history of the Ming and Qing dynasties had already asked him for a talk, and he was very willing to train him.
"You've strayed off topic a bit. Is there any necessary connection between what we are going to see now and what you are talking about?"
The tall girl pointed out his problem bluntly - unlike boys, girls are good at analyzing and deconstructing various historical details. She strongly believes that there is a methodology in the world that can comprehensively solve various historical problems, and this method is now being constructed and grown in her brain.
The boy quickly pulled himself out of his memories and told the girl confidently: "This is what happened. During the early part of the summer vacation, I rethought my visit and collected local historical materials in Chong'an, trying to restore the appearance of the local legend."
"The old man said that this war actually took place in the year when the Southern Song Dynasty fell. Many people from the fallen Song Dynasty wanted to flee to the Wuyi Mountains to hide, but they were chased and killed by the Yuan soldiers. These people eventually disappeared along the Chongyang River, leaving behind only memories that terrified the locals."
The girl also answered very confidently: "It's impossible. This story is too old. Folk legends and collective memories have always been fabricated and passed down. According to current research results, a story can only be passed down for no more than a hundred years before it becomes unrecognizable."
The boy chuckled and said, "I think I've read about this research result you mentioned. It should be used to study the spread and variation of modern urban legends. It's okay to use it to study cat-faced old ladies and haunted buses, but it has nothing to do with history, right?"
The tall girl said unhappily, "In short, this story is not very credible. It would be a waste of time to study it further."
The boy nodded and continued, "That's right, so I also overturned these collected opinions, but I still summarized some more characteristic descriptions from them, such as the people who were slaughtered spoke a language that was not local, and they gathered in groups with unknown origins..."
"Oh, by the way, the old people often mentioned the historical node of this killing, which was always in the second month of the lunar calendar. I found the record in the Wuyi Mountain Chronicle: with the city gate as the center, on the sixth day of the second month of the lunar calendar every year, bamboo poles, firewood sticks, farm tools and all daily necessities were gathered and sold at the city defense, so it was named 'Chaitouhui'."
The girl finally nodded: "These descriptions are in line with the feudal society's xenophobia and fear of outsiders, and they often demonize factors that disrupt their peaceful lives. Opportunities for communication and exchange of goods and services at markets were the most common population movement in that closed era, and the probability of unrest naturally increased. However, in this story, it's not the outsiders who killed people, but the outsiders who were slaughtered?"
The boy finally smiled, raised his head and looked at the tall girl, and his steps forward became faster and faster.
"That's right! We have already obtained the historically meaningful part of the story model. So what we need to do next is not to be fooled by their over-exaggeration and description, but to find special events that meet these characteristics and are not too far away from the vast historical process!"
The girl understood that this was the boy's forte. Once historical events and data became concrete in his eyes, the rest would be as easy as tailoring clothes. So she decided to wait for him to reveal the answer.
As they walked, they came to a fork in the road. A dim street lamp stood on the corner. Under the lampshade was a thick layer of mosquito corpses, forming an uneasy dark brown disc shadow.
"The one on our right is Xingyi Road, and the one in front and behind is called Nanmen Street. A long time ago, there should have been a water inlet called Jixian Gate for ships to enter and exit nearby, but now there is no trace of it. It is said that during the liberation of Chong'an, it was demolished along with the old city wall and put into the city appearance improvement project."
The boy introduced them in detail, and suddenly raised his hand and pointed to an inconspicuous traditional building on the southwest side. This building was hidden among the slightly old houses. The rough oyster shell exterior alone was enough to show that it was built a long time ago.
The girl looked in the direction of his finger, and saw a faded cross embossed on the dimly lit wall. It seemed to be an old church with its doors closed, hidden alone in a small corner forgotten by the modern city.
"Is this... a Catholic church? But why does it look more like a temple?"
The girl's thoughts, which had already decided to wait for the answer, were suddenly ignited by this discovery.
If it is a modern trading port city like Xiamen and Fuzhou, it is common to have such old churches. For example, the main building of Fuzhou's Fanchuanpu Church can be easily traced back to those turbulent times.
But in this county town that was originally isolated by mountains, the appearance of buildings of this age seems a bit strange and weird. Could it be that in that era there were extremely devout priests or pastors who came here from afar to settle down and preach, and their teachings have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people until now?
As the major events on the timeline emerged, the tall girl frowned slowly, seeming a little puzzled, but her thoughts were extremely restless at this time, and suddenly she jumped forward uncontrollably, and happened to land on a very reasonable and appropriate puzzle piece, like an anchor that could no longer be moved.
"The Catholic Church at that time... No, it's not necessarily Catholicism... It should be a group of people with similar or similar beliefs who once arrived here... The faith they left behind was inherited by others... That's not right either, their faith should not be left behind, but there should be relics excavated... Yes, that makes sense, these excavated traces were regarded as divine revelations, and thus unique churches sprang up..."
The jumping and meticulous thinking and reasoning turned into messy and fragmented language that came out of his mouth, and the boy also showed a matter-of-fact smile, and showed the information he collected and mastered without hesitation.
"According to the "Fang Family Genealogy" of Xiamei Ancient Town, on March 17, the seventh year of Emperor Xianfeng's reign, the bandits suddenly attacked and killed 300 soldiers in the pass. They went straight to Da'an. At dawn on the 17th, they attacked Chongcheng. The residents at that time regarded them as fugitives and closed the city gates. They fought with guns and bombs. The battle was like a sea of blood, with corpses piled up on the road. Some were headless, some were headless, some had their feet cut off, some were stabbed in the heart, and some were raped to death. The scene was indescribable and it was shocking..."
A hint of understanding flashed in the tall girl's eyes, and then she spoke.
"I see what you found..."
Of course the girl understood, because this incident left a strong mark in the history of the late Qing Dynasty. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had attacked Fujian four times, but always only stayed for a short time. It could not gain a foothold in this place where military strategists were not in dispute, and its territory jumped from Jiangxi to Zhejiang, and now appeared to be distributed around Fujian.
If the boy really finds the cultural relics or relics left by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Fujian, and the influence can even last for hundreds of years, then the paper written based on this discovery alone will be enough to be regarded as an important discovery!
The tall girl wanted to walk towards the cathedral excitedly, but the boy stretched out his hand to stop her, and took her around with her back to the cathedral, facing an old and crowded old-fashioned residential area.
"In 1987, the former Chong'an County Agricultural Bureau applied to the former Chong'an County People's Government for land allocation for the construction of staff dormitories. Two months later, the application was approved, which occupied a large open space behind the Catholic Church. Therefore, the things we are looking for are no longer in the Catholic Church, but hidden in this old Agricultural Bureau dormitory that was built later..."
"Hmm? Tell me, what did you see when you were a kid?"
The tall girl was very sure that all the strange signs of the boy in front of her were not discovered through textual research and analysis, but that he had seen such things a long time ago, and now he was just "discovering" them again along the path of memory.
The boy pushed up his glasses, reflecting an ambiguous light.
"The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is said to call officials and civilians demons, digging up every house and damaging every object, but what they value most is to smash the old things and leave behind the new things that they believe belong to the savior!"
The boy slowly raised his head, and the tall girl felt that the old faded dormitory of the Agricultural Bureau behind him was like a withered forest rising from the ground. Although it was only a few decades old, it seemed like the various incarnations of the Fujian area from Kuaiji to Jiaozhi where the Baiyue people lived. Just like the flying pavilions and plank roads and hanging coffins in the Wuyi Mountains, they were all unreal.
"I think it will be a stele, a stele carved by the last remnants of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom when they were defeated and died, to praise the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Brother, and to carry their last resentment before death. Only in this way can people who see this stele later regard it as a divine revelation and build a temple for it..."