Path of the Dead Prequel: Wings of Silver

I took out the spiked ring from my trouser pocket and returned it to its original owner. After taking it, Lao Qian stared at it for a long time and said,"The first things I told you were almost all lies. Of course, this was not intentional, but possessed by evil spirits." Erase it. As I gradually recovered my memory, I couldn't help but gasp. So I used to smoke and destroyed all the objects left at home to prevent the same feeling from coming back from time to time and finding any clues."

"Well, your night shift nurse told me about this. I was a little worried at first, worried that the remaining evil in your body was not cleansed. So that’s what happened."Lao Dai looked at him curiously and asked:"So Lao Qian, do you want to talk about the whole thing?"

"Okay, I don’t want this matter to be spread except for a few of you. He took out a pile of tattered paper that had been printed in advance from his bag and said,"This is a confidential document. After you sign it, I will tell you the answer to the whole thing." This agreement states that it is not allowed to be leaked, nor is it allowed to be fabricated into a novel for sale in the name of a third party, nor is it allowed to be interviewed by the media, nor is it allowed to be recorded privately. If you can't do that, then please leave immediately. This is my first condition, and I hope you can respect it."

Lao Dai knew that he was suspected of being seriously ill, so he winked and asked us to take off our coats and wear only underpants and undershirts to check his eyes. After confirming that no recording equipment was hidden, he sat down one after another. I didn't want to be naked in front of others. , but strong curiosity overshadowed everything

"When I listened to the daily reports from the Compassionate Society that you had figured out how to enter the ghost cave, I knew I had to set off, because if I continued to investigate, my reputation would be ruined, which is why I came here. He held the ring in his hands, looked at it from side to side under the lamp, and said with a wry smile:"Tell me about your latest discovery first, and I can figure out where to start.""

So, I, the most important person involved, compiled the instructions and reported them to him one by one. Lao Qian was very surprised. He did not expect that the extent of our progress was much higher than he expected, and his face instantly turned gray. After half a cigarette, He then raised his head

"All of us say that we should pay attention to our unique personality. In fact, few people are really free and easy when they live in this world. Although they live for themselves, they mostly live for their relatives, friends and family, so they cannot put everything aside and have to retain their attitude and privacy. You can call it cowardice or lack of character, I don't care. Since you mentioned the ring, let’s start with it. He put the ring down on the table and said,"The cause of the whole thing happened two years ago, which was also the first time I saw it.""

In the midsummer of 1996, at Duke University Central Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, there was a white-haired old woman in the hospice ward who was about to reach the end of her life. She distributed all her property, except the donated portion, to her five children. The famous son. Lao Qian is the eldest son of this woman. Because he has a successful career and a comfortable life, and he started a family early and his daughter has already left the society, he only gets an antique car.

He is an open-minded person, does not care about it, and feels that this Of course, he should take care of his younger brothers and sisters. But his attitude made the old woman feel ashamed. Before going out, she called him back, then took out a wooden box and handed it to him

"There was a ring in it, or a band, or something, but I never quite figured out what it was for." She opened the box tremblingly, and found a unique object wrapped in velvet. The old woman stared at it for a long time and said:"In these last moments, I should tell you a secret that I have treasured for many years. In fact, your biological father There is someone else, and this thing is his"

"this! Lao Qian was not only stunned on the spot, but asked:"How come you never mentioned this to me?" So who is he?"

"I just remembered this when I was asking a lawyer to divide the inheritance. After all, your siblings are the biological blood of Harris, and the housing company is all his property. But how to explain it to you? I've thought about it for a long time, and it's not too late for you to know now."

It turns out that this old woman was a small-town girl when she was young. Everyone praised her for looking like a star in a pictorial. In this atmosphere, she became arrogant and planned to go out into society to realize her ideals. However, the illusion It's beautiful, but the reality is quite harsh. After she really went to the big city, she was rejected one after another, and eventually she ran out of savings, but got nothing. She was poor and had no ambitions, so she had to accept the job she met in the bar. A guy went to make small movies to make a living and lived in a dilapidated building in Peach Tree Corner.

The residents of this whole building were poor people with low education and low income. It was very inconvenient for her to live alone as a woman. , she was often teased by others, or thieves broke into her residence. Sometimes she was owed wages and had to go hungry, which made her life miserable. Among these shabby houses, there was a man who lived in the attic who treated her the best, and she was often seen there. When she was in distress, she would take the initiative to help her. Over time, the woman gradually grew fond of him. She spent many nights talking under the light and got drunk, so she slept in his room. The two slept with her several times.

I don’t know if the big man was deliberately playing tricks on her or if he was really doing it. The incident happened one night when they were lying on the bedside. The man said that he knew a treasure cave. As long as a man went in and spent some diamonds, he would be worry-free for the rest of his life. The woman only thought that he was joking and did not take it seriously. But a few weeks later , the big man walked away silently, leaving the ring in the room. Rumors were circulating at that time. Some people said that they met him walking at night. The big man once walked into a basement near the bookstore carrying a bulging bag, and then went there again. She never came out. Maybe she was killed by the shoemaker who lived there for money. The woman went to report the case, but after a few hasty inquiries, she stopped asking.

One afternoon, she saw the shoemaker at the window. Pushing the big man's bicycle, he went out in an obscene manner. He planned to go downstairs to fight with him to the death. He insisted on asking whether the big man was dead or alive. Even if it didn't work, he would be embarrassed in public. But when he ran downstairs, he happened to collide with him. A resident was hanging a piano on the fifth floor. The worker's hand slipped and the thing fell from the sky. It happened to hit the shoemaker who was passing by below. The gray-haired old man died on the spot. The woman was so frightened that her face turned pale. She fled back to North Carolina overnight and never returned. Peach Tree Corner.

The woman was working as a bartender in Durham. Not long after, she got lucky and met a rich man from a glass factory. The two fell in love at first sight and soon lived together. Ten months later, they gave birth to a baby boy. , that is Lao Qian himself. In the following ten years, she gave birth to four more children for her husband. Each baby had a triangular light-colored birthmark on his shoulder, except for the eldest son. The woman couldn't help but wonder, could the child not be Kuo Shao? According to calculations, there was only more than a month between the disappearance of the big man and the time she met her current husband. She might have brought the old money herself. With this in mind, she secretly went for a paternity test and a test behind her family's back. The conclusion was indeed true. From then on, she was always worried that her disgraceful history would be known, so she no longer treated her eldest son well. After Lao Qian graduated, he became self-reliant, and mother and son often saw each other once a year. Until she was about to grow old. In the end, it was the old money who provided the most money and effort, so the woman couldn't help but lament and felt guilty, and told this secret to her eldest son before she died.

"I don’t know if that person was joking, but he barely left home, yet he had no worries about food and drink. So don't worry about whether it is true or not. I leave this ring to you. If you are interested, you can continue to check for clues. His name is Ingram."

After his mother was buried, the ring was always quietly placed on the desk at home. Lao Qian was not interested in finding blood relatives, so another year passed. In mid-1997, his decoration company encountered some financial difficulties. During a small crisis, many clients declared bankruptcy and failed to collect payments in time, resulting in insufficient liquidity to undertake a larger project in another state. Only then did he remember the ring, and with the mentality of giving it a try, he came to Georgia to find his roots. , by the way, let’s take a look at what this is.

"So, when you said that there was a sweetheart living in Peach Tree Corner, was this fabricated and non-existent?"

"But no, it was during the investigation process that I was lucky enough to get to know her, so I come here every month. He waved his hand to tell Lao Dai not to ask any more questions. He pointed to the east of the big window and said,"She lives not far away. She helped a lot when we were first searching for our roots, so we fell in love with her over time." You also said that people have seven emotions and six desires, and morality is a shackles. This kind of thing is irrelevant."

No matter who this woman is? We are not interested. As long as we know that she is a local and helped Lao Qian collect the initial information. Soon after, they found the dilapidated building and dug into the dusty basement. A few boxes belonging to Ingram, and by comparing the diaries inside, it became clear that the shoemaker was actually a shipper. The rough diamonds that the big man dug up were flowed into the black market through him. The old man was actually framed by rumors and was responsible for his missing half a dime. It had nothing to do with it. If he was really being murdered, it would probably be because of the gems. Therefore, Lao Qian stored the box in a storage warehouse at Peach Tree Corner, and took some back home to study carefully. However, a few After a month, he was surprised to find that his biological father might be a serial murderer. He had murdered at least four people and had a record of being imprisoned. He once pushed someone downstairs due to an argument, and Ingram was sentenced to more than five years in prison. This guy mentioned more than once that he had entered a treasure cave. He was very obsessed with a woman. He once planned to take her to the cave and was even willing to give her a ring for his control. However, the woman did not appreciate it and fell in love with someone else. Not long after the mining accident occurred, he disappeared.

With these major discoveries, Lao Qian gradually figured out the location of this treasure cave. It may be in Black Maple Town, not far from Peach Tree Corner, where the large mining disaster occurred at Diming Station. The land, and my old man had worked on the Peach Tree Corner railway line, so the two were compatible. So I prepared my tools and a flashlight, and on a dark and windy night, I excitedly went to the Black Maple Tunnel to hunt for treasure.

Soon. He found the strange device, opened the Cosita stone plate according to the summary of the book, and went straight in. But this guy was not for this bowl of rice after all. Even though he had a map, he still got lost in the stone gorge. During this period, he saw rows of lines in the soil. The rows of mummy bones were so frightening that he realized what kind of treasure cave this was. It was clearly a corpse cave. He was so frightened that he peed his pants and fled out of Condia. After returning to the tunnel, he was still frightened. Undecided, he hurriedly locked the stone plate and drove away. As a result, in the dark, he even reversed the direction. He drove out of Heifengkou and drove near the gas station, where he hit a tree stump. He fainted in the car. After the light came out, he gradually recovered. Conscious, he finally sent the car to a small repair station a few miles ahead, and then stopped all thoughts.

Shortly after the frightening night, he would always see himself shackled and sitting in the dark gravel ground in his dreams at night. There was a pair of The men and women with ferocious faces floated in the air, sternly criticizing the various crimes committed by Ingram. They both said in unison that they were killed. Not only did the big man not repent of his atrocities, he also forcibly tore them apart, leaving them with no way to reincarnate. There is no place to die, and Lao Qian is the descendant of this evil thief, so he must inflict all the pain he has suffered on him! And let him have no descendants!

"So this is the origin of the Cog Curse, yes, yes. Ligeia and Grant were trapped alive underground and eventually died of starvation. That's why old money is like a starving ghost in a horror movie, skinny and bones."Lao Dai slapped his forehead, thought of everything, and sighed:"At first, I thought it was a curse from the Indians by mistake. This makes sense."

Then, he and Paco pondered and restored another unknown secret, that is, why the ring was in the hands of the male corpse. Such a thing was recorded in what the nightmare saw and in Ingram's writings, that is Ligeia had followed the crew-cut man to the Condia Stone Gorge. At that time, he was begging the finance girl to give him another chance, but she was rejected. So on that day, Ingram might have planned to take her to see Tibet. Baodong even gave her the ring. But afterwards, for some unknown reason, the finance girl did not return the things to him, but handed them to Grant. Therefore, after the two were trapped, the crew-cut man could not save him even if he wanted to. But this crucial key was brought out when Li En sneaked into the mining disaster site a few years later. Ingram went down the cave again and accidentally saw it shortly afterwards, and then he hurriedly opened the secret passage and wanted to hit it. By chance, he saw the man and woman hugging each other even after they became mummies. So he became angry and evil, so he just kept doing nothing and dismantled their bones and deliberately sealed them in two shallow caves. inside, and exploded the earthwork. When he regretted it and tried to dig it again, he happened to encounter the mountain hunter.

"In August 1956, the day Ingram disappeared, the news was published in the local newspaper. Downton Books is responsible for printing newspapers and magazines."Paco flipped through the folder that Lao Qian brought, slapped his forehead and shouted:"Hey, didn't Rabbit ask at that time why he didn't use newspapers and magazines to cut notes? Instead of looking for old books, that's because the printed matter in Peach Tree Corner is exclusively owned by Downton, and he is worried that the female ghost will guess who he is!"

"None of this is important. In short, the Ingram incident has almost been clarified. However," the detective lit up a cigarette with a solemn expression, looked directly at Lao Qian, and asked,"If you are worried that this matter will expose your mother's youthful life, It's unbearable, I can understand that. But now it is no longer the closed social atmosphere it was back then, and it may still be quite inspirational. Why do you say that if you continue to dig deeper, your family will eventually break up? I'm totally baffled by this, if you'd like to tell me"

"This is because of the curse of two fierce ghosts. They want to kill me and have no descendants, so naturally Xiaojie will not be able to escape his fate. But the problem is that he has never been affected and completely stayed out of the incident. When I was conscious, I took a paternity test and it turned out that he had the same fate as me, and he was not biological flesh and blood. This incident attracted the attention of my wife. She seemed to have known that I had found out about her cheating! Therefore, I don’t want this family to be torn apart because of your in-depth investigation, so just let me die quietly."

"Old Qian, I'm afraid you can't die now even if you want to. Just now when I saw you standing up to drink water, all the clothes on your back fell off. The evil spirit that suppressed you is now possessed by the defender who came to your home last time. I held a cigarette and came to the window, opened the curtain and looked at the bright night scene, and said,"The suffering we suffered because of this incident is beyond your imagination." And now I can no longer hide it. People at the cable TV station have already learned about Ingram's murder. How could they miss the hot spot? I want to make headlines with the second excavation of Diming Station, so I will definitely contact the Brooks Police Station tomorrow to exhume the bodies in the boxwood forest. There are many unsolved murders. There’s no need to look for Ingram anymore, he’s long dead, and I may know his final destination."

"this!"Old Qian couldn't help but beat his chest. Under the comfort and enlightenment of the detective, he asked:"Then where is his burial place?"

I smiled slightly, pointed in the direction of the bathroom window, and lit the cigarette in my hand.

16:42S

Path of the Dead Prequel Wings of Silver Root Explanation:

Refuge: Field hospital and sanatorium for the children of the world.

Shepard: Living in Georgia The son of the world, the friend of Little Cherry, the first person mentioned to know how to catch ghosts.

Straight Man: Describes a man who speaks freely and has low emotional intelligence.

Lao Qian’s mother: She had a disgraceful experience in the past and did not want to be The outside world knows.

Ingram: Lao Qian’s biological father.

Shoemaker: The gray-haired old man in the nightmare, the cause of death, Lao Qian’s mother collided with the worker hanging the piano.

Xiaojie: The youngest son is not Lao Qian’s biological father, just because Mrs. Qian also has Over cheating.

Single name: FinalFrontier