In the evening.

Binhai City.

A taxi stopped slowly.

"Old man, can you help me with me? Don't let your waist go?" asked the taxi master enthusiastically.

"Haha, it's okay, it's not heavy, I can still carry it, thank you." An old man with a thin figure and clear appearance smiled and waved his hand, carrying a small suitcase and got out of the car.

Judging from his appearance, the old man was at least eighty years old, with a grey beard on his chin. Although the pedestrians around him had already changed into single clothes and thin shirts, he was wearing an old cotton robe as if he was afraid of the chill, which seemed to have just come out of the opera troupe. However, in sharp contrast to his age and his old outfit, he still used his mobile phone to scan the QR code to pay for the taxi fare, which surprised the driver, because many middle-aged and middle-aged people in their forties and fifties only knew how to pay in cash.

If the driver knew that there was a cat he could not see all the way in the back seat and got out with the old man, he would definitely be even more surprised.

The taxi drove away, and the old man dusted his cotton robe and looked around slightly. He saw that everything around him did not seem to have changed significantly before he left.

Meow.

The cat screamed in a low voice.

The old man lowered his head and asked with concern: "What's wrong?"

It was a Persian cat with a black top, a black back, and a black tail. Besides that, it was snow-white. However, if measured by the quality standards of modern Persian cats, this cat would undoubtedly be evaluated as a disqualification. After all, it was not a modern cat. The most popular cat in the upper class in the Song Dynasty was a Persian cat.

It ran to the old man's feet with its short legs, as if it was about to get into the cotton robe to take shelter, staring at the streets in the dusk with wide eyes. The trembling body made the old man's cotton robe shake slightly, as if it was extremely frightened.

The unusual behavior of his cat made the old man frown deeply, and he looked suspiciously into the depths of the half-light and half-dark street, but found nothing unusual.

The office workers who get off work drag their tired bodies to walk home, and the children who get off school ride their bicycles like the wind. They only set up stalls at night to avoid urban management to avoid the small vendors who set up their stalls to start business. Everything is no different from the past.

He looked up at the two-story antique building in front of him. On the front of the shop was a vermilion door with brass nails, on both sides were a pair of fine vermilion pillars with buckets. Just above it was a gilded plaque with blue bottom, with the words "Morning Things to Pick Up in the Night".

The red lacquer door was closed and locked.

There is a layer of gray on the door knocker.

Since leaving last fall, it was a few months since he returned to Binhai City.

What interesting things happened in Binhai City over the past few months?

He is old and has a hard body. He always chooses to lock the store door when winter comes, and goes to the southern villa farther away to come back when the flowers bloom the next spring. He doesn't point to this store to make money anyway.

Binhai City is his own chosen elderly care city. It is not as noisy as big cities, nor as inconvenient as small cities. Except for the cold winter, the climate is quite pleasant. There are more than one city with comparable conditions. He grabbed a lot in several candidate cities and happened to win Binhai City. Since then, he settled here half of the year.

This is not the first time his cat has shown abnormality. The last time it showed abnormality, someone gave him a bronze imitation cat god statue. At that time, it seemed extremely scared when it saw the cat god statue. It always hides far away and dares not get close.

The old man likes cats very much and likes things related to cats. He was very happy after receiving the statue of the cat god because he had come into contact with many antiquities. It can be seen that this statue of the cat god god is not just a simple imitation.

However, his own cat's fear of the cat god statue made him alert.

He has come into contact with many antiques and has collected many antiques. The antiques in this shop are just a drop in the ocean. No one can place truly valuable antiques outside for anyone to appreciate.

Perhaps it was because the ancients had poured too much emotion into it, or because it had gone through too long years, some very few antiques occasionally showed abnormalities that were difficult to explain with common sense, in other words, "spiritual".

Spiritual communication may not be a bad thing. Sometimes you can feel a magical tacit understanding from the psychic antiques, and the mind seems to cross time and space to meet the original owner of the antique at that moment.

However, among these very few psychic antiques, there are a few of them whose original owners are not good people, but who seem to be evil spirits.

Whenever this happens, his cat will always show abnormalities and warn him in time to stay away from antiques that are plagued by evil spirits.

Other psychic antiques have some special phenomena, such as abnormal noise, abnormal movement, strange changes in light and shadow, but at first he did not notice similar signs of the cat god statue. It was just a very vivid work of art. He thought it was because his cat had some nerve allergies, so he temporarily left the statue in the store and prevented his cat from getting close.

He used to feed nearby stray cats, but since the Cat God Statue came to the store, the stray cats dared not approach it, which made him reconsider this issue. Perhaps the Cat God Statue is completely different from the psychic objects he encountered before and cannot be judged by previous experience.

However, how to deal with this cat god statue?

He was very conflicted inside.

On the one hand, Confucius said: If you can’t serve people, how can you serve ghosts? If you don’t know life, how can you know death? When dealing with ghosts and gods, the saint’s teachings are ignored, because there are many more important things to explore in the world. How can you have time to pursue the illusory theory of ghosts and gods?

On the other hand, Zhu Xi also said: Scholars must know how the sky can be high, how the earth can be thick, how ghosts and gods can be visible, and how mountains can be integrated. This is the study of things. Zhu Xi advocates the study of things to lead to knowledge, and requires scholars to be curious about everything in the world and give ghosts and gods a scientific and reasonable explanation in the form of philosophical thinking.

The two predecessors had subtle differences in this part. Not to mention him, even Zhu Zi, who inherited the past and the future in the history of Confucianism, was troubled by this problem for life.

He searched for a lot of information, but there were too few credible information about ancient Egypt, and only a few of them have been passed down to this day. He never understood why the statue of the cat god representing the good god in ancient Egypt was infected with hostility.

Zhu Zi said that if a person is a monster, he will most people fail to die, and his energy has not dissipated, so he becomes a monster. According to this statement, the cat god statue does not have the prerequisite for becoming a monster and will die suddenly.

The extension of the qi is called the spirit; the crooked qi is called the ghost. The so-called ghosts are originally the rise and fall of the yin and yang energy. The same is true for the human body, so when the heart moves, you can communicate with ghosts and gods.

I think it can only be attributed to the fact that the statue of the cat god has been buried underground for a long time and has been immersed in too much yin energy.

The Cat God statue itself is very precious. If it is destroyed, it would be a waste of resources. There is nothing unusual about the statue at present. It is better to stay for those who are destined to be able to suppress it.

What's more, Zhu Zi also said: The energy of gods is always bent and stretched, and the energy of humans and ghosts will dissipate without any rest. The dissipation is also different from the speed of time. Some people do not suppress their deaths, so if they die, the energy will not dissipate, and they will become monsters and monsters.

When the Cat God statue was buried underground, it was contaminated with a lot of yin energy, but the yin energy would eventually dissipate, but it was just a matter of time. So he often pushed the Cat God statue to the sun at noon to bask in the sun to ensure that its yin energy dissipates quickly.

Everything in the world is formed by the yin and yang energy. Humans and ghosts are of the same origin. In addition to using the yang energy of the sun to dispel the yin energy, human yang energy can also play the same role. He felt that if the statue of the cat god was placed in a shop with a strong flow of people, it might be able to further accelerate the dissipation of its yin energy. But his shop is definitely not good. This second-hand antique store has a lot of qun and few customers.

When he met the lively and cheerful female anchor, he heard from her that she wanted to give the statue of the cat god as a gift for opening a shop, and the other party's store business was booming, which seemed to be a good place to drive away the yin. So he sold the statue of the cat god to her at an extremely low price and specifically reminded her of some taboos.

Whether it is the female anchor or the recipient of her gift, she doesn't seem to care much about the sayings of ghosts and gods, especially her gift, she actually claims that even if the yin energy is so strong that she only blows it as an air conditioner, which is really a big heart...

But this is also good. "Don't believe" is the best way to avoid evil, but the old man himself can no longer "Don't believe". After all, even the ancient sages "believed". How dare he go against the ancient sages?

The sky became darker and darker, and his cat was still watching the darkness in the distance, meowing and constantly pulling his cotton robe with his paws to alert him to leave the city quickly. The panic was a hundred times more than the last time the statue of the cat god appeared.

"The statue of the cat god has been given away, what are you afraid of?" he asked quietly.

However, his cat couldn't explain clearly, so he could only tell him that the huge evil had arrived in the city. For safety reasons, it would be better to leave quickly.

He pondered a little. If evil was around him, such as some ancient objects that were engaging in evil spirits, he would definitely follow the advice and find ways to send them away, buried them deeply or destroyed them. But since the scope of evil is so wide, it seems that there is no urgent need. No matter how serious the situation is, with his cat, he can always stay away from evil one step ahead of others.

"It's time to go in and take a break first. At least we'll talk about it after tonight, and then decide where to go." He comforted, then took out the key, opened the lock, and pushed open the store door with a bang.

The turbid air that had not been circulated for several months in the store was quickly blown away by the influx of night wind.

Everything was exactly the same as when he left, including the half-opened book on the table, "The Book of Zhu Zi's Occasional Readings", which was densely marked with his annotations and reading experience.

At night, the pages of the book were blown and flipped, and finally stopped on one of them.

Have you not seen a cat catching a mouse? The four feet are in the base, with the head and tail, the eyes are not instant, and the mind has no other thoughts. But if it does not move, the mouse will not escape.
Chapter completed!