The guard guarding the door saw that he looked unhappy and asked, "What happened?"
Eunuch Fang's voice was vague: "No...it's nothing important."
"Why is it so noisy?" came the question from the king.
Eunuch Fang was frightened.
He walked in quickly and reported: "Many birds flew in the sky. The palace people thought it was rare and accidentally disturbed the king."
"A hundred birds pay homage to the phoenix?" The king pointed at the peacock and said with a smile, "Could it be that this peacock was transformed into a phoenix?"
The officials echoed: "A wonderful sight appears on your birthday, which is an auspicious sign."
The king smiled: "Let's go out and take a look."
Eunuch Fang watched the king step out of the threshold, knowing that he could not stop him. He closed his eyes, as if he had fallen into an ice cellar, his face turned ashen.
After struggling a lot in his heart, he followed him out.
Outside the corridor.
The king looked around, and there were indeed many birds above his head.
The birds circled in the sky for a while, then swooped down and hit the frozen lake, leaving them bloody and bloody.
More birds flew in one after another, and they still crashed into the ice lake, as if they were crazy.
Master Kongjing couldn't bear to look any further. He put his hands together and recited a mantra: "Namo Amitabha Night, Duotagadu Night..."
The king's face darkened and he ordered people to go and deal with it.
Several guards ran to the ice lake. When they got closer to the center of the lake, countless bird corpses were strewn all over the ground, stained with blood and oozing with blood. They had to bend down and pick up the corpses one by one into their cloth pockets.
After picking it up for a while, the guard found a dark shadow under his feet, which looked different from other places.
He simply lay down and looked at that place carefully. The more he looked, the more he felt something was wrong.
Someone with sharp eyes saw that there was a very shallow crack in the ice, which was mixed with bird blood and seeped under the ice. So he pulled out his saber, held it against the crack, and pried it out with force.
Others should not stand too close, lest the ice cannot bear it.
After a while, a piece of the crack was pried open, revealing a gray-white thing that looked like a lotus stem.
The guard stared at it. It was a human finger bone.
It was winter, and he was sweating profusely from behind.
There was a sound of urging from the side, and the guard simply raised his knife and continued to smash it along the surrounding area until a hole was made and ice chips rolled down.
He followed the hole and saw clearly what was in the water...
The king sat by the lake without saying a word. After a while, the guards hurried over and whispered in his ear to inform him of the situation.
The king's brows slightly moved, then turned around and said loudly: "There is a layer of ice on the lake, and it is really heartbreaking to accidentally injure these water birds. It is getting late now, everyone, please go back and rest."
The chamberlain took the order and invited the envoys from various countries to rest, and the other officials also returned to the mansion one after another.
As an invited artist, Liu Ruyan was placed in the studio.
When the crowd dispersed, the king winked at the guards, who then found tools and went to the lake to retrieve the bodies.
The ruler of the country usually doesn't like to show off his behavior, but that doesn't mean he doesn't do anything.
On the day of his birthday, he encountered a dead body and regarded it as unknown. He left Master Kongjing, Mingjuezi, and several officials from Dali Temple behind.
The guards used a long pole connected with a fine net to search the bottom of the lake and picked up some bones. They put the human bones on the cloth and counted them carefully. There were about twenty pieces. The rest were scattered all over the bottom of the lake, making it difficult to find them for a while.
Complete.
The king believed deeply in Buddhism, so he left Master Kongjing behind to perform a ritual ceremony for the deceased.
Mingjuezi had nothing to do, so he simply stood aside and watched the people in Dali Temple busy.
Among these remains, the best-preserved ones are only the leg bones and skull, which were initially judged to be that of a woman. However, because it had been so long, the identity of the deceased could not be found out for a while.
After Kongjing recited the sutra for a while, he put down his magical weapon and said to the king: "The female benefactor died unjustly and refused to be reincarnated. I hope the king will give her justice."
The king looked towards Dali Temple, and the people there just shook their heads.
Things get tricky.
"Human death is like the extinguishing of a lamp, how can we talk about reincarnation?" Mingjuezi stepped forward and said to Master Kongjing, "The heaven and earth are one, and all things come and go automatically, which is the result of the Great Dao. After death, the spirit returns to emptiness, and the body returns to earth.
Everything goes into nature.”
Taoism cultivates this life, Buddhism cultivates the afterlife.
Before Buddhism was introduced to the Central Plains, there was no theory of reincarnation, only the two realms of yin and yang. The ancients promoted burials and sacrifices, believing that after death in the underworld, one could receive offerings from the yang world to bless future generations.
The king of the country has been a Buddhist for many years, and he has practiced the afterlife and taught about cause and effect. He heard that the dead do not enter reincarnation, and he was afraid that retribution would come to him.
While he was thinking hard, he remembered someone.
"Quick, send the message to Painter Gu!"
Gu Qing came to Jinling to visit at the invitation of a friend.
On the way, I heard that there is a kind of Chengxintang paper. The paper is like an egg membrane, as hard and clean as jade, and it is the top grade paper.
How many literati spend huge sums of money just to buy a few pieces of good paper.
Gu Qing didn't have many financial worries, but he was fascinated by Chengxintang paper, so he sold paintings along the way, hoping to meet one or two generous buyers.
By chance, his paintings caught the eye of the king.
The king of the country was willing to exchange a hundred pieces of Chengxintang paper for a portrait of Guanyin. Gu Qing was so happy that she entered the palace according to the order.
It was cold today, so Gu Qing went to bed early.
Just as he was becoming confused, he was suddenly woken up by someone knocking on the door. Then two strong men, one on each side, took his arm and "invited" Gu Qing all the way to the Lake Center Hall.
Gu Qing was helpless, but luckily she didn't meet many pedestrians on the road, so she didn't lose all her face.
In the central hall of the lake, the king has been waiting for a long time.
"Painter Gu is here——"
I don't know who this painter is. Now that the king of the country is urgently summoning him, he must have some skills to solve the urgent problem. As the palace door opened, everyone turned around.
But he saw Painter Gu being driven to the left and right by the guards, his nose was red from the cold, and he was holding a hand warmer in his hand.
When Gu Qing saw those pairs of eyes that looked either probing or astonished, his old face heated up and he felt completely ashamed.
He signaled the guard to let go.
"I wonder why the king called so urgently late at night?" Gu Qing asked with a stern face.
"There is a difficult problem at the moment, and only Painter Gu can solve it." The king ordered someone to present the remains, and at the same time prepare stationery supplies, "to draw her appearance during her lifetime."
Make a portrait of the dead?
Yuan Sheng, the Qing of Dali Temple, has judged countless cases and seen many murders, but he has never heard of anyone who can restore the appearance of the deceased.
Could it be a liar?
"Let me give it a try." Gu Qing said, striding towards the desk.
He picked up the skull and touched it gently with his hands. From the eyebrow arch to the mandible, from the parietal bone to the occipital bone, no part was left behind. Then came the leg bones, ribs, finger bones...
Gu Qing looked at it again and again, drawing with her right hand towards the void, but she still didn't pick up the pen.
In order to be more accurate, Gu Xiang asked the guards to find out the whole story. He ran to the ice lake, held a lantern, and squatted for a long time.
"It's just a picture, and you're going to squat in the lake?"
"Let's take a look and talk about it later."
It's half past Xu hour.
Gu Qing stepped back to his writing desk, rolled out a roll of Chengxintang paper, pressed it with a paperweight, dipped the tip of his pen in ink, and began to write.