roccoschili Chapter 118 Red Flower Cave
Chapter 118 Red Flower Cave
It is said that Cao Jiang, the former magistrate of Lishui County, Jiangnan Prefecture (now a district of Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province), was promoted after his term of office expired and was transferred to Shu (now Sichuan Province) as an official.
When he just arrived there, a strange thing happened.
It was a hot summer day.
One day, after lunch, Cao Jiang took a nap alone in his room. Dimly, he suddenly saw two official servants walking in with their horses and inviting him to accompany them.
Cao Jiang didn't know where he was going, so he got on his horse in a daze and followed them.
After walking for about twenty miles, suddenly another man came riding on a horse.
Judging from the attire of the man, he looked like an officer. He held a command arrow in his hand and said to Cao Jiang: "By order of the Jade Emperor, please count the prisoners in the cave and release them! I hope you will spare no effort!"
Cao Jiang was very surprised and was a little dazed for a moment. He didn't know what happened, what kind of hole it was and how it released the prisoners.
He didn't know what to say, so he just nodded silently and continued to walk along.
The group of people walked another two or three miles and came to a deep mountain.
After walking for a while, a cave appeared in front, with three big characters written above the cave entrance: "Red Flower Cave".
There are two stone doors at the entrance of the cave, which are locked tightly.
There were seven or eight officials and servants beside Shimen. They had prepared the list of public cases and were kneeling by the road to welcome Cao Jiang's arrival.
The officer handed the command arrow in his hand to Cao Jiang, and then told him: "You will be released by roll call according to the roster!"
After saying that, he rode away on his own.
After Cao Jiang sat on the public case, an official came forward to report and asked for the cave door to be opened.
Cao Jiang agreed.
The official shouted three times at the entrance of the cave: "Open the door!"
As soon as the cry ended, the stone door creaked for a while, and then slowly opened.
Immediately, there was a burst of cold air pouring out of the cave. The cold air hit the hair and was very chilling, making people shiver involuntarily.
As the entrance to the cave opened, not long after, thousands of female ghosts, all disheveled, swarmed in and blocked the door.
They all had shackles on their bodies, and they were wailing constantly. Their miserable appearance and bodies were really indescribable.
At this time, the official who opened the door picked up the roster and started calling the names in the order above.
The policeman next to him unshackled the female ghosts whose names were called, and then drove them south.
What surprised Cao Jiang was that none of these female ghosts seemed very happy after being released from their shackles. They lingered in place and moved forward reluctantly under the driving of the guards.
When it came to the last three female ghosts, they begged Cao Jiang not to untie their shackles and not to release them.
Cao Jiang didn't know why, so he made an excuse, saying that this was the Jade Emperor's order, and he was just the executor and had no ability to change it.
When the three female ghosts heard this, they were all very angry and cursed in unison: "You are so unkind, you will regret it! There will be retribution in twenty years!"
Cao Jiang disapproved and did not take their words to heart. He only regarded them as a kind of verbal venting of the female ghosts' failure to achieve their wishes.
After all the female ghosts were released, the previous officer came again.
He told the officers: "Mr. Cao is tired from work. You must send him home properly!"
The officers agreed in unison. Then he sent Cao Jiang home on horseback just like when he picked him up.
Cao Jiang mounted his horse and walked halfway, when a big river appeared in front of him. When the horse was wading across the river, it suddenly lost its front hoof and threw Cao Jiang off its back.
Cao Jiang fell into the water and struggled hard in panic. After some struggling, he suddenly woke up.
When he opened his eyes, he was still lying on the bed where he had taken a nap. Only then did he realize that he had had a dream.
But what puzzled him was that his family members gathered around his bed and cried bitterly.
He felt baffled. After asking, I found out that they thought they were dead. Now one day has passed, and he will be buried after three days of morgue.
Cao Jiang secretly thought that he was lucky that he woke up in time.
When Cao's family members saw that he was safe and sound, they burst into laughter.
Cao Jiang simply explained that he just fell asleep and brushed the incident aside.
However, Cao Jiang regarded everything he experienced in the dream as a secret and hid it deep in his heart, not daring to tell anyone.
After this incident, everything was peaceful in the Cao family and nothing strange happened.
Twenty years passed. Shortly after Cao Jiang's eldest son got married, his eldest daughter-in-law became pregnant. She contracted a strange disease before giving birth and died of dystocia during childbirth.
Not even a year later, the second daughter-in-law was also pregnant and giving birth. She suffered from the same strange disease as the eldest daughter-in-law. During the birth, she suddenly started talking nonsense.
She called her mother-in-law, Cao Jiang's wife, to the bedside and murmured in her sleep: "The time has come! There should be retribution for what happened in Honghua Cave! My house has been settled, and I should be my neighbor with Li!" "
After saying that, he burst out laughing, then pointed at the brother-in-law next to him and said, "It's your turn next!"
The mother-in-law quickly asked what the reason was.
The second daughter-in-law said resentfully: "Ask your father-in-law about the reason for this! I just hate that my father-in-law had the command arrow in his hand and could have been happy to be a favor, but why was he so cruel and refused to rescue us? !”
As soon as he finished speaking, he stared in pain and screamed, and then his face was broken and bleeding. In an instant, his abdomen exploded and the intestines flowed out. He kicked his legs and died.
The mother-in-law and brother-in-law were shocked and hurriedly ran to tell Cao Jiang what had happened.
After hearing this, Cao Jiang was also very scared.
Hearing from his wife that the second daughter-in-law mentioned the "Red Flower Cave", he knew that it was the three female ghosts in the dream who were talking about retribution.
But when he thought about it carefully, he never told anyone else about it. He didn't know where his daughter-in-law knew about it.
After Cao Jiang buried his second daughter-in-law, he stored her coffin in a nearby ancient temple.
While storing it, Cao Jiang discovered that there was already an old vermilion coffin stored in the temple.
Cao Jiang asked whose family it belonged to. After the monk told him, he finally realized that his daughter-in-law should be the female ghost in the Red Flower Cave.
Because the owner of that coffin is none other than the wife of a certain family, Mrs. Li!
Later, Cao Jiang's third son married a wife who, like the previous two daughters-in-law, fell ill during pregnancy and gave birth, and then died of dystocia during childbirth.
Cao Jiang was even more convinced that these were the three female ghosts in Honghua Cave back then, and they were punished on his daughter-in-law.
Because although his three daughters-in-law looked older and younger, the dates of their birth were not far from the date when he dreamed of the Red Flower Cave.
However, I don’t know why, but nothing happened to Cao Jiang’s three sons and his future wives, who became pregnant and gave birth to children!