The Land of Unforgettable Death 5
A dark blue frog jumped out from the weeds on the side of the road and stopped right in the middle of the dirt road.
The woman turned on the flashlight, and the beam swept across its smooth and shiny back. A shadow that seemed too large for its body was lurking behind it.
It's just a frog, it can't kill you.
Yin Sui observed the scene distractedly for a few seconds, but quickly regained his focus. Compared to the more pressing matter, the frog's presence seemed insignificant.
But before long, his anxious pace slowed down because of this harmless accident, and he eventually had to stop.
As the beam of light fell further away, she heard her mother's breathing become softer.
The originally flat dirt road suddenly rose up dense green hills, as if pustules had grown out of nowhere on the earth. There were so many of them that it was impossible to see where to stop. As the light moved away, the concave parts were dark and the convex parts were shiny.
"Why so many?" he asked hurriedly.
Gritting her teeth, Yinmu hardened her heart and raised her foot to crush the motionless frog, which had no intention of dodging. The soft piece of meat bounced under her feet.
The touch is so disgusting that it makes you want to vomit.
He turned around and held his daughter in his arms again, suppressing the urge to vomit and trying carefully to avoid it, but it was unavoidable.
There are too many of them, crowding the road. If you want to go deeper, you have to trample on life one step at a time.
The crushed dark green rotten meat mixed with the exploded purple-red internal organs looked like eight-treasure porridge with mung beans scattered on the ground, and was left behind, all falling into the eyes of Yinsui who was picked up and facing the retreat.
The call finally worked. A man came walking towards her from afar on the ridge of the field. She raised her flashlight, and the light illuminated the man from top to bottom. He was wearing a gray jacket and black pants. It was undoubtedly her husband.
The unintentional slaughter seemed to have aroused the anger of their companions. New frogs continued to appear next to their corpses, with their green eyes bulging high and kicking their executioners.
She buried her head deep in her mother's shoulder, then her peripheral vision caught sight of the large body of an unusual half-mountain creature, and she whispered a reminder, "Mom."
Unsure what was going on, the woman didn't turn around. "Your father will be here soon."
"There's a big frog in the back."
Parked behind like a truck, the corpse of its kind, its flesh exploding under its toes, twitched from time to time, its jaw bulged and tightened, its protruding eyes dull and lifeless.
If the big frog croaked loudly, it might cause the earthquake to collapse, and then we would all fall into the rushing river next to it.
Fortunately it didn't.
It didn't bark or move until the mother and daughter were close enough to hear the squeaking sound of waders.
Jilin walked over clumsily, wearing big rain boots.
The stupid frog insisted on occupying the territory. Likewise, every time he stepped on the frog meat, he pressed out a path paved with red and green internal organs and frog skin.
Every step I took made a sound, and I sank down slipperily.
Yin Mu was anxious to leave together. Before he could get close, she turned around and walked back: "Hurry up, something's wrong."
Strangely, the moment she turned her head, the big frog jumped to the side and hid in the jungle without being noticed. Yinsui opened his mouth and finally swallowed it all.
Without any doubt, as if he had not noticed anything unusual behind them when he came, Ji Lin immediately followed and soon surpassed his wife with big strides. Yinmu took the opportunity to step back to avoid the psychological torture of having to crush the frog.
The horizontal light only illuminated the man's legs, while the part above the shoulders remained in darkness, as if it had been cut off.
Such associations made Yinsui a little scared.
But when her father suddenly remembered something and leaned over to pick her up, her fear and imagination immediately disappeared. She leaned her head upwards. Jilin's clothes were soaked, and the water surged out of her little hands on her shoulders with the slightest clench.
After walking for a while, he felt that he had left all the frogs behind, so he said, "Give me the flashlight, you go ahead."
Yin's mother had no objection and quickened her pace to walk in front, followed by her husband holding their daughter.
Soon, they stopped again.
Because the front is crowded with frogs again, even if it means stepping on the shriveled bodies of their own kind that are not yet dead.
Seeing this, Ji Lin walked to the front again, just like when he came here, and ruthlessly crushed the frog that was blocking the road in front into a flat roadbed with its organs spilling out.
What's going on? There weren't any when we came. Having frogs is normal, but having so many is unusual. But the neighbor's house is haunted by burning corpses, so having frogs isn't surprising in comparison.
Convincing Jilin of all the strange things that had happened would have inevitably led to a lengthy argument. Although there was a hint of strangeness everywhere, Yin's mother finally chose a commonplace excuse to get him to walk toward the bridge: "Let's go play outside for a while and not go back yet."
"good."
The strong fishy stench made Yinsui want to cover himself with his father's clothes, but he found that the water that wet his clothes had the same smell, as if it came from the same source. He raised his head again in doubt.
It seemed like the water coming out of the pipes at home had the same smell... For some unknown reason, I stretched out my finger, dipped a little and put it in my mouth. Yes, it was exactly the same. Why was this happening?
Moreover, he said he was going to catch eels, but he didn't have anything to hang on his waist to hold eels. In the past few years, he used to carry a special retractable frame when going out. He even didn't bring a flashlight when going out at night. He obviously had three flashlights at home, which was more than enough. It's hard to explain according to common sense, right?
Let’s put the small issues aside for now. For now, as long as we can be sure that it is indeed the father, please, it must be him.
I have to think of a way to test him, as if he has only said the word "OK" from beginning to end, and then ask him a question to get him to speak, just one sentence, and then confirm his voice and mental state.
"Are you cold, Dad?"
The falling hand paused for a moment, and Ji Lin replied: "Dad is not cold."
It was a false alarm. After receiving a satisfactory reply, Yinsui's tense mouth just relaxed a little when his ears keenly caught a strange noise from his ears, and his eyes suddenly widened.
"Gu..." The voice sounded again.
It was faint and dull, not a sound a living person could make, like...
Like a frog's vocal cords vibrating above my head.
Yinsui was sure that his mother heard it too, because her footsteps suddenly stopped behind him.
——Silver Mother stopped in the distance and looked over with the same horror.
The hand holding her was icy cold, and the fishy-smelling liquid slowly seeped into her clothes like a snake.
Within the field of vision, the woman's figure shrank smaller and smaller, accompanied by the incessant creaking sound of her waders, and the outline that remained was finally completely swallowed up by the bottomless night.
My father seemed to have mentioned when he was alive that our family was blessed by the frog god... It turned out that it was not a fabricated bluff. How could it be? Yinmu was full of thoughts, thinking about worshiping the god and backlash, and her chest felt heavy and unbearable.
No, now is not the time to think about these things——
She rushed forward like a madman, and when she was two steps away from the tall figure, she stopped and tried her best to suppress the anger and resentment in her voice. She pretended to know nothing and spoke to "Jilin": "Let me hold our daughter."
The man actually stopped, turned around slowly and made no other movements. Even when Yin Sui was suddenly pulled out of Yin Mu's arms, he still maintained the original posture.
The wind was howling, and after taking a few breaths of cold air, I felt cold all over.
The crowd was right in front of me, and blending in would at least make me half as safe as possible. Then I could drop Sui Sui off on the road across the bridge and go back to pick up the old couple.
As I ran closer, I could clearly hear the discussions of passers-by.
"The bridge collapsed?!"
"I didn't find any broken cement. It's unlikely that it was washed away so quickly."
"We were taking a walk. At least half an hour ago, it was still there. When we looked back, there was nothing left. It was cement, not gold. Who stole it and how did they steal it?"
The shirtless man put one foot on a high ground and blew out a puff of smoke. "Uncle Liu went to see the village chief... Hey, this is really weird. I'm really confused as to how a big bridge could just disappear out of thin air. And everyone's cell phone signal is gone, and I can't even make calls. Is it haunted?"
"Don't say it, really don't say it," a shrill female voice, having its hidden soft spot poked, cried out, "I really feel like there's something fishy about our village's luck lately. It's filled with all sorts of ominous omens."
Yinmu squeezed out of the crowd holding Yinsui. From their conversation, they already knew what was waiting for them at the end of the road, but they had to see it with their own eyes and would not give up until they reached the Yellow River.
The bridge is really gone.
It's gone, not broken or collapsed, but it has completely disappeared without leaving any trace of its existence.
The river flows without stopping. On the wide surface of the water, there is no trace of the stone bridge that should have spanned the two banks. Now it is empty.
The moonlight, like a gauze, enveloped the entire area of water, exposing the disaster to the naked eye without any warmth.
There is also a road behind the village. If you walk around it and cross the fields, you can see the main road. The glimmer of hope flickered for a moment, but was immediately shattered by a car coming at high speed with its high beams on.
The village chief rolled down his car window. Even though he was a man of much experience, he felt a surge of anxiety within him. He stuck his head out and said in a trembling voice, "The road behind the village is also cut off and has turned into a river."
There are two ways out of the village, either crossing the bridge or going to the back village through a large field to other villages. Both roads are blocked, and Songshui Village has become an isolated island surrounded by the river.
The man's hand trembled with fear, and the spark from his cigarette arced and fell to the ground. He didn't bother to pick it up, but strode over to the car and asked, "What do you mean, Village Chief?"
"There's no land behind the village, only water. A river appeared out of nowhere and formed a circle around the back of the Chen family's house. No matter where you go, you can't get out."
The Chen family's house is the most marginal family in the back village.
With this explanation, the villagers immediately understood the exact location of the river. A moment of silence followed, and then an even more violent uproar erupted. Everyone looked at each other, helpless.
Yinsui looked at the people caught up in the same anomaly, carefully observing their varied expressions. Suddenly, his eyes regained their spirit. He grabbed his mother's collar, leaned in close, and whispered to her, "Mom, remember the people. The one standing here must be alive."
Life must go on, no matter what happened in the past.
Awakened by her daughter's reminder, Yin's mother realized that her legs were very weak, but she was reluctant to leave her even a step. She still held her tightly and took the initiative to walk back to the center of the crowd.
"Chen Lei is gone." The village is taboo and usually says "dead" as "gone". Everyone understands the meaning of this statement.
The sentence was like a thunderclap. What was unexpected was that this sentence was not an independent atomic bomb, but one of the first in a string of firecrackers.
"The wine jar is gone too," said a distant cousin of Chen Jiuzhang. After receiving the news of his death, Chen Jiuzhang had asked him to keep it a secret, and he had kept it a secret. "The death must have been very strange, otherwise they wouldn't have dared to hold a proper funeral."
The aunt, looking ashen, said, "Auntie Liu from the back village is gone too."
It was like playing a chain game, weird and absurd, with people coming out one after another to talk about bad things that had happened recently, ranging from small things like chickens and dogs dying, to big things like two people in a family of four going missing in just two days.
The village chief was furious. He was completely unaware of the two missing people and asked, "Why didn't you tell us about it on the day it happened? Why didn't you tell us now?"
The woman wiped her tears and explained, "The child's father and I had an argument and I couldn't find him. He used to be like this all the time, running away for two or three days and then crawling back like nothing happened. I was wondering why he was so responsible this time and knew to take the child away..."
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