The toad holds gold in its mouth
The next day's light unsealed this stubborn stone for him, and when he returned to his pillow, the gold medal remained intact in its original place.
Later, the gold medal was discovered by the ancestors and sold for a fortune. Believing in the toad sculpture's ability to attract wealth, they preserved it and took it home as a house-guarding sculpture, which lasted for three generations.
At that time, my grandfather had never studied science seriously, so he was unable to analyze the details and just felt it was extremely strange.
After Yinsui learned about this matter, he specifically checked:
After death, bacteria in the body decompose internal organs and tissues, accumulating a large amount of gas in the chest and abdominal cavities. The most direct route of release is through the respiratory tract. As these gases rush through the throat at high speed, they vibrate the remaining soft tissue in the throat and force the muscles around the mouth and nasal cavity to open and close passively, producing a low "sound"-like sound, which appears to be the corpse's "open mouth."
Perhaps this is where the exhaled air and the frog's croaking come from.
After that, after much persuasion, her second uncle, who was about to move and was too lazy to take the heavy and broken stone with him, successfully paid for the shipping fee to have it shipped across provinces to the community where he lived.
When the stone toad was delivered, there were several crisscrossing cracks on its surface. I called to inquire, and my second uncle explained that the cracks appeared exactly on the night that Yinmu discovered the frog. He also repeatedly emphasized that he had not even touched it and would not take the blame for destroying the ancestral relics.
Yin Sui didn't care about the important inheritance significance of the ancestral relics. He simply slowly uncovered the outermost layer of stone along the crack.
The head of a real person, long buried in stone, finally saw the light of day. It was a man, his mouth perfectly aligned with the toad's, his teeth slightly open and closed, lips turned outward, and a row of neat, slightly dirt-stained teeth protruding slightly.
The gate that my grandfather used to take the gold medal was his teeth, the soft mud was his mouth, and the hard stone he touched in the dark was the part that was completely stuck to the man's hair and could not be removed.
"The ancients believed that holding gold in the mouth of the deceased could suppress the soul, preventing it from becoming an evil ghost or vengeful spirit, and from harming the family or disturbing the living."
Yinsui slapped his ankle, and the mosquitoes and blood merged into a pool. "Yeah, so I still don't understand whether Grandpa took away the gold medal to turn it into an evil spirit or to save it - in fact, it has always appeared in a positive image in my family."
Could such a horrific appearance leave such a positive impression? Ji Xunjin was a little curious.
"Before several major disasters, my grandfather could still hear the sound from that night. It sounded like frogs croaking, but it was actually men sighing. The first time, he was terrified and fled with his wife. Two days later, they heard a fire along the street. If they had stayed there, they would have likely died in the fire. The biggest disaster was a major earthquake, but my grandfather received a warning and fled in advance."
"So you're here to repay your kindness, giving a warning in advance to help your benefactor escape disaster?"
"Not necessarily. People died every time, but it wasn't my grandfather's turn. The first time, my grandfather's father didn't believe what he said and stayed and died. When the earthquake happened, there was also an earthquake where my grandfather fled, and my grandmother died."
"So it's impossible to tell whether its appearance is a warning or a sign of disaster."
"Well, except for something that happened a long time ago," she frowned, looking across the pond, where the mulberry trees swayed their branches, their green leaves rippling. "The most recent time, he had already passed away, and it was his daughter who heard the noises. Not only did she hear frogs croaking, she saw countless frogs hopping everywhere. That was the day Songshui Village became Songshui Village. In short, she believed all the abnormalities were due to the curse she inherited, and she felt guilty about it."
Guilt ultimately cost her her life.
Yinsui rose from the ground and moved closer to Ji Xunjin, so as to lower the volume of his subsequent narration to avoid letting it reach his ears as much as possible.
"You know those scissors that are designed for cutting thread ends? They're different from the ones you use everyday. They're called U-shaped clippers, I think. Regular scissors make two loud snapping sounds when they close, but these make a thin, crisp sound, like biting into a potato chip."
As long as you have heard of it, you will be able to tell it apart from ordinary scissors.
Especially in the dead of night, it keeps making sounds in the next room, and you walk in to see how its owner uses it to trim himself.
Some sounds and some images will be engraved into your bones even if they appear only once. They are a kind of motto of destiny that will run through your life.
As if she was afraid of waking someone, she omitted the subject and said vaguely, "I used these scissors to cut it myself."
Late at night, she walked into the bottomless cave and found her mother holding a pair of scissors in the depths of the cave.
The sound came one after another.
The magma pushed open the lid of the land, and the boiling red liquid splashed from high above to all directions.
Yinmu gave birth to her by caesarean section. What kind of knife was used for caesarean section? Would it make such a loud noise and melt the body?
Overnight, her brothers and sisters skipped the fertilization ceremony and were born from the fire. They fell to the ground one by one, shining with a faint, moist blood light. They were illuminated by the moon like frozen meat in a butcher's shop with special lights, but they were alive and elastic, and their surfaces were still wriggling when they touched the ground and the moonlight.
On that empty, windless night, the dead part of the mother and the baby she gave birth to wailed silently.
The only one who truly screamed was the mother's dull-witted eldest daughter, like a dying bird spreading its wings and flapping desperately in the dome, and then being crushed by the vast night, falling straight into an even darker pool, with her mouth and nose covered by the crowded water from all directions.
But she still screamed, and only screams were the umbilical cord connecting her to the world.
Because it stretches endlessly, it pulls souls trapped in the nightmares of the past back into the present world.
After the dark tide receded, she was able to survive to this day by not being taken away by her mother and siblings, nor being burned by the magma.
But when she brought up the past in broad daylight, the same voice would still echo in her mind.
The maxims of fate are unavoidable.
"Then she vanished, completely gone. Perhaps she felt she had left the world cursed."
Ji Xunjin was silent for a while, not knowing why the relaxing outing had turned into such a heavy topic.
Yin Sui grabbed his sleeve and walked forward. "Don't think of words to comfort me. These are just materials for the job. Relax a little. Didn't we say we were here to pick up shells? The past is the past. Look ahead. The ditch ahead is full of shells."
"Pure white." He opened his palm and saw a small shell with a moist luster lying in the center.
Her long eyelashes fluttered up and down: "Alive?" It will go bad soon after you take it back.
In fact, it is best to pick up dead clam shells from the river. The smell will completely evaporate in a dry place, so you can pick them up and store them simply without worrying about the smell of corruption.
“There are a lot of them over there.”
Sure enough, the ridges beside the pond were inlaid with many clean white shells.
"It's rare to find one intact. Most of the ones I have at home have holes in them. When I was in elementary school, I picked up everything. I also picked up crayfish, live clams, and the offspring of toads because I couldn't tell the difference between frogs and toads."
"And finally turned into a toad?"
She covered her face with her hands, a look of dismay. "I wish they could transform into toads instantly, like the monsters in cartoons, but they grew legs first and then their bodies. Their dark oval bodies suddenly split into two dark green hind legs. It was pure mental pollution. When I found them after school, I felt like the sky had fallen. I ran to the pond in the dark to empty them."
"I used to keep fish, small blue sharks."
“Remember to post photos when you get out.”
Ji Xunjin chuckled: "I don't raise it now, I don't have time to take care of it. If you want to see it, you can go and see it in person. Just find a fish friend and we can go visit and see the shark by the way."
"I also dug for earthworms. A group of us planned to go fishing after digging, but we didn't have any fishing rods, so we went back to someone's house to get one. As we were leaving, someone decided that the earthworms were too dirty and would muddy the water."
"It's a good age to be able to do whatever you want. I can even play with earthworms."
An idea suddenly struck her, and she recalled more of what happened next: "Yes, we really did start playing with the earthworms while washing them. One girl had a sharp fingernail and broke one off, and the others thought it was funny and tried to imitate her. In the end, more than a dozen earthworms were cut into dozens of pieces in the pool."
Ji Xunjin:?
"I didn't join because my grandparents thought the mud around the pond was dirty and didn't allow people to touch it. At the time, almost no one my age wanted to play with me. They probably thought my family was poor and particular."
“…Some things do need to be a little more refined.”
"I tried to think about other childhood stories... I remembered a boy who had a turtle. It hibernated into the summer and still hadn't woken up, so he thought it was too late to save. He cut off the turtle's head with a shovel, and it ricocheted into the yard while we all stood there watching. After a while, we carried the turtle to bury it."
A second question mark loomed over Ji Xunjin's head, and he began to doubt whether Songshui Village had ever come into contact with reality: "Why would they behead a turtle that failed to hibernate?"
"I don't know. It seems to be to test the toughness of the turtle's neck."
Cruelty comes without any reason. It is absurd to watch it and numb to participate in it.
After thinking for a moment, he had a new doubt: "When a turtle hibernates, it should retreat into its shell."
"You can hook it out. After it dies, the flesh dehydrates and shrinks, leaving a gap between it and the shell. You can just use anything to get it out," she continued, trying to recall. "The boy had shown us each one before."
Could it be switched to a more innocent and heartwarming children's channel? Ji Xunjin had given up hope on Yinsui's childhood and tried to dig out some fresh, interesting, and joyful moments from his own past. He soon realized with regret that the remaining memories were all tangentially tied to the intrigues of wealthy families, and he couldn't retrieve a single one.
But Yin Sui still asked him: "What did you play before?"
"Family war, power game."
"Something like a palace fighting theater?"
He shrugged indifferently and corrected, "The kind of family horror movies."
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