Homestay (1)
When you step into the green shade, the most intuitive feeling is that the heat in the air is immediately relieved.
When I walked to the rusty little door, damp vapor hit me in the face.
The door was half open. I pushed it gently and it creaked with almost no obstruction.
We all went in and walked through the small, almost deserted garden in front of the building and the broken fountain pool, heading towards the residential building.
The places on both sides of the road that used to be flower beds are now just a pile of rubble mixed together, as if they were smashed and destroyed by blunt objects. The fragments are colorful, and it can be vaguely seen that the flower beds were also decorated with great care.
This path is the only flat land under your feet, and the soil on both sides is completely deformed by dead banyan trees.
Zhang Jia checked the soil again and compared it with the sandy and gravelly soil on the side of the mountain path.
He twisted it with his gloves, sniffed it, and exclaimed, "It's alkali."
Pyrolyte was added to the soil, no wonder it was so dry and hardened, the entire soil structure was probably destroyed. We checked with Yan Mo, and someone came to reply in a hurry, saying that if the damage was serious, it would be difficult to recover by ordinary irrigation and salt washing, and asked if there was anything in our field.
The team leader and I looked at each other and told the guy to calm down and speak carefully.
He thought for a moment and added:
"If a large amount of pyrolyte water is poured into this area, the entire land will become very compacted. The most obvious thing is that the roots of any flowers or grasses on the ground will be 'burned' directly, and there is basically no possibility of regeneration. And this withering and destruction will last for many years if it is not dealt with."
I asked him how long it would take, and he said in a serious tone that it would take at least ten to twenty years. And in the first year, it might just kill the plants, and it seemed that the damage would be limited to this small area. Later, it might gradually pollute the groundwater and the animals that might drink the water. This decision must not have been made by chance.
When we called the guy, we didn't mention the banyan trees on both sides. Now I probably understood what he meant, so I thanked him and told him to go back to work.
The team leader shook off the dirt in his hands and said, "What's wrong with the owner of this B&B? He planted two rows of banyan trees and then messed up the land when he got anxious."
I shook my head. The fake banyan tree in front of the B&B made me feel uncomfortable. Now that I heard that there was alkali in the soil, the contradictory feeling of separation was even more uncomfortable.
Having put this matter aside, we continued on without touching those creepy silk banyan leaves and went straight to the door of the small building.
This small building is a stand-alone building, made of the same red bricks as the low wall of the garden outside, and its doors and windows are closed.
The suspected corpse we saw before was on the balcony on the third floor. When we looked up, we could still only see some corners. But when we looked closer for a long time, it felt strange, and we all began to doubt whether it was a human figure.
What's more, the abnormal humidity in the air made the situation worse.
We tried pushing the security door of the B&B building, but it was very sturdy and didn't move at all.
One of the three men went up and took a copper wire to pry the keyhole. After twisting the wire between his fingers, he looked up and asked in a puzzled voice, "The keyhole has been blocked by something."
He made way, turned on the flashlight and showed us what was going on. The light shone into the keyhole, and we all squinted our eyes and saw that the inside seemed to be in a mess.
"There are those very thin roots, and there is molten iron that was poured in artificially. Hiss, and what is this, a bubble? I can't see it."
The team leader stared at it for a long time and said that something was wrong. Now the lock was just a solid lump of iron.
We went to the window again and saw through the glass that there was also darkness behind the window, as if there were wooden boards or metal bars nailed there, and the sound of knocking on the back of the glass was very dull.
The entire first floor of the small building seems to be completely enclosed.
When I looked at the burnt ground in front of the door, I found it even more indescribably weird.
How can I describe that feeling...
"The banyan tree itself has no leaves and is dead, but they still fixed a lot of silk leaves on it. They also made 'ivies' around the dead roots of the banyan tree on the homestay. These actions, such as making totems, are more like some kind of primitive religious behavior, which contains the meaning of fear and worship."
I subconsciously sorted out my thoughts, "They hope that the banyan tree is intact? Can it promise some kind of shelter? But they isolated and sealed off the homestay, destroying the soil that the plants need to survive..."
No, it doesn't make sense. Isn't this schizophrenia?
The team leader knocked on the security door and asked, "Do you want to attack?"
I didn't want to rashly destroy this sealed state or make too much noise, so I was a little hesitant.
So I shamelessly went to ask the omnipotent logistics manager Yan Mo if he had an infrared X-ray machine or some other equipment that would allow us to observe outside first.
Didn't the Zhang family use instruments to detect that there was water under the pit? This high-powered scan is good, give me one too. I didn't even ask for a helicopter, is that too much?
There was silence on the other end of the intercom, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and probably also felt that it was a bit outrageous.
In the end, the person who solved the problem was Ruirui, who was woken up while still dazed.
The little girl seemed to be used to being woken up and asked a few questions every time she slept for just two hours. She tried to recall the familiar lines that the female tour guide said on the bus, and then she said with a bit of confusion and yearning, "Look at the stars."
Here is the translation after Lao Yan asked for a long time:
——At night, you can lie down in the room and look up at the stars. The ceiling is inlaid with air windows that can be flipped open.
Although Ruirui could not be brought up the mountain to see this night view, the female tour guide would describe the scene and details to her every time she came back.
I slapped my forehead and thought, yes, according to the itinerary, it would be dusk after the tourists watched the sunset by the lake, and it would definitely be too late to leave the valley on the same day. They were going to stay in the B&B for one night.
Back to the window, from our visual observation, the ceiling of the B&B is at least 3.5 to 4.2 meters high. The window there is difficult to reach, maybe the seal is not so tight, and it is very likely that there are some fish that have not been sealed.
Things have changed a bit here.
After discussing it, we asked one of our servants, Zhang, to climb up the wall and take a look first.
The one who was more talkative along the way volunteered, wanting to show off, and climbed over the wall in no time.
After a while, his voice came over:
"The air vent is not sealed, it's just closed normally! You can see through the glass that it's very dark inside!"
Then he called out to me and asked me if I wanted him to climb up to the third floor to take a look and confirm whether the person who was so worried near the roof was a corpse.
My back felt numb, and I didn't know why I felt that this was not going to work. I told him to stop making any unnecessary moves and to observe what was in the enclosed space on the first floor.
He looked for a long time, and I could feel that he seemed to have turned the high beam of the flashlight to the maximum. Even in broad daylight, I could see that it was brighter in his direction. He moved on the air vents of several rooms to find an observation angle.
After a while, from his description, we had a general idea of what the first floor looked like.
There are four rooms on the first floor, with a cozy small reception room in the middle.
But the living room floor was now almost completely soaked in water. Most of the so-called pastoral-style fabrics were moldy and soaked, covered with something that was hard to tell whether it was green or white. The circular sofa in the center was especially large, with a spring that had broken and a long gap in it, revealing the old yellow and black cotton inside.
The damp vapor we feel in front of the door probably comes from this.
But then comes the problem.
"There's a person sitting on the sofa in the living room, with his head down and his shoulders slumped," the guy said. "He's probably dead, but it's weird."
He couldn't tell what the strange thing was for a moment, so he walked to the edge of the second floor, poked his head out and gestured to me, saying that the man's body shape and limbs were normal, and there was nothing abnormal. Therefore, he was very confused about the strange feeling he intuitively felt.
When I thought about it, I hissed and felt my teeth a little sour.
"Didn't you notice? The biggest problem is that it's a person, not a head."
The guy was startled, and even from such a distance I could see that his face changed a little.
Yes, all the accidents along the way left only a head, and suddenly there was a normal body, complete and intact, so it must be something fishy. But his reaction was still a bit puzzling.
"Not one."
The guy's voice was a little weak.
Oh, I nodded. Yes, there is another one on the third floor, holding the pipa and half covering her face.
But the guy said in a horrified tone: "No, I mean... there is only one body in the room on the first floor."
I was stunned for a moment, and immediately felt a chill on my back.
I understood what he meant and also discovered a very outrageous fact.
Because everything that has happened so far has happened in the tour group that entered the mountain almost at the same time as us, I have almost forgotten about the earlier batches of tourists.
In my opinion, it was all just a bunch of heads and all traces had been removed by the travel company.
But now, the makeshift team once again told me that they seemed to have not even solved the previous mess and directly dragged the next batch of people into the mountains.
I can hardly imagine how creepy the whole scene and atmosphere would have been if we hadn't stopped them and persuaded them to leave, and if the cave hadn't appeared in the rainstorm, the tour group would have reached the top of the mountain smoothly, saw the B&B and were ready to check in, but then faced a group of corpses.
No, I corrected myself with a shudder.
To be precise, such a ridiculous scene probably really happened.
I roughly know where these corpses came from.
But this speculation is really chilling.
I had to calm myself down and asked the team leader Zhang Jia beside me if he could help me look for a bronze plaque on the edge of the wall of the small building to commemorate the completion time and the investor.
"I have an idea that I need to confirm whether this B&B was built exactly ten years ago."
Seeing that I looked unhappy, Zhang Jia quickly walked around the small building and came back to tell me exactly what happened:
Fortunately, this B&B for tourism has not given up on the good materials used to promote its long-standing business. Not only is there a bronze plaque on the side of the wall, but there is also a "Take a photo here" sign that has fallen to the ground and is covered in dust.
Fortunately, this B&B was built about sixteen or seventeen years ago.
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