Old love
Could it be that I can't see the others? The moment the thought flashed through my mind, the panting sound on my back came closer, and an indescribable stench came along my shoulders and upper body, sliding onto my cheek.
The distance was too close. No matter how hard I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind, I still felt a chill in my heart and hair in my throat. I felt that thing staring at me viciously, slowly squeezing my entire face up. As it moved, I felt as if a piece of soap had been squeezed out of the place where my skin was in contact, and some kind of sticky and corrupt grease was seeping out.
For a moment, I thought it would unfold like a giant bundle of cloth and wrap me up and digest me, or lower its head and bite my neck off.
But the action logic of this thing was completely incomprehensible. It just maintained a condescending posture, lowered its head and gently rubbed my face, leaving a trail of wet marks. In my stiff and huge confusion, it slowly wrapped around me.
I couldn't imagine what this thing looked like, let alone what it was going to do. Was it teasing me? My thoughts, which had just grasped a clue, were completely disrupted.
Some beasts of prey do play with their prey repeatedly when hunting, exhausting the last bit of resistance and courage of the prey, and then bite off the prey's throat to bleed and release air, so that they can bite or swallow it whole later. Is this how it intends to deal with me?
Reason tells me that I should continue to try to communicate with Zhang Tianyi and the others, race against time to clarify the current situation, so as to give them instructions to cooperate. Instead of waiting to be eaten away bit by bit in the tormented fantasy like now.
But I couldn't help but tremble, as if I had foreseen some extremely terrifying future. It was not just a normal feeling of fear, I couldn't explain the fake death reaction that was like seeing a natural enemy, I felt that I was almost uncontrollably turning into a body.
In a state of near confusion and horror, my brain tried hard to work and connected the previous thoughts intermittently: In my nightmare, I had used the perspective of my younger sister Xu Ping and witnessed the behavior of my father Xu Feng when he was "blind". It seemed that he not only could not see, but also could not touch Pingping. This child once existed only in the oral narration of his mother Zhang Can and me, but he chose to believe it.
To extrapolate from this, in the eyes of Zhang Tianyi and Sanyi, is Pingping also silent and invisible, and can only rely on the descriptions of my mother and me to imagine its existence?
Now, I am undoubtedly putting myself in their shoes, in the situation they once were. I can't see or hear them, and this time there is no channel for intermediary to relay the message. Because of the darkness and strange fog, I can't remind them by leaving any traces or writing anything in the surrounding environment. I have completely become deaf, blind and dumb.
How else can I connect with my “non-existent” family?
My thoughts raced but I couldn't come up with a solution, and my face suddenly felt cold. The thing lowered its head again, and the extremely soft and sticky touch rubbed against my face, but it lasted longer and was wetter than last time, as if it was constantly groping for my outline with its hands.
An indescribable strange feeling surged up, and I got goosebumps layer after layer for no apparent reason. Suddenly, I realized something.
That thing, that thing seems to have no facial features.
It seemed as if it was repeatedly covering my face with its blank face.
...“Add an official position”?
A horrifying torture suddenly popped into my mind.
That was the one Nian Huairen used when he punished Sanyi.
More familiar and seemingly plausible details came to my mind, and I remembered the origin of the name "Tie Jiaguan".
The executioner covers the person's face with a towel or paper, slowly wets it and pours water on it. The wet mulberry paper will soften and stick tightly to the prisoner's facial features, causing the prisoner to fall into repeated slow suffocation without leaving any signs of abuse.
The more layers of paper are added, the longer and clearer the feeling of suffocation becomes, and the clearer the prisoner's facial features will be imprinted on the paper. When the prisoner suffocates and dies of exhaustion, and the soaked mulberry paper is peeled off, the prisoner's face will appear completely on the paper, with clear contours, just like a one-to-one replica of a mask.
In the Tang Dynasty, people performed Nuo dances and used masks to pretend to be heavenly officials, ghosts and gods who could communicate with heaven and earth. Therefore, this torture was called "Tie Jiaguan".
…Is that so?
Nian Huairen back then, this thing now, is using Sanyi and me as a living mold to adjust and make masks for worshiping ghosts and gods.
My mind was buzzing. The night when San Yi killed Nian Huairen, along with some of the previous details, became an extremely horrifying truth as I realized it at this moment.
At that time, every time Nian Huairen used wine and towels, it was not a punishment or admonition as Sanyi thought. He was repeatedly checking Sanyi's face to see when he could mature enough to meet the standards!
What was important was not Sanyi's surrender and tears, but the wet towel that seemed to have been used and discarded, and the moments when it was soaked with wine. Because at this time, Nian Huairen could directly pick up the wet towel, observe the facial features reproduced on it, and put it on his own face for comparison.
At the beginning, Nian Huairen did not let Sanyi and his ex-wife Zhang Can leave because Sanyi was too young and had a small head, so the masks he could make were far from the required size. Before he could reach the required size, he had to take good care of him and stay close to him at all times, so as not to let Sanyi deviate too much from his growth.
Few people have thought about it carefully. In fact, the head matures the fastest in a person's life. Generally, by the age of fifteen, the head circumference is almost the same as that of an adult. For this narrow and skinny ghost in front of him, the requirements for the size of the mask will be further reduced.
Zhang Tianyi once said that he and Sanyi had different fates. He was pushed into the underground palace pool of the rats by Nian Huairen, and was eroded and contaminated by insect eggs, and wore the dark blue mask used for Nian family sacrifices. Then he was thrown as bait by the rats, became a wanderer, and came here by chance, met us and Sanyi, and was captured by the sentry box and became a guard.
We all thought that it was a momentary act of madness on the part of Nian Huairen, but we were wrong. We were all wrong. Nian Huairen did not want his own blood children to fulfill his regrets from the beginning. He called himself the last member of the Nian family, but in this title, he did not consider that he had descendants.
He wanted someone who was connected to him by blood and could help him bypass the pass and avoid the great terror controlled by the pollution of the moving rats. After forming a sacrificial iron mask that was 80% similar to his own, he could peel it off and give it to him to use, so as to escape the harsh price of the moving rats.
Compared to the wanderers who turned themselves into banyan trees, and compared to the "Blue Star" plan to create a holy child to wish to return home, Nian Huairen's plan is indeed much simpler and cruder, and more like an easy shortcut that is within reach. He does not want his homeland, does not want to return home, he only wants to crawl under the authority of the moving mouse.
And now, unfortunately, more than ten years later, I happened to do all the actions that Sanyi did when he returned home on that bloody foggy night.
Like the seven-year-old child, I came to the old house with the lights on, turned the brass door lock, and witnessed the moment when "Nian Huairen" opened the door. I also have traces of erosion by rats and insect eggs on my body. I even touched the real bronze mask used in the New Year's family festival and witnessed rats picking Nian Ziqing as ripe fruit.
So, at this moment, in the eyes of "Nian Huairen", I was Sanyi who almost escaped from his control. He was repeating his actions back then and couldn't wait to "promote me" to see if I was ready to be used.
Back then, Sanyi had stabbed him before he could do this, ending his life and cutting off this unknown cruel secret. But at this moment, I seemed to be facing an immortal monster.
What's worse is that as an adult, even if we only consider the circumference of my head, I'm probably much more suitable than the unfortunate Sanyi back then.
Moreover, to put it in a somewhat darkly humorous way, I can, after all, snatch the position of "tour guide" in front of the young man. Even if I cannot compare with the broker, the legitimate heir of the Nian family, I should still be a precious delicacy that Yishu favors very much.
Haha, that’s great, there is no one in the world more suitable for “getting an official position” than me.
I laughed dryly, finally understanding what the problem was. Even if something had happened, it should have been Sanyi or Zhang Tianyi who should have been dragged into the thick fog and stuck close to this ghost thing. At this time, they should have been beating each other up.
That's why these two took the lead and walked right under Huairen's nose, telling me to think and fly without worry.
Oh my God, who knew there was such a cruel secret, who knew Nian Huairen was a blind psychopath, who not only abandoned his own son, but also turned around and stared at me, wanting to be my cheap father and peel off my skin.
Damn it, no wonder this thing refuses to eat me, it just keeps its head down and sticks to me like a dog. Are you still wondering why it has changed so much that the mask doesn't fit anymore?
I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. I thought to myself, this is good. My ability to solve cases is still far beyond my expectations. I found out the unclear past relationship for Sanyi in an instant, and I completed Zhang Tianyi's request in advance. And this time I really didn't implicate anyone. I can say that I finally have a clear conscience. I just forced myself into the mouth of a monster.
I have done what I said and I hope that when the two brothers look back and hold my ashes, they will remember to cry a few more times. No matter what grudges we have, we can write them off now.
As I was complaining in my heart, as if I had finally accepted my appearance and the size of my forehead, something wet moved in the mist, and it came straight down, spreading like an oil film. This time, there was no trial and error, it was firmly sucked onto my face, and drilled into my facial features.
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