Human bone cart
The village chief had just said these words and hadn't even opened his mouth to explain anything when Zhai Ting collapsed on the ground.
It happened so suddenly that Ding Can didn't have time to pull her up. He could only squat down and support her. She looked up at the village chief and asked, "What happened?"
Old Wang's brows knitted together and he sighed. He was clearly very anxious but didn't know what to say. After a long while, he finally spoke: "Xiao Cheng fell to his death where the human bone cart was kept."
When Zhai Ting heard the news, her face turned pale and she fainted.
Someone turned around and looked at the backyard of the ancestral hall. Although there was a wall between them, they still tried to see something through it.
This time Ding Can caught it. Yang Qi came over to check on him and said, "It's nothing serious. He just fainted from shock. He'll be fine after a short rest."
He carried Zhai Ting to the bed and laid her down. Mu Mu was concerned about her condition, so he stayed in the room to take care of her. Mainly, he didn't want to see any bloody scenes.
Ding Can looked at Lao Wang: "Cheng Jialu didn't go out through the main gate. We were all here just now because we found that he was missing and were looking for him."
"That's right," Old Wang wiped the sweat from his forehead, clearly unsure what to do. "After I showed you the bone cart yesterday, the door wasn't locked. This morning, someone from the village passed by doing farm work and saw someone lying at the base of the wall. When they called me over to check, the person was already stone cold. They must have been there last night."
"Take us over to have a look." Compared to the other people in the courtyard who were shocked, Yang Qi could be said to be relatively calm.
Knowing that someone was dead, not many people wanted to go and see. Lao Wang took them back to the place where they had been yesterday. There were a few people gathered in front of the courtyard gate, watching, talking in low voices, with looks of fear on their faces.
He caught a glimpse of them coming and took a few steps back, but his mouth didn't stop moving.
Lao Wang waved his hand and said, "Everyone, if you have nothing to do, go back first. Don't gather here. I'll go to town later and find someone to handle this matter."
"How many people have entered the scene?" Yang Qi took out a pair of white gloves from somewhere and put them on slowly. His every move revealed his occupation.
Lao Wang was stunned for a moment before he realized what he meant by the scene.
"Qiangzi found him this morning. He's in the fields now. I was the only one who went in there. I just felt him to see if he was still breathing. He definitely didn't move at all."
"I understand." Yang Qi walked into the yard first. This place was only used to place the human bone cart. The place was not big, and Cheng Jialu could be seen at the corner of the wall at a glance.
After seeing it, I realized that what the village chief had just said was just a brief mention of his death and did not describe the true tragic circumstances of his death.
Although the courtyard and the ancestral hall are adjacent to each other, they do not share a wall.
The outer wall of the ancestral hall is quite high, almost twice as high as here. Logically speaking, climbing from the high wall to the low wall and then to the ground should be much safer than falling directly.
But Cheng Jialu was not so lucky.
I don’t know if it was because there was not enough light at night and he couldn’t see the road clearly, but he fell headfirst, with blood spreading from the top of his head to all around.
In particular, there were some old farm tools placed in the corner of the yard. They were not enough for plowing the land, and no one cared about them because they had been left here for a long time. They formed a small pile on the side like garbage.
As luck would have it, one of Cheng Jialu's legs was pierced by a rake, and a broken piece of bone pierced through the skin and was exposed to the air.
Yang Qi narrowed his eyes. What kind of impact force would be needed to cause this? The courtyard wall was only a few meters high.
He walked over and examined Cheng Jialu's body, then checked the time on his watch. "Preliminary conclusion is that he died between 12 and 2 a.m. this morning. He may have fallen because he wanted to see the human bone cart."
Cheng Jialu's eyes were still open after his death, his eyeballs bulging outwards, the red blood vessels around them were more obvious, his facial features were hideous, and he seemed to have been extremely frightened before his death.
His mouth was slightly open, and his entire body was now showing signs of stiffness. The blood spreading on the ground had solidified into a darker color.
The time of death was the same as the time when Cheng Jialu was seen leaving the house yesterday, that is, shortly after he was seen, or even within just a few minutes, he died on the other side of the wall.
He had a cell phone in his pocket, and it fell not far away. The screen was shattered and the accessories were scattered all over the place.
No one knew why he came. A murder had occurred in the village. Lao Wang just told the villagers to cover the body with a layer of white cloth, and then told everyone to go back and rest. He would go out and contact his superiors to see how to deal with it.
On the way back, some people were already discussing going home quickly because the person they were traveling with yesterday had just died, and they couldn't continue to visit here. They also felt that this place was not auspicious.
"Cheng Jialu has been acting strange since yesterday. Maybe he encountered some evil spirit when he went out this afternoon? I have to go back and ask Zhai Ting what happened."
A few people walked slowly behind, and Ding Can told Cheng Jialu what happened yesterday.
Looking back now, I should have at least opened the door to see what he was going to do. I missed the opportunity to discover the truth.
As a professional habit, Yang Qi took out the disinfectant and wiped it on his hands: "Although the situation at the scene looks like an accident, I always feel that there is something behind it."
Just before leaving, he looked at the bone cart carefully again. Just like when he saw it yesterday, there was no sign of movement.
The only difference was the light. No candles were lit today, so even for most of the day, the whole room was extremely dim, and the bone cart stayed there as if it had been there for a thousand years.
"Now that I think about it, the way he walked yesterday was indeed very strange. His steps were weak and his back looked a little shaky, like..." Ding Can stopped talking halfway, thinking of the right adjective in his mind.
Yu Fu took over the conversation: "He looks like a puppet."
As one of the only two people who met Cheng Jialu last night, I added some details.
"So, maybe from the moment he left the room, it wasn't voluntary at all."
Soon they returned to the ancestral hall. The door of Zhai Ting's room was open, and they could clearly hear the sounds inside.
She had woken up by this time, but she didn't look very well. She was curled up at the head of the bed. Mu Mu was sitting next to her, comforting her softly and helping her tuck her messy hair behind her ears.
"You guys are back. She's been awake for a while, but she's in a very bad mental state. She keeps saying things that are completely incomprehensible."
Mu Mu still hasn't figured out how such a thing could happen just one night.
When Zhai Ting saw them coming back, she jumped out of bed and almost fell over. She grabbed Ding Can's hand and asked, "Did you see Jialu? Is he really dead?"
Ding Can felt some pain from being grabbed, but she endured it but didn't shake it off. Besides fear, she also looked a bit hysterical and crazy. "Where did you go yesterday afternoon? Did you meet any strange people or things?"
"Sure enough, it's true..." Zhai Ting didn't answer her, but just repeated this sentence, then widened her eyes and reminded, "Don't take pictures of that ghost car. I told him a long time ago that it must have killed him."
Ding Can turned around and looked at his companions, only to find out that it was Cheng Jialu who took the photo of the human bone cart when no one was paying attention.
Then, what the village chief had said before was confirmed, and he died together with the two backpackers.
“When was the photo taken?”
Ding Can asked a few more questions, but still couldn't get a normal response from Zhai Ting. He pinched her chin and forced her to look up. "Since you know this, you must have seen this photo. Aren't you afraid that it will be the same as Cheng Jialu?"
"We just saw it clearly. He was covered in blood. He fell so hard that even bones were sticking out. They happened to be leg bones. Do you think there is something trying to use his bones to make a car?"
Gao Wenwen nodded repeatedly as he listened, and added leisurely, "There are more than one person's leg bones on a wheel."
Zhai Ting shuddered. "He secretly took the photo when we went to see it together yesterday. He showed it to me during the lunch break..."
She raised her head and looked at me eagerly again, "But I, I have told him. Before going to bed last night, he was still holding his phone and looking at the photo album, but I didn't know that he would sneak out while I was asleep."
Seeing that people were getting excited again, Mu Mu held her in his arms and patted her back slowly: "Don't worry too much, this is actually an accident, no one wants it to happen."
She whispered comforting words, but there was hesitation in her eyes as she looked at the few people. Ding Can understood what she meant.
Although this is what he said, based on the folk stories he learned during his previous travels around the world, Mu Mu completely believed that this murder was caused by the curse brought down by the bone cart, or some other unknown unnatural mysterious force.
No matter where the real problem lies, the restrictions here have been touched. For safety reasons, we can't stay here any longer.
"Listen to me, eat something first, and wait for the village chief to find someone outside to help, then we can go home, okay?"
Zhai Ting's frightened eyes lit up, and she finally saw a glimmer of hope: "Yes, we have to leave here quickly."
She stepped directly onto the floor, not even having time to put on her shoes, and rushed to the bathroom to wash up: "I have to get ready to wash my face and change clothes quickly, otherwise it will be too late."
"Hey!" Mu Mu didn't have time to catch her. They looked at each other for a while, and were afraid that something might happen to Zhai Ting in the bathroom again, so he had to follow her in.
Gao Wenwen sighed, "He must have been frightened. The same thing happened to Cheng Jialu. He seemed like a nice guy, but why did he still take secret photos with his phone even after the village chief had warned him?"
"So the curse started to come true yesterday afternoon. That's why Cheng Jialu became like that. We..."
Ding Can was about to continue speaking when his body suddenly began to shake. He then realized that the shaking was actually coming from the ground beneath his feet.
Is this, an earthquake?
Fortunately, it only lasted for a dozen seconds, and nothing even fell in the house, so it seemed that the magnitude of the earthquake was not very high.
Several people subconsciously found a safe corner in the room and stood there, with a bad feeling in their hearts.
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