Wu Zhi was awakened by being pressed.
When I woke up, everything was pitch black.
"Am I... blind?" She tried to look up at the sky and suddenly saw a few faint stars. "It turns out it's dark."
She struggled to move, but was pinned down by the person on top of her. Perhaps it wasn't a person, but a corpse, pressing down on her like a stone, cold and heavy.
Wu Zhi tried her best to push the corpse away from her body, but suddenly she heard a broken bell and she froze.
After a long time, she reached out her trembling hand and touched the head and face of the corpse.
"...Mother?" She felt the familiar outline and then rubbed the body all over. "Mother? Mother!"
The corpse responded silently.
Wu Zhi's whole body was shaking like a sieve. She touched the wrist of the corpse and found it deadly silent.
Dead, died a long time ago.
Before she could cry out, heavy footsteps were heard from the darkness, and soon a group of people wearing masks and holding torches appeared above Wu Zhi's head.
By the light of the torch, Wu Zhi saw the corpses beside her with different appearances of death, and also saw her mother clearly.
Her mother opened her eyes and looked blankly at the equally empty night sky.
This was a crematorium, and Wu Zhi was sitting on top of the pile of corpses, with her long-dead mother lying beside her.
This must be a dream, Wu Zhi thought, but then a rolling corpse broke her self-deception.
"Almost done, let's burn it."
"Where's the tung oil?"
"Here."
Pungent tung oil poured along the edge of the crematorium. Wu Zhi staggered to his feet and asked blankly, "Who are we burning?"
This sudden question frightened the people outside the crematorium pit and made them scream. The brave ones raised their torches and shone them into the pit.
"It's Wu Zhi!"
"Wu Zhi? She's not dead?"
Wu Zhi asked again, "Who do you want to burn?"
"Who are we burning? A corpse! Someone who died from the plague." One of them looked at her again and shouted, "Since you're not dead, come up quickly. We'll burn you too."
Plague? Burning corpses?
Countless scenes flashed through Wu Zhi's mind. She intercepted one of them and slowly unfolded it.
It was also a pit, but it was not a crematorium, but a rat pit.
The pit was filled with rats, and the sound of their teeth grinding was creepy. Wu Zhi stood at the edge and took just one look before he couldn't help but step back.
Someone grabbed her shoulders and forced her forward.
"No." She grabbed the man's hand tightly, trying to stop him, "Grandpa!"
"Don't be afraid, you won't die." Grandpa's voice was kind, but he ruthlessly pried her hands apart and pushed her into the pit.
Screams pierced the sky and shook the night.
The cremator was so frightened by Wu Zhi's scream that he almost rolled down the pit.
"Is this girl crazy?" Several people who were cremating corpses saw Wu Zhi sitting on the pile of corpses, screaming and tearing her clothes desperately, and they couldn't help but feel numb all over.
Someone suggested, "Go and bring her up."
One person hummed, "Who's going? You going?"
Another person said: "Why not just burn them together?"
The person who made the suggestion said, "She is the granddaughter of the clan leader. Who dares to burn her?"
"What granddaughter? She's just a worthless creature born from a lowly family. Besides, if it weren't for her, would our village be plagued by a plague?"
"Forget it, I'll go. It's a life after all." The man handed the torch to his companion, slid down the mud wall, stepped on the corpse and came to Wu Zhi's side. "Come on, I'll take you up."
As he said that, he reached out to pull Wu Zhi, but was scratched by Wu Zhi's dancing hands.
"Hiss!" He slapped Wu Zhi in the face, and she immediately fell on her mother's body.
The people on the ground burst into gloating laughter.
The man kicked Wu Zhi angrily and said, "Are you leaving or not? If not, I'll burn you with these dead bodies."
Wu Zhi looked up and met her mother's stiff and numb face.
"Mom, it hurts." But her mother would never respond to her again.
The man impatiently grabbed the clothes on Wu Zhi's back and dragged her to the top of the pit.
Wu Zhi reached out to grab her mother in panic, but only grabbed a string of witch bells from the corpse.
That was what A'niang used to pray for her.
"Mother! Mother!" Wu Zhi couldn't break free from that man and could only watch her mother being swallowed by the darkness.
The man struggled to climb up to the crematorium, threw Wu Zhi to the ground, and then said to his companions, "Pour oil and light the fire."
Several barrels of tung oil were poured into the crematorium pit. Everyone stepped back and one person threw a torch into the pit. In an instant, the fire raged and turned the crematorium pit into a huge stove.
An indescribable smell wafted into the nose, making people's stomachs churn and some people began to retch.
Wu Zhi lay on the ground, watching the fire grow hotter and hotter, tears welling up in her eyes, "Mother..."
——————The dividing line between reality and illusion————
"Azhi, Azhi!" A gentle voice came from my ears.
"...Mother." Wu Zhi frowned, his forehead was covered with sweat, and he was muttering nonsense, but he did not wake up.
"Azhi! Wake up." The man patted Wu Zhi's face, then touched her forehead. "It's so hot!"
She called out a few more times before Wu Zhi opened her eyes, and everything in front of her was blurry.
"Azhi, are you awake?" the man asked with concern.
Wu Zhi blinked slowly, and after a while he saw clearly that the person pressing on him was Xu Jiang.
"Shen, dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Xu Jiang quickly got off her. "How are you?"
Wu Zhi reached out and touched his forehead.
Xu Jiang pulled her hand down and said, "You have a fever."
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