Chapter 265 Jinjiang
When Yan Shixun heard Zheng Shumu's question, he was silent for a moment, then raised his eyes and looked at him again.
He could sense that the person standing in front of him was the same person he had seen at Zheng Shumu's house before.
The fact that Zheng Shumu could appear here also confirmed Yan Shixun’s previous speculation.
——Zheng Shumu is the person behind the scenes who dominates the shadow play.
Master Bai felt guilty towards Zheng Shumu. He witnessed Zheng Shumu's transformation from a child full of innocent dreams into an evil ghost with only hatred in his body.
Therefore, Master Bai asked Zheng Shumu whatever he wanted. No matter what Zheng Shumu wanted to do, Master Bai would just nod and agree and would not refuse.
Because of this, Zheng Shumu was able to bring the entire village into the shadow play, and swap the identities of the shadow play characters and real people, even deceiving heaven and earth.
But Yan Shixun still had some doubts.
Why did Master Bai say that Zheng Shumu was not the person behind the scenes, and even asked him to save Zheng Shumu?
How can we save him? It is obvious that Zheng Shumu is the leader of this shadow play, and Master Bai is the one who truly controls the shadow play...
Yan Shixun frowned, and his protective feelings towards the boy immediately turned into wariness towards Zheng Shumu.
Zheng Shumu noticed the change in Yan Shixun's attitude towards him, but he just smiled bitterly and shook his head without explaining himself.
"Thank you, Mr. Yan."
Zheng Shumu's gaze swept across the villagers wailing on the ground, and when he finally looked at Yan Shixun, his red eyes were moist.
His voice was hoarse and his Adam's apple kept rolling up and down, as if he was trying hard to suppress the urge to cry.
"Back then, no one was willing to help me... Help a child, save his mother and sister."
Zheng Shumu forced a smile, but it was uglier than crying: "At least now, someone is willing to help that child and stand up for him. Even if, even if this is fake, it's fine."
Even in a fake shadow play, this tiny change is enough to comfort the pain of missing out on his mother's life.
Zheng Shumu raised his head tremblingly, looking at the boy's gradually exhausted figure in the lake. His mouth trembled violently, and his throat was so sore and tight that he couldn't utter a word.
Before he could say anything, tears started streaming down his wrinkled cheeks.
But it is blood and tears.
Yan Shixun was startled and subconsciously took a step forward.
But his palm, which was originally raised and clenched into a fist, slowly loosened after a slight pause.
Even though he was wary and suspicious of Zheng Shumu, at that moment he was only facing a child who had lost his mother.
It is inappropriate to treat Zheng Shumu with such an attitude and behavior.
Yan Shixun's knuckles were covered with bloody scratches. He lowered his hands again and slowly turned around, following Zheng Shumu's gaze into the lake.
The young and weak child was tired of crying and had exhausted all his strength. He fainted in the icy lake and slowly sank.
"Do you want to watch yourself die, Zheng Shumu?"
Yan Shixun asked Zheng Shumu, who was already middle-aged, in a deep voice: "Aren't you going to save him?"
Zheng Shumu watched his former self being gradually submerged by the lake water, smiled bitterly and shook his head slowly: "Just think of it as, just think of my former self... having died that night."
"Mr. Yan, do you know how it feels to watch your mother drown in front of you?"
Zheng Shumu raised his head and blinked rapidly, trying to suppress the tears that were about to burst out.
But his hoarse voice betrayed him.
"I know."
"I watched my mother die in front of me, but I was powerless. Back then, there was no Mr. Yan, nothing. I stood by the lake and watched my mother sink to the bottom of the lake. And then..."
Zheng Shumu shuddered, paused for a long time, and then said in a hoarse voice that could not suppress the sound of crying: "I saw my mother's body floating up from the bottom of the lake again."
Upon hearing this, Yan Shixun's eyes widened slightly.
He looked at Zheng Shumu with complicated eyes and was speechless for a moment.
"How much I wanted to die with my mother that night. To die in the lake with my mother would be the greatest happiness for me. I wanted to seek that kind of happiness. But."
Zheng Shumu smiled bitterly and shook his head: "I am a sinner. I don't even deserve such happiness."
For Zheng Shumu, death is a gift from gods and ghosts.
Ever since Zheng Shumu, who witnessed his mother's death that night many years ago and luckily escaped from the Bai village, has been living in a hell of hatred.
The scene of his mother's death recurred in his nightmares, haunting him day and night.
It was like the mother crawled out of the icy lake, her body wet with blood and tears, questioning him why he didn't save her, why he didn't save his sister.
Why... don't you help them get revenge?
Zheng Shumu would always wake up from a nightmare screaming, but his face would already be covered in tears.
Thinking about it day and night, the only thing left for him to do was to kill all the participants and bystanders of that year to avenge his mother and sister.
The child who once looked up at the shadow play with light in his eyes eventually turned into a gloomy young man full of hatred.
There was only one thing left in his life.
--revenge.
Let all the villagers who are worse than beasts pay the price for what they did in the past.
While Zheng Shumu was trying to remain calm and talking to Yan Shixun, the boy in the lake had completely sunk to the bottom and disappeared.
Yan Shixun took a step forward and stretched his arm forward subconsciously.
Zheng Shumu saw Yan Shixun's actions and knew that this exorcist instinctively wanted to protect the child and rescue him from the lake.
Even though he had been through a lot, had experienced life and death countless times, and had even forgotten what death was like, when Zheng Shumu saw that someone was willing to save him without any distractions when he was once isolated and helpless, the softest part of his heart was touched at that moment.
What if, what if all this is true?
If my mother and I, who were forced to death back then, had met Mr. Yan, my mother and sister would not have died, and I would not have become this half-human, half-ghost appearance?
Zheng Shumu closed his eyes and let out a long sigh, which drifted away in the cold night.
Unfortunately, everything has already become a foregone conclusion...
Zheng Shumu grabbed Yan Shixun's arm and did not ask him to save the boy who sank to the bottom of the lake. He just silently signaled him to watch what happened next.
The next moment, the changes originally caused by the appearance of Yan Shixun gradually subsided.
Things returned to the way they were supposed to be.
It's like a craftsman sitting behind the curtain, controlling all the shadow puppets. He flexibly and silently manipulates the wooden sticks and silk threads in his hands, controlling the puppets' every move and the changes in scenes.
In front of Yan Shixun's eyes, everything was rapidly going backwards.
The villagers who had fallen to the ground wailing stood up again. The torches that had fallen nearby automatically returned to the villagers' hands. The boy was held in the villagers' hands and punched down again and again.
However, the boy seemed to feel no pain. The light in his eyes went out and he stared at the lake in darkness. He begged painfully to all the ghosts and monsters passing by to save his mother and his unborn brother and sister.
The boy was like a sandbag, welcoming the villagers' unvented excitement and anger. Soon he was covered in blood, and his face was so bruised and swollen that his original appearance was unrecognizable.
When the villagers were finally tired of beating him, the boy was covered in wounds and was being held in their hands like a corpse, barely breathing.
Only those eyes still looked towards the lake stubbornly, begging for a miracle to happen.
The villagers kicked the boy and scolded him a few times, then laughed and discussed taking the boy back and locking him in the woodshed, waiting to hunt again tomorrow as they had tonight.
Just as they were about to turn around and leave, ripples appeared in the center of the lake, as if there was something beneath the surface.
The boy's eyes lit up instantly.
He didn't know where he got the strength from, but he struggled to break free from the villagers' hands and crawled towards the lake using his hands and feet. He stretched his arms desperately into the water. His vocal cords were covered in blood and he couldn't speak, so he could only make "ah ah" sounds. Tears welled up in his eyes, leaving two tear marks on his face covered in blood and scars.
He was expecting his mother to come back.
The villagers didn't know how the child, who had been beaten to the point of dying, managed to break free, but they still chased after him cursing, bent down and grabbed the boy's hair and tried to lift him up.
The waves in the center of the lake grew larger and larger, and the movement attracted the attention of the villagers.
When they looked up, they saw a female corpse slowly floating up from the bottom of the lake.
It was the woman just now.
The woman lay quietly in the middle of the lake, her hands crossed as if protecting her abdomen, her expression peaceful and tranquil.
It was as if she was not murdered by anyone, but died under the tearful gaze of her relatives and friends, and was buried solemnly in the water.
Everyone who saw this scene was stunned.
The light that had just ignited in the boy's eyes finally went out completely.
The light of the fire could not warm the coldness and despair deep in his soul.
The boy lost all strength to struggle and was dragged by the villagers by his hair. He dug his ten fingers into the wet soil to try to stop himself from being dragged away, but all he did was leave ten deep marks on the soil. His nails were broken and his fingers were ground to the bone.
A mess covered in blood.
Yan Shixun watched all this and tried several times to rush over to protect the boy behind him, but Zheng Mushu grabbed his arm tightly and did not let him go.
"Mr. Yan, this is what happened to me."
Zheng Shumu quietly watched the boy who looked like him being carried away like a dead dog. After a long while, he spoke again: "I am very grateful that Mr. Yan wanted to save me. But... it's too late."
"Mr. Yan arrived a few decades too late. Now even the gods and ghosts of heaven and earth cannot save me from the hell of evil spirits."
Yan Shixun's chest heaved violently, and the strong muscles wrapped under the black shirt were tense. He gritted his teeth and stared at the backs of the villagers fiercely.
It was like a top hunter lowering his body and growling as he prepared to attack his prey.
If he were an adult, Yan Shixun would not be so angry.
But the ones who suffered were pregnant women and young children.
In order to seize Carpenter Zheng's property, those young and strong villagers even spared the orphans and widows.
But what made Yan Shixun most angry was their bullying of the weak.
——If your opponent is an equally young and strong adult, would you still do such a thing?
If your opponent was me, would you dare to have even the slightest thought?
A coward who only dares to attack and hurt the weak!
The villagers' cat-playing-with-mouse behavior angered Yan Shixun.
He wanted to retaliate and let the villagers also experience the feeling of being hunted and teased.
Only this time, the identities were swapped.
——The hunter is him.
The prey being hunted are the villagers themselves.
For Yan Shixun, this is the only way to fairly resolve all causes and effects.
But although Yan Shixun was angry, he also calmly knew that Zheng Shumu was right.
The villagers have all died, and Zheng Shumu's mother drowned in the lake decades ago.
There was little he could do for them.
Now, only Zheng Shumu is still alive and can still be rescued.
Yan Shixun clenched his hands hanging by his side into fists and took a few deep breaths before gradually calming himself down.
Zheng Shumu slowly let go of the hand that was holding Yan Shixun's arm, took two steps back slowly, and looked at the lake again with tears in his eyes.
Yan Shixun's sharp eyebrows gradually calmed down, and his lips were pursed into a straight line, as if he was suppressing his anger and sadness. He stood there for a long while, then slowly turned around and looked at the woman's body in the lake.
Unlike the villagers who quickly ignored the shock, Yan Shixun, who had traveled between the mountains and rivers of the north and south for many years, knew very well that ordinary corpses would not float to the surface immediately after drowning. Only corpses with a grudge that had not yet dissipated...
It is unwilling to sink to the bottom of the water and slowly rot, so it returns to the human world with resentment.
As a ghost.
According to folk rumors, the corpses that rose again from the lake were because even the King of Hell was fed up with the sight of the dead, so he released the wronged souls back to seek revenge.
Although Yan Shixun knew very well that the King of Hell was dead at that time, there would be no King of Hell who would allow the woman to return to life for revenge.
But he also knew very well that this meant that the woman was now filled with ghostly aura.
But where does the ghost energy come from?
Yan Shixun's gaze fell on the woman's abdomen.
The woman's body was already cold and pale, but her round belly would still rise and fall violently from time to time, as if something inside was kicking and hitting the woman's abdomen, trying to get out.
At that moment, Yan Shixun's eyes suddenly widened, and he turned around in surprise and looked at Zheng Shumu beside him.
"Zheng Tiantian..."
Yan Shixun moved his lips.
Before he finished speaking, Zheng Shumu already knew what Yan Shixun wanted to ask.
He lowered his head in silence, and bright red tears flowed down his eyes and fell to the ground.
The next moment, Yan Shixun saw that the woman's fingernails suddenly grew larger and became as sharp as a knife, cutting open her own stomach.
A black mass was taken out from the woman's abdomen.
——It’s a ghost baby!
Yan Shixun felt as if his throat was being pinched by an invisible hand. His vision went dark and he was suffocating to the point of having difficulty breathing.
This was not the first time he had seen a ghost baby.
Whether it was Yang Duo from Jiazifen Village who almost became a ghost god, or Chi Yan who fed the little ghost with the fetus in her belly, although they both gained powerful strength far beyond that of ordinary people, they could not compare with the ghost baby in front of them.
Between Yang Duo and Chi Yan, the mother body has always had the upper hand.
Although Yang Duo was far superior to all the evil spirits in the battle with the Yin gods because she was pregnant when she died, Yang Duo herself did not have much affection for the fetus, and the fetus had to rely on Yang Duo to survive.
But this ghost baby is different from the previous ones.
The ghost baby was already full-term and the mother should have been giving birth, but she died at the last moment, suffocating the baby to death in her womb.
The anger and resentment brought about by the failure to reincarnate at the last step is so strong and profound that it far surpasses all other emotions, causing the ghost baby to become extremely ferocious and hate the entire world and everyone indiscriminately.
What’s even more fatal is that the mother has deep expectations and feelings for this baby.
A woman would rather cut open her abdomen and damage her body in order to give birth to a baby. This will cause the ghost energy originally gathered in the mother's body to follow the mother's will and rush towards the baby.
This means that from the moment this ghost baby is born, it is destined to be a powerful ghost king that is superior to all evil spirits.
Yan Shixun was shocked, and then he remembered that everything he saw was what Zheng Shumu wanted to tell him.
It happened decades ago.
Whatever he saw, it couldn't be undone.
This ghost baby has grown over the past few decades to a point where it is difficult to deal with.
And the identity of this ghost baby...
It’s Zheng Tiantian.
At that moment, Yan Shixun felt that his heart had also fallen to the bottom of the lake, and it was freezing cold.
He couldn't help but wonder, he was decades late and the situation had become inevitable, so how could he reverse it?
Yan Shixun smiled bitterly in his heart and sighed that the world really gave him a difficult problem.
This question...
Difficult to understand.
But the scene that Zheng Shumu wanted to show to Yan Shixun was not over yet.
The black blood gradually spread on the surface of the lake.
The woman held the black mass of flesh high in her hands, then swam from the lake to the shore and stepped on the land wet all over.
The wet soil stained the woman's legs, feet and skirt. Her organs and intestines fell out of her broken abdomen and drooped on the ground. They swayed with her slow and stiff steps and scattered all over the ground, and were crushed unconsciously by the woman herself.
Since there was no swaddling clothes, she tore her own clothes and wrapped the baby in her arms.
Without food, she used her own blood to feed the baby who was born full of her expectations and resentment.
The woman held the baby in her arms lovingly, as if death had never come to them. She sang hoarse and rough nursery rhymes with her gradually stiffening vocal cords, and rocked the baby to comfort him.
The evil spirit and power were transferred from the woman to the baby along with the blood.
The baby, who was originally pitch black, grew up quickly. His skin became soft again, his cheeks were pink and cute. He smacked his lips as if he was full and slept peacefully in the woman's arms.
But women become weaker and weaker due to the damage to their mother's body and the loss of strength.
When she walked into the field, she could no longer hold on and suddenly collapsed to the ground, scattered into pieces of bones.
But even so, the woman used up her last bit of strength to prevent the sleeping baby from being awakened by the pain of the fall.
The corpse lay in the weeds, looking lovingly and quietly at the child she had given birth to with all her life and ghost energy.
The weeds sway.
A young man in tattered clothes appeared on the ridge of the field.
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