Ancient Corpse in the Mountain Village (14)
Jiang Yu woke up in panic in the middle of his sleep. He turned over and found that Yu Shu was gone. He looked under the bed and in the toilet, but there was no trace of him.
He ran out in a hurry, forgetting to put on his shoes. The sound of his feet hitting the wooden floor was continuous and dense, echoing in the corridor.
There was no light downstairs, and no sign of human activity.
The whole house was eerily quiet. The sound of his bare feet running was so loud that Yu Huan would definitely hear it if he passed by the door of his room.
A bad premonition grew in the silence. Jiang Yu went back to the second floor and knocked on Yu Huan's door, but there was no response.
Sure enough, both brothers got into trouble.
Jiang Yu returned to his room and planned to prepare talismans to solve the problem. However, when he took out his cell phone to check the time, he found that the cell phone signal was zero.
Ghosts can influence people, but conversely, ghosts can only influence people. If there is no signal on the mobile phone, maybe what he is holding in his hand is not a mobile phone at all.
Yu Ding'an doesn't have such great ability to come back to life, could it be He Yuhua who is influencing him?
But He Yuhua's position was clear: if she wanted to attack him, while the chances of success were almost zero, there were plenty of opportunities. They were investigating the truth of the past and had found her body intact, and she had helped, so it was only natural that she wouldn't stand in the way.
If it wasn't He Yuhua, the situation would be even worse, and there would be a deeper hidden secret.
Just when Jiang Yu was about to use the talisman to dispel the evil spirit that was affecting the living, he felt that everything had returned to normal. At the same time, he heard Yu Huan knocking on the door and shouting.
"Jiang Yu, I saw a tree in the yard, but I cut it down when I was five. Is my brother okay?"
Jiang Yu opened the door wide, allowing him to take in the entire scene in Yu Huan's room.
"Your brother is missing." Jiang Yu turned his head and looked outside the window. There were no trees at all, but Yu Huan's panicked and nervous look did not seem like he was lying at all.
The color drained from Yu Huan's face, and the fluorescent light reflected on his face was like falling on white paper. He stared at Jiang Yu with wide eyes in disbelief: "Where did he go?"
"I'll go find him and ask the other two Taoists to come over. Stay home and don't go out."
While waiting for the other two Taoists to arrive, Jiang Yu wrote several talismans, arranging them according to the Bagua formation around the central axis of the house. Yu Huan's five elements lacked wood, while Yu Ding'an's five elements lacked water, so Jiang Yu added several protective talismans in the Xun and Li directions.
Jiang Yu explained the precautions to the young Taoist priest in detail three times before he went out. The fact that Yu Shu disappeared under his nose was enough to make him feel uncomfortable and regretful. If Yu Huan encountered another unexpected situation and the news got out, where would his name, Jiang Yu, be?
Jiang Yu was a little surprised after he went out. He could not see the tree indoors, but he saw it outside. He also remembered clearly that there were no trees planted at the location of Yu Shu's house. It seemed that this was the tree that Yu Huan had just said was cut down.
If time permits, he really wants to study this tree that appeared out of nothing, but when he thinks that Yu Shu might be in danger, he has to speed up and find him.
Jiang Yu blew a breath towards the talisman held between his index and middle fingers, and instantly a bright warm golden flame ignited. The flame lingered between his fingers but could not burn him.
Fortunately, Yu Shu still had the knot of eternal life with him.
That was given to Jiang Yu by his master for self-protection. It could purify the negative and evil spirits around him and could also be sensed. The fuel talisman allowed Jiang Yu to sense Yu Shu's approximate location, which was in the west of the village.
Jiang Yu rushed out in his pajamas and flip-flops.
The dismembered girl sang and laughed strangely, and Yu Shu was almost frightened to death. He sat on the ground with his eyes closed, supporting himself with his hands and backing away.
But no matter how Yu Shu retreated, the singing followed him like a shadow, maintaining the same volume. He did not dare to open his eyes, for fear of seeing
The girl's upper body crawled towards him.
The stones hurt my palms, the cold breeze from the lake blew on my body and penetrated into my heart and lungs, and there was also the singing that I couldn't escape or avoid.
He had never felt so helpless and hopeless.
At this moment, his greatest hope was no longer for Jiang Yu to come and save him, but to faint and lose consciousness so that he wouldn't have to endure this kind of mental torture anymore.
It's a pity that things don't go as planned. The fear penetrates into the nerve cells and travels throughout the body with the blood and breathing, stimulating him all the time. He has no way of fainting.
Yu Shu didn't know how far he had retreated, maybe ten meters, twenty meters, or maybe he had remained in the same place.
Every time the nursery rhyme mentioned flowery shoes, flowery socks, and flowery belts, He Yuhua's figure automatically appeared in his mind.
As Yu Shu was retreating, he seemed to touch something that felt like human skin, which made his heart leap to his throat.
He could no longer hold back and screamed in shock: "Help! Help!" But he just opened his mouth wide, his throat seemed to be blocked by a ball of wet cotton, and no sound came out at all.
Before Yu Shu could try to squeeze out a sound again, a pair of hands grabbed his waist and lifted him up. He got goose bumps all over his body and his spirit finally collapsed.
"Stop screaming, it's me."
Jiang Yu pasted talismans on Yu Shu's shoulders and waist, and tapped three pieces of talisman paper like a dragonfly touching the water. The talismans moved automatically without wind, and the cinnabar
The writing glowed extremely faintly.
Jiang Yu's voice was like a ray of light in the dark night, a fire in the cold winter. Yu Shu's collapsed spiritual world was repaired, and he also felt a gentle and long-lasting warmth flowing into his body.
"You fucking..." Yu Shu had no intention of keeping his words smooth, all his emotions were condensed in these three short words.
With Jiang Yu around, Yu Shu felt inexplicably at ease and not so scared anymore. He looked up at the deserted house again in the moonlight.
The little girl's upper body was scratching the rusty iron gate, while her lower body was sitting on the weeds, swinging her legs leisurely.
This scene becomes more and more frightening the more I look at it.
"Still looking? Go away." Jiang Yu said seriously. The little girl didn't hurt Yu Shu not because she didn't dare, but because she was afraid of the Eternal Life Knot which had a strong ability to ward off evil and protect.
However, no matter how they walked or how far they went, the old house was always about fifteen meters behind them, and the little girl kept singing with her body in sections.
When Yu Shu first saw the little girl broken into two pieces, he thought it was He Yuhua, but when he looked closely, the facial features were completely different, and he had no impression of this little girl who was about ten years old.
"Your village is really full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers, each one more powerful than the other." Jiang Yu held Yu Shu's hand and walked forward, looking back as he walked. He was not afraid of the little girl and looked calm and composed.
Jiang Yu had a rough idea of what the little girl was like. If a person dies with their eyes open and swallows their resentment, they will quickly re-death as a ghost (zhān). When a person dies, they become a ghost; when a ghost dies, they become a zhān. Ghosts fear zhān just as humans fear ghosts (Note: Quoted from "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" by Zhang Aduan).
I didn’t expect that there was this little girl above He Yuhua.
No wonder he was affected unconsciously, and the strangeness he felt last time was not from the mass grave, but from her.
The surrounding scene began to change. The single-family houses with their own courtyards turned into earthen houses made of yellow mud and large stones, resembling the appearance of an old village.
The villagers were enjoying the cool breeze in the alley, feeling quite cozy and comfortable.
"What's going on?" Yu Shu was stunned. The villagers could not see them at all.
Jiang Yu smacked his lips and said, "It must be the memory of that Xu."
Yu Shu's brain felt like it was wrapped in a wet sponge, unable to function for a moment. He spent several seconds trying to form a single word. He looked at Jiang Yu in confusion, hoping for a simple answer, but unfortunately, Jiang Yu had no intention of explaining it to him.
Three people stood out among the villagers. They looked like a family of three. The man was tall and handsome, the woman had a beautiful face, and in the middle was the curly-haired little girl who sang the Cantonese nursery rhyme.
"Why are you still out so late?" The man who started the conversation looked familiar. Yu Shu stared at him for a few seconds and recognized that it was Yu Dingan when he was in his early twenties.
The man smiled and said, "Brother Zhang is right when he said the environment here is great. The mountains and rivers are beautiful, and there are even flocks of fireflies at night. There's nothing like this in Xiguan. It's worth the journey."
Yu Ding'an exchanged glances with the man next to him who had a red teardrop birthmark on his ear and said with a smile, "No matter how beautiful it is, it's still a poor and remote area, and development isn't going well. If more tourists like you came, maybe the economy would be boosted."
Young Uncle Zhang and Grandpa look very familiar with each other, but according to the villagers, Uncle Zhang should have appeared in the village at about the same time as He Yuhua. Moreover, when He Yuhua took a photo with Grandpa, Grandpa was already sixty years old. The time span doesn't match.
Jiang Yu frowned and looked back at the little girl behind him. He guessed the real intention of letting them watch this, but he was not sure.
In the blink of an eye, the scene changed and a family of three was locked in a dark room with their hands and feet tied with iron chains.
Yu Dingan and Zhang Bo each kicked the man in the stomach. He spat out a few drops of saliva and coughed painfully. The pain made his skin turn red and veins on his forehead bulged.
Uncle Zhang wiped the saliva stains from his face with disdain, pinched the man's chin and said viciously: "Write, write quickly, write a letter asking your family to pay money to redeem you, otherwise, don't even think about going back."
The man glanced at his wife and daughter. He felt that no amount of humiliation could compare to staying alive. He wrote down the ransom amount and transaction requirements as requested by Yu Ding'an and Zhang Bo.
Yu Ding'an and Zhang Bo still had a little humanity and knew to provide water and food for the family of three, but they only ate leftovers. They were not starving to death, but they were not full either.
Relatives of a family of three came with a whole box of silver dollars to redeem them. They released them readily after receiving the money, as if it was just a blackmail for money.
However, when the whole family arrived at the village entrance, all the people who were ambushed were captured again.
"We can't let them go back. If they alert the police, not only will they lose the money they earned, but they'll also end up in jail."
"Yes, we can't let them go back. We need to take care of it and bring it back to Yu Ding'an. He promised to pay us. Let's go and get the money."
The scene changed again. Yu Shu watched his grandfather and Uncle Zhang direct the other villagers to divide the work. Except for the young woman, the organs of the whole family were taken out and sent to the rival family for trading.
The bloody and cruel scene was so severe that he could not accept it even after performing many operations on patients as a doctor.
He finally understood why the little girl sang the lyrics differently in two sections.
The chickens in the lyrics are the organs and viscera of their family. "Aba" is not "Dad" but a nickname for the rival family. Her mother was locked in the house by the villagers and never appeared again.
Jiang Yu and Yu Shu were both in shock and couldn't recover for a long time. They simply couldn't believe what they saw.
This village became wealthy by eating human flesh and drinking human blood.
Yu Shu felt a chill all over his body. He hadn't seen his grandfather's true face for so many years. How could the kind and gentle man who treated him and his brother like treasures be so cruel? How many people's flesh and blood had been trampled on in the wealthy life he had lived since he was a child?
He was truly thankful to have met Jiang Yu at the funeral, to have witnessed the buried truth that he should and must have seen. No wonder the villagers' testimonies were so remarkably consistent: they were all perpetrators, having thrived on the flesh and blood of their fellow men.
"You should make good use of your physical condition." Jiang Yu sighed without any context, his voice adding a hint of restrained, helpless anger and sadness.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
