Ancient Corpse in the Mountain Village (Thirteen)
The seventh day is the night when the soul returns. Is it possible that the soul returns earlier?
However, Yu Shu had only heard about metaphysics from hearsay, and this was the first time he encountered it.
Even if his grandfather returned to life, he couldn't avoid fear. A dead person is no longer a different person when they return. And after these few days of investigation, he felt increasingly alienated by the village and his grandfather. He felt as if he never truly belonged to this village. He couldn't fathom whether his grandfather's affluence was earned through unscrupulous practices and profiting from the misfortunes of others.
"Yu Shu, turn off the lights and go to bed quickly. It's very late." Yu Huan repeated.
The lights in the room flickered a few times.
Yu Shu learned to be smart and didn't go against the dirty guy. Since he was asked to turn off the lights and go to bed, he turned off the lights. Anyway, he wouldn't move unless Jiang Yu did anything. If anything happened, he would just grab Jiang Yu as a scapegoat.
The room was quite quiet with the lights off. The bright moon peeked into the room through the glass window, and the bright and soft light just happened to hit Jiang Yu's face. The handsome face with a hint of sleepiness looked a bit sacred under the moonlight.
Yu Shu suddenly realized that staring at Jiang Yu was a bit rude, so he apologized casually. After that, he watched Jiang Yu stretch, and his clothes were pulled to reveal a small piece of tight abdominal muscles.
Yu Huanjian turned off the lights and stopped pacing in the corridor. Things outside gradually returned to calm.
It seems that there is nothing scary about the return of the soul.
Yu Shu had been in the hospital for a long time and his nose was very sensitive. He could quickly capture subtle changes in smells. He lay on the bed, looked at the dark ceiling and sniffed. The room was filled with a fresh smell of earth, which was the unique smell of wet earth by the lake after the rain.
"Do you smell anything?" Yu Shu turned over.
The soft moonlight falling on Jiang Yu's back was like a layer of gauze, outlining the undulating muscles of Jiang Yu as he lay on his side.
Jiang Yu turned over, his cold eyes piercing the night: "No. If you can't sleep, just say it directly, no need to make excuses. It's not like we haven't slept together before, so come here if you're afraid."
"What do you mean by slept together? Don't be so ambiguous. I really smell the scent of soil. Will everything be fine tonight?"
Jiang Yu let out a long sigh and lifted the blanket. "You have such a keen nose, don't you think? How would I know what would happen? If you're afraid to sleep, come over now. Don't disturb me when I fall asleep."
Yu Shu thought for a moment and wrapped himself in his blanket before lying on Jiang Yu's folding bed. He said seriously, "Yes, I was born in the Year of the Dog. If I had been born a few days earlier, I would have been born in the Year of the Rooster."
Jiang Yu was captivated by Yu Shu's sincere answer for two seconds. He was joking about his zodiac sign being a dog, not asking about it. This grown man always gave very sincere but meaningless answers when people least expected it.
He closed his eyes, smiled helplessly, and patted Yu Shu's shoulder like coaxing a child: "Okay, go to sleep."
Yu Shuting's sleepy eyelids were stuck to his lower eyelid as if glued, but his mind was extremely clear. He counted from one to one hundred three or four times but to no avail. His mind automatically recalled how many pumps of toothpaste he had squeezed out when brushing his teeth in the morning and how many green vegetable leaves he had eaten for dinner.
He really couldn't sleep, and was afraid of waking Jiang Yu, so he got up quietly, hid in the bathroom, closed the door, and played with his mobile phone quietly.
This was clearly his home, but he felt more like an outsider. Forget it, it was already midnight. He hadn't expected to be so sleepy tonight, but he just couldn't fall asleep. It seemed his subconscious didn't want him to sleep.
Maybe his grandfather's returning soul irritated his nerves. It wasn't too scary, but it made him uneasy.
Yu Shu blinked hard at his eyes, which were sore from scrolling through the screen for too long. He raised his head and his sight just happened to fall on the tree branches. The dark branches and leaves outside the window swayed randomly as if waving at him.
The wind is so strong tonight that it can even bend the branches of that tree.
When he was a child, he and his younger brother often climbed up that tree to play. His grandfather was always afraid that they would fall down, so he would scold them whenever he saw them climbing the tree to play.
When he was nine, he lost his grip on a tree while climbing and fell. Fortunately, he was only about a meter and a half high, otherwise his bones would have been broken. Because his grandfather was worried about the safety and an accident, he cut down the tree. That was the saddest autumn for him and his brother.
Looking back, I still feel it’s a pity. If the tree hadn’t been cut down, it would have grown to the height of a three-story building.
What he missed was not only his distant childhood, but also his grandfather who was in good health at that time and could take them to the river to catch shrimps and to the mountains to catch birds. Now, everything can be seen in his memory, which he can see with his eyes closed but can no longer touch.
If it hadn't been cut...
Wait, what's that tree outside!?
Yu Shu's eyelids twitched uncontrollably a few times, and his eyelashes fluttered randomly like the wings of a struggling insect that was about to fall.
Moreover, the tree was getting closer and closer to him.
Just now it looked about the same distance as I remembered, but now it's close to the window.
Yu Shu shouted Jiang Yu's name while pulling the toilet door, but no matter how hard he pulled, the door was tightly closed without any movement, as if it was sealed with cement.
His heart was about to jump out and his throat was a little hoarse, but his voice was like a fish trapped in a sealed glass bottle. No matter how hard it hit, it couldn't be heard. Instead, it echoed unreasonably in the cramped little bathroom. The echo was like waves, wetting and sinking his composure, dragging him into the bottomless fear.
He tried to call Jiang Yu on his cell phone, but the signal bar was empty and he couldn't send any messages or calls.
The branches were about to completely cover the window, so he turned up the volume on his phone and played music, hoping that it was only blocking his voice and not the electronic products.
However, that was just his delusion. Neither the human voice nor the sound of the mobile phone could be heard.
Boom...
The silent knocking sound on the glass directly struck Yu Shu's panicked and frightened heart, shattering his few remaining calmness from within.
Boom...
The knocking on the window started again. It was so loud that Jiang Yu couldn't hear it at all. Yu Shu didn't dare to look up.
Could Jiang Yu please notice that he's missing soon!?
Boom.
The third knock on the window was particularly loud, as if he was angry because Yu Shu didn't open the window for him.
There was such a loud knock on the window, couldn't Jiang Yu hear anything?!
Seeing that he couldn't escape, Yu Shu simply closed his eyes and grabbed the toilet brush as a self-defense weapon. However, the fourth knock on the window did not come.
The wind stopped and the rustling of leaves could no longer be heard. It seemed as if everything had disappeared, but Yu Shu shuddered and his breathing became numb from the cold.
Yu Shu didn't dare to act rashly. He closed his eyes and waited for a long time until the coldness gradually subsided and his respiratory tract returned to normal. He then slightly relaxed his eyelids and squinted his eyes. He couldn't see anything in the almost pitch-black toilet.
He opened his eyes very slowly and looked at nothing.
Good, I escaped a disaster, Yu Shu thought.
However, the water dripping onto the back of my hand was extremely cold, like a needle piercing into flesh.
He looked up and saw Yu Ding'an hanging upside down on the ceiling. His eyes were hollow and his pupils had faded to the same color as the whites of his eyes. The saliva dripping onto the back of his hand was from Yu Ding'an's open mouth.
When Yu Ding'an saw that his eldest grandson had discovered him, he smiled strangely.
He couldn't help but yell "Fuck!" and fell backwards, his legs giving way. He pulled at the toilet door, but to no avail. No matter how he struggled and called for help, it was useless. He was like a young animal trapped in a deserted room, and his grandfather was the hungry beast watching him.
"Why aren't you sleeping yet?!" Yu Ding'an's hoarse voice sounded like it had been ground by a stone, and as he spoke, water carrying dead branches, leaves, dead fish and shrimps kept flowing down.
It's your fault why I don't sleep. Can't I just come back to life and send a dream like in TV dramas? Why do I have to be so scary? Yu Shu said viciously in his heart.
When will Jiang Yu realize that something is wrong with him? !
The smell made him feel sick and he wanted to vomit. He moved against the wall, but the bathroom was small and he had no way to escape.
Yu Ding'an added, "I am your grandfather. How can you let my grandfather and even the whole village be ruined because of an outsider?" As he spoke, he fell down and reached out to grab Yu Shu.
It is true that they have a decades-long relationship as grandfather and grandson, but underneath that is his selfish nature that is hard to change. Even after his death, he does not want the bad things he has done to affect his reputation and leave him infamous for eternity.
Yu Shu quickly retreated to the window, his eyes full of fear.
"I've been watching you all night. You've been thinking about how to investigate He Yuhua's affairs. I don't allow you to investigate. I didn't treat Zhang Bo and He Yuhua badly. It's them. They don't know how to appreciate kindness." Yu Ding'an spoke louder and faster.
In a panic, Yu Shu was stimulated by his grandfather's words and regained some rationality, confirming his guess. But if He Yuhua was abducted, how could she be related to Uncle Zhang?
Before he could catch his breath, Yu Dingan slid from the right side of the ceiling to the left side in an extremely strange way, right above Yu Shu's head.
Yu Shu's breath was pressing against his chest, unable to go up or down, making him feel uncomfortable and almost suffocated.
There was no place to escape. Instead of meeting with an accident at the hands of Uncle Zhang and He Yuhua, he was going to die at the hands of his grandfather who had returned to the spirit world.
Yu Dingan pinched Yu Shu's neck and repeatedly asked him why he did that and why he couldn't consider his reputation and his brother's future reputation.
The aorta was blocked by a cold, hard object, and the pulsation gradually became difficult. Yu Shu pulled with all his strength but failed to loosen his grandfather's hand. He gradually became breathless and had nowhere to escape or resist. He could only close his eyes and wait for death.
The clouds dispersed, and a faint ray of moonlight passed through the window and shone onto Yu Dingan's gray and withered face.
Yu Shu sensed the light, and the moment he opened his eyes, he saw a tear flowing from his grandfather's eye, falling on his cheek like an icicle piercing his flesh and embedding into his bones.
Was Grandpa resentful that the grandson he had raised for decades didn't stand with him, or was he even struggling a bit? The fear and uneasiness between Yu Shu's eyebrows, as well as the physical discomfort, remained, but his mental state had inexplicably calmed down.
Yu Ding'an tightened his grip even more, as Yu Shu's brain was already suffering from a lack of oxygen.
Yu Shu's only thought now was why Jiang Yu was sleeping like a dead pig. He could have noticed it when he grabbed his hand in the middle of the night before, but tonight he couldn't hear any movement at all.
Wait!
Moonlight! Window!
Yu Shu suddenly realized that the door couldn't be opened, so he tried the window, maybe he could escape.
The strong desire to survive stimulated his potential. Yu Shu ignored everything and bit and pulled Yu Dingan's slippery and smelly hands.
"You are not allowed to check, and you are not allowed to check even if you guess!" Yu Dingan repeated viciously.
He forced himself to swallow the vomit that surged up his throat and finally tore his grandfather's hand away. He used his remaining strength to prop himself up and put all his hopes on the window, his sore hands grasping the window frame for a final struggle.
The moist air unexpectedly rushed in and poured into Yu Shu's lungs, making him feel like he was reborn.
He didn't care that he was standing more than three meters high and just fell out. It was better for him to break bones and stay in the hospital for two or three months than to die in a daze.
What greeted him was not the piercing pain that spread throughout his body, but the slight sound of a human body colliding with the hollow bamboo tube.
The house disappeared, the silvery moonlight fell on the dark lake and instantly shattered into countless scales, and he was on the bamboo raft.
Yu Shu looked at the strange scenery around him and fell into deeper anxiety.
He couldn't see the edge of the lake clearly. Looking further away, there was only a blur of darkness. He felt like he was being swallowed by a huge mouth.
The bamboo raft floated automatically, and no one knew where it was going.
Yu Shu no longer had the strength to even paddle with his hands, so he had to rest for a while.
When he regained some strength, the bamboo raft had already reached the shore. He then realized that it was the abandoned old house of the Zhang family and he had actually appeared in the west of the village.
"It's raining hard, the streets are flooded. Dad is carrying chicks to sell. Mom is at home wearing flowery shoes, flowery socks, flowery belts, with pearl butterflies lining the sides..." (Note: This is a quote from the Cantonese nursery rhyme "It's Raining Hard," with some changes to the lyrics.)
Creepy Cantonese singing came out intermittently from the house.
Yu Shu felt cold from head to toe in an instant.
Moreover, he remembered that the original lyrics were not sung like this. It should be that the brother carries firewood to sell on the street, and the sister-in-law goes out wearing flowery shoes (Note: quoting the original lyrics of the Cantonese nursery rhyme "It's Raining Hard"). The characters have changed, and the things they are selling have also changed.
Yu Shu's legs were weak but he didn't dare to stay still. He couldn't go back home. What if Jiang Yu still didn't notice and his grandfather was waiting for him? If he went back, he would be walking into a trap. So he hurriedly ran out of the village according to his memory.
As he rushed past the old house, he couldn't help but look back out of curiosity. In the moonlight, he vaguely saw a curly-haired girl in a little dress standing in the yard, looking at him.
The singing continued as their eyes met.
However, the girl's upper body slid down and fell to the ground, while her lower body was still standing steadily.
The upper body fell on the messy grass, still singing: "It's raining hard, the streets are flooded, Dad is carrying chickens to sell on the street, Mom is wearing flowery shoes, flowery socks, flowery belt..."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
