Ancient Corpse in the Mountain Village (XI)
Yu Shu watched as Jiang Yu took out a red rope and circled it around his wrist. The rope slowly tightened, and the restraint became stronger. His pulse beat became clearer and slower, and the blood stagnation made him feel a little uncomfortable.
The slight dizziness that came over him made his heart hang in the air, and he subconsciously reached out to hold Jiang Yu's arm.
Jiang Yu gently squeezed his shoulders and said, "Adjust your breathing and imagine you are gathering energy to start running."
Suddenly, Yu Shu's strength seemed to be sucked away by a water pump, and he couldn't hold on to Jiang Yu's hand anymore and fell down.
Jiang Yu held his hand and comforted him in a low voice, "Don't be nervous, I'm here."
"I'm not nervous... It feels so weird, like being burned by fire and then soaked in ice water." Yu Shu said breathlessly.
The light flickered a few times and then went dark. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees, as if it had turned from an air-conditioned room into the freezer compartment of a refrigerator.
The heat rising from his wrist and the deep chill running from the bottom to the top of his spine appeared at the same time, constantly intertwining and swirling in his body, as if they were about to cut a hole in his spine and rush out.
Immediately afterwards, an intense feeling of exhaustion washed over Yu Shu's entire body like a turbulent current, and at the same time, he felt a sense of relaxation all over, as if he had finally made it through.
Before he could catch his breath, Jiang Yu pulled him up and held him behind him, protecting him like a protector.
Yu Shu rubbed his arms. The coldness that drilled into his flesh like a drill made him shiver slightly.
He looked past Jiang Yu's back and saw Zhang Boshi without a shadow. His breathing stagnated and his body became even stiffer.
"Young man, you're quite capable." Uncle Zhang narrowed his eyes into slits and said with a forced smile. The fine wrinkles on his face stretched slightly with the movement of his muscles, like slowly wriggling thread-like worms.
Jiang Yu glanced at Zhang Bo with sharp eyes, and a coldness gathered between his brows, as if a glacier had condensed. Then he stuck the last talisman to the ground, forming a soul-trapping formation.
He was initially hesitant about whether to place the talisman at the center of the formation to activate the Soul Trapping Formation, but the moment he saw Zhang Bo appear, he immediately concluded that he had ulterior motives and would harm Yu Shu.
"You were the one who killed Li Cailian, right?" Jiang Yu was about ten centimeters taller than Zhang Bo. He looked down at him with disdain and contempt.
Yu Shu was stunned for a moment.
Also? Could it be that Grandpa was also the work of Uncle Zhang?
But wasn't it his grandfather who brought him into the village? There is some irreconcilable hatred between him and his grandfather.
Zhang Bo's smile was kind on the surface, but the shadow in his eyes was as sharp as ice, capable of ripping someone apart. The dense wrinkles in his face only accentuated the eerie nature of his smile. He nodded. "That's clever. But it's useless even if you catch me. You can't save anyone."
Jiang Yu crossed his arms over his chest and offered Zhang Bo a deal he couldn't refuse: "I can consider letting you leave here."
Zhang Bo's floating body trembled, his heart already beating. Not only were the living trapped in this village, unable to leave for long, but even the dead couldn't leave and enter the cycle of reincarnation. He had been dead for decades, living a torturous life where the sun burned like a blazing fire and the rain felt like a thousand arrows piercing his heart.
If the young man in front of him could really help him escape from suffering, he would be willing to obey him a thousand times.
"Can you really help me leave here?" asked Uncle Zhang.
Jiang Yu nodded coldly without saying anything. After turning around and exchanging glances with Yu Shu, he decided to give Yu Shu the chance to ask questions.
He looked at Uncle Zhang again and raised his eyebrows provocatively.
Yu Shu stared at Zhang Bo with a complicated and somewhat evasive look. Fear, doubt and resentment mixed together, swirling and intertwining into a high-speed vortex, swallowing up the shrewdness and smoothness that he usually tried hard to maintain.
It was He who tried to harm him while he was keeping vigil but failed. After harming other people, He came again today. There was no grudge between them, but He was determined to kill him.
Yu Shu suppressed the fear and anger that was surging in his internal organs, and tried his best to look calm and not lose his aura. However, his hands behind his back had already been clenched into fists, and the subtle sound of bones squeezing was hidden under his breathing.
"What's the grudge? Why did you leave and come back? What happened in the end? And who is He Yuhua?" Yu Shu asked questions in rapid succession.
Zhang Bo thought of something and formed his words with his mouth open. After a brief silence, he spoke, "Yu Ding'an killed me. He forced me to kill He Yuhua. After I left, my family members met with misfortunes one after another. I had nowhere to go, so I had no choice but to come back."
He became increasingly agitated as he spoke, his mouth and eyes twitching unconsciously. "Without Yu Ding'an, I wouldn't be so miserable. He got rich thanks to me, and it was us who helped the village prosper, yet he turned against me! How ungrateful!"
Get rich?
Based on the time span of the photo album, it's true that the village's prosperity coincided with Zhang Bo's arrival. It's also true that the village was once very poor, using mud as cement and stone as bricks. The short period of prosperity in the 1980s and 1990s, when a dilapidated mountain village was built to accommodate people in single-family houses with courtyards, was incredibly difficult.
"Where is He Yuya?" Yu Shu asked while digesting the information he received.
Uncle Zhang frowned, and his already dry and wrinkled skin looked even uglier, like a piece of paper that had been squeezed into a ball and then slightly stretched.
"He Yuhua... He Yuhua is also dead. Yu Dingan asked me to bury her in the back mountain. I can't remember anything else."
Even the dead cannot bring up the topic of He Yuhua. It is 100% certain that He Yuhua is related to the strangeness in the village. But if He Yuhua is the source, then why is it Zhang Bo who is harming people?
"It must be her, it must be He Yuhua. She didn't want me to remember it, nor did she want anyone in the village to remember it. She hated this place, but she stayed by your side the whole night when I wanted to attack you."
"She deserves the golden flower earrings. She took them and attracted the ghosts who died in the mass grave. She deserves it."
Uncle Zhang no longer organizes his words or thinks about them; he just says whatever comes to mind.
Yu Shu chewed over the second half of the sentence, which meant that the person with red embroidered shoes who knocked on the door that night was He Yuhua, and she was not there to harm anyone, but to drive away Zhang Bo.
Considering that He Yuhua was buried in the back mountain, it can be inferred that the bride in red sitting on the coffin was He Yuhua, who helped drive away the fox ghost.
But how do we explain the He Yuhua dressed as a student whom we met in the west of the village? Are there two He Yuhuas, or is she switching identities back and forth?
All the clues pointed to He Yuhua, but they were completely cut off at He Yuhua.
"I've told you everything I know. Please let me leave. I don't want to stay here any longer."
Jiang Yu raised the corner of his eye and smiled mysteriously: "To make money from a side business, one's word is as good as gold."
Before Zhang Bo could show an expression of relief, a brilliant and blazing red-gold flame bloomed on his body, as beautiful and brilliant as the sunset in the sky.
The flames were warm and reassuring. Yu Shu's inner panic and physical discomfort turned into pieces of ashes under the light of the fire, which shattered and dissipated without a trace with his breath.
"Using talismans to transcend is also a form of leaving." Jiang Yu looked at Zhang Bo's painful and twisted expression and said calmly.
Jiang Yu got up early and basked in the sun by the window. In summer, the sun rises at six in the morning. The sun shines into the room through the window, and he stands in the bright and soft beam of light, with warm dust floating around him.
He checked the time and pulled Yu Shu up.
"Get up and go." The voice was cold and commanding, without any awareness of his age.
After praying for Uncle Zhang's soul last night, they sorted out the clues and decided to go to the back mountain to find the place where He Yuhua was buried today.
Thankfully, Yu Shu wasn't grumpy. He yawned and sat up, brushing his hair, which had become a mess. His half-open neckline revealed a small patch of fair skin. The eternal knot tied with red string was exquisitely translucent in the light, casting a watery green shadow across his collarbone, rising and falling slowly with his breathing.
"Leaving out so early?" Yu Shu stretched.
Jiang Yu said: "No, I woke you up because I was awake."
Yu Shu rolled his eyes, but when he thought about the fact that he was Jiang Yu, it made sense. This kid spoke bluntly, and although he was young, he often had a cold face. He was also a Taoist who didn't look like a Taoist.
"Are you sick?" Yu Shu slapped Jiang Yu on the biceps. He didn't have much strength but his muscles were firm, and the collision sound was very crisp.
Jiang Yu's eyes darted towards Yu Shu: "Yeah, it's definitely uncomfortable."
"You..." Yu Shu hissed. Although he was disgusted, his professional habits as a doctor had already formed a reflex arc. He reached out his hand under Jiang Yu's soft bangs to feel his body temperature.
"I don't have a cold or fever. I'm in clinical internal medicine. Outside of my specialty, I can only treat simple colds and fevers. I can't diagnose anything else."
Jiang Yu looked at Yu Shu silently, his eyes like a gem shrouded in mist, bright but without revealing a single emotion.
"Speak, where do you feel uncomfortable?" Yu Shu urged.
Jiang Yu turned his face to the side, his long eyelashes dyed with a strand of gold fluttered gently up and down. The soft light of the early morning gave his profile a cold and sacred feeling. The high nose bridge with a small hump added a little bit of sunny youthfulness.
"You seem to be sleeping too deeply and feeling uncomfortable." Jiang Yu raised his eyebrows.
No, is he sick?
Yu Shu resisted the urge to curse, glared at Jiang Yu fiercely, and then went into the bathroom to wash up.
They had a simple breakfast and officially went out.
The weather was clear and cool in the morning. The mountain road was easy to walk on and we soon reached the back mountain.
According to Uncle Zhang, it was quite strange that He Yuhua was buried in the back mountain, because according to the village custom, only people with the surname Yu would be buried in the back mountain, and people with other surnames could only be buried in a mass grave.
However, Jiang Yu and Yu Shu walked around but did not find He Yuhua's tombstone.
"Could it be that Uncle Zhang lied to us?" After Yu Shu came back a few days ago and saw ghosts several times, he couldn't help feeling creepy when he looked at the densely packed tombstones in the cemetery.
Jiang Yu also found it strange. Uncle Zhang should hate this village and He Yuya so much that he wouldn't lie to them. But he walked back and forth three times and didn't see any inscription on He Yuya's tombstone.
Moreover, they did meet He Yuhua on this mountain.
Jiang Yu's pupils gleamed. "I'm not lying. He said the back mountain, but he didn't say where the back mountain is."
"Near your grandfather's grave."
Yu Shu's face was full of an expression that said "don't be joking", but Jiang Yu's expression was serious and his tone didn't sound like a joke either.
Jiang Yu really didn't say anything nonsense.
There are two reasons for the formation of the place where the White Tiger is broken in the waist. One is that the location of the land caused the evil spirits to enter and could not leave, and over time they accumulated and changed qualitatively; the second reason is that the extremely strong resentment directly changed the local feng shui.
The location of my grandfather's tomb was chosen on a downwind slope halfway up the mountain. There is no possibility that it will become a treasure trove of evil spirits, so the only reason left is the second one.
The two walked around the cemetery and could only see Yu Dingan's tombstone.
"There's no tombstone either." When Yu Shu set foot in this place again, he no longer felt nauseous or chilly.
Jiang Yu pointed at the solitary stone tablet and said firmly, "It's right next to your grandfather's coffin."
A wave of moisture drifted through Yu Shu's mind, moistening it and making his thoughts seem heavy and labored. His eyelids felt as if they were filled with lead, drooping uncontrollably. When he finally looked up, he was met with Jiang Yu's confident expression.
"I don't know what your grandfather's relationship was with He Yuhua, but I do understand why he chose the shroud and why he was buried here."
"Tell me about it." Yu Shu knew the boy in his twenties too well, and he also respected Jiang Yu's pride in being the first to find the answer to the question, so he took the initiative to offer advice in a gentle tone and asked in a very respectful manner.
Jiang Yu bent down to pick up small stones, picking them up and looking at them, and throwing the ones he didn't like back to the ground.
As he picked up the pieces, he said, "The satin fabric symbolizes the end of his lineage, and the animal hair lining signifies the animal realm. Clearly, he was afraid of not having peace in his afterlife, and he didn't want his descendants to continue to suffer. He was buried here as a gesture of peace, to let He Yuhua see his sincerity in apologizing through his descendants."
As soon as he finished speaking, he picked up the last stone and stood up straight. His legs were long and straight, and the slim-fitting fabric outlined his powerful leg muscles.
Jiang Yu looked back at Yu Shu and asked him to bring the shovel over, then scattered a handful of stones on the ground.
He was fortune-telling, frowning and contemplating for a while, then he stood up, took a shovel and shoveled towards the southwest three meters away from Yu Ding'an's burial place.
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