Sleeping Valley (VI)
They went back and forth many times but were unable to return to the original scenic spot.
"Even Si Yangyu can't do it?!" Yu Shu muttered in a low voice.
"It's not that we can't. Logically, we should have already left. It's just that something doesn't want us to leave."
Jiang Yu glanced around vigilantly.
There was one thing Jiang Yu didn't tell Yu Shu. He trapped the two kids at the bridge head, but when they came out, they were nowhere to be found. He was afraid that there might be something else here that could help the two little ghosts escape.
"Then we will be trapped here for quite a while." Yu Shu glanced at the brightly lit village behind him, his face filled with resistance.
He slept in the house last night, but woke up in the weeds in the morning, and then spent the night in the village. He might be separated from Jiang Yu when he woke up the next day.
Jiang Yu lowered his eyelids, taking in all of Yu Shu's worries. He wanted to raise his hand to wipe away his negative emotions, but he stopped himself.
"Find a higher place."
Yu Shu pointed to the small mound behind the village and said, "I see. You contacted the rescue team. Let's stand on a high, open area and give the signal."
Jiang Yu was slightly stunned, and admired Yu Shu's associative ability from the bottom of his heart.
If the rescue team was really useful, the people who disappeared ten years ago would not have disappeared without a trace. At that time, there were reports that helicopter rescue teams and drone reconnaissance were dispatched, but nothing was found.
"Pitch the tent."
Yu Shu watched Jiang Yu take out the tools from his backpack, his eyes shining: "You've prepared everything."
"I can do it." Jiang Yu stopped Yu Shu who wanted to come over to help.
However, Yu Shu didn't listen and was very tough in his attitude towards helping.
Although he was trapped here and experienced physical and mental torture, how could he feel at ease to enjoy someone who was truly worried about him and took all the responsibilities on himself.
Especially since Jiang Yu had such heavy dark circles under his eyes, he was definitely not much better than him.
"The wind is blowing. Let's bundle up quickly and take shelter together." Yu Shu made an attractive suggestion that Jiang Yu was embarrassed to refuse.
Jiang Yu’s backpack is like a treasure trove. It contains not only food, a tent, and a night light, but also a blanket and a mobile power bank.
The tent was also paved, and Jiang Yu took out several yellow talismans from the secret compartment in the backpack and pasted them on the eight corresponding directions inside and outside the tent.
He threw the only blanket to Yu Shu: "Go to sleep."
"You don't want to sleep?" Yu Shu's frowning expression, under the dim night light, gave off a heartbreaking feeling of brokenness.
Jiang Yu turned around, leaving only Yu Shu's back: "The talisman is not omnipotent, I will keep watch."
"You also need to rest, relieve fatigue, and restore your physical condition." Yu Shu walked around to Jiang Yu, held his face, and their eyes met in the darkness.
"The talisman is not omnipotent, and you are not a steel robot. I don't want to see you blame yourself for my wrong choices and force yourself."
Yu Shu slowed down his speech, looked into Jiang Yu's eyes and spoke seriously word by word.
Jiang Yu's blinking became slow, his mouth was half open, and the bitterness and self-blame in his heart made him unable to organize his words for a while.
"I'm fine now. And I believe that with you around, they won't make any big moves."
As Yu Shu spoke, he slowly pushed Jiang Yu to the ground, asked him to lie down obediently, and then put the blanket across to cover their upper bodies.
Yu Shu turned off the night light, lay on his side facing Jiang Yu, patted his back gently, and whispered, "Let's go to bed early." He was not sure if there would be any accidents, he just wanted Jiang Yu not to force himself.
Jiang Yu didn't dare to look into Yu Shu's eyes, so he closed them: "You're treating me like a child."
"You are just a child in front of me." Yu Shu smiled and said lightly.
"It makes you look like a kid." Jiang Yu was a little dissatisfied, but he was nineteen and Yu Shu was thirty-one, with a twelve-year age difference between them. The facts were before him, and the words that he wanted Yu Shu to stop treating him like a child came to his lips, but he couldn't say them.
Yes, he ignored the issue of age. Yu Shu was gentle to him and helped him with various interpersonal relationships, most likely because he was young, not because he was Jiang Yu.
Thinking of this made him even more unable to sleep.
He wanted to say something, but Yu Shu opposite him was no longer moving, with only steady breathing. He fell asleep as soon as he said he would. He must have been very busy during the day.
Jiang Yu raised his hand and gently touched Yu Shu's face. His eyelids were heavy and it was pitch black, so he couldn't see anything clearly, but he couldn't bear to close his eyes.
He seemed stuck in the dilemma of thinking Yu Shu was only nice to him because he was younger. To Shu, he was the same as Yu Huan and Wang Zhiyao were to him: just younger brothers who needed care.
And he couldn't even understand this sudden possessiveness that came over him, he just wanted to be special.
Jiang Yu somehow got close to Shu, and following his inner thoughts, he pressed his lips on Shu's eyelids.
Yu Shu turned over naturally. He had been half asleep, but the moment Jiang Yu kissed his eyelids, he shuddered and woke up instantly.
He really wanted to open his eyes and ask Jiang Yu what he was doing, but he didn't dare to say anything, for fear of embarrassing both of them, so he had to take the opportunity to turn around and hide.
However, Jiang Yu did not let Yu Shu go. He moved to the other side and hugged him little by little.
Yu Shu didn't know what was happening to him. His heartbeat started to accelerate. Fortunately, Jiang Yu's heartbeat was also accelerating, so he didn't notice anything wrong with him.
The sky was turning pale, and the tent was a little brighter.
The air had also become much colder, and Yu Shu leaned towards Jiang Yu reflexively in a daze.
It would have been fine if no one slept, but one of them was in a mess and the other was pretending to sleep to avoid it, and they endured the whole night in agony.
In the dim light, Jiang Yu could see Yu Shu's slightly trembling eyelashes and the slowly rising and falling chest.
Neither Jiang Yu nor Yu Shu had any intention of getting up, but the intermittent whispers that came out of nowhere woke them up and they opened their eyes at the same time in tacit understanding.
"It would be great to plant some sweet potatoes and taro on this land."
“It’s better to grow corn.”
"Corn is good."
The sound was just outside the tent, there were men and women, but they didn't see any human figure.
"Hey, why does it seem like there's something on this land?"
"Yeah, this is flat ground, why is there resistance?"
As soon as he finished speaking, a palm-shaped indentation appeared out of thin air on the tent cloth without any light or shadow.
This was really difficult for Yu Shu. His pupils dilated and then contracted, and he looked at Jiang Yu in surprise for an answer.
Jiang Yu was also confused. There were sounds and touches, but no one was seen. This was the first time he had encountered such a strange situation.
"Yes, but why does this resistance feel so familiar, like a tightly drawn mosquito net at home?"
"You encountered something dirty so early in the morning?"
"Impossible, the river god will bless us."
The dents in the tent were piling up.
Jiang Yu captured the key information from their conversation - the river god.
At the same time, he recalled what his master had taught him long ago: "If one day you encounter someone who can be heard and touched but not seen, either this person is more powerful than me, or you are out of place."
The guy hiding in the valley is indeed powerful, but he can't be stronger than the master. Jiang Yu immediately came to the answer.
The people outside might not be ghosts, but living people. It’s just that they are out of place with the people outside and cannot see each other.
"Let's go back for safety. I feel something is strange here."
"Well, let's go to the temple and cast the holy grail to ask the river god."
Jiang Yu suddenly said, "There is no river god."
Yu Shu was startled and wanted to cover Jiang Yu's mouth, but it was too late. However, the group of people did not respond to Jiang Yu.
Normally, people outside should be able to hear it, but all I could hear was the sound of leaving footsteps.
The current situation is most likely that the guys in the valley don't want them to communicate.
After this deduction, Jiang Yu had the answer.
"The people talking outside are the missing people." Jiang Yu was very sure.
Yu Shu's eyes twitched. "Are you kidding me? They don't have shadows, and we're the only ones who can hear them. So, we're the weird ones, aren't we?"
"Do you remember the museum in the scenic area?" Jiang Yu guided.
Yu Shu was a little confused, but still responded according to Jiang Yu's words.
Jiang Yu continued, "The museum in the scenic area explains that residents of Baishui Town gradually moved away due to repeated natural disasters such as landslides and river floods, as well as backward development that couldn't keep up with the times."
"After you lost contact, I contacted Uncle Zeng, and he told me that decades before the acquisition, a devastating flood had left almost no one alive in Baishui Town. He also helped me investigate the person in charge of the scenic area, and he found no connection to Baishui Town at all."
"What does this have to do with them being missing persons?" Yu Shu thought for a moment, but couldn't find any clues in Jiang Yu's words.
"Everyone's dead. If they were truly indigenous people, this place would surely be filled with negative energy and resentment. You've been here for so long, have you sensed it? No."
Ordinariness is also a clue, which makes people ignore the truth hidden beneath the ordinary.
Although Jiang Yu's words made sense, Yu Shu was still deeply impressed by the red-dressed team that night: "No, I saw the red-dressed team in the village the night I first arrived here. The little girl in red and the little boy in blue were at the end of the team."
Jiang Yu's eyes flashed with surprise, but he quickly found a reasonable explanation: "They mentioned the River God. What you saw should be the River God getting married."
Having said that, Jiang Yu 100% denies the existence of the river god.
"If he really is a river god, how could he do something as harmful as getting married at night?"
The two children following behind the group were the biggest problem. From the time someone disappeared until he and Yu Shu chased them here, there were traces of them, but there was no clue leading to them.
It seems that we have to find the so-called river god to solve the mystery here.
The footsteps completely disappeared. Jiang Yu unzipped the tent and the moist and cool air rushed in.
The sky outside was dim, and the villages, rivers, and forests were shrouded in a layer of hazy mist, like a fairyland on earth.
But Yu Shu couldn't help but think of the strange things here, and he could no longer appreciate the beauty, but only felt the eerie atmosphere.
"But I don't think those two kids are ghosts. Although they are weird, they don't make me feel uncomfortable," Yu Shu added.
Jiang Yu denied Yu Shu's statement: "I don't think so either, but they are."
He still told Yu Shu in detail what he saw and heard before entering the forest.
"So the disappearance of the Eternal Life Knot is related to them." Yu Shu's focus shifted slightly, but he quickly returned to the right track. "We can't see anyone in the village, but we can only see those two children. Those missing people just mentioned the river god, so we don't know where to start."
Jiang Yu pulled Yu Shu out of the tent and pointed at the ribbon-like river: "Let's go to the next river."
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