A Buddha statue stood above the pit, with Little Butterfly half-kneeling beside it. Though masked, Ning Que could still recognize her. The pit, with a radius of approximately 10 meters, was densely packed with skeletons, leaning against each other. Each bone was as white as jade, without any signs of chopping or obvious wounds. Like pieces of art, they exuded a chilling aura, and a sense of melancholy permeated their bones.
They looked at Ning Que standing in the pit. He was really standing on the top of the pit looking at the bottom of the pit, and the people on the top of the pit were looking at you in the bottom of the pit.
The signal was really bad. Little Butterfly whispered to the Buddha statue, which was about 1.4 meters tall, but Ning Que heard nothing.
Ning Que silently pulled out his loudspeaker and shouted at them, "Don't you have anything to say to me? Like, why am I at the bottom of the pit? Or is it because of the people behind me that you want to get rid of me?"
Buddha statue, little butterfly: How come you stole our lines?
After watching Ning Que walk a few steps, they raised their loudspeakers and shouted, "Hey, you're too far away, I can't hear you. Speak louder, I don't have super hearing! I can't hear you!"
"I can't hear—"
At this moment, a thigh bone suddenly fell off the pile of music made of skeletons not far away, and then after a while, the whole thing collapsed with a loud crash.
Honghong quietly separated a strand of hair, which slowly crawled along the line of Ning Que's trouser legs to the eye sockets of the skeleton she was stepping on, and then stretched underneath and slowly spread towards them. A red thread was wrapped around the white jade-like bones, like a bunch of blooming red spider lilies.
At this moment, the Buddha statue spoke, its voice echoing above the pit like 3D surround sound. It laughed strangely, "So you are the Spider Mother?"
"Pig-sow? Sow?" Ning Que chewed on these two words in his mouth, and felt that something was wrong. What was wrong with this copy? People were swearing at every turn!
At this moment, the Buddha statue raised its hands. Ning Que was about to ask, "What's wrong? Does this guy want to surrender?" But then the tattoo on Little Butterfly's body began to slowly turn red, oozing a little bit of blood. It muttered something inaudibly, and from a distance it looked like a bloody man.
Black smoke billowed out of the pit, and slowly they disappeared from view. The skeletons began to tremble slightly, and the amplitude of the vibration gradually increased. Some of the skeletons that were stacked higher slowly slid down. Ning Que could hardly stand and sat down with a plop. He felt a sense of weightlessness, and suddenly a sound came from under his butt.
Oh my god, it’s a man. Ning Que was so scared that he jumped up immediately, but ended up landing on solid ground.
"Sister, please, my shoulder is about to break!" A teenager, about fifteen or sixteen years old, sat on the ground, rubbing his shoulders.
"Sorry! Calling me 'Big Sister' isn't the right thing to do!" Ning Que surveyed the area. Through the branches, he could see that most of the houses in the village below were one-story, with only one or two being two-story. Furthermore, the boy's clothing was characteristic of ethnic minorities: short-sleeved shirts and shorts, embroidered with various flowers, plants, birds, and insects.
"Excuse me, where is this place?" Ning Que had been following this person. As long as he could catch this person in this unfamiliar place, at least he wouldn't have to use the sky as a roof and the ground as a bed.
Ning Que walked along the winding and rugged path, fortunately he had strengthened his physical strength and was able to barely keep up with this person.
"Um, what's your name?"
"Where is this? I've never seen it before!"
…
The boy carried the basket on his back without saying a word, stopping from time to time to pick a few plants she had never seen before. Finally, he became impatient, turned around, frowned, and said in a very bad tone, "Stop talking, I hate Han people the most!"
Ning Que used her childhood spirit of being a scoundrel, because she found that the things in her space could not sustain her for a while, so she had to catch this person, "You can't kill me with one stick, I'm a good person."
"Even bad guys claim to be good guys!"
"I'm a really good person. You said you hate Han Chinese, so how come you can speak Chinese?"
He was silent. "Just stand here and don't move. I'll go get something. If you can still stand here, I'll take you back to the village!"
Ning Que watched him leave, then sat on the ground with his legs hugged, looking up at the sky at a 45-degree angle, his mind empty. His hands unconsciously dug small holes in the ground. He didn't notice that the black insect eggs with a little white on them slowly broke open, and a small white insect appeared inside.
These little bugs smelled the scent of blood and started to prepare to take their first bite in their lives, but they found a huge red monster appeared in front of them. Then it ate one by one, and their companions who were eating with them also disappeared one by one.
Suddenly, the red monster was lifted up by its own food. From then on, the image of the two-legged creature that was originally food in the little insect's memory collapsed instantly.
Ning Que picked up Honghong who was lying on the ground and said, "You are not so hungry that you want to eat dirt, are you?" Then he saw the insect shells on the ground and felt relieved.
It was dark, the chirping of insects disappeared in the grass, and the stars in the sky were scattered in the night like broken diamonds. He stood at the window and let out a long breath, finally getting rid of the woman in the daytime.
Although it was not a good idea to abandon a girl in the mountains and put a curse on her, his people could not withstand another catastrophe. Even if there was a 99.9% chance that the girl was a good person, the chance of that happening was still less than 0.01%.
He couldn't help but sigh, closed the window, and turned around to see a head hanging upside down in the middle, with long black hair hanging in the air like a waterfall. He screamed and sat down on the ground. The flying slippers accidentally broke a glass bottle placed beside the bed.
After a long and high-pitched cry echoed in the air, the glass bottle in Uncle Liu's house also broke. He was so scared that he quickly got up, put on his clothes hastily, and rushed out. He ran to a bell tower and rang the bell. The houses in different locations were all lit up, and human shadows fell on the windows.
An uncle holding a torch was walking along the road, chatting with an aunt who had come with him, "Xiao Chong, that kid won't listen to advice. He insists on living in that house alone. How is he going to explain to his father if something goes wrong?" More and more people were walking along, holding torches, carrying hoes and all kinds of farm tools, forming a fire dragon on the mountain, lighting up the sky.
Xiao Chong here covered his still beating heart, "How did you get in? I remember..."
Ning Que thought of Hong Hong, who was still chewing on his wrist, and nodded, "Here, you've eaten it all." She saw that he was still covering his heart, "Uh, this one is not going back."
At this moment, he shuddered, and with a frustrated look on his face, he hurriedly stood up and grabbed Ning Que's hand, but was pushed away by Hong Hong. He pointed at Hong Hong and asked, "Uh, is this the Gu you cultivated?"
She shook her head and then nodded. After all, Ning Que himself didn't know what this thing was.
"Forget it, it doesn't matter. My name is Miao Li." Xiao Chong pushed Ning Que behind the door and explained.
The door downstairs opened, and a high-pitched, resounding voice filled the empty house. "Kid! Little Bug!"
"Uncle Liu, I'm here!" Miao Li ruffled his hair and quickly responded to the anxious villagers downstairs.
"Kid, why did you suddenly... You scared me to death!" Uncle Liu patted Miao Li's shoulder and listened to him, "It's a mute girl of Han nationality who was raised in a village near us. Something happened to her family, and she escaped alone..."
When Uncle Liu first heard this, his face was full of disapproval, his brows furrowed so tightly that they could have pinched a fly to death. But when he heard that Ning Que, although a Han Chinese woman, had already cultivated her own destiny Gu, his expression became amiable again, and he looked very pleased. "Yes, yes, he's a good child!"
He then called out to the villagers still standing behind him, "Go away, go away, the kid is fine. Oh, old woman, you stay and take care of the girl!"
Ning Que watched the kind-looking uncle pat her shoulder, mumbling something she couldn't understand. Later, Miao Li came up and told Uncle Liu, "She's not only mute, but also traumatized. She can't understand Miao language."
Ning Que was completely bewildered. She could only see the increased distress in Uncle Liu's eyes. What on earth was Miao Li saying to this old man? It felt a little off. Wasn't he just being mute? Why did he add something to the mix?
Ning Que tentatively uttered, "Hmm, ahhh, hmm!"
The uncle asked, "Where is this girl's natal Gu? Very few Han people can establish a connection with the Gu Mother, and they can usually only learn the basics and raise simple Gu."
The aunt who came up rolled her eyes at Uncle Liu and patted her shoulder, "Good girl, have you eaten yet?" Then she looked at Ning Que's tattered long-sleeved shirt and trousers, "Oh, you've been through a lot. Come to my house and change your clothes!"
Ning Que was bewildered. What were they talking about? Miao Li wouldn't even translate. What was I supposed to do? Their voices were gentle and steady, and there were no violent movements, which left me no chance to even sketch or guess.
They felt even more distressed, especially the aunt. Her maternal glow was truly gleaming. She hugged Ning Que's head and cried, "Ouch, ouch, you must be terrified."
After tossing and turning for half the night, they finally sent the Liu couple away. Ning Que lay on the bed and rubbed his face, which was hard from the silly smile he had been wearing.
Miao Li handed her the quilt and said, "Hey, Wu Lan, you've changed your clothes and had your midnight snack, why are you still sleeping in my bed?"
Ning Que turned her back to him and said, "I'm so sleepy. Thank you for the bed. I'm already asleep!" She patted the empty space next to her and said, "I don't mind. If you don't mind, you can sleep with me."
Miao Li looked at her helplessly, took out a spare quilt from the cabinet and put it on the ground, thinking that it seemed that this woman would stay here for a while, and the room next door had to be cleaned up.
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