The villagers of Lugui Village age faster than those in other villages.
But for the people living here, no one finds it strange. Instead, they take such strange things for granted.
Bai Xiaozhen looked at the old woman groping forward in front of her and led her to the bedside. "Mother, you are tired too. Have a good rest."
"Okay..." After a while, the old woman slowly said, "Xiao Zhen, there's a piece of dead branch buried under the steps at the door. Go get it. It should be able to help you."
"You'd better keep it. We're running low on lamp oil." Bai Xiaozhen shook her head, her expression somewhat numb. "If I don't come back from picking this time, you can use the dead branches to burn as lamp oil. It should be able to last for a while."
There are no cultivated fields in Lugui Village.
All supplies have to be exchanged for local specialties from other villages, but going out to pick specialties is risky.
Many people die every month when they go out to pick the fruits.
But if they don’t pick the fruits, the village will have no supplies to survive, more people will die, and the village may even be destroyed.
Therefore, in the village, there are very few people who can live to the age of Bai Xiaozhen's mother.
"Mom has lived to this age, that's enough." The old woman with white hair and wrinkles pointed to the oil lamp beside her and said, "Xiaozhen, you are still young. Why don't you take the oil lamp with you..."
Click——
Before the old woman finished speaking, she only heard the sound of Bai Xiaozhen closing the door.
Looking at the empty, dilapidated house in front of her, the old woman was stunned for a moment before she let out a faint sigh: "Alas..."
After leaving the house, Bai Xiaozhen soon arrived at the village entrance along a muddy village road that was flickering with firelight.
An old man with a thin figure and a kind face was holding a big red lantern and standing at the stone tablet at the entrance of the village to gather people.
He is the village chief of Lugui Village, and his surname is Lu.
Next to Shikamura Masaru, two guards with swords stood upright.
However, the guards wore wooden masks, making their faces unclear. Some of the villagers who had been summoned felt their awe-inspiring presence and didn't dare get too close to the guards.
When Bai Xiaozhen passed by, she didn't know if it was an illusion, but she always felt that the two guards smelled a bit bad.
It was the smell of a rotting corpse.
Although she was somewhat puzzled, she did not dare to say anything. She just stood quietly in the crowd, waiting for Muramasa's arrangements and assignments.
Most of the people in the crowd were villagers like Bai Xiaozhen, who had very numb expressions and stiff behaviors, but there were also a few lively and active young children.
They looked much younger than Bai Xiaozhen, and were chattering about something in low voices, as if they were extremely looking forward to this picking trip.
In the dim light, everyone's shadow was twisting and blurring, as if they were living things, but if you looked closely, you could not find anything.
"It's already the hour of Xu."
Muramasa stood beside the stone tablet with a kind face. He waited for about an incense stick of time, looked at the sky which had turned completely dark, and then began to order the guards to count the number of people.
"One, two... twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven." After counting the number of people, the guard returned to Lu Muramasa's side. "Muramasa-sama, there should be thirty-one people here, but there are actually twenty-seven. We are short... four people."
The masked guard spoke in a very low and slow voice, sometimes even pausing in the middle of his speech, but Muramasa stood beside him with a smile on his face, listening to his report very patiently.
"It's not four people missing, it's only two people." Muramasa glanced at the big red lantern, then said slowly: "The couple of the Li family have died of old age, so it's normal that they didn't come. But the aunt of the Chen family and her son are hiding and won't come out..."
As he spoke, Kakumura Masa still had that kind face, but his tone of voice became increasingly eerie and strange.
The crowd, which had been quite noisy at first, suddenly fell silent. Even the lively young children kept their mouths shut, not daring to say anything more.
The atmosphere around began to become solemn.
One of the guards turned and entered the village, and quickly captured the two people hiding in the Chen family.
The masked guard held one in each hand like a chick. The two struggled desperately in his hands, but to no avail.
Aunt Chen is a very strong middle-aged woman, but her son looks a little old, with gray hair on his temples, and seems to be older than her.
If an uninformed outsider from the village were to know the situation, they might even mistake the two for siblings rather than mother and son.
But the villagers around here were not surprised and seemed to be used to it.
"Muramasa-sama, please..."
"us......"
The middle-aged mother and son were thrown in front of the village by the guards, and they knelt on the ground and begged for mercy.
Snap——
But just as they opened their mouths, Laocunzheng reached out and slapped them on the forehead, one for each. The mother and son, who had been extremely emotional, immediately fell silent, as if they had lost their souls.
"Go back to your seats, the others are waiting for you."
Muramasa still looks kind and benevolent.
"yes."
The two men stood up, not caring about the dirt and weeds on their bodies, and walked back to the villagers with extremely stiff postures.
The surrounding villagers also had numb expressions, looking at the middle-aged mother and son who looked like zombies, and no one spoke.
"Everyone's here, let's get going." Lucunzheng chuckled and pointed to the two masked guards. "They will lead us to today's picking location. Remember, stay within the range of the red lanterns."
After he said that, he stuffed the red lantern in his hand into the hands of one of the masked guards.
Afterwards, led by two masked guards, dozens of villagers from Lugui Village marched out of the village into the night.
The road outside the village is a winding muddy path. The ground is a bit sticky, and occasionally some unknown impurities flow on it.
The red light emitted by the big red lantern was not bright, but it strangely covered an area of dozens of meters, casting a red glow on the villagers.
Bai Xiaozhen walked in the middle of the crowd, his feet on the muddy road, looking at the bright light of the big red lanterns not far away, and then glanced at the Chen family mother and son next to him.
Looking at the unfocused pupils of the Chen family mother and son and their somewhat demented expressions under the bright red light, a sense of fear inexplicably rose in my heart.
But fear and terror are useless in Lugui Village; they will only accelerate one's aging and death.
So Bai Xiaozhen quickly adjusted her mentality, and her eyes gradually became numb.
"Anyway, I'm in the village, and I don't know how long I can survive, let alone how many harvests I can make it through." Under the light of the big red lantern, her face looked half black and half red. The girl thought silently in her heart, "I just hope that this time of harvest, I can bring back some lamp oil for my mother."
Lamp oil is essential for the villagers' survival.
Once the lamp oil runs out, they age faster.
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