Chapter 148
Shen Yunzhe still didn't say anything, because he didn't know what was going on here, nor did he know what kind of child Yaya was.
He even felt that it was impossible for him to behave like a child.
But this is not a problem in the eyes of a poor mother who has lost her child.
The woman tried to reach out and grab it. "Yaya, I'm sorry, Yaya. It's my fault that I didn't take good care of you."
"Come back."
“Ya-ya, ya-ya!”
Shen Yunzhe tried to reach out his hand, but his current condition was very strange. Not only could no one touch him except the woman, but Shen Yunzhe could not hold the woman's hand with his outstretched hand. He could only cover the back of the woman's hand with his hand.
But the woman seemed satisfied with this, and she looked greedily at Yaya, the creature she had imagined.
It seemed that Shen Yunzhe's response made her feel relieved, and she fell asleep with her hand stretched out from the gap.
Pulling his hand back, Shen Yunzhe looked at the woman, "What's her condition now?"
[Mental breakdown, as experienced by those with sleep disorders, is accompanied by hallucinations and is considered a mental illness.]
So he is now impersonating the daughter in the fantasy of a mentally broken mother. It is understandable why he does not behave like a child but is not suspected. The mother is in poor mental condition now, and in her fantasy, the child may become anything.
But at the same time, Shen Yunzhe realized that he probably couldn't stay too far away from the woman, because the child born from the woman's fantasy would not run away.
In order to ensure that he would still be there when the woman woke up, Shen Yunzhe sat outside the punishment room and waited. The woman looked too tired. Before she woke up, Ping Chu and He Yufeng arrived first.
"How is it?" Shen Yunzhe asked them.
"He Yufeng and I went to different places." Ping Chu spoke first. "I went to the assigned grave mound, and He Yufeng went to the assigned house."
"They really just allocated grave mounds, one for each person. I think those graves must have been used to bury people. I don't understand why they allocated grave mounds at all."
But Ping Chu was an official after all, and he was engaged in collecting information on the mountain village. He was skilled and bold, and he immediately went into the cemetery after the villagers who brought him left. He walked from one side of the cemetery to the other, and after making sure there was no danger, he even lay down to observe the appearance of the cemetery.
"Then I found this." Ping Chu took out a piece of paper from his pocket with a sketch on it.
The sketch looked like a mountain village at night. There was only one dim light on in the dark house. There was a very small word under the painting: T.
"Could this symbol be the one that disappeared in the mountain village three years ago?" He Yufeng looked at the painting. "I remember three years ago, the mountain village suddenly changed, swallowing up more than a dozen staff members surveying here. The person who drew this T was one of them."
"Yes, I was surprised too, but I pulled this out of the grave."
Pingchu said, "I counted all the graves, and there are really a lot of them, at least 300. But this village has a permanent population of only a hundred or so. Where did these extra graves come from?"
Shen Yunzhe frowned, "Don't you think that these extra graves are the people your officials reported missing in the mountain village?"
"The numbers match," He Yufeng said. "When the village was discovered, over forty people were lost at once due to improper operations. Later, Shen Wei summarized the pattern and concluded that even if there were subsequent accidents, the total number of people missing in the village over the past twenty years is 153, roughly the same as the village's permanent population."
"I wanted to dig up the graves to see if there were any acquaintances inside, because we officials all have markers on our bodies." Ping Chu curled his lips, "But if I dig up the graves right away, I'm afraid I'll find something bad, so I came back to tell you about this first."
He Yufeng nodded, "Actually, I've also found evidence that they were active here."
Shen Yunzhe looked over and asked, "You have it too?"
"It should be said that they are just like us. Once they enter, they will be treated as villagers. They have always been trying to find a way to leave. The official people are organized and disciplined. Most of them try to leave information. The house allocated to us just happens to be such a person who is very good at hiding information."
As he spoke, He Yufeng took out a notebook and showed it to them.
"That person left a special official code. I'm translating it for you to see."
There are a few lines of words written on the notebook.
[I must shed my identity as a villager and leave the village, because the mountain village is constantly devouring other villages, and the final outcome will inevitably be the village being devoured and the villagers being killed.]
Xiaoqing is a very important person. She may have a way to leave the village.
【Maybe there is a girl named Yaya who has always existed. 】
After reading just these three lines, Ping Chu hissed.
He looked at Shen Yunzhe, "Shen Yunzhe, the dead girl we saw last night was called Yaya, right?"
"Yeah." Shen Yunzhe nodded. "That's right, she died a few days ago."
"It seems there's something wrong with this deceased Yaya." He Yufeng said, "We need to pay more attention to her."
Shen Yunzhe looked at them and asked, "You just believe this information?"
"Why don't you believe it? We officials have our own set of identification methods. We are sure that the person who left the message is from our official team." Ping Chu looked at Shen Yunzhe doubtfully, "Or do you think our official team is untrustworthy? The officials themselves are not very good, but those who dare to come to the mountain village are all pretty good."
"No." Shen Yunzhe said, "Aren't you afraid that their information is wrong? It's not that they are deceiving you, but that the information they received is wrong."
"After all, as you said, there are more than a hundred graves, and no one who came in got out alive."
Ping Chu and He Yufeng understood what Shen Yunzhe meant.
What he doubted was not the person who left the message, but the accuracy of the message itself.
Because even if they left information, they could not leave alive. Shen Yunzhe was very rationally excluding these external conditions and thinking about whether this information was correct.
"That's a problem." He Yufeng was also thinking about it.
"I think it's believable. After all, this is what they concluded," Ping Chu said. "Assuming they really discovered this information and left it for people who might be involved in the future, then they must be certain of it to leave it. In other words, they trust their own judgment."
"Then for us, perhaps this is the information we can find out through our own investigation."
Ping Chu unexpectedly seemed very reliable. "As long as it's not intentional false information, we might as well believe it with a certain amount of doubt."
"It turns out that you can speak human language besides nonsense." There was surprise in He Yufeng's voice.
"No, when did I ever say that?!"
Just then, they heard a woman's voice. When they turned around, they found a woman in the punishment room looking out.
The woman's eyes looked through the gap, and Ping Chu and He Yufeng immediately realized that it was Xiaoqing who was trapped inside.
They immediately stood up and gestured to Shen Yunzhe to leave. The village rules stated that they were not allowed to help Erniu's woman, and they were not allowed to pay attention to the voices in the punishment room. It was still the beginning, and they did not want to challenge the village rules so quickly.
The woman woke up and saw Shen Yunzhe. She seemed to be sure that Yaya was around her, and she seemed to finally feel relieved.
"Yaya." The woman said, "Mom is sorry. Mom wanted to take you away."
"But Mommy tried many times, but she couldn't escape. She didn't have the strength to get out."
“Ya Ya, Ya Ya…”
Just as the woman was shouting, a familiar big man came over. Shen Yunzhe immediately recognized him as Erniu. Erniu walked over and kicked the door. The woman screamed. Erniu opened the door of the punishment room and dragged the woman out.
"Are you crazy? What are you talking about?"
As he said this, Erniu raised his hand.
Because the people here couldn't see Shen Yunzhe, or even touch him, Shen Yunzhe didn't avoid him. He stood there and watched everything happen. After all, he couldn't do anything in his current state.
Erniu waved his hand and positioned himself right in front of Shen Yunzhe.
Xiaoqing didn't know where she got the strength from. She pushed the man away like a madman and stood in front of Shen Yunzhe with her arms outstretched, like a furious old mother protecting her child.
"You are not allowed to hit Yaya! You are not allowed to hurt Yaya!"
Shen Yunzhe clearly saw fear in Erniu's eyes.
The big man looked at Xiaoqing who was standing in front of him, and then looked at the empty air behind Xiaoqing. He finally realized that Xiaoqing seemed to have gone crazy.
"Village Chief!" Erniu ran out quickly, "Oh no! That girl has gone crazy!"
Xiaoqing turned around as if she heard nothing. She looked at Shen Yunzhe with bright eyes, looking full of happiness.
"Yaya, mommy will protect you." She was as happy as a child. "Mommy is no longer an unqualified mother. Mommy will always protect Yaya."
"So, Yaya, please speak to your mother."
Shen Yunzhe looked at her, and through Xiaoqing's eyes he saw himself as she saw him.
The little girl sat at the door, looking at the woman in front of her expressionlessly. Her face was pale and her body was wet. She didn't look like a living person, and her expression didn't have any lively childishness. She was like a dead object that Xiaoqing had forcibly dug out.
A corpse.
Xiaoqing cried so hard that she kept trying to hug Shen Yunzhe, but no matter how hard she hugged she couldn't touch him.
Shen Yunzhe sighed. He thought about the children in the orphanage and how they called for their mothers.
Finally, he couldn't think of anything, so he opened his mouth and uttered a very light syllable.
"Mom." Shen Yunzhe shouted.
Xiaoqing was stunned for a moment, and her crying stopped abruptly. She opened her eyes wide and looked at Shen Yunzhe. She stopped crying and just kept laughing.
Just then, Erniu came with the village chief and his party. Erniu was shouting so loudly that Shen Yunzhe could hear it from far away.
"That woman is crazy! She keeps saying that the girl is still alive and right here, and she also told me not to hit that girl!"
"She must have gone crazy because her child died!"
"Will the next child also become as crazy as her?"
"That's enough." The village chief hit Erniu's arm with a stick. "I told you a long time ago not to hit her all the time, and not to hit Yaya all the time, but you never listened."
Erniu had a look of disdain on his face, "Women are meant to be beaten."
"It's fine if you beat her, but you actually... Yaya is your daughter." The village chief whispered, "You did this, and now Xiaoqing has lost her mind. Let's see what you can do."
Erniu was even more confident and said, "It's just a little girl. What I want is my son. Let her die."
"Shut up." The village chief asked Erniu to stay where he was, and he walked to Xiaoqing.
Shen Yunzhe looked at the people coming. Maybe because it was daytime, in addition to the village chief and Erniu, many people came to watch the fun. Ping Chu and He Yufeng were standing not far away. Although they had left, they were probably very worried. When they saw the crowds of people here, they came over to see.
He stood up and walked past Xiaoqing to the side of the village chief.
The village chief spoke in a gentle voice, "Xiaoqing, are you okay?"
"Yaya." Xiaoqing said, "Oh, I should go back and cook. Yaya needs to eat, and I also need to teach Yaya how to write."
Erniu opened his mouth to curse, but was stopped by a look from the village chief.
The village chief sighed, "Xiaoqing, we have to accept the reality. Yaya is dead. She accidentally fell into the spring and froze to death."
"But Yaya is standing there." Xiaoqing pointed blankly in the direction of Shen Yunzhe, "Yaya is still smiling at me. She is still alive."
The village chief looked in the direction Xiaoqing pointed in confusion and found that it was right behind him. The village chief took two steps to the side, and the direction Xiaoqing pointed changed with his walking direction, as if there was really something following him. The village chief's hair stood on end instantly.
"Xiaoqing, don't talk nonsense."
"I'm not talking nonsense." Xiaoqing looked a little scared, but her eyes were always looking in Shen Yunzhe's direction, "Yaya, she's right there."
To be honest, Shen Yunzhe felt very uncomfortable seeing this.
Whether he was influenced by his peers or Shen Yunzhe was essentially an emotionally expressive person, he had felt depressed since entering this mountain village. Especially after seeing a group of men aggressively attacking an injured woman, he had been paying attention to the wound on the woman's hand, and the frostbite was getting worse.
He stood behind the village chief and kicked him without thinking.
The moment he kicked, he felt that he had kicked something solid. The village chief was caught off guard and fell to the ground. His knees immediately turned purple as they hit the frozen soil.
"Village chief?!" Erniu rushed over immediately.
Shen Yunzhe was waiting for this moment. When Erniu was about to help the village chief up, he kicked him in the back. Erniu fell down directly and pinned the village chief under him, causing secondary injury.
"What? Who's behind me?!" Erniu turned around, but saw nothing but empty air.
There was a dead silence in an instant, and cold sweat dripped down his forehead.
“Ya, Yaya?”
Shen Yunzhe smiled, picked up a branch, and began to draw in front of Erniu. In the end, he drew a child. Erniu and the village chief were scared to death when they saw the painting spirit that appeared out of thin air in front of them. They didn't even dare to care about Xiaoqing and ran out like crazy.
Watching them crawling away, Shen Yunzhe threw away the twig.
"It's so cool to be a strange creature. You can do whatever you want. It's just a strange creature anyway." Shen Yunzhe clapped his hands.
[Note the boundaries, Yaya exists in the background of the story, but it is not clear what form of existence she has.]
"It's okay, I think it's fine. At least my counterpart didn't warn me when I did it." Shen Yunzhe turned to look at Xiaoqing who was still sitting on the ground. "Maybe Xiaoqing really knows how to leave the village, but I believe there must be more than one way to leave the village."
Not far away, Ping Chu and He Yufeng were whispering.
"Fuck, it's no wonder he's such a great character. I now believe Chen Wei must have left something behind for him." Ping Chu cupped his hands together, pretending to use binoculars as a child playing. "Did you hear that? Yaya! His current role is actually Yaya!"
"This is so strange." He Yufeng searched for information in his database. "Until now, I've never heard of someone becoming a strange creature in this kind of playground. That Yaya is dead. Even if she still exists, she must be a strange creature."
"Besides the two of us who are special players, no one else can see him. Only Xiaoqing can see him."
Ping Chu put down his hand, "Yeah, guess what the reason is? He must have some special method, maybe we can really survive this time."
"No, that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to why only Xiaoqing can see Yaya." He Yufeng said. After thinking for a long time, he suddenly realized, "Because Yaya was born from Xiaoqing!"
"Strong negative emotions can give birth to demons! Yaya is a strange creature formed by Xiaoqing's intense self-blame and longing!"
"So now only Xiaoqing can see Yaya!"
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