Chapter 15 The Boy Who Was Eaten
"Open it and take a look?"
Although Shi Xiaoyin spoke in a questioning tone, he quickly and skillfully opened the boxes.
The boxes were filled with jewels and exquisite clothes. Strangely, these clothes looked like they were only suitable for thin teenagers.
"Is this dress just right for you?" Shi Xiaoyin said jokingly.
"Uh... maybe it's a bit tight. It can be worn when you are seventeen or eighteen years old." Xie Liang said, covering his mouth.
Shi Xiaoyin scanned the surroundings with his flashlight and said, "Looks like we haven't found anything else. Let's go up first."
After the two came up, they chatted casually on the deck on the first floor, feeling the sea breeze.
Shi Xiaoyin looked out at the sea in the distance and said, "These sailors don't seem to be able to speak. I've never heard them speak."
"Well, after all, he's not a human, so it's normal that he can't speak."
"That's right. In a small world, abnormality is normal."
The cold glow of the moonlight grew brighter and brighter, illuminating the eerie blue-black sea.
Shi Xiaoyin reached out to check the time, the hands were almost pointing to twelve o'clock.
"Let's go and hide over here on the side of the ship. They may be coming out to bask in the moonlight soon." Shi Xiaoyin whispered to Xie Liang.
"Yeah." Xie Liang responded and followed Shi Xiaoyin to the side of the boat.
After a while, the sound of footsteps came from the corridor. The sailors came out and walked onto the deck leisurely and unsteadily.
"Hissing" sounds were heard one after another, and they tore off the human skins covering their bodies and hung them on the railings beside them.
"It seems that one mermaid is different from the others. Has its skin 'grown' a little longer? But the color is different, it looks very strange..." Shi Xiaoyin said, staring at the skin of the mermaid.
Xie Liang lowered his voice: "It didn't grow out, it was attached. Look at the white skin on its belly and the pattern on it. Doesn't it look like the tattoo on the neck of the woman who died before?"
"There's the neck, yes, I have some impression of it."
Xie Liang looked at the mermaids basking in the moonlight on the deck not far away and said to Shi Xiaoyin, "I'll distract them while you steal the human skin. I don't know if they'll all follow us, so be careful."
Shi Xiaoyin thought for a moment and said, "How about this? You go out first and make some noise to attract their attention. I'll take advantage of the chaos to grab two human skins and then throw the rest into the sea. That way, they'll have to go down to the sea to retrieve the skins. Then, while they're down there, we'll put on the human skins and try to bring the bride out."
"Well, let's give it a try. There's no better way now."
After Xie Liang finished speaking, he picked up the long pole and net on the side of the ship, ready to attract the sea monster's attention: "Hurry up, I'll lead them to the cabin on the bottom floor. There's a small ventilation duct at the end. If nothing goes wrong, I'll crawl out from there."
Shi Xiaoyin pointed at the tall exhaust pipe: "That pipe?"
Xie Liang looked in the direction of her finger and nodded: "Yes, that's it."
"It's so high, you better be careful." After saying that, Shi Xiaoyin ran around the side of the ship to the other side.
Xie Liang walked to the railing with a scoop net and hit the iron bucket next to him hard. The collision of the objects made a harsh clanging sound in the dark night.
After hearing the sound, the mermaids turned their heads to look at him one after another, then quickly stood up and pounced on him. Xie Liang could even "read" the happy expressions on their faces from their strange fish heads.
Their sticky lower limbs made a squeaking sound as they moved against the planks, making Xie Liang's scalp tingle. The mermaids' movement was neither fast nor slow. Xie Liang made a provocative gesture towards them and shouted, "Come and chase me! Come and chase me! You dead fish!"
He mobilized all his strength and ran to the bottom floor, with the mermaid behind him chasing him closely.
at the same time.
While the mermaid was being distracted by Xie Liang, Shi Xiaoyin quickly ran to the railing on the deck and grabbed two human skins. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction tonight, and when she threw the remaining six skins overboard, the sea breeze blew them back and hung them on the mast.
Shi Xiaoyin glanced at the human skins on the crossbeam and thought, forget it, never mind. If I lose their skins and disrupt the rules of the small world, it would be a waste of time.
After getting the human skin, she quickly ran to an empty cabin, put on the smelly human skin, suppressed her nausea, and ran towards the bride's cabin on the second floor.
With a creaky sound, Shi Xiaoyin opened the two doors of the boathouse where the bride lived. The oil lamp inside was on, and she tentatively reached through the water curtain in the middle of the door—after she put on the human skin, the resistance really disappeared.
The bride lived in a cabin with a living room. Shi Xiaoyin walked through the small and cluttered living room and pushed open the door of the bride's room. The scene before her made her scalp tingle:
The bride was wearing a bright red wedding dress and was sitting in front of the dressing table. Two paper dolls were standing beside her, combing her long black hair.
The two paper figures with red flowery jackets on their bodies heard the noise, turned around stiffly, their eyes rolling around, then picked up the scissors and hairpins on the table, as if they were going to pounce on her.
The bride should have noticed her intrusion, but she ignored Shi Xiaoyin and started coughing to herself: "Cough cough... cough..."
As she coughed violently, the two paper figures turned around, put down the scissors and hairpins in their hands, and patted the bride's back gently.
After a while, the bride seemed to recover. She whispered, "You are the one who is sending the bride off."
Her voice was filled with sadness, without any joy of her first marriage, as if this marriage was a dead end.
"Well, I wonder who you're going to marry?"
The paper doll helped the bride, who was sitting on a stool, to turn around slowly. She looked at me softly and said with a wry smile, "Marry? It's just a nice thing to say." Her sad voice was clear and pleasant, but full of despair.
Shi Xiaoyin didn't say anything, but just stared blankly at the bride's outstanding face - she had never seen such a beautiful woman, just like she had never seen a man as handsome as Xie Liang, and she was lost in thought for a moment.
The bride didn't care about her reaction and continued, "They appear on the coast of the village every other year, and the villagers always offer a large number of jewelry and fine clothes, as well as people like me. We are just victims of the curse."
Shi Xiaoyin came back to his senses, frowned, and asked, "Do 'they' refer to these sailors?"
"Well, you must have realized they weren't human, otherwise you wouldn't have come in wearing their skins."
"How did you know? You seemed to see right through me the moment I walked in."
"Because you don't have their stench. Even though you're wearing their skin, I can still smell the human scent on you. Besides, they only come in, drop off food, and leave. They won't stay..."
Perhaps because she talked too much, the bride started coughing again, and the plain handkerchief covering her mouth was stained with blood.
"You mean a curse? What kind of curse?"
Seeing that she was coughing violently, Shi Xiaoyin couldn't help but pour a glass of water from the earthenware jar on the table and place it in front of the dressing table where she was sitting.
The bride took a sip from the water cup and continued, "Our village has relied on fishing for generations. About ten years ago, a hurricane blew a village boat far out to sea. No one knew where it was. The people on the boat couldn't catch anything, not even algae. They were trapped in that dead sea for a long time, so long that they ran out of food and water..."
Shi Xiaoyin glanced at the mechanical watch on her hand, feeling a little anxious. She didn't know how long Xie Liang could drag it out, and wondered if she should kidnap her and ask her later. Ultimately, she decided to ask clearly here, fearing that she would end up ruining the bride.
"Then what?"
"After an unknown amount of time, they drifted to a small island. There was only one young boy on the island. They thought they could find food after getting off the boat, but later they found that there was nothing on the island, as if the boy didn't need to eat. They thought the boy had hidden the food, so they tied him up. No matter how they beat and questioned him, the boy refused to say a word. In the end, they only found a little fresh water on the island. But they had been hungry for a long time, and a little fresh water was of no use to them..."
The bride then seemed to recall something horrible, her face pale as if she were dead: "They tied the boy back to this ship..."
"This ship?"
"Yes. Because they were so hungry, they ate the boy..."
Shi Xiaoyin wasn't too surprised. She had read news reports about similar shipwrecks before, and they included reports about cannibalism. "So the curse was cast by that young man? What is the curse?"
"Ahem... ahem... it's... the plague. First you have a fever, and soon your whole body will fester. No one knows what it is. These are the words of the only villager on the boat who only lived for three days after returning to the village. He said that the boy seemed to know he was going to die, and he cursed before he died. Those were the only words the boy uttered: 'After I die, plague will spread everywhere, and those who eat my body will fall into eternal darkness.' But they just thought he was talking nonsense out of fear."
The bride's body seemed to be reaching its limit, and she coughed every few words. Shi Xiaoyin anxiously checked the time on her watch again - she was worried that Xie Liang would not be able to hold back those mermaids and sea monsters.
"After they killed the boy, they shared his body parts every day, relying on them to escape the sea. They crushed the remaining inedible bones and threw them into the sea to use as bait for fishing. Soon after, they began to suffer from fevers and their bodies festered and festered from eating human flesh. Only the one who ate the least survived and returned to the village..."
More blood oozed from between the bride's fingers, covering her mouth. She pursed her lips and continued, "That man brought the plague back to the village. That year, many people died. The village, which originally had thousands, was reduced to only a few hundred. The village chief had no other options... ahem... so he went out and invited a famous fortune teller back. She figured out that the curse on the ship had been brought back to the village by the surviving villager. Then she performed a ritual on the ship and asked the village chief to load it with gold, silver, and jewelry. Only then did she send the ship away."
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