Seeing her, I suddenly remembered what the village chief had said.
He said that the mute old woman spent her days running around mass graves digging up corpses.
It seems like we've trespassed on someone else's territory.
At this critical moment, the old lady suddenly took out a bell and started shaking it.
Isn't this the [Yin Sha Copper Bell] that the long-haired girl took? How did it end up in her hands?
Strangely enough, as soon as the bell rang, Gao Qian, Liu Junming, and the three long-haired men who had been attacking us frantically suddenly stopped moving as if they had been frozen in place.
Their faces showed pain and discomfort, and their bodies trembled violently uncontrollably, as if something was tormenting them inside.
Then he closed his eyes and, like a puppet with its strings cut, fell straight to the ground with a "thud," without making a sound.
The old woman walked up to the three of them, took a crumpled cloth bag out of her pocket, and with a slight movement of her hand, a bag of soybeans rained down on the three of them.
The moment the soybeans touched their bodies, a burnt smell seemed to fill the air.
Immediately afterwards, a faint, extremely shrill scream reached our ears.
The sound was like the wailing of a soul from the depths of hell, sending chills down one's spine.
Gao Qian and the other two suddenly sat up and began to vomit violently.
The black liquid was mixed with the bits of flesh they had previously eaten.
“What…what did you do to us? Ugh…” Gao Qian lay on the ground, looking at the old lady with resentment.
Judging from her appearance, she had no idea what had happened before, and even thought that what she vomited up was the meat she ate last night.
I ignored her and thanked the old lady.
The old lady looked at us, then at Gao Qian and the other two, shook her head and sighed repeatedly, and gestured to me with a frown.
From her actions and expressions, I could clearly sense that she seemed to be blaming us for recklessly running into this place.
I hesitated for a moment, but then I didn't hide anything. I told them the whole story, from being tricked by the village chief to entering the illusion and witnessing Bai Su's death.
The old lady listened quietly at first, her eyes revealing an inscrutable expression.
But when I mentioned the word "village chief," her expression changed drastically.
His previously relaxed facial muscles suddenly tensed up. He pointed to his mouth with his finger, made a scissor-like opening and closing motion with his other hand, and then shook his head violently, his face full of pain and indignation.
She was telling me in sign language that her tongue had been cut off by the village chief.
Then she started gesturing rapidly to me, her hands moving so fast it was like she was forming hand seals.
Although my understanding is incomplete, I can roughly guess what she was trying to express.
She said that the things came looking for us the night we entered the village, and she had been guarding outside the door ever since.
We thought we'd leave at dawn, but who knew we'd run into the village? I wish we'd just been eaten last night.
I asked, "Grandma, you always say we can't leave the village at night, but what are those things that come out? Are they ghosts?"
The old woman shook her head, put her index and middle fingers together, pointed to the ground, then made a lifting motion from bottom to top with her palms, and finally crossed her hands in front of her chest to simulate the outline of a person.
Seeing the old woman's gesture, my heart skipped a beat, and I blurted out, "A person?"
I considered countless possibilities, but I never imagined it would be a human!
Before I could think about it, the old woman reached into the inner pocket of her tattered black robe, fumbled around for a while, and pulled out a small bottle containing an unknown yellow liquid.
Holding the bottle, she first pointed at us, then gently tapped her eyelids with her index and middle fingers, and then made a gesture of walking forward.
It was as if she was telling us that as long as we followed her instructions and applied the liquid to our eyelids, we would be able to leave this horrible place safely.
When I opened the bottle and smelled that familiar scent, I knew what it was.
Corpse oil!
However, the method of refining this corpse oil is different from the grease that sticks to the fireplace after a person has been burned.
To obtain the purest corpse oil, you must slowly heat the chin of the corpse with a white candle at 1 a.m.
I asked, "Grandma, the village chief said you go to dig up grave mounds at night just to extract corpse oil, is that right?"
As soon as I finished speaking, Luo Tianhe and the others, who were applying corpse oil to their eyelids, were so frightened that they tried to wipe it off with their hands.
I glanced at him and said, "If you want to live, don't wipe it!"
Su Meng, suppressing the churning in her stomach, rushed over and grabbed Gao Qian's arm tightly with both hands.
"Sister Sisi, please don't wipe it! If you wipe it, we really won't be able to leave."
The long-haired man and Liu Junming were already pale with fright, frantically wiping the corpse oil off their eyelids.
But Gao Qian seemed to be possessed, and suddenly swung her arm, causing Su Meng to stumble.
"Stop spreading alarmist rumors, you coward! I think you're just trying to drag everyone down. Have you forgotten how that old woman made us eat corpses? Now she wants us to smear corpse oil on our faces? She must be crazy!"
Su Meng wanted to persuade her, but I pulled her back: "You can't reason with a damned person. Let her be."
Luo Tianhe's words were even harsher: "What's there to advise? Don't try to persuade someone who's determined to eat shit. Not only will she not be grateful, she'll think you're trying to take her shit away from her!"
"Who are you calling a shit eater!"
Gao Qian's eyes were practically spitting fire as she glared fiercely at Luo Tianhe.
Luo Tianhe pointed at her nose: "You, Gao Qian!"
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