Chapter 57 Contradiction
"I... I don't know. We only called each other a few times, and the signal was always bad." Xiao Liang answered a little flustered, "It was a girl. Before I came here, I thought she was the daughter of the village chief."
"But you don't think so now?"
"It doesn't seem so. I thought it was a bit strange when I first came here."
"From the sound of her voice, how old is she? Any characteristics?"
"I can't really tell. The signal was always bad whenever she called. I'd guess she was around 20, pretty young."
"Then do you remember her phone number when she called?"
"I've got it." Xiao Liang took out a notebook, "But there's no telephone line in this place yet. This number should be a landline outside the mountains."
Lu Jiamu replied: "That's just what we thought. Let's try it first."
Xiao Liang was a little confused: "Maybe something is blocking the signal here, so we can't get through at all."
"Whether you can get the fight out or not depends on who you are fighting for. You try it first."
Xiao Liang turned to the page that recorded the calls from villagers and dialed the number using the satellite phone.
The phone, which had no signal at all, strangely got through at this moment. After two beeps, the other end of the phone was picked up, but the other party did not speak.
Why can I still get through when there is no signal? Who is on the other end?
Xiao Liang realized something was wrong, swallowed nervously, turned on the speakerphone, and didn't dare to speak.
In the silence of the crowd, amidst the amplified sound of the communication due to the hands-free function, there was a faint noisy and chaotic sound that was hard to tell what it was.
Xiao Liang felt scared and handed the phone to Lu Jiamu.
But it seemed to be just some noise that was intercepted and mixed from different places when the signals were confused, and the meaning was unclear.
Beneath the noise, there was a faint rhythmic sound of breathing, as if someone was breathing into the phone.
Several people here leaned forward and looked into their phones, trying to hear what was going on.
The person on the other end of the phone seemed to notice that they were listening attentively. Suddenly, he chuckled and hung up.
There is indeed something wrong with this situation!
Several people immediately looked up at each other inquiringly, but none of them got enough information from this short laughter. Lu Jiamu called back again.
But the other party did not pick up the phone again. Lu Jiamu called back several times but the same thing happened.
Wang Biao asked a little worriedly: "Will we alert the enemy?"
Lu Jiamu shook his head: "With so many people dead, it would be really strange if we did nothing."
He thought for a moment and then said, "If there is something wrong with the person who called the program team, then the village chief must know who she is. I want to look for the well ghost again, you go ask the village chief first."
The few of them divided the work quickly and in tacit understanding.
Lu Jiamu and Yu Leng went back to the well to look for the well ghost, and to see if they could collect other clues along the way. The others stayed at the village chief's house, on the one hand to communicate with the village chief, on the other hand to continue to supervise the security guy.
After the division of labor was completed, Lu Jiamu and Yu Leng climbed over the wall and ran out.
There were several villagers cursing at the village chief's door, so the two could not leave through the main gate and had to hide from others on the way. Fortunately, they were both good at stealth.
The two sneaked all the way to the well. Lu Jiamu leaned over to look into the well and smiled gently like last time: "We want to seek your help with something. Can you come out for a moment? We are not bad people. We want to help you too."
After he said that, he stepped aside, but nothing else crawled out of the well.
Lu Jiamu leaned closer again: "Beauty? We want to meet you."
Seeing that there was still no movement in the well, Lu Jiamu took off his coat and handed it to Yu Leng, tied a rope around his waist for safety, put on the head-mounted flashlight, and turned over and went directly into the well.
Yu Leng was holding the other end of the rope from above, and he also turned on a flashlight, watching Lu Jiamu climb down.
Under the light of the flashlight, Lu Jiamu could vaguely see some black filaments in the water, like hair. They shrank when hit by the light, as if they were hiding from them.
Lu Jiamu climbed all the way to the surface of the water, with the tip of his shoe already touching the water: "We want to see you. Are you scared? What in this village scares you so much?"
"We already know what is hiding in this village. Can you tell us who she is?"
The well ghost still had no intention of showing up. But he was constantly being harassed, and the harassment had already reached his head, which might have been a bit annoying for the ghost.
The hair in the well floated for a while. Seeing that Lu Jiamu had no intention of leaving, he had to sink into the water, carefully fumbled out a red bracelet, and gently lifted it out of the water, as if to give it to him.
Lu Jiamu freed one hand and took the bracelet held up by his hair: "Thank you."
He climbed out of the well again and then looked carefully.
This bracelet is crystal clear, and even though it may have been submerged in the well for a long time, its luster is still visible.
Unfortunately, neither Lu Jiamu nor Yu Leng knew how to identify jewelry, so they couldn't tell whether it was glass, or valuable items like jade or jadeite.
Yu Leng used a flashlight to shine on the bracelet and asked, "What are you giving us this for?"
Lu Jiamu didn't quite understand, it couldn't be that she was annoyed by him, so she spent money to buy peace. This might be an important clue given by the well ghost.
Yu Leng took back the flashlight: "It looks a bit expensive, and it's red. At least it should be very conspicuous in a village like this. Let's go back and ask the village chief."
Lu Jiamu untied the rope around his waist, took his coat and put it on again, put away the bracelet, then walked around the village with Yu Leng, secretly looking at the four people who died today.
When they returned, the village chief was still sitting in the rocking chair and looking at the sky as usual.
Lu Jiamu went to him with the bracelet and said that he had picked up a bracelet on the way to the toilet and wanted to come over to ask if it belonged to the village chief's daughter.
The village chief was a very simple person. When he heard Lu Jiamu say so directly that he had found something and wanted to return it, he did not immediately think that the stranger had sneaked out and lied. After seeing the bracelet, he was very confused: "This... seems to belong to Fang girl. That girl lives quite far from us. How did her things fall here?"
Lu Jiamu shook his head in confusion: "I don't know. Then can you help us return it to her? She must be very worried after losing the bracelet."
"You city people are really nice. You return lost items to their owners." The village chief took the bracelet and looked at it carefully. "It's hers. Maybe she came here today and dropped it here. I'll go look for her later."
Lu Jiamu smiled and said, "Thank you, Village Chief."
The two men returned to the house, where everyone else was also.
Wang Biao said: "We asked about the phone call, and the village chief said he took a bus into the city to make the call."
Xiao Liang's face didn't look good: "But I clearly remember that it was a girl who called. He was lying."
"Maybe he's not lying." Lu Jiamu shook his head. "The village chief has always had a bad memory. He may have forgotten."
The village chief sat outside for a while, then went out with the red bracelet.
Lu Jiamu immediately followed him out quietly and watched the village chief from a distance.
The village chief walked along a long mountain road, came to a house and knocked on the door.
A woman carefully opened the door a crack and was relieved when she saw it was the village chief.
The village chief took out the bracelet and seemed to be asking questions.
The woman turned around and called out, and a young girl about 20 years old ran out of the house. The girl took a look at the bracelet in the village chief's hand and shook her head.
Lu Jiamu narrowed his eyes and saw from afar that the little girl was also wearing a red bracelet on her hand.
Why are there two identical bracelets?
…
Lu Jiamu went back to the village chief's house first. The village chief came back later and called them. He returned the red bracelet to them and said that he had just asked and it was not that girl Fang's, so he asked them to keep it first.
The people in the room did not communicate directly, but they all knew each other's thoughts tacitly.
There are two identical bracelets, and it is obvious which one looks the most problematic.
It is now late, and the villagers who were blocking the village chief's house have left and gone home for dinner.
The village chief’s wife prepared a few steamed buns for them, brought them into the house, and left.
Everyone in the room didn't waste any time talking. After finishing their meal, they sent their plates out and closed the door.
The security guy looked at Lu Jiamu expectantly and played a deck of cards: "Want to play two?"
They had no plans to let the security guy go out to step on landmines today, so Lu Jiamu shook his head and said that he had no interest in this kind of game. He had run too much today and wanted to go to bed early.
The security guy challenged him a few times, but when he got no response, he gave up.
Everyone in the room was exhausted both physically and mentally by today's events and wanted to go to bed early, so the room quickly became quiet.
This night was just like yesterday, it was very quiet outside and there were no strange flames.
The next morning, several people who were light sleepers were awakened by the chaotic shouting.
Wang Biao frowned and asked seriously, "Did eight people really die today?"
They waited quietly for a while.
Perhaps because so many people died, no one asked the village chief to take charge of the situation today. Instead, they directly carried farm tools to the village chief's house and said gloomily, "Village chief, open the door."
There was something bad mixed in their tone.
“…”
The gate was slammed violently: "Village Chief! Open the door! Someone died in the village again today!"
"This is a curse! Must it wait until we are all dead?!"
The village chief heard the shouting and came out, his hand holding the pipe trembling, looking very confused and at a loss: "But there is no curse in this world."
The villagers outside slammed the door and made it tremble: "Eight people died! They are monsters!"
"Kill the monster!"
In the room, Wang Biao asked, "Should we run?"
The villagers were so excited that it looked a little bad. But the village chief seemed to be willing to help them. If they left directly, they would lose the village chief's protection and would no longer be able to rely on him to learn about the latest situation in the village.
Several people hesitated for a moment, and finally reached a consensus: "Run."
Xiao Liang was already very wary of people from such remote areas, so of course he had no objection now.
Only the security guy asked: "Why are we running?"
Most of the villagers are now blocking the two doors of the village chief's house and have not surrounded the entire yard.
They climbed over the wall and ran out. They only met one or two villagers along the way, and they could be knocked down with one punch. They quickly broke out of the encirclement.
As soon as they ran out, the door of the village chief's house was pushed open by a group of villagers holding farm tools and rushed in fiercely. They immediately saw the security guard who had not run away.
"Strangers bring a curse!"
"Death to the monster!"
The tall villager who was in the lead rushed over with a pointed wooden stick in his hand and stabbed the security guard in the abdomen.
"Puff"
Before the security guy could react, the stick had already pierced through his back.
The villagers raised their arms violently, and he was lifted up like a chicken. Bright red blood spilled all over the ground, flowing down along the wooden stick and also staining the villagers' hands red.
The security guy who was strung together screamed and made a painful "ho ho" sound from his mouth.
The village chief fell to the ground in shock: "You...what are you doing?"
The villagers who rushed in were all red-eyed and shouted loudly: "Burn him to death!"
"You guys are breaking the law!"
"Breaking the law?"
Other villagers said angrily: "Someone was killed today again, don't you understand?! This is simply not something a human can do! It's a curse, they angered the mountain god! If they don't die, then we will die!"
An elder came out from among the villagers and took charge of the situation: "Did the other outsiders run away? We must catch them back quickly."
…
Of course, there was no reason for the group of people who had already run out of the yard to turn back. Moreover, the victim was a security guard, who had probably been burned to death long ago, just like the villagers. The few people who knew about the incident were eager to get rid of him as soon as possible.
The two girls from the program crew covered their mouths in shock when they saw such a cruel scene.
They wanted to go back to save him, but they knew that going back would only mean death, so they felt very distressed.
After they were out of the villagers' sight, they found a secluded place and stopped.
After taking a breath, Lu Jiamu patted Xiao Liang and said, "Find a place to hide. We must find out who the eight people who died today are."
Xiao Liang grabbed his sleeve and asked in horror: "Why? Did you see what they did to him just now? If we are caught now, those lunatics will kill us too!"
Lu Jiamu just repeated: "Find a place to hide."
Kou Man touched her hand to comfort her: "You can see that we can't escape from here, but we should be able to go deeper into the mountains. You can hide there, but there may be more dangerous things deep in the mountains, so don't go too deep."
After saying that, the five people gestured to each other, then left their hiding place, split into two teams and ran in different directions.
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