Floating to your side (15)

Shen Tang asked her question directly, staring at the old lady in front of her with sharp eyes. Although her hair was gray, she was in high spirits and in very good condition. She was not unconscious as she had imagined.

The old lady sitting on the chair looked at her with amusement: "Although I am old, my brain is not muddled yet. I remember everything that happened clearly."

Having said this, the old woman let out a long breath, and her eyes and brows seemed to be tinged with a hint of darkness, as if she was unwilling to recall what had happened. The old woman took the kettle from the table beside her and drank several sips of water, and then she began to recall.

"Gushi Village carries many memories of my generation. When I was your age, I stayed in the village every day and worked with other girls. But what you are asking about, little girl, should be what happened before we left."

Shen Tang nodded, watching the old man slowly stand up, walk to the table and open the drawer. His hands were covered with dust and rust, rummaging around inside, as if he was looking for something. After rummaging for a while, the old man finally pulled out an old wooden photo frame from the drawer. He slowly took out the frame and wiped off the dust on the edge.

Shen Tang followed the old man's movements and saw the photo in the frame. In the old black and white photo, two young girls were smiling sweetly. Shen Tang moved his fingertips lightly, "Is this an old photo of you?"

There was a young girl in the photo whose facial features were very similar to the old lady in front of him, so Shen Tang made this guess easily. Next to the old lady in the photo, there was another woman of similar age. The two did not look alike, so they were probably either relatives or friends.

As expected, the old lady caressed the two people in the photo and whispered, "This girl is my friend when I was young. We did everything together at that time, but who could have thought that something like this would happen later."

As she spoke, the old lady couldn't help but shed a tear from her eye. She slowly reached out her hand to wipe the tears from her eye, and then said, "Little girl, you came to ask me, probably because you heard about the wolf invasion of Gushi Village, right?"

A hint of surprise flashed across Shen Tang's eyes: "Yes, could it be that..."

"That's right," the old lady said slowly, with a look of helplessness in her eyes, "One of the people in this photo is the daughter-in-law of the family that was attacked by the wolf."

"But I heard that there was someone in that family who happened to be taken away and survived?" Shen Tang remembered the news he heard from the person in charge and asked in confusion. Unexpectedly, the old lady shook her head with a gloomy expression.

"She did survive, but now she is as good as dead," the old lady said sadly, and Shen Tang realized that although the old lady's friend survived the wolf disaster, she had some mental problems and had been sent to the hospital. She was holding a baby and shouting "An An" with empty eyes all day long. It was said that this name was the name of the child she had given birth to, but the child was unlucky and did not survive.

"Excuse me, which hospital is that old lady in now? Can I go visit her?" Shen Tang knew that it was presumptuous to ask this, but he still said what he wanted to say. If the old lady in the hospital was the ghost baby's biological mother, perhaps the opportunity to help the ghost baby reincarnate is there.

The old lady raised her head slowly and said, "You can visit her, but now she doesn't recognize anyone and only recognizes the baby in her arms. Even if you go, I'm afraid you won't get any news."

"It's nothing, I just want to visit this old lady." Shen Tang went up to the old lady and looked at the girl in the photo frame. He pointed at the girl standing on the right side with his finger. "The one on the left is you, and the one on the right is the old lady who is lucky enough to survive, right?"

"I wonder if you still remember what happened before the wolf entered the village? I also heard that this Gushi Village has not encountered any wild animals in several years. How could it have encountered a wolf for no reason? Could it be that some hunters in the village provoked the wolf outside and brought the wolf into the village?" Shen Tang raised his eyes and looked at the old lady and asked.

"That shouldn't be possible. Although there were men in our village who went into the mountains to hunt at that time, those men had only seen animals that were easy to catch. Occasionally they would catch a pheasant or rabbit to feed their wives and children. They had never seen a wolf."

As the old lady recalled the past, her sparse white eyebrows slightly raised, as if she remembered something, "But now I think about it, before the wolf slaughtered my sister's family, a gentleman came to their home. At that time, my sister was already seven or eight months pregnant, and her husband's family didn't allow her to do housework at first, so they hoped that the baby would be a boy."

"Sir?" Shen Tang vaguely sensed something was wrong. How was this matter related to the sorcerer?

The old lady shook her head and said, "Yes, before that gentleman came, my sister was pregnant and occasionally went to help her husband with odd jobs. Her in-laws were pretty good to her, after all, they didn't know whether the baby in her belly was a boy or a girl. As a result, after that gentleman came to my sister's house and stayed for two days, my sister's mother-in-law was looking forward to having a grandson. She heard that the gentleman had the ability to tell whether the baby in her belly was a boy or a girl, so she went to ask the gentleman to do work behind my sister's back!"

"My sister told me about this later. I don't know how the doctor did it, but after my sister rested, he used a secret method to test the baby's health. After the test, I don't know what he said to my sister's mother-in-law before leaving. After the doctor left, my sister's in-laws announced that she was pregnant with a boy. Neighbors also said that they were lucky to have a boy as their first child. But when I saw her again, her in-laws were using her, who was about to give birth, to do heavy work. Don't you think this is harmful to her?"

The old lady recalled this with anger on her face. She took a sip of water from the water bottle beside her and couldn't help muttering, "My sister's life was hard, but her husband's family was not good people. They scolded their daughter-in-law all the time and made her do heavy work even when she was pregnant. I thought they didn't want a baby!"

Shen Tang quickly put together what the old lady said: "You mean, before the husband went to the mother-in-law's house, the mother-in-law's family was quite nice to her, but their attitude changed after the husband left?"

At this point, Shen Tang paused again, "Then what happened to the mother-in-law's child?"

The old lady shook her head, "Who knows? They said to others that they were pregnant with a boy, but two days later, my sister was walking outside the door when someone came and pushed her to the ground. She was bleeding all over the floor. I didn't see her until I went to visit her. The in-laws were blind and stayed in the house without watching over her or hearing her cries. I wanted to send her to the hospital, but the old lady said something!"

"She said she knew a village doctor who could treat illnesses and deliver babies, so there was no need to spend a lot of money to go to the city to find a doctor. I didn't see my sister for several months. When I saw her again, she had lost a lot of weight due to the treatment and was shriveled. I saw that she looked unhappy, so I guessed that the baby had been aborted."

When the old lady said this, she couldn't help but glance in the direction where her granddaughter had just left. "Comparatively, my daughter and granddaughter were lucky and nothing happened to them. But my sister was really miserable. Her child was thrown away. I heard that the child's flesh and blood were directly dealt with by the in-laws. She didn't even get to see it."

At this point, Shen Tang had already realized why the evil spirit in the ghost baby condensed into the shape of a wolf. If she guessed correctly, the ghost baby must have died at the hands of the daughter-in-law's in-laws, but after death its flesh and bones were thrown to the wolf pack. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why the ghost baby saw the wolf.

"So after the mother-in-law lost her child, she was taken back by her family while she was unconscious?" Shen Tang's gaze fell on the smiling girl in the photo. Judging from the girls' clothes in the photo, they did not look like people who had lived in the countryside for a long time. Instead, they looked more like young ladies who stayed in the city to study.

The old lady sighed, "Yes, I told my sister at the beginning that it would be much more comfortable to live in the city, but she ignored her parents' objection and fell in love with the poor boy from the country. When she was taken back, her family was heartbroken, and her husband's family blamed her for not giving them a boy. The two families almost became enemies. Later, the wolf accidentally broke into that family's house, and they ended up like this now. It's really sad. In my opinion, this family deserves it, otherwise the wolf could have attacked anyone else, but it just attacked their family."

Shen Tang carefully took the old photo frame from the old lady's hand and looked at the girl on it calmly. Some choices can really ruin your life if you make a mistake. However, what the old lady said did provide her with a lot of information for the ghost baby's reincarnation. If this ghost baby is really the child of the woman who survived the wolf disaster, then this incident cannot be blamed on the woman, and the ghost baby's resentment should be dissipated, right?

After Shen Tang learned the information she wanted from the old lady, she begged her to tell her the location of the hospital where the old lady was. The old lady did not refuse her request, and even hoped that she would say hello to her old friend when she visited her. After all, the old lady herself was old and it was inconvenient for her to travel. If no one asked about the past, it would be buried with her. It would be better to tell the story to those who wanted to know so that they could visit her old friend.

When leaving the old lady's house, Shen Tang looked calm, but her heart was in turmoil. She didn't know what happened at the time, and the old lady's words were only one-sided. If the child in the daughter-in-law's belly was really pushed to death by someone else, how could she have such a strong resentment? Maybe the family did something to the woman at the time, which caused the ghost baby to have such a strong evil spirit now.