Chen Ge climbed out of the tunnel and looked around.
There were no windows in the house, and there were several recently dead poultry placed not far from the tunnel entrance.
"She used the blood of poultry? Can this also deceive evil spirits?"
He could vaguely hear the cry of a baby, and Chen Ge walked up the stairs to the second floor.
It can be clearly seen that this is a woman's room. There are simple furniture in the room. The difference from other houses is that there is no coffin in this room, but a wooden bed.
After opening the thick bed curtain, there were several bamboo baskets placed side by side on the wooden bed. Each baby in the basket had a blade of grass placed on its mouth.
The grass leaves seemed to have a soothing effect. Although the babies were separated from their parents, they did not cry too much.
"Every time this woman surnamed Zhu takes her child away, is she actually trying to protect her?"
Soon Chen Ge found a notebook under the pillow on the bed. After opening it, a personal name and address were recorded on it.
The person who wrote these things may have limited knowledge of characters, and used symbols in many places.
"The woman surnamed Zhu outside looks like she is in her thirties or forties, but this book is yellowed and shabby. It feels like it was from many years ago." Chen Ge held the book and couldn't understand the words on it.
Most of the Chinese characters are unrecognizable: "The address is very vague, but I can distinguish a few names. Could they be the children who were rescued?"
"You're right, they are all children I sent out." Suddenly an old lady's voice came from behind, and Chen Ge immediately turned around with the repeater in hand.
"I'm the one who should be afraid, right? Or do you think I, an old guy with half his foot buried in the coffin, can pose a threat to you?"
It seemed that the voice sounded strange because of the lack of teeth. Singer Chen took the repeater and walked into the room. In the compartment on the second floor, he saw an old lady with a severe hunchback and wrinkles on her face.
She was lying on the wooden bed in the cubicle, her legs had atrophied muscles, and only her head and one arm could barely move.
"Who are you?" The old man looked very old, so Chen Ge couldn't help but use "you" as the address.
The old man looked at Chen Ge and she grinned: "I am a person favored by a fierce ghost."
Hearing these words, Chen Ge's head buzzed. The words the old man said were all too familiar to him!
"You kid makes me feel very friendly. You should have dealt with them." The old man naturally refers to ghosts.
"Yes, I have not only dealt with them, but I also built a home specifically to house them."
"Then you are much better than me." The old man tried very hard to express his kindness: "Sit down, I didn't hear the door ring. You should have ran in from the tunnel of the ancestral hall. I guess you are planning to take advantage of the opportunity.
The baby was secretly taken away during the sacrificial ceremony?"
"Well, I have this plan." Chen Ge did not approach the old man, but just put down the repeater in his hand.
"As I thought, people who can be favored by evil ghosts must have qualities that even ghosts recognize." The old man's voice was very plain, but it made people feel comfortable listening to it.
"Quality recognized by Li Gui?"
"kindness."
The old man nodded laboriously, and under Chen Ge's questioning, she told her exactly what happened that year.
It's basically the same as what Ah Qing said. The difference is that the evil ghost in the old man's mouth is not an unbridled murderous revenge, but there seems to be a trace of residual emotion.
The old man had rescued the female ghost three times, and the female ghost promised to help the old man do three things that were not excessive.
The old man is usually treated specially. For example, it will never enter the old man's house. When other evil spirits appear in the village, as long as they threaten the old man's life, the female ghost will appear and kill them.
"She washed the village with blood, and no one who committed the crime was spared. I can understand all this, and even found it very satisfying. But what happened next made me feel that something was wrong." The old man was in poor health, and he had to rest for a while: "
A red door appeared in the house where she lived, and only she could push it open."
"After the bloodbath in the village, she gave up her obsession and originally wanted to leave. Before leaving, she wanted to enter the door to take a look, but that's when she saw the problem."
"When she came out of the door again, she was filled with hatred and her eyes were full of malice. She became a completely different person."
"I don't know what she encountered inside the door. I only know that she is full of malice towards everything. She is going to imprison the descendants of the perpetrators here, so that they can only be monsters for the rest of their lives. Even all normal people are in her eyes
Unforgivable.”
There was a hint of hidden pain in the old man's voice: "I have no ability to stop her. I can only use my own methods to save some innocent children when she goes crazy."
"As you can see today, she will wake up once a year and enter the world behind the door. If these children are placed elsewhere, they will be killed by her. Only here can they be safe."
"Get through it, just get through this night, and when she comes out of the door, she will fall asleep again."
The old man didn't know what was in the world behind the door. She only knew that the female ghost would visit the world behind the door every year at this time.
"Then why don't you escape? All leave the village." Chen Ge said.
"Anyone who drinks well water cannot escape and will be entangled with her for life. This is why I only save newborn babies."
"A lifelong entanglement? But I heard that some people from your village escaped more than ten years ago, and nothing happened to them." Chen Ge was talking about Jiang Ling's father and the others.
"It was an accident. One day more than ten years ago, after she entered the door, she did not come back that night."
"The people in the village spent a month in fear and found that she still hadn't come back. Some people thought she might have died on the other side of the door."
"At that time, there were two voices in the village. One was to stay in the mountain village with peace of mind, and the other was to take the opportunity to escape."
"Later, some people with obvious physical deformities escaped secretly. On the third day after they escaped, she came back."
"Among those who escaped were my descendants. I begged her to let those people go. It took two favors to keep them safe for twenty years."
The old man's cough became more and more severe. Chen Ge did not dare to ask any more questions. He already knew enough from the old man.
"Grandma, you have a good rest and I won't disturb you. I will take one of those children away. This is an agreement between me and someone in your village."
Chen Ge turned around and prepared to go to the bedside to look for A Qing's child. Before he had taken a few steps, the old man's voice came from behind him: "Actually, I asked you to come over for another thing."
"Is it related to the female ghost who jumped into the well?" Chen Ge had already found the baby with copper coins hanging around his neck. It looked very cute.
The old man shook his head and stared at Chen Ge's face: "Have you noticed that your body temperature is slowly getting lower?"