Chapter 0006: Being Driven Out of the Village
When Aunt Qin saw Mo Xiu, she seemed to be both afraid and respectful. She knelt on the ground, trembling all over, but she didn't dare to move.
Mo Xiu's voice was heavy: "I have protected the Qin family for many years, and you are just disregarding our friendship?"
"I dare not! I dare not!" Aunt Qin's voice trembled.
"Do your duty well." Mo Xiu shouted again, then he turned into a black snake and wrapped himself around my wrist again.
Aunt Qin stood up only after Mo Xiu disappeared. Her blue cloth coat seemed to be soaked through. She couldn't even stand steadily while holding on to the door. She just looked at me with gloomy eyes.
Her eyes seemed to see through people, staring at me straight, making me feel uneasy.
Grandma pulled me and motioned me to go forward.
"No need, go back and prepare, and go find the snake coffin tomorrow." Aunt Qin seemed to faint for a moment, holding onto the door and saying, "Long Ling, be careful on your way back, and don't let go of the big white goose."
The big white goose had its feet pierced and was put down now.
I now realized the seriousness of the situation and quickly picked him up .
"You should treat Niu Er, the village guard, well. It's best if he stays at your house tonight to guard the gate. Otherwise, I'm afraid you won't make it through the night." Aunt Qin stared at the black snake jade bracelet on my hand and said coldly, "Even if you have the protection of the Snake King, you can't beat that corpse snake."
Her voice was so faint that it made my heart shiver.
When my grandmother heard that she agreed to help find the snake coffin, she hurriedly pulled me back.
On the way, she told me, "This Qin Mi Po started to ask for fortune after her aunt died, but she has a bad temper and always drives people away. So she has a bad reputation. Not many people know how to ask for fortune now, and now even fewer people know her."
When I think about how she pulled that old woman out the door, I really admire her.
There are a lot of motorcycle taxis in the village now, so my grandma and I took another motorcycle taxi home.
On the way, my grandmother told me that every village has a village guardian, who is a person who committed sins in the previous life. Before he died, he realized that he wanted to let one of his three souls and two of his seven spirits go to guard an area in the next life to repay the sins of his previous life.
This kind of person can ward off disasters for the village, but because his three souls and seven spirits are incomplete, he looks crazy, but he is actually kind-hearted.
The guardian of our village is Niu Er.
Grandma remembered Aunt Qin's words, so she stopped the motorcycle taxi at the entrance of the village. She coaxed Niu Er to come to my house for dinner with kind words, and even said that she wanted him to live in my house.
"No, there are snakes in your house." Niu Er sat under the stone tablet that I knocked down, shook his head and muttered, "There are so many snakes in your house, I won't go."
"There is no snake." Grandma explained hurriedly.
I looked at Niu Er, thought about the little snakes in the eggs, and Chen's family, and said to my grandmother, "Forget it."
"Stop making trouble." But grandma still wanted to pull Niu Er.
I hurriedly pulled grandma back and said, "Forget it. If there's anything, we can go by ourselves. Why drag him along?"
Niu Erren is a good guy. He helps out whenever he can at weddings and funerals in the village. The villagers always bully him and make him do all the dirty and tiring work, but when it's time to eat, they just give him some leftovers and he doesn't complain.
Aunt Qin said that she asked Niu Er to guard the gate for us at night. I learned about what happened in Chen Quan's family and found out that she was actually asking Niu Er to ward off disaster and die.
"Long Ling, don't pull me." Grandma still tried to pull Niu Er, coaxing him, "I'll kill a chicken for you, a big fat rooster, the whole one is for you. I'll also give you wine, beer, white wine, whatever you want."
"Grandma." I saw that grandma was lying to the child, so I shouted in a deep voice, "Can we not do this?"
I pushed Niu Er away and said, "There are snakes in my house and on my body. Don't come to my house, understand? Get out!"
Niu Er looked at me, grinned, stretched out his dirty hand, and pointed at my grandmother: "Your granddaughter is really interesting, interesting."
There were tears in my grandmother's cloudy eyes as she stared at me. She shook her hand suddenly and walked towards home.
Niu Er was still laughing, looking at me and said, "Interesting, interesting."
I looked at him, took out all the cash from my schoolbag, stuffed it into his hands, and said to him fiercely: "If you dare to come to my house, I will beat you, you know!"
Niu Er took the money and ran towards the store at the entrance of the village with a big laugh.
I held the big white goose and hurried to catch up with my grandma.
But she looked at me with a red nose and watery eyes: "Who am I doing this for? I have a black heart, but who am I doing this for? You want me to watch you die? I can't bear that!"
"Grandma." I wanted to pull her, but grandma pushed me away and strode towards the house.
I held the big white goose and hurried after him.
Before I got home, my neighbor Aunt Liu came to greet me anxiously: "Grandma Long, I was looking for you. All your chickens and ducks are dead. You should go back and check. It's weird. There are so many snakes in your house. Could it be that your snake wine dragon came back to collect the snakes and left the cages unlocked?"
"The last time I saw so many snakes was when I gave birth to your daughter, Long Ling!" Aunt Liu said anxiously. She saw me and was stunned for a moment. She said awkwardly, "Long Ling, you're back?"
Grandma sniffed, nodded to Aunt Liu, and ran quickly towards home.
"Thank you, Aunt Liu." I hurriedly chased after her.
Just after running two steps, I heard Aunt Liu spit loudly behind me and whispered, "No wonder there are so many snakes. The snake lady is back. Ugh!"
When I turned around, she smiled at me awkwardly.
When I got home, I saw dead chickens scattered around the chicken coop in the yard, and colorful snakes were crawling among the dead chickens.
My grandma was so angry that she was shaking all over. She snatched the big white goose from my arms and threw it into the yard.
"It came to take revenge when I was away." Mo Xiu's voice sounded in my ears.
Then the black snake jade bracelet on her wrist made a hissing sound, and all the snakes ran away immediately.
The big white goose still spread its wings and flapped its wings, chasing the snake.
Grandma trembled as she looked at the chicken coop, then went to the pond at the back to look at the ducks penned in the bamboo fence, as well as the pigpen and the rabbit hutch.
Without exception, all were bitten to death by snakes.
Grandma seemed to be more hunched over. She turned her head to look at me, then silently took a shovel and shoveled the dead chickens and ducks into the backyard.
I quickly took a hoe and dug a hole. I felt very bad watching my grandma shoveling the dead chickens and ducks here one by one.
I wanted to talk to her, but she pursed her lips tightly, obviously angry.
After the dead chickens, ducks and rabbits were buried, there were two dead pigs in the pigsty. My grandmother and I couldn't pull them out, so she called my cousin and asked him to come over to help.
"Grandma." I filled the hole with soil, trying to comfort her.
But she hugged me and burst into tears: "Long Ling, grandma is evil-hearted. She wanted to drag Niu Er to ward off disasters and evil spirits for you. But if grandma can ward off disasters for you, grandma is willing to do so."
"My Long Ling, how come she ended up with you?" Grandma hugged me tightly, tears streaming down her face, and the emotions that had been suppressed for a whole day were finally released.
I hugged my grandma: "It's okay, don't we still have Mo Xiu? He will protect me."
The black snake jade bracelet on her wrist moved when she heard this, and she seemed to hear Mo Xiu's low laughter.
When my cousin came, he was very careful and called several family members. All of them reeked of alcohol and sprinkled sulfur into my house before they even entered.
Grandma led them to the pigpen to drag the pigs, but when they arrived in the backyard and saw me digging a hole, their faces looked unhappy.
My uncle asked a few of his family members to fill the gap and said to me, "Long Ling, come out for a moment."
Grandma was looking at the two pigs with reluctance. These pigs were raised before the New Year pigs were slaughtered. It has been almost half a year now, and each pig weighs about 100 pounds.
He died a miserable death, with his stomach bitten through by a snake.
While grandma was distracted, my cousin took me to the front yard and said, "You have seen what happened in your family. You know that there are so many snakes as soon as you return to the village. Leave quickly before it gets dark. Don't stay in the village."
I looked at my cousin in surprise. He lit a cigarette with a gloomy face and said, "This is not just my opinion. The relatives who came to help all had the same opinion."
"You only know that when you were born, you were bitten by roadside snakes. But you don't know that the village was hit by a snake disaster that year, which killed many chickens and ducks, and even many piglets." My cousin blew out smoke rings and said to me in a deep voice: "Tell your grandmother and I will take you out of the village on my motorcycle, okay."
