Chapter 0017: Using Snakes to Press the Coffin
Grandma seemed to remember something. I wanted to hold her back, but she ran away quickly.
I got out of bed and wanted to chase after him, but I felt dizzy as soon as I moved. Fortunately, I held onto the door and did not fall.
It may be because I have been lying down for too long and I stood up too quickly.
"The snake lady is out of the coffin... Huilong Village's revenge is coming!" Qin Mipo picked up the trash can, tore off a piece of clothing, threw it in, and started a fire in the hospital corridor.
As the black smoke rose, the dead silk snakes seemed to want to crawl out.
Mo Xiu snorted coldly, and then the silk snakes lay in the fire and were slowly burned into charcoal.
The black smoke attracted the nurse and choked Qin Mipo so much that she almost died from coughing.
The nurse brought some water to put out the burning trash can, then told us not to burn anything and went back to work.
The hospital in the small town has few staff, and the patients are numerous and diverse, so they are also very busy.
“ What is a snake woman?” I closed the door and looked at Qin Mipo: “Why is grandma so anxious?”
"I don't know either. Ask Mr. Snake?" Qin Mipo took out another needle and started sewing that thing seriously. It looked like a pillowcase or something, but it was very plain.
I could only look down at the black snake jade bracelet on my wrist. Mo Xiu and Liu Longting both seemed to be related to the snake coffin.
Mo Xiu came out directly this time, sat beside the bed, looked at me and said, "The snake lady is probably a kind of coffin-guarding spirit, just like the snakes released by the snake coffin. I don't know what a snake coffin is either. Liu Longting is actually just a coffin-guarding snake used by the Long family to bury their daughter."
"The one who actually led the snake coffin was not Liu Longting, but the girl from the Long family." Mo Xiu said here.
He looked at me with some worry: "Since the snake coffin refused Long Xia to enter the coffin and turned her into a snake woman, the snake coffin will still chase you, not to mention Liu Longting, you just need to be careful and don't worry about those people in Huilong Village."
"Since the daughter of the Long family is leading the snake coffin, why let the snake Liu Longting go in?" I feel that this matter is a bit beyond imagination. It is obviously different from what my uncle said?
"If there are snakes around the coffin, the descendants will be prosperous. If there are snakes in every generation, the descendants will be prosperous for generations." Qin Mipo sneered and turned to look at me: "Don't you find something wrong with your village?"
"What's wrong?" I was a little confused for a moment.
"Most of the people in Huilong Village are developing outside. Each of them is either powerful or wealthy. But every household, if there are no elderly people left behind, will let the older generation come back to guard the village." Qin Mipo looked at me.
He said in a deep voice: "This is called using a person to gain power. You are borrowing the power of the Snake Coffin, and what you have to pay back is to send a girl from the Long family to the Snake Coffin every eighteen years."
I was sweating profusely as I listened to this. I looked at Qin Mipo and asked, "What will happen if we don't bury the daughter of the Long family?"
"How should I know?" Qin Mipo blinked and looked at Mo Xiu with ridicule: "Snake Lord, tell me?"
"If my guess is correct, the snake coffin is already taking revenge. Your cousin has cancer, and those of your relatives who are developing their careers outside are probably doing something wrong." Qin Mipo seemed very sure.
He sneered, "People never get up early without benefits. Once things go wrong, they will look for problems in their ancestors' graves or their fortunes, and never think about whether they are doing the right thing. How can they have good luck if they are so conscienceless?"
"What will happen if the snake lady comes out of the coffin?" I thought of my grandmother who had returned to the village, and I still felt worried.
Qin Mipo is not from Huilong Village, so she doesn’t know what Snake Po will do.
I turned to look at Mo Xiu, and he also shook his head.
Thinking of Long Xia’s weird look and the anger my dad got on the night he left, I can tell that the villagers must have put a lot of pressure on my dad.
I thought about it and still felt worried, so I called my grandma.
"Long Ling, your seventh cousin is buying things needed for the funeral. I'll take his car back. You stay in the hospital. If you're hungry, ask Grandma Qin Mi to order takeout for you." Grandma said .
I don’t even know who my seventh cousin is, but how come I ran into him just after leaving the hospital?
But he hurriedly said to his grandmother: "I am in so much pain, please come back soon."
Grandma wanted to say something, but seemed to make a "hmm" sound.
Then a deep voice came: "Long Ling, I am your seventh cousin."
"You don't remember, right? It was the one who opened a travel agency that your dad introduced to you during the Chinese New Year. Your dad also said that after you finish the college entrance examination, you should find me to sign up for a group tour and travel with your whole family." The man's voice was very cheerful.
But his voice was heavy: "There is a funeral in the village today. Your parents are not here. You should come back to show your filial piety."
I held the phone tightly: "Where's my grandma?"
"Oh, Second Aunt, nothing will happen . After all, your cousin only asked a few aunts from the same village to chat with her that night. This time I just used some medicine to make her unconscious." Seventh Uncle's voice was cold.
He said in a deep voice, "But there was a snake plague in the village this time, and several people died. Your grandmother was so old, she might have fallen into the water, or been bitten by a snake, or she couldn't stand the stimulation and committed suicide. We don't know what happened to her."
I listened with anger rising in my heart: "Long Xia is back, you should have seen it. She has turned into a snake woman. My grandmother went back to warn your village that a disaster is about to happen."
The seventh cousin chuckled, "Longxia dropped the snake coffin, how could she come back? What's there to be afraid of a snake lady? We are not afraid of snake coffins. If you don't come back, there will be a funeral today anyway, and there will be several coffins. Who knows which coffin has the most bodies in it?"
After saying that, he hung up the phone.
I heard the beeping sound from the other end and called again, but the phone was turned off.
“Everyone in the entire Huilong Village is taking advantage of the snake coffin. They believe that all their wealth and prosperity in the outside world are due to the snake coffin.” Qin Mipo was still sewing and smoothing the needle through her hair.
Mo Xiu also sneered and said, " You were not buried in the coffin eighteen years ago, but they divided the gold and silver treasures in the coffin, so that's it. Now there must be a lot of people who are not living well, and they must be thinking that it's because you were not buried in the snake coffin."
"It just so happens that you are eighteen years old this year, and it is the second time to bury the snake coffin. Plus, your cousin started it all and caused all these troubles. He must trick you into going back." Mo Xiu's voice gradually turned cold.
I felt a chill in my heart and wanted to call my parents, but they were obviously avoiding me, so there was no way I could get through.
She had no choice but to change her shoes and prepare to go back to the village. Qin Mipo sighed and said, "Just save your grandma, don't think about saving the villagers."
She handed me the sewn cloth bag: "It's for rice."
Only then did I realize that it was a cloth bag that I hung around my neck. It had pockets on both ends and hung just in front of my chest, making it easy to grab rice from it.
Qin Mi Po took out another bag of rice from under the bedside table: "I asked someone to bring it from my home, mixed with incense ash."
I put the rice into a cloth bag, looked at Grandma Qin Mi, wanted to say something, but swallowed it instead.
"Huilong Village doesn't welcome me, and I don't want to save those unscrupulous people." Qin Mi Po thought about it and got out of bed: "But I can ask someone to meet you outside the village."
I filled my cloth bag with rice, looked at her and asked, "Anything else to keep snakes away?"
"No matter how poisonous a snake is, it can't be more poisonous than the human heart, right? With the Snake King here, you don't have to guard against snakes, but people." Qin Mi Po snorted coldly and looked at Mo Xiu: "The Snake King must have experienced this, right?"
Mo Xiu's eyes darkened, and he just looked at me and said, "You will suffer for what you have done. You can only save them once, not a second time. It is also impossible for Huilong Village to prosper forever!"
Mo Xiu’s meaning was very clear, and he would not help anymore.
I looked at him and thought of what Liu Longting had mentioned about Mo Xiu's death.
And the fleeting scene when Mo Xiu pulled me back to save the villagers.
Perhaps Mo Xiu’s death last time was related to the rescue of the people in Long Village.
I filled both ends of my backpack with rice, left the hospital, and prepared to take a taxi back.
As soon as I walked out of the hospital gate, a black car stopped next to me. The driver was a familiar face. He had been to my house to bury a dead pig and had also been to Qin Mi's mother-in-law's house.
It was this person who stood by the grave and asked me to go back and look after my uncle.
He opened the car door and looked at me sullenly, “Long Ling, get in the car.”
I didn't expect that the villagers had thought of everything and even sent a car to wait for me here. Even if my grandma didn't want to go back to the village, they would find a way to kidnap her.
After getting in the car, the man drove: "Old Seventh asked someone to wait for you at the hospital gate, so I came."
I no longer have any good feelings towards the people of Huilong Village and just said "hmm".
The man was driving the car and said with a sigh: "When you returned to the village this time, they..."
"They will bury me again." I already knew this, so there was nothing more to say.
The villagers will not remember that I originally ran away that night, but went back to save them because I heard their screams.
All they thought was that I should have been buried in a snake coffin in exchange for their prosperity and wealth, which would last for generations!
The driver looked at me, a flash of shame on his face, but he just drove in silence. After all, he was also from Huilong Village...
I was thinking about how to escape and how to calm down everyone in the village if I found my grandma.
Because it was a funeral, Niu Er was helping out inside and didn't wait at the entrance of the village, so he drove straight in.
When the car arrived at the village road, we saw white banners hanging all along the way, and a coffin was parked every few steps.
But what was pressing down the coffin was not a rooster, but a bunch of dead snakes, hanging on the coffin like a colorful coffin blanket.
