Episode 9 Chapter 97: Accidental
Even if we go further, this place is still a wasteland and there are no clues to find. Finally, after walking around, we went back to the road where I was found last time. After walking such a long distance, there was nothing. I was also confused because the feeling last time was very real and it was not an illusion at all.
Shan Ranjin said that I should believe it now. He asked me to recall the details carefully to see if we had missed anything. The direction and the place were definitely correct, but why could my mother find it easily, but we couldn't. Shan Ranjin then guessed that we came here not only to find the house full of paper figures I mentioned, but also to find another place, which seemed to be lost.
I asked where it was, and Dan Ranjin said that he had asked someone to check the water delivery worker I mentioned and the brand of water I drank yesterday. They soon found out that the address of the water was in this area, and the detailed address was the wasteland where we just stood. However, there was not even a ghost there, so how could there be a mineral water factory?
I was a little surprised. The water was also produced here. I have been drinking this water for nearly three years. I didn't expect that it came from a place where I couldn't even find the factory address. The employee who delivered the water turned out to be a dead person embedded in my house. What's more coincidental is that it was the same place where I was brought to in a daze. What is the connection between these two things? Now I no longer believe in coincidences.
Originally I thought this matter was somewhat independent yesterday, but I didn't expect it to be linked together immediately. And it's no wonder that something is not normal around me. How can I be normal if I drink this kind of water that I don't know where it comes from all day?
We couldn't find anything, so we had to go back the same way. However, the road looked a little different after we got off the wasteland. A small path appeared in front of us. It looked familiar to me. Shan Lanjin said that it wasn't there when we just came here. So we followed the path, and suddenly there was the small woods in front of us that I saw last time. I said this is the place, and I remembered it. Shan Lanjin looked behind him, and there was a white fog behind him, and he couldn't see anything. He said that we had come in.
After passing through the grove, I really arrived at the house I mentioned last time. To be precise, it was a row of houses. It didn't look like a village, with only a few scattered families next to each other. It felt lonely and deserted. I pointed to the house in front of me and said, this is it.
The door of the house was half open, and it looked the same as when I left last time. When we went in, we pushed the door open a little more and came to the yard. I didn't pay attention last time, but this time I saw a lot of bamboos piled in the yard, which were probably used to make paper figurines' skeletons. We walked through the yard and into the house, and it was the same as what I saw last time, a room full of paper figurines. But this time, maybe it was daytime and because I was with Shan Lanjin, I didn't feel scared as last time.
Shan Lanjin saw the room full of paper people, sighed and said that it was not an illusion, and then he went in alone. When he walked in, I suddenly heard the gate of the yard creak, as if it was closed a little. I looked over and there was no movement at all, as if it was blown by the wind.
The feeling of dead silence came over me immediately, and it was accompanied by an eerie atmosphere, which made me feel like there was someone in the yard. So I felt a little creepy standing outside alone, so I followed Shan Lanjin inside.
The paper figures inside can actually be seen to have been made for some years. It was night and the lights were dim that day so I couldn't see them clearly. Plus, I was in a hurry and just wanted to leave so I didn't look closely. Today I found that the originally pale faces have started to turn yellow. It's because the white paper has been left for a long time. Some of them have even rotted, just like the skin of a dead person.
The ground was also full of cut waste paper. Shan Lanjin just watched without saying a word. During this time, I seemed to hear a "guchu guchu" sound inside, as if something was moving, but when I looked in the direction of the sound, there was no sound again. This happened several times. I asked Shan Lanjin what the sound was, but Shan Lanjin made a gesture to me to keep quiet, indicating that I should not speak any sound.
Although I didn't understand what Shan Lanjin meant when he asked me to be silent, I still shut my mouth and didn't say anything. The sound lasted for a while and then disappeared. I suspected that it was a mouse, but I didn't investigate further. It was only until we came out that Shan Lanjin told me that we should go outside and talk.
I saw that Shan Lanjin's steps were a little hurried, and I was a little confused, so I turned around to look behind me. But when I turned around, I was shocked to see that the paper people that had just been piled up in the room were actually lying on the window and looking at us, and seemed to be laughing. I shuddered uncontrollably, so I quickly turned around and almost ran outside.
After coming out, I was still a little frightened. I asked Shan Lanjin what was going on and why he was so mysterious in there. Shan Lanjin then said, "Did you notice just now? There was a paper man moving inside and the sound was made by it. I really didn't notice this." Shan Lanjin said that the paper man in my house must be related to this place, but the paper man itself would not move, so I was only afraid of the thing behind it.
Then he asked me if I had seen anything in there. I said they were all paper figures, what else could I see? Shan Lanjin said that was because he had not seen anything. I heard him say that and asked him if he had seen anything. Shan Lanjin nodded and said that among the paper figures, he saw a pair of feet standing in them, but there was no body, only a pair of feet, wearing the same kind of black cloth shoes with white soles that I found in my house.
Hearing Shan Lanjin say this, I felt more and more goosebumps all over my body, and thought that since he could see, he could act as a psychic consultant, so why bother looking for someone else at all the trouble? But I didn't say this out loud. After Shan Lanjin said this, he looked at the house in front and said, let's go take a look in the front.
The structure of the house in front is roughly the same as here, but when I got to the front, I found that these rooms were connected together. After entering, even the yard looked the same, except that the wall here was knocked through, and it looked wider, extending far to the front. There were pools built in the yard, and there was a water channel leading out of the house. I took a look at this and asked Shan Ranjin if this was the water plant he mentioned.
Shan Rankin also confirmed it about 80% to 90%. He said it seemed to be the case.
The water came out from inside the house, and the water was still flowing, just less. I guess it was because it had been abandoned. After entering, I found that it was not a house, but just an empty frame. There was a well built inside, like the one used to draw water in the old days. It was not a round well that required a bucket. The water just flowed out along the passage inside.
Shan Lanjin pulled me and asked me to look above my head. I was shocked when I saw it, because there was a dark coffin hanging above the house. I said what a lie it was, I had never seen a well dug in a house, let alone a coffin hanging above a well.
Shan Lanjin said that the place we were in was probably not a well, but an ancestral hall. I had only heard of ancestral halls, but I didn't know what they were used for. Shan Lanjin said that ancestral halls were simply places for the dead to be placed for worship, so it was not surprising to see a coffin hanging inside. What should be surprising was why this well was built inside the ancestral hall.
I was completely confused and had no idea what was going on. Shan Lanjin said that since it was built in the ancestral hall, it only had two functions: either to place the dead or to be used for sacrifices. From the looks of the water being diverted away, it should have been used for drinking, so the possibility of it being used for sacrifices was greater.
As we were talking, we walked to the well. The water in the well had not dried up, but the water level was just a little higher than the drainage channel, so a small stream of water flowed out freely. But when I looked down, I saw a face floating in the water. I carefully identified that this was not a reflection, but a face in the water itself.
