The first volume of the funeral Chapter 18: The Village of the Deadly Curse
Li Jinghao.
"Could it be just a coincidence? After all, Li is a big surname," said Wei Dong.
Ke Xun stood up and said, "Go ask, maybe the old man can provide something."
The two ran towards the old man's yard.
After entering the house and knocking on the inner door, the old man raised his cloudy dead eyes and looked at the two of them: "What's the matter?"
"Let me ask you, who was the dead person?" Ke Xun went straight to the point.
"How could you not know? Who are you?" The old man's tone suddenly became alert, and his two stone-like eyes suddenly moved, slowly revealing a strange and ferocious look.
Ke Xun was startled, and quickly pointed to the linen strip with the curse word on it tied around his waist and showed it to the old man: "I'm here to help. You see, I never went to school since I was a child, and because my brain is not very good, I can't remember what anyone said to me. After helping for two days, I suddenly forgot who died. I thought it was a bit disrespectful to the deceased, so I hurried over to ask you."
The old man stared at Ke Xun with his lifeless eyes for a long time, until Ke Xun was frightened, and finally spoke: "The one who died is Guaiguai from Li Mazi's family. Unfortunately, there is no one left at home. We villagers have to help out."
Deformed children are called "guaiguai". People in rural areas like to give them derogatory names so that they can be raised more easily.
Ke Xun asked again: "How did Guai Guai die?"
The old man gave him a grim look and said, "It's not easy for you to live to this age with that appearance."
Wei Dong recalled the topic he had just discussed with Ke Xun and asked hurriedly, "What is the relationship between his father and mother?"
Old man: "Husband and wife."
Wei Dong: “…”
Ke Xun rolled his eyes and asked, "Is there anyone in the village who has a grudge against Li Mazi's family?"
I remembered the curse of the three locust trees and the cypress coffin that Mu Yiran mentioned.
The old man stared at him gloomily: "We are all from the same village , what hatred can there be?"
"Who made that weird coffin?" Ke Xun got goose bumps all over his body when the old man stared at him.
The old man looked strange: "His parents were afraid that no one would take care of Guaiguai after they died, so they asked someone to prepare Guaiguai before they died."
This is strange, Ke Xun is puzzled, unless Guaiguai's parents don't know that a coffin made of pure cypress wood will be struck by lightning, and they accidentally gave it to Guaiguai.
"Do you know when the three locust trees next to his house were planted?" Ke Xun asked.
The old man's expression became even weirder. The color of his face faded at a speed visible to the naked eye. His pair of turbid eyeballs were filled with ferocity and brutality. His two eyeballs bulged outwards as hard as they could. His shriveled mouth suddenly tore open, revealing his toothless black-red gums and his smelly mouth. He opened his mouth wide and said stiffly, "What locust tree? There is no locust tree. Who are you? How dare you break into Lijia Village? Lijia Village has not allowed outsiders to enter for thousands of years. You, die, die, die--"
As he spoke, his mouth opened wider and wider, like a bottomless black hole, and suddenly pounced towards Ke Xun and Wei Dong!
"Run!" Ke Xun yelled, dragging Wei Dong, who was stunned on the spot, and ran out the door.
The two of them rushed out of the yard without looking back. Wei Dong had never . Under Ke Xun's pulling, he felt that his legs were no longer legs. Six out of ten feet could not touch the ground, and half of his body was swaying in the air.
Seeing that his legs could no longer move, he fell to the ground like a hungry dog.
When he raised his face with a mouthful of dirt, he saw a few more pairs of feet in his sight. Then he saw Ke Xun's feet striding in front of the leading pair of feet. Based on the distance between the toes, Wei Dong calculated that Ke Xun could almost bite Mu Yiran's face with a pursed lip.
"Boss, someone wants to eat us." Ke Xun looked like he was begging for comfort and a hug.
The boss gave him a cold look and let him experience it himself.
"What's going on?" asked the doctor.
Ke Xun looked back and saw that the old man had not caught up with him, so he briefly told them what had just happened and then asked them, "Did you find any clues?"
"We..." The doctor's expression was a little complicated, "We have made a shocking discovery."
After Mu Yiran and his friends separated from Ke Xun, they first went to the village to find the village chief's home.
The village chief is the head of the village. Normally, the place where he lives should be the largest and best house in the village, so everyone quickly found their target.
However, there was no one in the village chief's house, and dust was everywhere, as if no one had lived there for a long time.
Mu Yiran found a family tree and village history in the room of the village chief's house that served as a small ancestral hall.
As expected, all the villagers in this village are from the same clan. Their ancestors once served as royal priests during the Warring States Period.
Legend has it that the clan priest can communicate with ghosts and gods, and his magical skills and witchcraft are only passed down to the direct descendants and not to outsiders.
Therefore, the ancestors of the Li family formulated clan rules, requiring their descendants to live here forever, not to leave, not to branch out, not to intermarry with people from other families, and not to have secret dealings with the outside world.
Looking through the entire family tree, whether husband or daughter-in-law, all have the surname Li.
There is no one with a different surname in the entire village.
"...Their ancestors must have gone crazy," Wei Dong wiped his mouth in surprise, "Are they encouraging inbreeding?!"
"Witchcraft is a twisted, evil, and irrational thing." Mu Yiran said coldly, "We don't need to worry about whether their clan rules are in line with legal principles and ethics. We just need to know that this village is like a lost land. It has been closed and cut off from the outside world."
Ke Xun interjected: "Then here comes the problem."
Mu looked at everyone with joy: "Combined with what happened to Ke Xun and the others just now, since this village is cut off from the outside world and resists outsiders from entering, then who painted this painting? How did this painting spread out?"
Everyone suddenly understood something, and their eyes all flashed.
Ke Xun raised his hand: "Boss, is Li Jinghao's name on the family tree?"
Mu looked at him with a smile: "No."
Ke Xun scratched his head: "That's a coincidence?"
Mu Yiran's eyes moved slightly: "Not necessarily. Many painters have former names, or they give themselves a presentable name after becoming famous."
Wei Dong interrupted: "This is difficult to deal with. Who knows who will give themselves another name later."
"Since we know that the artist is Li Jinghao," Mu Yiran said, "then the first question is solved. The second question is how did this painting spread out? In other words, how did Li Jinghao enter this village, paint this painting, and then take it out."
"If Li Jinghao is from this village, it's not surprising that he could paint this picture," the doctor said. "But the village has a rule that villagers are not allowed to have contact with the outside world or leave the village. This doesn't explain how this painting got out."
"The last discovery," Mu Yiran said to Ke Xun and Wei Dong, "we searched all the houses in the village and didn't see a single living person."
"What, what does that mean?" Wei Dong shuddered.
"All the houses were covered with dust of varying thickness," the doctor said, "which showed that no one had lived there for a long time. However, we did not find any bodies or coffins in these houses."
"And the most common thing we see in these houses," Mu Yiran said with a meaningful look, "is tablets."
Ke Xun raised an eyebrow: "Does this mean that all these villagers are dead?"
Mu Yiran nodded slightly: "That's my guess. We checked the names against the family tree, and the names on the tablets are all in the family tree."
Ke Xun stroked his chin and pondered: "Could there be an infectious disease like plague in this village? Or a natural disaster? Otherwise, how could so many people die?"
Mu Yiran said calmly: "The thickness of the dust in the houses varies, which means that these people did not die in the same period of time."
The doctor nodded: "They will probably die within a few years or even a dozen years."
Wei Dong twitched his lips: "Could it be that because of inbreeding, the life span is short?"
Mu Yiran raised his eyebrow slightly: "Maybe, these people died because of the curse?"
Everyone was shocked when they heard this.
Ke Xun was the first to react: "So what you mean is that the three locust trees next to Guai Guai's house are not just cursing Guai Guai's family, but... the entire Lijia Village?!"
"I think so." Mu nodded happily.
Wei Dong was shocked: "Who has such a strong hatred, cursing an entire village?"
Ke Xun suddenly asked, "But why did the old man say there was no locust tree? Although he went crazy and bit people after a disagreement, I don't think he said that he was being naughty and didn't tell us."
Mu Yiran lowered his eyes in deep thought, then suddenly walked away. Everyone looked at each other and hurriedly followed him.
Coming to the three old locust trees outside Guaiguai's yard again, Mu looked up at the ghost face on the tree with joy.
Ke Xun also looked and saw that these ghost faces seemed to protrude more outward than in the morning. The whole face and head were almost separated from the tree trunk. Only the back of the head was still slightly connected to the bark. They were like huge tree tumors, hanging on the tree, looking extremely disgusting.
"Have you noticed," Ke Xun nudged Mu Yiran with his elbow, "these ghost faces seem to have genders. Look at this face, does it look like an old lady? And that one, it has a beard, the one on top looks like a little boy of seven or eight years old. Look over there, there's a baby's face underneath an old lady's face. There are both men and women, young and old."
"Yeah." Mu Yiran was not surprised, and obviously he had already discovered it.
"I suddenly had an idea," Ke Xun said as he scanned the faces, "Do you think these faces are..."
"The faces of all the dead villagers." Mu Yiran continued calmly.
Ke Xun pointed to a ghost face at the root of the tree: "...Liu Yufei."
Mu Yiran looked in the direction of his finger and saw that this ghost face looked like it had just grown and was gray in color, unlike the other ghost faces which had darkened to black and gray.
The facial features of this ghost face are very similar to Liu Yufei, and there is even a small braid-shaped bark on the back of the head.
Its facial features were extremely distorted, retaining the painful expression it had when Liu Yufei died tragically, but this pain was also filled with endless resentment. In its dark eye sockets, there seemed to be two invisible eyes, staring at Mu Yiran and Ke Xun with extreme resentment and viciousness.
Mu Yiran looked at the two eye sockets for a moment, unmoved. Instead, he walked around the tree a few steps and found the faces of the five people who died before Liu Yufei one after another.
"It seems that these three trees were not planted," said Mu Yiran. "They are just images in the painting, not real trees."
"No wonder the old man said there were no trees," Ke Xun said, "Speaking of the old man, why hasn't he been cursed to death yet? Is he the only one left in the whole village?"
"Go and have a look."
Mu Yiran was about to leave when Ke Xun grabbed his arm and said, "That old man has gone berserk. If you go over there now, you're looking for death."
Zhang Maolin next to him quickly agreed: "Yes, yes, it's better to find a seal before it gets dark!"
Mu Yiran glanced in the direction where the old man lived and said lightly: "I have a guess about the old man's identity."
