The first volume of the funeral Chapter 19: Brothers, Father and Son
“But that old man looks like he wants to eat us—literally—eat us!” Wei Dong was terrified. “I think you might not be able to get anything out of him, and you might end up being his lunch—I think our lunch might be ruined, because that old man has changed. I think he might have forgotten how to cook human food…”
Mu Yiran ignored his subsequent nagging: "Even if he has mutated to the point where he can no longer answer questions, we still need to go into his inner room to look for clues."
Wei Dong shuddered: "You are basically pulling teeth out of a tiger's mouth. It's too dangerous. Ke'er, please try to persuade him."
Ke Xun looked at Mu Yiran: "Are you really going?"
Mu Yiran did not answer, but just looked at him expressionlessly.
Ke Xun: "I'll accompany you."
Wei Dong: “…”
Ma Zhenhua trembled and said, "Can I not go with you? I can continue to look for the seal somewhere else..."
Zhang Maolin quickly followed suit: "I'll also look for a seal first, so we can both stay the same."
Without waiting for the rest of the people to express their opinions, Mu Yiran said calmly: "If you are not afraid, you can go to the Li's funeral hall and look carefully. We have already searched other places in the village. The only possible places left are the funeral hall and the old man's house. We will meet here again in an hour."
Ke Xun also pulled Wei Dong over and whispered to him, "Be careful. If you still don't see me by night, I'll probably be dead. You have the key to my house. If you can leave this painting and go to my house, my real estate certificate, all the certificates and information for opening a gym, my ID card, and my bank card are all in a flowerpot with a fake cactus planted on the balcony. All the passwords are the last six digits of my ID card. You can donate my savings for me, rent out the house, and use the rent to buy new equipment for the gym. The income from the gym will be distributed to my partners, and the 1T of movies in my computer will be yours."
"Get lost! The 1 T you saved is just calcium tablets, I don't need it!" Wei Dong cursed, and then he grabbed Ke Xun's arm worriedly, "Are you really going? Just for him? You don't need to, right? There are many better women out there, why do you have to sacrifice your life for this one? You've only known him for a few days, and how could it be such a coincidence that he's gay like you? For a straight man, aren't you losing out?"
"What are you thinking about? For him and for ourselves, our physical education department's teaching motto is: there is no reward without hard work. We can't always let others work hard while we wait for results." Ke Xun said, "Besides, you forgot that my intuition has always accurate."
"So what?" Wei Dong was confused.
Ke Xun smiled, turned around and walked towards Mu Yiran.
The two groups acted separately.
Mu Yiran and Ke Xun arrived outside the old man's yard. Mu Yiran stopped and looked at Ke Xun: "Do you really want to go in with me?"
"Not only do I want to go in with you, I also want to come out with you." Ke Xun said.
"I'm afraid not." Mu Yiran said, "If you don't plan to change your mind, then follow my instructions."
Ke Xun: "Okay, you go ahead."
Mu Yiran looked at him with scrutiny: "Wait, you go through the courtyard gate first, and walk carefully to the door of the house. If the old man chases you out, you try to lead him away. I will take the opportunity to go into the house and search his inner room. During this time, I hope you can hold him back for as long as possible. Can you do it?"
"I have a question," Ke Xun said, "This old man cannot be judged by ordinary people's standards. What if he grows faster than me? What should I do?"
"Since you and Weidong were able to escape from his house just now, you will definitely be able to escape this time as well." Mu Yiran said, "In fact, you even escaped too fast just now and got out of his control, so you were able to get rid of him completely. So this time you have to be careful not to let him catch up, but also don't leave him too far behind. Always maintain a safe chasing distance, lead him out of this yard, and try to keep him outside as long as possible. If I can finish my work ahead of time, I will come to you and then get rid of him. How is it, any other questions?"
"Yes," Ke Xun said, "What's your phone number?"
Mu Yiran said coldly: "If there is no problem, go in."
Ke Xun stretched his legs and stretched his muscles, then signaled to Mu Yiran, "You hide over there by the door, I'll lead the old man out over here."
Mu Yiran followed his instructions and stood on the other side of the door, then saw Ke Xun take a step with his long legs and step into the courtyard.
Mu Yiran looked at his back as he walked towards the door almost without hesitation. His usual casual and lazy posture disappeared without a trace. His straight back and his gait full of elasticity and strength made him look like a real... sharp character from the sports department at this moment.
The sharp man Ke Xun walked to the door of the house.
The door was closed and I couldn't see what was going on inside.
Ke Xun didn't want to give himself time to imagine the situation, so he reached out and pushed the door open.
With a creaking sound, the gray light flooded into the dim main room. The old man stood in the middle of the room like a zombie, motionless and dull.
The moment he saw Ke Xun, his face, which was as gray and hard as a dead body, suddenly opened up. His dark gums and oral cavity were like a bottomless black hole, opening wider and wider until it exceeded the limit of a human mouth. Then he pounced towards Ke Xun with his huge mouth wide open.
Ke Xun turned and ran, listening to the sound of the wind and the old man's footsteps behind him to judge the distance between the two.
This is Ke Xun's specialty. When he was in school, he participated in large and small competitions. He could listen to the sounds and determine the positions of his opponents, which had a crucial impact on the adjustment of game tactics.
Ke Xun controlled the distance between himself and the old man, always keeping it at about five steps, and ran out of the courtyard one after the other.
Mu Yiran waited until Ke Xun took the old man out of his sight before he quickly entered the courtyard and headed straight for the inner room where the old man lived.
Ke Xun didn't dare to go towards the locust tree, for fear of meeting the other people, so he took the old man and walked back and forth between the villages.
After thinking about it, I realized that only he could do this job. If someone else were to do it, they wouldn't have his speed or endurance.
His current speed did not reach his fastest level, but by ordinary people's standards, it was already quite fast. If Wei Dong had not been dragged by him at that time, he would have been caught by the old man long ago, not to mention that he now needs to keep running at this speed, and in order to leave enough time for Mu Yiran, he may have to continue running for dozens of minutes.
There was one thing that Ke Xun didn’t quite understand. If this old man was not a real person, but that kind of “thing”, its “competitive level” should not be worse than that of a human.
Mu Yiran said that if one did not follow the rules in the painting, one would suffer an irresistible backlash, and what happened in the past two nights also proved that although there were ways to avoid the "things" that had appeared before, it was actually because of coincidence or luck. If they really encountered them head-on, they would have no hope of survival at all.
In other words, the power in this painting, no matter how regular it is, cannot be confronted head-on.
But this old man is not.
The old man can't outrun him.
Isn't that strange?
Thinking of this, Ke Xun couldn't help but turn his head to take a look.
I almost tripped when I saw this.
He no longer knew what was chasing him. A huge black hole-like mouth covered his entire head. Two skinny hands stretched forward with long fingers, which together with the skinny arms looked like the three twisted and gnarled locust trees.
The fatal part was the old man's abdomen.
Because he was running so fast, the wind blew his clothes backwards and stuck them tightly to his body, and the bulge on his abdomen was clearly outlined.
That's a face.
The facial features are complete and the expression is lively.
This face is crying.
Its mouth was wide open, its lungs were torn and it was in unbearable pain. It kept swinging and struggling as the old man ran.
Ke Xun felt itchy all over and couldn't help scratching his belly.
Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind: Itchy...itchy all over...last night's experience...
After running for who knows how long, when he finally saw Mu Yiran appear in front of him, Ke Xun shouted, "Boss, this guy is a freak!"
Mu Yiran made a gesture and disappeared around the bend. Ke Xun sped up and got rid of the old man a few minutes later.
Mu Yiran was waiting on the road that led to the locust tree. He saw Ke Xun striding towards him. He had been running at such a fast speed for such a long time, but he was only slightly out of breath. He even looked as energetic as if he had just stretched his muscles.
With such physical strength, even Mu Yiran felt inferior to him.
"This old man is also a deformed child," Ke Xun walked forward, "He has an extra face on his stomach. I suspect he has an extra brain in his stomach. Even if he can't think, he can control the expression of the face on his stomach. Are there any clues in his room?"
Mu Yiran said: "Yes. Cypress wood."
"Did he make Li Guaiguai's coffin?" Ke Xun was surprised. "We are both deformed children, why are we so anxious to hurt each other?"
"His name is Li Mazi," Mu glanced at him with a smile, "He is Li Guaiguai's father and also his...older brother."
Ke Xun was stunned: "I seem to know something extraordinary."
Mu Yiran had a blank expression on his face: "Because this village is closed and backward, there are many ignorant and immoral customs left over. Since many people marry close relatives, the medical level is low, the survival rate of offspring is not high, and there are more men than women. In order to reproduce, the villagers have gradually developed a system of sharing wives under the consensus of the villagers."
"…Being isolated and backward is too terrible." Ke Xun didn't know what to say.
"In fact, the probability of having a baby with defects in a close relative marriage is only 4%," Mu Yiran continued, "Many of these deformed children die prematurely before reaching adulthood, and some die in infancy. I think that the number of people who grow up like Li Mazi and Li Guaiguai is a minority in this village."
"I don't know whether this is lucky or unfortunate." Ke Xun said.
"Of course he is not lucky." Mu looked at him with a smile, "Can you imagine what kind of life a person like him, who is so deformed that he is almost like a demon, has led in the village since he was a child?"
