When I woke up, it was noon the next day, and I was lying on a bamboo bed, covered with a thick bedding, exuding a faint scent of soap, which in my childhood memories belonged to my grandmother.

Lin Qiao'er fell asleep on the edge of the bed, although I didn't know what happened last night after I lost consciousness, but seeing that she was also safe and sound, my heart completely relaxed, and I began to look at the place I was in.

This is an old-fashioned bamboo house, and everything that can be seen by the eyes in the whole house is made of bamboo, and through the gaps in the floor paved with countless raw bamboos, it is faintly visible that there is still a lot of space under the floor. This is a typical dry-stilt building, with the lower floor elevated for livestock and the upper floor for people.

This style of building is extremely popular among ethnic minority villages, but few Han people will build this kind of bamboo building, from this point speculation, we should have been rescued by people from nearby ethnic minority villages last night, and I was secretly glad at the same time, I recalled it carefully, and found that I couldn't think of anything, so I didn't bother to toss again.

Lin Qiao'er slept deeply, but I could still see a little uneasiness and worry in her frowning brows. I didn't wake her up, and covered her with the bedside with my other hand, and at this moment, my pupils suddenly shrank, and I couldn't help but gasp.

I saw that where my right wrist was just revealing my clothes, a black line like a vine from a coiled tree was entrenched hideously, extending all the way to the top of my arm. I rubbed my hand on the edge of the bed, rubbed my clothes up a little, and I could still see the black line, like green tendons growing in flesh and blood, the higher I went, the more branch-like branches branched out, and the more branch-like branches spread to the elbows, and I could even clearly see more branches growing at the end of the black line, which had not yet fully unfolded, like countless poisonous snakes that had been hungry for a long time, constantly wriggling.

Looking at these hideous lines, I was cold, I recognized this black line, ten years ago when I was a child, I was dyed with this black line, and then it was eliminated with the help of my grandmother and many elders in my hometown, until the time in college, the black line reappeared, but then it was also removed by my grandmother, why did it appear again?

My actions woke up Lin Qiao'er, and when she saw me wake up, she hugged me happily, and shouted Great, you finally woke up, and she was a little excited.

I didn't react before I could recover from the shock of the black lines, but her voice was too loud, and then a swarthy young man walked in with a wrinkled old lady in her arms.

As soon as the old lady entered the room, I felt sick and looked at her, and saw that she was staring at the black lines on my arms with wrinkled eyes. I hurriedly pulled down my sleeves, the old lady glanced at me, didn't speak, then Lin Qiaoer also let go of me, and saluted the two people, although I couldn't understand it, but I also did it, and then she told me, thanks to this grandma last night, if it weren't for her, I would be in danger, and grandma has a few questions to ask me.

Hearing her say this, I hurriedly saluted the two of them again, thanked them several times, and said that if they asked questions, I would know everything.

The old lady was old, but her hearing was not bad, and there was no expression on her face, or because the furrows and wrinkles on her face covered her expression, and she coughed a few times, her lips moved, and then a hoarse voice came: "Who are you?" What are you doing here? ”

This is the question I expected, after all, we are outsiders, and we have to ask the details. I didn't think about it, so I said that the two of us were reporters from other places, and we were originally going to Luogong County to cover the news, but we accidentally got stuck in the mud when we were walking at night last night, and this is what happened later.

As soon as I finished speaking, the swarthy young man who was holding the old lady immediately said: "You lie, I often go to the city of Luogong to buy things, how can I go to Luogong to take this road, you are lying!" ”

This young man has a bit of a temper, looking at him like this, if it weren't for his grandmother on the side, I'm afraid he would have come up and beat me directly. I'm a little dumbfounded, made a mistake? How is this possible, I spent a lot of time planning the route before I set off, and I confirmed it through many channels, how is it possible......

No, wait a minute, I suddenly thought of a problem, when planning the route, I chose all the high-speed national highways, and there was no such wilderness road at all. Besides, before Lin Qiaoer and I changed shifts, it was less than an hour's drive from Luogong County, and it was eight o'clock in the evening, but in the end I woke up at twelve o'clock in the morning, and I drove for three more hours.

My mind was in a mess, but the old lady, as if she had not doubted my words, patted the young man and told him not to interject, and she asked, "What did you encounter last night?" ”

She asked the key question, and I wanted to know what happened last night after I lost consciousness, so I told me everything that happened last night. After hearing this, the old lady fell silent, and the young man's face immediately changed, and he spoke to the old lady in a dialect that we did not know whether it was a dialect or a minority language, and although we could not understand it, we could detect the urgency and worry in his tone.

The old lady muttered for a moment, and after saying something to the young man in the same words, the young man hurried away.

Lin Qiaoer was worried that the old lady would not be able to stand steadily, so she hurriedly helped her sit on the edge of the bed. The old lady looked at me, and there was no trace of turbulence in her cloudy eyes, and suddenly she grabbed my right hand, and her squinted eyes suddenly opened wide, and her eyes became extremely sharp and terrifying.

I was startled by her, and tried to withdraw my hand, only to find that the old lady was far from being as weak as it seemed, and her hand was rough and strong, like an iron tong, and I could not break free at all. And at this moment, she whispered: "Don't move! ”

This voice seemed to have some kind of magic, I subconsciously gave up resistance, at the same time, I found that the old lady's eyes stayed on those black lines, and after looking at it for a while, the old lady suddenly muttered to herself: "Retribution, retribution is finally coming, all die, all die!" ”

I wondered if she knew the black line, but her next words made my heart skip a beat.

"Young man, is your grandmother's surname Miao and lives in Si Miao Village?"

She spoke slowly and softly, but I was taken aback, and I hurriedly asked, "Do you know my grandmother?" ”

"Alas, sure enough!" After listening to my rhetorical question, she sighed faintly: "You don't need to know this, kid, do you know, if it wasn't for the fact that the village happened to be lost last night, that place, I'm afraid that no one will go in another ten or eight years, and you two are afraid that you will become unjust ghosts!" ”

I knew that the place the old lady was talking about was the barren mountain last night, so I couldn't help but be curious, and asked tentatively, "Grandma, what kind of place is there?" Is there something there? ”

"Don't be in a hurry to ask, what you should care about now is what you have in your hands, for your grandmother's sake, the old woman advises you, hurry back to find your grandma, I hope she still has a way!"

The old lady shook her head, and didn't want to say more, but I wanted to ask again, so she stood up directly, took out a string of brown rosaries from her pocket, and handed it to me. This is the rosary that my grandmother gave me, and I have been telling me to wear it with me, but at this time, I found that three of the seven rosaries were cracked, and there was a faint black mark on them.

"Cracked three, blocked three calamities for you, otherwise before we find you, you will already be a dead man, take care of it!"

Hearing this, my face changed, and I suddenly remembered that there was a warm current protecting my chest last night, could it be because of this string of prayer beads?

I wanted to ask her, but the old lady had already gotten up and walked out, leaving Lin Qiao'er and me in shock.

After the old woman left, I learned some information from Lin Qiaoer's mouth, this village is called Ahe Village, it is a village where Miao Yao lives together, it is located in a remote area, although it belongs to the jurisdiction of Luogong County, but it is at least more than 100 kilometers away from the Luogong County where we are going.

I don't know why we are so far away from our destination, but the village is only more than 30 kilometers away from the town of Fengyang, where we are on this trip, which is a blessing in disguise.

The place where our car fell last night was the "first residence" of Aji Village for generations. The so-called ancestral residence is actually a place similar to an ancestral tomb. This is a custom that has been passed down from generation to generation in Aji Village, that is, after a person dies, he does not enter the earth, does not cremate, and the body of the deceased is parked at home for two days after the funeral, and then directly sent to the "first residence" and hung on the trunk of the tree in the "first residence", which is a hanging corpse burial.

To put it bluntly, after waiting for the death of the people, the funeral is held, and the coffin is not pretended, but directly sent to the woods to be hanged, and this is the end of the matter.

This kind of burial custom sounds a little terrible, and even a little miserable, but it has something in common with the funeral customs of many places, such as sky burial, water burial, etc., which takes the meaning of being born in heaven and earth and returning to nature. This kind of burial custom, ordinary people don't even have the opportunity to enjoy, you take the sky burial as an example, most of the people who can get the treatment of the sky burial have great merit and prestige, such as some public recognized lamas.

In fact, the hanging corpse burial has been recorded a long time ago, and the "Book of Zhou" records that the burial custom of the Mo Xi people is "the dead are wrapped in reeds and hung on a tree." This is the earliest origin of hanging corpse burials, but the fact that Aji Village hangs all the corpses of all the ancestors in a forest for generations is a bit unacceptable no matter how you think about it.

And I finally know why I was blinded by ghosts last night, damn it, I broke into the pile of dead people in the middle of the night, and it's hard not to hit ghosts.

Lin Qiaoer only made one call to me last night, and the previous call could only be a ghost call, and the reason why the later call was interrupted was because Lin Qiaoer's mobile phone was out of battery, but the female voice appeared again on my side, and I don't know the reason for this for the time being.

After that, because a girl disappeared at night in Aji Village, the villagers searched overnight and found our car, under the guidance of Lin Qiaoer, they found me in a coma in the burial forest in the "first residence", but the missing girl has not been found so far.