When we hid in the grass and talked, there was a fog outside, which obscured everything in a hazy way, and things five meters away were basically only roughly outlined.

There was also fog when we came yesterday, and it was almost ten o'clock now, it stands to reason that even if there was morning fog, it should have dispersed, but seeing that these fogs did not mean to disperse, I couldn't help but think of what Yang Mengqing told me, and hurriedly stopped her and asked: "Wait, I remember you said that the town shrouded in fog is very dangerous, and now that it is so foggy, will it be dangerous for us to walk so swaggering?" ”

Yang Mengqing turned his head to look at me and said, "Don't worry, those living dead are afraid of water, let's walk along the river, even if they are mixed in the fog, they won't be able to get by!" ”

I felt at ease, and said that I had to be careful, the people from the security team might still be looking for me everywhere, and now that the fog is so big, we may not be able to find the other party if we collide head-on, and if we do, we don't even have time to react.

Yang Mengqing nodded, deeply convinced of my words, and then told me that the bald man last night was the mayor of the town, and as for the one wearing the mask, it was the patriarch of the Shangli people in the town, saying that I broke their witch sacrifice, and the mayor would definitely not let me go if he didn't die.

I had heard of the Li people, but I didn't know if Shangli was a branch of the Li people, so I asked her: "Shangli people, is it the Li people in Hainan?" ”

"No, the Li people are the Li people, Shangli is the Shangli people, I don't know the specifics, I only know that the number of Shangli people is scarce, so it is not counted among the fifty-six officially recognized ethnic groups."

I do know that in addition to the 56 ethnic groups in our country, there are also some unidentified ethnic groups, such as the green people, the Yi people, and so on. Although they have not been officially recognized, they have lived in this land for countless years and are also part of the Chinese nation. From this point of view, this Shangli ethnic group should also belong to this kind of ethnic group.

However, judging from the human sacrifice of those guys last night, these people's minds are only afraid that they are still in a barbaric and primitive state, otherwise it is impossible to burn people alive as sacrifices! I was thinking about it, but what Yang Mengqing said next made me stunned.

"Although there are not many Shangli people, in Fengyang, most of the nearby villages are dominated by them, by the way, the Aji Village you went to before, the whole village is Shangli tribe!"

I sighed, and my heart said no! No wonder what the old man in the mask said last night was somewhat similar to what the people of Ah Ji Village said, and it turned out to be the same person. Damn, is this kind of human sacrifice also in Aji Village? Thinking of this, I suddenly felt a little unacceptable, although the hanging corpses in Aji Village were a little terrifying, they didn't give me the feeling that they would be the kind of murderous people who would use people as sacrifices! And the old woman and the old man seemed to know my grandmother, which made it even more difficult for me to accept.

The witch sacrifice mentioned by Yang Mengqing was talking about the human sacrifice last night, so I asked her what the witch sacrifice was? She told me that witch sacrifices are a ritual of the Shangli people, and there is no fixed time, but whenever there is a disaster in the town, the Shangli people will initiate a witch sacrifice and pray to their black witch god to remove the disaster. At first, it was only Shangli people who participated, but it seemed to be quite effective, and gradually many townspeople spontaneously participated. The place of worship was the stone tablet by the river, which, according to the old patriarch, was a holy relic connected to the black witch god, similar to the Buddha statue enshrined in the temple.

When I heard that there were still ordinary townspeople participating in the witch festival, I immediately asked in confusion: "Such a stupid and cruel thing, if the others don't want to stop it, why did they join in?" Are they still human? ”

Yang Mengqing saw that I had misunderstood, and hurriedly explained: "It's not like this, in fact, the witch sacrifice at the beginning was only with livestock, and there is no such thing as killing people and sacrificing people!" It was only after the accident that I stumbled upon them and offered them a fire sacrifice with a young girl. ”

When she said this, she paused, and her expression showed sadness: "Before last night, they had burned three girls to death, and one of them was a good friend who I had played with since childhood. Originally, the person who was tied up there last night should have been me, it was Cortana who saved me, but she was caught by those devils, I was ready to save her last night, but I didn't expect you to take the lead. ”

I knew that now was not the time to chat, so I comforted her a few words and the two of them continued on their way. The fog was very large, but fortunately, Yang Mengqing was extremely familiar with the terrain, and following a few markers by the river, we soon reached the upper reaches, but the road ahead was blocked by a large iron dam.

The iron dam is more than three meters high, spans the river surface, and is about ten meters wide, occupying all the tidal flats on both sides of the river, only the middle of the river has a gap in the water discharge, and there are several houses made of iron sheets on the iron dam.

Yang Mengqing told me that this is one of the three gold mining mouths of Fengqing River, called Fengweikou. The iron dam is called the gold dam, which is used to block the gold sand washed down by the river, and on the other side of the dam is a very open gold panning field, where the townspeople of Fengyang Town wash sand gold on weekdays.

Of course, Fengweikou is only the worst of the three gold mining mouths, and there are two such gold dams and gold panning fields upstream of it, and panning for gold here is equivalent to digging for the remaining golden sand in the mud and sand that others have sifted twice, and the difficulty is not known how many times greater.

But even so, there are the most people panning for gold in Fengweikou, because the three gold panning ports are controlled by the town mayor, and if you want to pan for gold in the gold panning, you must pay the gold panning fee. Because of the good location of the first two gold panning mouths, the gold sand content in the sediment is high, so the gold panning fee is also quite high, only the Fengwei mouth is open to the whole town, and you can enter it without paying fees. Although the people of Fengyang are rich, compared to the town, there is still a distinction between rich and poor, and most people can't afford the gold panning fee, so they can only go to Fengweikou.

Originally, I heard that there was gold panning here, and I had the idea of going to see it, after all, it was gold, and if I was lucky enough to pick up a few pieces, even if it was sand gold, I could make a lot of money, but when I heard that the mud and sand had been mined here twice, I immediately lost interest.

Listening to Yang Mengqing, there are usually a lot of people in Fengweikou, but now, there are not many people still alive in the town, and even those who are alive have mostly taken refuge in the mayor, and no one will come to this place again.

The dam blocked the way, and I looked around and saw that I had to continue on either swimming through the gap in the center of the river, or wading across the river and bypassing the riverbank.

I knew the rush of the water last night, and when I got here, the river was so deep that it was impossible to swim against the current. I discussed it with Yang Mengqing and decided to go over to the river.

Due to the fact that the dam restricts the outlet of the river, the section of the river near the outfall is extremely turbulent and can be swept away if you are not careful. I've watched some wilderness adventure shows, and I know that if you want to cross such a rapid, you can swim down the slope of the river along the current, which can not only use the power of the current, but also effectively reduce the resistance.

The process of crossing the river went smoothly, but the clothes were wet, and the wetness was sticking to the body, and it was terrible. Just when we had just landed and were about to bypass the iron dam, Yang Mengqing suddenly exclaimed: "Oh my God, look at the river!" ”

She pointed to the river, her face frightened. Since I was facing away from the river, her reaction startled me at once, and I thought there was something terrible behind me, so I hurriedly stepped out of the water, and then turned my head to look, and suddenly saw a gruesome scene.

It's not that there's any monster in the water, it's that the water itself has turned red.

I hurried to look at the sluice gates, and found that the gushing water had all turned red, and because of the urgency of the water, the red soon spread downstream, and looked particularly terrible against the white mist.

This red is definitely not the kind of red that the dye scatters in the water, but something like the kind of red that spreads in the water when the blood drips in the water when killing chickens and ducks at home, but I don't think that at this time someone would kill a chicken upstream, and besides, how much blood of chickens and ducks would it take to dye the river like this?

Just as I was thinking about it, a pungent fishy smell filled the air, confirming my suspicion that it was really blood! Damn, something must have happened upstream, this kind of blood, if it's all human blood, how many people have died?

Yang Mengqing obviously thought about it too, his face changed, and he said that there must be an accident on the side of Yushugou, because the security team and the survivors hid in the cave of Yushugou, and the river flowed out of Yushugou.

I don't know exactly what's going on in Elm Gully, but I have to get there right now, because the meeting place between the Taoist priest and us, the tower, happens to be near Elm Gully.