Chapter 7: The Shroud Tree
At the same time as the sound sounded, my scalp went numb and my legs went limp.
It was a woman's voice, and just last night, I was almost scared to death, and the two phone calls I received, and the distress cry I heard from down the hillside, were exactly the same as this voice!
I kept telling myself that it wasn't a human voice, don't care, don't care, but my legs seemed to be out of control, and they dragged me in the direction from which the sound came.
Just when I was terrified, the rope around my waist suddenly burned like a fire, and in an instant my feet regained sensation. I even crawled out for several meters, and was even about to run back, but at this moment, I saw a person lying on the slope in the direction from which the sound came, a person wearing a unique costume of Aji Village.
I don't know what ethnic group the village is, but it's definitely not Han or one of those common ethnic minorities. Their costumes are very distinctive, most of them are blue and black, and the most important thing is that the young men are all wearing long buns and wrapped in a black turban, which is very recognizable, and the man lying on the slope, also with a bun on his head, is the person I am trying to save. It's just that if the cry for help was made by him, why was it a woman's voice?
My heart was stunned, just when I was struggling to go over, a thought suddenly flashed in my mind, my heart said badly, just now I couldn't even see things two meters away, how can I see the person lying more than ten meters away now, is it possible to be blinded by the ghost again?
As soon as the thought came to me, I was busy reciting an obscure mantra that I didn't understand myself, which my grandmother had taught me when I was a child, and it was said to be a witchcraft to get rid of my own evil spirits, similar to the Buddhist scriptures on the suppression of evil spirits. When my grandmother taught me this, I just thought it was fun, but I never used it, so I don't know if it was useful or not, but now I have to go to the doctor.
When the awkward and obscure incantations kept coming out of my mouth, I don't know if it was a psychological effect, the anxiety and fear accumulated in my heart were reduced a lot, and the fog around me was much lighter. Then I looked at the hillside again, and saw that the man was still lying there.
Is it true? I was a little suspicious, and I said that it was not a way to hesitate like this, it was better to cut through the mess quickly, and if there was really something, even if I didn't go over, it might not come to me.
Thinking of this, I mustered up my courage and slowly leaned towards the man. Ten meters, five meters, three meters...... To my relief, nothing happened until I touched the man's side. It seems that no matter how evil this forest is, the sunny day is still somewhat restrained, or because I am not from Aji Village, the things in this forest are not interested in me.
I was thinking wildly, but my hands were not idle. I turned the person over and found that it was similar to what the old woman described, so it shouldn't be wrong, and then I briefly checked it to make sure that he wasn't dead, but he was hit on the forehead and passed out, thinking that as long as it wasn't a severe concussion, it wasn't a big problem.
When the man was found, I didn't want to stay here for a moment, so I tied him to the rope as well, and then carried him on my back and prepared to pull the rope. As soon as I turned around, I was almost frightened by the sudden appearance in front of me.
It was a half-dried corpse hanging upside down from the black roots, except for the shriveled head, which had been completely shriveled down, the rest of the body was tightly wrapped in a white cloth, as if wrapped in a thick cocoon, the shriveled and rotten abominable face was almost attached to my face, the empty eyes were just staring at mine, as if from hell, and I could even smell the peculiar smell of death on the dried corpse.
It wasn't fishy, it smelled like some kind of plant that had been seen before. I knew that this corpse must have undergone special treatment, but at this time I was in no mood to think about it, I was completely frightened by the sudden appearance of the hanging corpse, so that for the next ten seconds, I did not react, just stared at the hanging corpse in a daze, until I couldn't help but feel nauseous, then I fell to the ground and vomited wildly. It wasn't until I had vomited all the acid that I eased up and distanced myself from the hanging corpse.
At the same time, I found that there was much more to this neighborhood than this hanging corpse, and there was a huge black vine living on the old locust tree around it, hanging down countless arm-thick rhizomes like a single banyan tree, and more than a dozen hanging corpses were wrapped in these vertically falling rhizomes and fell in the air, like a tree full of fruit.
The terrifying picture in front of me made me shudder, and I couldn't help but think of the ginseng fruit tree recorded in Journey to the West, damn it, is this the prototype of the mythical ginseng fruit tree?
Hanging corpse burial, I really didn't expect that the hanging corpse burial that has been inherited for thousands of years in Aji Village would be such a ghost. The ancients emphasized that the dead should be great, put into the earth for peace, and be buried and buried, so that the deceased could walk peacefully, and the relatives in the yang world could also feel a trace of comfort. But this hanging corpse burial, how can these dead people be half peaceful, isn't this a sin?
My heart was shocked, my back was cold, I really wanted to leave this ghost forest immediately, so I couldn't care about the nausea anymore, grabbed the rope and pulled it three times in a row, according to the agreement, the people above would pull me out immediately.
However, after I pulled the rope, I didn't receive any response, and I hurriedly pulled it three more times, but it was still useless. I was shocked, and I said, "Is something wrong?" I didn't wait for them any longer, I walked back along the rope and put it away as I went, so that the increasing rope and the strong man behind me weighed me down, and the uphill way back was even more strenuous.
I had climbed less than twenty meters back, and I was too tired to walk, and at the same time, I found that wherever there were such strange vines clinging to the trees, there must be hanging corpses, and these corpses had turned into white bones, and the skulls were scattered on the ground, and the more recent ones were dried into dried corpses. I found an old locust tree without vines, put the person on my back down, and was just about to rest for a while, when I heard a faint voice from the fog around me: "Leave!" ”
I stood up suddenly, and the hairs on my body stood on end, and I thought to myself, "Isn't it an auditory hallucination!" But then the voice rang out again:
Get out of here!
Or let me go, convinced that it was not an auditory hallucination, and a pang of horror in my heart?
"Get out of here!"
The voice sounded again, and even carried a bit of urging, but I still didn't see anyone, and I was so frightened that I couldn't care about being tired anymore, so I picked up the young man and ran up the slope. At the same time, I sensed that something seemed to be chasing after me in the fog behind me, and the rustle through the leaves was definitely not a hallucination.
I turned my head sharply, and suddenly I saw a black thing like a snake appear in the mist, and leap towards me at a very fast speed. I know that there are many snakes in Yunnan, but it is absolutely impossible to be a snake in front of me, if this is a snake, a snake that can fly in mid-air, it is a snake spirit!
The thing was so fast, in an instant, it had reached me and wrapped my feet. I didn't have time to react, but I saw the true face of this thing, it turned out to be the vine roots with the hanging corpses just now, my God, this thing is actually alive!
Before I could be frightened, the vine pulled me to the ground and dragged me down the slope. I grabbed the trunk of the locust tree next to me, but I didn't expect the power of this thing to be terrifying, I only held on for less than two seconds before my hand broke away from the trunk, and the whole person was dragged out.
There was a lot of confusion in the process of dragging, and I was scratching around with my hands and kicking my feet constantly, trying to get rid of the vine roots. But all this seemed to be to no avail, and after being dragged out about ten meters, I suddenly felt my body swing, and then the whole person left the ground, hanging in the air like a sausage between a huge locust tree.
For a moment, the world was spinning, and my vision was blurry for a while, and after a while, my vision returned to normal. I gasped as I saw what was going on around me, and I found myself hanging from a huge vine the size of a bucket, and around me hung countless tengans, and countless corpses hanging from me.
Corpse forest, I can only describe it like this, the number of corpses here, I think even if more than ten generations of Aji Village are all hanging here, it is far from enough! And many of these corpses are not wrapped in white cloth, and the clothes on their bodies are not like the kind of clothes in Aji Village, damn it, it seems that there is a custom of hanging corpses in this vicinity, not only Ahe Village!
I know that there are man-eating trees and man-eating flowers living in many primeval jungles, but compared to this vine, those can only be counted as pediatrics, which can no longer be explained by common sense, this is simply a demon vine, dog's day, what the hell did those bastards in Aji Village feed with their corpses?
Along with him was the unlucky young man, who I had tied to the rope before, and at the same time that I was swept over, he was also swept over, and now he was hanging under me. I couldn't untie the vine roots from my feet because of his fall, and I didn't think the stems were so easy to untie.
Just as I was thinking about whether I was going to be hanged here, something worse happened, and I saw many small rhizomes sticking out of the huge vines, and those rhizomes pierced into the bodies of the newly dead hanging corpses around me like wriggling straws, and soon the corpses dried up at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the stems quickly became dark and thick.
I felt a chill in my heart, it turned out that these rhizomes came from this way, and at this moment, a young stem also stared at me and stabbed straight at me.
"Ah......h
Almost at the same time, a terrible sound sounded out of nowhere, the sharp sound almost made my head burst open, and I was just about to cover my ears with my hands, when suddenly I felt my feet loosen, and the vine roots were actually released, and I fell heavily to the ground, but fortunately the ground was a thick layer of rotten leaves. I didn't care about the pain, I seized the opportunity to pick up the person and run back.
But soon, the sound stopped, and the vine roots, as if suddenly resurrected, rolled towards me again......