On the first day of the first lunar month in 1948, Shuangmu Village.

The cannon battle sounded sporadically and ended piecemeal, the snow in the air was stained with the smell of gunpowder and confetti after burning, and a vague black shadow jumped over the continuous roof, and gently landed on the top of an adobe courtyard wall, looking at the middle-aged man in the courtyard who was walking towards the house with a plate of dumplings "meow".

The man stopped, looked at the black cat licking its paws on the wall, picked up a dumpling with his hand blocking the plate and threw it on the wall: "You beast nose is quite smart, this ghost weather, you are not easy, let's have a New Year." With that, he raised his feet and walked into the house.

The black cat lowered its paws and sat down on the wall, its blue eyes staring at the figure reflected in the window. The dumplings on the side of the wall melted a hole in the snowdrift, and the last trace of heat gradually drifted away, forming a layer of ice on the surface.

The eastern sky gradually turned white, and the villagers took to the streets one by one. Since ancient times, there has been a custom of kowtowing to the New Year, and the adults of each family will take their children to go to the door to visit the elderly and elders in the village.

Unlike in previous years, the topics of the villagers' meetings revolved around the heavy snowfall. Since ancient times, there has been a proverb that "the snow is a good year", and snow in winter has always been regarded as a harbinger of a good harvest, but this year's heavy snow has not stopped since the Laba Festival and continues until the first day of the new year, and the elderly people in the village have not seen it since they were born.

Ergouzi and a few other young people stood on the side of the road, stomping their feet while talking about the girl from the next village they met when they were in the market last time. An elderly man walked over, looked at several young people, and smacked his lips. The old man's name is Lin Laosan, naturally not his real name, because he is the third in the ranking among his uncles and brothers.

When several young people heard the movement, they hurriedly said, "Happy New Year, Third Grandfather." Lin Laosan enjoyed this feeling very much, stroked his goatee, and was about to speak, when he heard an exclamation not far away: "Dog, your father is crazy!" ”

A middle-aged woman was lying on the ground, shouting and waving her arms at several young people, her face stained with a large patch of snow, and there was a faint trace of blood in the snow. Seeing this, several villagers around him hurriedly walked over to help, but they didn't want the middle-aged woman to be unable to stand up as if she was out of strength, so she could only let her sit on the ground in the end.

When the second dog saw it, he hurriedly ran towards the middle-aged woman, ran to the middle-aged woman, bowed his head and shouted to his mother, but saw that the snow on the middle-aged woman's hands and face had been stained red with blood, and after wiping it off, several nail scratches were revealed, and blood was constantly oozing out of the wound. The middle-aged woman trembled and grabbed her son's hand: "Dog, go and see your father, your father is crazy." ”

Ergouzi threw a sentence of "help your aunt" to the young man who had just chatted with him, and ran home. It is an unlucky thing to see red on the first day of the new year, and coupled with the snow for many days, there is no shortage of people next to him who show the expression of "I just said that this year is not peaceful".

Lin Laosan just wanted to say a few words to a few young people, but he was all stuck in his throat when he was shouted by the dog's mother, and the situation in front of him, as an elder, naturally wanted to support the field, and shouted to the people watching the excitement next to him, and followed behind the second dog.

On weekdays, as an elder, you naturally have to behave dignifiedly, but at this time, you can't take care of it so much, and your legs and feet are more flexible than the young people around you.

As soon as I walked to the gate of the courtyard, a cat bark suddenly came from the courtyard. This cry is not like the cat meow on weekdays, it seems to be emotional, unwilling, sad, and with a trace of hatred and misery, and everyone on the road is trembling in their hearts.

Although Lin Laosan is a little dependent on the old and selling the old on weekdays, after all, he has rich experience, so he stopped the people walking into the yard: "Don't move, I'm afraid there are unclean things!" After speaking, he quietly pushed open the courtyard door. In the yard, the two dogs were pressed to the ground, their necks were choked to death, and they were talking indistinctly.

Hearing the movement at the door, the person who was squatting on the second dog raised his head and glanced at the door, his eyes shining with a faint blue light. Taking advantage of the effort to raise his head, Lin Laosan saw at a glance that the person on the second dog was the dog's father.

Lin Laosan took a step back, looked at a few middle-aged men outside the courtyard gate, beckoned and said, "You guys go in with me to save people." ”

Although several middle-aged people are also quite prestigious people in the village on weekdays, they saw the eyes of the dog's father just now, and the previous cat meow was a little trembling in his heart, and now his legs are a little disobedient, and he has no idea of moving.

Seeing this, Lin Laosan scolded his mother a few times, and pulled a few young people next to him: "You guys, the dog and his father are possessed by the cat demon, you are yang, you are not afraid of dirty things, you arrested him and sent him to the grandmother." ”

A few young people are naughty on weekdays, often listen to the old people in the village tell some stories of ghosts and spirits, and they all know that there is a grandmother of the Lin family in the village who has the ability to subdue demons and eliminate demons, but she has never seen it.

The dog father looked at the few people who slowly gathered around, his back slowly arched, and his mouth made a "whine" sound. A few young people did not stop by relying on their youth and strength, continued to walk a few steps, rounded their arms, and slapped them towards the dog's father.

The dog father has always disliked these young people for not doing their jobs on weekdays, and there are not a few of them, and now they are possessed by the cat demon, and several young people have no energy at all, but they greet them vigorously, if they really want to break people, it is also Lin Laosan's way, and the people outside can all watch, and they can't blame themselves.

All kinds of farm tools were about to fall on his body, and the dog's father's feet on the dog's stomach suddenly exerted force, jumped out two meters away, tilted his head and stretched out his tongue and licked his hands.

A few young people didn't have time to regain their strength, and as soon as the two dogs took a breath, they were hit a few times, and their faces were twitched in pain. Several young people took advantage of this break to drag the second dog aside, picked up the guy in their hands again, and continued to surround the dog father without stopping.

The dog father looked at the few people who gradually surrounded him, lying on the ground on all fours, his back arched, and he pulled up more than a meter high in place, and jumped towards the second dog, but he didn't want to sweep a shovel across his chest, and he couldn't dodge it and hit it heavily, and twisted his body in the air with the strength of the shovel, and fell back to the same place.

Dog's father looked at the people around him and stretched out his tongue to lick the blood at the corner of his mouth, and once again arched his back and jumped up, this time the target was not the second dog, but Lin Laosan at the front.

Although Lin Laosan is old, he was also a person who followed the militia to fight devils a few years ago, and when he saw the dog father jumping towards him, he didn't have time to take a closer look, so he picked up the stick in his hand. I saw this stick when I first took it, it was used to take care of the family and the hospital when there were bandits in the past, and there were nails on the head, although it would not kill the body, but it would definitely not be pleasant.

As soon as Lin Laosan swung out the stick, the dog father forcibly folded his upper body back in the air, driving the whole body to change direction, jumping out of the encirclement and falling to the ground, without waiting for everyone to react, he quickly jumped onto the courtyard wall next to him. Seeing that the dog's father was about to run, a few young people didn't want to miss the opportunity to see the Lin family's grandmother cast a spell in vain, so they raised the guy in their hands and chased after him.

Dog Daddy squatted on the wall and "meowed" to the people below, ready to jump off the wall, suddenly there was a sound of "Wang" outside the courtyard wall, Dog Daddy trembled, and under the fright, a standing unsteady fell from the courtyard wall, just fell into the fishing net stacked under the courtyard wall, struggled a few times and was entangled in the fishing net and couldn't move.

Several young people raised the guy in their hands and surrounded him, wrapped the fishing net a few more times, until the whole person couldn't move, wrapped the rope a few more times, put on a stick and carried it behind Lin Laosan to see Grandma.

The group carried the dog father to the grandmother's house, and as soon as they entered the courtyard gate, they saw Shouzhen kneeling at the door of the house on the east side of the courtyard and kowtowing. Shouzhen is the daughter-in-law of the grandmother, only in her twenties, no one can enter the grandmother's house on weekdays, and almost never goes out, three meals a day and a change of clothes are delivered to the door. Lin Laosan pointed to the dog father who was tied up with five flowers, and said a rough idea to Shouzhen.

Before he finished speaking, Grandma's voice came from the house: "Third child, let the door out, the others will disperse." ”

Lin Laosan agreed, knelt down and kowtowed, and beckoned to several young people. A few young people carried the dog's father over and put it outside the door, and also knelt down and kowtowed like Lin Laosan, but they were unwilling to leave like this, and they hid not far away to watch.

The dog's father, who was tied up strongly, suddenly struggled to get up and knelt on the ground when he heard the voice of the grandmother, and the two hands were clasped together, and one shook the door of the house.

"Dust to dust, dust to earth, you shouldn't have broken the rules privately, and used such a subordinate means, today I accepted your evil thing, and in the future, it is better to be safe."

As soon as Grandma finished speaking, the door of the house opened halfway, and a huge black snake with a thick bowl slowly crawled out of the room, with red eyes and a pair of wings behind its head.

The giant snake stretched its head in front of the dog's face, kept spitting out the letter, and wrapped the dog's whole body around the dog's father, the dog's face began to turn purple, and the whole body began to spasm, and finally made a cat meow from his mouth that was even more miserable than just now, and the whole person was paralyzed and unconscious.

A vague black shadow began to slowly crawl out of the dog's back, ready to jump away, but not wanting to be swallowed by the giant snake. The serpent swallowed the shadow and shook its head, slowly retracting into the room, the door shut.

"Third child, carry it back." After the grandmother finished speaking, there was no sound in the house.

The middle-aged man sitting in front of me, holding a cigarette that was about to run out between the middle and ring fingers of his right hand, finally ended his story after smoking off nearly half of my box of Xuan Hemen, wiped the saliva from the corner of his mouth, smiled at me, and pulled out another cigarette from the cigarette case to continue, with a feeling of unfinished.

This legend has been passed down to him for the third generation, the legend mentioned Lin Laosan is his grandfather, and he is also the person who knows the most details about that matter, when everyone in the village was in the past, whenever he talked about the legend, someone would always come over to listen, and someone would hand him a cigarette when it was the most exciting, but then the old man died, and the young man worked part-time, and no one listened to him for a long time.

From the moment we came in, he never asked who we were, nor did he ask us for the purpose of our inquiry, it was obvious that he didn't care at all, judging from his reaction, he should have cared more about the satisfaction of the stars just now.

After listening to the middle-aged man's story, while he was still immersed in satisfaction, I stood up and motioned for Shen Muhan and Li Jingyao next to me to leave together. Although I don't fully believe the story told by the middle-aged man just now, it at least proves that the direction I am looking for is correct, and the Lin family appeared here seventy years ago.

I've been through things I've been unimaginable for three months, and all the information I've gotten is still very confusing, and I still don't have a clue about the whole thing back then. However, I knew I had no choice but to go all the way.

Because I am Lin Qi, I have the Lin family behind me.