Grandma recalled that the old woman was wearing strange clothes with bells and whistles, even more fancy, than the kind of clothes worn by the Miao people during ceremonies.

After the old woman moved in, she lived in the same room as her grandmother when she was a child, and that night, the grandmother noticed a particularly strange thing.

Grandma had the habit of getting up at night, and that night she got up and found that the old woman sleeping next to her was gone, and then turned her head to look, only to find that the old woman was standing by the window, as if she was looking at the scene outside the window, and there were words in her mouth.

Grandma was very bold when she was a child, and when she leaned over to look, she found that the old woman was not looking out the window, because she was standing there with her eyes closed, and her breathing was very even, as if she was still asleep, and her mouth seemed to be dreaming, and she was talking vaguely in her dreams.

Grandma thought that the old woman was sleepwalking, so she wanted to wake her up and let her go to bed, but

As soon as I called out to her, I suddenly heard a sound of 'rustling' from outside the window.

At that time, it was dog days, the window was open, and my grandmother looked out, and then with the help of the moonlight, I saw a very strange scene in the yard!

The yard was full of snakes and all kinds of insects, and the flowers were so green that it was like a carpet of flowers in the yard, and there was no room for pins!

Cloud. On the south side, although there are many poisonous insects and ants, it is absolutely impossible for them to be so outrageous, so the grandmother screamed in surprise, and then woke up the sleeping old woman standing next to her.

After the old woman woke up, she glanced at her grandmother, and then looked at the poisonous insects and ant beasts outside the window, and seemed to understand what was happening, she patted her grandmother's shoulder, and said to her grandmother Don't be afraid, and then said a few words to the window that were similar to the tone of the dream just now, and as soon as she finished speaking, a strange scene appeared!

The poisonous insects and ant beasts in the yard, as if they had received some orders, all turned around and climbed outside the yard, some went out directly over the wall, and some squeezed out from the gate, just like the ebb tide of the river, it only took a few breaths, and there was not a single insect left in the whole yard! ”

Wang Lumiao shook her head,

"Grandma also told me a lot about the old woman, but only this one thing I remember too much.

As you can guess, the old woman was a wizard, and after she got along with her grandmother for a while, she liked her very much, so she found an opportunity to pass on her skills to her grandmother, and she became the heir to that mysterious witchcraft.

But at that time, the state cracked down on feudal superstition so hard that even the gentleman who told fortunes on the street had to be arrested, so my grandmother learned a lot of witchcraft, and no one dared to tell me.

The old woman stayed at her grandmother's house for a while, and then left, and before leaving, she gave her a black iron box—

As I said at the beginning, the one that my grandmother dug up from the temple of the Bodhisattva of the land contained some tools used to perform witchcraft, and my grandmother hid it under the bed, and took it out and scrubbed it every day until my grandmother got married.

Although grandma is a woman who has her own world view since she was a child and has independent thinking, she actually still has feudal thoughts in her head, she thinks that after a woman gets married, she should teach her husband and children, farm and cook, so a few nights before she got married, she decided to no longer touch witchcraft, but to be an ordinary housewife.

She buried the black iron box in the Bodhisattva Temple of the Land, and put it in the box together with the big red witch robe that the old woman gave her back then, and buried it.

Later, I took it out again, that is, decades later, in order to save my grandfather. ”

At that time, after my grandmother told Wang Lumiao about the past, she took the black iron box from the side and let them see it.

Wang Lumiao said that there were many patterns of different colors printed on the surface of the black box, and she remembered very well that although each pattern on it was different in color, the shape was exactly the same, all of them looked like a strange tree!

"Is that the coral tree?"

Wu Yi was surprised.

Wang Lumiao nodded.

"But I was so young at the time that I could only remember the things that scared me except for the strange tree of beautiful colors, and as for what was in the box, I have almost forgotten it by now.

Well, I can only remember that there are many needles in it that are many times larger than the embroidery needle, and my grandmother said that it was a bone needle, and I ...... It could also be Gu needles, I don't remember exactly, anyway, grandma said that those needles were made from the bones of livestock, and grandpa's head was re-sewn to the neck with bone needles and the tendons of another animal. ”

"The grandfather we saw sitting on the bed with his head tilted before was actually because his head had not been completely sewn up.

Grandma lifted the quilt and asked us to look at Grandpa's neck, which I didn't dare to look at the time, but my parents later told me that there was indeed a blue and black 'thread' around Grandpa's neck, which must be the veins of animals. ”

Wu Yi looked at Bai Yue, and saw that she didn't react after opening her mouth just now, so he asked Wang Lumiao,

"Knowing this, then you and your parents are relieved?"

Wang Lumiao smiled bitterly,

"We know what Grandma is doing, but how can we rest assured?

Even children know that people can't be resurrected after death, and grandpa's head has already fallen off, no matter how powerful the witchcraft is, it is impossible to resurrect him, right? Or even if he is really resurrected, who can know if the resurrected one is still not the grandfather he used to be? ”

"My parents persuaded my grandmother countless times after that, telling her to stop working, since grandpa is dead, it is better to let him be buried as soon as possible.

But grandma has always been stubborn, and then maybe she was annoyed by her father's questioning, as long as her father mentioned it, grandma would be furious and scolded her father for being an unfilial son, and my father finally didn't dare to speak again, so he could only let grandma mess around.

Fortunately, grandpa's body was in grandma's room, and there was no decomposition and corpse smell, otherwise, there would really be no way to stay in that house.

In this way, in that strange atmosphere, two years have passed. ”

Wang Lumiao sighed,

"In the past two years, my grandmother would often go out to collect medicine, and then put the collected medicine in a wooden barrel and soak my grandfather's body in it, for this scene, I was a little scared at first, but two years was enough for me to get used to it, so when I saw it later, I was not so afraid, because I knew that the grandfather in the bucket was dead, and it would not do me any harm."

As she spoke, Wang Lumiao's body began to tremble,

"But, is the grandfather inside really dead?"

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