The man sitting opposite Fang Rui on the right was relatively young, estimated to be only in his twenties, and he couldn't see any deformities except that he looked fair-skinned and looked too delicate. On the left... Forehead.... Fang Rui really didn't know if it should be one... Or two ... Woman. Because of her ... Two heads, two arms... But he only has two legs. Yes, the two women were conjoined from the chest down, making her chest and abdomen, although one-piece, noticeably wider than normal. The conjoined woman is older, with white hair and a wrinkled face, although the facial features on the two faces are the same, but if you add the demeanor on the two faces, it makes people feel completely different. The face on the left side of the body is kind and kind, and the face on the right body is gloomy and vicious.

The old woman is the head of the village, and the young man is her successor, the next village head. The people in the village all have no surnames, and their ancestors are a group of deformed people who were abandoned at birth, so they have long been abandoned by their respective clansmen. Historically, they only had names or nicknames.

The conjoined old woman didn't even have a name, so she was called the village chief. The young man's name is Dongsheng.

Li Lei sat next to Fang Rui, and Sun Xiaoxiao sat behind with Su Su in his arms, the two of them had already woken up, from disbelief at the beginning to surprise and panic to reluctantly accept it now. Su Su still didn't dare to look at these villagers, and kept leaning on Sun Xiaoxiao's arms with his head down.

"Village chief, can't we really get out?" Li Lei asked.

"It can't be said that there is no way out at all." Half of the benevolent eyebrows spoke, "Those who enter the miasma around the village will die, but every year on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, the Ghost Festival, at that time, there is no distinction between people and ghosts, and if you are lucky, you can get out of the ecstasy." ”

"The fifteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar? That... Not three days later! Li Lei and Sun Xiaoxiao both stood up excitedly, it seems that there is no endless road!

"Village, what do you mean when you say you're lucky enough to get out?" Fang Rui wasn't too excited, and heard some clues.

"It means that although the miasma was the weakest that night, it was the time when the gods and ghosts were most likely to appear, and no one knew what else the ecstasy outside the village had besides the miasma." The village replied.

Everyone was a little confused when they heard this ambiguous remark, but after all, it was good news.

"Village, we are really grateful for staying here for the past three days." In any case, Li Lei still expressed his gratitude on behalf of everyone.

"It's nothing, it's a guest from afar, besides, it's been a long, long time since outsiders have come to our village. It's a pity that I'm already an old bone, so let Dongsheng greet you for me. After the village chief finished speaking, he smiled at Li Lei and them, but her other face glared at them viciously.

Su Su, who was frightened, immediately lowered his head again, and his body involuntarily shrank towards Sun Xiaoxiao.

The village chief smiled and stretched out his left hand to rub the head of the fierce face, with a doting face, and said softly: "I'm sorry, my sister doesn't have a good temper. ”

Li Lei and the others hurriedly waved their hands to show that they didn't mind.

After sending off the village chief, Dong Sheng immediately ran in front of Li Lei and the others, and asked with a curious look: "Are you really people from outside?" Tell me about the outside world! ”

"You... Never been out before? As soon as he saw that the terrifying village chief was gone, and the rest was Dongsheng, who looked weak, Sun Xiaoxiao couldn't help but ask.

Dong Sheng shook his head and said, "Never." ”

"Then don't the people in your village go out? Just now, the village chief said that no outsiders have been in the village for a long time, what do you mean? Sun Xiaoxiao, who was also curious about the baby, continued to ask.

"There is miasma outside the village, and there is no way to go out or come in, even if the miasma is weak in the middle of the year, but the people in our village still won't go out. One is because it's not just the miasma that can kill in the ecstasy, and the second is that... Dongsheng sighed helplessly, "We are like this, can we be accepted when we go out?" Isn't it a monster yet? ”

"You... It doesn't look like much! Su Su, who had never dared to speak, looked Dong Sheng up and down.

Dongsheng's face flushed, and he bit his lip before he said, "I... I... ”

"Oh, what are you doing in Dongsheng!" Sun Xiaoxiao saw Dongsheng's embarrassment, immediately turned around and patted Su Su's arm, then pulled away from the topic and asked, "By the way, where is the cave and lake we came over?" Isn't it possible to get to you directly? ”

"That's..." Dongsheng saw that he didn't need to say any more, and immediately replied, "That cave and the lake used to lead directly to the outside world, but then something happened and it was blocked, and no one can go back and forth between the village and the outside world freely." ”

"What happened?" Sun Xiaoxiao asked.

"I don't know, the village chief's mother-in-law refuses to say." Dongsheng shook his head.

Li Lei and the others glanced at each other and didn't ask any more questions. It was Dongsheng who continued to ask a lot of questions about the outside, but fortunately, Sun Xiaoxiao, a super chatty person, took the trouble to answer Dongsheng's questions.

The two asked and answered for a long time before they finally satisfied Dongsheng, a curious baby.

After listening to the wonderful explanation of the outside world, Dongsheng happily took Li Lei and a few people back to the stone house where they lived before, and made them a dinner by the way, although it was only a simple millet sweet potato porridge, fried vegetables, cold radish and steamed bacon jerky, but it was also a pure natural and pesticide-free organic dinner.

Although Su Su wanted to help when Dongsheng was cooking on the fire, as a city girl, she would only cook instant noodles at most, and her arm was injured, so she could only watch from the sidelines. Fang Rui helped a lot, after all, as an orphan, he still had some kung fu in cooking since he was a child.

After eating, Sun Xiaoxiao and Li Lei volunteered to wash the dishes, but Su Su was embarrassed to do nothing, so he insisted on following.

Only Dong Sheng and Fang Rui were left in the room, Dong Sheng touched his hands a little crampedly before saying, "It's not too early, you guys rest, I'll go back." ”

Fang Rui was a little reluctant, mainly because there were still a lot of questions that he hadn't asked clearly, how could he be willing to leave Dongsheng? Where is the most crucial book hidden in this village? And what was the child who snatched the book that night, could it also be a villager in this village? I don't have much time left, I have to find it as soon as possible and take it back to pay for it!

Thinking of this, Fang Rui, who was born to not talk to each other and only talk awkwardly, didn't know where the courage came from, and said, "It's still early, I can't sleep!" Why don't you show me around this village? ”

"What's there to do in the village?" Dongsheng was puzzled.

"Oh, the village is nothing to you, just as curious to me, an outsider, is as curious about the outside." Fang Rui hurriedly said.

"Hmmm... All right! Dong Sheng tilted his head and thought about it and agreed, "Do you want to call Li Lei and them?" ”

"No, no, they do the dishes." Fang Rui said that he had already stood up and took Dong Sheng's hand and walked out, Dong Sheng's hand was surprisingly soft and smooth to the touch. However, Fang Rui, who was nervous, didn't think much about it, he only wanted to let Dongsheng take him to familiarize himself with the village, and he didn't see Dongsheng's coquettish look when he lowered his head.

Out of the room, although Li Lei had already taken himself around before, this time it was the next village chief Dongsheng who introduced him in more detail.

The village is bordered by trees on three sides and a lake on the other. There is miasma in the woods, and although the lake leads to the cave, the eye fungus in the cave is always life-threatening. Even when the passage was still open, the people in the village did not dare to enter it without permission. This time, Fang Rui and the others were able to come out of the cave full of eye fungus alive, which greatly frightened the villagers.

"In other words, those fungi that look like eyes are called eye fungi, and they can spew out spores at any time, and these spores will burn when they get on people's bodies? However, we had been walking for a long time, so how could we only encounter a spore eruption at the last minute? Fang Rui questioned this.

"I don't know." Dongsheng shook his head, "Maybe you're lucky, or maybe the passage has just been opened after being closed for a long time, and the fungi can't react?" I've heard that the interval between these ophthalmic eruptions doesn't seem to be long. ”

Maybe, anyway, Fang Rui is not willing to waste more time on some things that he can't figure out for the time being.

The village is actually very small, and it will take a while to finish walking. Except for the slightly larger stone house, which was the village chief's residence, the others were the houses of the villagers. I heard that the village was larger before, but this miasma is shrinking year by year.

"The village is so small, don't you feel like you're locked up?" Fang Rui couldn't help but feel a little sad for the villagers.

"There are fewer and fewer people in the village, and there are only thirty-five people except me and the village chief. We don't know when we will perish, and then the miasma will completely consume this village, and the outside world will not know that we once existed, and there will be no trace of us in this world. Dong Sheng's sudden sadness made Fang Rui a little concerned, yes, in the eyes of the outside world, can these people still be regarded as people in the strict sense? Is the value of their existence to fend for themselves in this ecstasy?

"But!" Dong Sheng suddenly cheered up again, "Fortunately, there is still a three-eyed eye image, our village will not disappear from now on, there will always be something left!" ”