The village in front of me is not very big, the houses are sparsely located in this mountain col, built against the mountain, and like the stone village, most of them are also stone houses made of local materials. Unlike Stone Village, judging from the power lines running over the village, there is electricity in this village, but it comes from nowhere...

Looking into the distance, the mountains are dark and undulating, endless. I muttered in my heart, is there really that rooster mountain in this area? …

As the sun set, most of the houses in the village were enveloped in the shadows of the mountains. After sitting outside the village and resting for a while, I took out some jerky and fed it to the little fox, while the three of us each smoked two cigarettes and drank some of our own water, and then walked towards the village.

Uncle Yang had never been to this village and had no acquaintances, so we had to find a place to settle on our own. The village is located in the heart of the mountains, and there should be very few outsiders coming, so the villagers seemed quite new and enthusiastic about our arrival. The first house we went to, the man didn't say a word and wanted to stay with us. However, the children of that family were frightened and cried by the little fox, and shrank in the corner of the kang, refusing to come out no matter how they pulled it. We can only apologize and leave.

After coming out of that house, the little fox hummed and looked at me pitifully. I smiled and stroked its head as a sign of comfort.

"Look, you're in trouble, aren't you?" Uncle Yang bowed and said to the little fox, and the fox hit him with his head.

"Oh, his grandmother's, Xiao Leng, this fox will recognize you..."Uncle Yang scolded with a smile.

The little fox seemed to understand his words, raised his head up, and flicked his tail twice. Master and I just laughed.

"Master."

"Huh?"

I pointed around with my hand and whispered, "You don't feel anything unusual in this village, and in the vicinity of the village, do you?" ”

Master raised his eyes and shook his head, "I haven't noticed it for the time being..."

The second house we went to was occupied by an old lady and her son. The old man is over ninety, his eyes are not dazzled or deaf, and her son has not yet returned from the mountain. Like the previous family, the old man was also very enthusiastic, took out the dried persimmons stored in the house to entertain us, and took out the things that were usually reluctant to eat, such as cured meat, and wanted to cook for us. We hurriedly took out some of the food we had brought and worked together to assist the elderly in cooking. When the meal was ready, the old man's son also returned.

At night, the wind blew everywhere outside. The old man ate only a little and went to sleep. A few of us, around a small low square table, with dimly flickering light bulbs, drank and ate food and chatted.

The old man's son, an honest mountain man, began to talk to us very restrainedly, drank a few cups of liquor we brought, and as his face turned red, the person became lively. Chatting and chatting, finally, I pulled to that rooster mountain...

"Uncle, I heard that there is a rooster mountain in your area, is there any?" I asked, and Master and Uncle Yang immediately stopped talking.

The old man's son seemed startled, and his hands trembled, "Why are you asking what that mountain is for?" ”

"Oh." I smiled, "Nothing, just curious." ”

The old man's son peered out into the courtyard through the torn window paper.

"It's dark in the middle of the night, don't mention the mountain, it's unlucky."

"Why?" I asked.

"What if you bring in a ghost liar?"

"So, is there really that mountain?"

"Whether there is or not, I don't know, the old generation has passed it down, and it is said that there is..."

"Uncle, tell us about it."

At first, this man refused to do anything, saying that it was easy to attract ghosts when talking about the mountain at night. I poured two more glasses of liquor, but after the persuasion of Uncle Yang and I, I finally started talking. Regarding that mountain, what this man said was similar to what Uncle Yang said before. The man didn't know where the mountain was, anyway, the legend was around the radius of their village. Although he grew up here, like everyone in the village, he hadn't been everywhere around. Because there are many deep mountains and old forests in this area, it is easy for people to get lost when they walk in, and there are many invisible dangers lurking.

This person has also heard about the fact that there was a person in Stone Village who came to see off his relatives and found Rooster Mountain in the middle of the night. After all, it was many years ago, and by word of mouth, what this person said was very different from what Uncle Yang said...

As he spoke, he ate and drank, and when he said that, the man's tongue was a little knotted.

"Uncle..."

I said in my heart, I don't know if they have ever been to this village.

"Apart from us, have any outsiders ever been to your village before?" I asked.

"Huh?" The man stared at me with drunken eyes, and the dazzled Den looked at me.

I repeat it again.

The man lowered his head and thought for a while, then burped, "Yes, before... The year before last, there were a few outsiders. ”

"Oh?" Master, Uncle Yang, and I looked at each other and asked, "Do you remember what those people looked like?" ”

The man shook his head.

"So," I thought for a moment, "did they spend the night in your village?" ”

"Yes, there is."

"Whose house do you live in?"

"Live," the man pointed with his hand, "the lame man's house is the lame man's family, and the relatives brought them here." ”

"Cripple? His relatives? ”

"Well, that cripple died this year, and he got sick to death."

I was secretly disappointed, how the fuck did everyone with a clue on them die? …

"The cripple is dead, is there anyone else in his family?" I asked.

"Yes, his wife..."

It was late at night, and all the villagers had already slept, so we decided to go to the lame man's house tomorrow and ask his wife.

When I woke up the next morning, I saw that the wind had stopped, and the rain was floating outside. I asked the old man's son for the location of the lame man's house, and we packed up our things and left the house.

The rain was dripping, the sky was cloudy in the distance, and the outline of the mountains was hazy in the rain, as if it had been smeared with a mosaic.

According to the old lady's son, when the cripple died this year, he was nearly sixty years old. We all thought that the lame wife must be an old woman with a wrinkled face and a sad face blown by the mountain wind. Therefore, when the woman opened the door and came out, we thought that we had gone to the wrong house, because this woman looked like she was in her thirties, although there were many traces left by perennial labor on her body, but judging from her facial features and face, she should have been a girl with black eyebrows and big eyes, and she looked quite peugeot.

"You are..."

"Oh, excuse me..."

I said to myself, "Oh no, I forgot to ask the name of the lame man, and I can't call him 'lame.'"

I was thinking about the wording, and Uncle Yang blurted out, "May I ask if this is the lame brother's house?" ”

I swallowed.

"Oh, yes." The woman said.

I didn't think it was really this one.

"And who are you? I asked.

"I'm his daughter-in-law..."

I frowned slightly, and I felt strange in my heart.

"Lame sister-in-law, it's good..."Uncle Yang said.

I almost didn't vomit blood, so I hurriedly took over the conversation, otherwise this Uncle Yang might not have anything to say. When I made it clear that I wanted to ask her about something, the woman let us into the courtyard.

It may be that there are very few outsiders coming, this woman does not know how to greet us, and when she comes to the house, she does not sit or stand, and her hands rub the corners of her clothes, looking quite cramped. I went straight to the point and asked her about the gang who came there the year before. According to what this woman said, except for her brother, there are three in total, and what they are doing is not clear to this woman, they are all her husband, that is, the lame man, who greeted them. Judging from the appearance described by this woman, one of them should be Wanjin Mountain! The other is a young man. As for the third, wearing a black trench coat with an erected collar covering both sides of her face, and a pair of wide sunglasses, the woman did not see the man's appearance clearly throughout...

My heart is pounding, could it be that the man in the trench coat that the woman is talking about is the mysterious Gao Qien, who has lived from the Ming Dynasty to the present? …

"By the way, how did your brother know them?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"That's... Who is your brother? ”

"People from Stone Village."

"Stone..."

Staring at the woman in front of me, I suddenly seemed to think of something and asked, "Your brother, with your mother's family, are they all okay?" ”

The woman's eyes were red, she lowered her head, and after a while, she grabbed the corner of her clothes and said in a very low voice, "All dead, burned to death by the fire!" …”

This woman is actually the sister of the 'second dog' in Stone Village! …

When we went into the mountain last year, we took pictures in front of the big waterfall, and we took a picture of the 'black shadow' in the waterfall, which was a charred person, and Yuxin and I tracked it all the way to a dense forest, and finally got rid of it. Later, when we went to Stone Village, we learned that the man was the 'second dog' in their village. Leaving us to stay overnight, the uncle in Stone Village said that Ergouzi is a bastard who is not doing his job properly and is lazy. His parents used a way of exchanging relatives to marry Ergouzi's sister to a very old disabled person in a mountain village hundreds of miles away, so as to exchange Ergouzi for a wife... The so-called sister of the second dog is the woman in front of her! …

As for the follow-up, Ergouzi was wanted for raping a girl who traveled into the mountains, and he hid for several years. Last year, they secretly ran back to Stone Village, but somehow, their family was burned to death at home... The people in the village said that it was because the two dogs did a lot of evil, so they were burned to death by the heavenly fire, and even their families also suffered...

We originally went into the mountains to look for the old man Niansheng, after hearing about this, we decided to stay to find out the truth about the death of the Ergouzi family, but I didn't think about it, the truth was not found out, but I found that the mountain was about to collapse, burying the stone village... So there was a back, Yuxin and I were buried under the landslide, and along the underground passage behind, we found the Eighth Route Army Arsenal located in the belly of the mountain behind the stone village, as well as the stone room, and the cave where the 'monster' was imprisoned before...

The woman in front of us, that is, the sister of Ergouzi, told us that the reason why she was married here was because at the time of the Republic of China, there was a woman in their village who married here, and her dead husband, the lame, was the descendant of that woman back then...

I didn't pay much attention to this, I was just thinking in my heart, how did this 'second dog' know Wanjin Mountain and them? … I think, Wanjin Mountain, they must have been to Stone Village...

"Eldest sister, let me ask you," I said, "how long did the three people that your brother brought with you live in your house the year before last?" ”

"I stayed in a black house (one night), and then left..."

"Do you know where they went?"

"Go..."

"Where?"

"Temple."

"Where's the temple?"

"The temple in our village, over the cliff in the west of the village, there is a mountain temple..."

"I think it might be so..."Coming out of this woman's house, I said, "Wanjin Mountain, they have been to Stone Village, and somehow they met Ergouzi, and then they heard about this Rooster Mountain, so they asked him to bring it..."

The master thought for a moment and said, "Let's go, go to the mountain temple and have a look..."