Mountain snail is a name for our side. Sichuan people generally do not distinguish between snails and snails, the so-called mountain snails, in fact, is the most common round-shelled snail, this animal originally lived in the cracks of the stone or on the roots of plants, if according to the general understanding, the old grave is usually built up of stones, so it is not strange to have snails in the cracks of the stones.

But if there are a lot of them, and they all climb out of the grave, that's not a good thing.

So it must be explained that the snail itself is a mollusk, and it also belongs to the category of mental retardation, which is different from the slug, although the two have similar living habits, but the slug has no shell, and it loses its protection. When the snail encounters danger, it will retract into its shell to protect itself, so whether the snail retracts or not has almost become a criterion for judging whether it is dangerous or not. There are some snails growing in the old graves in the countryside, but if the snails don't even feel safe to shrink back into their shells, they must be affected by the anger of the ghosts and forced to escape. Not to mention that there are so many of them.

Mr. Zhao then told me that when he saw the snails all over the ground, he was also very surprised, and there are many old sayings in the countryside, and there are many about graves. For example, the grave bag is cracked, there are toads in the grave, or the grave is flooded. These are all bad signs in the eyes of the countrymen. But it was the first time that such a huge number of snails had crawled out of the grave. Teacher Zhao said that on the same day, he found a goddess in their village, and sang and danced for a long time in front of the grave, and burned a lot of incense, candles, and paper money. At that moment, Mr. Zhao and his brother gave the goddess a few hundred yuan and asked her to take away a chicken and a basket of eggs, thinking that this matter would end like this, but that night, something strange happened again.

Mr. Zhao said that this night was met by his wife, tossed all day, he was tired and went to bed earlier, Mr. Zhao's wife cleaned up the house inside and out and pickled a lot of salted cabbage to eat the next day, after being busy it was already more than 11 o'clock at night, and after going to bed, he pulled up the mosquito net and slept. The night in the countryside was quite cool, and when she hadn't been able to sleep that night, she was suddenly awakened by a cold soak, so she opened her eyes and was stunned. Gradually, her eyes became accustomed to the darkness of the night, and because she could slowly see things, she found that outside her mosquito net, there was a humanoid thing standing upright, so she slowly sat up, and when she was about to look carefully, through the veil of the mosquito net, she clearly saw a dry and thin old man with a landlord's hat, and his face was against the mosquito net, grinning at her.

This frightened her miserably, screaming from the sky and the ground, her screams not only woke up Mr. Zhao, but also attracted the younger brother and daughter-in-law who lived in the next room, so the family did not dare to sleep that night, and played poker all night in Mr. Zhao's bed.

I couldn't help laughing when he said this, I said that your family really wants to be open, if I had replaced me, I would have run away a long time ago. Teacher Zhao smiled bitterly and said, Run, where can you run, this midnight three watches, you also saw the way up the mountain, it's not easy to walk at all, we plan to wait until dawn, and then go to the goddess to comment. As a result, the next day, when the family went to find the goddess to theorize, they found that the goddess was not at home, and the neighbor said that when he came back from the Dharma that day, he went into the city happily, and he didn't know what he was doing. So the family could only go home again, I don't know what to do, I have stayed up all night, no matter how scared I am that night, I have to continue to sleep, this night, it was my brother and daughter-in-law's turn.

At this time, Mr. Zhao's younger brother took over and said that because he was afraid, the two of them were close to each other that night, and they were back to back, so that no matter which direction they found the ghost old man, they could remind each other. Mr. Zhao's younger brother said that the child was in high school in the city, and that night his wife used his mobile phone to send a message to his son to care. We all know that the light is turned off in the environment, the light of the mobile phone will be particularly bright, just when she sent a message, suddenly the wrist was grabbed by a cold thing, and then broke up, with the movement of the mobile phone in the hand, in the close proximity, through the mobile phone light to see the old man again, the expression is similar to the expression that the sister-in-law said the night before, but also grinning, Mr. Zhao's brother told me, his daughter-in-law still said that the old man opened his mouth is toothless.

This is a very important piece of information, if you have no teeth, it means that you are already quite old, so I asked Mr. Zhao, who is buried in your ancestral grave? Mr. Zhao and the brothers replied in unison that it was our grandfather. I asked you how old your grandfather was when he died. The two brothers said that the old lady had died before he was born, and the brothers had never seen it, because it was the relationship of the dragon dance family, so when he was a child, he learned from his father that his grandfather was the best dragon dance in the local area, and he was the person who held the dragon's head. Hu Zongren asked what is called the palm of the dragon, and Mr. Zhao told him that the stick in his hand is the head of the dragon, from the beginning of the dragon ball to the end of the dragon tail, the most critical thing in the middle is the dragon head, and the trend of the dragon head directly determines whether the dragon dances well or not.

Mr. Zhao's younger brother said that after his daughter-in-law saw the incident that night, she also screamed in panic, so the family of four got together to play poker all night. Teacher Zhao continued, so from that day on, the family asked people to ask for a reliable master, and then found Master Ma, and then found Hu Zongren. Hu Zongren asked him, where is your father's grave? Teacher Zhao said that his father's grave is on the downhill slope of the ancestral grave, and there is a custom in the countryside that the grave of the descendant cannot be higher than the ancestral grave. Hu Zongren said again, then let's do it, while we haven't had lunch yet, you can take us to see your ancestral grave.

So we got up and left the table, and Mr. Zhao led us around the back of the house, and walked along the path on the ridge for a few minutes, on the way, we cleared some weeds and found this ancestral grave in a cornfield that had been cut. After Hu Zongren saw the ancestral tomb, he then looked at the tomb from a distance along the direction of the ancestral tomb, and said that the location of your ancestral tomb is not very good, this place can see that there are mountains and no water in the tomb, and the mountain is also twists and turns, plus after the corn grows, it blocks the tomb, which is equivalent to gathering all the good and bad things in the tomb here, and behind this tomb is a small mountain col, there is no way before and after, the ancestor only came to you at this time to find trouble, and he has endured you for a long time.

Hu Zongren is much better at feng shui than me, and this family doesn't look like a rich family, so there is no need to scare them. However, I noticed that in the cracks of these stone graves, there were indeed many snails crawling out one after another. Hu Zongren said to me, why don't you check it out. So I took out my compass and first recited a mantra in my heart to pay respect to the deceased, because I really didn't want to be attacked during the inspection, and I had encountered it once in my early years, so I had to be careful with the old grave. After reciting the mantra, I took the compass and calculated the direction of the north, south, and west, and the so-called direction was to match the passing year of 2010, which would determine whether the direction I walked around the tomb clockwise or counterclockwise. After walking around, there is a supernatural reaction, but it is quite mild. Normally, after such an old grave has experienced a long time, the dead buried in it should gradually disappear, that is, a pure grave, just saying that the ancestral tomb is in charge of three generations, and the place where the ancestral grave is buried is right, it will allow future generations to enjoy the blessings of three generations. But after seeing the conditions in Mr. Zhao's house, I really doubted it.

After walking around, I knew in my heart that the dead people in this tomb had not disappeared completely, or that they had been away for a long time, but because of a certain inducement, they came back to make trouble, and I think that building roads and moving graves is the main reason for the return of the ancestors. At the same time, I also found a very strange phenomenon, that is, almost every snail crawling out of the grave, most of them crawled a few meters away from the head of the grave and did not move, only a few continued to crawl outside, I carefully identified the direction of the snail door crawling, which happened to be the earthen house of Mr. Zhao's family. And not only that, when my compass gets close to the snails, it will emit a supernatural reaction, although it is not strong, but it is stronger than the supernatural reaction of the tomb itself, which shows that these snails are different from my initial expectations, they are not fleeing from the danger signal, but because they are controlled by the supernatural substance.

When I thought of this, I seemed to suddenly understand something, so I told Hu Zongren my thoughts privately, and Hu Zongren also tentatively lit the curse around the grave, and found that the conclusion he got was not much different from my conjecture, so Hu Zongren said to me, then let's not go back the same way now, let's follow the trajectory of the snail to find it, if the destination of the snail crawling is Mr. Zhao's house, then there should be an answer in this house.

Hu Zongren and I bent on our waists and followed the countless snails, all of which were about the same color and size, and they were crawling, and they were all crawling in the same direction, which was very time-consuming. After looking for more than ten minutes, I heard Mr. Zhao's wife shouting at us in the corner of the house, saying that we should hurry back to eat, because we did not tell Mr. Zhao what we were looking for, so he and his brother could only follow behind us. Several times he smiled and reminded me and Hu Zongren, why don't we go back and eat first? We ignored him, and kept looking, and we searched for more than half an hour to get to the road that could have been reached in a few minutes, and finally came to the conclusion that as I thought, several of these snails eventually crawled into the house, and they were all heading towards the same place.

After entering the house, I rubbed my old waist, and the food and wine glasses had been placed on the table we were sitting on in the courtyard, and when everyone was about to sit down, Hu Zongren suddenly said, let's carry this table of dishes into the house. Teacher Zhao asked puzzledly, what is it for, this outside is much more spacious. Hu Zongren said, you just listen to me. Because of the request for Hu Zongren, Mr. Zhao could only agree, and after several of us worked together to carry the table into the room, Hu Zongren said, let's sit and squeeze a little bit to vacate this position, and the aunt will trouble you to take an extra pair of bowls, chopsticks, wine glasses, half a bowl of rice, and serve the dishes.

So I understand what Hu Zongren is going to do. After a pair of dishes and chopsticks that no one ate were arranged, Mr. Zhao finally couldn't help it and asked Hu Zongren, what do you mean by this? Hu Zongren drank wine and ate meat in a big gulp, and said casually, please invite your ancestors to eat. The two brothers looked at each other and asked fearfully, is the ancestor here now? Hu Zongren said, I don't know what to do when I'm not there, but I know that he must be watching us.

After saying that, he raised his hand and pointed to the dragon head hanging on the wall, and then said, "Look, there are snails on the dragon's horns."