We immediately left the entrance of the village, rushed into the village to look for people, and when we had invited most of them back to their homes, we returned to the tree, and it was already the third watch.

"I'm tired to death, I just want to sleep, but when people come out at this time, are they all evil?" Wu Shu kept complaining.

I said, "It's normal to look at them, they don't look like evil spirits, there should be some other reason." ”

Huang Maoqiang came back after us, as if he had lost his soul, and said to me: "Big brother, why is the village chief gone?"

"Didn't you just send him home?" I said.

Huang Maoqiang said: "It was indeed sent back, but just now his family said that he had just arrived home, and the village chief was gone." ”

"It's bad, the village chief is evil. "We immediately got up and went to the village, this time, in order not to alarm the villagers, the five of us went separately to look for it, and almost turned the whole village over, but we still did not find the shadow of the village chief.

"Uncle, did he go to find that bastard warlock?" Wu Shu said.

Liu Laosi said: "It stands to reason that it is impossible, even if he runs fast, he is still an old man, and I should catch up with him with my foot strength, so I conclude that he must not have left the village." ”

"Is there any other place in the village that we haven't been to?" I asked.

Huang Maoqiang thought for a while and said, "There are two other places, the village chief's house and the ancestral hall behind his house. ”

"Then don't hurry up, come with me. ”

Huang Maoqiang led the way, and a few of us followed behind, and entered the village chief's house, and we began to search without dead ends.

The village chief's wife was surprised at first when she saw us, but after hearing me explain the reason, she began to cooperate with us in searching around the house.

We searched the whole house, but we couldn't find anything, and when I stood near his stove, I found that there were three or so bowls of hot rice on the stove.

"Do you still have a habit of having a hot meal so late?" I asked, the village chief's wife.

She said, "No, yes, when will this meal come out?" But at this time, the village chief's wife was dumbfounded, her face became very ugly, she said: "These bowls of rice should be served in the ancestral hall at the back, you see that pig's head meat, I made it the day before yesterday." ”

After her words were finished, several of us were stunned, and then I calmed down, thinking about it carefully, this matter is very interesting, the house of the living can be in the same place as the ancestral hall of the dead, even if the ancestral hall is placed at the head of the village or on the hill behind the village.

I didn't slack off, I turned around and gave Liu Laosi a look and said, "Go to the ancestral hall, Wu Shua Cai stays here." ”

In order to prevent anything strange from happening in the kitchen, we can only do that.

Huang Maoqiang took us into the ancestral hall, just arrived at the door of the ancestral hall, and found that the fire in the ancestral hall was bright, and the wood carving couplets on both sides of the ancestral hall were clearly visible.

"Qingyuan world, ghost longevity dwelling. ”

The horizontal batch is "village hall".

What a strange couplet, the ancestral hall is not called the ancestral hall is actually called the village hall, if you look at it from the understanding of the meaning, it is the place where the living live.

I asked Huang Maoqiang, "Why is this ancestral hall so strange?"

"This is where the customs in our village are different from other places, and the ancestral hall is taken care of by the village chief. During the festival, the whole village would bring what their ancestors liked to eat, and we would have fun with our ancestors and hold a meeting in the ancestral hall that night. ”

"Oh, it's weird, it's amazing to have a party at night, and there is no distinction between people and ghosts. I said.

Then I entered the ancestral hall, and as soon as I entered the ancestral hall, I was startled, and I immediately jumped out and said, "Brother, are you kidding me, the ancestors in the ancestral hall are all portraits?"

"No, those people are all old people of their predecessors, and they will all come here to die when they reach the age of their ghost life, and they will all sit and become dried corpses, so we keep their bodies and worship them here. ”

Hearing Huang Maoqiang's introduction, I figured out that the people in this village still know how to practice, and they can sit down when they are old, which is really an unusual thing, but just put some spiritual positions in the ancestral hall, and it is unacceptable for ordinary people to engage in so many dead bodies.

At this time, I suddenly thought of something and asked Huang Maoqiang: "Is your village chief also about to reach his ghost life?"

"It's early, he has just passed the sixtieth birthday, our ghost shou refers to the person who feels like he is going to die, if he suddenly dies of illness and old age, it is not a ghost shou, and those people can't enter the ancestral hall. ”

At this time, I understood what was going on, and after entering the ancestral hall, I looked at them one by one, and I could clearly see from their faces that they had died in a clean and safe manner. After saluting them again, a few of us carefully searched the ancestral hall twice, but we didn't find the shadow of the village chief at all.

"Strange, where the hell did the village chief go?" I asked.

Huang Maoqiang thought for a long time and said: "There is no other place to look for it, and now we can only wait until dawn to mobilize the villagers to find it." ”

We had no choice, and when dawn and everyone in the village got up, we asked the big guy to rummage through the houses, and everyone said that they had not found the village chief, and then Huang Maoqiang arranged for all the young people to go to the mountains and rivers around the village to look for them.

I took Wu Shu and Liu Laosi to the mountain behind the village, ran from the top of the mountain to the foot of the mountain, and didn't find anything wrong, let alone a human figure, even birds and beasts are rare.

I picked up a rock and sat down, thinking about it for a long time, but I didn't understand what was going on.

But when we were about to go back to the village, a villager ran to me in a panic and said, "Guys, we found another corpse by the river behind the village, and the corpse was exactly the same as the corpse at the head of the village." ”

"What?" I suddenly felt the complexity of the matter.

I immediately took Liu Laosi and the villagers to run over, at this time Wu Shu and A Cai were also next to the corpse, Huang Maoqiang squatted in front of the corpse in a daze, and the old man was speechless for a long time.

"Do you know this person in the village?"

"I don't know, I think it's an outsider, but strangely, this person's eyes are full of horror, and it doesn't look like he killed him. Ah Cai said.

I said, "Carry him to the entrance of the village first, put him with the body from before, and when you find the village chief, immediately bury the two of them." ”

A few bold villagers wrapped the body in hay and carefully carried it under the big tree at the head of the village.

It was almost noon, I asked all the villagers to go back to rest, Ah Cai and they followed Huang Maoqiang to mix rice, and I was alone under the tree.

I gagged my nostrils with two sacks of linen and ginger in my mouth, crouched down and opened all the hay from the two corpses, ready to study their wounds.

But when I opened the hay for the first corpse, I gasped, rubbed my eyes, and looked at it again.

"My God, isn't this the village chief?" The dead body under the hay from before turned into the village chief, and the stranger who started was nowhere to be seen.

I immediately put the hay back on, thanks to my long-term experience in tomb robbing, and I was quite immune to such things, but it was enough to make me panic for a while.

I subconsciously stayed away from the village chief's corpse and sat on the bluestone at the other end of the tree, puzzled.

Not long after, many villagers came to see the excitement.

I pulled Huang Maoqiang: "I want to ask the villagers not to come out, this matter is too strange, wait until we figure it out, and then tell them." ”

Huang Maoqiang spoke more vigorously in the village, and the villagers dispersed.

The five of us stood in front of the two corpses, and as I slowly uncovered the hay, everyone else was dumbfounded.

Huang Maoqiang immediately shouted, "Why is the village chief here?"

"I can't explain this, but the strange thing is that the outsider did die here, and this time he became the village chief, which proves that there is definitely something strange here, so the main thing at the moment is to find the body of the outsider. "After I said that.

Ah Cai scratched his head, Wu Shu picked his teeth with the small shovel in his hand, and Liu Laosi stretched out his nose and kept sniffing.

I said, "Fourth brother, can you smell anything special like this?"

"Yes, and I think this tree is very strange. ”

"What's strange?"

Liu Laosi said with a smile: "This is not a real big tree, the bark on the outside of the big tree is camouflaged, the real big tree is inside, and you have seen whose big tree has to add a foundation under it." ”

"Well, I've lived in the village for more than 20 years, how come I don't know?"

Liu Laosi stood in front of the big tree, knocked twice with his hand and said: "Look at this tree, the outside is empty, but the inside is solid, plus the foundation below, this is obviously built by someone." ”

"Really?" I knocked twice.

"But it seems that these fake barks were made by them later, not like they have been there for a long time, you see that the color of this bark is still relatively fresh, it should not be more than half a year. ”

It wasn't until Liu Laosi said this that Huang Maoqiang remembered something, it turned out that the warlock invited by the village chief had come to their village half a year ago, saying that the big tree at the head of the village affected the feng shui in the village, but it couldn't be pulled out, so the village chief later found a way to surround the big tree.

When we were almost talking about what Liu Laosi said, what does this fake bark have to do with the two corpses, Liu Laosi's nose sniffed close to the tree, and said with a smile: "The other corpse is in the bark." ”

For such conjectures, I can only say that he is bold enough, but through Huang Maoqiang's confirmation, there is indeed a small mezzanine in the middle of the tree, and this mezzanine can be penetrated from the hole in the top of the tree.

Due to the construction of the day, there was no opening below, so I could only leave an exit from the tree and climb the ladder up and down, which was also to hide people's eyes.

We were able to find the outsider's body from the mezzanine, but the question before us came to the question, how the three corpses, the two outsiders, and the village chief, all of them died, seemed to have become a mystery.

I thought about it for a moment and asked Huang Maoqiang, "Do you know the origin of that warlock?"

"I don't know, but I heard that he is very rich, and it is the face of the village chief to come to our village to help with errands, but after he came to our village half a year ago, there has not been a day of peace in the village. ”