After a brief silence, Uncle Ya said softly: "Today is no better than before. If you feel uneasy, please come back first."
"It is wisdom to retreat bravely from the rapids, and there is no shame in it."
He spoke very cryptically, but I understood what he meant.
I admit that with my current ability, facing a mass grave is no different from facing death.
But I had already agreed to this, and quitting halfway was a bit irresponsible.
After a brief moment of confusion, I responded to the phone: "Let me try again."
"Um."
He didn't ask any more questions, just responded and hung up the phone.
Ji Canghai put his hand on my shoulder and comforted me: "The sky is falling, I will carry it with you."
I laughed, feeling filled with relief.
"Fortunately, we found the source of the problem. Let's get rid of the ground first."
We just started working. It took us almost a whole morning to dig out a big hole in the ground.
This dig was at least two meters deep.
However, what I didn't expect was that there was only dirt in the pit, not the bones everywhere I thought.
After noon, we were both exhausted.
"It won't work anymore." Ji Canghai waved his hands: "We can't dig anymore. If we dig more, water will come out."
"This..." I was a little hesitant: "This kind of prisoner of war burial pit will not be dug too deep. It will be buried shallowly to prevent the smell of corpses from spreading. That's basically it."
Under the scorching sun, we held hoes and looked at each other.
At this time, the desolate old house had been turned into a demolition site by the two of us.
If the problem can't be solved after making it like this, then I really can't explain it to Liang Hai.
"We are still sleeping here tonight, I still can't believe it!"
At night.
There were not many candles left, the cold moonlight fell on the peeling arhat bed, and the weeds outside the window rustled.
Ji Canghai was lying on his side next to me, snoring slightly.
I looked carefully for a while and found that the voice from yesterday did not appear tonight.
With him by my side, I feel a lot more at ease.
When I turned over in the middle of the night, I felt that everything was empty and all I got was the coolness.
I opened my eyes and saw that there was no one around me.
I put my hand into the quilt, and all I felt was coldness, no warmth at all.
This means that he did not get up at night, but left for a while!
Where else could he go so late at night?
I took out the knife from under the pillow and tentatively shouted a few words: "Erhai?"
The sound was amplified many times in the silent night, but the only thing that responded to me was my own breathing and heartbeat.
I quickly put on my shoes and went to the ground, and the birds outside the door sounded again at this moment.
Is it the wedding team from last night again?
I looked out through the crack in the door. Sure enough, it was the same as last night, even more lively than last night.
All the weeds in the yard were gone, replaced by tables, chairs and benches.
At the gate, there was a gentleman wearing a melon-pipe hat sitting. He was holding a writing brush, accepting gifts and writing accounts.
Everything seemed so normal, except that all the guests coming and going were skeletons.
The colorful shrouds kept swaying on the empty bones of the skeleton. From a distance, they looked like giant candy wrappers.
Ji Canghai's departure was probably related to these things in the yard.
I was about to open the door, but suddenly I stopped. Last night, the moment I opened the door, they disappeared immediately.
I immediately thought of the words from the first grade of junior high school.
She said that I felt like there was a fire in me, which made her very scared.
Are these ghosts in the yard also afraid of me?
The reason for this is unknown, but a blind guess may have something to do with lightning strikes.
If that's the case, it's a mixed blessing.
Fortunately, evil spirits cannot get close to me, let alone harm me.
What worries me is that there is no way to catch them.
I can't just squat in this yard like a mythical beast that controls the house and never come out, can I?
A person who has been expelled from Taoism can still make evil spirits so fearful. This kind of thing is simply unheard of and has never been seen.
For a moment, I had no idea.
However, Ji Canghai’s whereabouts are still a mystery, and I don’t have much time to think about it.
After just a brief pause, I gently pushed the door open through a gap, trying not to make any noise, and slowly got out.
