That night, Zhuo Datong tossed and turned and couldn't fall asleep. All he could think about was the scene when he saw Jiang Guirong sitting in the yard in the early morning.
Sometimes he was frightened and sometimes panicked. Sometimes he felt like there was someone standing next to the bed, and sometimes he seemed to hear someone knocking on the door outside the yard.
He opened his eyes and glanced around the bedroom. There was no one else but himself.
Listening carefully outside the house, there was silence, and there was no knock on the door.
He kept tossing like this until midnight, and he didn't know what time it was before Zhuo Datong finally fell asleep.
His sleep was not stable at all, as if he had not fallen asleep at all. He was sometimes awake and sometimes confused.
In the early morning, when it was just dawn, Zhuo Datong simply sat up, sat on the bed and lit a cigarette for himself. He smoked while looking ahead with dull eyes.
After smoking a cigarette, I got up from the bed groggily, planning to go to the bathroom to urinate and then come back to sleep to see if I could fall asleep.
Everything he experienced yesterday seemed to him like a nightmare and no longer real.
Glancing out the window, Zhuo Datong suddenly froze on the spot.
Looking out the window, I saw Jiang Guirong in a colorful shroud still sitting there on the familiar wooden chair in the yard in the early morning. The sheets tightly wrapped around her body and the ropes that bound her had disappeared.
But this time, Jiang Guirong's sitting posture was no longer so upright.
Her head was drooped, down to her chest, and her face was almost invisible. Her feet were also crooked, as if she could not sit still and would slip at any moment.
Her hands were resting on the wooden armrests on both sides of the wooden chair, which also seemed loose.
And unlike yesterday, Jiang Guirong had liquid dripping all over her body at this moment, and it seemed that the inside of her body was even more rotten.
Under the chair she was sitting on, there was a pool of what seemed to be black liquid, emitting a strong odor.
Zhuo Datong tremblingly picked up the phone and called Old Man Ye from the coffin shop.
An hour and a half later.
Old man Ye stood in the middle of Zhuo Datong's room with a serious face, looking at Jiang Guirong's body that had been wrapped in torn cotton wool by his two apprentices.
The purpose of wrapping it with torn cotton wool is to absorb water and prevent the corpse water from flowing out.
A layer of lime powder was also sprinkled on the ground in the yard to neutralize the smelly liquid just now.
Looking away from the busy apprentice, Old Ye's face was still a little red at this time, but he had already woken up from last night's wine.
He looked at Zhuo Datong and asked solemnly: "Did you do anything to feel sorry for Guirong?"
Zhuo Datong was stunned, then shook his head like a rattle, "No, I, Zhuo Datong, swear to God, absolutely not!"
"Then does she have any unfulfilled wishes during her lifetime?" Old Man Ye continued to ask.
"No, she said she only hoped that I could live in good health." Zhuo Datong replied.
Old Man Ye lowered his head, thought carefully, and asked again: "Do you usually have any symptoms, such as getting up by yourself when you fall asleep?"
Zhuo Datong asked back: "Are you talking about sleepwalking? I don't have it. I usually sleep well. I never go to the toilet in the middle of the night, except to get up to take care of Guirong."
Having said this, Zhuo Datong suddenly realized why Old Man Ye had asked so, and looked at the rewrapped body.
He said with a horrified look on his face: "You mean, I had a sleepwalking attack and went to dig up Guirong's grave in the middle of the night and then carry her back?!"
"It's just a guess." Old Man Ye said: "After all, when Guirong was alive, the neighbors knew that you two had a good relationship. Maybe you were subconsciously reluctant to let her go? Then you took her home unconsciously while you were asleep. "
"No, no!" Zhuo Datong shook his head vigorously, "Definitely not. I barely slept last night. Even if I slept for a while, I definitely couldn't get up and go dig a grave four kilometers away. To the point of opening Guirong's grave and carrying her back again."
"And..." At this point, Zhuo Datong pointed to the lime powder on the ground, "If I carry the body back, there won't be any foul-smelling liquid on my clothes, it will be clean."
Old man Ye nodded. Looking at it this way, it was indeed not Zhuo Datong who carried it back.
At this moment, Qiu Sheng and Wen Cai tied up the body. They carefully washed their hands with hand sanitizer at the faucet in the yard and came to Old Man Ye.
Qiu Sheng said: "Master, this matter is too evil! Wencai and I discussed it, and we thought it was better not to touch this matter again. It just so happened that I had something to do at home in the afternoon..."
Before he finished speaking, Old Ye's face had turned ugly.
Zhuo Datong quickly took out a thousand yuan and gave each of the two apprentices 500 yuan, saying, "I'm sorry to bother you, I'm really in trouble!"
As he said that, he quietly stuffed the last thousand yuan he had with him into Old Man Ye.
According to yesterday's practice, even if the body was to be returned to the grave for reburial, it would have to wait until after evening, so all we could do now was wait.
The two apprentices accepted the money, no longer asked to leave, and sat honestly under the eaves.
Old Ye sighed and sat on the cloth sofa in the back room near the courtyard. Zhuo Datong quickly made another pot of tea for the three of them.
After the tea became lukewarm and cool, Old Man Ye picked up his tea cup and took a sip. He had been thinking about the key to this evil incident, and stood up and said, "I'll take a look around your room."
"Well, you can look at it as you like." Zhuo Datong nodded.
Old Man Ye looked at it and asked: "Are there any antiques in the house? I mean real antiques, the kind that are dug out of tombs and have a certain age?"
Zhuo Datong shook his head and smiled bitterly: "How can I afford that kind of thing?"
Because he didn't get enough rest, the bags under his eyes looked even bigger at the moment, as if he had another pair of chubby eyes under his eyes.
Old Man Ye asked again: "Then carefully recall, are there any things at home that were recently brought back but did not belong to this house before?"
At this point, Zhuo Da was stunned.
"It seems that there really is one!"
After a while, Old Man Ye took the wooden carving of a mask that Zhuo Datong took out from the bedroom and said in surprise: "Did you spend 10,000 yuan to buy this thing?"
"Well, although it is not an antique, I feel that this mask is very similar to Guirong when she was young, and I can even feel her smiling at me." Zhuo Datong explained: "Because at that time I knew that Guirong was about to leave. , to have something to think about in the future, so I gritted my teeth and paid the deposit, and I just got it back a few days ago."
Old Man Ye and his two apprentices looked at the mask curiously, but they felt it was just ordinary and did not feel like it looked like anyone the more they looked at it.
So they all had a thought at the same time: This idiot Zhuo must have been deceived!
…
Shen Xing, who was sitting in front of the workbench in Tingwu Woodcarving Shop, suddenly sneezed twice in succession.
I pulled a tissue and wiped my nose, crumpled it into a ball, and threw the tissue into the trash can.
"Am I catching a cold?"
Shen Xing lowered his head and looked at this increasingly muscular and perfect body. Since his physical strength had improved, how could he have thought about catching a cold?
Looking at the chest muscles and biceps, the more I looked at them, the more beautiful they looked. After almost a minute, I suddenly praised from the bottom of my heart: "I feel so powerful!"
As he spoke, he suddenly felt something. When he raised his head, he saw a male customer who had entered the store at an unknown time staring at him warily and nervously with a look like "stay away from me, you damn gay guy".
