Holding the jade pendant left by my mother, I feel even more miserable. She has been dead for many years, but she is still protecting me.
Now is not the time to feel sad. I was dragged into the water and couldn't breathe. I soon couldn't stand it any more, so I hurriedly paddled upstream.
Children who grew up in rural areas are not bad at swimming. When I was six years old, I would go into the river to take a bath. After a while, I swam to the shore with force. At this time, my second uncle also waved his knife desperately and swam to the shore quickly under the siege of those water ghosts. By the side, I grabbed a handful of floating grass for support, and the beautiful kite turned over and quickly landed on the shore.
But I could see that it was not easy for him. Those water ghosts left a lot of scratches on Uncle Er’s neck and shoulders. He was breathing rapidly and his body was shaky. He spit out a mouthful of black water as soon as he came ashore and even reached out to catch me. ,
"Let's go. It's not safe in the river either. The guy named Wang didn't intend to leave us a way to survive. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to climb to the shore. I guess the guy named Wang didn't expect us to survive."
He took my hand and started to hide in the woods.
But I struggled hard and looked at him with guarded eyes, "Are you my second uncle?"
He was stunned and looked at me with surprised eyes, "What's wrong with you? Of course I am your second uncle."
I remained motionless and looked at him while breathing in the cold air, "Grandma has three sons. My father and third uncle are both ordinary farmers. Why are you so talented and know how to catch ghosts?"
The second uncle was stunned, and his eyes flickered when he looked at me.
This time he didn't answer, just shook his head, "Your focus is really strange. Are you still in the mood to ask this now?"
I took a step back and said, "You must answer me, where did you learn your skills, and what is the purpose of returning to the village this time!"
Although I was only a child at the time, I already had the mindset of an adult after experiencing so many changes.
The timing of the second uncle's appearance was so coincidental. Last time I left the village with the help of my grandfather, but he happened to be stuck on the way out of the village. He nominally rescued me, but he took me back to the Zhou family. ditch.
He kept saying that he had received a letter from his grandfather and came to help, but since his second uncle returned to the village, his grandfather had disappeared from the world. There was no proof of his death.
I thought about a lot of things, the message on the note, and when giving me the decapitation meal that night, Huzi said that he saw a strange man poisoning the villagers' wells...
Connecting these things one by one, I have reason to doubt the second uncle's motives.
The second uncle didn't know what he was thinking. He looked at me with twinkling eyes for a while, then smiled bitterly, shook his head and said,
"You are very smart. Since you can think of so many doubts, it seems that I can no longer hide it from you."
"Who the hell are you!" I became very excited, climbed up and asked loudly.
"Shh!"
The second uncle put his index finger to his mouth and made a silent gesture to remind me not to make any noise. Then he sat down and breathed heavily and said,
"I am indeed your second uncle, and your father is my eldest brother. This is true. You don't need to doubt my identity. It's just..."
Halfway through the words, the second uncle paused, and a sense of numbness flashed across his stiff face, "Although I am a descendant of the old Zhou family, my relationship with your grandma is not good. I have been disabled since I was born, and they feel If they couldn't feed me, they threw me into a mass grave. It was your kindhearted grandfather who took me back and raised me on goat's milk for three months, and I survived with great difficulty."
Although the second uncle was lucky enough to survive, grandma never liked him. She fed him the worst food and did the dirtiest work.
The second uncle had no feelings for this family and always wanted to leave Zhoujiagou and go outside to make a living. However, he was still very young at the time and did not have the ability to survive outside.
"Your grandma abused me for a long time. That time she really beat me to the point of death, so I ran into the mountains and fell into a ravine. I thought I was going to die, but unexpectedly, it was a blessing in disguise. I met a man who could The person who changed my life.”
The second uncle glanced at me sideways and continued, that person was his master, a Taoist monk in the mountains. After learning about my second uncle’s tragic childhood experience, he felt compassion and not only cured his second uncle. He suffered from polio and secretly taught him some Taoist skills.
"Later, I went to the Taoist temple every now and then to learn skills from my master. Your grandma didn't care about me. She never treated me as a son anyway."
The second uncle smiled at himself and said that it was not until his master died of illness thirteen years ago that he stopped running into the mountains.
"Originally, I planned to rely on the skills I learned to do something for the villagers. Who knew that not long after that, your grandfather actually brought a crazy woman from outside the village!"
When the second uncle said this, he paused unconsciously and his eyes became more complicated.
"Originally, your grandfather planned to leave that crazy woman to my care, but I saw that that woman's destiny is different from that of ordinary people. If I marry her, she will definitely be involved."
My second uncle was determined not to marry that crazy woman, so my grandfather had no choice but to hand the crazy woman over to my grandma so that my father could marry her.
When I heard this, my mouth shook violently.
There is no doubt that this crazy woman is my mother.
But why is Grandpa so stubborn and insists on sending my mother to my home?
The second uncle noticed my doubts and sighed, "The ancestors of the old Zhou family have had prime ministers. It is said that the ancestors of the Zhou family were a wealthy family hundreds of years ago. Although they are in decline now, they will still be protected by their ancestors."
"My grandpa sent your mother to the Zhou family because he wanted to take advantage of the Zhou family's ancestral protection and hide her existence. It's a pity, it's a pity..."
The second uncle suddenly sneered, shook his head and said,
"Your grandpa has missed something. The Zhou family is no longer the wealthy and prestigious family it was hundreds of years ago. The remaining ancestral shadow has been defeated by the descendants. Not only can it not protect your mother, but it has pushed her into a pit of fire. "
I fell silent, thinking about what happened to my mother after she married into the Zhou family, and my heart ached.
"At that time, I expected that this day would come sooner or later, so I always opposed your mother's marriage, but your grandma... haha!"
The second uncle gasped and shook his head, saying that after that quarrel, he simply left Zhoujiagou and went to start his own business outside. It was not until thirteen years later, on the day when he was sure that something happened, that he took the initiative to return to the village to help our family. Collect the corpse.
My heart trembled hard, "Then the helper the grandpa is looking for is you?"
"no."
The second uncle shook his head frankly, "Your grandfather was looking for another person, but that person was not at home. It happened that I saw him when he was delivering the letter, so he entered the village under this name."
So that's it.
I suddenly understood, continued to look at my second uncle, and asked the last question word for word,
"Just now, before Third Uncle's ghost was dispersed by you, he said something. He said that you, like the people outside, came back to get something from my mother. Is that true or not?"
The corner of the second uncle's mouth twitched and he stared at me with dark gray eyes.
I looked at him without hesitation, and time seemed to have stopped.
After a long time, the second uncle nodded heavily,
"Yes, I also want to get what your mother left behind, but my purpose of looking for it is not to harm anyone. From the beginning to the end, I never thought of harming you. You should be able to see that I have been saving you. "
