He walked to the door and asked, "Yunfeng, it's so late and it's still raining. Where are you going?"
"I have to go and watch him! What if something happens to someone alone in the middle of the night? Don't worry, I'll be back soon!"
After saying that, I hurried after him.
I was wearing a raincoat, but she didn't even hold an umbrella. She walked very fast, and I trotted to catch up.
"Wait! Where are you going? Also, what is this thing you are holding?"
"This? This is sulfur-smoked dried star grass," she said, turning her head back and forth to glance around: "I can feel it, it's not far from here."
"Then we can't come here during the day? It's still raining! Look at your clothes and pants, they're all soaked!"
"No, it definitely won't be around here during the day."
The snake girl's hair sticks to her cheeks and she squints her eyes. Her eyes are pure orange, which makes her look strangely beautiful.
"Shh..."
"Don't make a sound..."
After speaking, she stuck out her tongue like a snake, and her tongue kept moving left and right.
"In that direction!"
She trotted southwest, and I followed closely.
She took my flashlight and kept looking back and forth on the ground while holding it up.
I looked and there was nothing but some toads jumping in small puddles.
Countless raindrops fell on the puddles, causing ripples.
"It's strange... where did it go? I just smelled something coming from this direction."
"You smelled it with your tongue?"
She nodded, shook her head and said, "I have lived with snakes since I was very young, so I am familiar with their smell. It only takes me three steps to find a snake."
“Smell the smell of the snake, listen to the sound of the snake, and recognize the snake’s path.”
She pointed to her feet and told me: "As long as there is a snake crawling over on the ground, it will leave a trail of snakes on the spot. Some are diamond-shaped marks, and some are uneven marks, just like a water pipe pressing down."
After she explained, she held up a flashlight and got into the lush grass nest.
"Come and see!"
"This is the trace! This is the snake road!"
I also got into the grass nest. It didn't matter when I saw it. My scalp felt numb instantly!
I saw a large area of grass being flattened.
On the rainy ground, something seemed to be crawling across quickly. Looking at the mark, it was thicker than the mouth of a large stainless steel bowl, probably more than 20 centimeters in diameter!
It's cold in the Northeast and there are few snakes.
But this is an uninhabited land deep in the mountains! It's so inaccessible that it's not surprising that there are snakes, but I've never seen such a big snake, let alone seen it with my own eyes or heard of it.
"I...I'm going back to sleep, you...go find it yourself."
"No! Don't you want to see the Snake King?"
My head shook like a rattle, and I said I didn't want to at all, and then I asked her: "What do you want to do if you find the Snake King?"
"You can eat meat and drink blood. I really want to drink the blood of the Snake King."
"Drink...drink the blood! Didn't you say snakes are your friends?!"
She nodded and said, "They are friends, but friends are for eating. I started eating them when I was 6 years old."
"Isn't your Zhanghu custom not to eat or kill snakes?"
She smiled and said: "I am different, I have privileges."
I was dumbfounded. It was the first time I heard that friends are for food.
Seeing me stunned, she explained: "Brother Xiang, snakes are solitary animals, so there are very few snake kings. Since 1984, the ones we rated every year in Zhanghu cannot be regarded as real snake kings. At most, they are relatively rare. Variety."
As she spoke, her tone gradually became excited.
"The real snake king is impossible for ordinary people to catch! If the snake king is captured, all the snakes within a radius of dozens of kilometers will attack the person who captured the snake king until they die!"
I said, stop bragging and let’s go back. My shoes are all wet.
Seeing that I didn't believe it, she stamped her foot and said anxiously: "Brother Xiang, I'm not bragging! You believe me, everything I say is true!"
"Seventeen years ago, a man named Cheng from Hubei came to Zhanghu to ask my mother to save him! My mother asked him what was wrong, and he said that he had caught a big snake in a snake cage and killed it. As a result, every night he Snakes can be seen in the house, and later two people in his house were bitten to death, and the snake he killed was the snake king!"
"My mother didn't want to take care of it at first, but he kept begging!"
"Later, my mother asked him to go to the place where the snake king was catching, dig a big pit, and then buy 71 live old hens, cut off the wings of the old hens, tie the chicken feet, and throw them into the big pit. Burn a stick of incense in front of the pit."
"The next day he went to visit and found that all the 70 old hens in the pit had been eaten by snakes, except for one that was intact. My mother asked him to take the remaining hen back and stew it, and then the whole family We ate together, and later, no snake appeared in his house."
"But!"
As soon as the conversation changed, she gritted her teeth and said, "But in the summer of 1990, when the aphrodisiac snake wine business was very profitable, he forgot my mother's advice and followed others to catch snakes in the mountains! As a result, the next year In the summer, he was working in the fields and was bitten to death by more than a hundred snakes!"
"This is not over yet! After he died, snakes would appear around his graveyard at night. My mother told me this!"
At that time, I didn't believe what the snake girl said.
The rumors are not groundless. First, many people have to see it before there are rumors.
Later, I heard from others that this was indeed a true story. The person involved in the incident was named Cheng Diming. It was said that when the villagers went to carry the body in the field, they did not dare to come close. The ground was full of snakes! And his tomb became the famous "Lichuan Snake Tomb".
She was determined not to go back, and I couldn't convince her, so I had to grit my teeth and follow her to find the snake king.
There is obviously a certain kind of creature that really exists in reality, but you don't know anything about it, so it's easy to become afraid.
She could see the "snake path" in her eyes, but I couldn't.
stop-and-go.
Unknowingly, we were almost 2 kilometers away from the camp, and finally we caught up to a "small cave".
This cave was opened halfway up the mountain. The height of the cave entrance was less than 1.5 meters. There were no stones. It was a dirt cave. It was very dark inside and nothing could be seen.
She was very courageous and without hesitation, she drilled in with a flashlight in her mouth and waved to me.
I can't go in and I can't go out.
"Damn, I'm not afraid of a little girl, I'm afraid of a ball!"
The cave looked small, but it was very deep. I crawled forward behind her for almost ten minutes and still didn't reach the end.
Sudden!
I felt a chill on my neck, as if something had fallen on my head.
I subconsciously reached out to grab it!
"Don't move! This snake is poisonous..."
I couldn't see it at all, I just felt like there was a snake hanging on the back of my neck!
"Hiss..."
This is the voice of Tu Xinzi.
She slowly approached me without making any movement. In the darkness, her orange eyes were particularly dazzling, and I saw that her pupils had shrunk into a "vertical line."
One person and one snake, looking at each other.
Then, I clearly felt a cold snake crawling down my back and quickly disappeared into the darkness.
"It's okay, let's go."
"What kind of snake?" I asked, wiping my sweat.
"The one just now was a white-headed viper. One bite can kill a person, but it's okay. It's gone."
"Brother Xiang, hide the star grass in your arms so that snakes won't come near you." She turned around and handed the grass to me.
"You don't need it?" I quickly took it and stuffed it into my arms.
She shook her head: "Just take it, it doesn't matter if I don't use it."
