"coming?"
The shirtless butcher saw Yu Zhile and a smile appeared on his face.
"Sit down for a moment, I'll be ready soon." The butcher said and the movements in his hands sped up.
Yu Zhile nodded, entered the store, found a stool and sat down.
The woman was a little surprised when she saw that Yu Zhile didn't show any concern, but what was more surprising was the butcher's attitude towards Yu Zhile.
Women don't have the careless character of Yu Zhile. The butcher is very strong and has a bad temper. In this village, he kills the most people, not at night, but during the day.
Most of the local gangsters in the past died at the hands of butchers.
The stability of Huai Village can be largely attributed to the butcher in front of him who was breaking down the pork with a butcher's knife.
"Two pounds of pork, as usual." The woman said to the butcher.
The butcher nodded, picked up a piece of pork, packed it and handed it to the woman.
The woman smiled, glanced at Yu Zhile, said nothing, turned around and left with the pork.
"What are the old rules?" Yu Zhile asked curiously.
"Barter, exchange grain for meat, bring it to me in the afternoon." The butcher put down the butcher's knife, washed his hands, wiped them on a towel, took out a stool, and sat next to Yu Zhile .
"So that's it." Yu Zhile suddenly realized that if no money is needed, this most primitive method is the best way to maintain the simplicity of the people.
Although there is some trouble, the villagers here have endured a lot of trouble.
This little trouble is no longer a trouble.
"Do you have anything you want to ask?" The butcher looked at Yu Zhile, "I know you are different. You should have some understanding of that thing."
"From what I see, you don't seem to be afraid of that thing."
"Usually, people who enter here for the first time can't reach the entrance of the village. Moreover, you are very familiar with the extra things in your body."
"That's what I came here for." Yu Zhile stretched out his hand to support his chin, looking at the smiling villagers walking on the street, and the children playing.
The butcher's eyes instantly narrowed, and an evil aura suddenly appeared.
"I'm here to solve it, not you." Yu Zhile said without turning his head.
After hearing this, the butcher was silent for a while, and the permeating aura on his body slowly subsided.
"Tell me about it." The butcher looked away slightly, and his eyes fell on the butcher's knife on the chopping board.
Whenever what Yu Zhile said dissatisfied him, he would chop off Yu Zhile's head.
“It’s not uncommon to see something like this out there, and it’s certainly not common.”
"Ghosts cannot be killed. The only ones who can deal with ghosts are ghosts. Ghosts act according to the rules of killing, but ghosts with intelligence and high levels of terror can kill people without rules. Although it is said to be irregular, in fact it still follows rules, but the rules change. It became instinctive.”
"Since there are ghosts in the world, there are things to deal with ghosts. The only ones who can deal with ghosts are ghosts. So how can people deal with ghosts?"
"Of course I control the ghost and then deal with the ghost."
"Ghosts are very dangerous things, and of course there are risks in controlling them."
"The evil ghost will wake up, and after waking up, it will kill the host."
"If you want the evil ghost to not wake up, you can only find a way to suppress the ghost. And only ghosts can deal with ghosts, so you can only use ghosts to suppress ghosts."
"That's why you can deal with that thing, because after you killed all the villagers, you already had the spirit of a ghost in your body, or you were already a ghost at that time."
"My purpose here is simple, to capture that ghost and control it."
"My purpose is the same as yours. You want to deal with the ghost and relieve the plight of Huai Village."
"I'm not here to solve your difficulties, but the result is the same."
"If you deal with that ghost, your nightmare will be over, and I will live."
The butcher's gaze shifted again. He looked at the villagers on the street, his eyes flickering slightly.
"I couldn't kill that thing. No matter how many times I killed it, it would reappear. I fought all the way to the top of the mountain, and then continued to kill, and finally it was daybreak." The butcher was silent for a while and told the situation on the mountain.
"Then everything will come back to life, the villagers will come back to life, and I will appear in the pork shop with everything on me gone, as if it never happened."
"Have you ever been killed by it?" Yu Zhile asked a key question.
The butcher shook his head, "No, I don't dare. I'm afraid that if I get killed, it will all be over. I have a premonition."
"As long as I die in the hands of that thing, no one will be resurrected."
Yu Zhile nodded, "That's true. At that time, you had the ghost's jigsaw puzzle. Once you were killed by it, it would complete the jigsaw puzzle, and then it would leave here and leave the world that trapped it. place."
"Once you are killed by it, all your efforts will be lost."
Hearing this, the butcher couldn't help but feel scared.
After repeating this for so many years, he had never thought about death, being killed by it, and maybe starting over again the next day.
But thinking about the villagers who died at his own hands, he gave up again.
Now that I think about it, it's a good thing he gave up, otherwise he would be a sinner, the sinner of the entire Huai Village.
"Is there any way?" the butcher asked after being silent for a while. The repeated days were not easy to bear, nor were the days of killing people every night.
Every time he killed someone, he felt a little guilty in his heart. Although he knew that the villagers would reappear tomorrow, this guilt would not disappear with the resurrection of the villagers.
Because he was not sure whether these villagers were the ones he killed.
"I know that this is actually a dream, a dream that has been repeated countless times, but the dreamer is not just me, but the whole village."
"I also know that we will all die when we wake up from the dream, and they also know it."
"But we don't like this kind of immortal life. Time stops. The moonlight is the same every night. Children will never grow up. That ghost never stops going down the mountain to kill people."
"I can't watch, I can't watch innocent villagers die in front of that ghost."
"You know, the boy from the Liu family is still a baby who can only drink milk. Every night, the boy from the Liu family cries and chops off his child's head, just because he is afraid that he will be killed by that thing."
"Everything is repetitive, nothing changes, time doesn't move forward, do you know this feeling?"
The butcher looked at Yu Zhile with a dead expression.
Yu Zhile was horrified.
The people here are probably crazy.
"I may not know, but I think this situation is very scary." Yu Zhile couldn't imagine this scene. If it were him, he might have gone crazy several times, then got better several times, and finally lost hope and gained again. Hope, then numbness.
It's like working on an assembly line, mechanical and numb, doing the same thing every day.
"We can die, but we can't die in the hands of that thing, and we can't let that thing leave here and go outside to harm others. This is the thought that we have repeated and killed countless times."
"The more we repeat it, the safer people outside will be."
"Our misfortune cannot be experienced by others. This is terrible."
The butcher looked up at the blue sky in the distance and fell silent again.
Yu Zhile was silent for a long time and sighed, "If you believe me, I will go up the mountain tonight, maybe I can find out the truth about that ghost that can't be killed."
He had actually guessed that the reason why the ghost couldn't be killed might just be because he was in a dream.
This shows that in this village, no, it should be in this dream, there is a person who has been dreaming.
He knew the ghost's killing patterns. Everything in the dream would be attacked by it, whether it was a living person or a ghost.
This ghost does not have the ability to create dreams, it only has the ability to enter dreams.
When it appears, it means someone is dreaming.
To deal with this ghost, you must find the dreamer and wake it up in the dream, or kill it.
When it wakes up or dies, the ghost will instantly escape from the dream and then appear in reality.
And he will follow the ghost out of the dream.
In reality, he could easily imprison that ghost, very easily.
"What if you die in the hands of that ghost?" The butcher tilted his head and looked at Yu Zhile, "It's not that I underestimate you, it's just that I don't believe you. Although you lost to the weapon yesterday, the horror of that thing, you If you haven’t experienced it, you don’t know.”
"If I go up the mountain, I have a 90% chance of surviving."
"If I killed you yesterday, the injuries on my body would recover instantly, and the things that belong to me would wake up."
"At that time, I killed that thing like a dog."
Yu Zhile shook his head and said extremely casually.
"Aren't you ashamed?" The butcher frowned.
"No, when I fought you yesterday, the ghost in me was about to wake up. If I kill you, the ghost in me will definitely wake up."
"I am the most terrifying person as a ghost."
It's not a boast. Once you kill the butcher yesterday, your own ghost eyes will be stimulated to wake up in an instant, and the other ghosts will also recover from their dormant state within a minute.
When he is in full condition, he has no problem beating an S-class ghost.
"There is a ghost in you too!" The butcher was shocked this time.
"Outside, I am one of the top group of ghost controllers. I am in the same generation as me. There are no more than five people who are better than me." Yu Zhile stretched out a hand and moved his fingers slightly.
"Ghost Controller..." The butcher chewed on these three words, "Is that the name for controlling ghosts?"
"Yeah." Yu Zhile nodded.
The situation in the village is probably known, but there are still many things that are unclear.
The ghosts in this village should be the resurrection of some old antique after his death.
If the guess is correct, it should be the ghost of Zhuang Xianjian, the first leader of Haoliang.
And that black cat...
Yu Zhile guessed that he should have seen it before, but he couldn't remember where.
"You know a lot and are capable enough, but that's not why you can go up the mountain."
"You should know that once you die, everything we have done before will be in vain. I can't bet, and neither can they."
The butcher shook his head, but then he continued, "But you can kill me and go up the mountain with your own ability."
"You lost to a knife before..."
Having said this, the butcher stood up and turned around to enter the shop. Yu Zhile looked at the butcher who entered in confusion.
Soon, the butcher came out, carrying a handful of long items wrapped in cowhide.
"The Hundred Forging Sword, I took the time to make it. It's no worse than the knife I use. It's Tang Heng style. It's one meter and three meters long, so it's not too short."
The butcher untied the cowhide, and a beautiful long knife appeared in the air.
Under the sun, the long knife shone with a dazzling cold light.
Yu Zhile reached out and took it. It was a little heavy, but he could accept the weight.
Gently stroking the long knife, Yu Zhile couldn't help but sigh, "What a good knife."
"Tonight, everyone depends on their ability. If you win, hope will be on you. If you lose, then you will try to win in the future." The butcher sat down and said expressionlessly.
Yu Zhile let out a breath, "It seems like this is the only way."
"Tonight, everyone depends on their abilities." Yu Zhile picked up the cowhide on the ground and wrapped the knife again.
The butcher said nothing, just looked at the villagers passing by on the street.
Yu Zhile was silent for a while, then stood up and left.
He had to go back and get familiar with the knife.
The butcher didn't stop him, and the two of them tacitly agreed not to mention the matter of learning how to recruit people.
"then."
Just when Yu Zhile was about to leave, the butcher shouted. Yu Zhile turned around and a piece of wrapped pork was thrown over.
Yu Zhile reached out to catch it and was a little surprised, "I don't have anything."
"It's free," the butcher said.
Yu Zhile was stunned for a moment, then thought about it, turned and left without saying anything.
The sun is shining brightly, the birds are singing and the flowers are fragrant. The villagers live and work in peace and contentment, and everything is peaceful.
“Old man, what’s for lunch today?”
Yu Zhile pushed open the door of the small courtyard.
"Eat red sweet potatoes." The old man knitted a bamboo basket on his back and said without raising his head.
"Why eat sweet potatoes? Let's eat meat."
Yu Zhile placed the pork in front of the old man, then went to the kitchen to take out the whetstone, unwrapped the cowhide and started sharpening the knife.
This long knife has not been used for a long time and needs to be sharpened for a while before it can be used.
The old man finally raised his head, with a very surprised look on his face, "This is the butcher's treasured knife that cannot be forged over time."
The old man stood up, trotted over and squatted in front of Yu Zhile, "Why did he give it to you?"
"When I asked him for it in the past, he ignored me."
The old man looked at the long knife rubbing up and down on the whetstone with envy, and the look in his eyes seemed to be looking at some peerless beauty.
"If I kill him tonight, your dilemma may be solved."
"Yesterday, I lost to the knife. Maybe I won't lose tonight." Yu Zhile said calmly.
The old man's expression became serious.
"Does he believe it?" the old man asked with some disbelief. I don't know if it was because of excitement that the old man spoke a little loudly.
"Do you still have a choice?" Yu Zhile picked up the knife, looked it up and down, then watered it and continued to sharpen it.
The old man was silent. He didn't know how long it had passed. He sighed, "There is really no choice. Instead of continuing like this, it is better to accept the changes that have been introduced."
"Perhaps you are the real hope."
The old man stood up, turned around and continued to weave his back bamboo basket.
Stagnant water needs external living water to keep the fish inside alive. Even if this living water is only short-lived, it is better than nothing.
Yu Zhile smiled and began to sharpen the knife seriously.
But it’s in Taiping Ancient Town.
(End of chapter)
