C10 Wild home

To let them live or die in a single thought.

But in the end, I retracted my hand. It wasn't only because I had intruded into their territory, but also because Daoist Priest had given me a total of two talismans.

If one were to spend just one talisman here, it would be very difficult to make a decision about the final talisman in the future if he were to encounter any other problems.

I walked through them and picked up Ah Tong. He wasn't hurt.

Just as I was about to leave, a little kid called out to me. He said he smelled the same thing on me.

I ignored him and walked on. I didn't know how much longer it would be until dawn.

The Wall-Hitting Ghost made me lose track of time completely. I could only go to the front of the house to have a look.

When the fog cleared, I didn't see my tombstone where I'd left it. Perhaps it was because the fog had disturbed my mind and made me hallucinate.

In the dead of night, in the wilderness.

There was only one house with a light on at the foot of the mountain. If I lived in a place like this, it would probably be lit up all night. Who knew what was hiding in the darkness?

Ah Tong still hasn't woken up yet, but I'm not worried, because this kid's saliva has already moistened my shoulders.

I went into the yard of the house, where a dog was lying on the ground, sleeping, tied to the door.

My visit seemed to have disturbed his rest, and at the sound of it he sprang up from the ground, grinning and baring his teeth, ready to pounce at any moment, even if he could not free himself from the chains that bound him.

What made me curious was that in the next second, he shrunk his body and let out a "wuu wuu" sound of begging, looking really pitiful.

I turned and looked behind me. I thought it was something behind that made the dog react, but there was nothing behind it but a dark, empty graveyard.

When I got close to it, it immediately moved to the side. It was afraid of me, but what was the reason?

He knocked on the door and heard a woman's voice.

When the door opened, the old woman's face could be seen through the crack in the door. She looked to be in her seventies, older than my grandmother.

"Young man, it's so late. What's the matter?" The old woman beckoned me inside.

The room was particularly warm, and I stood in the doorway and told him where I'd come from.

She didn't ask me why I was out in the open at night, but asked me to put her on a chair and sleep for a while.

"Grandma, why are you still up so late?"

She smiled, put on her glasses and sat down in the middle of a pile of straw hats. She said, I'm getting old, and I don't know why I can't sleep, so I knit my hat.

I was about to say something when she suddenly said, Maybe it's because I'm dying, so I have more time to open my eyes.

For a moment I didn't know how to respond. I stared at her proficient movements, lost in thought.

"Young man, young man!"

"Ang?" When I came to, she asked me if I wanted a bath and how my clothes were dirty.

"Grandma, stop calling me young lad. Just call me A-Liang." I put down my bag. "No need, I'll change my clothes later."

She nodded, but still seemed to care about my dirty clothes.

I told her everything that had happened, and she smiled, still working.

As expected, she was already used to it and did not find anything strange about what happened to me that night.

"Liang, you're right. There was a passing guest who didn't know that this is a cemetery. He had the same experience as you. If it wasn't for my wife bringing him out, the consequences would have been unimaginable."

"What happened?" I asked her curiously, and learned that an old man was still asleep in the bedroom upstairs.

She finally stopped what she was doing and lowered her voice to a whisper.

The last time, when he passed through the graveyard at night, there was also a big fog, and then he encountered the so-called Wall-Hitting Ghost. He ran for a long time, and found that he had been walking in circles for a full ten times, and each time he had seen his own name on a gravestone.

He was particularly frightened and anxious. When these two emotions intertwined, he became irritable and pushed all the tombstones over the grave. If my wife hadn't heard the sound and brought him out, he might have died there.

He had violated a great taboo. Knocking down the tombstone was purely to anger the people in the graveyard.

I was glad I hadn't been so impulsive, or I wouldn't have left in one piece.

A jolt went through my head, and when I asked her if she had heard any shouting before I came, she shook her head and said no.

I took a deep breath and said nothing more. She was still fiddling with her hat and didn't look up at me.

I stood up and said I was sleepy so I ended the conversation. Grandma put me and Ah Tong in the downstairs cubicle, and she told me where to shower and where to drink.

But definitely not upstairs.

I lay on the bed and looked at the sleeping Ah Tong beside me.

Weird, truly weird. Just now grandma said that the person before her was saved by her wife because she heard the sound.

And when I asked her if she had heard any shouts, she told me she had not.

This was extremely strange. I had clearly been shouting in that graveyard for so long, and it was very loud, so why didn't she hear it? Then how did she hear that person's shout before?

As expected, I couldn't relax my guard when I went out. I was relieved when I opened the door, because the other party was an old grandma with a kind face. They shouldn't be in any danger to me.

I lay on the bed staring at the door, afraid that she would push it open.

It wasn't until there was a sound outside the door, followed by a series of clicks on the steps, that I was sure she had gone upstairs.

The sound of the door closing, and the woman's voice, were faintly indistinct, but they seemed to be talking to someone else, though to me there was no one but her voice.

Finally, unable to hold on any longer, sleep overcame my wariness, and I placed a talisman under the pillow and closed my eyes.

The next morning, a light knock on the door woke me up from my sleep. I looked around and saw that nothing had happened. The soil outside the window was slightly damp. It seemed as if it had rained a light rain last night.

I rolled up my sleeves. My clothes hurt from rubbing against the wound. The wound from last night in the fog was still there.

I dressed and pushed the door open, and my grandmother, carrying a large bowl of porridge, beckoned me over.

"Come, come, come. Come and eat."

She put two bowls in front of me, one in front of her.

She asked me if Ah Tong was up, and I said he was still sleeping and would eat for him when he got up.

I didn't touch my chopsticks for a long time. I was relieved to see her take a mouthful after mouthful of the salted vegetables.

I yelled porridge in my mouth as I asked her, "Elder, where did the elder go? Why didn't he come to eat?"

She put some pickles in my bowl and said that her wife had already finished her meal and had gone up the mountain to chop wood.

After dinner, Grandma went to feed the dogs, and I dressed Ah Tong and went with her, unlike last night.

The dog was not afraid of me, as it had been the night before. Instead, it seemed to be very close to me, rubbing against my legs.

Then why did it have such a reaction last night? Regardless of whether it was the grave or the people, they were all extremely strange.

After all, she had taken me in for the night, and I did not hesitate to let her go.

It was not easy for the two old men to live in this kind of place. There was a cemetery beside them, so it was not difficult for them to go somewhere else.

I asked her where her children were, and she told me that she had two sons and a daughter, and that neither of them wanted to live in such a place, so they moved to the city.

And they are used to living, do not want to follow their children to the city, do not know anything, live a strange life.

The life in the mountain can be considered to be quite comfortable. If I were to choose, I would probably choose the mountain village. After all, I have lived for 18 years.

He threw the wooden bucket far away and landed on the river. Soon, the river was filled with water and the bucket sank.

I almost slipped and fell when I tried to pull it, but my grandma easily hit buckets after buckets.

Just as we were about to carry the water back, we heard Ah Tong's shout from the direction of the house.

I threw down the bucket and ran toward the house, my grandmother even more anxious than I was.