When at Amei's house, Lu Yingjiu had already seen a faint black mark on Feng Mao's neck.
Just like Ye Deyong in the photo.
In addition, although Feng Mao looked healthy and had a rosy complexion, Lu Yingjiu was more cautious and secretly prayed to the gods at that time.
After summoning the gods, his five senses were enhanced and he smelled the blood on Feng Mao.
Very faint, almost covered by the damp rain, but it is there.
He remained calm and didn't say a word, nor did he tell Ye Feng right away - he knew that Ye Feng attached great importance to his family, and when he saw that something was wrong with his grandfather in the photo, he said nothing and set out for the village the next day.
Sometimes, worrying too much can lead to confusion. Lu Yingjiu didn't understand the situation in the village, so he left Ye Feng and Xiao Li to comfort everyone and went to the village chief's house to take a look at the situation.
The house in front of me was brightly lit, illuminating the rainy night.
It should have been a warm feeling, but now it has become a bit weird.
Lu Yingjiu wanted to knock on the door directly, but heard a "creak-bang!" sound instead.
It sounded like a door opening and closing.
And it didn't seem to be coming from inside the house, it seemed more like outside.
Could it be that Feng Mao went out
Lu Yingjiu was stunned for a moment, then walked to the window and looked into the house.
Just half an hour ago, there was a figure swaying by the window. Now the lights were still on in the house, but there was no one in the living room, it was completely empty... except for a baby cradle, in which there was a pink little hand holding a rattle, shaking it up and down.
Child
Lu Yingjiu thought, Feng Mao was really careless to leave such a young child at home and just go out.
He looked at it silently for a few seconds, then said to Jing Xian, "Just go in, I'll see if the window is locked."
Just as he said this, he remembered something else and quickly pulled Jing Xian to add, "Let me do it, don't just break other people's windows."
"Oh." Jing Xian's face was full of disappointment.
Lu Yingjiu reached out to open the window.
Fortunately, Feng Mao had not locked the window. He pulled it gently and the window opened silently.
He turned over lightly, and walked into the house with a damp body, embraced by the warm air. Jing Xian followed closely behind him and also came in.
The room was very quiet, except for the sound of the rattle. Lu Yingjiu took a quick look and confirmed that Feng Mao was really gone.
Since he wasn't there, he wasn't in a hurry to chase him. He could just search his house.
Looking around, there were scratches on several wooden sofas, neither deep nor shallow, very similar to the ones on the sofa in A-Mei's house.
Lu Yingjiu touched it, feeling the uneven texture, and seemed to be thinking about something.
The child seemed to be aware of the movement and made a series of babbling sounds. No one knew what he was saying, but he continued to shake the rattle. Lu Yingjiu did not approach him, but glanced at him from a distance.
This was just a casual glance.
It turned out that there were scratches on the inside of the baby cradle.
… Even human fingernails can’t scratch such marks, let alone such a young child.
Lu Yingjiu thought for a moment, and said to Jing Xian, "I'll go upstairs, you stay downstairs and search his house to see if there's anything."
Jingxian nodded.
They both searched things quickly, one using talisman paper and the other using Yin Qi. Suddenly, Feng Mao's curtains, potted plants, and various small decorations... all moved automatically without wind, books flipped, and the TV on the first floor was affected by the Yin Qi and started to flash snow screen. If anyone suddenly returned home, they would definitely think it was haunted.
Lu Yingjiu put down the book in his hand, thinking that this was indeed a ghost, and it had disturbed Jingxian.
He glanced downstairs.
I just happened to make eye contact with Jing Xian.
Jing Xian smiled at him.
Lu Yingjiu looked away awkwardly and continued to turn to the next book.
The black-haired ball came to play with him again, rubbing against his feet, and finally tried to chew the potted plant at the end of the corridor, but he picked it up and took it away.
At the end of the corridor on the second floor, Feng Mao's bedroom was locked. Lu Yingjiu used his excellent lock-picking skills. He straightened a paper clip, turned it into the keyhole, and pried the door open silently.
—This time, he finally gained something.
The wind brought by the talisman paper swept through the entire room, opened a large book on the bedside, and stopped at the middle page.
There is a photo inside.
The photo shows a bright sunny day, with Feng Mao and Ye Deyong standing side by side by the village lake.
Feng Mao smiled brightly, and the wrinkles on his face were squeezed together, while Ye Deyong still maintained a neutral expression and no emotion could be seen.
These two people actually know each other.
Besides being surprised, there was something in the photo that made Lu Yingjiu feel very strange.
That is Feng Mao’s age.
Lu Yingjiu flipped through the photos but couldn't find the time.
However, Ye Feng said that the sanatorium was closed in 2002. Ye Deyong came back one after another in the next one or two years, and finally died of lung cancer in 2007.
In other words, this photo was most likely taken before 2003, and Ye Deyong in the photo looks quite young and energetic. Combining his appearance, Lu Yingjiu guessed that it was at least before 1995.
To put it another way, the latest should be 2007, which is 14 years ago.
Feng Mao's appearance in the photo has not changed at all.
Can a person's appearance remain completely unchanged for several years
Feng Mao looks about 4 or 5 years old in the photo. From 4 or 5 to 6 or 7, most people would have experienced a lot of changes, whether it is wrinkles, mental state, or gray hair.
Feng Mao in the photo already has some white hair.
Today, several years later, not only have his wrinkles and white hair not increased significantly, even the length of his hair has not changed, as if time has stopped in the past few years and he has just walked out of the photo.
Lu Yingjiu took the photo, stepped back and went out, and said to Jing Xian downstairs: "Can you find his ID card? Or anything related to his age?"
"There is one." Jing Xian answered immediately.
He lightly hooked his finger, and a cold wind immediately blew a photo frame over and landed steadily in his hand.
The baby next to them witnessed the whole process, with a look of (⊙⊙) on his face.
Then continue shaking the rattle like crazy and giggling, meaning one more!
Lu Yingjiu went downstairs and watched with him.
The photo frame showed a huge birthday cake. Feng Mao was sitting at the dining table, and next to him was a little boy of seven or eight years old who was cutting the cake.
Next to it, there was a child writing with a fountain pen, "Happy 50th birthday, Grandpa! Live a long life!"
The time of signing is
In other words, Feng Mao should be 71 years old this year.
But the man who appeared before them looked nothing like 70.
Lu Yingjiu looked at the two photos in silence, and then said, "We haven't visited his backyard yet."
Ten minutes later, they came out of the back door and into the backyard.
The backyard was overgrown with weeds. It was not properly maintained and was a mess. There were all kinds of wild flowers and weeds. It was a good place for mosquitoes to breed. In the mud, there was a line of new footprints leading deep into the grass.
It seems to have been left by Feng Mao.
Lu Yingjiu followed the footprints and saw something unusual among the knee-high weeds.
He put the fur ball down, and it immediately spread out on the soil and grass, digging up all the mud covering it.
The handle and the iron door were exposed underneath.
It turned out to be a door leading to the underground!
There were very complicated patterns carved on the door, which seemed to be some kind of runes that even Lu Yingjiu had never seen before.
Just as he was thinking about how to break it in, he saw Jing Xian gently place his hand on the door.
Jing Xian's hands had sharp joints and slender fingers, which made him look powerful. A few seconds after he put the door on the ground, a "sizzling" sound was heard, and the lines on the door disappeared from the middle, as if they were wiped out by some strange force.
The cold wind around made the rain become biting, and white air came out of Lu Yingjiu's mouth.
As long as Jing Xian makes a move, there will definitely be scenes of encountering big ghosts and monsters around him.
After all the runes disappeared, Jing Xian pulled the handle again - he was very strong and opened the door without much effort.
"Squeak-bang!"
A familiar voice came.
They looked at each other and understood that this was the sound they heard before entering the door.
It seems that Feng Mao really went to the basement.
Lu Yingjiu leaned forward to look down. It was pitch black below, but there was a circle of spider silk floating at the door, white and swaying in the wind, and wet by the rain until it was hanging down.
He took a piece of talisman paper, lit it and threw it down.
The flame of this talisman paper is weak and will go out by itself soon. Even if it is thrown into hay, it will not cause a fire. It is very safe and is only used for exploring the way.
As the talisman paper fell, the firelight illuminated the layers of spider silk, all of which were white and entangled together, filling the entire passage. When they fell down, they looked like some strange curtain... Just looking at it made people's face itch, as if they could imagine the touch of the spider web floating on their face, and reminded them of the rustling sounds of spiders and their hairy feet.
A spider web of this size would require at least hundreds or thousands of spiders to create.
Moreover, there is a negative energy on the spider web.
Lu Yingjiu frowned and threw a few more talismans down.
This time, the flames melted the spider silk directly below, along with the negative energy.
Jing Xian jumped down first and turned around to stretch out his hand to him.
Time was running out, so Lu Yingjiu didn't hesitate or act pretentiously this time. She jumped down directly and was caught firmly in Jing Xian's arms.
—He vaguely felt Jing Xian pinching his waist.
But he had no evidence, so he just glared at Jing Xian and that was it.
The black-haired ball followed them closely.
Lu Yingjiu lit the talisman paper for lighting.
As they got closer in the firelight, Lu Yingjiu could see the magnificence of the spider web more clearly. The road in front of them was about four or five people wide, stretching to an unknown end, and spider webs were spread in every corner.
Spiders of all sizes were crawling around, their bodies looming in the white silk. Lu Yingjiu didn't know many types of spiders, but she did some research in the past two days and saw spiders like wolf spiders and white-fronted stilt spiders that don't weave webs, but they were actually lying on the web, which was very strange.
There was also a strange smell in the air, mixed with the scent of earth and rain, which made people feel uncomfortable.
Fortunately, there were simple wooden boards laid on the mud in the passage, and although it was dirty, it was still convenient to walk on.
Lu Yingjiu walked forward and couldn't help but sigh: "This place is just like a Pansi Cave."
Jing Xian didn't answer.
Lu Yingjiu waited for a few seconds before she heard him ask in confusion, "What is Pansi Cave?"
Lu Yingjiu was stunned, then remembered that Jing Xian probably had not read the four great classics, so he couldn't help but smile and briefly told him the story of the Spider Cave, how the seven spider spirits kidnapped Tang Monk and how they took a bath in the spring water.
Unexpectedly, after hearing this, Jing Xian came over nervously and hugged his waist again.
Road to welcome wine:
Lu Yingjiu asked: "What is this for?"
"You're not afraid that a female spider will come and snatch you away, so you drag me to take a bath together." Jing Xian said.
Lu Yingjiu: “…”
He had a new understanding of Jing Xian's excuses. He pried the hand off his waist, threw it aside, and walked forward first.
Jing Xian followed behind him with a look of regret on his face.
This underground passage seems to have no end. The further you go, the darker it gets and the more rampant the spiders become.
The spiders they saw before were very scared of people, but after they had been walking for about 2 minutes, some spiders dared to approach them and looked like they wanted to bite them.
These spiders posed no threat, and Lu Yingjiu easily drove them away with the light from the talisman paper.
After walking for a while, he found that he seemed to have not heard Mao Tuanzi's footsteps, and he hadn't heard Jing Xian speak for a long time.
He turned around.
He almost suffocated when he turned back.
Jing Xian was actually holding a ball of fur in his hand and was moving it towards a big spider on the wall!
The furry ball stuck out its tongue, eager to try, its saliva almost dripping to the ground, and wanted to stretch out its claws to scratch it.
Lu Yingjiu:?!
Seeing that Maotuanzi was about to bite him, he quickly stopped him: "Respectfully!"
When Jing Xian was discovered by him, his hands trembled and he quickly shrank back with the fur ball, looking at him with an innocent face.
Lu Yingjiu: "Don't feed it weird food anymore!"
Jing Xian: “Hmmmm.”
Lu Yingjiu felt uneasy no matter how she looked at it, so she snatched the ball of fur from his hand and held it in her arms.
Maotuanzi: “Aoaowu—” expressing dissatisfaction.
Lu Yingjiu tapped its forehead.
We walked like this for a few more minutes.
The spider webs around were almost as thick as a curtain, and finally a faint light appeared at the end of the passage.
It wasn't a fire, but more like a light bulb.
When they got closer, they saw an iron door embedded in the soil and rock wall. There was an incandescent lamp on each side of the iron door.
The iron gate was locked.
Lu Yingjiu looked at Jing Xian and poked him.
Jing Xian received the order and immediately removed the entire iron door with force. The metal of the entire door was almost crumpled, and he threw it aside in grievance.
The turbid air in the house hit me in the face.
The inside was clean, without a single spider or spider web to be seen, nor was there any sign of Feng Mao.
Lu Yingjiu stepped in and saw a simple single bed, a TV and a player, and the bookshelf next to it was piled with black videotapes.
He held up the talisman and took a closer look.
The videotapes were divided into six piles in total, with varying numbers of items from the first pile to the last, some piled very high and some piled completely empty.
A wooden frame is embedded on top of each pile, inside which is a gray-black stone slab, about 15 inches in size, engraved with patterns.
Lu Yingjiu first looked at the first stone slab.
The patterns are all very simple lines, like some cultural relics left by primitive people.
The painting shows a giant spider perched on a mountain, its body almost buried in the clouds. A man kneels on one knee in front of it, stretching out his left hand to take the spider silk from its front legs.
There were already quite a few people behind him, all with spider silk wrapped around their left hands.
At this moment Lu Yingjiu understood: spiders are indeed related to the fact that all the villagers are left-handed.
Perhaps it is because according to legend, our ancestors received the spider silk with their left hands, so they believed that the left hand was sacred.
Below this painting, the title "Spider Mother" is written
On the second stone slab, there was a picture of a group of little people dancing around a fire, and the name of the picture was "Sacrifice".
There were a lot of videotapes under the stone slab. Lu Yingjiu picked up one, turned on the TV and put it into the machine.
After a flash of snow, the screen appeared on TV:
The bonfire was burning, and a group of villagers were dancing and singing around it.
This should have been a warm and lively scene, but both their actions and singing were extremely weird.
The singing was sobbing, like a baby crying, or like a sharp wind blowing through the valley. Their dancing movements were extremely stiff, with every inch of their joints twisting abnormally, like a group of marionettes... or like they were imitating some arthropods, such as spiders.
Lu Yingjiu fast-forwarded through the video with an expressionless face, then put in other videotapes.
The images were the same, they were all dancing and singing around the fire, but the time and location were different. Judging from the number of tapes, it was probably recorded over several years.
While fast-forwarding, Lu Yingjiu would press the pause button from time to time and look carefully at the villagers' faces.
Sure enough, he found a few familiar faces.
He had met those people in recent days.
These people who danced more than ten years ago still live in the village with the same appearance. The girls are still as beautiful as flowers, and the boys are still young and handsome. Time has forever frozen them in a moment, never passing.
Lu Yingjiu said, "Everyone in this village has problems..." He pondered for a moment, then smiled helplessly, "Those amulets I gave to them were wasted."
He moved on to the next tablet, titled "Grace."
The slate showed a person with eight spider legs growing out of his back, and a large pool of vomit on the ground. Upon closer inspection, it was all internal organs, with liver and gallbladder flowing everywhere.
He was desperately vomiting out his internal organs.
The more he vomited, the more spider-like he became.
The two people in front of him - to be precise, they were no longer people, but two spiders crawling happily.
Jing Xian's hand touched the slate and said, "The anchor who plays with the pen fairy is called Zhao Ziming, right?"
"Yes," Lu Yingjiu closed his eyes, "it seems that when he went to the bathroom to vomit, he vomited out all his internal organs. He turned into a human-faced spider."
Then, without his good friend Aaron knowing, he was stepped on to death.
Lu Yingjiu has seen many tragedies and heard many tragic stories.
His thoughts would not be affected by this, but he couldn't help but sigh and let out a soft sigh.
When I turned on the videotape, I saw that the images were all of people vomiting their internal organs.
Some vomited while leaning on the toilet, some vomited into the sink, and some vomited directly on the ground, a bloody mess. There was no sound in the videotape, but Lu Yingjiu could almost imagine their heart-wrenching sounds.
Then, spider legs grew on its back and its body gradually shrank.
They turned into spiders.
The fourth tablet is titled "Transformation".
There was no videotape, just a village and a few spiders painted on the stone slab.
The whole village has turned into spiders.
The fifth slate is titled "Heavy Rain".
There was still a village drawn on the stone slab, but this time there was not a single spider, and it had become a simple stickman again.
The matchstick people waved their hands to greet each other, and outside the village, cars were driving towards them.
Lu Yingjiu frowned and put the videotape in.
Then his breath hitched—
The faces of those anchors actually appeared on the screen!
The footage was very shaky, like the effect produced by a pinhole camera in the news.
He quickly browsed through every videotape and saw the familiar figures in red clothes, A'long, Zhao Ziming, and even Ye Feng and Xiao Li... Some of them were talking in the hotel, some were climbing the mountain to the sanatorium, and some just flashed by in the car.
Judging from the angle and time, it seems that different people recorded it, such as the hotel waiter, the village doctor at the entrance of the village, or the old man feeding chickens by the lake. They patiently and quietly recorded the daily life of outsiders.
Since the first group of anchors entered the village, the entire village began to monitor them!
Lu Yingjiu subconsciously looked at the last stone slab.
There was nothing on the slate, as if the painting was not finished.
There was only an empty title next to it: "Feast".
It's creepy enough.
His gaze returned to the first slab.
"Spider Mother..." Lu Yingjiu murmured, "I have never heard of this name. Jingxian, do you know anything about it?"
Jing Xian pondered for a moment: "She has never been to the ghost world. I have only heard some rumors and don't know if she really exists. If she really exists, then she must have been staying in the world of the living."
He continued, "According to legend, the Spider Queen is a spider as huge as a mountain. She turns those who follow her into spiders, making them immortal, and sometimes they can turn back into humans."
"Of course, if those human-faced spiders want to live forever and have human appearance, they have to constantly turn new people into spiders to provide new followers for the Spider Mother."
Lu Yingjiu asked, "Does it feel a bit like being an accomplice to a tiger?"
—Legend has it that people who are killed by tigers will become ghosts after death and will lure other passers-by to the tiger.
"Yes," Jing Xian nodded, "The Spider Queen is extremely greedy and will never be satisfied. These anchors have been her prey from the beginning."
Lu Yingjiu pondered for a moment.
The situation is very tricky.
He walked around the house twice, thinking as he walked, and then said, "I wanted to wait until the typhoon passed and the mudslides were cleared before going out with the others, but it seems that's not possible now."
He pointed to Grace and said, "Since one person has begun to transform into a spider and we don't know the means of infection yet, it's too dangerous to wait any longer."
"So?" Jing Xian looked at him - at times like this, his tone was relaxed and nonchalant, except when he asked about Lu Yingjiu, he was extra serious, "What are you going to do?"
Lu Yingjiu said: "Ye Feng said that the Ye family would go to worship the mountain, that is, along the pavilion on the top of the mountain, and follow the route blessed by the snake."
"A place protected by ghosts and gods might be much safer, which can delay or inhibit their transformation into spiders. Of course, this is just my guess. In any case, we can't stay here. We must find a way out."
He took a deep breath and said, "Although climbing the mountain during a typhoon is a bad decision... but now it seems that we have to take those dozen people and walk the mountain worship route again. And we have to set off now, immediately, and right away."
As soon as he finished speaking, Lu Yingjiu heard a rustling sound.
It came from outside the house, at the end of the corridor, and was approaching rapidly!
Lu Yingjiu's expression turned stern, and he flipped his hand and found four or five pieces of talisman paper, ready to throw them out.
Then Jing Xian took her into his arms.
Road to welcome wine:
He was almost buried in Jing Xian's arms. When he raised his head, he almost bumped into Jing Xian face to face.
Jing Xian looked at him seriously and said, "Look, the female spider spirit who can take a bath that I mentioned is here!"
Lu Yingjiu: “…”
Jingxian is still thinking about this.