The Chen couple were at a loss for a moment.
According to what was written on the paper, the child should have been buried here eight days ago, but they would come to Yuhe Mountain almost every morning and evening and had never heard the baby crying.
Mother Chen touched the child's face with concern. His face was blue and purple, probably because he was suffocating or cold. Even covering it with her hands could not bring back any color.
She whispered to her husband, "What do you think we should do with this child? Should we go to the village down the mountain to ask, or should we send him directly to the police station?"
Father Chen pondered for a moment, put away the letter, and sneered: "I'm afraid that even if you ask, you won't get any information. Look at the contents of the letter, and then look at the paper money in the shoebox. It's clear that they don't want anyone to find the child, and want to suffocate him to death. The irony is that they even found a plausible excuse for themselves."
"What should we do then?" Mother Chen frowned, and suddenly remembered something, and asked in confusion, "That's not right, husband. Didn't the letter say that the child is deaf and dumb? But you see..."
The baby stopped crying and sobbed. His eyes looked at the sullen father Chen and then at the gentle mother Chen, as if he understood what was said.
Mother Chen's heart was about to melt. She lowered her head and rubbed the baby's forehead with her chin, and said in a gentle voice, "Be good, you must be hungry. I'll find you something to eat when we get back."
Father Chen pursed his lips, couldn't help but stretch out his fingers to tease the child, then sighed and said, "Let's go to the village to ask first. If we hand the child over to the police station directly, the child will definitely be sent to an orphanage."
Mother Chen had an idea: "If that's the case, we'll take him home."
Father Chen was more rational. He patted his wife on the shoulder and said, "We'll see."
When the couple came down the mountain, the lights in the village were already on.
Because Yuheshan was the private property of the Chen family, everyone in the village knew them. The two were a little nervous as they passed through the village, thinking that if someone saw the baby in their arms, they would ask about it.
But I don’t know what happened that day, but I didn’t see any of the villagers who used to come out for a walk after dinner today.
The two of them carried the child into the rented yard. Mother Chen went to the kitchen to cook some rice soup first, and then carefully fed the child little by little with a spoon.
The little guy seemed to be extremely hungry, his mouth was wide open. After drinking, he seemed to feel that it was not enough, and kept licking his lips with his little pink tongue.
Mother Chen touched his bulging belly and said, "You can't drink anymore. I'll go buy you milk powder tomorrow morning, okay?"
Father Chen looked in the direction of his wife once, then again, and finally, unable to resist, he walked over, held the baby's face and kissed her.
He asked his wife to look after the gate and went to the village chief's house next door.
The village chief has lived in Yuhe Mountain for nearly fifty years, and he knows exactly what happens in every household.
When he heard Father Chen asking who had just had a baby, he answered, "There's a stranger from the east, a woman. I saw her taking a walk in the evening a while ago with a big belly. She's a strange person, she never talks to the villagers and keeps to herself. But I heard from my wife that judging by her belly, she's about to give birth."
Father Chen asked, "What happened next?"
The village chief said, “Then I don’t know.”
Father Chen nodded and wanted to go directly to the east of the village to find the woman. When he reached the door, he remembered something and stepped back. "Village chief, when you went up the mountain recently, did you hear the crying of a child?"
"No." The village chief hissed and slammed the table with an ugly look on his face, "But I heard other sounds."
"What's that sound?"
"I can't really explain it." The village chief counted the time on his fingers and said, "Eight days ago, I went up the mountain to dig bamboo shoots. When I passed the top of the mountain, I heard a strange sound, a creaking sound, like fingernails scratching something, or a friction sound."
"Are you sure it was eight days ago?" Father Chen's heart sank.
"Of course I am sure." The village chief said firmly, "I was really scared that day. When I got home, I looked up the almanac with my wife. As a result, we saw that it was a very bad day. It was not suitable for anything except burial!"
Father Chen was confused. If the child was suffocated to death in the soil, how could he come back to life eight days later? The strangest thing was that his voice was not hoarse and his ears seemed to be no longer deaf.
He had lived for thirty years and was skeptical about matters of ghosts and gods, but everything that was happening now seemed "unusual".
Father Chen said goodbye to the village chief and went to the east of the village. There were not many houses around, and only one was dark.
He walked over and knocked on the door, but no one answered.
Mr. Chen had no choice but to ask the neighbors next door.
There lived a widow next door, but unlike the ones I had seen before, she wore lipstick and had her hair permed. When she saw Father Chen, she was stunned for a moment, then stroked her hair and asked, "Mr. Chen, are you knocking on the door in the middle of the night for something?"
"Excuse me." Father Chen pointed to the dark yard and asked, "Where is the woman living in that yard? I have something to ask her."
The widow's face froze for a moment, then she smiled and said, "I don't know, maybe she went back to her hometown. She is not a local."
Father Chen was very perceptive and did not miss the expression on her face. He said coldly, "What do you know?"
"I don't understand what you are talking about." The widow took a step back and tried to close the door, but Father Chen held the door with one hand.
"Did she give birth to a deaf-mute child?"
The widow was shocked and blurted out, "How do you know!" Realizing what she had said, she quickly covered her mouth with both hands.
Unfortunately, it's too late.
Father Chen questioned: "Did she bury the child on the top of the mountain?"
The widow was not sure how much Father Chen knew, so she did not dare to make up a story. She said timidly, "Yes..."
Father Chen couldn't hold back his anger when he thought of the child being taken out of the shoebox, his body covered in bruises. "Did you know that she buried the child alive?"
The widow's knees went weak and she knelt down on the ground. "I didn't know, I didn't know she would do that!"
Father Chen half squatted down and spoke in a very soft voice, but the heart of the listener sank: "You are killing people."
"I didn't! I didn't kill anyone! It has nothing to do with me. I really didn't know she took the child up the mountain to bury him!" The widow explained hurriedly, "Brother Chen, don't tell the police, I really didn't participate. I just, I just helped her deliver the baby, I don't know anything else!"
"How much money did she give you?" asked Chen's father.
The widow didn't think too much when she was paid to deliver a baby. But now, after hearing that the child was buried alive, she felt ashamed and guilty, and she gestured a number with trembling hands.
Father Chen sneered and stood up: "Was the child really deaf and dumb when he was born?"
Seeing that he was no longer blaming her but asking about the child, the widow hurriedly said, "Really, I slapped his butt so many times that it was swollen, but I didn't hear him cry. The same goes for his ears. The child has been staring at the ceiling for several days since he was born. I guess he is not only deaf, but maybe... maybe he has a problem with his brain..."
After saying that, he secretly glanced at Mr. Chen.
When Mr. Chen didn't smile, he looked very serious. Even Mrs. Chen was a little scared of him, not to mention the widow who was already feeling guilty.
Seeing that the man opposite didn't speak, the widow touched the door panel and slowly stood up from the ground, "Brother Chen, do you have anything else to do? If not..." Can you leave
Father Chen raised his eyelids, and his narrow eye sockets made his eyeballs dark inside. "What happened on the day she buried the child alive?"
"I don't know the details. Not long after I helped her deliver the baby, about four or five days later, I got up early in the morning to go to the bathroom and heard some noises in her yard, so I opened the door and peeked..."
The widow swallowed and said dryly, "I saw her holding a rectangular paper box with a lid on it, and there was movement inside the box!"
"I didn't think too much about it at the time and went back, but when I went to visit her in the afternoon, I found that the child was gone and she was packing her things, looking like she was leaving."
Father Chen frowned.
The widow looked at him fearfully and continued, "I asked her where the child was, and she said she went to where she was supposed to go..."
Father Chen clenched his fists tightly, the veins on his arms bulged, and he looked like he was trying hard to suppress his anger.
The widow shrugged her shoulders and tried to distance herself from the matter: "I really didn't know she had buried the child at the time! I only found out after you told me!"
Father Chen's heart was in turmoil. How cruel must one be to end his own child's life personally!
He turned and left, returning home in anger.
The moment he entered the door, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He didn't push the door open until his emotions calmed down a little. When he looked up, he saw his wife holding the child and singing a lullaby.
The anger and anxiety in my heart were immediately extinguished.
Father Chen walked over lightly and told his wife everything.
Mother Chen looked at her child who was sleeping with his eyes closed, then looked at her husband with a serious face. She moved her lips but didn't know what to say for a moment.
"There are many suspicious points about this child. For example, it is impossible for a premature baby to be alive after being buried in the ground for eight days. For another example, why did his deafness and dumbness suddenly recover?"
What happened to this child was so strange that Mother Chen was a little flustered, but more of it was distressed: "What should we do? Send him to an orphanage? But you saw when we went to the orphanage as volunteers before, the environment there is very bad... Look at him, he is still so young, do you really want him to grow up in an orphanage?"
Father Chen held his wife's hand and said, "That's not what I meant, but there are some procedures that must be followed."
Mother Chen understood what he meant: "Are you willing to keep him?!"
Father Chen inserted his fingers into the child's empty palm and said, "Well, this will be our son from now on."
The next morning, the couple left early with the child and went to the town police station. After an investigation, the police station informed the Chen couple that because the child's biological mother's ID and name were false, they could not find her and could only temporarily send the child to an orphanage in the city.
The Chen couple rushed to the orphanage that afternoon to complete the formalities, and it was not until the afternoon of the third day that they finally brought the child home.
But the very next day, we learned that something had happened to Yu Heshan.
The news came from a phone call by the village chief. He said that since the day the Chen couple left, the crops on the mountain had been quickly withered by insects, followed by the lush vegetation, which died overnight as if they had contracted some unknown disease. In less than four days, the once lush and pleasant Yuhe Mountain had become a barren mountain with withered vegetation.
The village chief also said that some villagers had specially invited experts to test the soil, and the results showed that the soil composition of Yuhe Mountain was very normal, no, it could even be said to be very good.
Father Chen rushed back to Yuhe Mountain the next day. In just five days, Yuhe Mountain became desolate and withered, with only the pool of water remaining relatively clear.
But when he took a closer look, he found that all the small fish that used to swim in it were gone.
The village chief said that the fish all died when the crops withered, and they had already started to stink when they were fished out.
That night, he stayed temporarily at the village chief's house.
Perhaps because he had experienced too many strange things in recent days, Father Chen couldn't sleep. He walked around the yard with his hands behind his back, full of thoughts. The weather had begun to get colder, and the wind blew over him, giving him goose bumps.
Just as he was about to go back to the house, a piece of yellow paper floated in from outside the courtyard wall and landed right at his feet.
Father Chen looked down subconsciously, his pupils constricted. On it was a sentence written in calligraphy: Take the children away from here and don't come back.
The only people who knew that they had picked up the child were the people from the police station and the orphanage, and there was no need for people from these two places to say such things to him.
Who is playing tricks on me
Father Chen picked up the yellow paper and walked out quickly. He walked around the courtyard wall but didn't see anyone.
He held the yellow paper and read the concise contents on it several times. He immediately returned to the yard, left a note for the village chief, and drove away from Yuhe Mountain overnight.
Since then, the Chen couple never came back.
In the following twenty years, Yuhe Mountain never saw any life again.
…
Chen Ling squatted in front of Chen's mother, held her hand, and was speechless for a moment, but his mind was unusually clear.
It’s like listening to someone else’s story that has nothing to do with you. You feel emotional but don’t know how to express it.
But Mother Chen thought that he was concerned about blood ties and missed his biological mother.
She bit her lower lip and took a deep breath, her voice trembling with emotion: "Lingling, if, if you want to find your biological mother, mom and dad can help you. We will support you in whatever you want to do."
"No." Chen Ling reached out and hugged Mother Chen, "You are my biological mother."
He raised his head pretending to be angry and pursed his lips aggrievedly: "Mom, why do you say such things? Don't you want me anymore?"
"Of course not!" The appearance of this child brought her so much happiness and joy that she couldn't imagine what she would become if this child really left her completely one day.
"I will never give up on you." Mother Chen held her son's face and said, "As long as you need me, Dad and I will always stand behind you."
The mother's eyes were gentle and firm, containing too many emotions. Chen Ling's nose felt sore and he couldn't help but sniff.
"Mom, your story is so beautiful." He looked into his mother's eyes and said, "The baby in the story is very lucky. He asked me to tell you that from the moment he opened his eyes and saw you, he recognized you as his mother, and that will not change no matter what happens."
Mother Chen was stunned, then burst into laughter and gently touched her son's hair: "Then tell him for me that daddy and mommy love him very much."
Father Chen hid outside the kitchen door and couldn't help wiping his eyes.
Zhao Xunchang put his hand on his shoulder and said with a smile: "From the first day I met Chen Ling, I knew he was a good boy."
Perhaps the voices outside were too loud, so Chen Ling looked up.
Zhao Xunchang looked at him, took the initiative to walk in, raised his chin towards him, and said, "Ask anything you want to ask."
Chen Ling: "Master, why can I survive?"
Not to mention a premature baby, even a living person could not survive eight days in the enclosed space underground. Not to mention starving to death, the lack of oxygen alone is enough to kill a person.
Zhao Xunchang put his hands behind his back and asked, "Do you still remember the quilt in Feng Shui?"
"Remember." Chen Ling said seriously, "The quilt refers to the low-lying area in front of the Feng Shui cave. The soil in this place is soft and the trees are dense. It is the place where the remaining energy of the true dragon condenses."
Zhao Xunchang continued, "If the heavens and the earth are blessed, and with the help of the residual energy of the dragon's lair, the quilt can grow into an earth-born fetus, that is, a Kunlun fetus."
There must be a noble dragon acupoint behind the quilt. After the Kunlun fetus is formed, it will crawl like a cicada. After arriving at the dragon cave, it will absorb the dragon energy and grow slowly.
Thinking of the desolation of Yuhe Mountain, Chen Ling's eyelids jumped: "Master, what do you mean..."
"That's right." Knowing that his disciple had the same idea as him, Zhao Xunchang smiled and said, "It's also a coincidence that the place where you were put in happened to be the location of the Kunlun fetus. The Kunlun fetus must have been attracted by your vitality before you died and crawled into your body. By chance, after coexisting for seven days, it actually merged with your soul that had not yet shed its shell."
At this point, Zhao Xunchang's face darkened again: "It's just that the remaining death energy before death has always affected the balance of yin and yang in your body, until this balance is completely broken and the yin energy has the upper hand."
"That's why, after I turned eighteen, I started to encounter evil spirits again and again." Chen Ling murmured.
Father Chen interjected, "The yellow paper was also written by Mr. Zhao. We only found out about this after we invited him home and had a detailed discussion in the study."
It is precisely because of this that they can safely hand their son over to Zhao Xunchang.
Talking about the past, Zhao Xunchang felt a little embarrassed, and felt like a stalker psychopath. "Twenty years ago, I happened to be tracking a ghost that had transformed into a barbarian. That thing lost its ghost aura and form, and disappeared as soon as it entered Yuhe Mountain. It was at that time that I discovered the movement under the soil."
The Kunlun fetus is the condensation of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and the residual energy of the dragon's lair buried underground. For a newly dead baby, it may be a new life.
But since he knew it, there's no reason why a thousand-year-old ghost wouldn't know it.
In order to prevent Yi from absorbing the spiritual energy and dragon energy of Kunlun fetus, Zhao Xunchang deliberately stayed nearby. Until the evening of the eighth day, the dead baby came back to life, and powerful howling sounds came out from under the soil.
Just when he was about to go out and dig the child out, the Chen couple arrived.
Zhao Xunchang said, "You two have kind faces and are good people. If the child follows me, he will have to wander around, but if he follows you, he will have a stable life. So I followed you quietly all the way. After I was sure that you would treat the child well, I wrote the yellow paper. First, the child would be feared by others if he came back to life. Second, I didn't want the barbarians to find him and snatch the body."
But no one can change the destiny written by God.
"After the yin and yang balance in Chen Ling's body was broken, I could only take him back to the place where he was born and raised, so that I could use the dragon energy to rebalance the yin and yang. At the same time, I could absorb spiritual energy by learning magic to promote a better fusion of the Kunlun fetus and the soul."
And Yuhe Mountain also regained its vitality because the lost spiritual energy returned.
Zhao Xunchang raised his head and looked at his little disciple: "What I didn't expect was that the barbarian would turn into a demon after being missing for many years. I didn't expect him to target you again."
He said guiltily: "I was careless."
The evil spirits change from evil to barbarians, from barbarians to rare ones, and finally to demons after death. The pain and suffering in this process are even worse than the torture in hell. It requires not only cruel self-torture, but also the strongest will and obsession.
No one could have expected that Yi could survive all that torture.
After Father Chen left with the yellow paper, Zhao Xunchang's tracking still yielded no results, so he naturally thought that the Yi might have died in the process of transforming into Xi.
Chen Ling recalled what the City God said at the time: "Dad said that the village chief said that experts came to the village to check the soil. I guess those experts should be from the Special Investigation Department. It was at that time that Yi followed Li Daoxuan and lurked in his body or nearby."
Otherwise, it doesn't make sense that Li Daoxuan, a normal person, would not follow his colleagues to check out Yuhe Mountain, but instead sit quietly by the lake for three hours.
Only he himself knew what happened exactly during those three hours.
Zhao Xunchang shook his head and sighed. After all, he was more or less responsible for the way things had come to this point. If he had continued to investigate, he might have really led to Qingxuan Temple.
Seeing his master sighing, Chen Ling knew that he was feeling guilty, so he said, "Master, there are many masters living in Qingxuan Temple. Even they didn't notice it, which only means that the Yi had successfully transformed into Xi. It is invisible and soundless, no different from air. Unless it shows up on its own initiative, no one can find it."
Zhao Xunchang raised his hand and touched his little apprentice's head: "The little brat has grown up and knows how to comfort me. Don't worry, I won't dwell on it. I can only say that it's fate."
Speaking of Li Daoxuan, people will inevitably think of Jiang Yu.
Chen Ling's eyes dimmed, and he asked in a low voice: "Master, do you have any familiar ghost messengers in the underworld? I want to ask about the situation in Jiangyu."
Since Jiang Yu appeared, he has always been by his side, making him feel as if this person will never leave.
But when the other party really left, Chen Ling was at a loss and realized that he knew too little about Jiang Yu. He didn't know why he was targeted by God, and he didn't know where to find him if he disappeared...
I don’t even know if I will have the chance to see him again.
Zhao Xunchang frowned and said, "I do have a little bit of friendship with the people down there, why don't I ask that ghost to come up and ask?"