My name is Zhao Xueming.
My family lives in a very remote mountain village in western Hunan. A cement road was just built in the village a few years ago. The county magistrate said that this is the country's money to support impoverished mountain villages across the country.
When I was a child, I would often pester my grandpa to tell me stories.
I heard from my grandfather that before the reform and opening up, lynching and harsh criminal laws were very common in various places.
Among them, several ways of death are the most evil, and the resentment is the heaviest after death, and some strange things will often happen.
There are five punishments, 醢 (hǎi) punishment, sawing, frying, 虿 (chài) basin, human pig (zhì)), cooking, skinning, pumping intestines, cutting in half, splitting, quartering corpses by horses, burying alive, disembowelment, riding a wooden horse and donkey, Soaking in pig cages... is the most common method of torture in ancient times, according to my grandfather.
There are five punishments, which are to cut off the hands, feet, eyes, ears, and finally the head, and then the torso into three pieces. That is what people often say.
Punishment is the brutal punishment of Ling Chi. Every time Ling Chi is executed by two people, the whole body is covered tightly with a fishing net before the execution, and then cut from the feet, a thousand pieces of flesh are cut off before the prisoner is allowed to die. I heard from my grandpa that some people had to mow for three days and three nights before dying.
Sawing means sawing people to death with a chainsaw.
Each of these criminal laws was more tragic than the last. At that time, I was only six or seven years old, and I was so scared that I dared not sleep alone for a month.
Now that I think about it, I can't help but be thankful. Fortunately, I was not born in ancient times when lynching and torture were rampant.
Grandpa said that these people suffered so much before they died that they couldn't swallow their grievances after they died. In addition, the death conditions were too miserable, and weird events often happened. Generally, no one dared to approach these corpses.
So there was a business of carrying corpses, which specialized in dealing with the dead.
It is also called Xiangxi mortician.
Every industry has its own rules, and there are many taboos among corpse-carrying craftsmen.
For example, my grandfather once talked to me that a person who died tragically by half should never bury the upper and lower parts of the body in one place. Usually, the upper and lower parts of the body are buried on the banks of rivers, rivers, or cliffs, which means that they will be cut in two, and the three souls and seven souls will be incomplete, so as to prevent the corpse from becoming evil after death.
Grandpa said that the people who had been cut in half were usually found in random rivers or streams and buried on both sides of the river. But the more miserable, the more painful, the more hated, and the longer the person who can't breathe for a long time, the heavier the resentment after death. The place where this kind of corpse is buried must be cautious, and it is often chosen in a different place. Feng Shui of mountains and rivers cuts off resentment.
The reason why grandpa understands the taboos of carrying corpses so well is because his grandfather has been carrying corpses for several generations.
It’s just that after the reform and opening up, the law was enlightened, the country banned torture, lynching in various places, and the transportation was convenient and developed, gradually, no one asked the mortician to carry the corpse.
In order to make a living, the corpse-carriers also began to disappear.
However, when I was nine years old, my father secretly carried an unbearable corpse to someone without telling my grandfather. Half a month later, my father's bloody corpse was skinned and hung on an old tree at the entrance of the village!
…
Du Feifei hurriedly quit the mobile phone novel with a numb scalp, frightened like a kitten, her hair was blown out, and it was 8 o'clock in the evening when the sky was completely dark, and she was the only one left in the whole company.
At this time, the office was empty, extremely claustrophobic, and quiet, and the night sky outside the window was dark.
This quiet girl in her twenties, who just graduated from university and came out to find a job, has not yet completed her internship for three months. Today is the first night shift in her life. She turned her head suspiciously, looked behind her, and looked at the corridor outside the office. There is always a person hiding outside the empty office or corridor, only showing two cold eyes peeking at her.
Du Feifei's scalp was numb, and her heart was beating like a drum. In fact, she knew very well that all of this was her own surprise, and she was too afraid to imagine it out of thin air. But knowing Gui knew, I still couldn't help thinking about some terrible things in my mind.
Du Feifei regretted it in her heart. If she knew she would not take out the fruit phone to read novels in the last bit of time to turn off the computer.
Pat, clack, suddenly!
A man's footsteps could be heard outside the supposedly empty corridor.
Du Feifei froze suddenly, panic and fear flashed across her expression.
Pat, clack... The sound of footsteps came with a rhythmic knocking sound, hitting the heart one after another, getting closer and closer.
He was approaching her.
"Who, who is outside!"
"Is it the security guard of the building patrolling the building?"
"Are you guys out in the corridor?"
Du Feifei was covered in cold sweat and felt her voice trembling.
The man's footsteps outside the corridor stopped suddenly, and there was no sound at once.
Du Feifei was like a frightened bird, and her body was suddenly as cold as ice. She pricked up her ears to listen, but she couldn't hear anything. The corridor and the office seemed to be separated into two worlds, and she fell into a short silence.
There is only the whirring sound of the computer shutting down, and the fan is still spinning at high speed.
Time passed slowly, and the seconds felt like years. Just when Du Feifei was about to be unable to bear the psychological pressure, patter, patter, footsteps sounded again outside the corridor.
But this time the footsteps seemed to be repeating the previous cycle, not near the office, but from far to near like the first time, stepping on a fixed rhythm of footsteps, unhurried, still moving towards this place. He approached the only office on the first floor that was still lit.
Du Feifei's hairs stood on end, her face turned pale with fright, and her eyes were terrified.
Slap! Slap!
The man's footsteps were getting closer and closer, and when they approached the office, they suddenly disappeared again.
Soon after, the sound of footsteps repeated the cycle for the third time, from far to near again from the starting point, and approached the office with a fixed rhythm of footsteps, which was particularly harsh in the empty environment in the middle of the night.
It's like playing a tape over and over again.
Du Feifei was about to collapse mentally, and she was so frightened that she cried, "Who the hell are you! No matter who you are, such a joke is not funny at all! Are the people outside patrolling the building?"
"You are so scary again, I am really going to be angry and call the police."
Pat, clack... The footsteps outside the corridor repeated for the fourth time, and it seemed that her voice was not heard at all.
The blood on Du Feifei's face became paler and her body felt cold. The air behind her neck was swishing cold, and the wind was blowing. She turned around in horror, but there was nothing behind her, only the dark glass window.
Slap, slap... The sound of footsteps is still repeating and ringing continuously.
Du Feifei was shaking and was about to cry out of fear. When the footsteps repeated a new cycle, halfway through, Du Feifei couldn't bear the psychological pressure anymore and rushed out of the office angrily, trying to arrest the prankster. one is right.
The sound of footsteps suddenly stopped.
The corridor was empty, quiet and quiet, like a claustrophobic space, there was no one at all, only a few fluorescent lamps above the corridor barely served as illumination.
It seemed that the footsteps before were just hallucinations.
The temperature in the corridor is very low.
Except for a gust of cold wind blowing in from the end of the corridor from time to time, the corridor was quiet and there was no other sound.
Du Feifei's face suddenly lost all color.
The experience tonight has already exceeded the psychological capacity of normal people, let alone a girl who works overtime late at night alone. Du Feifei's body is shaking, and her highly tense spirit is already on the verge of collapse.
At 8 o'clock in the evening, the business building was extremely empty and cold, as if the whole building was squeezed out of the world, and only Du Feifei's office on the entire floor was still lit.
Du Feifei was terrified, her hands and feet were already cold, and she didn't dare to stay here for a second.
Turn around and rush back to the office, ready to pick up your personal belongings and flee here immediately.
But the moment Du Feifei just turned around! Pat, clack... The sound of footsteps came again, still with the same rhythm, coming from the corridor behind Du Feifei, as if she was very close, standing behind her.
"ah!"
Du Feifei's terrified screams came from the corridor, and her spirit finally collapsed completely. She was frightened and ran away to the end of another corridor in fright. Whether Tian will be punished by the supervisor and have her salary deducted, she doesn't even dare to look back to see who is behind her.
Maybe it was Du Feifei's scream, which was very ear-piercing in the cold night, and soon two security guards patrolled the building and ran to find Du Feifei who was frightened.
Finally seeing someone, Du Feifei was so excited that she cried out loud.
When Du Feifei calmed down, she remembered the footsteps in the corridor behind her, but there were no footsteps in the corridor at this time.
Afterwards, the two security guards took Du Feifei who was nervous behind him and began to walk to the office, looking for the prankster Du Feifei said, but they did not find the so-called prankster.
The two security guards began to think that Du Feifei was a timid girl, and working overtime alone at night was a bit suspicious, so they didn't take it seriously. After taking Du Feifei to pack up her personal belongings and turning off the lights in the office, she helplessly escorted the frightened Du Feifei down the elevator to the lobby on the first floor, and took the initiative to call a taxi for her.
Eyelashes blinked a few times, and there were still wet tears in the corners of her eyes. Du Feifei turned her head to look at the night view of the city outside the car window, trying her best to wrap her body into the taxi seat, trying to find a trace of wrapping in it. A sense of security covered.
The unbelievable experience tonight made her tremble with coldness all over her body.
Du Feifei's residence is a bit remote, an old apartment building rented by herself. After graduating from university, she stayed in Zhou City, a coastal city, to work hard.
As soon as Du Feifei returned to the apartment, the first thing she did was to turn on all the lights in the house. Until this time, the warmth of returning home gave her a sense of safety and security, and Du Feifei poured herself a cup of hot water.
Slap, slap...suddenly!
From the bedroom came the sound of a man's footsteps, step by step approaching the door of the bedroom!
The water glass in her hand fell to the ground, and Du Feifei looked in the direction of the bedroom in despair. She wanted to scream, but her heart seemed to be crushed by a big rock, and she couldn't scream.
He is at home!
Why!
Why!
The coldness engulfed Du Feifei's whole body like a tide, her eyes widened in horror.
Thanks to book friends @Why Wuyue, @托茶李天王 for their rewards! ! Thanks!
Reply to book friend's question @星夜北京星: Baby is so innocent, I didn't delete your comment on this chapter. Because after the chapter is revised, regardless of whether this paragraph has been modified or not, all the comments in this chapter of this paragraph will disappear, and will be automatically condensed to (18), (20), and (100) at the end of the chapter. Click on the number of comments and expand this chapter to see it again.
(end of this chapter)