Paintings of Terror

Chapter 18: Bai Shi 18 ┃ Village of Death Curse

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Lee Kyung Ho.

"Could it be just a coincidence? After all, the surname Li is a common surname." Wei Dong said.

Ke Xun stood up: "Go and ask, the old man might be able to provide something."

The two ran to the old man's yard.

Entering the room and knocking on the inner door, the old man raised his murky dead eyes and looked at the two of them: "What's the matter?"

"Let me ask, who is the person who died?" Ke Xun said straight to the point.

"Why don't you know? Who are you?" The old man's tone suddenly became vigilant, and his two stone-like eyes suddenly moved, and a strange and sinister look slowly emerged.

Ke Xun was startled, and quickly pointed to the sackcloth with the words cursed on his waist and showed it to the old man: "I'm here to help, you see, I haven't studied since I was a child, because my brain is not good. Shi, I can't remember who said anything to me, I've been busy for two days, and suddenly I forgot who died, thinking that this is a little disrespectful to the deceased, so I hurried over to ask your old man."

The old man stared at Ke Xun with dead eyes for a long time, until he stared at Ke Xun to the point where his heart froze, and finally said: "The one who died is the weirdo of Li Mazi's family, it's a pity that there is no one in his family anymore, we can't do without us. These villagers from the villages have all contributed to help.”

The deformed child is called Weiwei, and the rural people love to have some cheap names, in order to make a living.

Ke Xun asked again, "How did Wei Wei die?"

The old man gave him a gloomy look: "It's not easy to live to be that big."

Wei Dong remembered the topic he had just discussed with Ke Xun, and hurriedly asked, "What's the relationship between his parents and his mother?"

Old man: "Husband and wife."

Wei Dong: "… "

Ke Xun rolled his eyes: "Is there anyone in the village who has a grudge against the Li Mazi family?"

I remembered the curse of the three locust trees and the cypress coffin that Mu Yiran said.

The old man stared at him gloomily: "Everyone is a villager, so what kind of hatred can there be?"

"Who beat that weird coffin?" Ke Xun got goosebumps from the old man's stare.

The old man's expression became strange: "His mother is afraid that no one will care about the strange monsters after she dies, and let people prepare the strange monsters in advance before she dies."

This is strange, Ke Xun is puzzled, unless Wei Wei's parents don't know the statement that the pure cypress wooden coffin was struck by thunder, and it was accidentally used by Wei Wei.

"Then when the three locust trees next to his house were planted, do you know?" Ke Xun asked.

The old man's expression was even more strange. The color of his face faded at a speed visible to the naked eye. A pair of turbid eyeballs were full of ferociousness and ferocity. The black-red gums of the teeth and the stinky mouth were wide open, and he said bluntly: "What locust tree, there is no locust tree. Who are you, you dare to break into Lijia Village. Lijia Village has not allowed outsiders to enter for thousands of years, you guys , die, die, die—"

As he spoke, his mouth opened wider and wider, like a bottomless black hole, rushing towards Ke Xun and Wei Dong!

"Run!" Ke Xun roared, dragging Wei Dong who was stunned on the spot, grabbing the door and fleeing.

The two of them rushed out of the yard without looking back. Wei Dong had never run so fast in his life. Under Ke Xun's pull, he felt that his legs were no longer legs. Individuals swayed and undulated in the air.

Looking at his legs, he couldn't get over it, and he fell to the ground with a hit of a hungry dog.

When he raised his face with a mouthful of dirt in his mouth, there were a few more feet in his sight, and then he saw Ke Xun's feet striding in front of the head's feet. Through the distance between the toes, Wei Dong calculated. Ke Xunyi's pursed lips almost reached Mu Yiran's face.

"Report boss, someone wants to eat us." Ke Xun begged for comfort and hugs.

The boss rewarded him with a cold look and let him experience it for himself.

"What's the matter?" the doctor asked.

Ke Xun looked back and saw that the old man hadn't caught up, so he briefly explained what happened just now, and then asked these people, "Have you found any clues?"

"We..." The doctor looked slightly complicated, "We made a shocking discovery."

After Mu Yiran and the others separated from Ke Xun, they first went to the village to find the village chief's home.

The village head is the head of the village. Generally speaking, the place where he lives should be the largest and best house in the whole village, so everyone quickly found the target.

However, there was no one in the village chief's house, and dust was accumulating everywhere in the house, as if no one had lived in it for a long time.

Mu Yiran found a genealogy and village chronicle in the room of the village chief's house as a small ancestral hall.

Sure enough, all the villagers in this village are from the same ancestor and the same clan, and their ancestors once served as the royal family's ancestors during the Warring States Period.

Legend has it that Zongzhu was able to communicate with ghosts and gods, and his magical skills and witchcraft were only passed on to direct descendants, not outsiders.

Therefore, the ancestors of the Li family made clan rules, and their descendants, who lived here permanently, were not allowed to leave, not to branch, not to intermarry with foreign surnames, and not to come and go privately with the outside world.

Looking at the entire genealogy, both husband and wife are all surnamed Li.

In the whole village, there is not a single foreign surname.

"... Their ancestors are crazy," Wei Dong wiped his mouth in surprise, "Is this encouraging close relatives to marry?!"

"Witchcraft is a kind of distorted, evil and unreasonable existence." Mu Yi Ran was cold, "We don't need to care whether their clan rules are in line with legal ethics, we just need to know that this village seems to be lost. Like the land, it has been in a closed state and cut off contact with the outside world.”

Ke Xun interfaced: "Then here comes the problem."

Mu Yiran looked at everyone: "Combining with what happened to Ke Xun and the others just now, since this village is cut off from the outside world, and outsiders are resisted from entering, then, who painted this painting itself? What is this painting? spread out?"

Everyone was stunned, and their eyes flashed.

Ke Xun raised his hand: "Boss, is there Li Jinghao's name on the family tree?"

Mu Yi glanced at him: "No."

Ke Xun scratched his head: "Is that a coincidence?"

Mu Yiran's eyes moved slightly: "It's not necessarily true, many painters have used names before, or they have given themselves a name that is on the table after becoming famous."

Wei Dong interrupted: "It's not easy to handle. Who knows who will give them another name later."

"Since it is known that the artist of the painting is Li Jinghao," Mu Yiran said, "the first question has been solved, and the second question is how did the painting spread, or how did this Li Jinghao enter the village and paint I took this painting down, and then I brought this painting out.”

"If Li Jinghao is from this village, it would not be surprising to be able to draw this painting," the doctor said, "but the village stipulates that people in this village are not allowed to communicate with the outside world and are not allowed to leave the village, so there is no way to explain what this painting is about. It went outside."

"The last discovery," Mu Yiran said to Ke Xun and Wei Dong, "we went through the houses in the whole village, but we didn't see a single living person."

"What, what do you mean?" Wei Dong shivered.

"In all the houses, there are different thicknesses of dust," the doctor said. "It can be seen that no one has lived for a long time, but we have not found any bodies or coffins in these houses."

"And in these dwellings, the things we have seen the most," Mu Yiran's eyes were quite meaningful, "It is the tablet."

Ke Xun raised his eyebrows: "Does it mean that these villagers are already dead?"

Mu Yiran nodded slightly: "It is presumed that this is the case. We checked according to the names on the genealogy, and the names on the tablets are all on the genealogy."

Ke Xun touched his chin and wondered, "Could it be that there has been an infectious disease like plague in this village? Or is it a natural disaster? Otherwise, why did so many people die?"

Mu Yi said indifferently: "The thickness of the dust in the dwellings varies, which means that these people did not die in the same time period."

The doctor nodded: "It should be almost a few years or ten years after death."

Wei Dong twitched the corners of his mouth: "Isn't this because the life expectancy is not long because of consanguineous marriages?"

Mu Yiran raised his eyes slightly: "More likely, these people are all cursed to death?"

Everyone was shocked when they heard this.

Ke Xun was the first to react: "So you mean that the three locust trees next to the strange house actually cursed not just the strange family, but... the entire Li family village?!"

"I think so." Mu Yi nodded.

Wei Dong was speechless: "Who has such a big hatred, curse a village with one curse."

Ke Xun suddenly asked, "But why did the old man just say that there is no locust tree? Although he went crazy and bit people after a disagreement, I don't think what he said did not seem like he was lying and didn't tell us."

Mu Yi lowered his eyes and pondered, and suddenly walked away, everyone looked at each other, and hurriedly followed.

Once again, he came under the three old locust trees outside the strange house courtyard, and Mu Yiran looked up at the ghostly faces on the trees.

Ke Xun followed and saw that these grimace seemed to protrude more outward than in the morning. The whole face and head were almost detached from the tree trunk, only the back of the head was slightly connected to the bark, like a The huge nodules hung down on the tree, looking extremely disgusting.

"Have you noticed," Ke Xun touched Mu Yiran with his elbow, "These grimaces seem to have genders. Look at this face, does it look like an aunt? And the other one, with a beard? , the top one looks like a seven- or eight-year-old boy, look over there, there is a baby's face under the old lady's face, both men, women and children."

"Yeah." Mu Yiran was not surprised, obviously he had already discovered it.

"I suddenly had an idea," Ke Xun said as he glanced between these grimace, "When you say these faces, could it be..."

"The faces of all the dead villagers." Mu Yi replied indifferently.

Ke Xun pointed to a grimace at the root of the tree: "... Liu Yufei."

Mu Yiran's eyes followed the direction of his fingers, and he saw that this grimace looked like it had grown out, and the color was gray. Unlike other grimace, the color had already darkened to black and gray.

The facial features of this grimace resemble Liu Yufei's, and there is even a small braid-shaped bark behind the top of his head.

Its facial features are extremely distorted, and it maintains the painful expression of Liu Yufei's tragic death. However, there is endless resentment in this pain. In the position of the black eye socket, there are two invisible eyes, resentment and viciousness, death to death Staring at Mu Yiran and Ke Xun.

Mu Yiran and these two eye sockets looked at each other for a moment, and did not move at all. Instead, he walked a few steps around the tree and found the faces of the five people who died before Liu Yufei.

"In this way, these three trees were not planted." Mu Yiran said, "The expression in the painting is just an image, not a real tree."

"No wonder the old man said there were no trees," Ke Xun said. "Speaking of that old man, why hasn't he been cursed to death? Could he be the only one left in the whole village?"

"Go and see."

Mu Yiran said that he was about to leave, but Ke Xun grabbed his arm: "That old man has gone crazy, aren't you courting death now?"

Zhang Maolin, who was next to him, hurriedly echoed: "That's right, it's better to find the seal before it gets dark!"

Mu Yiran's eyes swept to the direction where the old man lived, and said lightly, "I have a guess about the identity of the old man."