It's dark, don't go out.
This sentence has been circulated in the disabled village for many years, but it is impossible to verify when it was passed down. But this sentence is the truth, there is no need to doubt it.
Granny Si from Disabled Elderly Village became nervous again when she saw the setting sun hiding behind the mountain. As the sun set, the last ray of sunlight disappeared, and the sky and the earth suddenly became extremely silent, without any sound. I saw the darkness slowly submerge from the west, devouring the mountains, rivers, roads, trees along the way, and then came to the disabled village and submerged the disabled village.
There are four ancient stone statues erected at the four corners of the disabled village. The stone statues are mottled and old. Even Granny Si doesn't know who carved these stone statues and when they were erected here.
When darkness fell, the four stone statues emitted a faint light in the darkness. The stone statues were still lit, which made Granny Si and the elders in the village heave a sigh of relief.
The darkness outside the village became more and more intense, but with the light of the stone statue, Disabled Old Village was considered safe.
Suddenly, Granny Si's ears twitched, she was stunned, and lost her voice: "Listen, there is a child crying outside!"
Old Ma next to him shook his head and said, "Impossible, you heard it wrong... Hey, there is really a baby crying!"
In the darkness outside the village came the cry of a baby. All the other elderly people in the village, except the deaf ones, heard the cry.
"I gonna go see!"
Granny Si got excited, and ran to a stone statue in the village on tiptoe. Mr. Ma hurried over: "Old lady Si, are you crazy? It's dark, and you will die if you leave the village!"
"Come out of the village with this stone statue on your back. Things in the dark are afraid of the stone statue. I won't die for a while!"
Granny Si bent down, trying to carry the stone statue on her back, but she was a hunchback and couldn't carry it. Ma Lao shook his head: "I'll do it. I'll accompany you with the stone statue on my back!"
Another old man limped over and said, "Master Ma, you only have one arm, and you won't be able to carry the stone statue for long. I have both hands, so I'll carry it."
Ma Lao glared at him: "Cripple, you have a broken leg, can you walk? Although I only have one arm, this arm is very strong!"
He picked up the stone statue with one arm and steadied his steps. The stone statue was unimaginably heavy: "Old lady Si, let's go!"
"Don't call me a dead old woman! Lame, dumb, you all have to be careful, there is a stone statue missing in the village, don't be touched by things in the dark!"
…
Ma Lao and Si Granny walked out of the Disabled Old Village, there was some strange thing swimming around them in the darkness, but when they were illuminated by the light of the stone statue, they retreated into the darkness with strange squeaks.
The two followed the crying sound, walked a hundred steps, and came to a big river. The baby's crying sound came from the river. The stone statue exuded a faint light, and the light was not too far away. The two carefully caught the direction of the sound, and walked upstream along the river. After walking dozens of steps, the crying sound was nearby, and Ma Lao could hardly support it with one arm. Granny Si's eyes lit up, and she saw a speck of fluorescent light. It was a basket parked on the bank of the river. The fluorescent light came from the basket, and the crying sound also came from the basket.
"There really is a child!"
Granny Si stepped forward and lifted the basket, but was slightly taken aback and failed to lift it up. Under the basket was an arm that was soaked white by the river water. It was this arm that held the basket and the child in it up until shore.
"Don't worry, the child is safe." Granny Si whispered to the woman underwater.
The female corpse seemed to have heard her words, let go of her palms, was washed away by the river, and disappeared into the darkness.
Granny Si lifted up the basket, and in the basket was a baby in swaddling clothes, with a jade pendant on top of the swaddling clothes, the jade pendant emitted fluorescence. The light of this jade pendant is similar to that of the stone statue, but much weaker. It is the jade pendant that protects the child in the basket from the things in the dark.
It's just that the light of the jade pendant is very weak, it can only protect the child, but not the woman.
"It's a boy."
Back in Disabled Old Village, all the villagers in the village surrounded him, they were all old, weak, sick and disabled. Granny Si lifted her swaddling clothes and took a look, then grinned, her broken teeth fell off: "We finally have a healthy person in our disabled village!"
The cripple with only one leg said in surprise: "Old lady Si, are you planning to keep him? We can hardly support ourselves! I think we should give it away..."
Granny Si was furious: "The child that my mother picked up with her own ability, why did she give it away?"
All the villagers were obedient and did not dare to refute her. The village chief came over on a stretcher. He was more miserable than the others. The others had hands and feet anyway, but less than normal people, while he had no hands or feet. But everyone respected him very much, even the vicious Granny Si didn't dare to be presumptuous.
"Since we want to raise him, we should give him a name, right?"
The village head said: "Old woman, do you see anything else in the basket?"
Granny Si flipped the pages, shook her head and said, "Only this jade pendant, no other notes or anything. There is a word on the jade pendant, which is the character Qin. This jade pendant has no impurities, and there is a strange power inside. It is not ordinary, it should be Is it from a rich family?"
"Is his name Qin, or is his surname Qin?"
The village chief thought about it, and said: "Let's let him be named Qin, and his first name is Mu, Qin Mu. When he grows up, let him go to herd herds, so that he can make a living at least."
"Qin Mu." Granny Si looked at the baby in the swaddle, and the baby was not afraid of her, and even babbled and laughed.
…
By the river, the sound of the flute came. A shepherd boy sat on the back of a cow and played the flute. The sound of the flute was clear and melodious. This shepherd boy was eleven or twelve years old, with delicate features, red lips and white teeth, half-open clothes, and a jade pendant on his chest.
This boy is exactly the baby that Granny Si picked up from the riverside eleven years ago. Over the years, the old people in the village have worked so hard to raise this child. Granny Si got a cow from somewhere and made Qin Mu drink milk every day when he was a baby. , survived the period of easy early death.
Although the villagers in Disabled Old Village are vicious, they treat him very well. Granny Si is a tailor. On weekdays, Qin Mu learns how to tailor clothes with Granny Si, learns to pick and refine medicine from a pharmacist, learns leg skills from a crippled grandfather, and learns from a blind man. Grandpa learned to listen to sounds and recognize positions, and learned to breathe and breathe with the village chief who had no hands and feet. The days passed quickly.
This cow was his childhood nanny, and Granny Si originally planned to sell it, but Qin Mu was reluctant, so the task of herding the cow was also entrusted to him.
He often herds cattle by the river, where the green hills are like Daisy, blue waves and white clouds, which is very pleasant.
"Qin Mu, Qin Mu, help me!"
Suddenly, the cow under him spoke. Qin Mu was startled, and quickly jumped off the cow's back. There were tears in the eyes of the cow, and she said to him, "Qin Mu, you If you grow up on my milk, I'm your half-mother, you have to save me!"
Qin Mu blinked and asked tentatively, "How can I save you?"
The cow said: "You have a sickle on your waist, peel off my skin, and you can save me from trouble."
Qin Mu hesitated, and the cow said, "Have you forgotten the grace of nurturing?"
Qin Mu raised the sickle and carefully cut the cowhide. It was strange to say that the cowhide was peeled off, but there was not a trace of blood flowing out, and the inside of the cowhide was actually empty, without flesh and bones.
When the cowhide was half-peeled, a woman in her twenties and thirties rolled out from the inside. Her two legs were still wrapped in the cowhide, and the flesh was connected to the cowhide, but her upper limbs had been separated from the cowhide.
The woman with disheveled hair snatched the sickle from Qin Mu's hand, cut the cowhide on her legs and feet two or three times, looked at Qin Mu with evil spirits, put the sickle on Qin Mu's neck, and said with a sneer : "Little villain, I was turned into a cow because of you. For eleven years, I could only eat grass and feed you milk! Poor thing, I just gave birth before I became a cow, and I was plotted against by that temptress. Turn me into a cow to feed you! I’m finally out of trouble today, I’ll kill you first and then wash the villains in this village with blood!”
Qin Mu's mind crashed, he didn't know what the woman who got out of the cowhide was talking about.
The woman was about to slash him to death, when suddenly her heart turned cold, she looked down, and a knife pierced her chest.
"Mu'er, your pharmacist grandpa told you to go back and take your medicine." The woman's body fell, and standing behind her was the crippled grandpa of the village, with a kind face and a simple and honest face, holding a bloody knife in his hand, smiling at Qin Mu road.
"Grandpa lame..." Qin Mu's body went limp, and he looked at the cowhide and the woman's body on the ground, but he still didn't recover.
"Go back, go back." The cripple patted him on the shoulder and laughed.
Qin Mu walked towards the village with one foot high and the other low. When he looked back, he saw the lame man throwing the woman's body into the river.
This scene shocked him so much that he didn't even know when he returned to the village.
"Qin Mu! Damn boy, how did I tell you? Don't go out when it's dark!"
As night fell, the stone statues at the four corners of the Disabled Old Village automatically lit up again. Granny Si called Qin Mu who was about to sneak out of the village to check the cowhide by the river, and dragged him back.
"Grandma, why can't you go out when it's dark?" Qin Mu raised his head and asked.
"When it is dark, there will be some terrible things moving in the dark, and if you go out, you will die."
Granny Si said solemnly: "The stone statues in the village will protect us, and things in the dark dare not enter the village."
"Are there stone statues like this in other villages?" Qin Mu asked curiously.
Granny Si nodded, but her expression was a little worried. She kept looking outside the village and said in a low voice, "The cripple should be back... I really shouldn't let the cripple go out. This guy only has one leg..."
"Grandma, something strange happened today..."
Qin Mu hesitated for a moment, and told the story of a woman getting out of the cow's belly. Granny Si said casually, "You mean that woman? The cripple told me about it, and he handled it very well. You were weaned when you were four years old." I said when I sold the cow, but you were reluctant, so I let you feed it. Look, something happened now? I said that if you eat milk until it is four years old, you will have feelings for the cow."
Qin Mu blushed. Weaning at four years old is indeed a bit too long, but it seems that the key is not weaning at four years old, right
"Grandma, that woman was killed by the lame grandpa..."
"Good kill."
Granny Si smiled and said, "That's for taking advantage of her. She should have died eleven years ago. If she didn't want to nurse you, how could she have survived until now?"
Qin Mu didn't understand why.
Granny Si glanced at him, and said: "This woman is the wife of the owner of Xianglong City thousands of miles away from here. And every time the city lord of Xianglong violated the innocence of a woman, the wife of the lord of the city would send someone to beat the woman to death. I sneaked into the city of Xianglong, originally intending to kill her, but when I saw that she had just given birth to a child, the child died. Three months later, I thought that you had no milk yet, but she had milk, so I turned her into a cow and came back to milk you. I just didn’t expect this woman to break free from the seal and be able to speak, which almost killed you.”
Qin Mu was dumbfounded, and lost his voice: "Grandma, how can a person become a cow?"
Granny Si chuckled, revealing part of her mouth and missing teeth: "You want to learn? I'll teach you... The cripple is back!"
Qin Mu looked over and saw the lame man limping forward, leaning on a cane with one hand and grabbing the prey on his back with the other. The darkness rushed towards the village like a tide, and Granny Si hurriedly shouted: "Cripple, hurry up, hurry up!"
"No hurries?"
The cripple still walked towards the village unhurriedly, and the moment he entered the village, the dense darkness just flooded the village. The prey on his back was a colorful tiger, which was not dead yet. Its tail was swept by the darkness. Suddenly the tiger let out a mournful roar. Qin Mu quickly looked and saw that the tiger's tail was only a piece of bone. All the fur and flesh and blood were gone, as if it had been gnawed off by something.
He looked curiously at the darkness outside the village, it was pitch black and he couldn't see anything.
"What's in the darkness?" he wondered.