I asked about the background of this old lady.
The middle-aged man told me that the old lady had lived in Fengmen Village for her whole life and could enter the Fengmen Mountain.
How strange was the mountain near Fengmen Village? Outsiders hardly ever survived entering it, but the old people from the village could go in without any trouble.
Some people say it's a curse, a curse sent by God to the village of "Fengmen".
A middle-aged man said, "I, Xiaobao, didn't believe it before. It wasn't until I saw it with my own eyes that I believed it."
"What did you see?" I asked Xiaobao.
Xiaobao said that when he was young, he and his friends were playing at the foot of the mountain. At that time, a villager had relatives visiting from the city. They were delighted to see the primeval forest surrounding Fengmen village.
They said that in the city, they never saw such mountains. So they wanted to go into the mountains for a while. At that time, the village warned their relatives not to go into the mountains, as it was no joke and something would go wrong.
To their surprise, once the villager finished speaking, the relatives became curious and disregarded the warning. The city was always promoting the destruction of old customs, and opposing superstition, advocating the overthrow of all superstitious beliefs, and opposing all cultural dregs.
Having been educated in these beliefs all the time, as soon as they heard what the villager said, they got angry. They said they wanted to go into the mountains, they wanted to overturn superstitions. As long as they had faith in Marxism, all taboos were just paper tigers, and they were just cultural dregs that would fall with a poke.
They shouted slogans about going into the mountains to see what "ghostly things" were inside. Some kind-hearted villagers tried to advise them, but they not only ignored the advice but also beat up those villagers.
The leading person among the relatives even took out his own belt and, holding the end, brandished it, saying that whoever tried to stop them would have to face him, and he would fight them.
With that, who would dare stop them?
So, the relatives left Fengmen village and went into the primeval forest nearby. When they went up the mountain, Xiaobao and his friends were still playing by the reservoir.
"What happened next? Did they all die?"
"They all died, and they died in a terrible way," Xiaobao said. "Before going up to the mountain, the city folk gave candies to our kids, saying we were the successors of socialism and must study hard, abandon ignorance, discard stubborn old ideas and make meaningful contributions to socialism."
Xiaobao said at that time, he didn't understand what socialism was, nor did he understand what a successor was. He thought that a successor was someone who took over the position of the class leader at school, so he called himself a successor.
Xiaobao and his friends took the candy absent-mindedly. He didn't want to eat the candy then. After the city relatives had left, he carefully tore open the wrappers and put the candy in his mouth, sucking gently.
As he was sucking on the candy, they suddenly heard several eerie screams coming from the mountain.
Xiaobao was frightened, and he didn't dare to continue playing in the water. He ran back to his home naked.
As soon as he got back to the village, he timidly told the villagers about what had happened. The villagers immediately organized a rescue team, led by the oldest man in the village, and entered the deep forest.
Just past the first hill, they found a body buried halfway in the trees. The skull seemed to have been crushed by a heavy object, and the white brain mixed with bright red blood made for a disgusting sight.
Xiaobao said he was so disgusted, he vomited on the spot. Three or four days later, they found the bodies of the other three people, but they were unable to find the last person's body, dead or alive.
"That's so eerie," I said after listening to Xiaobao's story. I really felt that Fengmen Mountain was not a place for ordinary people to go. At the same time, I asked Xiaobao, "Hey, did you and your brothers go to dig up the coffin in the mountain? I guess the old lady led the way?"
Xiaobao realized I had figured out his secret. A faint tinge of color finally appeared on his sallow face. He chuckled and waved his hand, saying that most of the people in the village made a living by growing crops, and when they encountered a drought or flood, they couldn't even have enough to eat. They were unwilling to be coffin carriers, but what else could they do?
"Forget it, I won't ask any more. Let's go. Take me to the place where the stone coffin was unearthed. I want to see it for myself," I said to Xiaobao.
Xiaobao shook his head, saying he couldn't go because he had to take his second nephew to the hospital. The painkiller he was using was running out, and if he didn't get it today, he wouldn't see tomorrow's sun.
"Just undergoing conservative treatment?" I asked Xiaobao.
In the hospital, conservative treatment for cancer means just taking medicine, but some people are even more "conservative" and only take painkillers... waiting to die!
Xiaobao nodded and managed a smile, saying that people from the countryside had cheap lives, and he couldn't afford the several thousand or even tens of thousands for effective medicine. Besides, he was being retaliated against as the owner of the stone coffin. Medicine was useless and a waste of money.
Then he pointed at my watch and said, "How much did this watch cost?"
I didn't understand what he meant and honestly said, "Over seven thousand."
"Over seven thousand, huh. You probably don't know... in our Fengmen village, some people's yearly income doesn't even match half the price of your watch. You rich people really can't understand how we poor folks live."
Xiaobao said I didn't know, but I actually did. I had once been to a place called Yushan, where the people were very hospitable, although poor, they were always eager to invite you over for a visit.
I was once dragged by a local to go for a drink. The alcohol we drank was homemade sorghum liquor, and the side dish was quite unusual. You wouldn't believe it if I told you, just a plate of soybeans and a pot of stones soaked in saltwater.
We ate a few soybeans and then fished out a stone from the saltwater and licked it.
I cried when I was happy after drinking that round of liquor.
Honestly, people who buy Nike shoes for seven or eight hundred, and those who live worry-free lives really can't understand that kind of poverty. When I saw Xiaobao preparing to go on the tricycle, I took a stack of red hundred-yuan notes from my wallet and stuffed it into Xiaobao's pocket.
Xiaobao tried to give the money back to me, but I waved my hand and said, "This money isn't for you, it's for showing me the way."
After that, I let Huang Xin and Cheng Yan get into the car, ready to take the old lady to Fengmen village.
"Buddy, you're a good man! Buddy, you're a good man!"
As my car started to move, Xiaobao kept running alongside my car. He ran along and leaned on my car window, shouting at me, "Buddy, you're a good man."
I waved my hand and smiled, indicating for him to go back.
He continued to chase after me for seventy or eighty meters before returning to his own electric tricycle.
"So pitiful."
"So pitiful," Cheng Yan and Huang Xin said with a hint of sadness.
Big Golden Tooth shook his head and said, "Poor people are everywhere, but there's nothing we can do. This world is inherently cruel. Even beneath the neon lights of the wealthy, there is blood and tears, and beneath the tall buildings of the wealthy, there are shadows. There's just no way around it."
"Alright, alright, stop thinking about this. Let's focus on our own business," I sympathized with Xia Bao's plight, but I couldn't let my brothers be distracted by it. After all, we were about to enter the legendary Fengmen Mountains, a place of extraordinary danger.
"Got it!" Big Golden Tooth replied readily.
I have a habit when driving. After driving a few dozen meters, I like to raise my head and check the rearview mirror, just in case there's a car following too closely or a child or elderly person appearing behind the car, so I can take precautions. This time was no exception; I raised my head.
But this time, as soon as I looked, I saw an old lady in the back seat, with a strangely eerie smile on her lips.
The smile vanished in an instant, but unfortunately, I had seen it.
Could this old lady be up to something?
I pondered on this as I drove. After a few hundred meters, I suddenly remembered a legend about this area in Henan, so I asked the old lady with a hidden meaning, "Grandma, let me ask you something, have you ever eaten human flesh?"
As soon as I spoke, Huang Xin and Cheng Yan, who were sitting beside the old lady, moved away, staring at her intently.
The old lady chuckled, "Actually, I have."
"What?" Huang Xin and Cheng Yan moved further away.
The old lady continued, "In 1942, during the famine in Henan, everyone was starving. It was a matter of who was dead that mattered. It didn't matter whether it was disgusting or criminal, as long as you could survive, it was fine."
Initially, I estimated that the old lady was about seventy, but now, hearing her statement, I realized that she was at least eighty or older.
"Grandma, are you long-lived?"
"I'm eighty-six this year," the old lady said, with clear thinking and a stable tone, quite unlike the usual feebleness of an octogenarian.
I sneered and was about to speak, but Duan Guangyi interrupted, "Grandma, what's your surname?"
"Zhang."
"Have you always lived in Fengmen Village?"
"I've lived here since I was a child," the old lady said.
Suddenly, Duan Guangyi burst into laughter, "Hahaha! Grandma, what you said is different from what my grandpa said. My grandpa also fled to Fengmen Village in 1942, and at that time, the village only had one surname, Bai. I never heard of anyone surnamed Zhang. This book is updated slowly [Half] [Floating] [Life]."
Back then, Duan Guangyi's wife, Yanzi, starved to death in Fengmen Village. I guessed that Duan Guangyi had probably inquired thoroughly, and at that time, Fengmen Village only had the Bai surname. It's just over the years, due to changes in the times, that other surnames gradually appeared!
By saying "my grandpa", he was actually using the excuse of "having three generations of memory".
Sure enough, the old lady's expression was very unnatural.
Quick-witted Big Golden Tooth took out a Luo whistle drum and stared at the old lady intently. "Old lady, you better tell the truth. We are not easy people to deal with. Don't try to deceive us with just a few words!"
"Hmph." The old lady erupted in a chilly smile. "When my daughter-in-law asked me to find you, I felt that you weren't ordinary people. It's precisely because you are not ordinary that I agreed to take you into the mountains. I wouldn't bother with ordinary folks."
I stepped on the brake. "Let's be upfront with each other, old lady."
Author's note: Brothers, I'm really sorry it took so long to publish this chapter. I hope you enjoy reading it. Thank you.