dognovel Chapter 825 Outline
Chapter 825 Outline
When the last ray of morning light sprinkled into the hall, she turned into starlight and dissipated in the air. The rain stopped, and the sun penetrated the clouds and shone on the mottled walls of the old house. Lin Xia took off the silver bracelet on her wrist and gently placed it on the altar. She knew that this old house, which carried a century of grievances, could finally rest in peace. Before leaving, she burned Wan Niang's diary and all the old photos together, so that those dusty past events would disappear forever in the long river of history. Walking out of the alley, Lin Xia looked back at the plaque of "Su Family Old House". The breeze blew, and the dust on the plaque fell off, revealing the brand new words "Lin House" below. She smiled, turned and walked into the sunlight. Behind her, the wooden door of the old house slowly closed, and she let out a long sigh.
Huaizhen Weird Stories**
As the bus bumped into the mountain road, Lin Xiaoman counted to the 37th bend. The blue-gray mountains outside the window were stacked up like a crumpled ink painting. The mountain breeze, wrapped in the smell of damp moss, poured into the car window, making her subconsciously wrap her coat tightly. The mobile phone map showed that there were only five kilometers left to Huai Town. The navigation female voice mechanically repeated, "The road ahead is rugged, please drive carefully." This sentence has been circling in her mind like a spell since she received a call from her aunt last week. "Girl, to Huai Town?" The driver suddenly asked, and his cloudy eyes were reflected in the rearview mirror. "Didn't your relatives tell you why they asked you to go back at this time?" Lin Xiaoman squeezed the backpack straps. Her aunt's voice on the phone was hoarse like sandpaper: "Xiaoman, come back soon, your cousin is in trouble." If she asked again, she would just say "You will know when you come back" and then hang up. She looked at the dead trees passing by the window. The shadows of the trees cast a distorted outline on the car window, which looked very much like the portrait of the judge she saw in the Huai Town ancestral hall when she was a child. The old locust tree at the entrance of the village is still tangled, with faded red cloth tied all over the trunk, rustling in the wind. As Lin Xiaoman approached, several old ladies sewing shoe soles suddenly stopped their work, and their turbid eyes swept over like a group of frightened crows. "Isn't this the girl from the Lin family?" Aunt Wang was the first to break the silence, knocking her pipe on the soles of her shoes. "Your aunt is waiting for you in the ancestral hall." The door of the ancestral hall was ajar, and the smell of sandalwood mixed with rotten wood hit her face. The aunt knelt on the futon with her back to the door, with a photo of her cousin in front of her. The boy in the photo was wearing a school uniform and had a bright smile, but if you look closely, you can see that the pupil of his left eye is a strange gray-blue. "Xiaoman, you are finally here." The aunt turned around, her hair was gray and she didn't look like a -year-old, and her eye sockets were sunken. "Your cousin is gone, just three days ago." Lin Xiaoman felt the blood coagulate instantly. The last message from her cousin on her phone was last month, saying that he was preparing for the college entrance examination and sending a monthly exam report card. The boy in the photo was clearly full of energy, how could he... "How did he die?" She heard her own dry voice. Her aunt suddenly coughed violently, and dark red blood foam oozed out from between her fingers: "He got..." Before she finished speaking, a harsh suona sound came from outside the ancestral hall, and a group of people in mourning clothes passed by carrying a coffin with twisted talismans painted on it. The man walking in front was a man in mourning clothes, with a haggard face and a yellowed talisman paper on his forehead. "Don't look!" Her aunt suddenly covered her eyes, but Lin Xiaoman still caught a glimpse of black liquid oozing out of the bottom of the coffin, winding into strange patterns on the stone road. That night, Lin Xiaoman lay on the bed in the old house, and the moonlight poured in through the carved window lattices, casting the shadow of the locust tree on the wall. From the main room came the suppressed sobbing of her aunt, mixed with the sound of rummaging through boxes and cabinets. She got up gently and saw her aunt looking through her father's old bookcase. A yellowed photo slipped out from between the yellowed pages - in the photo, her father and several young people stood under an old locust tree, each holding a peach wood sword in their hands, with a solemn expression on their faces. "Xiaoman?" Her aunt found her and hurriedly stuffed the photo into her arms, "Go to sleep quickly, we have to go to the grave tomorrow..." "What did Dad and the others do back then?" Lin Xiaoman pointed to the "Maoshan Magic Essentials" in the bookcase, "Also, why are the people in the village so strange?" Her aunt's hands were shaking so badly that the flame of the kerosene lamp was shaking with it: "You are still young, there are some things..." "I am not young anymore!" Lin Xiaoman raised her voice, "How did my cousin die? Why are his eyes..." Before she finished speaking, a shrill cat cry suddenly came from outside the window. Her aunt's face suddenly changed, and she grabbed the copper bell at the head of the bed and shook it vigorously. The bell jingled, mixed with the barking of dogs in the distance, and was particularly harsh in the silent night. In the following days, Lin Xiaoman began to ask around. The young people in the village all went out to work, and the elderly who stayed behind avoided talking about her questions. Only the lame old Zhoutou secretly slipped her a note: "Zi Shi, Lao Jing." The moonlight at Zi Shi was as pale as frost, and the weeds around the old well rustled in the night wind. Lin Xiaoman clutched the peach wood sword stolen from her aunt's room, her heart beating so fast that it was about to burst out of her chest. There was a sound of dragging footsteps in the distance, getting closer and closer. She held her breath and saw Lao Zhoutou walking slowly with a cane, holding a swaddling cloth in his arms. "Twenty years..." Lao Zhoutou opened the swaddling cloth, and there was a clay doll inside, with two black buttons for eyes. "The fire that year killed seven children, and only your father escaped." Lin Xiaoman's temples were throbbing. She vaguely remembered hearing her father say when she was a child that there was a mysterious fire in the village, and seven children were burned to death while playing under the old locust tree. But every time her father talked about this, his face would turn pale and he would never say more. "The souls of those children refused to leave and attached themselves to the locust tree." Old Zhou's voice was erratic, "Every twenty years, boys and girls must be sacrificed, otherwise the whole village will suffer..." Suddenly, a gust of cold wind blew, and Old Zhou's body began to twist and deform, and in a blink of an eye it turned into the appearance of his cousin. The clay doll's eyes glowed with a faint blue light, and the corners of its mouth opened to reveal its white teeth: "Sister, you are finally here..." Lin Xiaoman waved the peach wood sword, but found that her body could not move. The cousin (or rather the thing attached to him) approached step by step, muttering to himself: "This time, I will take away all the blood of the Lin family..." At the critical moment, the aunt rushed out holding a burning talisman, which shone brightly in the night sky: "Evil creature! We were the ones who let you down back then, but Xiaoman is innocent!" The cousin's body trembled violently, and he let out an inhuman roar: "Innocent? Your Lin family has been guarding the locust tree for generations, but you watched us burn to death!" The aunt burst into tears: "The fire was set on purpose by the village chief! He was afraid that the secret of the locust tree would be spread, so..." The truth exploded like thunder. Lin Xiaoman thought of the village chief he saw in the ancestral hall during the day.