Chapter 2: When Xiao Hua was a child

Seeing these eyes, Lu Qingjiu's breath caught and he even thought he was hallucinating. Those eyes seemed to see Lu Qingjiu inside the room through the slit, and a strong look of greed came out of them.

Lu Qingjiu said in dismay, "Am I having a nightmare?"

Before he could get an answer to his question, the terrible eyes above his head were nowhere to be seen. Before Lu Qingjiu could slow down, however, he saw a long, thin, pink tongue, burrowing through the small hole in the room.

The tongue was extremely long and covered with transparent mucus, and it shot towards Lu Qingjiu's position, but Lu Qingjiu reacted quickly and dived under the bed to avoid the tongue. He stumbled and pushed open the door and ran outside, only to see what was on his roof and freeze in his tracks.

A huge reptile was attached to the roof of the old house, its skin greyish-black, its eyes protruding and its limbs easily fixed on the slippery brickwork, clearly a giant gecko.

The gecko also noticed Lu Qingjiu's movement and slowly turned its head towards Lu Qingjiu, Lu Qingjiu saw the bad situation and turned to escape, but the next moment he heard a cracking sound behind him, as if something was stabbing towards him

Before Lu Qingjiu could react, he felt a tightness around his waist and his whole vision was inverted. With an ahhh, he was swept up by the huge gecko with its tongue.

The gecko, as it always does when it eats something, will eat the living thing as soon as it has caught it with its tongue. Lu Qingjiu watched as he came closer and closer to the huge gecko, and just as he was about to be sucked into its mouth, the gecko suddenly froze in its tracks, its huge pupils filled with horrific fear.

Lu Qingjiu was thus stuck in mid-air, the light was too much for him to fully digest for a moment, but his survival instincts made him make the right choice. Taking advantage of the gecko's momentary daze, he pulled out the keychain he kept in his trouser pocket and slashed down hard at the tongue that was wrapped around him.

I don't know if it was the pain or something else, but the gecko actually dropped Lu Qingjiu, who fell from mid-air to the ground and saw a dense darkness floating above his head at some point.

Something seems to be hidden in the darkness, but Lu Qingjiu can't see it clearly.

The gecko, seemingly terrified of the darkness, turned and jumped off the roof to flee, but the darkness spread quickly over and enveloped the gecko.

Then Lu Qingjiu heard a sound like chewing meat. The gecko, covered by darkness, had only a small section of its tail showing, and Lu Qingjiu watched as it twisted and struggled, then moved less and less, and finally stopped moving.

The sound of meat being chewed gradually diminished and was replaced by the crunching of bones. Lu Qingjiu slowly got up from the ground, intending to take advantage of this to leave the area, but just two steps forward, he felt a dizziness in his head and his whole body went limp on the ground. Just before he passed out completely, he seemed to faintly see a large orange eye

The next day, Lu Qingjiu woke up in a daze to a knock at the door. He got up from bed and stayed there for a while before staggering to the door.

"What's wrong, Qingjiu looks so pale" Yin Xun saw Lu Qingjiu opening the door and was shocked by his face, "You went to catch a ghost in the middle of the night last night"

At the mention of the word ghost, Lu Qingjiu's face turned even more ugly as he said, "I seem to have had a very scary dream last night." As he said this, he looked up at the roof and saw no signs of damage on it.

"Horrible dreams," Yin Xun said, "are you too tired?"

Lu Qingjiu was in a trance: "It's possible, isn't it?"

"Are you still going to the town fair today," Yin Xun asked, "or are you staying home for the rest of the day?"

"Go on." Lu Qingjiu shook his head to clear it a little, "I have some more shopping to do."

"Alright then, let's go straight away and go to town for breakfast." Yin Xun glanced at his watch, "Uncle Chen and his car are just about to go to town."

Shuifu Village is quite far from the town and it takes a whole day to walk and more than two hours by car. There are only two small lorries in the village, so if villagers want to go to the town, they can wait until the day when the lorries come in and pay the fare. The man Yin Xun calls Uncle Chen is one of them. His family has a lot of fields and he is going to town to buy some fertiliser.

The two walked to the entrance of the village, said hello to Uncle Chen and got into the cab.

After Lu Qingjiu had paid for the car, Yin Xun handed him a cigarette with a smile, which Uncle Chen took and lit, asking Lu Qingjiu what he wanted to buy.

"I want to raise a piglet." Lu Qingjiu said, "And buy some seeds."

Uncle Chen said, "Sure, there are piglets for sale in town, so I'll help you pick them out together, don't get screwed."

Lu Qingjiu smiled and thanked him.

Then Uncle Chen asked Lu Qingjiu how he was doing and told him that he was planning to stay here for a long time, and gave him some advice on what he should pay attention to, such as the need to plough the land immediately so that the seeds could be planted, as farming is all about the season, and if you miss the spring, you will have to wait until the next season.

Lu Qingjiu listened and nodded his head from time to time. It is better to have distant relatives than close neighbours, and Shuifu Village is already small, so we can all help each other out with anything.

The minivan drove over the hill and reached the town market. Unlike the silence of the night, the town was bustling with activity during the day, with vendors on both sides of the road selling all sorts of things, including food and useful items, as well as many seeds and livestock.

Uncle Chen said he had to go and prepare the goods first and asked Yin Xun and Lu Qingjiu to buy what they wanted first, then the three of them would meet again at the place where the piglets were sold.

Lu Qingjiu nodded his head in agreement and entered the marketplace with Yin Xun.

"What do you want to eat?" Yin Xun said, "That Xiao Long Bao tastes pretty good."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Try it then."

Yin Xun said, "Hey, let's go."

Lu Qingjiu followed Yin Xun to a small shop next to the market and ordered two steaming dumplings, two bowls of soy milk and two dough sticks.

Lu Qingjiu took a bite of the dumpling and halfway through, he said, "Delicious." The dumpling is stuffed with meat in sauce, the skin is thin and the filling is large, and when you bite into it, it is full of meat juice, with chopped lotus root inside to reduce the greasiness of the meat.

"It's good, isn't it?" Yin Xun said, "Every time I come here, I get a few cages, try this dip."

Lu Qingjiu dips into the dipping sauce, which is spicy, vinegary and sprinkled with spring onions, and the taste is completely different.

Lu Qingjiu narrowed his eyes in satisfaction and smiled, "How much can you eat alone?"

"I," Yin Xun said, "have no problem with three or four cages, it's just that I don't like to eat lunch if I have too many."

"Oh." Lu Qingjiu took another one and was about to stuff it into his mouth when he felt a gaze resting on his back, he turned his head in confusion and saw a man in white standing behind him, looking at him with burning eyes.

The man's face was familiar to Lu Qingjiu, the same man he had met that day on the mountain road in a taxi.

"Hello to you." Lu Qingjiu silently put down his chopsticks, "You," he wanted to say something, but didn't know how to start.

Who knew that just as he was hesitating, the man had walked up to him.

Yin Xun whispered, "Who is this?" The man was handsome, the corners of his eyes drooping slightly, a lazy look, his thin lips pursed into an arc, all his attention seemed to be on Lu Qingjiu's body. After repeatedly checking, Yin Xun realised that the man seemed to be staring at the Xiao Long Bao in front of Lu Qingjiu.

Lu Qingjiu: ""He also spotted the man's target and after a moment's hesitation, asked politely, "Eat"

The man looked at Lu Qingjiu and nodded decisively.

Lu Qingjiu then hurriedly ordered two more dumplings, and the man didn't even use chopsticks, he just picked one up and put it in his mouth, Lu Qingjiu was about to remind him that the dumplings were a bit hot, but looking at him, he didn't seem to be affected at all, taking one after the other without a moment's pause.

Lu Qingjiu asked in a whisper, "Is it good?"

The man moved and nodded.

Lu Qingjiu: "Want some more?"

The man nodded again.

Lu Qingjiu then called for two more cages. He didn't know exactly what the man was, but he had a vague feeling that it was the man in front of him who had saved his life that night.

One cage, two cages, three cages in front of them stacked higher and higher, and Yin Xun's eyes widened.

"Crap, he's eaten twenty cages." Yin Xun said creepily.

Lu Qingjiu forced himself to calm down, "It's okay, he shouldn't be broken."

Yin Xun: "Is it a matter of propping it up?"

Lu Qingjiu: "What is the problem then"

Yin Xun: "Do you have enough money with you?"

Lu Qingjiu: "Have you brought enough?"

The man in white had already eaten almost twenty cages, and Lu Qingjiu suspected that he would have no problem with another twenty, so he could only touch his wallet to comfort himself that the four hundred dollars was worth the price of a life.

Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun were already dumbfounded by the tall steamers in front of them, and only when Lu Qingjiu asked the boss to serve five more did the man wave his hand, indicating that it was no longer necessary.

"I'm full," Lu Qingjiu said, "don't worry, I can afford to pay for this meal, eat up before you go."

"Eat up," the man sniffed, suddenly twisting his head in earnest

Staring at Lu Qingjiu, "I haven't had enough for a long time."

Lu Qingjiu :""

The man said, "Can you fill me up?"

"Haha, I'll try," Lu Qingjiu's back actually broke out in a layer of white hair sweat as he was stared at by the man's black eyes, and he didn't dare to shrug it off, so he could only express his thoughts in a more polite manner.

"Oh." The man said, "That's quite all right."

Lu Qingjiu breathed a sigh of relief, but it hadn't quite subsided when the man came to say, "My name is Bai Yuehu, and I will come to you." He held out his hand and threw a small cloth bag on the table, "Here is the deposit."

Lu Qingjiu froze, but in the few moments that he was frozen, the man had already stood up and simply disappeared into the crowd.

"What is this" Yin Xun touched the pocket on the table with some curiosity, "What is this, it's not money, is it?"

Lu Qingjiu opened the pocket and as soon as he saw the contents, his expression froze and he didn't say anything for a long time.

Yin Xun saw Lu Qingjiu's strange expression and poked his head over to see the contents of the black sack and was dumbfounded: "What kind of worm is this?"

Lu Qingjiu shakes his head, but doesn't explain what's in the bag, and closes it with his hand. The others might not recognise it, but Lu Qingjiu knew very well that it was a gecko's tail, still throbbing slightly, as if it had just been cut off from the body. What he had encountered last night had not been a dream.

Yin Xun muttered in a whisper, "That man was joking when he said he was coming to see you."

Lu Qingjiu looked at Yin Xun for a moment: "Yes, I guess."

The two men looked at each other after saying this, but they both saw a certain sense of worry in each other's eyes, and they both had a bad feeling about it

After the men had left, Lu Qingjiu took his wallet and calmly settled the bill, then followed Yin Xun and decided to pick out some seeds for the family to plant.

Lu Qingjiu's family has eight acres of land, all of which are rented out to other people, and this year two acres are up for lease, so Lu Qingjiu is planning to grow some vegetables for his own consumption.

"And what do you grow?" Yin Xun asks.

"Let's plant a little bit of everything." Lu Qingjiu doesn't know much about farming, so he thought he'd take two acres of land this year to practice, "corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and whatever else we usually eat."

"Sure." Yin Xun asked while picking out seeds for Lu Qingjiu, "You don't know anything at first, so it's okay to practice first, because two mu of land isn't much anyway."

Lu Qingjiu nodded, and the two of them chose some seeds of various kinds and had the boss wrap them up and put them in their backpacks.

After choosing the seeds, Lu Qingjiu went to buy some household items, such as pots and pans and spices for the kitchen, and Yin Xun asked him to buy some screens to cover the windows, as the mosquitoes are very poisonous at night.

Lu Qingjiu said he had not been bitten by mosquitoes at all.

Yin Xun still didn't believe it. He could say it was a coincidence before, but it had been a few days since Lu Qingjiu was still fine, so it was really strange. Who knows, after searching Lu Qingjiu's arm, he didn't find a single mosquito bite, so he could only say with hatred that these mosquitoes are really mountain pigs that don't eat fine bran, the smooth-skinned Lu Qingjiu didn't bite, but came to bite him!

Lu Qingjiu is standing next to him, but he remembers the huge gecko on the roof of his house. Well, it seems that the gecko's main food is mosquitoes, right?

After picking out what to choose, it was almost time to go to see Uncle Chan.

Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun carry their belongings to a piglet market next to the bazaar, a small livestock market, where Lu Qingjiu sees a calf vendor as soon as he enters.

Yin Xun said, "Go this way, how many heads are you going to buy?"

"Two heads, I think." Lu Qingjiu said, "One is too lonely."

Yin Xun paused in his tracks for a moment, looked at Lu Qingjiu and said seriously, "I have a warning for you, don't give the pig a name when you buy it."

"I know that." Lu Qingjiu said. Lu Qingjiu said, "When you have a name, you have a feeling, didn't you name your pig Xiao Hua when you were little?"

"Yes." Yin Xun lapses into reminiscence, lamenting, "I loved Xiao Hua so much back then that I used to give him the tenderest pig grass every day."

Lu Qingjiu: "Yes, you cried all afternoon when Xiao Hua was killed by your father... by the way, how did they make you feel better?"

Yin Xun: "Made me a bowl of braised pork."

Lu Qingjiu :""

Yin Xun: "It smells good."

Lu Qingjiu: ""That's fucking fine.

When they arrived at the place where they bought the piglets, they saw Uncle Chen already chatting with the owner of the piglets, who saw Lu Qingjiu coming and beckoned, "Come here.

Lu Qingjiu walked over and saw that Uncle Chen had bundled two pink piglets with him. The piglets had just been born and were still quite clean, lying on the ground grunting, looking very cute.

Yin Xun looked at the piglet and said, "So tender."

Lu Qingjiu: "Do you remember Xiao Hua?"

Yin Xun: "Don't mention the sad past again."

Lu Qingjiu thought to himself, "That's not what you say when you eat roast pork.

"This batch of piglets is of good quality." Uncle Chen said, "The number of home-raised pigs is small, so you don't have to be so particular about it, are you eating it yourself or using it to sell meat"

"Eat it yourself." Lu Qingjiu said.

"Oh, that's fine." Uncle Chen nodded.

Nowadays, there are stricter regulations on pig farming, and if you have more than a certain number of pigs, you have to get a farming license, but in a remote place like Shuifu Village, the regulations are not so strict, especially if you raise them for your own consumption, like Lu Qingjiu.

Satisfied with the pig that Uncle Chen had chosen, Lu Qingjiu took out his wallet and was about to pay when he heard a mournful pig squeal from the side, a mournful, piercing sound that drew everyone's attention.

"What's that," said a puzzled Uncle Chen, "Boss you've got wild boar boys."

The owner of the pig shook his head and said, "I didn't get it, I just found it two days ago by the side of the road, it seems to have been knocked unconscious by a car.

"Wild boar," Lu Qingjiu said, intrigued, "can I see it?" He had never seen a real wild boar before.

The owner waved his hand to indicate Lu Qingjiu to make himself comfortable.

Lu Qingjiu met its gaze and found two small, dark balls of flesh cowering in the corner of the fence, the slightly larger one screaming miserably.

"It's crying." Lu Qingjiu had no idea that pigs were so spiritual.

"Yeah, right." Yin Xun said, "But is this thing a wild boar? How come it has tusks at such a young age." Normally tusks develop slowly and cannot be present at birth.

"Yeah, it's a bit of a strange looking pig, probably a mutation." The owner was beside himself not taking this seriously, "And it's a male and a female too, the female has tusks too."

The two meatballs were cowering in the corner, but now they seemed to have understood their conversation and started to look this way.

"Boss, what are you going to do with these two pigs." Lu Qingjiu asked.

The owner said, "They won't eat anything, so if they can't sell it, they kill it and eat the meat."

Lu Qingjiu said, "How much meat can there be in such a small place?"

The owner said, "Why, you want to buy it"

Lu Qingjiu said, "Looking at the two poor ones, I'll ask if I can add some money and you can sell them to me together."

The owner was a little hesitant.

Uncle Chen chimed in, "Old Xu, this pig doesn't have much meat, and it looks sickly, so it's not safe to eat, so we might as well sell it cheap to see if it can survive."

After being persuaded by a regular customer, the owner relented and agreed to sell the two black piglets together to Lu Qingjiu at a cheaper price. Lu Qingjiu paid the money, took the black piglets out of the pens and put them into Uncle Chen's van with the other two piglets.

The two black meatballs also seemed to resent the other two piglets, not wanting to go near their own kind at all. Lu Qingjiu sat next to the two and watched their little antics, helplessly reaching out and gently pulling the smaller one's ear, saying, "They're all the same kind, what's the point of resenting them?"

The smaller one grunted twice and actually shed tears, with an expression of resignation.

The bigger one grunted at Lu Qingjiu, but he was just as mean as he could be at that moment, so Lu Qingjiu reached out and flicked him on the forehead, saying, "You're still mean to me, but I saved you two from there. "

Yin Xun laughed at this, "Wine, what do you say to the pigs, do they understand?"

Before the words were out of his mouth, he saw the large Xiao Hei piglet bend his front feet and pay homage to Lu Qingjiu.

Yin Xun's smile froze: "Damn, this pig has become a spirit."

Lu Qingjiu: "It seems to be."

Yin Xun: "Then this pig-elf"

Lu Qingjiu :""

Yin Xun: "Is it good?"

Lu Qingjiu: ""To be honest, Xiao Hua's death was not unjust.