Chapter 3: The Woman in the Well

With their four piglets, Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun returned to Shuifu Village in Uncle Chen's van.

When he arrived home, Lu Qingjiu first took the piglets into the pig pen, which he had cleaned in advance, and put clean straw on the floor. According to Yin Xun, pigs like to be clean and have a comfortable place to live so that they can grow meat.

Lu Qingjiu picked up the piglets and put them into the pig pen, putting clean grass and water in the trough. The two little white pigs wiggled their fat little bottoms and ate happily as soon as they were inside, but the two Xiao Hei pigs stood hesitantly at the entrance to the pen.

"What's wrong?" Lu Qingjiu wondered when they refused to move, "Is this pigsty not to your liking?"

Hearing Lu Qingjiu's question, the big black piglet actually nodded and stretched out his tiny piggy hoof to point at the two small white pigs that were happily eating.

Lu Qingjiu: "You don't want to live with them"

The black piglet grunted.

Lu Qingjiu looked at Piggy suspiciously, "Are you really a pig? You're not a human, are you?"

The black piglet looked at Lu Qingjiu with an innocent face, as if he did not understand what Lu Qingjiu was talking about, and Lu Qingjiu seriously suspected that he was deliberately pretending to be innocent. After all, if it was a human who found someone willing to communicate with him or her, he or she would have shown it right away, rather than playing dumb like this.

Lu Qingjiu thought about it, so he went to get a wooden board from the side and separated the two black piglets from the white piglets, so that the two little piglets could walk cautiously on their toes to the pigpen, look around and then lie down on the clean straw and start resting.

Lu Qingjiu, seeing this, did not bother with them any more and turned to go back to the house.

Yin Xun is busy in the kitchen, setting up everything Lu Qingjiu has bought. Lu Qingjiu comes in and asks him what he would like to eat in the evening.

"Anything is fine." Yin Xun is quite casual, "I'm going to pick some vegetables in the field and we'll have a hot pot."

"Sure." Lu Qingjiu said, "I'll make a pot of soup first... By the way, where do we get the pig's grass, or do we just feed it?"

"You can ask the children in the village to pick the grass for you." Yin Xun said. Yin Xun said, "Fifty cents a basket, they earn some pocket money and you don't have to go to the mountains, you just feed them, add some vitamins and other things that the pigs need, the meat won't smell as good if they eat too much, but they won't get sick easily."

Lu Qingjiu nodded at his words to show that he knew.

"I'm going to pick vegetables, so you can make the soup first." Yin Xun went off to her family's field.

Lu Qingjiu put the bones he had bought from the market today into a pot and started to cook them, then cut up some of the meat he had bought. Lu Qingjiu stuffed the rest of the ingredients into the fridge, picked up the vegetables and went out into the courtyard to wash them when he heard a loud poof, which sounded like a heavy object falling into the water.

The sound came from the backyard. Lu Qingjiu froze at the sound, then thought of something and put down the dishes he was holding and hurried to the backyard.

The backyard has not been cleaned up much and is surrounded by withered trees and messy weeds, with white cobwebs hanging from the walls, and the black well in front of us stands out in the midst of it all.

Lu Qingjiu had just heard clearly the sound of something falling into the water and, fearing that a child from the village had accidentally fallen into the well, he hurried over to the mouth of the well and looked inside.

Lu Qingjiu shouted several times, but heard no sound of distress from inside.

"Did someone fall in?" Lu Qingjiu continued to shout, "Call out if someone is there."

The well was silent, the only thing that remained was dead silence.

Lu Qingjiu called a few more times, but there was still no response. He was wondering what had fallen in, if not a person, when Yin Xun called out from his side, "Where are you, Wine?"

"I'm in the backyard." Lu Qingjiu responded.

"What are you doing in the backyard" Yin Xun said, "I've come back from picking vegetables, these cucumbers are so sweet"

Lu Qingjiu looked at the mouth of the well, "I just heard something fall in, so I came to check."

"Oh, is there something there?" Yin Xun stood in the backyard doorway, clutching a half-chewed cucumber in his hand, watching Lu Qingjiu from afar.

"No." Lu Qingjiu said.

"Never mind, then." Yin Xun said, "Maybe it was a stone that someone's child threw carelessly outside the wall and rolled into the mouth of the well."

Lu Qingjiu thought about it and decided that the person who had fallen into the well was not a human being, so he left the backyard and walked to Yin Xun's side, walking together towards the front yard. Yin Xun looked at Lu Qingjiu, took another bite of cucumber, crunched it and said vaguely, "What is that thing on your back?"

"On my back" Lu Qingjiu craned his head to look behind himself, "What is it?"

Yin Xun reached out and pulled a black mass off Lu Qingjiu's back: "This"

Lu Qingjiu got a good look at what was in Yin Xun's hand. It was actually a black mass of hair that had somehow stuck to his back.

"It's hair." Yin Xun hurriedly threw it to the side after seeing clearly that what he was holding was hair, "What the hell, it's disgusting."

Lu Qingjiu: "" He looked at the well in his backyard in silence, a sense of foreboding rising in his heart.

"Don't be afraid, it's okay." Yin Xun said. Yin Xun said, "In the countryside, it's a remote place and there are always strange things going on."

Lu Qingjiu was shocked: "Strange things like"

Yin Xun was silent for a moment and whispered to Lu Qingjiu, "Last summer, Liu's little

of that waif was drowned."

"Drowned," Lu Qingjiu said, "in the village stream, which was shallow. Even if he fell down in it, he could easily get up.

"No." Yin Xun said, "It wouldn't be particularly strange if it was there, he was drowned in the woods."

Lu Qingjiu didn't understand for a moment and repeated in confusion, "In the woods"

"Yeah." Yin Xun whispered, "It was in the woods, there was no water around at all, and the Liu family called the police at the time, only for the police to say after the autopsy that he had drowned."

Lu Qingjiu said, "So what happened?"

"What else can we do in the end?" Yin Xun said. Yin Xun says, "Just leave it at that. In fact, such strange things happen in other villages too, but not many, just one or two a few years."

Lu Qingjiu had nothing to say. He had actually encountered this kind of thing when he was working in the city before, but he didn't expect to see such strange things in a different place.

"So in the future, if you meet someone, just pretend you didn't see them." Yin Xun said, "If you don't see it, you won't be bothered."

Lu Qingjiu: I thought that's how you use the term "out of sight, out of mind".

Yin Xun hands Lu Qingjiu a cucumber and they squat down in the front yard to continue washing vegetables.

The taste of the cucumber was really good, crisp and sweet, no bitterness at all, and plenty of water, similar to the fruit, Lu Qingjiu felt better after eating the cucumber and said, "Have you ever encountered anything strange?"

Yin Xun grinned, his cute tiger's teeth showing again, "I might have come across it, I didn't notice."

Lu Qingjiu thought to himself that it was nice to have thick nerves.

Yin Xun picked a lot of vegetables and after washing them Lu Qingjiu added the stewed bone broth base to the hot pot base he had brought from the city, boiled it up and brought it out to the courtyard where the two of them opened a few bottles of beer and started eating the hot pot while drinking beer.

The hotpot is simple, but the ingredients are fresh, so the taste is not bad. The rich aroma of the bone broth fills the garden, and Yin Xun looks a little drunk as she takes a few sips and two flushes rise to her cheeks.

Lu Qingjiu also had a strong feeling of drunkenness, he hadn't been drunk for a long time, he had no time to stop and have a drink with his friends when he was working late and his consciousness was blurred.

Lu Qingjiu saw Yin Xun sitting in front of him and suddenly reached out his hand and pointed behind him, saying vaguely, "It's so dark."

"What," Lu Qingjiu said, "isn't the light on?"

Yin Xun tilted his head with a very confused expression, "But it's still dark."

Lu Qingjiu thought that Yin Xun was completely drunk until he also turned his head and looked behind him, then he understood the meaning of Yin Xun's words. Lu Qingjiu rubbed his eyes heavily, and only then did he see clearly that the black figure was a mass of hair in human form.

"You know what I'm most afraid of," the woman's soft question rang in her ears.

Perhaps it was the alcohol that numbed his nerves, Lu Qingjiu was not too frightened as he looked at the mass of hair and heard the woman ask again.

"You know what I'm most afraid of," black hair, closer to them.

Lu Qingjiu's lips twitched slightly: "You are most afraid"

"What."

"I'm most afraid of baldness," said a drunk Lu Qingjiu in all seriousness, thinking that his logic was perfect and that there was nothing wrong with it, otherwise why would the female ghost have so much hair? I wouldn't have been able to get away with it"

The dark shadow twitched twice, and I don't know if she was shocked by Lu Qingjiu's answer, after all, it was the first time she had heard such an answer in so many years, the man in front of her was so innocent and unpretentious, nothing like the other sultry bitches.

The dark figure in front of her seemed to be about to speak, but a thick black fog suddenly appeared around the courtyard. Sensing something, the female ghost disappeared in front of Lu Qingjiu's eyes the next moment, leaving only a dull water stain on the ground.

Lu Qingjiu thought he was really drunk, otherwise how could the stuff just disappear? Across from him Yin Xun stammered and opened another bottle, filling him up with a glass.

"Drink," Yin Xun said with a big tongue, "keep drinking."

Lu Qingjiu picked up the glass and finished it in one gulp, saying, "Drink."

It was the next morning when his memory returned. He and Yin Xun had lain in the courtyard all night, and when they got up, their backs were aching and they were on the verge of falling apart. Lu Qingjiu got up from the ground in a daze and nudged Yin Xun, who was sleeping next to him with his eyes slanting.

"Aigoo" Yin Xun screamed as she opened her eyes, "My whole body hurts... Wine, did you beat me up last night while I was drunk?"

Lu Qingjiu: "I'm in pain too, okay?"

Yin Xun said, "I can't, I can't, my whole body hurts like hell, especially my butt." He rubbed his bottom and looked suspiciously at Lu Qingjiu, "You really didn't do anything to me?"

Lu Qingjiu: "The mirror is in the house, go and look at your face to clear your head."

Yin Xun: "I'm so good looking."

Lu Qingjiu: "You look good, my ass, you're swelling up like a pig's head."

Yin Xun, with a puzzled look on his face, stumbled into the room and found the mirror hanging in the toilet, and then Lu Qingjiu heard a scream from him: " Lu Qingjiu, you definitely beat me last night while I was sleeping".

Lu Qingjiu: "I didn't"

Yin Xun: "Then why are you not swollen when I am?"

Lu Qingjiu: "Maybe it's because I'm good looking."

Yin Xun: ""You are really shameless.

Joking aside, the face was suddenly swollen and had to be looked at, so the two men limped to the village health clinic with their arms around each other. The villagers who knew them were amused to see how miserable they looked and joked that they had been caught stealing bales in the middle of the night last night and beaten up.

Yin Xun cried out, "Auntie, don't make fun of me."

When he arrived at the health centre, the doctor examined him and said that Yin Xun was allergic to something and had not been beaten up, so Lu Qingjiu was cleared of any wrongdoing.

"What are you allergic to?" Yin Xun didn't understand, "I eat what I normally eat."

Lu Qingjiu thought for a moment, unsure, "Are you allergic to the hotpot ingredients I brought?"

Yin Xun is dumbfounded: "I can't believe there are people who are allergic to hot pot bases."

"It's possible." Lu Qingjiu analysed it carefully, "There are quite a few spices in that hot pot ingredient, it's possible that you could be allergic of course it's just possible, you're the first person I've ever seen who is allergic to hot pot ingredients."

Yin Xun shed tears of sorrow.

The doctor saw that Yin Xun's symptoms were not particularly serious and prescribed some medicine for him to take, saying that he would be fine in a couple of days without touching the allergens.

Then the two handicapped people were assisted back to their homes.

Lu Qingjiu went home and lay in bed for half a day before feeling better. When he got up to pack up his things in the front yard, he looked at the back yard and seemed to vaguely remember something, but he couldn't make sense of it for a while. In the end, he couldn't remember, so he didn't bother to think about it, it wasn't a big deal anyway.

After tidying up the house and having a quick bite to eat, Lu Qingjiu soaked the seeds in warm water, intending to plant some of them in the afternoon, as Yin Xun had told him. After soaking the seeds, he went to his next-door neighbour's house, where he saw the neighbour's children sitting in the yard knitting straw rope.

Lu Qingjiu: "What is this about?" asked Uncle Li, a neighbour.

"I want to ask if there's anything wrong with the little fish," Lu Qingjiu said, "I need some hogweed at home."

When he heard this, he nodded and threw away the twine in his hand, saying, "I'm fine, how many frames do you want?"

"A few frames will do." Lu Qingjiu thought Li Xiaoyu, who would have been in primary school by now, "Is it dangerous for children to go to a place where hogweed is beaten?"

"It's alright." Uncle Li laughed when he heard it was this, indifferent, "They're used to being wild there since they were little, and they don't thank you Brother Lu."

"Thank you Brother Lu." Li Xiaoyu stood up happily, seeing that the boy was happy to have the pocket money and that his family did not object.

"Aren't you going to school?" Lu Qingjiu asked.

"It's only half a day." Uncle Li said indifferently, "What's the point of going to school if you're going to go home and farm in the future anyway. It's not like everyone can become a university student like you."

Lu Qingjiu gave Li Xiaoyu two yuan and saw him go out happily with his bamboo basket and sickle.

As he watched his back, Lu Qingjiu said something but didn't say anything, because in the end it was his family's business and he couldn't get involved.

Afterwards Lu Qingjiu took the seeds soaked in warm water and planted them in the field, not too many this time, but mostly seeds of cucumbers and tomatoes and other vegetables that he usually eats, but of course he didn't forget to plant some vegetables and also buried some potato tubers.

It was the first time Lu Qingjiu tried his hand at it, so he was not very particular about it and planted it very casually. According to Yin Xun, if he hadn't been so particular about the yield and hadn't sold it, it would have been more or less the same, so there would have been no need to go to the trouble of serving it.

After Lu Qingjiu had worked on less than half an acre of the field, it was almost dark and he was sweating so much that his clothes were almost soaked through, sighing that only by planting with his own hands could he understand what it meant to sweat and work hard.

Lu Qingjiu saw that it was getting late, so he went home, took a shower and changed his clothes, then steamed the buns he had bought yesterday for dinner.

Lu Qingjiu went to open the door and found that Li Xiaoyu, who had gone to the back of the mountain to collect pig's straw, had returned, carrying a large basket of roped pig's straw with a smile on his face: "Brother Lu, the straw has been cut for you. "

Lu Qingjiu was just about to refuse when he saw the child darting towards the pigpen, unable to stop him.

Lu Qingjiu had no choice but to turn around and go back to the house, wrapping some freshly steamed buns for the children and then, on second thought, fetching a bar of chocolate from his suitcase.

Lu Qingjiu went to the pig pen with his things and before he could reach it, he heard Li Xiaoyu shouting, "Brother Lu, your pig is so cute".

Lu Qingjiu walked over to see Xiao Hei, the piglet who had been praised by Li Xiaoyu, puffing out his chest with pride and a look of discernment on his face.

Lu Qingjiu: ""Why did he see the expression on the face of the pig.

"Can I give it a name?" Li Xiaoyu turned his head towards Lu Qingjiu.

Lu Qingjiu: ""He thought of Yin Xun's tragedy, but in the face of Li Xiaoyu's eager eyes, he could only think that if there was an eventuality he had to make the roast pork better, "Okay."

"You can call Xiao Hua." Li Xiaoyu said, pointing to the larger pig.

Lu Qingjiu: ""It's a choice of fate" he said euphemistically, "Why call it Xiao Hua? Isn't it better to call it something else?"

Li Xiaoyu said, "But it has a flowery back." The pig's back was a soft layer of fluffy fur with a squirrel-like pattern of black and brown.

Lu Qingjiu: ""He couldn't actually argue with that.

Li Xiaoyu said, "Your name is Xiao Hei." He named the smaller one, "You're the cutest pigs I've ever seen."

Lu Qingjiu thought it might be the best too

Li Xiaoyu watched Xiao Hua Xiao Hei eat his fill and his little tummy puffed up before he was satisfied and asked Lu Qingjiu if he could go to the next hog hog hunt, which Lu Qingjiu nodded in agreement and gave Li Xiaoyu the bun and chocolate he was holding.

Lu Qingjiu looked at Xiao Hua, who was licking Xiao Hei's fur, and said, "Xiao Hei, Xiao Hua, grow up well."

Xiao Hua: ""Who are you calling? Who the fuck is Xiao Hua? How could he, a fine male, admit to such a name?

Xiao Hei: ""What what what what her brother is saying what mmm pigweed is so delicious, blah blah blah blah.

Xiao Hua: You're still fucking eating, if you get fat I'll kill you and eat your meat!

Xiao Hei was very upset: Brother, you are so mean and you had a good meal just now.

Xiao Hua: Shut up and don't talk

Lu Qingjiu, who was standing next to the pig pen, could not understand the conversation between the two Xiao Hei pigs and could only hear them grunting, which he took to be a sign that they were happy. As he turned to go back to the old house, he thought that he should buy some chicks and raise them, so that the yard would be more lively.