Chapter 50: A Tale of Terror

Lu Qingjiu was sick for about two or three days before he was completely cured. Only after he had recovered was he relieved to know that he would not be eaten by Bai Yuehu as a sick animal.

The snow had been falling heavier and heavier for several days, and Lu Qingjiu soon learned from Yin Xun that the road to the town had been blocked by snow. With the traffic between the two areas cut off, Shuifu Village became an isolated village that could only be reconnected to the rest of the world when the snow melted next spring.

Lu Qingjiu has very few memories of winter as a child, he only vaguely remembers that winter in Shuifu Village was particularly difficult compared to other seasons and that food became precious and scarce, making it difficult to eat fresh vegetables.

Lu Qingjiu was now conscious of this difficulty when, after about five or six days of snow, the internet and electricity were cut off. Lu Qingjiu was watching TV that day when the house was suddenly plunged into darkness, and Yin Xun was very calm, apparently anticipating what would happen: "The power is out."

Lu Qingjiu said, "It's broken. Didn't you say it would be broken in December?"

"It's snowing a lot this year." Yin Xun said, "I think the power grid is down somewhere and there's no way to fix it, so take out the candles and make do."

Yin Xun had already told Lu Qingjiu that in the middle of winter the village would be without electricity and internet, but now the situation was even worse than Yin Xun had said, as it was only the first snowfall and both electricity and internet were gone. Luckily, Lu Qingjiu had prepared for this by taking out a few small battery-operated lamps and setting them up in the living room.

Lu Qingjiu has the charcoal pot red-hot and sits on the edge of the fire, discussing with Yin Xun what to eat for lunch. Bai Yuehu is still sitting in his rocking chair, squinting and resting. Winter is a time when people don't want to move, when there's not much farm work to do and when they don't need to go out, when it's enough to stay at home and think about what to eat.

"Let's have the bacon." Yin Xun begins to think about her menu, "I haven't tasted it when it's ready."

Lu Qingjiu nodded: "Okay then, let's make a bacon stir-fry with chillies, what about Bai Yuehu?"

Bai Yuehu said, "Whatever." He eats everything.

Lu Qingjiu said, "You guys play first, I'll go and make dinner."

Yin Xun said, "I'll come with you, aren't you afraid of the cold?

Lu Qingjiu didn't say no and they went to the kitchen together. Since the snow fell, Lu Qingjiu has been doing all the cooking, while Yin Xun and Bai Yuehu have done all the other work in the house. The steps that require cold water for cooking are all done by Yin Xun, and Lu Qingjiu hardly touches the cold water.

If Lu Qingjiu had previously thought that it was okay for him to dip his toe in the ice water, the problem was that after his illness, Lu Qingjiu finally realised that if he got sick again, Bai Yuehu would not be soft on him. So, fearing the cold, he had to avoid touching anything cold to prevent himself from getting sick, lest his illness didn't kill him and Bai Yuehu ate him out of his skin and bones.

The bacon was cut into thin slices and put into the wok with the chillies and stir-fried. The heat made the bacon curl up and the fat appear transparent, so that the meat did not taste greasy at all, but instead was bouncy and sticky and chewy. They had bought the chillies earlier and put them in the freezer to freeze, taking them out to thaw when they were to be eaten. They were not as fresh as when they were first bought, but they were sufficient in the winter when supplies were scarce.

Lu Qingjiu also asked Yin Xun to go to the cellar to get some stored cabbage and made a big pot of pork and cabbage stewed with vermicelli, before the dish was ready, the aroma of the meat filled the room and Yin Xun stood next to him with his eyes falling into the pot.

Lu Qingjiu went into the room, looking impatient, which was a bit amusing. Lu Qingjiu made the food and brought it to the room where the kang was burning. To save charcoal, the family stayed in the room with the kang and sat on the kang to eat and talk.

The bacon stir-fry was very fragrant, and the pork vermicelli stew was a perfect winter dish, as people's appetite is always better in winter, even Lu Qingjiu ate a lot more rice.

Yin Xun sucked on his vermicelli noodles and gulped down white rice, his eyes narrowing with happiness. Bai Yuehu sat next to him, crunching and chewing the pork, a sound Lu Qingjiu had been used to hearing before, but now he had a new appreciation for the sound he felt his bones were not as hard as the pig's

After dinner, it was time for a beautiful lunch break. Yin Xun didn't dare to share a bed with Bai Yuehu, so he went to the next room. Bai Yuehu, on the other hand, shakes out his beautiful nine tails and wraps Lu Qingjiu, who is lying on the bed, up in a natural way.

The tail was warm and soft, and Lu Qingjiu was so comfortable wrapped up in it that he hugged one, rubbed his cheek against it, and soon fell asleep in the pleasant temperature, sleeping for most of the day, usually waking up when it was almost four or five o'clock in the afternoon.

After waking up and briefly washing up and waking up, it was time for dinner again.

After all, it's only one or two months every winter, and then it's a busy time at the beginning of spring. Of course, the downside is that there is no more entertainment in the house because of the power cuts.

So after dinner, Yin Xun, who was very bored, suggested that he wanted to have some fun.

Lu Qingjiu, eating the fragrantly fried sunflower seeds, said, "What joy?"

Yin Xun said, "Let's have a competition to see who has the scariest ghost story."

Lu Qingjiu was eating his melon seeds, "You're a mountain god and you tell ghost stories."

Yin Xun said, "Come or not, come or not"

Lu Qingjiu thought about it and thought it would be a good idea, so he asked Bai Yuehu, who was sitting next to him, "Bai Yuehu, do you want to come along?"

Lu Qingjiu thought Bai Yuehu would not be interested in this kind of activity, but he nodded in agreement and got up from his chair to sit next to the two.

"Then you go first." Yin Xun said to Lu Qingjiu.

Lu Qingjiu said, "All right, I'll start then." He told a story that he had met at the company.

When Lu Qingjiu was working at the company, he often worked overtime until 11:00 or 12:00 at night, and every time he went to the toilet, he found that one of the toilet doors was locked. If they were normal feet, they would have been fine, but the problem was that they were wearing red high heels and the skin of their feet was so pale that you could even see the blue veins.

Lu Qingjiu went into the gents, and in the gents, how could there be a pair of women's feet? At that moment Lu Qingjiu sensed that something was wrong and was about to get up and leave when he heard the sound of da da da da da, and then with his eyes wide open, he saw the pair of high heels moving from the right toilet to his face.

"Knock knock knock." There was a knock on his toilet door.

Lu Qingjiu was frozen in his tracks. Although he had occasionally encountered strange things, such as old talking trees, it was the first time he had encountered such a dirty thing. He didn't dare make a sound and sat on the toilet as if he hadn't heard anything, holding his breath.

There were two more knocks on the door, but Lu Qingjiu still didn't dare to move, and then he heard the sound of high heels walking away. Lu Qingjiu heard the footsteps and thought the thing had left. He was about to push the door open when he thought of something and stopped to look through the gap. Lu Qingjiu's head was still in front of him, but his feet, in red heels, were already at the door of the toilet, no wonder he heard the sound of the heels moving away

"And then what then?" Yin Xun tensed as she listened.

Lu Qingjiu said, "Then I spent the rest of the night staring at her wide-eyed in the toilet, and she didn't disappear until almost dawn."

Yin Xun's eyes rounded as she listened: "She didn't do anything to you."

Lu Qingjiu said, "That's not true."

Yin Xun sighed long and hard, "Now it's my turn, then."

When he first became a mountain god, he came across a man who brought a corpse to the mountain to dump it. The woman's body had been hacked up by the man and her death was so miserable that the man panicked and buried the corpse in a random pit. He was too young to tell his grandparents about the incident, but when he did, the old man nervously stopped him from calling the police and told him not to tell anyone about it.

Yin Xun then listened to his grandparents, although he was still using his mountain god powers to secretly observe.

After burying the body, the man disappeared for a while, only to reappear at the top of the hill, shovel in hand, looking around for a place to bury the body. The man dug east and west, finally allowing him to find the burial site. By the time he dug the body out again, it was highly decomposed and looked very disgusting and hideous. But the man ignored this and took something out of his pocket and put it on the forehead of the woman's body before re-burying it again.

Yin Xun was very curious at the time, but as he was trapped in the mountains, he could not follow the men and wondered what had happened to them to make them act in such a way.

But since this time, men have been coming up the hill more and more often, even climbing up in the middle of the night to dig up that body.

At first Yin Xun wondered why on earth the man was doing this, but gradually he noticed something different in him.

The man's neck became longer and longer, at first barely looking like it was stretched out, but then it was no longer explained by being straight at all. His neck began to thin, lengthen and become soft, like a cold snake. Because of this change, the man was afraid to return to his dwelling and he was forced to choose to live in the mountains, and this time, Yin Xun finally knew what was happening to the man.

It was night, and Yin Xun, who could see everything on the mountain, saw the man lying in a simple tent, asleep, his neck wrapped in a grotesque circle. As night fell, a violent wind blew through the tent and Yin Xun saw a woman appear on top of the man, her body highly decomposed and clearly the body of the woman the man had buried on the mountain top. The woman lay on the man's chest, stretched out her own hand, grabbed the man's head, and then began to tug hard, and the man's neck was thus tugged longer and longer and longer

As Yin Xun spoke, Bai Yuehu's voice was heard from the side: "Just like that?"

Yin Xun turned his head and saw that Bai Yuehu's neck had become incredibly long, clearly the horrific shape of the man he remembered.

"Ahhhhhhh", Yin Xun screamed in terror as she stumbled and tried to run out of the room, barely missing the bed.

Lu Qingjiu couldn't help but laugh and said, " Bai Yuehu, don't you scare him."

Bai Yuehu's neck was restored to its original shape and he blinked, looking very innocent: "I was just joking, he is a mountain god, why is he so timid?"

Yin Xun said angrily, "Who says the mountain gods can't be less bold? I am what I am, a different kind of firework."

Lu Qingjiu: ""Yes, you are a mountain god with a brain full of water.

Yin Xun said, "Lu Qingjiu, you have to control your vixen, is that so scary? That man is my childhood shadow."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Well, well, well, what about the end?"

Yin Xun said, "In the end, the man's head was pulled off, and I was the one who called the police." Although it was an unsolved case that was reported to the police, the fact that the woman's body was found by the police and the family came to claim it was a good deed, but the process was a bit scary.

After Yin Xun and Lu Qingjiu finished their stories, they both turned their attention to Bai Yuehu, who seemed to be the most experienced of them all and must have told a particularly scary story. But Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun's stories were similar in that one had stretched her body and the other had stretched her boyfriend's neck, so it seems that female ghosts like long and thin things!

Bai Yuehu said, "Horror stories I don't have any horror stories."

"Why not," Lu Qingjiu said, "nothing particularly scary has ever come across."

Bai Yuehu ponders for a moment, "Does not having enough to eat count as particularly scary?"

Lu Qingjiu said: ""

Bai Yuehu said, "Not counting that, then no."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Tell me about it."

Bai Yuehu thought about it, "Why don't I just show you?"

"Look," Yin Xun was dumbfounded, "this can still be observed live."

Bai Yuehu said, "Naturally, there's nothing to do anyway."

Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun looked at each other and finally agreed to Bai Yuehu's proposal, agreeing to go with him to see the most terrifying thing in his mind. After receiving Lu Qingjiu's and Yin Xun's affirmative answer, a black mist rose up around Bai Yuehu, enveloping Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun.

By the time the fog cleared, Lu Qingjiu had arrived in a completely unfamiliar place, also at night, but not Shuifu Village, for there was neither snow nor signs of snow, a bright moon in the sky, and an indescribable smell in the air, like a combination of fishy and rotting meat.

Lu Qingjiu was standing in front of a huge pit, very deep and vast, and looking down, Lu Qingjiu saw that the floor of this huge pit was covered with a layer of black silt, which was probably the source of the smell of decay. On top of the mud, Lu Qingjiu also saw many skeletons, which looked strangely like fish, but were longer than fish, and were scattered all over the mud.

"Where is this?" Yin Xun said, a little frightened, "What's in the pit?"

Bai Yuehu said, "Keep looking."

As soon as Bai Yuehu said this, the mud in the pit made a gurgling sound, as if it was boiling water. Lu Qingjiu looked into the pit and saw a huge head emerging from the mud, which at first glance looked like a dragon, but the mud that clung to it blurred its appearance, but the long fangs in its bloody mouth told the others that it was not something to be messed with.

Lu Qingjiu noticed that the creature had no eyes, or rather, the eyes had been blinded, leaving only two black holes.

But it seemed to sense the presence of Bai Yuehu and Lu Qingjiu, and heaved its tail in this direction. The heavy tail fell, shaking the surrounding rocks, but the rocks in the deep pit were as steady as a mountain, unmoving. If Lu Qingjiu was correct, this deep pit was the cage prepared for this monster.

Only when the monster's body was completely revealed from inside the ground did Lu Qingjiu barely guess its identity. With its slender body, coiled in a deep pit, it was indeed a dragon of the most standard kind in ancient legend. But if it was a dragon, it was too wretched and lacked the haughty posture of a divine dragon. Lu Qingjiu even saw many blood-red wounds on its body, and the blood oozing from those wounds mixed with the mud, making the looker's teeth sink a little.

"Is this, is this a dragon?" Lu Qingjiu asked.

Bai Yuehu said, "The dragon," he glanced at the monster, "doesn't count. He's no longer worthy of being a dragon."

Lu Qingjiu says: "He was locked up here because he did something wrong."

Bai Yuehu nods.

Lu Qingjiu could not imagine what the dragon had done to deserve such a place. To him, an ordinary human, the dragon is a sacred representation, a totem of the Chinese people and a belief in a creature that should be proud and beautiful. Despite the wretched appearance of the monster in front of him, Lu Qingjiu could sense in some small details the power and beauty it had once possessed as a top predator.

"What did he do wrong," Yin Xun asked weakly from the sidelines, "and shouldn't dragons have gone extinct long ago?"

Bai Yuehu said, "He has done the irrevocable." He said faintly, "Extermination Who told you the dragon was extinct"

Yin Xun said, "The memory of the inheritance."

Bai Yuehu said, "Then you can update your memory."

Yin Xun looks helpless.

This is what Bai Yuehu finds most terrifying, and unlike Lu Qingjiu Yin Xun, his fear is due to the wretched appearance of his kin.

The monster in the mud pit opened its mouth to roar, but what came out was a hoarse roar. Lu Qingjiu listened to the sound before he realised that the dragon in the mud pit, too, seemed to have had its vocal cords removed.

Lu Qingjiu felt a little cold as he watched this scene.

"He couldn't die and he couldn't live." Bai Yuehu said, "There is no food and he is so hungry that he can only eat his own body." He turned his head to look at Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun and said, "To me, this is the most horrible thing of all."

As if in response to his words, the dragon that had been transformed into a monster in the deep pit once again emitted a hoarse, dry howl, a sound that sounded as if it was crying for blood, and was chilling to the ears.

"Let's go." Yin Xun looked at the scene and felt really uncomfortable, in his inherited memories the dragon shouldn't be in this sorry state in front of him, he looked at the creature and what rose in his heart was pity and a sigh, "I don't want to see it anymore."

Bai Yuehu said, "Then let's go back."

A black mist rose around the three of them once more, and when it cleared they returned to the warmth of the house. The silence spread between the three of them, and Bai Yuehu looked at Lu Qingjiu with an uncertain look in his dark eyes, and just when Lu Qingjiu thought he was going to say something profound, he heard Bai Yuehu say, "So I win the horror story today, right?"

Lu Qingjiu :""

Yin Xun :""

Bai Yuehu said, "What are you looking at me like that for?"

Yin Xun shuddered, "When of course you win." Their story is not a patch on Bai Yuehu's immersive horror.

Bai Yuehu said, "Oh, is there a reward for that?" He spoke of a reward, but his eyes fell on Lu Qingjiu, his eyes full of expectation.

Lu Qingjiu: ""If it was before, he would probably have thought Bai Yuehu's expression was quite cute, but having been given a bite, he finally came to his senses and realised that Bai Yuehu's eyes were like looking at a delicious pork elbow. And he was politely asking the pork elbow if he could have more

Take a nibble.

Delicious pork knuckles Lu Qingjiu ruthlessly rejects Bai Yuehu's idea: "No."

Bai Yuehu lets out a sigh of disappointment.

Yin Xun was still absorbed in the image he had just seen, and did not notice the undercurrents between Lu Qingjiu and Bai Yuehu, he said, "It's getting late, I'll go back first, you guys go to bed early."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Are you all right?"

Yin Xun said, "It's nothing." He scratched his head, "I just felt a bit sorry for that dragon."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Yes, but it's their business," and they were just outsiders, so they couldn't say anything.

Bai Yuehu is indifferent to the misery of his kind, not even bothering to say a word of comfort.

He didn't know why Yin Xun cared so much about the dragon, but he was touched by the image of himself.

"So what was the dragon's mistake." After Yin Xun left, Lu Qingjiu asked Bai Yuehu this question again.

Bai Yuehu looked at Lu Qingjiu and winked: "You really want to know"

Lu Qingjiu: "Hmm."

Bai Yuehu said, "I'll tell you later."

Lu Qingjiu: ""Why did he think Bai Yuehu's expression looked a bit strange?

What the author has to say: Bai Yuehu: Yay, I'm first in the competition.

Lu Qingjiu.