Thirty years ago, my parents fostered me with my grandparents in my hometown because of work. There was no entertainment in those days, and the children went crazy playing everywhere in the summer vacation. Fortunately, even bicycles were rare at the time, let alone cars, so there was no risk. I was just in the first grade that year and I didn’t want to take a nap, so I went out to run around at noon.
The small towns in the south of the Yangtze River still retain the appearance they were 60 or 70 years ago, or even more than 100 years ago. Towns are generally very small. Even a large town with a population of five or six thousand is often hundreds of meters away from the main street. A bridge from my grandmother’s house is the home of Qi Jianhua, a classmate. Their home is a single-family house, and there is also a courtyard in the south of the Yangtze River called the courtyard. Because the yard is small but the walls are high, when you look up from the inside, you can only see the sky in all directions, which seems to be at the bottom of a well. However, the patio of Qi Jianhua’s house is not small. In retrospect, it was about 100 square meters and planted a lot of mulberry trees, because Qi Jianhua’s mother and grandmother raised silkworms every year. Qi Jianhua is in the same class as me and lives close to each other, so I play together every day when I get summer vacation. My grandmother’s family is just a child. Although Qi Jianhua has many children, he still has an older brother and an older sister, but the older brother is in high school, and the older sister has graduated from high school and works in a silk factory.
It was the summer of 1977. On the first day of summer vacation, I ran to Qi Jianhua’s house after lunch. He wanted to play in his yard, but he said he would go out because his sister was sick and was resting at home, not to mention it was time to take a nap.
To the north of Qi Jianhua’s home is a large mulberry field. In the summer, the mulberry leaves grow extremely luxuriantly, and the mulberries also bear a lot. When we were tired from playing, we picked a big mulberry tree and slept on a big branch to pick mulberries and eat. Because I was a little tired, I wanted to take a nap first, and then think about what’s fun. About one o’clock in the afternoon, I was about to propose to go to the paddy field to the north to catch frogs. Qi Jianhua suddenly said: “Someone is here,”
The kid picks mulberries and eats it. It’s not a big deal, but for the farmers, it is even more distressing for the children to abuse the mulberry leaves, so if the farmers see us picking mulberries and eating them, they will be scolded. Fortunately, we are in the middle of the mulberry field. The mulberry leaves cover everyone tightly. We are sitting on the mulberry tree. We can see the outside, but we cannot enter from the outside. So I was not afraid. It is not the time to pick the mulberry leaves. Most of the person who comes here just takes a look, and will leave soon. As long as he doesn’t say anything, he won’t be scolded. We all think this way, so even though there is a little voice that the person outside can’t hear, we still don’t even dare to speak out.
c1();
The man approached. From the cracks in the mulberry leaves, we saw that it was a beggar. I was relieved and was about to say nothing. Qi Jianhua suddenly said in a very low voice: “Don’t talk!”
The beggar stood outside the wall of Qi Jianhua’s yard, looking aroundtook a look. This look is really weird, and I am also a little strange. Could this beggar want to go to Qi Jianhua’s house to steal something? But the beggar looked around, but didn’t overturn the wall, just started walking along the wall. However, he walked in a very strange posture, stepping up with one foot and dragging up with the other, like a lame man. But when the beggar walked over just now, he was obviously not lame. He seemed to be dancing a weird dance, but it wasn’t pretty.
What the hell is he doing? We all feel weird, but at the same time we feel a little scared.
The beggar took a few steps and stopped under a tree. This is a neem tree with many round neem trees. He bent down, dug at the root of the tree, then turned and left. We waited until the figure of the beggar was gone before we walked out. When he walked under the neem tree, the beggar smoothed the soil, and he didn’t even notice the trace. We dug there and found a neem tree buried underground.
It’s just that this neem tree is pink and as hard as a rock.
The neem will turn black when it gets old, but I have never seen any red. This incident was very strange. After we smashed this red neem tree, we found that the core inside was a soft black blister with a thin tail, which seemed to move. What was it, and the smell was very heavy, and there were flies crawling in this place for several days.
c2();
The next day, I will go to Qi Jianhua to play again. His family has hired an old Chinese doctor from the country to see his sister. Qi Jianhua told me that he My sister had been in a coma a few days ago, but she suddenly woke up last night, vomited a lot, and became more energetic. When he talked about it, his face was still a little pale. I asked him what was going on. At first he refused to say it, but later he said that his sister vomited many nuclei that looked like the neem tree. Things, a lump of softness, can also move.
The old Chinese doctor couldn’t tell what the disease was. Fortunately, Qi Jianhua’s sister gradually got better after vomiting.
A few days later, it was suddenly rumored that a young male worker in Qi Jianhua’s sister factory died under a bridge hole. His death was very strange. Although I felt scared, Qi Jianhua and I ran to watch because of curiosity. Fortunately, the town is small enough. When we ran, the corpse was just picked up and put on the bridge. There was a broken mat on our body, surrounded by many people watching the show.
I heard that the young male worker has a good family background. He also talked to Qi Jianhua’s sister about the subject, but he has already blown it out. I don’t know if he committed suicide because of this. Qi Jianhua and I have never seen a dead person, and we bothered to see it but were afraid. At this moment, someone suddenly yelled that the mat was moving. We looked at it and found that something was moving under the broken mat. There was a daring one who found a long branch and picked up a corner of the mat, revealing a dead man’s arm, but the person watchingHalf of them threw up. The arm was pale and bloodless, and it was full of small holes like a beehive. In each small hole there was a small toad, and it was all alive. Later, I heard that this was all about this person. Those people who didn’t vomit in their arms at that time actually had vomited before. Both Qi Jianhua and I thought of the beggar, but because we were afraid, we never talked to others.
Speaking of this matter again, more than ten years have passed. After I left that town to go to university, I had a night talk with my classmates in the bedroom, but I didn’t say the red neem tree. Thing.
That classmate is from Xiangxi, he said as soon as he heard that this is the Scarlet Blood Gu passed down from their old age. The Scarlet Blood Gu is also called the Five Poison Gu. When a person is caught by the Gu, five poisons such as toad, centipede, scorpion, snake, and spider will grow in the blood. If it can’t be rescued, the body will be very itchy at first, and then will be packaged up one by one, and finally the five poisons will bite through the skin and come out, making people die horribly. However, it is a very secret matter to play Gu, once someone sees through it, the Gu will eat back its owner. In this incident, it was clear that the deceased had found someone to punish Qi Jianhua’s sister, but the spell was broken by some expert, and he died.
I have lingering fears after hearing this, so I don’t dare to mention it again.
It has been decades since I lost contact with Qi Jianhua’s family. I don’t know what happened to their family or whether they would be retaliated by the warlock.