Book Synopsis
Book Tags
Donation Rankings
Comment
0 Comments
You May Also Like
墨書 Inktalez
On the Second Day of the Lunar New Year, the whole family gathered again at Grandfather's house.
Regardless of the adults' demeanor, the children were overjoyed. Hu Ruoyun's younger brother, Xiao Hu, and sister, Xiao Feng, played happily with their uncle and cousins from Second Aunt's family. Grandmother and Grandfather had brought out all the delicious food they had prepared, allowing the kids to eat whatever they liked!
Aunt's younger brother had gotten married before the New Year and was accompanying his wife back to her Maternal Family on the second day to visit relatives. Naturally, Aunt's visit to her Maternal Family was also rescheduled to Junior Three. This year, there was no lingering discomfort about seeing Third Aunt.
To be honest, during the New Year, visiting relatives and chatting together didn't involve many serious topics. It was mostly about how the winter wheat was growing, when to prepare for watering, and how fertilizer prices had risen from nine to eleven yuan... just typical family chatter.
Speaking of watering the fields, Second Uncle-in-law Qi Hongwei shared a humorous story from his childhood about an incident that happened one summer during the transition from summer to autumn involving a childhood friend of his.
Zhang Fen was a large cemetery for the Zhang family located at the eastern end of his village. It was said to date back to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Due to its age, large graves were often surrounded by smaller ones, and even when digging new graves, they would sometimes unearth old ones! Many of these graves had no descendants left because they were so old.
In his childhood, there was no electricity in the village. At night, Zhang Fen became a vast expanse of eerie darkness. Uncle recalled that when he was in middle school and went to school at night, he could still see flickering will-o'-the-wisps among the earthen graves. Legends about Zhang Fen were plentiful.
Due to frequent power outages caused by insufficient electricity supply, villagers would take advantage of any available power to water their fields day or night. No matter what time it was, once one family finished watering their fields, they would go door-to-door to notify the next family.
On this occasion, Uncle's childhood friend Zhang Shengli finished watering his fields around two in the morning. As his parents packed away their shovels and hoses, Zhang Shengli was tasked with going in the dark to notify their neighbor Old Man Han that it was their turn to water. However, getting to Old Man Han's house meant passing through Zhang Fen!
Zhang Shengli rode his bicycle in the dark alone, already terrified as it was. But as he reached Zhang Fen, his bicycle suddenly became immovable; it felt as if something was pulling him forcefully from behind! Terrified, he didn’t dare look back and abandoned his bicycle to run back towards the village, shouting for Old Man Han to come water their fields. He covered his head with a blanket and slept until dawn before daring to retrieve his bicycle left by the road next to Zhang Fen.
When he got there, he couldn't help but laugh at himself; there were no ghosts at all—his fertilizer bag had simply gotten tangled in the rear wheel!
As they chatted idly, Second Uncle-in-law shared this amusing story about his childhood friend. Once he opened up about it, he found it hard to stop talking. After taking a sip of Large Leaf Tea, he began recounting more legends about Zhang Fen.
In his youth, not only were there no televisions but radios were also rare; rural people's cultural and entertainment lives were extremely limited. Whenever word spread that there would be a performance or storytelling in a nearby village, people from over ten miles away would flock there. There was a tale about someone from their village who went to see a "light opera" (referring to nighttime performances) in another village. Since he had dinner late and everyone else had already left in groups by the time he set off alone.
With no moon in the sky and hurrying along for quite some time, he could faintly hear the sounds of drums and gongs from the stage ahead and saw a faint light in the dark—likely from stage lights—prompting him to quicken his pace. However, after walking for an unknown length of time, he realized that while the sounds continued ahead of him, the distance to that light seemed unchanged... At that moment, he began to panic: could it be that he had encountered a "ghost wall"? The more frightened he became, the more uneven and treacherous the path beneath him felt.
After walking for what seemed like ages with still no change in distance or clarity of sound or light ahead...
At that moment, the person was terrified to the core, feeling as if his feet were weighed down with lead, unable to move.
Eventually, he simply rolled over and lay on the ground, falling asleep: it was what it was; let things be as they may!
As the rooster crowed and dawn broke, he suddenly woke up to find himself lying in the middle of Zhang Fen's graveyard, having spent the night there! Around one of the new graves were his footprints.
—He hadn’t even left the village that night; he had just been circling around this new grave.
When we were kids, if a child was being unruly and wouldn’t stop crying, their mother or grandmother would say: "If you cry again, I’ll throw you into Zhang Fen!" The child would immediately quiet down.
Third Aunt’s husband became animated and took over the conversation:
According to the elders, there is a Black Dog Spirit at the East End of our village that comes out at night to scare people. For a while, as soon as dusk fell, no one dared to pass through the East End.
There was a man in the village named Er Dadan who never believed in ghosts or respected gods.
That autumn during harvest time, when farm work was extremely busy, one day before dawn, Er Dadan took his ox and plow to work. As he reached the East End of the village, he suddenly heard barking behind him, as if a rabid dog was about to catch up.
The ox he was leading seemed frightened too, mooing and refusing to move forward, tugging at its reins wildly. Even more alarming was that the plow on his shoulder sounded as if something were banging against its blade, clanging loudly!
As the barking grew closer and seemed almost beside him, Er Dadan suddenly dropped his plow and grabbed his Cowhide Whip from his back, swinging it fiercely behind him!
With a loud crack, the boisterous barking turned into a pitiful wail.
Then everything fell silent before dawn. From that point on, there were no more disturbances from the Black Dog Spirit at the East End.
Later on, after an unknown amount of time had passed, a woman in the village suddenly went mad: she began barking like a dog with an eerily realistic sound. Even more astonishingly, she could leap over half-height earthen walls and climb onto roofs made of mud bricks. She could even jump from one house to another as if walking on flat ground.
The old villagers said that she was possessed by the Black Dog Spirit. Aside from her physical form, everything else about her resembled the behavior of a fierce dog.
Her family tried to communicate with her, but all they received in return were menacing barks.
One of her aunts, unable to bear it any longer, approached her and said, "I know you were once the 'Immortal' of Village East End. Please, spare my nephew's wife!"
The woman possessed by the Black Dog Spirit seemed to find a sense of existence in this moment, letting out a cold laugh without responding.
Her aunt continued, "Everyone here knows how powerful you are; no one can challenge you! Let my nephew's wife offer you the proper respect..."
Hearing this, the possessed woman became smug. "For so many years, whether it's the land deity or the City God, no one has ever intimidated me here!" Her voice was sharp and thin, completely unlike the woman's usual tone. Then she casually added, "Heaven doesn't care, Earth doesn't care, but I fear only Er Dadan in this village..."
Her aunt listened intently and quietly sent her nephew to call for Er Dadan.
The woman possessed by the Black Dog Spirit sat there in a dog-like posture, gesturing wildly while frothing at the mouth and babbling incoherently. Suddenly, the crowd parted to reveal Er Dadan, casually holding a cigarette and wielding a Cowhide Whip as he walked in!
Panic erupted as someone let out a terrified scream, and a dark shadow dashed away. The possessed woman then slumped down as if completely drained of energy.
The elder declared that the Black Dog Spirit had "left."
Just then, Grandma interrupted Uncle's chatter about ghosts and spirits during the New Year festivities. She began clearing the table to prepare for the feast.
Comment 0 Comment Count