Huang Xiaolong shook his head and said questioningly, “This is what I felt very strange. That little girl is a human.”
Then Wu Jian said, “Maybe that just is a normal wrapping-corpse cloth. Is there a problem with anything personal?”
After thinking about it for a while, Huang Xiaolong also nodded and agreed with what Wu Jian said.
My heart was filled with the strange feeling and I always felt that wrapping-corpse cloth was never as normal as Wu Jian said. Then I took a look of the villagers around me, but for a moment, I didn't know who I should ask, because, you have to know, most people in the village were very superstitious. Once they knew the cloth on the body of the little girl was a wrapping-corpse cloth, they would definitely no longer show sympathy for the little girl and even worse, something bad might happen.
The villagers' conversation quickly moved away from the little girl and changed into some small household affairs. Both Wu Jian and Huang Xiaolong were drunken and joined the villagers’ big happy party. As for me, instead, I became even more clear because I was thinking about something in my mind.
After the middle of the night, there were villagers to left one after another. Some staggered away and others were carried back to their home. Wu Jian was also dragged back by Ni Min. As for Huang Xiaolong, he was very tenacious and even had a drinking competition with a few drunkards in the village. There was just a feeling that if he couldn’t make others all drunken, he would never leave.
Because mom went to sleep very early, there was nobody to care about me and I also stayed, but I didn’t drink. I just sat here and ate something, watching these drunken men talk groundlessly.
Just as Huang Xiaolong made another man drunken and fall down again, I saw a white shadow on the road, and it was the little girl wrapped in the wrapping-corpse cloth. Perhaps because the rest of us all were men, instead of approaching, the little girl just stood far away from us.
I noticed the time and it was1 o’clock in the morning. I patted hard Huang Xiaolong and he inarticulately asked what I wanted to do. I guessed his eyes had become so blurred that he couldn’t know who I was. Shit! This guy was no longer reliable.
I tried to speak in a soft voice, “Are you not full just now? Come here. Just take it.”
The little girl was still unmoved. I stepped forward and the little girl took a few steps back quickly again, so I had to said, “Shall I put the bowl on the ground?”
Having been waiting for so long, I still didn’t wait for her answer, so I had to put the bowl on the ground and stepped back. The little girl walked a few steps forward, but still didn’t go to fetch the bowl, still looking at me warily, as if I was the big wolf in the fairy tale.
I turned my head and began to divide food for those some drunkards. I wanted to look back at the little girl, but I also was afraid of scaring her, but when I finished dividing the grilled food and turned my head back again, I found the little girl had disappeared with the bowl on the ground.
If it wasn't for the wrapping-corpse cloth on her body, she would be an ordinary poor little girl. Although I didn’t see anything wrong, I still felt something wrong in my heart.
Until the end of eating night snack, the little girl never showed up again. Because it was too late and I was also a little drunken, I slept till dawn. My mom and witch Yan went out very early to search the clues of the old well. Wu Jian, as the police, was also pulled to go with them.
There was only me and Huang Xiaolong at home. I had a look and found he still was sleep like a pig. Then I ate something and went out.
It might rain a little in the early morning and road became very wet, so it was very slippery to step on, which made me unable to walk very fast. Now, there was few people in the village and maybe most people were doing farming in their lands. Until I walked on the main road at the end of the village, I saw several senior old men chatting in the place where we had eaten the night snack.
I walked over, greeted to them very politely and found a place to sit down.
At this moment, a hunchback old man, whose back had already deformed, smoking the tobacco, came to ask me, “Young man, your mother is looking for you and she runs into the woods early in the morning.”
I just smiled. Then I randomly found a reason to fool him and also didn’t care about whether the old man believed it or not, and just asked, “Sir, we saw the carpenter's little daughter while we were having the night snack yesterday. Do you think how can such a young child live alone in the woods? Doesn’t she have any other relatives?”
The hunchback old man used his tobacco pipe to knock on the bluestone of one side, so as to make the ash inside out, then re-added some cut tobacco and sighed, “Who says no? Alas, in fact, she has some relatives, but none of them are willing to look after this little girl. This girl is also very stubborn. She is so young but even goes to stay with the graves of her parents. I really don’t know who on earth has told her that if she has been staying with the grave for three years, her parents will come back.”
I was a little stunned. Since I had never heard anyone tell about this, I continued asking the old man. Then the old man recalled, “It was Liu Lan who told the little girl about this. The woman also has a good heart, so maybe there is only her who could talk to the little girl. Liu Lan also had persuaded the little girl, but she always insisted on this point and still claim that she wanted to wait for her parents to wake up. Ah, Liu Lan wanted to adopt her but she refused, too. This all is a crime.”
After recalling for a long time, I still couldn’t remember who Liu Lan was. Until I asked the old man again, I finally knew she was owner of this small shop, who was already 50 years old. Therefore, I also followed the people in the village to call her aunt.
However, she went to the county town to buy some goods now. While the old man was coming here, he had met her but didn’t know when she would come back.
Then I asked for the little girl's name again, but the old man couldn't say it and he just knew everyone in this village called her little girl. Having seen that old man just knew little, I no longer sat here and then went into the shop to ask aunt’s husband. After knowing that she wouldn’t come back until tomorrow, I also didn’t stay for long and went to the woods by the village road.
This was the place where the little girl showed up last night. At first glance, there was full of trees. However, what was very strange was that I looked back at the other side of the road, only to find there was full of neat crops there.
This was the head of the village and it was also the closest to the village. The ground also looked very fertile, but why were all the trees here? Didn’t anyone come to plant crops?
“Wu Rui, what are you doing here?”
When I turned around, I saw a villager looking at me with a hoe. I knew this guy and he was supposed to be one of my relatives. He was not young but his generation was the same as mine.
“Bro, I am very curious about why this side is full of trees, while the other side is full of crops. It looks like that the people in the village must have much environment-protection awareness.”
This man put the hoe on the ground and scolded, “What f**k environment protection! As for this land, you can’t make any ideas to it. It cannot be touched.”
I thought for a while, “I can’t do nothing. Do you want me to go home and farm? Even I am tired to death, there won't be a harvest.”
The man laughed, “Seeing you just look very white and clean, I definitely know you are unsuitable of working.”
When he finished saying and was about to leave, I hurried up to pull him and asked him, “Why can’t this land be touched?”
“There are people buried here. Those people who can’t get into their ancestral graves are all buried here.”