Chapter 19 Chapter Five: The Silent Miao Village

The gate of this stockade is made of thick pine wood, covered with a layer of oil, which looks very strong, but at the moment it is tattered, as if it was smashed by something.We walked in through the opening of the gate, and saw rows of earthen graves on the green grass on the left, and the soil on the top still had fresh signs of turning. Obviously, the people buried here did not die for a long time. There is no stele in front of the tomb, but wooden pillars have been erected hastily, with a rough grimace carved on it, with a huge mouth and empty eyes, covered with blue cloth strips, which should be worn by the deceased. clothes.

Roughly counting, there are more than 20 grave mounds. Like the Han people, most of the Miao people practice burial, but they have never buried the dead at the gate of the village.After all, the dead are gone, and the living still have to live their own lives. Anyone who sees these rows of graves every day will not be in a good mood. Things seemed very strange, there were more than a dozen wooden houses in this stockade, all of which were very old, and the architectural model appeared to be very simple.The layout of the front and back of the house is similar to that of Jinping's ordinary countryside, except that it is rare to see concrete flats, which are all rammed with soil.I followed Yang Cao and cautiously approached a room at the entrance of the village. The door was ajar. After entering, the furniture inside were made of wood and bamboo, and there was also the smell of smoke from people living there.

Looking around, the house is rough and rough, not modern, and the room is narrow, no one is there. It is worth mentioning that the room is quite clean, and there are no cobwebs that are common in ordinary houses. In the dark room, I saw a hazy shadow on the ground.Turn on the flashlight and take a photo. It is a big mouse with black and shiny hair, as fat as a kitten, and it walks slowly.We followed it to take photos, and saw a person lying on a wooden couch, all the flesh on his limbs had been eaten clean, revealing white bones, and a hollow belly with a nest of chirping mice inside. Slip around.

When we walked over, the big mouse was not afraid of people, but instead rushed up fiercely. I kicked it hard and fell to the wall. It was hit by a bloody head, and died with a wail. Corpse shrews, cannibals and grow resentment, body fat like a kitten, covered with poison, very vicious, choose people to eat. This thing usually appears in the pile of dead people after the war, and it is the chief culprit of spreading vicious diseases. We walked to the wooden couch and observed the dead person: she was an elderly woman, most of her face had been gnawed off, revealing horrible teeth, yellow and black, exuding a very unpleasant rancid smell.Yang Cao took out a bone needle, pierced her temple, pulled it out, looked at the minced meat on it, and said that the person died no more than three days ago.Hmm... It's very strange, how come there are no flies or other insects?

Although it was approaching late autumn, the temperature in this valley was abnormal.When we camped by the stone wall of the ruins yesterday, we were still plagued by mosquitoes. If it weren't for the smell of fat insects, we might not have been able to sleep well.But here people died for several days, the rancid smell exudes, and there are no insects and flies around, it is really strange.But I quickly found the answer: beside the wooden couch, there is a bamboo shrine with a stone-polished incense ash box and a root-carved statue of the Five Plague Gods—this family raises Gu, although Gu is a fusion of ten thousand poisons, However, it is clean by nature and has a strong repellency to insects and flies.

It's just not rat-proof, so let these rats eat the skin and flesh. Yang Cao took out a small bottle from his clothes and sprinkled some white powder on the corpse.In this kind of weather, if the dead are allowed to rot and stink, it is easy to cause a plague. Even if we don't collect the corpses, we must do a good job of prevention.The toxicity of the white powder is very strong, if it is sprinkled a little bit, black smoke will come out immediately, a litter of more than a dozen little mice the size of a thumb want to escape, and within a few steps, they all kick their legs to death.

We walked out of this house and into several more.Some rooms are empty, and some of them can see the dead, and they are all the ones who died not long ago, only three or two days ago.There are many reasons for their death, some were bitten to the throat, some had several holes in the chest and abdomen, some had no scars on their bodies, their eyes bulged out, and some of their corpses were torn apart, or they were destroyed by corpses so that they couldn't see the reason . After walking around the village, there was no one alive. This village was slaughtered. We gathered in front of the Drum Tower and began to exchange views on this matter.There are a few places worth mentioning:

First, as an aborigine in Qingshanjie and a resident of Segai Village who is the closest to this vast forest, Lao Jin said that he had never heard of such a village.There are some seedling stockades in Qingshanjie, some live on the mountain thousands of meters above sea level and never go down the mountain all year round, some live in the old forest, but more or less, there will be some names, and some young people will go out to make a living .Speaking of which, Segai Village used to be a seedling village, and now it has access to cars. How could this happen? Second, I personally visited nearly ten households, and unexpectedly found that six houses enshrined the statues of the Five Plague Gods, and Gu raisers accounted for most of them.

Third, there is not a single thing or object with modern characteristics in these people's homes. This is a mysterious village, a foggy village.Everything seemed very strange. The people here were originally enjoying the rural life in a peaceful corner, but when we arrived, we found that in the entire village, except for a dozen or so graves, everyone else had died. The time of death is only a few days. what is the problem?How could it be such a coincidence? At the end of 2008, time-travel novels were in the ascendant, and Xiao Zhou, who had always been very silent, made a rare joke, saying that we fell from the waterfall and time-traveled?We smiled, but we undoubtedly thought of something: Could it be that this village is like the Tale of Peach Blossom Spring described by Mr. Tao Yuanming, hidden from the world and self-sufficient, "I don't know that there are Hans, regardless of Wei and Jin"?

Maybe that's the only way to explain what we've seen. But, how did they keep their village from being discovered by outsiders?Was it the horrible and weird legend that Lao Jin said that scared people away?Or did the dwarf mule act as an outer barrier? We had a discussion, and Hu Wenfei told us that after passing this stockade, there is a large paddy field behind.But at the end, from a distance, there was a large cave with a wide mouth, from which the stream disappeared into darkness again.I don't know if there is a way up the mountain there. Instead of finding the way so hard, we should find out if there is still a living person in this Miao village. If so, the information we get from him should be more accurate.Moreover, we can also know what kind of situation is here.

The upstream landslide, the path is piled up with rocks, and the downstream is a dark cave. The method Hu Wenfei said is indeed more useful than our blind search for the exit. It's just... Are there any survivors here? We came to the largest building in the Miao Village - the Fangzu Ancestral Temple built of stones.Miao villages usually have ancestral temples, also called ancestral halls, where ancestors are worshipped, clan meetings are held, and clan laws are enforced. In ancient times, when the chieftain system was still in place, this place represented power and majesty, so it is particularly sacred. The patriarch can come here Formulate laws and regulations to determine the life and death of the tribe. This is the largest ancestral hall I have ever seen. I originally thought that in this small village with only thirty or forty families, there might be more than a dozen rows of ancestral tablets in the main hall, but when I stepped into the room with bluestone floors, what I saw was a mess.In the main hall, there are three or four hundred tablets on the shelves, scattered on the ground, and broken into several pieces.What is this concept?According to the old practice of the Miao family, only the head of the clan or someone who has made special contributions to the clan can be ranked above the main hall and enjoy the incense offerings from descendants. I picked up a tablet casually, and the words on it were crooked and not familiar to me. Yang Cao took it over, looked at it for a while, and said hesitantly, could it be the Guyelang script? I was just about to laugh at his nonsense, when I suddenly heard Ma Haibo's shouting from outside, my heart tightened, and I ran out the door, only to see Ma Haibo shouting loudly in the distance, as if he was chasing something.The people around showed surprised expressions, and then they were on guard, clenched the weapons in their hands, and ran forward one after another.I took the lead and quickly ran through four or five houses, yelling at Ma Haibo what's going on? Ma Haibo answered me, saying that he had just seen a thin figure running out of the room over there. I was startled, could it be a dwarf mule? When I think of this hateful little thing, the anger in my heart burns one after another, and without hesitation, I run wildly in the direction Ma Haibo pointed.I have been poisoned by the golden silkworm for more than a year, and my body's explosive power is not inferior to that of a professional sprinter. As soon as I exert my strength, I quickly catch up. However, to my surprise, the one in my sight is not a short mule. But a little girl. This girl was about 1.3 meters tall, wearing thin coarse clothes, black and blue, and ran fast with her bare feet. She seemed to have been greatly frightened, and she was babbling while running. I was overjoyed, I was talking about living just now, but now it appeared, could it be that the gods in the sky are caring for us? Trembling with excitement, I quickly ran up to her, and grabbed the right hand of this yellow-haired girl who was barely a few catties thin.When she turned her head, she was a delicate girl, with exquisite eyebrows, white skin, like milk, completely different from ordinary rural children. The only regrettable thing was that when she opened her mouth to bite me, her teeth were a little black—this is a long-term phenomenon. The result of drinking hard water that is extremely high in calcium. It's a pity, a pity...such a little girl, bad teeth are a big problem! Before the sigh in my heart stopped, I felt a pain in my arm, and my face was distorted. Hey, this little girl really bites, it really hurts!