Chapter 61 Chapter 7 The time of pause

The old woman in front of us was crying bitterly. I thought the deceased was her son or grandson, but she cried and said that it was her brother who had been missing for more than fifty years!I suddenly felt both surprised and puzzled. The old lady looked at least seventy years old, but the dead person lying on the beach was only in her thirties at most. Is there something wrong with the old lady's mind?However, the clothes worn by the deceased were decades ago, exactly the same as the old woman's clothes, which made me feel a little uneasy. "Brother, where have you been these past few decades? Why did you leave the burden of the whole family to me alone!"

"Old lady, are you really sure that he is your elder brother? But, he is so young..." I deliberately stretched out the last words. "This...but he is my elder brother, how could I have mistaken him?" the old woman replied in blunt Mandarin. I wanted to continue talking, but the staff of the supply ship gave me a wink, telling me to calm down first.I saw the old woman's heartbroken look, and I couldn't bear to let her continue to suffer, so I stood quietly beside the old woman.The staff of the supply ship comforted the old woman and suggested that the deceased should be moved to a cool place on the island.After I got off the ship and landed, I felt much more energetic, so I volunteered to help the staff of the supply ship move the dead to a shady place.

"Can you do it, or I'll call my colleagues to help, you were still seasick just now!" the staff of the supply ship said worriedly. "It's okay, I'll feel much better once I get off the boat, I'll do it." As soon as I finished speaking, I raised the corpse in front of me. When I first touched the deceased, my hands felt very sticky and cold. It felt like touching meat porridge wrapped in plastic film, which was disgusting.Could it be that after being submerged in the sea for a long time, the corpse will become like this?The people on the island took us to carry the body to a cool place. Along the way, I found that walking on Yongxing Island, the largest island in the Paracel Islands, was like walking into a tropical botanical garden.

Tropical plants are abundant here and flourish in all seasons.In the area inside the sand bank around the island, there are arbor forests composed of white frost flowers. The closer to the center of the island, the taller the plants are, and the closer to the coast, the shorter the plants.On the outer sandy embankment of the island, there are tropical trees and shrubs such as coastal tung and pituitary.The coastal tung tree is mainly distributed on the 50-100 meter wide sand embankment around the island, like a windbreak forest along the island.Its material is better, its branches are many and low, and it has strong wind resistance.Pittosporum is a tropical evergreen shrub on Coral Island. It is widely distributed and has a large area. Except for areas that can be submerged by tide water, it grows in other places on the island.

In addition to the natural forest, there are also coconut trees planted by our military and civilians in the past dynasties on the island, and small coconut forests have formed in some places.There are so many trees here, no wonder Yongxing Island also has a name called Lindao, but I can’t get up to appreciate them now, after all, what I’m carrying now is a corpse. After the old lady waited for us to put down the body, she stood quietly and sobbed with her head down.The old woman yelled the word "brother" vaguely, but the corpse on the ground was dozens of years younger than the old woman, and I wouldn't believe it was her brother even if I killed him.The old woman's elder brother had disappeared fifty years ago. If her elder brother had died at that time, then a corpse that had been soaked in sea water for decades would not have rotted, but would have remained in its original state. Such an outrageous thing!

"Grandma, is he really your brother?" I asked softly, but then I felt that it was very inappropriate to ask such a question at this time, and I had already asked this question once just now. "How could I be wrong, my elder brother is so kind to us, how could I not know him!" the old woman said excitedly, "There must be a scar on his arm, which is when I accidentally cut my eldest brother when I was chopping coconuts when I was young." Hurt!" When I heard the old woman say this, I immediately picked up the sleeve of the deceased with my hands and feet. When I saw the arm of the deceased, I was speechless, because there was really a clear scar on the arm of the deceased!Could it be... could this corpse really be the old woman's elder brother who had been missing for more than fifty years?But this is too absurd. Is there any way in the world to make the corpse soak in seawater for decades not only not to rot, but to keep it as it is?

The staff of the supply ship brought us to the guest house of the Xisha Working Committee in shock, but we can only come to this place. Anyone who comes here for tourism can only find this place to stay, unless you have a special relationship with the people on the island. Iron, so that they can live in their home.The Xisha Working Committee Guest House is a small three-story building with only 18 rooms, and can only accommodate 36 people at a time.Everyone still followed the allocation in Haikou, and I shared the same room with Xinhong.However, there is no telephone or air conditioner in the room, which makes the guest house even more stuffy under the high temperature.

Although we encountered disappointing things as soon as we landed on the island, the six of us still cheered up, and everyone clamored to go to the post office at the southernmost tip of China to post letters.Chen Jing wrote the address of receiving the letter as the place where we live, which is no wonder, because she does not have a fixed address here, and she should be able to receive this very meaningful letter after going back to rest for a few days.I put a very small leaf in the envelope, because I didn’t have time to write any words along the way, and playing with my literary talent, putting a leaf might make the letter more meaningful.

At the post office, we were preparing to seal the envelope with glue one by one. When I just sealed my envelope, I accidentally touched Uncle Tian’s hand, and another envelope fell out of the unsealed envelope in Uncle Tian’s hand. .I felt strange, so I stretched my head to have a look.Uncle Tian picked up the envelope in a panic, and then nervously stuffed the envelope back into the envelope.Uncle Tian pretended to be nonchalant, sealed the envelope solemnly, and stuffed the envelope into the mailbox. Uncle Tian let out a sigh of relief. "Uncle Tian, ​​what was in your envelope just now, why does it look like an envelope?" I asked puzzled.

"How old are you? A young man is only so young to take care of the elders?" Uncle Tian said angrily. In fact, he wanted me to stop asking. "Okay, okay, I just don't ask." I pretended to be innocent and said, "Isn't there another envelope in the envelope? What's so mysterious about it?" On the way back to the guest house, I ran into the staff of the supply ship again, because I was very curious about the old lady, so I leaned forward and asked: "By the way, when you were at the beach just now, why did you run to take that old lady?" Pulled over to identify the body?"

"Because I know her. Every time I come to the island, I will visit my grandma. She often mentions her elder brother to me. There is still a photo of her elder brother in her home. Just now I saw that corpse and ate a piece of it." I was shocked, so I hurriedly called grandma to identify it." "It turns out that you have known that old woman for a long time. The corpse really has the scar she said. Could it really be her brother?" Xinhong asked. "I looked at the corpse at the time, and I couldn't believe it, but it was really the same as her brother. I thought it was really her brother. How could there be such a similar person in the world, and even the scars were the same!" The staff of the supply ship said seriously. Suddenly, I fell silent.In fact, in my subconscious mind, I already identified this corpse as the old woman's brother, but why did the flow of time stop on her brother's body?What was the reason for her brother to disappear fifty years ago, and what happened to her brother fifty years ago?Fifty years later, the old woman found her brother. It must have been a bad feeling. We saw that it was not too late, so we went to a restaurant on the island to enjoy the local delicacies.As far as I know, there is only one restaurant on the island, and they serve the local specialty mussels and fried sea carp.However, when I ate these things, I couldn't help but think of the two corpses I encountered earlier, which made me tasteless at all.Uncle Tian and Xinhong decided to go to the beach to watch the sunset after eating. I felt like my body was filled with lead, and I was terribly exhausted, so I went back to the guest house to rest by myself. I fell on the bed in a dazed state, and soon fell asleep.In the dream, I dreamed of my parents again, they were still coming and going in front of me, and finally ran into the darkness again, I couldn't catch up with them no matter what.At the end of the darkness, the big bird is still flying.In my dream, I couldn't help thinking, whether the parents who have been missing for ten years will be like the old woman's brother, the flow of time has stopped in their bodies, and whether the parents still live in this world?I have never had the courage to face this matter directly, and I have blamed myself until now. After a while, I may be able to find the truth like Xinhong. When I woke up from the dream, it was already dark.There was no light in the room, and I should have been unable to see my five fingers, but I was able to clearly see my ten fingers!Because there is no light around, it is pitch black, but my hands are shining faintly, I feel like I am sinking in the deep sea.I pinched my arm hard, and the pain in my arm made me almost cry out.This is not a dream, it is reality!But how come my hands have such a light, what is going on? I tried to calm myself down, and then walked out of the room slowly, the light in my hands still flickering.I took out the mineral water I brought from Haikou, and after rinsing it a few times, the light still covered my hands tightly.I thought about it carefully. Recently, the things I touched with my hands include food, drinks, luggage, stamps and envelopes. These are all normal things. Why do my hands suddenly have such reaction? Just when I was puzzled, I suddenly remembered that I touched the body of the old woman's brother this afternoon!Excitedly, I ran all the way to the place where the corpse was parked. As I expected, the corpse was radiant and looked very strange in the dark!I thought of some things I saw at sea. Could it be...could it be...the place where the old woman's brother went fifty years ago also had such ocean wonders?