Chapter 34: The Terrifying Memory X Truth within Truth

  Du Jie said: "When I looked at his body, many things from my childhood came back to me, so clearly flashing in my mind. He rode a bicycle with me to the provincial hospital to see a doctor for my stomach disease, he took out money from his pocket to help me buy medicine, he made me take traditional Chinese medicine and forced me to drink it, at night when we slept together, he hugged me and said 'you can't just die like this, I promised your dead mother that you would be okay, she won't let go of me even if she becomes a ghost...' All these things came back to me.

  "So, I think I should inherit his will, I want to become him, he's gone, but his spirit remains, and I've received it. Father's profession is passed on to the son, he must have wanted me to be like that too. So, thirteen, sorry, starting from you, I also want to become a person like my father."

  He gazed at me coldly, his deep-set eyes shooting out two sharp rays of light, and he said in a measured tone:

  "Today, I'll make the first move on you, and I want to make you a part of me."

  "Thirteen, are you ready?"

  "Hurry up, Du Jie, no, everything isn't what you think it is. Try to recall, what happened in the autumn and winter of 1982? You can't remember, right? Let me tell you, I know what you've lost from that memory. Don't eat me yet, wait for me to finish speaking before you make a move."

  In 1982, that cold autumn and winter, the ultimate truth was ——

  In 1982, a massive snow disaster swept through the region since the beginning of autumn, getting worse and worse until it became a hundred-year horror.

  For Liu Long Village, it was even more of a disaster. The summer harvest was already poor, and since the arrival of winter, the cold had been getting worse and worse. The most tragic thing was that the heavy snow blocked the mountain, and the village was trapped in the mountains, becoming an isolated hell on earth.

  The shadow of death began to envelop Liu Long Village.

  The food stored in the village began to gradually decrease, and what could be eaten changed from grains and domestic fowl to tree bark and roots. Some people even started eating mud.

  Those who have not experienced the years of famine can hardly understand what happened at that time. The feeling of hunger in humans gradually began to break through the defense line of reason, and the village became more and more unstable.

  6-year-old Du Jie didn't actually understand what was happening, he just thought it was fun that every day was a snowstorm, the whole village was covered in white snow, a vast expanse of whiteness, a thousand miles of ice and ten thousand miles of drifting snow.

  He started out playing with the younger kids, building snowmen and having snowball fights. But he noticed that at home during meals, there was less and less food to eat. He began to go hungry.

  The child's innate sensitivity made Du Jie begin to feel that the atmosphere at home had become somewhat eerie.

  From that morning on, there was always someone coming in and out of the house, and each person's face showed a sneaky expression, as if they were hiding a secret, everyone tacitly concealing this secret, not letting the children know.

  Du Jie was a boy with a very strong curiosity, he thought he should secretly uncover the secret hidden by adults, and then proudly show off in front of them that their secret had been uncovered by him, how cool am I?

  Although he had been starving and feeling sickly, now he seemed to have suddenly regained his energy, with strength filling his entire body.

  In the afternoon, the weather became even more severe, with the entire sky a deep, foreboding grey, like a thick layer of rotting, moldy cotton batting. The blizzard raged on again, with huge snowflakes dancing wildly in every direction, and the sound of the wind was like the roar of an enraged giant, tearing through the air.

  The villagers sneaked back to Du Jie's house again, gathering in the woodshed on the west side of Du Jie's house and closing the wooden door.

  Du Jie originally wanted to sneak a peek, but his father refused, saying: "Stay in your room, it's too dangerous outside. If you don't want me to spank you, then stay here."

  After his father finished warning Du Jie, he closed the door and left.

  Du Jie could only lie on the windowsill and watch as his father came out of the house, braving the blizzard to head towards the west wing's woodshed.

  After Father entered the woodshed, something happened. However, in the sound of the blizzard, a faint quarrel was heard, someone was arguing, and it was very fierce, even Du Jie, who was lying at the window, heard it.

  What exactly happened in the shed on the west side?

  After a while, Du Jie saw other people walking in and out. Some were carrying water buckets, some were carrying washbasins, some were hugging rolls of plastic paper, some came out with big sweat on their foreheads, some walked out crying and laughing at the same time, some took off their thick clothes and walked out bare-chested, some carried huge iron pots in, and some carried a basin of bowls and chopsticks in...

  Du Jie was just a little kid, but he still figured it out that they were slaughtering pigs in their own family's woodshed to make meat soup.

  Du Jie thought of this and immediately sneaked up to the window when no one was passing by, then jumped out.

  He ran out of the yard through the corridor. After all, he was still afraid of his father and had not forgotten his father's warning before leaving.

  So he ran out of the yard and came to the outside of the house because there was a window of the woodshed.

  Dujie often liked to climb through this small window when he played in the woodshed. Braving the cold, Dujie quietly came to the window and tiptoed to look inside.

  He saw a long wooden table placed in the middle of the woodshed. On the wooden table was spread a plastic sheet, and on the plastic sheet was a pile of deep red pork.

  Father was bare-chested with his right hand grasping a butcher's knife and chopping away at a piece of meat with bones.

  Ka cha - ka cha - the slaughter knife chopped on the pig bone, making a cracking sound.

  Red flesh and fragments of pig bones splashed up.

  His father's face looked somewhat crazy, with some ferocity, really like a rough butcher.

  That table of pork looked so enticing, Du Jie's saliva flowed down, and he even smelled the rich aroma of the pork stew.

  Du Jie decided to jump down from the window immediately and ran into the woodshed.

  Just as he was about to jump down, he suddenly saw his father take out something.

  Next to the pile of deep red pork, Grandma's head was placed on the table.

  The old woman's skull was just a skull, without a neck, without a torso, without limbs, only a white-haired skull. The old woman's eyes stared wide, as if glaring at Du Jie. Her eyes were gray and white, without any expression, as if covered with a thick layer of white membrane.

  Du Jie was frightened, the old granny's head was like a swollen monster, becoming more and more ferocious, opening its bloody big mouth, pouncing over.

  Du Jie strained his voice to the utmost, shouting at the top of his lungs, each cry more mournful than the last.

  All of the above is what Du Jie told me. When he was a child, in 1982, during that cold winter, he experienced this story.

  He rushed ahead of me and suddenly brought up this blank period of over 20 years.

  "Yes, I remembered it long ago. Now that I'm standing in front of my father's corpse, I recall this dark memory. They distorted the fate of Liu Long Village."

  I said: "What you're saying is wrong, the truth isn't what you think it is!"

  Du Jie punched me on the forehead and said: "What else do you want to quibble about? This is what I saw with my own eyes, and I only believe my eyes!"

  "No, the truth is not like that. After all these years, have you ever thought about why your father refused to see you? Why did Liulong Village decline? Why do the older generation refuse to leave Liulong Village? Why did they ruthlessly drive away your young generation? Haven't you ever wondered what it's all for? It's because... they are using their own lives, their own love, to protect you..."

  I cried out: "All these years, didn't you feel anything?"

  In 1982.

  Du Jie's home.

  The fierce blizzard destroyed everything.

  The old lady leaned on her cane, trembling as she stood up from the chair and said: "There is no more food in the village, the children are so hungry that they can't move, if this continues, many children will starve to death. So I've gathered you all here today because there's something I want to discuss with you."

  "Grandma, I know you've been worried about food these days, but this is also an unavoidable thing. Now the heavy snow has blocked the mountain and the road out is also broken."

  The old lady said: "So I came to discuss with you."

  "Grandma, you say it, we'll all listen."

  "I remember a long, long time ago, there was a disaster that lasted for a very long time, and many people starved to death. Later on, cannibalism occurred... Don't interrupt me yet, listen carefully. I've decided to become food myself, to save every single person in the village."

  "No way! We strongly disagree with this, it's not saving people, it's harming them! We can't do that!"

  Everyone started arguing loudly, this proposal is too crazy.

  The old lady raised her cane and slammed it to the ground, saying: "This is my proposal, whether you agree or disagree, I have decided to do so! Besides, I am already half a step into the coffin, what does it matter if I die a few days earlier? My death has meaning for everyone in the village, I died as I should, I have no regrets!"

  Everyone still opposed, Du Huangniu hugged his grandmother's legs and cried: "Grandma, it can't be like this, we all disagree with this, I won't accept it even if you live to be a hundred years old, you should leave peacefully in bed, not become food!"

  The old lady wielded her cane and slammed it onto the hump of Du Huang's back, shouting: "Get out! You ungrateful son! Did I still expect you to understand me? Can't you be rational for once? Do you really want to see all the children in the village starve to death? Are you waiting to see all the children die before you're at peace?"