Chapter 9: Ma Ling's Treasure Hunt

  Liubao didn't know what had happened, but seeing me so tense, he jumped down from the kang and asked in a low voice what was wrong.

  I whispered in his ear, "Catch the thief", gesturing for him to follow me. The two of us left the house and I found that the ghostly figure was not in the yard. As we walked out of the yard, we saw a hunched figure walking towards the back of the village chief's house in the distance. I waved my hand for Liu Bao to follow up, and the two of us crept after the dark shadow.

  After walking for a while, I realized that this was not the way to enter someone's village house. The dark shadow in front of us seemed to be heading out of the village. We looked at each other and didn't understand what he wanted to do. Was he going to take advantage of the night to get rid of the loot?

  Like this, after following for about 100 meters or more, a vacant lot the size of a basketball court appeared in front. The ghost stopped walking when he reached the middle of the vacant lot. I and Liu Bao hid behind a big tree to secretly watch what he wanted to do?

  At this moment, I was surprised to find that the ghost shadow actually knelt down on the ground, and then carefully put down the scroll of painting and gently opened it in front of itself. Then, he knelt on the ground with his head up towards the sky and made a few strange cries of "Woo Woo Woo", and immediately began to kowtow to the painting.

  I and Liu Bao were both stunned, what the hell is this situation? Where has a thief stolen something without selling or hiding it, instead knocking his head against it?

  It's too far away to see clearly, so the two of us quietly moved forward a bit, wanting to see what this ghostly figure was going to do. If he wanted to escape, we could directly knock him down.

  Until we walked to the side of the ghost shadow and estimated that there were still twenty or thirty meters left, the ghost shadow had not discovered us. It was still knocking its head desperately. With the moonlight, I felt that his head was already cracked, and blood flowed all over his face.

  What followed was an even more bizarre scene, the ghost stopped bowing and then, like a dog, it lifted its buttocks and lay on the painting, its head moving up and down, as if licking something, illuminated by the moonlight, it was simply terrifying.

  He added a while and then knelt in front of the painting, stopping for about ten seconds. Then I saw him pull out a sharp knife from his arms and start rolling up his sleeves.

  At this time, my brain started spinning rapidly, and the scene seemed to have been seen somewhere before. 'No', I immediately had a cerebral congestion, wasn't this the plot of the story that the village chief told us last night?

  I and Liu Bao no longer had the desire to watch, and directly rushed up. Liu Bao flipped that ghost shadow to the ground with one move. I was about to go up and grab his knife when I saw that ghost shadow crawling up like a madman, waving his knife randomly at us, staring at us with his eyes wide open and his teeth bared, his expression completely losing all human appearance.

  The two of us stood there with him for a while, not daring to go forward. Under the moonlight, I took a glance at that painting and felt that the white fox's eyes seemed to have tears flowing from them again.

  A sudden flash of insight made me seem to understand something, I ran over and picked up the painting scroll and quickly rolled it up. Immediately after that, I saw the ghostly figure standing in place and then fell straight to the ground losing consciousness. Liu Bao hurriedly went forward and snatched the knife from his hand, then kicked him a few times but he didn't react at all.

  After waiting for a while, he still didn't wake up. My brother and I had no choice but to put away the painting and carefully carry Ghost Shadow back to our room. Our place was separated from the village chief's bedroom by a courtyard wall, so as long as we didn't make too much noise, they wouldn't be disturbed.

  As I entered the house, I casually turned on the light and glanced at my watch, which read 12:30. After putting down Guiying, Liubao went to pat the beams and old roads, and only then could I carefully take a look at who this person was.

  He was probably around sixty or seventy years old, wearing a set of dirty and tattered clothes, his hair and beard hadn't been trimmed for who knows how long, and his face had various-sized warts all over it, like a toad's, making him look especially disgusting.

  Lao Lu was woken up and walked over, rubbing his sleepy eyes. Seeing a strange person lying on the ground, he immediately jumped in fright. Liang Zi circled around me and asked, "What's going on? You two aren't murderers, are you?"

  I briefly explained the situation to them, and Liangzi quickly grabbed the painting and shouted: "Damn it, dare to steal my treasure!" While saying this, he went up and slapped the ghost's face and pinched its nose. After a long time, the ghost slowly opened its eyes, stood up, looked at us four, and surprisingly let out a sigh of relief.

  Liang Zi originally wanted to show off, but seeing him like this, he didn't know what to do for a while. At this time, the ghost shadow slowly opened its mouth and said: "What are you people? Why is this ghost painting in your hands?"

  What ghost painting? I thought to myself, you're a thief who's been caught, not only are you not afraid, but instead you're asking us questions. Suddenly, thinking of his suspicious movements earlier, I felt that things weren't so simple after all. Was there something hidden here?

  I helped Gu Ying sit down on the anti-inflammatory medicine and briefly told him about how this painting came about.

  Kui Ying's face turned increasingly ugly as he listened to my words, and then suddenly stood up and asked me: "What did you say? You've actually seen a black and white pair of demon foxes?"

  I nodded at him to show that I had seen him, and then he suddenly collapsed like a terrified expression and sat on the ground, saying: "I knew it, I knew things wouldn't end like this. Back then, I came back alive, but I didn't expect them to come back for my life again."

  "King De"? I suddenly had an epiphany, could this be the hunter who was the only survivor in the story told by the village head? Wasn't he supposed to have gone mad?

  I was just about to ask him what had happened that year, when this man suddenly jumped up and started wailing loudly, first shouting "Don't kill me, don't kill me, I didn't take anything", then bursting into loud laughter saying "Come on, come on, I'm not afraid of you, I'm...not...afraid...of...you".

  He was shouting and running wildly around the room, when he reached Liang's side, he saw the painting in his hand, and immediately pounced on it like a hungry tiger, but Liang was prepared, lifted his leg and kicked him to the ground. He seemed to be unaware of the pain, got up and continued to grab.

  In the midst of the chaos, the village chief pushed open the door and walked in, asking "What's going on? What's going on?" He then saw Guiying and Liangzi struggling with each other. With a helpless expression, he went over to scold Guiying: "Wang De, what are you doing sneaking into my house in the middle of the night? If you scare these guests away, I won't give you food anymore."

  As expected, the ghost was indeed Wang De from back then. He seemed to listen to the village chief's words and after a silly laugh, he rushed out of the door and ran far away.

  I just wanted to chase after him when the village chief grabbed me and said, "No need to chase, no need to chase. He's a madman, but he knows his way home, nothing will happen."

  The village chief also seemed to be sleeping soundly and was awakened by the shouting in our room. He rubbed his sleepy eyes, apologized to us with a few words, and then told us to rest early before turning around and going back to sleep.

  We were all woken up by the commotion and couldn't sleep, so we sat on the kang and started smoking and chatting. I felt that with all the strange things that had happened in recent days, it seemed like they were all connected somehow. After smoking two cigarettes, a strange idea suddenly occurred to me - to go take a look at that Wasp's Ridge.

  When I shared my idea with everyone, except for Lao Lu's fearful expression, both Liang Zi and Liu Bao were just like me. Liang Zi clapped his hands excitedly and said: "We came here to search for treasure in the first place, now that we've got this painting, who knows how much it's worth? The village elder's story didn't say that the cave was full of gold, silver, and jewels, did it? If we can go in and grab a few things, wouldn't that be great?"

  Actually, according to my personality, I would never do something that is uncertain and unreliable, but recently I don't know what's wrong with me, my curiosity has become stronger and stronger, maybe it's just an excuse for myself to love money, so I always want to explore the truth of things.

  The next morning, after everyone got up and went out, we saw that the village chief's family had already prepared breakfast. We didn't stand on ceremony and followed Lao Lu to sit down together for breakfast. Along the way, I asked the village chief where Zhēng má lǐng was, saying that we wanted to go take a look and see if there were any special species.

  The village chief didn't seem to care about the legend, and smiled at me: "It seems that you people are quite brave, and it's true that educated people don't believe in these ghost stories. As for Zhēng má lǐng, to be honest I've never been there myself, but I roughly know the direction."

  The village head told us that the distance from the village to Zhēng má lǐng is about 20 miles, and the mountain is quite steep. There are no roads in the mountains, so it's not easy to enter the mountains. We may encounter some wild animals, and we also need to pay attention to those poisonous stinging nettle grasses.

  After finishing breakfast, everyone packed up their things and borrowed two days' worth of dry rations and four sickles for cutting grass from the village chief. The sickles were much more useful than our small fruit knives. After bidding farewell to the village chief, the group set off in the direction of Zhēn má lǐng.

  The road just out of the village is still relatively easy to walk, with a small path trodden by villagers. The mountains here and where we parked our car are completely different concepts. The trees are sturdy, the vegetation is lush, and as far as the eye can see, it's a green and beautiful landscape, much more beautiful than any tourist area or deep forest park.

  After walking for a while, the small path disappeared from view. Looking up, I could see a high mountain peak in the distance. Although it was sunny, the upper half of the mountain seemed to be shrouded in dark clouds. I thought this must be what they called "Zhēng má lǐng". Indeed, it looked quite different from other mountains.

  The road under our feet became increasingly difficult to walk, and everyone could only use sickles to cut through the weeds to move forward slowly. As we entered the dense forest, our line of sight immediately became very narrow, and with the gaps between trees, we could see a distance of more than 20 meters at most. Everywhere was green, and we also started to feel slightly tense, afraid that some insects, snakes or wild beasts would come out and attack us.

  At first, it was quite interesting to pick wild grapes and climb pear trees. Later, after walking for a long time, the playful mood of everyone faded away because the road was all uphill, and everyone felt that their physical strength was being consumed greatly. Liangzi was chopping weeds in front, while others followed one by one, lowering their heads and looking at his back as they walked forward.