Chapter 2: The Mysterious Village (6)

  "When you get home, you'll find something's off!" I repeated, carefully noticing that Old Jin had a black object in his hand.

  "Right, right!" Old Jin's words interrupted my train of thought. "I returned home to find the atmosphere in the house a bit strange, and it seemed like something was gasping for breath in the darkness. I lit the kerosene lamp, only to discover that one of the two remaining jars was also missing."

  I rushed to my daughter and Jin Douzi's room, saw that they were fine, and then returned to my own room. At this time, Tang Jun had woken up, seemingly waiting for me to return, his face solemn, as if he had just gone through a life-and-death struggle. I immediately asked him, "The jar in our house is missing again, you've been at home all the time, didn't you notice?" After finishing speaking, I went back to the hall and carefully investigated, but still couldn't find any clues. What do these thieves want with those two jars? Could it be that the thieves were those two black shadows from earlier? I thought puzzledly, recalling that the three jars had appeared under strange circumstances when I was only three or four years old. At that time, we were still living in Beigou Village, and the three jars suddenly appeared overnight. Later, when we left Beigou Village, my father insisted on bringing those three jars with us." Speaking to this point, Old Jin got down from the kang and said to me: "Xiao Luo, come and take a look!"

  I curiously followed Old Jin down from the kang, in the northeast corner of the hall was a black large vat over one meter high, on the body of the vat were three... oh, it should be five monster heads, although not big, but looked very ferocious. On the edge of the vat body there were several blurry scratches, among which one was relatively clear, and in the scratch grew light green fluff.

  I approached the vat and tapped it gently twice, only to hear a "thud" sound from the vat. In fact, when I saw the green fluff, I had been suspecting that this vat should be made of copper, and now my guess was confirmed.

  "Is that thing made of copper?" I asked in doubt.

  "Ah, yes!" Old Jin said, pulling me back to the house. After we sat down, he continued: "When I returned to the house, Tang Jun grabbed me and told me in detail about his encounter in the courtyard. It turned out that he had also heard the strange noise and immediately ran out, but as soon as he pushed open the door, he saw a figure standing in the middle of the courtyard with its back to him, holding something indistinct. Tang Jun shouted loudly and approached the figure, but was suddenly knocked to the ground by a black shadow. Enraged, Tang Jun got up and prepared to fight for his life against this troublemaker, but just as he did, he saw that the attacker was a monster with a human face and cat body. He was so frightened that he stood frozen in place until I heard the noise and went out to help him back into the house. At this point, I connected the dots between what had happened earlier - the person I had pinned to the ground must have been the black shadow figure in the courtyard, and the flying shadow on the eaves was probably the human-faced cat monster that Tang Jun described."

  That night, after Tang Jun rested, I sat in front of the vat for a whole night, thinking that there must be something fishy about it, but I couldn't figure out what the secret was. The next day, Hongying woke up and saw that her complexion had improved slightly, so she carefully asked if she had seen any strange people the night before. To my surprise, her face immediately turned pale, and then she quickly got out of bed and hugged Jindouzi.

  "After having breakfast, I carried a hunting rifle and came to the wasteland alone. Relying on my vague impression, I was searching for the deserted grave where my daughter fainted last night. Suddenly, a black object rushed into my eyes, and I immediately became spirited and ran wildly towards it. There was indeed a deserted grave there, but what surprised me even more was that black object..." Old Jin Tou said up to here and raised his neck to drink another big cup of wine.

  "What's with the black thing?" I racked my brain, and it seemed like I had some impression of this thing.