Human skin envelope

  I took a step forward, ready to pin this person to the ground. But when I pounced on him, I found that this black shadow, who was not even as tall as me, had incredible strength. I couldn't hold him down, let alone see his true face. Just then, my eyes caught sight of another flying black shadow. My mind was a mess, and I released the person in my grasp, preparing to swing my machete at the strange shadow. Since it was just a shadow, I thought I could subdue it with one slash. But to my surprise, my blade cut through empty air, and before I could react, both shadows vanished into thin air. Suddenly, an idea flashed through my mind: the person I had pinned down must have been human, while the flying shadow that evaded capture was some kind of supernatural being. But what kind of supernatural being could take on a human form yet possess inhuman speed and agility? And then another chilling thought occurred to me: as someone who has spent their life hunting, I should be able to overpower any ordinary person. Yet the person who seemed like a shadow had been impossible for me to subdue, despite his smaller stature. As these thoughts ran through my mind, I remembered that Hongying and Tang Jun were still waiting for me at home. So I rushed back in their direction, but as soon as I entered the house, I sensed that something was off. Old Jin looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to ask him something.

  "What's wrong?" I replied.

  Old Jin Tou waved his hand at me and made a gesture of silence, then stretched his head out the door. I also held my breath and listened curiously. The house was as quiet as death, but suddenly a rustling sound came to my ears.

  The sound grew louder and louder, like a tidal wave. Old Jin immediately stood up and quickly walked to the window, pulled open the curtains, and the curtains opened. To my surprise, the room was already brightly lit, and the originally empty house was now shining with lights everywhere. I was shocked in my heart, could it be that I had encountered a ghost?

  To be honest, at that time I only had one feeling, whether I was in reality or a dream. Before this, I also felt fear because of the appearance of the earth spirits, but the earth spirits were visible after all, and it wasn't until then that I truly experienced what it meant to be terrified, those things were hidden around you, but you didn't know what they were.

  Old Jin Tou looked for a while, then put down the curtains, jumped off the kang with one step, hastily put on his shoes and walked towards Jin Dou Zi's room across the way. I lifted the curtains again to look outside, just as Old Jin Tou entered Jin Dou Zi's room, the lights suddenly went out completely, and in an instant, everything in front of me turned into a pitch blackness. Then I heard the sound of Old Jin Tou walking.

  I turned my head and found myself face to face with Old Jin, his face was solemn, his eyebrows furrowed, he didn't say a word as he leaned against the wall deep in thought for half a day, before suddenly saying: "You weren't scared just now, were you?"

  I shook my head.

  "Where did I stop talking to you last time?" Old Jin Tou seemed like he hadn't spoken in a long time, so many things had been pent up in his chest. Today, when he met me, he poured out everything at once, feeling relieved after finally speaking out.

  "When you get home, you'll find something is off!" I repeated, while carefully noticing that Old Jin's hand seemed to have an extra black object.

  "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 thief was one of the 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 a time when we were still living in Beigou Village. The three jars suddenly appeared overnight, and 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 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 heads of strange beasts, 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 lightly tapped it twice on its body. The vat emitted a "thud thud" sound. Actually, when I saw the green fluff, I had suspected that this vat should be made of copper, and now my guess was verified.

  "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 rushed towards the figure. But suddenly, a black shadow pounced on him, knocking him to the ground. The already agitated Tang Jun quickly got up, ready to fight for his life against this troublemaker who had been disturbing our family's peace. However, just as he was about to attack, he saw clearly that the shadow that had attacked him was a monster with a human face and a cat's 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 happened earlier and now - the person I had pinned to the ground must have been the black shadow figure standing in the courtyard, and the shadow that had flown over the eaves must have been the human-faced cat-bodied monster that Tang Jun mentioned."

  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 entered my line of sight, and I immediately became spirited and rushed over there. There was indeed a deserted grave, 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.

  "Right!" Old Jin interrupted my thoughts, and then continued: "It was the place where I chopped that black shadow the day before. At this time, there is a piece of black stuff like fur here, but it's as hard as wood."

  Lao Jin's words made me a bit apprehensive, but the more something makes people feel fearful, the more it often attracts them, just like many people are afraid of chili peppers yet have a special fondness for them.

  I crept up to the front of the deserted grave, carefully observing this thing, but unexpectedly discovered that the soil around the deserted grave had an unusual color. What made me feel strange was that the surface soil was black, which is normal, but after digging about an inch, the soil color suddenly turned purple, and another inch or so deeper, the soil color turned blood red, and another foot or so deeper, the soil color turned cyan green, and with each layer, I felt the soil layer becoming more solid. The final cyan green soil layer was as hard as rock, and when I used force, the knife broke into two pieces.

  I held the remaining half of the knife handle, slowly digging forward bit by bit. After this layer of soil was opened, I surprisingly saw a red coffin. The red color of this coffin was eerie, like flowing blood. And the tip of the knife had already been deeply embedded in the coffin.

  "At that time, I immediately understood that it must be the strange coffin that brought the disaster. So I got up and ran back home to get a hoe or an iron shovel to dig it open. But just as I reached the door, I heard my daughter screaming inside the house."

  I gripped the half dagger in my hand, kicked open the door and rushed into the room. Only to see Hongying lying on the bed, hugging her shoulders and shouting, but Jindouzi was nowhere to be seen.

  "I hastily asked: 'What's going on? Where is Jindou?' My daughter was now pale with pain, her lips bitten through. She said that a hairy monster had jumped in from the window and taken the child away in an instant, and she had been injured by the monster while desperately protecting the child. At this moment, I suddenly felt as if the flesh on my shoulder had been cut open with a knife."

  She said that, and I knew it must be the work of that monster. But I didn't dare to continue with the idea of hitting the coffin anymore. Tang Jun was not in the house at this time, where did he go? At that time, I couldn't take care of so much, just worrying about Jindou's whereabouts. Until evening, Tang Jun came back, his face worried and said that he followed the monster rushing out, searched the entire mountain, but still didn't find any news about his son.

  "In the following days, all sorts of strange noises kept coming, but I and Tang Jun stayed in our daughter's room, moving that jar into her room. No matter how chaotic it was outside, I refused to leave the room half a step."

  It had been like this for over a week, and finally, the strange noise at night stopped. However, just as I was about to let my guard down, I discovered that every household in the village would turn on their lights after midnight.

  "It was similar to the scene tonight, when I didn't sleep all night until the lights went out after the sky turned white in the east. During the day, I thought of exploring those abandoned courtyards to see what's going on. I walked from house to house, but they were already in a state of disarray, and there was no sign that anyone had been there, let alone any lamps."

  Those lights were on for about a month, and finally everything returned to normal. However, Hongying's body was getting weaker by the day. One evening when I came home, I found that Hongying had disappeared." Old Jin said this, his eyes already overflowing with tears.

  I can understand Old Jin's feelings at that time, "When was Hongying found?"

  As soon as I uttered this sentence, I noticed a hint of despair on Old Jin's face, his eyes staring blankly out the window.

  Silence... Old Jin's face was gloomy as he stared out the window, while I kept staring at him. The rain had stopped by now, and all that could be heard was the sound of water dripping from the eaves, a crisp "patter" in my ears.

  After a long while, Old Jin finally came back to his senses and let out a deep sigh. "In the following months, strange things happened again," he said. "During the day, Tang Jun and I did almost nothing but search for our daughter and Jindouzi's whereabouts. At first, we looked in abandoned houses in the village, then gradually expanded our search to all possible places, even including that deserted grave mound. And at night, we would return home with empty stomachs, hastily cook a meal, eat it, and then sleep with our hunting guns in our arms."

  "It's been about half a month since those days passed, one night, I suddenly heard my daughter's cry of surprise by my ear, and vaguely also heard the sound of Jin Douzi crying. I sat up from bed with a start, and in front of me was a complete darkness. When I woke up, my daughter's cry of surprise had disappeared, and at that time, I thought it was just myself missing my daughter too much to have had a nightmare. But when I lay down again, the sound of my daughter's cry came to my ear once more, that voice as faint as a strand of silk."

  My heart tightened, and I quickly woke up Tang Jun. The two of us held the shotgun and followed the sound as we walked out, pushing open the door. My daughter's voice seemed to be coming from the south side of the village. I hastily ran in the direction of the sound while loading the gun.

  But just as we approached the sound, it drifted northward again. We chased after it to the north, but the sound shifted eastward instead. This continued until dawn was near, and I was exhausted. Just then, the sound suddenly vanished, and Tang Jun had no choice but to support me as we trudged back home in disappointment.

  As soon as I entered the door, I suddenly had an epiphany and a dangerous idea flashed through my mind. I quickly rushed into the house in three strides, and Tang Jun seemed to have realized something too. Sure enough, that last mouthful of wine was gone by then.

  I slumped at the entrance like a deflated balloon, realizing I had been deceived again. Anger suddenly arose in my heart, so I carried a hoe and iron shovel to that wasteland, thinking that since my daughter was nowhere to be found anyway, I might as well get rid of this evil creature. Who knows, maybe it's the lair of those two monsters.

  But as soon as I arrived at the deserted tomb, I was shocked. I clearly remembered the location of that grave, but now it had become empty and hollow, with all the soil on top collapsed into a big pit. Next to the pit, surprisingly, there were still scattered pieces of fur-like things. I distinctly remembered burying them in the ground, so who could have dug them up again?

  I jumped into the pit and used an iron shovel to remove all the floating soil. It took about half a day, and a three-meter-long, two-meter-wide rectangular pit appeared before my eyes. But what surprised me even more was that in the north-south direction, there was actually a deep ditch, which was built with broken white ceramic pieces.

  "I bent down to take a closer look at those white ceramic pieces, and I saw water erosion marks on them. But where did the water come from?" Old Jin said this and coughed lightly twice, then got off the kang and walked in with a kerosene lamp.

  He went back to his seat and poured me another cup of wine, then said softly: "Little Luo, do you understand Feng Shui?"

  I furrowed my brow, although I had read some books, but still felt ambiguous about those things, so I shook my head.

  "Haha, that's no wonder, I was just wondering why there would be such a ditch at the time. In an instant, I remembered that my ancestors had said something like this before: 'Yin Quan'!" Old Jin Tou said word by word.

  "Yin Quan?" I listened to these words as if in a dream, mechanically picked up the wine cup and drank it all in one gulp. The moment I put down the cup, I suddenly caught a glimpse of something black and sticky on the bottom of the cup.

  "The yin spring is rarely seen in general places, but a long time ago, it began to prevail in the village of Beigua. It started by digging a ditch about one foot deep under the coffin, with the edge of the ditch built up with stones. It's said that this can prevent people with heavy resentment from becoming evil spirits. I don't remember when it started to flourish, but I vaguely heard old people say that it was first created by a high-ranking monk." Old Jin sighed deeply.

  Before this, I had seen many ghost movies like Lam Ching-ying's "Mr. Vampire", but I was still skeptical about the existence of vampires. Even now, hearing Old Jin say such things, I couldn't help but feel doubtful - could it be that there really are such ferocious creatures in this world?

  "What happened after that?" I hastily gathered my thoughts and asked.