The fast-traveling girl has no feelings for her

Chapter 399 Young Town ([-])
"Help, help... help me..."

Someone inside is calling for help?

Although the voice was very weak, the girl was sure that she really heard it.

She started to follow the sound and walked towards the cabin in front of her obliquely to the right.

The wood used to build the wooden house is a very simple kind of rough-planed wood, with fine wood thorns all over it, not only rough in texture, but also without any paint or oil.

As the young girl approached the cabin, the cries of the people inside became more and more audible.

"Help, help me..."

A middle-aged woman who was lying in the wooden house at this time seemed to have heard someone coming from outside.

Dizzy and weak, she barely sat up from the wooden bed with half support.

Under the scorching sun, this airtight wooden house seemed to be a small stove, and people were slowly roasted in it. It was so hot that people's whole body became hot, their brains became dizzy, and their bodies became heavy.

After sitting up, the woman tried her best to look up at the small skylight above her head.

This is the only passage she can see outside.

If someone outside really came to rescue her, the other party would definitely drop some food, drink, and even some local medicine from the skylight. As for whether the person would put a rope down to rescue her, she wondered about it. I dare not think about it.

Outside the wooden house, the young girl who found that there were no windows on all sides of the wooden house found a long wooden ladder leaning on the south side of the wooden house.The ladder appears to be used to climb to the top of the cabin.

Could it be that the entrance of this wooden house is at the top?
Who would build this kind of house that seems to be used to hold prisoners?

The young girl was puzzled, but the movements of her feet did not slow down.

Facing the scorching sun above her head, she grabbed the handle of the wooden ladder with both hands, and climbed up the ladder step by step with her feet to the top floor of the wooden house.

As soon as she stepped onto the wooden ladder, the vibration of the wall reached the ears of the woman inside.

The middle-aged woman, who was only dubious about whether there was really someone outside the house, was now really sure that there was someone outside.

Who will come?
Could it be that her dead ghost husband has found out his conscience and is coming to pick her up?
Or did her family send someone to see her and bring her water and food?

Thinking of this, the middle-aged woman stared eagerly at the skylight above with her big eyes, not daring to move her eyes away.

After a while, she noticed a faint figure flashing past the skylight.

The middle-aged woman vaguely saw a young girl standing above, and hurriedly shouted, "Xiaoya, is that you? Are you outside? Xiaoya?!"

Xiaoya is the younger sister of her compatriot.

Think back when she got married, the little girl had just learned to walk, and the latter was fully ten years younger than her.

If the person coming outside at this moment is Xiaoya, then her mother must have sent someone to see her.

When she mentioned Xiaoya, a slightly old and tired face suddenly flashed into the middle-aged woman's mind.

The owner of that face is her and Xiaoya's own mother.

If she remembers correctly, her mother's 50th birthday will be soon.

After the birthday, the younger brother and sister-in-law will probably send their old mother to this "cannibal house".

It's just that she didn't expect that she would step into this "man-eating" wooden house before her old mother.

Just as the middle-aged woman was looking up at the skylight above her head and her thoughts were churning, a young face she didn't know at all appeared outside the wooden skylight.

The girl had a good face, very young and beautiful, a face she had never seen before.

After the other party saw someone under the wooden house and saw the extremely simple environment inside the wooden house, a hint of surprise flashed across his face, as if he didn't expect someone to be trapped in such a place.

Before the middle-aged woman could say anything, the girl above picked up a roll of rope placed on the wooden roof.

I saw that she untied one end of the knotted rope, and put the rope down so that it hung to the side of the woman.

"You tie the rope to your body, and I will try to pull you out."

The young girl called to the woman below.

The middle-aged woman, who was still dizzy and weak, found an extra strength in her body after seeing the hanging rope, and she struggled to stand up.

She wrapped the coil of rope around her waist in circles, tightening the rope tightly, then stretched out her hand and pulled the rope down, and shouted to the girl above, "I've tied the rope at this end. Now, you can pull it up!"

As soon as she finished speaking, the rope tied around her waist was suddenly tightened.

It was the people above who were using their strength to pull her up.

On the top of the wooden house, the young girl alone could not pull the people up from below, but she cleverly took advantage of the structure around the roof and successfully rescued people up in a very labor-saving way.

When the middle-aged woman was being dragged upwards, she held onto the rope tightly with both hands, not daring to let go.

After her head, her shoulders, and her waist were all exposed outside the wooden house, she let go of her hands holding the rope under the young girl's repeated reminders, and climbed onto the wooden roof.

At this time, the wooden boards on the wooden roof were still hot, but the middle-aged woman sitting on them was completely unaware.

She greedily breathed in the fresh air around her, her whole body seemed to have regained freedom, and even her previous dizziness symptoms had eased a lot.

It's just that when she looked around the wooden house and suddenly saw the cold ancestral house standing not far away, her body shivered unconsciously.

The young girl noticed this.

She stretched out the index finger of her right hand, pointed at the old house and asked the woman, "Do you know where it is?"

When the middle-aged woman heard her words, her eyes widened immediately.

Everyone in the town knew where the ancestral house was. Could it be that the beautiful girl in front of her came from another country?
She didn't answer the girl's question, but tentatively asked the other party, "Aren't you from our town? Who sent you here to save me?"

From the middle-aged woman's point of view, this young girl from a foreign country may have come here at the request of her natal family.

After all, the rules of the town are there, but it will be difficult for anyone who enters this cabin to figure out.

If my natal family didn't want to take any risks and tricked an unsuspecting outsider to save me, it was also possible.However, this possibility is still too low in the eyes of women.

There are no outsiders in this town, and the one outsider who came here recently was ten years ago.

"No one asked me to come here to save you. I'm really not from this town, but I want to know what happened here."

The clever young girl recognized the temptation in the woman's words, but she still told the latter the truth bluntly.

The woman sat on the roof, and after hearing what the girl said, she raised her eyes and looked her up and down.

The girl said that she was not from the town, but she dared to interfere in the town's business.

Is the other party someone with a background, or a pure-hearted person?
The woman couldn't figure it out and continued to ask her, "Do you know anyone in this town?"

"Not knowing."

"Then what is your relationship with the mayor of the town? For example, you are going to marry his son, or are you related to their family?"

"It's okay, I don't know the mayor of this town."

The girl's answer was short and to the point.

Along the way, the only person she had interacted with was the young man who took her outside his house and gave her a bowl of water and some steamed buns.

She didn't know the man's name, but she was basically sure that he was the little boy who had tricked her in her memory. However, she didn't know why the man seemed to suddenly change his mind even though there was only a two-day difference between yesterday and today. Ten years older.

The girl's answer obviously disappointed the woman.

She lowered her head silently. It turned out that this girl was not entrusted by her relatives, nor did she dare to be kind and save people because of her connections with the big shots in the town. She was even more incompatible with her dead husband. Go together.

But it happened that this strange girl from a foreign country who had nothing to do with her became the only person who saved her life at this moment.

Thinking of this, the woman felt an inexplicable sadness in her heart.

She stroked her somewhat dry and messy hair, and after straightening them, she said to the girl, "The old house you just pointed to may have existed in our town for thousands of years. People in our town call it the 'ancestral house'. According to legend, the leader who brought our lineage to settle here first lived in that house, and he is the ancestor of the whole town."

"Afterwards, the mansion lived in that house for countless generations, and it gradually showed supernatural powers, attracting many people to worship and make wishes, saying that the ancestors had spirits, and they were protecting everyone!
In the future, the house will no longer be suitable for people to live in, and it will gradually become deserted.

But the incense is getting more and more prosperous.

In the beginning, everyone made origami money and burned gold and silver paper as tributes. Later, they became living people who paid tribute somehow. God's ointment used to light candles and make wishes.

Since then, no one in the town has offered tribute paper tributes, and they have invited elderly people from their own families to come out to make tributes...

After all, he is an old man who is about to enter the grave, and if he continues to live, it will be a drag and burden for the younger generation sooner or later, it is better to contribute to himself early, so as to leave some blessings for future generations..."

When the middle-aged woman said this, her voice was a little choked up.

If it is said that she, like everyone else in the town, was sent to the wooden house when she was old, and asked her ancestors to turn over a brand and turn it into a god ointment, so as to accumulate blessings and luck for the younger generations in the family, then she would be willing.

But she is not yet 40 years old this year, but she was sent here by her husband in advance. After all, it is because she has not been able to give birth to a son and a half for her husband these years to continue the incense.

In the town, it was common for a woman like her who was unable to bear children or who did not want to bear children to be sent to a wooden house by her husband in advance to pay tribute.

Many other people have done this kind of thing.

At the beginning, no one objected to this kind of thing, but after a long time, it became a rule.

But the woman herself did not want to die.Giving one's own tribute to one's ancestors is an upright and high-sounding statement, but what's the difference between this and letting a good-looking living person go to die?
The children and young people in the town are in awe of their ancestral house, but the older they are, the more they find the house to be abhorrent and dreadful, and they even call the wooden house under them "eating" in private. Human house".

Because you just put a big living person in and hang a little sign outside the house with the auspicious day written on it.

When the auspicious day passes and you come to visit again, the person in the room has already been taken away.

The scary thing is that everything in the wooden house is intact, except that the people in the house seem to have been eaten silently by the ancestral house.

The woman told the young girl these things intermittently.

Maybe she kept these things in her heart for too long, but she couldn't say these things to other people in the town.

Because if someone dared to disrespect the ancestral house, the mayor would come forward to punish the disrespectful person instead of the ancestral house.

At that time, Xu Shi will be punished with confinement without water and food for a few days. In severe cases, he may also be used to pay tribute to the ancestors.

In the past, there were also such disobedient young people in the town, clamoring for everyone not to pay tribute, but each of these people suffered disasters in the end, and even their families were hurt.

In this town, all those who rebelled against the ancestral house died, and those who survived were obedient citizens like her.

While listening to the woman talking, the young girl drew a relationship diagram in her mind.

In this picture, the layout of the whole town is shown as the background, including the layout of the town's people, three wells and farmland.

Then there are diagrams of the relationship between ordinary townspeople, the mayor, and the ancestral house, as well as the rules of tribute that bind the whole town.

Through the words and compositions that emerged in her mind, she seemed to see a hierarchical map of power.

At the top of the town stands the ancestral house. Below the ancestral house is the mayor who represents and maintains the authority of the ancestral house. Further down is the town that is divided into grades according to the wealth and age of the family. folks.

Elderly townspeople, people who don't obey discipline, and middle-aged women like the childless woman in front of her are the ones who are given priority in paying tribute to the ancestral house.

Every generation is aging, and every year there are new people, so that the cycle of the town's hierarchical system is formed stably, and it continues to operate from cycle to cycle.

As soon as she sorted out these clues, the woman beside her suddenly said in a low voice, "I don't know if you saw it just now, but the auspicious time written on the wooden sign outside my wooden house should be tonight... ..."

This day was chosen for her by her husband personally, and the picture is that the day is near.

When the other party stood outside the wooden house and told her about his life, he also told her that he was ready to marry another young girl who was fertile.When she turns into divine ointment, he will use this ointment to beg his ancestors to give his bride a fat boy for him.

Wooden sign?The young girl thought about it carefully.

When she walked around the wooden house earlier, she did see a wooden sign.

It seems that the date written on it is today.

And the days when the ancestors come to turn over the cards are all at night.

It seems that although she went to the ancestral house during the day, she got nothing, but she can take a good look at it at night.

Now she wants to know more and more what kind of ghosts and ghosts are hiding in that old house.

(End of this chapter)