Cannibalism

Day after day, night after night, the villagers of Lujia Village trapped it in a stone house, sealed the windows and doors, and covered its eyes, which could not see many colors clearly, with sackcloth, leaving it alone. In a corner where you can't see your fingers, force it to become a container for medicinal materials.

Every day, someone would take a machete, cut into its waist, and skillfully pull out a bear gall, and sell it to that filial dignitary.

The villagers gave it a bowl of old bran and rotten vegetables eaten by pigs every day, as nutrients for growing gallbladders.

Its body is like a cornucopia, feeding dozens of households in Lujia Village who are suffering from the locust plague.

New bear bile grew continuously, and it suffered the pain of having its abdominal cavity cut open day after day.

It was blindfolded, and it didn't know the alternation of day and night in the dark stone house.

But it never seemed to want to escape.

Having lost its freedom and light, in order to endure the boundless loneliness, it stretched out its claws and scratched one mark after another on the stone wall.

The sound of scratching nails was extremely harsh, but it calmed his mind.Such ear-piercing sounds seemed to become the meaning of its daily survival.

It never howled in despair, but sometimes wept silently, and the sackcloth blindfold was soaked with tears and dried by the heat of its body.

After a few degrees of dryness and wetness, its eyes were completely blind.

But whether he is blind or not, he will be nicknamed Xiong Xiazi. He clutches the wound in his abdomen, feeling that the wound is healing rapidly, and the gallbladder is reborn unscrupulously.

After an unknown number of days, the high-ranking official finally stopped going up the mountain.

His father died of illness.

But the villagers who survived the locust plague did not return the black bears to the forests. They tasted the sweetness of selling bear bile: they can stock up thousands of shi of grain and grass without farming, and they can live and work in peace and contentment without worrying about food and clothing.

Unexpectedly, within a few days, the black bear died in the dark stone house.

It died without a whimper, quietly, as if asleep.

His sackcloth blindfold was not removed, even though it had been worn on his head for many months.

They dug a hole in the ground and buried it.

However, the sweetness of getting something for nothing is getting bigger and bigger in their hearts. They are no longer satisfied with just taking the bile of one bear, so they catch a few more bears and put them in the cage together, trying to raise more bears that are inexhaustible and inexhaustible. containers of dried bear bile and make them a cornucopia for the village.

Not so lucky this time.After they took the bile, the black bears died soon after.

Of course, the villagers would not give up. Although the black bears on this mountain were quickly hunted and disappeared, they still found a new way out.

Kill plowed cattle to take out the lumps in their gallbladders; kill ferocious tigers to make tiger bones.If the animals on the mountain were really killed, they would go down the mountain to find sika deer and saw off their young horns.The villagers held these tiny deer antlers, thinking that it would be great if there were musk deer around the village. The price of musk here is many times higher than that of deer antlers.

In the beginning, they cut off the whole deer head to ensure freshness. Later, they saw off half of the antlers of each deer, and they gave them gold wound medicine after sawing, so that they could recover from their injuries.

"In the coming year, I can saw it a second time." Orion of Lujia Village said, "This way, we can be like that black bear, inexhaustible and inexhaustible."

They continue to enshrine the Baiwo Mountain God, and continue to search for precious medicines from the beasts on this mountain.Lujiacun has become bigger in the business of taking medicine primers, and has gradually gained some experience in sourcing medicines and selling medicines.The reputation of Lujia Village spread far and wide, and people outside the village praised them as a village that can be used to help the world.Every time they sell a large number of medicines, they will be snatched up by dignitaries from all over Tianfu.

I don't know when, two more antlers appeared on the portrait of Baiwo Mountain God, and not long after, another pair of bear paws appeared, and even the thick round tail turned into a yellow oxtail.

"This is the god we enshrine." The Lujia villager who was fascinated by ghosts said, "The Baiwo Mountain God brought us countless treasures and helped us overcome the difficulty of starvation. Now, it leads our Lujia Village to prominence. , we already have the reputation of hanging pot to help the world."

Too bad it didn't last long.

More than half a year ago, wild animals began to appear in their village.At first, some people disappeared inexplicably. Later, some villagers saw their fellow villagers being taken away by wolves, tigers and leopards. In the end, there were always one or two villagers who were going to be eaten every day.

Especially the elderly, weak, women and children are most likely to be poisoned.They have no ability to resist, and wild animals are the easiest to catch.

These cunning and vicious beasts seem to have fallen in love with the taste of chewing human|meat, and also fell in love with the taste of revenge.They spit out human bones at the gate of the village, and sometimes even attach a piece of blood-stained clothing provocatively.

The "Yao Yinzi" were clever and active, and played a game of hide-and-seek with the villagers. The villagers who were proficient in hunting could no longer find any traces of animals on Baiwo Mountain.They knew they couldn't sit still and go hunting in groups of three and four at first, hoping to avenge their relatives and villagers.

But they couldn't find anything, and the hunting ability of that village seemed to have been ruined overnight.

Villagers continued to lose their lives.This makes them feel helpless and hopeless.They were terrified all day long, and the villagers of the Lu family, who were struggling in fear and grief, finally rushed into the Earth Temple aggressively, smashing all the offerings and tablets of the Baiwo Mountain God.

"Empty food offerings! This Hundred Eddy Mountain God doesn't want it!"

"We might as well keep this offering for ourselves!"

"We can bless ourselves!"

The villagers rushed in and left angrily.

The picture finally freezes on the falling melons and fruits and the shrine broken in half.

The illusion of memory stops here.

The four of them descended slowly from the high sky of the illusion, the surrounding sunlight gradually died down, and the sky dimmed.

Tobishijin thought for a moment, and said: "I always feel that there are still some things that have not been revealed in the illusion, but I can't remember..."

After speaking, he pulled out the jade pendant around his neck and put it in his mouth, and the red string swayed on his cheeks.

Xie Sheng knew that this memory illusion had cost him a lot of spiritual power, so he patted Yuanshiren on the shoulder and comforted him: "The resentment itself is extremely complicated, and you were seriously injured by resentment at the time, so it's normal if you can't remember it. We will talk about those missing trifles later, these memories are enough for us to understand the problem of wild animals in Lujia Village... I didn’t expect the villagers here to be so greedy.”

"Brother, have you forgotten that 'greed' is firmly attached to the outer layer of the spiritual consciousness, like gluttony and laziness, it is the most common shortcoming of the spiritual consciousness." Xie Nan said, "There are always pros and cons to everything. Regrets are the price of gaining consciousness."

"Why hasn't the man in black appeared?" Yong Chuan rested his palm on his furry face, "What kind of role did he play in the whole thing?"

Xie Sheng stood there thinking for a while, and said: "Perhaps at the beginning, he saw the villagers' crops being eaten by locusts, and felt very sympathetic, so he conjured up a black bear with a gallbladder to help Lujiacun through the difficulties. It's a pity The villagers in Lujia Village are too greedy, and their unrestrained behavior angered Baiwo Mountain God."

Yong Chuan added: "It should be the villagers who deliberately altered the portraits in the Earth Temple that made the Baiwo Mountain God furious. It is obvious that he has been protecting the entire village, but he was taken away by the antlers, bear's paws and oxtails from who knows where. If I were the god here, I probably wouldn't be able to swallow this breath, and I must teach this group of Lujia Villagers who don't know the heights of the sky and the depths of the earth."

"But this can't explain why the God of Baiwo Mountain used the forbidden technique to bestow spiritual consciousness on ordinary birds and beasts." Xie Nan was still full of doubts, "Even if he lost the enshrinement, he didn't have to pay the price of the death of his soul to punish his people .”

"No matter how much we talk, we can't restore God's thoughts. Why don't we ask Ah Ren." Xie Sheng turned his head and glanced at the silent boy who was holding the jade pendant in his mouth. "Ah Ren, if it were you, what would you do?"

"Well, I don't know." Yuanshiren frowned slightly, biting Yupei's mouth and muttering, as if taking a bitter pill, "At least... I won't create an energy source to continuously grow a gallbladder I donated black bears to the villagers. I will not let them taste the sweetness for nothing."

Xie Nan shook his fan, nodded in agreement and said, "What the Flower God said is absolutely true. The actions and purpose of Baiwo Mountain God have yet to be verified. We will ask him again when we find him."

The eastern sky was a little white, and the moon and stars that were still in the sky lost their brilliance for a while.

Looks like it's almost dawn.

After a while, Tobishijin raised his head to look at the place where the dawn broke, and suddenly lowered his eyelids, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

The fish-belly white hanging in the sky gradually disappeared, and the stars and moon in the sky also disappeared together.The entire sky seemed to be covered with an impenetrable curtain, pressing darkness on the top of Baiwo Mountain, blocking all vitality and light.

In the sky above Lujia Village not far away, the steaming resentment spread in all directions, enveloping the entire village.

"Did you hear any sound?" Yong Chuan lowered his head and looked at his feet.

"Squeaky-"

"I heard it, it's a mouse." Xie Sheng watched the bushes stir up and down, "And there are many of them."

The rats that had turned into ghosts swarmed over in groups, and the sound of "squeaking" came one after another, and every inch of grass around them shook, like a mighty and mighty army of rats crossing the border.

"No, besides mice, there are—" Xie Nan followed Yuanshiren's gaze to another cloud of black mist.

buzz-

buzzing buzzing-

The sound was really unbearable, and the four of them standing here with the night wind had goosebumps all over their bodies.

"It's the ghosts of locusts." Yuanshiren's eyes became serious, "They flew towards Lujia Village."

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