Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 42 Pine Forest
On the dark and gloomy loess road, the monkey being dragged by the rope struggled desperately and was unwilling to move forward.

It stared with its eyes wide open and let out sharp, fearful cries at the dark forest ahead, as if it had seen something terrifying.

But Aunt Liu ignored the monkey's struggle and dragged it inside by force.

In the dark forest, the monkey's sharp and strange cry echoed in the mountains, as creepy as a ghost's howl.

Ran Qing followed behind with a flashlight in hand, feeling inexplicably frightened.

Even though he hadn't seen anything strange yet, just by stepping into this dark path, Ran Qing felt a chilling aura, as if he had seen a demon.

But as he swept his flashlight across the forest, he couldn't see any ghosts among the pale tombstones. It seemed that the chilling cold was just Ran Qing's illusion.

This is Meihua Mountain, Moonlight Cemetery.

But the loess path they were on stretched into the dark forest, and this wasn't the cemetery. The cemetery was behind the mountain, a little further along the main road.

The graves in the dark forest ahead are all mounds built by the villagers.

The white stone slabs carved into tombstones stand in front of the graves, like cold, pale faces in the darkness.

There are also some very old graves scattered among them, without tombstones and covered with grass, making it difficult to identify whose ancestors they belong to.

From time to time, you can see some ashes of burnt paper money on the ground, and in front of some tombstones you can see candles that have burned down to the point that only the bases remain.

The further you go in, the more noticeable the chill in the air becomes.

Aunt Six dragged the monkey along, but she no longer needed it to point the way. She walked in front, staring around with a grim expression, her direction clear.

The flashlight accidentally fell on her, and her shadows on the ground moved to the left and right.

The woman on the left has nothing in her hands, while the burly black figure on the right is holding the rope.

Ran Qing's heart skipped a beat, and he quickly lowered the angle of the flashlight, not daring to shine the light on Aunt Liu.

After walking for a while, Aunt Liu suddenly left the loess path and turned into the woods nearby.

Ran Qing hurried to follow.

It was a vast pine forest, with tall, straight trunks rising in the darkness. The fluffy, swirling canopy obscured the sky, leaving almost no light in the forest.

This pine forest looks dark and damp even during the day, let alone late at night.

The air was thick with the smell of decaying vegetation, and the ground was covered with a thick carpet of dry pine needles. The ground felt soft and moist, and the cool moisture seeped through my cloth shoes into my soles.

"It shouldn't be far away..."

Aunt Liu, who was holding the monkey, murmured.

She took Ran Qing through the pine forest. There was a winding path among the bushy mountains, which was trampled out by the nearby villagers.

From time to time, you can see one or two pieces of dry land planted with corn or potatoes on both sides of the road.

But as they walked, even the cornfield disappeared, and there was no road ahead.

At this point, the monkey no longer dared to scream and struggle.

It curled up into a ball, shivering, and was dragged away by Aunt Liu like a ball of flesh. Its fur and jacket were rubbed and covered with mud, making it look even dirtier and uglier.

Ran Qing looked at the gloomy forest and also smelled a certain uneasy atmosphere.

After becoming a ghost walker, some aspects of his perception seemed to be magnified.

When I saw the old ghost last night, I felt a much more terrifying malice than before.

Following Aunt Liu tonight, I could clearly feel a certain eerie aura wafting through the forest.

These are abilities that we didn’t have in the past.

Aunt Liu stood at the end of the path and watched for a long time before finally choosing a direction and dragging the monkey into the dense bushes on the side.

Ran Qing and the dog quickly followed. In the pathless forest, the dense undergrowth was both annoying and dangerous. Not only were there thorns mixed in, but many of the verdant branches were crawling with terrifying thorns. If touched, the sting would make even an adult scream.

Ran Qing grew up in the mountains and had been running around in the woods since he was a child, but he was also afraid of this kind of bushes.

Fortunately, the bush was not big, and he soon followed Aunt Liu through the bush and came to a wasteland covered with Artemisia selengensis.

This should be a piece of abandoned land. After being abandoned, the ground is full of half-human-high quinoa stalks.

Slender leaves spread from the roots to the top of the Artemisia selengensis stems, like the mourning clubs held by the Black and White Impermanence in ghost stories. The cold night wind blew, and this half-human-high Artemisia selengensis "forest" rustled and trembled.

When Aunt Liu walked here, she seemed to have lost her way.

She looked around for a long time but still couldn't find the direction. Finally, Aunt Liu squatted down, roughly pinched the curled-up monkey, and stared coldly into its eyes.

"lead the way!"

Aunt Six threatened with a cold look: "I'll let you go if I find you."

The curled-up monkey seemed to understand what was said. It stared hesitantly at Aunt Liu and then at the dark forest around it.

In the end, it seems that Aunt Six is ​​more terrifying.

The monkey reluctantly got up from the ground, sniffed the ground carefully, and then crawled in.

Aunt Liu and Ran Qing followed behind.

The eerie chill in the air was particularly intense here.

Ran Qing felt his entire body crawl just by walking through the sedge forest. The oppressive atmosphere made him afraid to speak.

Soon, they walked out of the wasteland and entered a gloomy pine forest.

In the dark, lightless pine forest, the air was chilling, and the stench of rotting vegetation was even stronger than in the pine forest they had passed by previously.

It is also much colder here than in the pine forest before.

When Ran Qing breathed, he even saw the breath he exhaled turned into white mist.

——It’s summer!
No matter how cold the moon is, it won’t be this cold in summer.

Ran Qing rubbed his arms. The gloomy chill in the air seemed to be constantly drilling into his body, and his face became increasingly ugly.

Finally, the monkey stopped in front of two tall, straight pine trees and dared not go any further.

It pointed at the two pine trees and pulled the rope around its neck desperately, as if to say that it had found it but did not dare to go any further.

Aunt Liu glanced at the monkey, threw the rope to Ran Qing, and walked behind the two pine trees alone.

A few seconds later, Aunt Liu's voice came from behind the tree.

"Let it go."

Ran Qing loosened the rope, and the monkey instantly jumped out and fled like a madman.

Although Xiaomianhua was frightened and uneasy, she still followed Ran Qing.

Ran Qing walked behind two pine trees and saw that Aunt Liu had put down her small wooden box and handbag and was assembling a folding engineer shovel.

After Ran Qing came over, Aunt Liu threw the sharp engineer shovel directly to Ran Qing and said coldly.

"dig."

Aunt Six pointed to the patch of dirt behind the two pine trees and said, "It's time to use your Ran family's inherited skills. Dig up this piece of soil."

As she spoke, Sixth Aunt smiled, a smile that was strangely sinister: "Don't worry, it's all new soil, very loose."

(End of this chapter)