smuggler

Chapter 17
I shook the snake soul bell, and the snake shadow that emerged from Zhang Xianren's neck twisted even more violently. After it came out completely, I used the snake-repelling charm to scatter the snake shadow.

After those snake shadows were wiped out, I stuck a snake-repelling talisman on Zhang Xianren's forehead to protect his altar and prevent evil spirits from entering his body.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Zhang Xianren lying on the bed completely quiet.

It is already late at night, and it will be dawn in a few hours.

Just in case, I didn't go back, and stood by the table, but the night was quiet, and after a tiring day, I fell asleep in a daze.

When I woke up, the sun was high and the bed was empty. I stood up and walked out the door, only to find Zhang Xianren sitting in the yard basking in the sun.

As soon as he saw me, he smiled and said, "Finally I can talk, I almost didn't suffocate me."

This old man, is speaking more important than life?
But I was very happy to see that he was fine. His eyes were on my wrist, he suddenly shrank and then stretched it out, and said with a smile: "Sure enough, it's what I thought."

I looked down at the snake bracelet on my wrist with a puzzled look on my face.

Seeing my doubts, Zhang Xianren said: "I have been to the hinterland of the mountains before, and I have seen the Ba people who are isolated from the world. They have honored the snake for generations, and they are proud of being asked to marry by the snake king."

"Use Lord Snake to make marriages and pray for the prosperity of the Ba people. Lord Snake will irrigate the red blood vines with his heart and blood, and then cast spells to polish the snake bracelet as a matchmaker. Only give it to the destined person."

Zhang Xianren smiled and said: "It seems that it is so, the girl is very lucky."

Is it good fortune to ration a snake as a wife?
When Zhang Xianren said this, I couldn't help but take a closer look at the snake bracelet on my wrist. I cursed in my heart, shook my head and said, "The rumors are rumors after all, so they can't be trusted. Besides, the village is not a Ba tribe."

Zhang Xianren didn't say much, and said with an undiminished smile: "If it weren't for your smuggler, I might have died last night!"

Hearing his words, my face was extremely unnatural, and I blushed slightly and said, "Daozhang Zhang is fine, then I'll go back first."

Zhang Xianren nodded, restrained his smile and said, "You have to be careful, things in the village may not be that simple."

"I see."

After Wang Mazi's accident yesterday, those snakes have been chasing me, and I have always had a strong sense of uneasiness in my heart.

After I got home, I thought about what Zhang Xianren told me about the snake bracelet, so I couldn't help pestering my aunt to ask about the relationship between our family and Chu Yuan.

"This matter has something to do with you!" My aunt looked up at me, sighed and said, "I only know a rough idea."

It starts with my birth. When I was born, I was only three pounds and six taels, with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, and I was as thin as a lump of dirt.

People in the village said that I couldn't survive, that I was a huasheng (a child who would die underage), and the barefoot doctors in the town said it was hopeless.

But grandpa was not reconciled, he hugged me in his arms as a baby and drove home with the wind and rain.

On the way back to the village, I met a wandering wild man.

The man was very strange. He was wearing a leather jacket in summer, and he had a bag with a big hole on his shoulder. Inside the bag was a big black cat, almost as big as an adult dog, half a meter long. long.

Ye Langzhong said that he had fled from the north, and he relied on watching people for food along the way.

Grandpa immediately begged him to save my life, Ye Langzhong lifted the swaddling clothes and looked at me, his face was very heavy, he pondered for a long time before he said in a bit of embarrassment: "If you want to save her, I'm afraid you will have to pay a lot of price."

Ye Lang took out a strange pebble, handed it to Grandpa, and then leaned closer and said something.

After hearing this, Grandpa's expression became extremely unnatural, he gritted his teeth for a while, and asked, "Is this all right?"

Ye Langzhong shook his head slightly, "This can only save her life, if you want her to survive, you have to go to the mountains to find some herbs!"

"What medicine?"

Ye Langzhong said: "Snake gall!"

Grandpa was relieved after hearing this, and said that there are many snakes in the snake ditch behind the village, and it is not difficult to catch a snake now that the snakes have not drilled their holes.

Ye Langzhong said: "The snake gall I'm talking about is not an ordinary snake gall. Only snakes that have existed for hundreds of years can have it."

At that time, when Grandpa heard this, he thought of something for a moment, sucked in a breath of cold air, and stared at him with wide eyes in disbelief.

When I got home, my aunt hugged me, and my grandma just sat aside and blew on that weird little rock, sitting there in a daze without resting for a while.

But a miracle really happened. On the third day after I was born, I finally opened my hands and kicked my legs, and finally let out the first cry after I was born.

"Mom, look, she's alive..." My aunt wept with joy, and she hugged me who was baring my teeth and claws, and called my grandma repeatedly.

But grandma didn't say a word, went back to her own cabin without even looking at me, and hasn't been seen since.

She was seriously ill, very ill, and seemed to die at any moment.

Besides, she made a strange rule that I should not be in her house.

At this point, my aunt suddenly skipped the conversation and said instead: "Your grandfather is a good snake catcher. In order to find snake guts for you, he wears a snake basket and a cigarette pot on his waist. He goes to Panlong Mountain almost every day to catch snakes." .”

"Every time he catches a snake, he will open his intestines in the yard. After a month or two, he will catch hundreds of snakes, but this ordinary snake doesn't have the guts he's looking for."

I followed up and asked, "What happened later, what happened later?"

"That year when your grandfather went into the mountains to catch snakes, he met an old woman in a black cloth jacket wearing pudding. The old woman said something inexplicable to your grandfather, saying that all her descendants in the mountains were caught. If you dare to go into the mountains to catch snakes in the future, don't blame her for being cruel."

"After finishing speaking, the old woman in black left. When your grandfather turned his head, there was no sign of the old woman in the deep mountains and old forests."

The mountain next to our village is called Panlong Mountain. At the foot of the mountain there is a snake ditch. The elders in the village there have heard that there is a big snake with a length of more than ten meters. Cloudy.

What's more, every first and fifteenth day of the lunar new year, standing under the snake pan ditch, you can see the big snake swallowing inner alchemy towards the moon, shining radiantly, absorbing the essence of the sun and the moon.

When I heard what my aunt said, I was surprised and said, "The old woman was transformed from a snake?"

My aunt's face turned pale, and without saying anything, she said, "Later, your grandfather said that he also caught snakes when he went into the mountain that day, but he caught more and more snakes. Those snakes seemed to come out specifically to look for him. When they caught one, they immediately ran out of the grass. If one comes out and doesn’t move, let him catch it.”

"Grab the one in your hand, and look up at the bushes. There are snakes on the trees and by the river. No matter how courageous your grandfather is, he was quite frightened at that time, so he dumped the snakes out of the snake basket."

Hearing this, my tense heart was also relieved.

"Grandpa let those snakes go, so there should be nothing wrong."

My aunt hesitated for a while, and said that after Grandpa released the snakes, he found that the heads of the snakes were all facing the same direction, just like doing a ritual.

Grandpa came out of Panlong Mountain. When he entered the village, the sky suddenly became cloudy, with lightning and thunder, and then there was a violent storm.

Er Bao, a fool in the village, clapped his hands and danced, shouting indistinctly, "The big snake is going to ascend to the sky, the big snake is going to ascend to the sky..."

(End of this chapter)