Chapter 18: Funeral 18┃ Village of Death Curse.

Li Jinghao.
"Could it be just a coincidence? After all, Li's surname is the common surname." Wei Dong said.
Ke Xun stood up: "Go and ask, maybe the old man can provide something."
The two ran to the old man's yard.
Entering the room and knocking on the inner door, the old man raised his muddy, dead eyes and looked at the two of them: "What's the matter?"
"Let me ask, who is the dead person?" Ke Xun was straightforward.
"Why don't you know? Who are you?" The old man's tone suddenly became vigilant, and his two stone-carved eyes suddenly moved, slowly emerging a strange and hideous look.
Ke Xun was taken aback, and quickly pointed to the linen strip with cursed words on his waist and showed it to the old man: "I'm here to help. You see, I haven't studied since I was a kid, because I have a bad brain. So, I can’t remember who said anything to me. After helping me for two days, I suddenly forgot who it was that died. Thinking that this is a bit disrespectful to the deceased, I hurried over to ask your old man."
The old man stared at Ke Xun with lifeless eyes for a long time, until he stared at Ke Xun so that his heart was hairy, then finally he said: "It's Li Mazi's weird that is dead. Poor, there is no one in his house. The folks in these villages all helped."
Deformities are called grotesques, and people in the countryside like to use bad names to support them.
Ke Xun asked again: "How did the strange die?"
The old man gave him a gloomy look: "It's not easy to be that way, it's not easy to live so big."
Wei Dong remembered the topic he had just talked with Ke Xun, and hurriedly asked: "What is the relationship between his father and his mother?"
Old man: "Husband and wife."
Weidong: "..."
Ke Xun rolled his eyes: "Is there anyone in the village who has enemies with Li Mazi's family?"
I remembered the curse of the three locust trees and cypress coffin that Mu Yiran had said.
The old man stared at him gloomily: "Everyone is folks from the village, so what hate can they have."
"Who beat up that weird coffin?" Ke Xun was stared at by the old man's goose bumps.
The old man looked strange: "He is afraid that no one will care about the strangeness after he died, and before death, he will let the strangers lay down in advance."
This was weird, Ke Xun was puzzled, unless Guaiguai's parents didn't know that the pure cypress wooden coffin was struck by thunder from the sky.
"Then when were the three locust trees next to his house planted, do you know?" Ke Xun asked.
The look of the old man was even more weird, the color of his face was grayed out at the speed visible to the naked eye, a pair of cloudy eyes were full of ferocious and ferocious, two eyeballs protruded vigorously, and his dry mouth was torn apart quickly, revealing nothing. The black-red gums of the teeth and the smelly mouth were wide open, and he said stiffly: "What locust tree, there is no locust tree. Who are you who dare to break into Lijia Village. Lijia Village has not allowed outsiders to enter for thousands of years, you , Death, death, death—"
With that, his mouth opened wider and wider, like a bottomless black hole, suddenly rushing towards Ke Xun and Wei Dong!
"Run!" Ke Xun yelled, grabbing Wei Dong who was frightened on the spot and fleeing.
The two rushed out of the yard without looking back. Wei Dong had never ran so fast in his life. Under Ke Xun's pull, he felt that his legs were no longer legs. Six out of ten could not touch the ground. Individuals are swaying up and down in the air.
Looking at his legs, he couldn't make a fuss, and he fell to the ground with a hungry dog.
When he raised his face with a mouthful of dirt in his eyes, there were a few more feet in his sight, and then he saw Ke Xun's feet rushing to the head of the head. Through the distance between the toes, Wei Dong calculated Ke Xun pursed his lips almost to the point of Mu Yiran's face.
"Report boss, some people want to eat us." Ke Xun asked for comfort and hugs.
The big guy rewarded him with a cold eye for him to experience.
"What's the matter?" the doctor asked.
Ke Xun looked back and saw that the old man hadn't caught up, so he briefly recounted what had just happened, and then asked these people: "Did you find any clues?"
"We..." The doctor looked slightly complicated, "had a shocking discovery."
After they separated from Ke Xun, Mu Yiran first went to the village to find the village chief's home.
The village chief is the head of the village. Generally speaking, the place where he lives should be the largest and best house in the whole village, so everyone quickly found the goal.
However, there is no one in the village chief's house, and dust accumulates in the house.
Mu Yiran found a family tree and village chronicles in the small ancestral hall of the village chief's house.
Sure enough, all the villagers in this village are of the same ancestor and clan, and their ancestors served as the royal blessings during the Warring States Period.
Legend has it that Zongzhu can communicate with ghosts and gods, and his magical skills and witchcraft are only passed on to the direct line, not to outsiders.
Therefore, the ancestors of the Li family made clan rules, and their descendants will live here forever, and they are not allowed to leave, branch, marry with foreign surnames, or come privately with the outside world.
Looking at the entire genealogy, no matter the husband and wife, all have the surname Li.
In the whole village, there is no one with a foreign surname.
"... Their ancestors are crazy," Wei Dong wiped his mouth in surprise, "Is this encouraging close relatives to get married?!"
"Witch Gu is originally a kind of distorted evil and unreasonable existence." Mu Yiran coldly, "We don't have to care about whether their clan rules are in accordance with the law, we just need to know that this village is like a loss. The land is the same, it has always been in a closed state, cut off from the outside world."
Ke Xun interface: "Then the problem comes."
Mu Yiran looked at everyone: "Combining with the experience of Ke Xun just now, since this village has severed contact with the outside world and resisted the entry of outsiders, then, who painted this painting itself? And what about this painting? Circulated?"
Everyone suddenly gave initiation, their eyes flashed.
Ke Xun raised his hand: "Big brother, is there Li Jinghao's name in the genealogy?"
Mu Yiran glanced at him: "No."
Ke Xun scratched his head: "Is that a coincidence?"
Mu Yiran's eyes moved slightly: "It's not necessarily true. Many painters have used names, or they have given themselves names that are on the stage after becoming famous."
Wei Dong put it in: "This is difficult, who knows who will give themselves another name later."
"Since it is known that the author of the painting is Li Jinghao," Mu Yiran said, "then the first problem has been solved, and the second problem is how did the painting spread, or how did this Li Jinghao enter the village and paint I left this picture and then took it out."
"If Li Jinghao is a native of the village, it would not be surprising to be able to paint this painting," the doctor said. "But the village stipulates that the villagers are not allowed to communicate with the outside world and are not allowed to leave the village, so there is no way to explain how this painting is. It went outside."
"The last discovery," Mu Yiran said to Ke Xun and Wei Dong, "We went around the houses in the whole village and didn't see a living person."
"What, what do you mean?" Wei Dong shivered.
"In all the houses, there are different thicknesses of dust," the doctor said. "It can be seen that no one has lived for a long time, but we have not found any dead bodies or coffins in these houses."
"And in these houses, the thing we have seen the most," Mu Yiran's eyes were quite meaningful, "It's the tablet."
Ke Xun raised his eyebrows: "It means these villagers are already dead?"
Mu Yiran nodded slightly: "It is speculated that this is the case. We checked against the names on the genealogy, and the names on the tablets are all on the genealogy."
Ke Xun rubbed his chin and wondered: "Could this village ever have an infectious disease such as the plague? Or was it a natural disaster? Otherwise, how could so many people have died?"
Mu Yiran said indifferently: "The thickness of dust in the houses is different, which shows that these people did not die in the same time period."
The doctor nodded: "It should be a few years or more than a dozen years later."
Wei Dong twitched his mouth: "Isn't this because the life span is not long because of the marriage of close relatives?"
Mu Yiran's eyes twitched slightly: "More likely, these people are all cursed and died?"
Everyone was shocked when they heard the words.
Ke Xun was the first to react: "So you mean that the three locust trees next to Guaiguai's house are actually not only cursing the Guaiguai family, but... the entire Lijia Village?!"
"I think so." Mu stunned his head.
Wei Dong was speechless: "Who has such a big hatred, curse a village."
Ke Xun asked: "But why did the old man just say that there were no locust trees? Although he later bitten people madly at a disagreement, I don't think what he said is like a shame in not telling us."
Mu Yiran lowered his eyes and thought, and suddenly drew his feet away. Everyone looked at each other and hurriedly followed.
Once again under the three old locust trees outside the yard of the strange family, Mu Yiran looked up at the grimace on the tree.
Ke Xun followed, and saw that these grimace faces seemed to protrude more outward than they did in the morning. The whole face with his head was almost separated from the tree trunk. Only the back of his head was slightly connected to the bark. Numerous huge knots hang on the tree, looking very disgusting.
"Have you noticed?" Ke Xun touched Mu Yiran with his elbow. "These grimace faces seem to have gender. Do you think this face looks like an aunt? And that one with a beard? The one above, looks like a seven or eight-year-old boy, look over there, under the face of the old lady is a baby's face, both men and women of all ages."
"Yeah." Mu Yiran was not surprised, obviously he had discovered it.
"I suddenly had an idea," Ke Xun said as he patrolled his gaze between these grimace faces, "Do you think these faces are just..."
"The faces of all the dead villagers." Mu Yiran answered indifferently.
Ke Xun stretched his hand to a grimace at the root of the tree: "...Liu Yufei."
Mu Yiran's gaze followed the direction of his fingers, and saw that this grimace looked like a newly grown face, and the color was gray, unlike other grimaces, the color was dark to black and gray.
The facial features of this grimace resemble Liu Yufei, and even behind the top of his head, there is a small braid-shaped bark.
Its facial features are extremely distorted, maintaining the painful expression of Liu Yufei's tragic death, but there is endless resentment in this pain. In the position of the black hole, it seems to have two invisible eyes, resenting viciously and deadly. Staring at Mu Yiran and Ke Xun.
Mu Yiran stared at the two eye sockets for a moment, and did not move at all. Instead, he walked a few steps around the tree and found the faces of the five people who died before Liu Yufei.
"In this way, these three trees were not planted." Mu Yiran said, "In the painting, it is just an image, not a real tree."
"No wonder the old man said there were no trees," Ke Xun said. "Speaking of the old man, why hasn't he been cursed to death? Will he be the only one left in the whole village?"
"Go and see."
Mu Yiran said that he was about to leave, and was grabbed by Ke Xun's arm: "The old man has gone crazy, didn't you want to die now?"
Zhang Maolin next to him hurriedly agreed: "Yes, yes, it's important to find the seal as soon as the sky is still dark!"
Mu Yiran glanced towards the direction where the old man lived, and said lightly: "I have a guess about the old man's identity."