Chapter 67 Leeches (Four K)

Dozens of demonized villagers had climbed halfway up the mountain. As soon as they stood firm, they bent their backs and fired bone spurs in the direction of the two living people.

"Walk."

Li Ang swung his stick and swept away an oncoming bone spur, rushed out of the door, and rushed towards the forest on the left side of the hillside.

Wang Congshan quickly followed, and the two rushed into the forest and headed straight for Hiratsuka's mansion along the mountain road.

The Hiratsuka Residence is also like a night of ghosts, with a large number of strange ghosts crawling out from every corner, roaring manically and attacking each other, desperately trying to tear into pieces any moving objects within sight.

The further forward Li Ang and Wang Congshan were, the greater the resistance they encountered. Just when they were about to be trapped in a tight siege, the lantern with a human head suddenly glowed brightly.

The candle flame extended upward for more than one meter, emitting strong light and creating long shadows behind the surrounding demons and ghosts, causing the shadows to fight with their bodies.

Create a path for both players.

Correspondingly, the human head candle burned itself at an extremely fast speed, and most of it was burned in just one breath.

Li Ang had a clear understanding in his heart, held the lantern high, and ran with Wang Congshan through the front of Hiratsuka Residence until they reached the atrium.

As the candles burned out, the two arrived at the courtyard.

The ground in the courtyard was covered in black and red blood, and there were stumps and broken arms everywhere.

The black-haired creature was unscathed and still stood by the return spring well, muttering to himself, "Masumi...Yangichi..."

It was completely impossible to tell that he had killed all the demons and ghosts everywhere.

Wang Congshan took a step forward, took out the Ksitigarbha wood carving of mother and son from her pocket, and tossed it forward.

The black-haired creature immediately raised its head and stared at it. It instinctively wanted to attack, but when it saw the mother and son Jizo, it suddenly froze.

I saw it reaching out to catch the Ksitigarbha wood carvings of mother and child, standing there, whimpering, and gave way to the Guiquan Well.

The two players rushed forward without hesitation and jumped into the Guiquan Well.

Use your palms to grasp the gaps between the bricks and stones on the well wall, and quickly descend step by step.

The well water below is as black as ink,

Slowly rotating like a whirlpool, the water was vaguely mixed with human fingers, eyeballs and even seaweed-like hair.

Li Ang sank into the well water and felt the direction and strength of the vortex. Only then did he realize that there was a horizontal S-shaped water trap below the well.

The so-called well water is actually the water on the bottom of the trap.

Since it is a trap, the other end is where there is no water.

The two players swam a distance along the bottom of the water to the other end of the S-shaped trap. They soon left the water and came to a spacious underground platform.

With the help of dim vision abilities, the two of them could vaguely see that the entire area was circular.

The lower part of the circle, where the two of them stand, is the ground to step on.

The upper part of the circle is a cliff leading to the abyss.

There are torch brackets on the walls on both sides of the platform entrance. Li Ang lit the torch with [Burning Finger]. With the light of the torch, he could finally see more clearly——

On the ground of the platform where the two of them were, there were densely packed Ksitigarbha stone statues.

The ground at the entrance of the platform is paved with sleepers and steel blocks. It is a bit like a train track, but it is narrower than a railroad track.

Similar to the minecart rails in the mining area.

This railway track extends straight forward, connecting all the way to the cliff.

There are two iron nails hammered into the ground on both sides of the rail end.

Each iron nail is tied with a hemp rope and hangs down to the bottom of the cliff.

And a black-haired figure who was exactly the same as the one next to Guiquan Well was picking up one of the hemp ropes and preparing to wrap it around his waist.

Seeing Li Ang and Wang Congshan appear, the figure visibly shook and sped up the wrapping of the hemp rope.

"do not move."

Wang Congshan shouted, raised the assault rifle and pulled the trigger.

The enchanted bullet flew out in a swirling motion, grazing the black-haired figure's feet, successfully causing the opponent to stop moving.

The two players quickly stepped forward, pulled the figure back from the edge of the cliff, and removed the hemp rope from his waist, but the other player did not struggle to resist.

Li Ang glanced at the bottom of the cliff.

I saw the black mist in the abyss churning, rising and falling, as if something terrifying and indescribable was brewing. Just looking at it made people's eyes dizzy and their brains tingled.

Li Ang avoided looking into the abyss,

I found a metal box tied to the end of another hemp rope on the edge of the cliff, hanging just above the fog, appearing and disappearing.

"Do you want to end this?"

Wang Congshan looked at the silent black-haired figure and said the answer she already knew: "Mr. Folklorist?"

"..."

The figure known as the folklorist trembled visibly, but still stood there without saying a word.

"Aren't you still willing to admit it?"

Wang Congshan sighed and said calmly: "You are the noodle master of Yuanke Village, the son of Fujimura Shuhei and Fujimura Masumi.

He is also the father of Tetsuya Ogasawara and Ayaka Ogasawara. He was a professor of folklore at Toyo University who disappeared in the ruins of Enkoku Village in Ogasawara Prefecture in 2001. Ogasawara Masayuki. "

The figure suddenly raised its head, the black hair on its face trembling.

"I wonder if you recognize this pair of scissors."

Wang Congshan saw that the other party remained silent, so she simply took the scissors from Li Ang and waved them in her hand, "We used these scissors from the Hiratsuka family mansion to destroy the torii gate outside the Enkei Shrine. Rope seal.

In the long-abandoned shrine, I saw a large number of bones wearing kimonos, with no obvious external injuries, and hugging each other.

However, there is something strange.

The so-called seal is naturally meant to block something evil, ominous, or something that will bring misfortune.

However, there were no monsters or monsters in the shrine, only corpses on the ground.

Instead, hundreds of ghosts were walking around at night in Enkei Village outside the shrine.

So what exactly is the seal of the torii sealing? "

Wang Congshan paused for a moment, and seeing that the other party had no intention of speaking, she continued: "Obviously, the seal of the torii gate is not aimed at the bones in the shrine.

It's the demons outside the shrine to prevent the demons from entering the barrier.

The effect of the barrier was quite good, and it successfully protected everyone in the shrine when disaster struck.

But it is a pity that all the survivors in the shrine are still dead, dying of hunger and despair. "

The figure trembled all over, and its fluffy and messy hair shook up and down.

"Why panic?"

Wang Congshan tilted her head in confusion and said calmly: "The disaster in Yuanke Village that happened in July of Showa 54 has nothing to do with you.

Because in terms of age, you were only eight or nine years old at the time.

The real cause of the disaster is the Hiratsuka family and your mother, Masumi Fujimura..."

"not like this!"

The figure finally spoke. He clenched his fists and breathed heavily, "It's not like that..."

"What's that like?"

Wang Congshan had no mood swings, and her attitude did not change at all because the character Ogasawara Ayaka she played was the daughter of the folklorist Masaki Ogasawara in front of her. She just calmly said: "Do I have to say it?

Your mother, father, brothers, and even everyone in the village died in that disaster because of you..."

"...That's not the case. You don't understand."

Ogasawara took a deep breath and was about to say something when he heard a loud boom.

The whole underground space trembled and shook,

The solid dome above, which carried countless tons of soil, had numerous cracks.

A large amount of dust fell, and the entire underground space seemed to collapse and be destroyed in the next second.

"That's too late,"

Ogasawara glanced up, shook his arm vigorously, trying to shake off Li Ang's palm, "You go quickly, get out of here, I will end it all."

However, Li Ang held his wrist firmly and said calmly in the sight of the sky collapsing and the earth collapsing: "There is still a lot of time. We have enough time to understand the truth."

"..."

Ogasawara struggled hard, but couldn't break free, so he had to give up the struggle and sighed sadly: "Why do you come to me..."

Li Ang and Wang Congshan did not respond. Ogasawara let out a sigh of relief as if resigned to his fate, and finally spoke, but first told a seemingly unrelated content.

"Myths are a type of folk literature. They are a kind of spiritual sustenance that may be yearning or paralysis for ancient humans to understand and control nature under difficult living conditions.

Those myths and stories that can be passed down orally through the long history of history usually have their own special features.

Or it can satisfy the people's taste,

Or it can play a teaching role in daily life, so that it is considered valuable and can be passed down for thousands of years - such as being filial, cherishing family members, keeping promises, etc. "

Ogasawara paused for a moment and said: "This is the basic knowledge of folklore, and it is also the basis for folklorists to conduct folk visits.

We need to use legends and stories to understand the material basis and emotional logic of stories created by local ancestors in ancient times.

The myth of the origin of Yuanke Village is relatively well-known in the surrounding areas of Gangson County.

Even after the destruction of Yuanke Village, this mythical story has not completely disappeared.

Instead, as Yuanke Village disappeared, it became a hot topic in the field of folklore.

You should know this. "

Li Ang and Wang Congshan didn't say anything. They were not from this world and didn't know this.

However, this does not affect Ogasawara's continued narration.

"In this mythical story, the wife of a samurai died in childbirth while giving birth to a leech. The samurai offered a sacrifice to the God of Karma, and with the help of a hemp rope, came to the land of hell to have sex with his wife. There was a misunderstanding between the two parties, and then They cleared up the misunderstanding and finally reconciled,

The samurai took their children to live on Mount Yuan, and every once in a while, they could meet their wives from the land of hell through the hemp rope in the well. "

Ogasawara Shoyuki paused and said: "It seems like a happy story, but there is a key problem. That is the leech that was born to a samurai couple.

Leeches are children without arms and legs that would have been almost impossible to survive in ancient times.

Even in the mythical story, Izanagi and Izanami, who created Hishima, had to put the leech on a boat made of reeds and let it drift on the sea after inbreeding and giving birth to a leech. .

Returning to the original topic, at the end of this Yuanshan story, it only mentions that the daughters of the samurai grew up and found their husbands, and established a village on Yuanshan, which later became Yuanke Village.

So, where did the leeches go?

If the leech was still alive after birth, why didn't the samurai ask the gods of Karma to restore the leech to its original state?

If the leech also died, why was the existence of the leech not mentioned at all in the story in the Land of Underworld?

There is only one answer, and that is leeches, which were dedicated to the God of Karma by the samurai himself and prayed for help.

Because of this, his presence is completely absent from the second half of the story. "

Ogasawara Masaki said: "This is the biggest problem with this myth.

This myth, full of chilling evil connotations, must have originated from an extremely distant era.

Even some other parts of the story itself are real.

Just because it is too evil and weird to be understood and recognized,

And had to cover it up with seemingly normal fairy tales.

If you speculate on the story itself with the greatest malice, then it is not difficult to come to a conclusion——

In order to reunite with his dead wife, the samurai sacrificed the leech of death to reach the land of hell.

Because of the strangeness and specialness of Yuanshan itself, the samurai were reluctant to move away from this place, so they built villages here and lived there for generations. "

"etc,"

Li Ang thought for a while and pointed to the turbid black mist below the cliff. "You mean, the abyss under Yuanke Village is the land of underworld?"

Even without using his psychic powers, he could feel the ancient and profound evil aura in the abyss below.

If you really use your spiritual sense to look at it carefully, in the current restrained state, you will probably run out of sanity within a few seconds and go completely crazy.

"Not really,"

As if harboring great fear, Ogasawara glanced at the abyss and said, "This is just the entrance to the Land of Underworld.

Just like the metaphor in the myth,

Yuanke Village is built above the entrance to the Underworld. Only through a specific ritual can the entrance to the Underworld be opened.

And through the sacred rope that symbolizes the meaning of connection, we reach the real land of hell. "