Chapter 112 Jing Yizhi

Chapter 112 Jing Yizhi

Chapter 112 Jing Yizhi

Crunch, crunch... The friction between the two pieces of wood made a rough rustling sound. Ji Taixu pushed open the coffin lid covering his head with trembling hands. The bright sunlight poured down, causing his eyeballs to hurt slightly.

Looking around, Ji Taixuan found himself on a staircase. A black-painted pine coffin was placed under the side eaves of a residential building. The plastic sheet covering it had slipped to the ground because he had just pushed open the coffin lid.

Ji Taiyu climbed out of the coffin tremblingly, confusion and fear filled his mind, but his heart was motionless in his cold chest, which made him doubt whether he was really using his brain to "think" now?

Just as electrical signals passing through the switches of silicon transistors constitute the 0s and 1s at the bottom of the digital world, human "consciousness" is essentially the bioelectric signals that continuously communicate in neurons.

When the heart stops beating and the brain dies, there is no bioelectric activity in the neurons that have turned into a pool of dead flesh...

So what exactly are "thinking", "consciousness", and "self" at this time?
There was no time left for Ji Taiyu to think about this question, because the first thing he saw after climbing out of the coffin was a field of lush green bamboo. The second thing he saw was a well with half of the cover removed in an open space in the bamboo forest. A boy and a girl, two children who looked only eleven or twelve years old, were lying by the well, standing on tiptoe and looking into the well with great interest.

"Jingyan, look, the little flower fish is eating steamed buns!" The little girl shook the shoulder of the little boy named 'Jingyan' next to her, her voice very excited.

They were feeding the fish in the well with steamed buns broken into small pieces.

It is not surprising that there are fish in the wells in Yanglao Village. There are no high-end instruments to detect hydrology in rural areas. The simple working people will raise one or two aquatic animals such as koi or river turtles in the well, and rely on whether the fish and shrimp are sick or dead to determine whether the well water is polluted or poisoned. It is simple and practical.

"Don't look at the fish, Xiaorong, look behind you." The little boy Jingyan held the hand of the girl named Xiaorong beside him and pointed to the house behind him: "The coffin is open."

"Oh my..." Xiaorong's excitement suddenly turned into fear. She nervously held the half steamed bun in her hand and said, "When did you open it..."

"It seemed like just now, I heard the coffin move." Jing Yan said: "Dad said it's unlucky if the coffin moves, let's go home quickly."

"Ok."

Xiaorong and Jingyan ran out of the bamboo forest hand in hand, saying that whoever got home first could hold Xiaohei.

What is Xiao Hei? Maybe it's a pet like a black cat or dog.

Ji Taiyu stood there, looking at the two children skipping away in a daze. He wanted to shout at them to stop, but he could only make hoarse sounds - his Adam's apple was eaten by Grandma Wang last night.

"what happened……"

Watching the two children disappear at the end of his sight, Ji Taiyu felt at a loss. He came to the well, supported himself with both hands, and leaned out a little, looking down at himself on the water:

His clothes were ragged. Both his outer shirt and inner short-sleeved shirt were torn into pieces and covered in blood by Grandma Wang. What was exposed under the tattered clothes was not the color of human skin, but hideous and terrifying scars. One could vaguely see his internal organs underneath the skin.

Almost all of his face skin from cheekbones to chin was torn and eaten, with bloody gums and mandible wrapped in muscle fibers exposed. The upper half of his face was normal, but the lower half was a skeleton covered with mutilated flesh, just like a zombie or a zombie in a horror movie.

Even adults would be frightened to scream in fear if such a horrible monster stood in front of them, but the two children, Jingyan and Xiaorong, did not show any fear or worry at all. They seemed not to have noticed Ji Taiyu standing in front of the coffin at all. They just whispered to each other that it was unlucky to open the coffin, and then ran away.

"Maybe it's not that I didn't seem to see it, but that I really didn't see it..."

Ji Taiyu felt a chill in his heart. He turned around and looked at the half of the manhole cover placed on the edge of the well.

He remembered this well. The manhole cover was in the shape of a yin-yang fish, one yin and one yang divided into two halves. The one now placed on the ground was the yang half in the middle of the yin.

Ji Taiyu squatted down and saw a small word "Zao" carved with a sharp tool on the half of the manhole cover on the ground. He had an impression of this word because he carved it with a knife when he was a child, imitating Mr. Lu Xun. There is a kind of wild fruit on the hill behind my grandmother's house, which is pronounced as "Nong Nong Zi" in the dialect. Its Chinese name is Nansuanzao, which is a southern wild fruit native to Qinzhou. It is rare in the Central Plains. The few trees in the backyard were brought back by my grandfather who was an educated youth in Qinzhou.

The core of the Chinese jujube is very beautiful and can be made into jewelry like bodhi bean bracelets. When Ji Taiyu was a child, he and his mother agreed to go to the mountains to pick Chinese jujubes when they went to their grandmother's house, and use the core to make a bracelet for his mother and sister. But when his mother took him back to Yanglao Village to visit relatives that year, it was already late autumn and winter, and he missed the season for picking wild fruits.

Full of regret, Ji Taixuan followed the example of Mr. Lu Xun in his textbook and used a knife to carve a word "early" on the cover of the well behind his grandmother's house, meaning that he must come earlier next year.

That was the last time he went back to his grandmother's house.

"In other words..." Ji Taiyu's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at the coffin where he had been lying before, which was placed under the eaves.

This house with a coffin placed under the eaves is my grandparents' home.

The brick building with glazed tile roof in front of him gradually overlapped and merged with the old house where he and his sister used to sit on a small bench and eat watermelon. Ji Taiyu had no doubt in his heart that this was his mother's hometown.

He took off his coat and shirt, wrapped them around his face so as not to scare the two old men, and hurried to the front door of the house. The door was open, and there was a couplet posted on both sides of the door:
First couplet: [Reunion reminds me of our first meeting, and separation makes me hate this moment]

Second line: [We see the same scene, but have different minds]

The horizontal banner is torn and the words written on it are not clear.

That's right, that's right, this is the handwriting of grandpa! Ji Taiyu's memory gradually became clearer. He stepped over the threshold and walked into the house, walking towards the bedroom on the left with ease. That was the bedroom and also the study. In Ji Taiyu's memory, grandpa often drank tea, read books, wrote and slept in it.

But when he walked into the bedroom, Ji Taiyu's body suddenly froze and he stood stiffly in place, his mouth wide open. If his throat had not been disabled, he would have screamed out loud, but now all that came out of Ji Taiyu's mouth were hoarse bubbling sounds of "ah...ah..."

What a horrifying scene appeared before his eyes...

The bedside shelf in the bedroom was filled with books. There was a cup of hot tea on my grandfather's desk, emitting a lingering fragrance. The white-haired old man was sitting on the edge of the bed drinking tea and reading. The scene in this old house was exactly the same as Ji Taiyu remembered.

But next to my grandfather, there sat a decadent teenager with dark circles under his eyes from years of staying up late to surf the Internet. His figure was still straight, but his temperament was unexpectedly depressed.

This person is too familiar to Ji Taixuan.

Because that's who he is.

"Grandpa, do you know where my sister is?" Ji Taiyu, who was sitting on the bed, asked his grandfather, "Mom asked me to look for her."

"I don't know." Grandpa shook his head, took a sip of tea and said, "The old woman took her to worship the God of Land early in the morning, and said she wanted to bring back some incense ash to make water for the baby. To me, it's all feudal superstition."

After my grandfather finished speaking, he spat the tea leaves in his mouth. As a former educated youth, he didn't care much for worshipping the God of Land.

Ji Taiyu next to him also echoed that he did not believe in any gods or ghosts in this world.

The grandfather and grandson were chatting as if no one was around, and didn't notice that there was someone standing at the bedroom door.

A person covered in wounds, with torn skin and flesh, looking like a skeleton, and with eyes full of hatred.

(End of this chapter)