Today was strange. I called for a long time, but the jade bracelet didn't respond. The red shadow didn't come out, either.
In the end, I had to give up. I closed my eyes and prepared to sleep. However, right at this moment, I saw the fat man's cat.
It was standing on the windowsill, staring at me with its pair of green eyes …
I felt a chill in my heart when the cat stared at me. I sat up and hit it with my pillow.
When the fat man hit it at the door, it ran away. But now, it was evil. No matter how hard I hit it, the cat didn't move. Its eyes gazed at me.
The fat man was sleeping soundly. I called him a few times, but he didn't wake up. In the end, I had to turn on the lights in the room. I turned around and didn't look at the cat. Eventually, I fell asleep.
It was strange. When I went to bed that night, I was restless, but I slept soundly. I didn't wake up until the next morning when the fat man's father came to wake us up.
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the cat. It wasn't on the windowsill anymore. It was behind the fat man's father, its two eyes still gazing at me.
I even noticed that its two pupils were in a straight line, which looked very strange.
However, the fat man and his son were both here, and the sky was bright. I didn't feel scared. I just thought that the fat man's cat was of a different breed, so I didn't put it in my heart.
After waking us up, the fat man's father asked us to eat breakfast. Then, he left. "I have something to do. When I get back, I'll take you back to school."
As soon as he left, the cat also left. I felt much more relaxed.
After we got up, the fat man hurried to get breakfast for us. I sat down, but I didn't have time to eat. Since last night, I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask. When the fat man's father was here, he wore a solemn face. Moreover, I wasn't familiar with him, so I didn't dare to ask. Now that his father had left, I hurried to ask the fat man what the white powder was. Why did the fat man turn black when he walked past it? Also, why his cat was behaving strangely.
While eating his porridge, the fat man explained to me, "The white powder from last night isn't strange. It's just a mixture of lime powder and bone powder. If you have something dirty on your body, you can just walk over it and get rid of it."
After listening to him, I vaguely understood. In the past, when my father went out to work and came back, he would put something similar in front of the house. He would ask my father to walk through it to enter the house. He said that it could ward off evil spirits.
However, what I had at home was a mixture of lime powder and chicken blood. It looked like a sticky paste, completely different from the powder I had seen last night. That was why I didn't think about it.
I was curious, so I asked the fatty, "What kind of animal do you mean by bone powder?"
The fatty said casually. How could they use animal bones? The bone powder was ground from human bones.
This time, I was startled. The fatty's father had used human bones to grind into bone powder!
In the past, his father had given me a gloomy impression. Now, he looked like a wizard from the fairy tales I had read when I was young.
The fat man saw that my face didn't look right, so he explained, "What's so strange about that? My father was the village's coroner, and he had come into contact with many dead people. He used to clean up the dead children in the back of the mountain and the broken bones that the villagers dug up when they built their houses. What's wrong with getting some bone dust? Moreover, he used it to save people."
He was right. In our village, children weren't buried in graves. They were put in baskets and placed on the mountain.
There were also some unknown skeletons that were dug up by accident. The coroner in the village had to clean them up.
Then, he explained, "Usually, when people come in contact with something dirty, it's a ghost. In other words, it's what we call ghosts.
Once you come in contact with a ghost, your body will be covered in Yin energy, which will bring bad luck and affect your health. "
The way to deal with Yin energy was to mix it with something with heavy Yang energy, just like the lime powder and chicken blood I used in my house. Besides, there were many similar methods among the people, such as black dog blood.
However, if you encountered a ghost that had turned into a malicious ghost, these simple methods wouldn't work.
When you encountered a malicious ghost, your body wouldn't be covered in Yin energy. Rather, it would be a higher level of Yin energy. It was called Yin energy.
Normally, things with heavy Yang energy couldn't neutralize it. Moreover, Yin energy was sentient. It would actively invade a person's three souls, which would lead to their death.
The evil ghost that we often talked about was the Yin energy invading the body.
Whether it was a ghost or a Yin energy, they were ethereal like a soul. They needed a vessel to survive. Otherwise, they would vanish from this world.
It was also the reason why Yin energy would actively invade the three souls. After Yin energy entered the body, the human corpse would become a vessel for the Yin energy to reside in.
For example, the ghosts that we often talked about would attach themselves to corpses. They couldn't stay too far away from the corpse.
The bone powder that the fat boy's father had used was to provide a vessel for the Yin energy to reside in. That was how it separated the human body from the foul things.
Last night, I saw the black powder on the fat boy's body because he had been stained with Yin energy. After the Yin energy was absorbed by the bone powder, it turned into a dark red color.
After listening to his explanation, I had a whole new level of respect for the fat boy. Usually, he was a simple-minded person, but I didn't expect him to know so much.
I also remembered the red shadow. According to the fat boy, the red shadow was a ghost, and the jade bracelet she gave me was the vessel she was residing in.
The only thing I didn't understand was that on the night Guo Mingming encountered the ghost and shaved his head, Little Fatty and I were in the dormitory. I even slept on Guo Mingming's lower berth, which was closer to him. Logically speaking, I should have been stained with Yin energy. But why was the fat boy possessed while I was perfectly fine?
I wanted to ask Little Fatty, but I remembered the frown on his father's face. I opened my mouth but didn't ask.
After the meal, the little fatty talked about the cat again. He said that there was nothing strange about it. Cats liked Yin and could see some unclean things. Moreover, the cat had followed his father since it was young and had come into contact with many dead people. His father even raised it to devour Yin energy. That was why when the Yin energy was sucked out by the bone powder last night, the cat arched its body and screamed. In fact, it was looking for food, just like a cat that had encountered a chick and was arching its back to catch it.
After listening to him, I vaguely understood why the cat had been staring at me last night. I guessed it was because of the red shadow.
I was even more afraid of the cat now. I thought that I should stay away from it in the future.
Although Little Fatty had told me that people who provoked Yin spirits would have bad luck and harm their health, I felt that the red shadow's situation was different from what he had told me. She didn't harm me. Instead, she had helped me recover from my sprained ankle. I was sure she wasn't a dirty thing like the fat boy had described.
With that thought in mind, I didn't have the mood to ask more questions. I followed the fat boy to wash the dishes. When it was almost noon, Little Fatty's father came back with the cat.
I saw that his feet were covered in mud, so I quietly asked, "Did your father go to the mountain?" Little Fatty nodded and whispered, "My family has an ancestral house behind the mountain. Whenever his father encountered something troublesome, he would go to the ancestral house."
I understood immediately. Little Fatty's father was going to solve the case of the shaved ghost.
Indeed, after his father came back, he didn't rest. He said that he wanted to take us back to school and took us to the village entrance.
When we were about to leave, the cat followed us. However, Little Fatty's father grabbed it by the neck and threw it back to the courtyard.
When we arrived at the village entrance, we hitched a tricycle and headed to school.
Little Fatty's father was very quiet. He didn't talk along the way and just smoked the pipe in his hand. Little Fatty was a man who couldn't stay idle. Yesterday, he was scared when we talked about the shaved ghost. But today, he wasn't afraid anymore. Instead, he proactively asked his father about the shaved ghost.
It was no wonder why he didn't tell me when I asked him yesterday. It turned out that he didn't know much about it.
Fatty's father didn't seem to want to talk about it. In the end, he put down the pipe in his mouth and sighed. "A ghost shaves his head. A ghost shaves his head, so naturally it's a Yin head. How can a living person have their Yin head shaved?"
My heart sank. From what Little Fatty's father said, it seemed that someone was going to die … Although he had just met Guo Mingming, they were roommates. No one could bear to see such a thing happen.
Little Fatty was a little worried. He asked his father, "Dad, you can save him, right?"
Little Fatty's father shook his head. "It's hard to say."
Hearing Little Fatty's father say that, our hearts became even heavier. We didn't say anything on the way and quickly arrived at school.
Little Fatty's father sent us to the classroom. When the homeroom teacher saw us, he thought that Little Fatty's father was just here to send us off. He even smiled and talked to us for a while. But when he heard that Little Fatty's father was here to solve the strange thing that happened in the dormitory, his expression changed. He said to us, "Our school is a place to educate people. We don't believe in these feudal superstitions!
The school leaders have already investigated this matter. It's a complication caused by Guo Mingming's illness. You guys shouldn't get involved. "
Let alone Little Fatty's father, even Little Fatty and I didn't believe him. After all, the two of us had personally experienced it. Whether Guo Mingming was sick or not, Little Fatty and I knew it better than him.
But the homeroom teacher was our teacher. Since he said that, Little Fatty and I didn't dare to retort. We could only look at Little Fatty's father.
Little Fatty's father finally broke his silence. He squinted his yellow eyes and said, "I don't care what your school does, but my child lives there. I can't let anything happen to my child!"
The homeroom teacher was a little angry. He said, "If you insist on saying that, I can change your child's dormitory. Of course, you can also let your child transfer schools."