荒墟牧神 - 第1章 暮色封村，莫入荒夜 - 雲海書庫

o blood, no skeleton. When the hide was half peeled away, a woman in her twenties or thirties rolled out from inside; her two legs were still wrapped in the cow's hind legs, her flesh joined to the hide, but her upper body had already come loose. The woman, hair disheveled, snatched the sickle from the stupefied Qin Mu's hand, cut the hide away from her legs in two or three strokes, then looked at Qin Mu. Wickedness surged in her heart; she put the sickle to Qin Mu's neck and sneered, "Little villain! Because of you I was turned into a cow. For eleven years I could only eat grass and even had to feed you milk! Pitiful—just before I was turned into a cow, I had given birth to a child, and that witch woman ambushed me and turned me into a cow to suckle you! Now that I've finally escaped, I'll kill you first, then slaughter every villain in this village!" Qin Mu's head buzzed; he had no idea what this woman who had crawled out of the cowhide was saying. The woman was about to cut him down with the sickle when suddenly her heart turned cold; she looked down and saw a blade thrust out through her chest. "Qin'er, your Pill Master grandfather told you to go back and take your medicine." The woman's body fell, and behind her stood Grandpa Lame Weng, kind-faced and simple, holding a blood-dripping blade, smiling at Qin Mu. "Grandpa Lame Weng..." Qin Mu's body went weak; he looked at the cowhide on the ground and the woman's corpse, still unable to recover his wits. "Go back, go back." Lame Weng patted his shoulder and chuckled. Qin Mu walked back to the village, one step high, one step low; he glanced back and saw Lame Weng throw the woman's corpse into the river. The impact of that scene was so great that he did not even know when he had returned to the village. "Qin Mu! You little brat, what did I tell you? When it gets dark, don't leave the house!" Night was falling; the stone statues at the four corners of Hidden Remnant Village had lit up by themselves again. Granny Zhu called out to Qin Mu, who was about to slip out of the village to go to the river and check the cowhide, and dragged him back. "Grandma, why can't we go out when it's dark?" Qin Mu asked, looking up. "When it grows dark, some terrible things move about in the darkness; going out means death." Granny Zhu said solemnly, "The stone statues in the village protect us; the things in the darkness dare not enter the village." "Do other villages have such statues?" Qin Mu asked curiously. Granny Zhu nodded, but her face was a little worried; she kept looking out of the village and murmured, "Lame Weng should be back by now... I really shouldn't have let him go out. That fellow has only one leg..." "Grandma, something strange happened today..." Qin Mu hesitated and told the whole story of the woman crawling out of the cow's belly. Granny Zhu said nonchalantly, "That woman? Lame Weng already told me about it. He handled it very well. I said long ago, when you were weaned at four, that we should sell the cow, but you couldn't bear to, so we kept it. See? Now something's happened. I told you drinking milk until four would make you attached to a cow." Qin Mu flushed; being weaned at four was indeed a bit late, but that did not seem to be the real point. "Grandma, that woman was killed by Grandpa Lame..." "Killed well." Granny Zhu laughed. "That was letting her off easy. She ought to have died eleven years ago. If she had not been needed to nurse you, could she have lived until now?" Qin Mu did not understand. Granny Zhu glanced at him and said, "This woman was the lady of Crimson Dragon City's lord, a thousand li from here. The lord was lustful, and she was jealous; the lord liked to philander and carry off innocent women. Every time the lord defiled a woman, the lady would send someone to beat that woman to death. I slipped into Crimson Dragon City, originally planning to kill her; but I saw she had just borne a child, only three months old, and I remembered that you had no mil