Third watch

Both Wang Xiaoming and Lu Xiaolu were so shocked that they couldn't speak, and the light of the mobile phone dimmed after being so stunned.

The child didn't seem to be able to feel the light, instead he took two steps forward, shaking his head from side to side slightly, as if there was a broken spring on his neck.

Lu Xiaolu simply turned off the lights, and stepped forward cautiously, "Little friend, why don't you go home?"

The child listened with his head turned sideways, and probably heard an unfamiliar accent. He took two steps back as if startled, then turned around suddenly, and patted his head.

Lu Xiaolu stopped in place, and suddenly turned to look at Wang Xiaoming.

Wang Xiaoming: "?"

"Xiao Ming," Lu Xiaolu's voice was a little dry: "Why do I feel..."

Before he finished speaking, the child suddenly turned around and ran away—it was said to be running, but it was probably because of an invisible relationship, and the speed was actually not fast.

Wang Xiaoming was still immersed in the shock of the big forehead, he quickly stepped forward and asked Lu Xiaolu in a low voice: "Do you think that child is from the village?"

Lu Xiaolu didn't answer, but suddenly shivered, and pulled Wang Xiaoming over: "Let's go."

Wang Xiaoming immediately understood what Lu Xiaolu meant, and simply turned off the light on the phone, and the two chased after the child in the direction he left.

The child had short legs, so he saw it when he turned a corner, but Lu Xiaolu didn't let Wang Xiaoming get too close, but kept a distance away, and Wang Xiaoming felt that Lu Xiaolu's palms were sweaty.

"Why are we hiding?" Wang Xiaoming asked in a low voice.

Lu Xiaolu didn't answer, but pulled Wang Xiaoming to stand at the corner of the wall—the two looked around, and found that the child stopped in front of a house, and there was an old light bulb under the eaves, emitting a yellow shimmer, and buzzing around it. Buzzing little flying insects.

Wang Xiaoming felt that Lu Xiaolu's behavior was a bit inexplicable, even if they were following, the child had no eyes, as long as he didn't make a sound, he wouldn't know if he was following him.

Lu Xiaolu turned around and made a "shh" gesture, and took out a slingshot from his pocket.

Wang Xiaoming took a closer look and found that Lu Xiaolu's forehead was also sweating.

"Look carefully." Lu Xiaolu said in an almost inaudible voice, "Look at his head... I think he saw us just now."

Before Wang Xiaoming figured out what he meant, Lu Xiaolu bent down and picked up a pea-sized pebble, and raised the small slingshot.

The child was opening the door on tiptoe, hands seeming to be fumbling for the lock.

Lu Xiaolu leaned out half of his body quickly, shot the small stone out, and then quickly retracted it.

"Be careful." Lu Xiaolu said with a trembling voice, "Hair..."

Wang Xiaoming poked out his eyes slowly in doubt, and saw that Lu Xiaolu seemed to have thrown a stone into the child's unkempt hair, the child stopped opening the door and shook his head in doubt.

He really didn't understand why Lu Xiaolu had a hard time with a disabled child, but that child was too dirty, not to mention messy hair, it seemed to be greasy in locks, and it looked a little thin...

Wang Xiaoming squinted his eyes to see the child using both hands to pick the hair from the back of his head, and suddenly he wanted to gasp, but Lu Xiaolu covered his mouth with one hand.

Wang Xiaoming froze in place, feeling that thousands of needles had been stuck into his scalp, numb from the back of his head to the soles of his feet—after the child tore the hair away randomly, he actually saw that there were eyes in those hairs!

Those hairs are not sparse, but that the child has several pairs of hair growing between them, no, maybe it is the eyes at the back of the head, the hair grows around the eyes, and when it grows, it can barely cover those eyes, and now it is covered by hands. As soon as I opened it, I saw several pairs of eyes, big or small, closed or open, and some eyelids were still connected——

Wang Xiaoming was trembling all over his body, almost unable to stand up, Lu Xiaolu pulled him back, and the two of them were leaning against the wall, their hands and feet were cold, and their heartbeat was so loud that it was hard to tell whose it was.

After a while, they heard the soft opening and closing of the door.

Wang Xiaoming hardly knew how he got back to the village chief's house.

Lu Xiaolu was better than him, but he was also quite shocked, neither of them said a word, they went back to open the door lightly.

As soon as they entered the door, the two of them were almost scared out of their wits - the village chief stood in the living room, watching them quietly.

"Where did you go?" Village Chief Zhou asked softly.

"Go to the toilet." Wang Xiaoming said, "Your toilets are all outside, it's really troublesome."

"I went to see it." The village chief said.

"There was something buzzing around the corner. I thought it was our cat, but it turned out to be a toad." Lu Xiaolu hecked twice: "I don't know where the cat went."

The village chief stood silent for a while in the darkness, then suddenly turned and left.

It wasn't until he entered the room and saw Zhong Yi and Ye Xun that Wang Xiaoming's feet softened and he sat on the bed.

Lu Xiaolu's face was covered with sweat, and his face was also pale—fortunately, the old man didn't turn on the light just now, otherwise he would know something was wrong when he saw the expressions on the two of them.

"What's wrong?" Zhong Yi frowned.

Wang Xiaoming got hairy when he thought of the scene just now, and he didn't say anything after thinking about it for several times - he was mentally prepared for the monster to look strange, but the child just now... was a living person.

However, is there such a living person in the world?

Lu Xiaolu was calmer than him, he just glanced at the child when he turned around, and saw that there seemed to be something in his hair, so he pulled Wang Xiaoming to follow, the one who really saw those eyes was Wang Xiaoming.

Lu Xiaolu told the story again: "I think the child suddenly turned his back to us and shook his head. His movements were a bit strange, so I looked carefully, and in the end I was almost scared to death... scared to death..."

Ye Xun looked at Zhong Yi: "What you said during the day, most of the people hiding in the house are people like that child?"

They were right in guessing that there were indeed deformed people in Hongdeng Village.

But what they saw during the day were—at least on the surface, normal people. If there were as many deformed people as they had imagined, then they were probably hiding in the dark.

"Those peepers have eyes in the back of their heads?" Lu Xiaolu started to get goosebumps again when he thought of this possibility.

Think about it, you think there is someone lying by the window and peeping at you, but in fact that person is leaning against the window, brushing his hair aside, and peeping with several pairs of eyes...

"I think the old man suspects us." Thinking of what the village chief said just now, Wang Xiaoming couldn't help but said, "He knew we went out just now, so he made some nonsense, but he may not believe it."

"It's okay." Zhong Yi said, his face suddenly changed, and he quickly turned off the light.

The four immediately shut their mouths. In the darkness, only the sound of breathing came and went.

I don't know how long it took before Zhong Yi turned on the flashlight.

"The old man really doubted us." Zhong Yi said.

"Has he been here?" Wang Xiaoming lowered his voice.

Ye Xun quietly walked to the door and listened carefully: "It's gone."

Zhong Yi pointed the flashlight at the door, and Lu Xiaolu gave a "drink".

On the originally dark yellow wooden door, a dark brown humanoid shape appeared, curled up into a ball, as if a thin person had once lay on the door and left this mark.

"I applied a layer of medicinal juice today." Ye Xun said softly, "It will respond to body temperature... The old man was lying on the door for a long time just now."

"What should we do now?" Ye Xun asked Zhong Yi: "Although I don't know what he wants to do, but such a sneaky reaction definitely does not mean to welcome the guests."

"We were not good guests." Zhong Yi said, turning off the flashlight.

"At least do it in the middle of the night?" Wang Xiaoming said softly, gritted his teeth.

Lu Xiaolu and Ye Xun: "Hush."

Zhong Yi touched the door lock of the 'study room', not knowing what he was playing with.

Wang Xiaoming was speechless - just after they eavesdropped on them, they turned around and wanted to pick the lock...

The old man just went downstairs, and now he might be talking to his wife about how to make them into pork buns tomorrow, at least wait until the two of them fall asleep before coming out?Zhou Jin's room is also next to it...

It's a pity that Zhong Yi didn't take his suggestion to heart at all. As soon as he went downstairs with his front foot, he walked out of the room with his back foot.

Zhou Jin said that this room is the old man's study room, which is actually used for storing sundries, because the old man is also the accountant of the village and has some ledgers, so it is usually locked to prevent people from entering.

Zhong Yi has been staring at this room during the day.

Although the Red Lantern Village is weird, the village head is still a farmer after all, not the boss of the world's evil organization, so the study room looks heavily guarded, but in fact Zhong Yi fiddled with it.

They didn't dare to turn on the lights and flashlights, and adjusted the minimum brightness of their mobile phones to search for all the information that might let them know about Red Lantern Village - genealogy, yearbook, even ledgers.

The room was small and narrow, and the four big men rummaged back to back in it for a while, but Zhong Yi found something that looked like an old photo album.

Zhong Yi asked them all to come closer, turned on the lights slightly, and opened the photo album.

There were no photographs in this photo album, but some random stuff stuffed in, sort of like a notebook of newspaper clippings.

Zhong Yi casually flipped through two pages, and the light stopped on one of the clippings.

In [-], Jiang X Daily reported that a pregnant woman gave birth to a pair of conjoined twins at the Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Le X County, H Province. They survived for less than three hours, and the pregnant woman became mentally disturbed.

Zhong Yi turned the page in silence.

In [-], a boy with a dog face was found to be deaf in a certain town on the third page of XX Daily...

In [-], a pregnant woman in S city gave birth to a baby girl with strange hands growing out of her chest, and the pregnant woman died of dystocia.

In [-], a man in Xjiang Town was insane and strangled his congenital cerebral palsy child to death. His wife disappeared...

The black-and-white briefings or accompanying pictures or comments made people's hearts tremble. Some reports were marked with pens, all of which marked the "native place" of the news parties.

Could it be that the parties in these news are all related to Red Lantern Village?

Otherwise, why did Village Chief Zhou collect so many news clippings from different places?

Mixed with these newspaper clippings, there are some notebook papers with what looks like a list scribbled on them. At a glance, they are all death records in the village. Sometimes there are many people who died in the same year, and there are rows of names. Look down, shocking.

Zhou Luorong's second son died in X month and his wife Liang Qiao

X Year and X Month

……

Zhong Yi's fingers slid across those 'death lists', and the other three saw something strange.

Almost all couples on the list have different surnames.

In the few newspaper clippings, the aliases of the husband and wife were mentioned, and the surnames were also different.

If those who died all died of deformities, could it be that the cause of the deformities was not the intermarriage of close relatives, but another reason?