Ghost Blowing Lantern II

The herdsmen on the grasslands regard eating roasted rat meat as a common meal, but in the Xing'an Mountains, many people never eat rat meat. Before liberation, people who were looking for gold veins and gold mines in the mountainous areas were taboo on eating rat meat. I once heard my grandfather say that the craftsmen who fight against each other do not eat rats, but call them "daughter-in-laws" because all they do for a living is moving soil and digging holes. They are no different from rats and belong to the same industry. Rats are also members of the "Grey" family, one of the five major families of "Hu, Huang, Bai, Liu and Hui". When dealing with Tudongzi every day, you must not offend the rats, otherwise they may be buried alive if you are not careful. In the thief's cave.

At that time, I never thought about robbing tombs, and I didn't care about eating the meat of "big-eyed thieves". Ding Sitian didn't really believe that yellow skins, long worms, foxes, hedgehogs and mice were immortals, but she I firmly believe that the law of heaven is forgiving, and we should not do anything too extreme, such as eating rats. In Ding Sitian's hometown, there was a famine before liberation. There were so many rats in the area. Although there was no food, there were no shortage of rats at all. Everyone caught them in order to survive. They ate hundreds of thousands of rats and finally survived the famine. However, the locals have developed the habit of eating rat meat. When there is food, they still catch rats and eat them, and every household eats them. Everyone ate it, but one year the plague suddenly broke out, and countless people died. After the epidemic, in some villages, only two people who were vegetarians were left alive.

The fat man said: "What do you mean by the grace of heaven? I think rats are one of the four pests. If we eliminate them completely, there will be no plague. But have you ever heard that some people say that there are more rats than people in the world? Look. After we have wiped out the imperial revisionist rebels, we will start to exterminate the rats." As he spoke, he suddenly picked up his hunting gun, turned it up butt-down, and went to kill a rat that was poking its head into a nearby rat hole to spy on us. The big-eyed thief.

The big-eyed thief was so disturbed by the aroma of fish soup and roasted rat meat that he poked his head in the rat hole, looking for an opportunity to crawl out and steal some fish to eat. Suddenly he saw someone hitting him with a stick, so he quickly retreated back. The fat man had just finished eating and wanted to take the opportunity to eat. Now he used all his strength and slammed the butt of the gun on the ground. Unexpectedly, the big-eyed thief was not hit, but the soil on the ground collapsed. A large piece of soil, the crust here is very brittle, and there are holes underneath, and it sank in after being pounded with the butt of a rifle.

The reason why this forest is called "Hundred Eyes Cave" may be that there are many caves or caves underground. However, the natural environment and changes in water and soil over the years have caused the fallen leaves and grass to cover these caves and form a layer of earth crust. So now it seems , it was difficult to find any burrow directly, and the earth crust was riddled with holes by big-eyed thieves who dug for earthworms and ate them, so it was not surprising that the fat man collapsed when he hit it with the butt of his gun.

But none of us expected this to happen at that time. A large piece of grass collapsed from the earth crust, which was really unexpected. What was even more surprising was that the exposed big hole was filled with rats. The fat man raised his hand and pointed. : "Oh my grandma, why do so many big rats appear?"

When I looked along his hand, my whole body was shocked, and my scalp was numb. The hole was filled with tree roots and mud. There was actually a huge "rat mountain" in it, with countless big eyes stealing from you. I was crowded together, and the rats were squirming and stacked on top of each other. The pile was as high as one person. And there were not only big-eyed thieves, but there were also gray rats, prairie dogs, and many unrecognizable species running around nearby. Fat wild rats, a large area of ​​Wuyang Wuyang, this huge mouse hole is beyond imagination.

Disturbed by the collapse of the cave entrance, the rats swarmed out like a tidal wave that burst the embankment. Because there were so many of them, they immediately extinguished the fire we lit. Fatty, Ding Sitian, and I hurriedly swung the fire. He wielded his knife and stick to drive away the many giant rats that rushed to him. Once these big rats were driven away, they even broke into chaos and ran around in the forest, squeaking and screaming. One of the natural enemies of wild rats is centipedes, and at night It was when the centipedes were looking for food that they were attracted by a group of wild rats. Large yellow-green centipedes emerged from the cracks in rocks, grass burrows, and trees, and burrowed into the fleeing wild rats to devour them.

The forest that was originally deathly silent became a mess. In the chaos, they encountered many natural enemies. The wild rats didn't know which way to escape for a while. They bumped east and west and circled in the forest. There are centipedes in all directions. The centipedes common among herdsmen on the grassland are only about 20 centimeters, and those nearly one meter are very rare. But here we found that there are actually large centipede centipedes that are more than two meters long with spots on their bodies. Centipedes are more venomous than venomous snakes. If we follow a group of rats and rush out in this situation, we will definitely be bitten by the centipede's venomous jaws. If we bite, we will be hopeless because there is no time to save us. Death from poison.

It is really horrifying to think of the tragic situation of Ding Sitian's bay-red horse being bitten to death by a centipede. If there were a few mounts at this time, we could still gamble our luck and risk riding out, but there was only one old horse beside us. The horse was also frightened now. Its reins were tied to the tree, and it struggled to free itself while neighing. It had to keep raising its pout and kicking away the rats and centipedes that approached it in the chaos.

I grabbed the kerosene gas lamp on the ground, called Fatty and Ding Sitian to hold the unconscious old sheepskin, and escaped into the mouse hole exposed by the collapse of a large hole. By this time, most of the rats had jumped out. Compared with the huge rat cave, which is a mess of hissing and devouring animals in the forest, this dirty and smelly cave is the only place to retreat. Fatty and Ding Sitian immediately understood what I meant, and the two of them dragged me away. Half-stretched, I dragged the old sheepskin with its belly into the rat hole. I waved the "Kangxi Sword" and cut off the reins of the old army horse with one stroke. The old horse was free and neighed, but it didn't stop immediately. It rushed out of the encirclement, but circled around the rat hole, refusing to let go of its owner and escape. I pointed my knife at it outside the forest and said, "Escape by yourself."

The old horse seemed to be really smart, as if it realized that it couldn't get into the rat hole due to its height, and saw its owners going in to avoid danger, so it snorted, turned around and rushed out of the forest. When I saw the horse running away, I immediately got into the rat hole. As soon as I entered, a fishy smell filled my nostrils. I quickly covered my nose with my sleeves.

The rat burrow is very deep inside, with damp and narrow sides on both sides. It looks like a man-made underground tunnel. When we shine a light on it, we can see that there is no end to the dark hole in the depths. There are still some rats, big and small, that have not escaped in the hole. From time to time, they come from under our feet. Climbing up and down, I heard centipedes gnawing and scurrying away, as well as the miserable howling of wild rats. I had reached the entrance of the cave. I thought to myself that this time I had truly entered the "Hundred Eyes Cave". I couldn't even think about going in now. Not daring to neglect at the moment, he quickly pointed his knife at the depths of the cave and said to Fatty and Ding Sitian: "Switching to guerrilla warfare is the magic weapon for our army to defeat the enemy. We should look for opportunities to turn defeat into victory in roundabout movements and large stride retreats. Now retreat inside first, and be careful where you step." Back then, the three of us young people, with a lot of "leftover courage", boldly broke into a restricted area. At first, we were a little nervous at most, but we didn't think much about anything else. But at that time, none of us expected that at the end of this rat hole, a huge nightmare was waiting for our arrival.