Text/Lao Chun (original)
"It's killing people! Shanwai Plum is killing people!" A woman suddenly cried loudly.
But after shouting a few times, the woman couldn't scream anymore because the murderer had already plunged the knife into her chest.
However, just these few shouts have broken the original tranquility of this small mountain village, and caused several nearby villagers who were taking a nap to wake up from their sleep and run to the yard or street to find the source of the sound. .
1.
Shanwai Lizi is not from this village. When his family of three moved to this village, they had nothing but clothes and luggage. .
No one knows why he came to this small mountain village. They only know that he is related to a villager named Jiang in the village and came to him. The reason why he is called Shanwai Plum is because his surname is Li and he comes from the hilly area outside the mountain.
Shanwai Lizi and his wife are very hard-working. No matter it is windy or rainy or the sun is shining, they are always busy making money to support their family.
This is also directly related to the fact that they have just arrived in the local area and have little financial background. As an outsider, Shanwai Lizi's family had no savings at all, and even eating would be a problem if they didn't work, so they had no choice but to work desperately.
I go to the mountains to collect wild vegetables in the spring, dig medicinal materials in the summer, mushrooms in the autumn, collect firewood in the winter, and occasionally do some temporary work. Anyway, as long as they can make money without breaking the law, they will do it.
In the beginning, someone was always throwing green corn in the village. Everyone knew that Shanwai Lizi had stolen it, because they were the only ones in the village who had nothing to eat. Therefore, although everyone was very angry, they were not willing to delve into it. After all, no one was caught, and not much was lost. Everyone could just curse a few times and be done with it.
Besides, the corn grown in the fields is all hybrid corn, which has thick skin and is not delicious when cooked. Even if it is dried in the sun, it must be peeled and ground into flour or crumbs by a machine before it can be eaten. But there was nothing to eat for plums outside the mountains, and there was no land to plant them when they first arrived, so they had to steal some corn cobs here and there to eat.
In the second year, Shanwai Lizi picked up some abandoned land by the villagers and opened up some wasteland on the edge of the forest, finally settling down his life.
2.
Because they are from outside, the Shanwai Lizi family has no roots in the village, so they are not very popular with the villagers. Especially the thorny heads in the village always bully Shanwai Lizi intentionally or unintentionally because they are locals and their family is powerful.
They either deliberately took the animals away to eat the crops of Shanwai Lizi's family, or they accidentally took away the firewood that Shanwai Lizi had picked up on the mountain.
When an animal gets away, you can't just say it was intentional. As for the firewood on the mountain, there is no name or surname, it belongs to whoever picks it up. If you didn't catch the person on the spot, how could you say that you made the firewood?
So for such a thing, let alone Shanwai Lizi, even the villagers in this village would have nothing to do if they encountered it, so Shanwai Lizi could only endure it.
But as an outsider, I am very wary. I feel that the people in the village look at me with hostility. What's more, if there are too many such things, no matter how big-hearted you are, you won't be able to suppress the anger in your heart.
However, these are not enough to push Shanwai Lizi to a dead end, nor will they crush him. Because he knew that as a newcomer, he would encounter such things everywhere. This is human nature, there is no way around it. There is no other way but to endure it until you are strong enough.
3.
Shanwai Li Zi’s son is young, only in the fourth grade of elementary school.
In the spring of the third year, Li Laosan's daughter, who was in the third grade of elementary school, said that Shanwai Lizi's son raped her and gave her two yuan afterward. Shanwai Lizi's son insisted not.
Finally, in order to verify the authenticity of the matter, the Shanwai Lizi family insisted on calling the police and took Li Laosan, his wife and Li Laosan’s daughter to the hospital for identification.
The identification results confirmed that Li Laosan's daughter lied and Shanwai Lizi's son did not rape her. As for the two yuan, it was Shanwai Lizi's son who lost to her in a bet.
However, Li Laosan's family has five brothers in the village alone. This incident has made everyone in the village know about it. Li Laosan and his wife felt that they couldn't bear it, so they forced Shanwai Lizi to pay two yuan. A thousand dollars is enough to buy back the reputation of my daughter.
Shanwai Li Zi didn’t care at all, so he just moved around and gave Li Laosan’s family two thousand yuan. Everyone in the village knew that Li Laosan deliberately blackmailed him, but Li Zi outside the mountain said privately that it was nothing that could be settled with money. Two thousand yuan was worth buying his son's innocence.
After this incident happened, Shanwai Lizi's son was always beaten by others who found trouble in school, which made him unwilling to go to school anymore.
Shanwai Lizi knew that if his children did not go to school, their fate would still be the same as his and his wife's in the future. He had had enough of this kind of life, so he insisted on persuading his son to go to school. But the child seemed to have eaten a weight and refused to go.
In the end, Shanwai Lizi had no choice but to buy two pregnant cows for his son to herd.
4.
Ordinarily, if the child herds cattle well, and the plum couple works in the mountains and farms, life will get better day by day.
However, there are always people who will have trouble with him.
Soon, a pregnant cow from the Li Zi family outside the mountain was poisoned to death in the mountain. Anyone could see that it was a deliberate poisoning. Because there is no way there is poison in the mountain, unless someone deliberately throws it.
Shanwai Li Zi also knew that this matter must be related to Li Laosan's family. Because in the village, their two families have the biggest conflict.
As expected, not long after, Li Laosan himself revealed the matter when he was drinking with others. He also said that he did this just to let Shanwai Lizi know how powerful he was, and not to accuse him of not knowing how to count every day.
Regarding this matter, Shanwai Li Zi still kept silent, but he must have hated Li Laosan in his heart. After all, if the cow gave birth to a calf successfully, he could get six to seven thousand yuan back in the new year. But now, this hope is gone.
5.
In the late summer and early autumn of the fourth year, the construction sites in the city were short of sand, so some bosses drove trucks to the village to buy river sand.
Like other villagers, Shanwai Lizi and his wife also fished sand from the river to sell.
In order to fish out more river sand, villagers are accustomed to fishing out a pile of river sand to occupy a place in the river, and then use piles of sand to occupy the places they can one by one to prevent others from fishing.
The river in the village is very long, enough for the whole village to fish for river sand. However, there are not many places where you can enter a carriage and transport the river sand smoothly, so you have to go first.
Because Shanwai Li Zi is willing to endure hardships, after every flash flood, he is the first to come out in the rain to occupy a seat, so he has occupied some of the lucky sand places near their home.
Li Laosan himself is not very diligent and is willing to take advantage of opportunities. So even if the plum outside the mountain takes over, he will fish it out regardless. Moreover, in order not to directly conflict with Shanwai Lizi, he fished at the opposite position where Shanwai Lizi was fishing for river sand, leaving Shanwai Lizi speechless.
In this way, even though Shanwai Lizi was angry, there was nothing he could do.
However, Li Laosan's appetite is more than that. One night, he contacted the owner of the sand in advance, and in the middle of the night, he secretly sold the sand that had been transported to the roadside from plums outside the mountain. After daybreak, Shanwai Lizi discovered that the sand was missing.
The plums outside the mountain are no longer dry now. They are the ones that he and his wife worked hard to soak in the water. They put in so much effort, sweated so much, and were soaked in so much rain, but they asked others to give them to them. He sold it secretly, and he couldn't bear it anymore. He cursed at the top of his lungs in the village, but what's the use of scolding! If scolding was effective, those evil people would have changed long ago.
Later, the boss who came to the village to buy sand accidentally told the truth. Only then did Shanwai Lizi know that Li Laosan had sold the sand, and he hated Li Laosan even more.
6.
When the land was about to be harvested in autumn, the cow at Li Zi’s family outside the mountain gave birth to a calf.
But not long after, their mule used to pull the cart was poisoned to death after eating something unknown.
The land is about to be harvested. At this time, without the animals to pull the land, it is simply a fatal thing for the farmers.
Shanwai Lizi was about to collapse. He didn't need to think about it to know that someone must have deliberately poisoned him again. He decided not to tolerate it anymore and called the police.
But what about calling the police?
Every house in the mountain is surrounded by wooden stick walls. As long as you can move, you can jump over the sticks and enter the yard to poison at night.
Although Shanwai Lizi also has a dog at home, as long as the perpetrator throws some food for the dog and lets it eat and sleep, even if he goes into the yard and takes the animal away, the same will happen to the person who is sleeping in the house. have no idea.
So the case was finally settled.
But Shanwai Lizi knew in his heart who did this, but he didn't have any evidence and didn't dare to say anything.
7.
After the autumn harvest, as a rule, after people take home the corn stalks used to feed livestock in the fields, every household will scatter the livestock and let them go to the fields to eat some weeds and the unwanted crops that people have given up. Corn stalks.
The Li Zi family outside the mountain was naturally no exception, but he did not dare to be careless. To be on the safe side, he asked his son to follow the two cows during the day and watch them graze. There should be something wrong with
. One day, Shanwai Lizi's family was beating beans. There were not enough manpower at home, so Shanwai Lizi didn't let his son go out with the cows and asked him to help beat beans at home. He drove the cow to the hillside opposite his house so that he could see it when he raised his head.
At the beginning, the Lizi family outside the mountain looked at the cows grazing on the mountain from time to time. Later, they got busy beating beans and forgot to look. When the family finished beating beans and looked up again, there were still shadows of cows on the mountain.
Outside the mountain, Li Zi thought that a cow had crossed the mountain ridge while grazing on grass. He hurriedly asked his son to go and see it while he and his wife were collecting soybean bran and soybeans at home.
However, his son searched the mountain and couldn't find the cow, so he hurried home and told Shanwai Lizi.
Shanwai Li Zi panicked when he heard it. The father and son searched for it over the mountains and ridges together for a long time, but still couldn't find it. Shanwai Lizi knew that he must have been driven away and sold.
Shanwai Lizi’s son was so angry that he burst into tears because Shanwai Lizi had promised him that he would buy him a motorcycle after selling the cow. Seeing his son so sad, Shanwai Lizi also felt that his heart had been taken away.
That is the only hope left for their family. How can it be said that it is gone?
This time, Shanwai Lizi did not call the police because he knew that even if he called the police for a while, he would not be able to find out.
However, just like the last time the mule was poisoned, Shanwai Lizi also suspected that Li Laosan did it.
8.
After winter, Shanwai Lizi’s son went to work in a hotel in the city.
Not long after, Shanwai Lizi’s wife felt bad and went to the hospital for a check-up. It was found out that she had liver cancer, which was still in the advanced stage.
No matter how strong you are, plums outside the mountain can't stand it anymore. He couldn't help crying alone, constantly asking God why he was so cruel to him.
Shanwai Lizi knows that this disease is caused by anger. It must be that life was not going well after moving to the village, and I was always depressed and that led to the current result. Thinking about the sins his wife and he had suffered over the years, Shanwai Lizi felt sorry for her. I thought my life would be better after selling the cow next year, but I didn’t expect that my wife would not be able to enjoy it anymore.
With no money and no treatment, they can only go home and work. Not long after
returned home, Shanwai Lizi found out from others who had stolen his two cows.
That's right, it was Li Laosan. He was the one who stole the two cows and sold them.
When he was selling the cow, he was seen by people from other villages. At first, they didn't know that the cow was not his own. When I found out later, I revealed it to the people in the village. Then, someone told Li Zi's wife outside the mountain when he came to visit her. The moment
learned the news, Shanwai Lizi was extremely angry, but he kept it to himself and did not show it, and comforted his wife not to think too much. Maybe the man had seen it wrong.
In the spring of the new year, Shanwai Li Zi’s wife died of illness. After sending his wife away, Shanwai Lizi sold his house and land. He said he would go out to work with his son and never return to this place.
But no one expected that a month later, he suddenly returned to the village, first killed Li Laosan who was taking a nap, and then stabbed to death Li Laosan's wife. As for Li Laosan's child, he was lucky enough to escape because he was in school at the time.
When Li Laosan's neighbors heard the shouting, Shanwai Li Zi was sitting at the gate of Li Laosan's house, covered in blood, holding a knife and smoking.
"I killed the person! Don't be afraid, I won't kill anyone again. I have already called the police. I will wait here for the police to come." Shanwai Lizi said calmly.
The neighbors looked at him in horror, not knowing what to do. Even Li Laosan's brothers did not dare to move forward when they saw such a scene, because they saw that Li Zi's eyes outside the mountain were filled with hatred and murderous intent.
In the fall, Shanwai Lizi was sentenced to death for and . It is said that Shanwai Lizi killed someone because he himself had cancer and didn't want to live anymore.
But who forced him to do that?
