When I woke up again.

I was lying on the kang in the northern room.

Looking through the window, I saw darkness outside.

I instinctively checked my body and found no signs of injury.

I remember...

Today I came to Xijiao Village.

I am a volunteer teacher.

I met the village chief.

And then?

I seemed to have discovered something?

My memory began to blur.

The table was empty, there was nothing.

Where is my backpack?

Could I have remembered wrong?

I had a splitting headache.

Just when I was puzzled and sleepy.

A hoarse voice echoed in my ears.

"First death."

I got up in fear.

I saw an old woman standing at the door.

Her eyelids were sewn shut with thick black thread, like a centipede with many legs.

"Who are you? Why are you in my room?"

I asked her in panic.

"Girl, I'm helping you,"

the old woman said, as her aged left hand moved along the tabletop towards me.

"Do you know about human rabbits? How a person turns into a rabbit?"

I couldn't understand her words at all.

The old woman continued, "People who enter the western mountain village experience spiritual death three times and will descend into becoming rabbits."

I stood alert in one corner of the kang.

"Only by cutting off your head, stopping your mind from thinking, to avoid contamination, can you be saved."

As she spoke, she pulled out a rusty axe from a wrinkled sack.

I covered my mouth with my hand, afraid to make any sound.

I heard her muttering, "Can't let you turn into a rabbit..."

I suspected that this old woman was mentally disturbed.

I had to get away from her.

I pressed against the right wall and quietly moved my body.

The old woman came closer and closer to me.

I took a deep breath, then suddenly jumped off the kang and forcefully knocked her down to the ground.

I ran as fast as I could.

Escape!

I pushed open the door, and the moonlight illuminated the playground.

Groups of students were happily running around, playing jump rope, kicking shuttlecocks, and playing games.

The sound of reading came from the classrooms.

"Don't go out!"

The old woman behind me shouted loudly, lunging at me with her teeth bared and claws outstretched.

Her sharp axe narrowly missed splitting open my head.

I didn't have time to think, instinctively I escaped outside.

The students noticed me and surrounded me, singing and dancing in circles.

"Teacher! Teacher!"

Mistakenly, I thought everyone was warmly welcoming me, and the fear in my heart gradually subsided.

They escorted me into the classroom.

I was pushed to the podium.

The students shouted in unison, "Teacher! Teacher!"

Amidst the joy, I noticed something strange.

Their gazes didn't look at me.

They were all staring at the blackboard behind me.

A sense of foreboding surged through me.

Trembling, I turned around.

On the blackboard was a drawing of a deep ancient well.

Corpses crawled out of the well.

Underneath the drawing were small words:

"Retrieve the corpses! Retrieve the corpses!"

I was terrified and screaming.

Suddenly, the female corpse from the well raised her head.

Her eyes, streaming with tears of blood, locked onto me as she reached out her hand.

Sharp, blood-red nails broke through the blackboard and grabbed onto my throat.

"Help me..."

I weakly cried for help, but the agonizing pain drowned me.

The familiar scent of death swallowed me.