When I mentioned the profession of "trick merchant", Mr. Sekiguchi was obviously stunned for a moment, then shook his head and said that he had never heard of it.

He wasn't lying. Judging from the expression on his face, he must have really never heard of it.

This is not surprising. After all, "cheating merchant" is not a common occupation. If I hadn't known Edward, I wouldn't have known what a crafty merchant was.

Maybe Mr. Sekiguchi is in a good mood today and bought the supernatural video he dreamed of, so he wants to tell me more.

Although he is relatively unfamiliar with the trick merchant, when I mentioned the surname Sato, it still reminded him of something...

So, Mr. Sekiguchi smiled and said to me: "Unfortunately, I don't know about the crooked businessman you mentioned, but there is a story about a family named Sato in our country. It can be regarded as folklore. Do you have any?"

Are you interested in hearing it?"

Since the other party said so, I'm quite looking forward to it.

I can’t leave at this time, so I’ll listen to what story Mr. Sekiguchi will tell me. Even if it’s useless to me, at worst it’s just to kill time.

Next, Mr. Sekiguchi told Ermiao and me a story that sounded quite a long time ago...

In the northeastern part of the island country, there is a village where there is a family named Sato. In the entire village, it can be regarded as a large family.

However, the villagers believed that the Sato family would pose a certain threat to other villagers, so the villagers had to impose "eight points in the village" sanctions on the Sato family.

The Sato family really couldn't live in the countryside anymore, so they had no choice but to move to the city...

What does "village eight points" mean?

I don’t know much about the culture of the island country, and I can only understand one or two sentences in Japanese, which are the most commonly used sentences in bed.

Mr. Sekiguchi is a foreign teacher who is very good at giving lectures. Before I asked, he simply explained.

It turns out that the "eight points in the village" is a negative sanction against those who disrupt order in the village. In fact, it is a joint exclusion.

They divided the major events in collective life into ten: coming-of-age ceremony, marriage, childbirth, caring for the sick, house renovation, care during floods, annual worship services, travel, burying corpses and putting out fires.

The so-called "eight points" means that except for the two things of burying corpses and putting out fires, the villagers did not help at all and ignored the other eight things.

So why are there two exceptions?

This is because the last two things are related to the vital interests of other villagers. If the corpse is left alone, it will cause plague if it rots, and if the fire is left alone, it will affect the fish in the pond.

Apart from this, all other matters are subject to collective exclusion. This behavior is very common in rural areas of island countries.

Of course, now that everyone's life is very convenient, we don't have any feelings when we see this kind of exclusion, because we can shop online and order takeout, but it was very scary in the old days.

Once they are excluded by the villagers, it means that they cannot obtain the basic items needed for production and life.

Hearing this, Ermiao and I were both drawn into the story, and we were also very curious, what did the Sato family do to the villagers to be so disliked by their neighbors?

Mr. Sekiguchi continued to explain that the main reason sounded very superstitious. It was said that the Sato family was cursed by some evil spirit.

The villagers were very afraid of this family, especially the mistress of the family, who was called "Mrs. Sato".

This legend should be relatively old and can be regarded as a very ancient folk tale.

Because Mr. Sekiguchi is a Japanese language teacher, he is also a folklore teacher. When teaching the language to the students, he will tell some folklore stories to accompany the teaching, which will make the class very interesting.

Therefore, he has done a lot of research on the folk culture of his nation, and everyone knows that the island nation attaches great importance to the culture of gods and ghosts.

I guess it was because Sekiguchi studied a lot of folklore stories that he joined the Paranormal Research Society. There must be a connection there.

However, this is a bit far-fetched, let’s go back to the story of the Sato family’s curse…

Regarding the Sato family's curse, Mr. Sekiguchi doesn't know when it started. Anyway, it is a very ancient legend.

Legend has it that one winter, a fire broke out in the village's barn, which burned almost all the food stored by the villagers for the winter. As a result, the village ushered in a great famine.

Many villagers are suffering from hunger, but the Sato family seems to have no shortage of food, and the tempting aroma of meat always wafts from his yard.

Not only did this make the villagers very envious, but later the troubled villagers wanted to find out what was going on?

A villager followed the Sato family, and then he saw that the Sato family women always went to a small temple on the top of the mountain late at night, and they didn't know what they did after entering?

The villagers began to gossip, saying that the women of the Sato family did not follow the rules of women and went to the temple to seduce monks and exchange their beauty for food in the temple.

At first this statement was popular for a while, but soon some villagers began to doubt it?

No, there is famine in the whole village, and the life of the monks in the temple is not easy. Even if they sell their sex, the monks don't have any extra food to give away?

Then there was another rumor, which sounded even scarier than the previous one!

It is said that the men of the Sato family are not good, but the women are quite beautiful. They go up the mountain to seduce the monk, then trick the monk into coming home and kill the monk. This is why they always float out of the yard of the Sato family.

The reason for the meaty aroma...

After hearing this version of the rumor, the villagers felt that it was really possible.

Because many people can indeed smell the aroma of meat when they pass by the walls of their homes.

However, some villagers retorted, saying that the monks in the temple on the top of the mountain were all decent and could not be easily seduced by the women of the Sato family, unless the Sato family would use some kind of magic to deceive the monks from the top of the mountain and then eat them.

.

Anyway, there are more and more such legends...

Maybe the villagers were really hungry, it was very cold in winter, and there was nothing to do, so they felt uneasy and had to go to Sato's house every day to pass the time.

Just like that, the long winter finally passed...

Spring is here!

In this way, the villagers will feel better because they can dig some wild vegetables to satisfy their hunger.

Gradually, the villagers became busy preparing for spring plowing, and they paid less attention to the Sato family.

Moreover, some villagers went up the mountain to burn incense and heard that there were indeed a few monks missing from the mountain. The official explanation from the temple was that they had starved to death.

If this were the case, perhaps the rumors about the Sato family would gradually disappear.

However……
Chapter completed!