True Lies（一）

The memories of the village of Jiajia begin with the pig that ran hard.

I saw my ten-year-old self standing on a dry tree in front of the drying field, holding the rough trunk with one hand and putting the other on my forehead, looking at the drying field not far away with interest. A grand sacrifice will be held there.

After I had eaten a hearty meal for a long time, my stomach, which had long since become accustomed to hunger, groaned reproachfully again and again. After burping, I farted several loud and smelly farts. Looking back now, I have some doubts. The pig heard my loud fart and took it as a kind of command, whereupon it broke away from the humans and ran off.

"Damn it! The pig ran away!"

Then I heard the angry cries of my adoptive father. Jia Yiren's broken shouts were stretched and torn by the wind, floating in the sky above Jiajia Village.

"Catch the pigs for me!" he ordered, looking very proud.

Thereupon the members of the Jia family, who had just been huddled together in the drying field, scattered and began to chase the runaway pigs. My adoptive father vigorously swung his healthy right arm, hobbled on and was soon thrown to the back of the crowd. His swaying posture resembled the once majestic and cocky goose in the village, but half his body was tilted so comically that I crouched down and clung to the tree trunk, bursting into tears with laughter. My voice has become hoarse from the constant grief, so my laughter is as broken as Jia Yiren's shouts.

Guangtou Jia was the fastest runner in the crowd, and he caught up with the pig in a short time. Since he had no hair, his smooth head shone particularly brightly in the sunlight. He rolled up his sleeves, coughed, spat into his palm, then rubbed it and tried to pull the pig by the tail, but failed. So he adopted a hopping posture like a toad, walked towards the pig, tried to jump up and subdued it with his own weight. He spread his arms, lowered his center of gravity and swayed left and right with the pig. Then, recognizing the opportunity, he quickly leaned on the pig's back with both hands and spread his upper body. The pig swayed its hooves, turned in a circle a few times and then slowly stopped. When Jia Guangtou sat upright on its back and even showed off to the people who were late with ropes, it suddenly bent its two front legs, lifted its buttocks with all its might and threw the forward-facing Jia Guangtou upside down. Then it nimbly passed through the panting and coughing crowd and ran towards the wide field in front of the drying area.

My eyes followed the running pigs, and my gaze wandered from the bustling crowd to the barren and cracked fields.

In earlier years at this time, the dry fields were covered with round, plump, golden grains of rice, and the fields were covered with a thick, soft layer of straw that exuded a beguiling fragrance. Nowadays, the drying field is completely empty. After the expansion of the chemical plant, the remaining fields were also empty. The dark soil, which was once fertile, is now dry, yellow, full of cracks and has become an empty shell in which no plants can grow, as if the body had lost the nourishment of blood.

Against the backdrop of the destroyed Jia family and the ruined land, the pig running on the dusty field looked extremely lively. Its sturdy figure made me sceptical at first. In the next second, it would take off from the runway in the field, grow wings and fly into the distant sky, towards survival and freedom.

The last living pig in Jiajia Village used all its cleverness to avoid the crowd and ran from the dry field to the field, from the field to the small grove I was in, and then through the forest to the bumpy road, and then straight down the road. Run to the widow's house, which is its home.

The widow sat on the threshold, clutching her handkerchief tightly and weeping with grief at the loss of her last pig. It was hard to find the charm of the past in her sad face. When she heard the sound of the pig running into the yard and saw it walking to her side, the widow blinked her eyes, wiped her face with her handkerchief in disbelief, then slapped her thigh in surprise and exclaimed, shouting"Aiya aiya." She stuffed the handkerchief into her pocket, stood up with the help of the door frame and touched the pig's head with great affection. The pig shook its head and rubbed it against her palm.

"What a spiritual animal." The widow sighed sincerely.

The noise of the crowd reached the courtyard before the disorderly footsteps, causing the widow to suppress her surprise at having found what she had lost and to feel fear instead.

"Hey, the pigs are back again!"

Jia Guangtou ran into the courtyard, panting, with a layer of sweat on his forehead. The widow bent down, put her hand on the pig's head and looked at him nervously.

"It's so funny! Why did it run back?"

"Pigs run faster than people."

"My body is really broken, I have no strength left..."

"No, no, I can't breathe..."

A huge crowd of people followed Jia Guangtou and rushed into the courtyard, coughing and red-faced. When they saw the escaped pig that had taken up residence next to the widow, they were in a dilemma. It took a lot of effort to persuade the widow to donate the last living pig in the house. It was not easy to persuade people to take the pig away, but such a joke happened again.

The members of the Jia family gathered in the courtyard, looking at each other and recalling the warmth of the past. No one was willing to be the villain and make the widow who had lost and then found her relive the grief of loss.

"I really treat it as my own child."

The widow hugged the pig's neck and spoke to everyone with tears in her eyes. The pig seemed to understand her words, wagged its tail and stuck close to her in response.

Now, no one dared to take the pig away.

The village headman Jia Xiande looked at everyone, sighed and went to the widow: "My dear sister, you know that there really is no way. The chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep in the village have all been poisoned... If there was one left, they would not come to catch your pig. Everyone knows how carefully you take care of it... But there's really... no way..."

Jia Xiande spoke sincerely with a sense of guilt.

It was he who did the ideological work for the villagers and secretly leased the land of the elementary school to outsiders to open a chemical factory because they could not earn money from farming and did not even have enough to eat. He also thought that after the chemical factory was built, the village would be prosperous and everyone would have money in their pockets, he would build a university and invite teachers from the town to teach the children. The next generation of the village must study hard.

But who could have guessed that the bright and beautiful future would be as fleeting as a soap bubble.

The boss ran away, the chemical factory collapsed and the money he deserved was gone; the water and soil were contaminated, the fields could no longer be cultivated, the cattle were poisoned, and the Jia family's health was also damaged... In the end, they were reduced to stealing a poor widow's pig!

"There really is no other way." Jia Xiande kept repeating this sentence helplessly.

"I really raised it as a child." The widow kept repeating this sentence helplessly.

Everyone looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

"Kill it and save our whole village!"

I hid at the gate, looked through the dusty human legs and searched for the pig. Suddenly I heard my adoptive father shouting and saw him raise his healthy right arm high and wave it vigorously in the air. Everyone turned their heads to look at him and stepped aside to make way for him.

"If it dies, we don't have to die!"

My adoptive father's hoarse cry and his openness to death made the members of the Jia family present to fall into deeper fear and despair, and they even coughed softly.

His left hand, twisted into a knot due to polio, was clutched tightly to his waist. The waving right arm and swaying walking posture made him look like a bumpy, long-necked vase with a handle, which was very funny. However, this funny thing in my eyes was accompanied by some unknown mystery and horror in the eyes of the Jia family.

At that time, the outrageous feudal superstitions and rumors were already known to everyone in Jiajia Village.

Jia Yiren took advantage of people's fear of death and despair of reality to portray himself as a special person who could foresee and even control death. And this superstition became exaggerated as it spread, so that his personal image continued to be idolized. Some said that he was an immortal who had long predicted that Jiajia Village would fall into this disaster. He could not bear it and came to earth to help people overcome the difficulties. Because he had revealed the secret, his body shape was different. Others said that I was a boy who had followed him to Earth. Only the two of us could save this disaster together, so I was picked up by him and taken home.

Combined with Jia Yiren's strange figure and my special life experience, these rumors were exaggerated and made the panicked Jia family believe them.

However, these superstitious words are neither unfounded nor logical.

If Jia Yiren was really an immortal who could know the consequences, he would definitely not dig the drainage ditches that indirectly caused the disaster. And I, who appeared and disappeared in everyone's eyes, was only an unknown because I had previously been ignored and ostracized by the Jia family, but after a funeral, I was suddenly came to a position that was noticed and feared by the entire Jia family.

Before the disaster, we were on the outskirts of Jiajia Village, but after the disaster, we were pushed to the center of Jiajia Village.

"If one of them dies, there is hope that we can all be saved. What's so special about the life of an animal?"

These kinds of words aren't what an immortal would say.

"Look how clever it is, it's spiritual, it doesn't look like an animal at all." The widow hurriedly replied, whispering to the pig, hoping that Jia Yiren would be lenient due to their previous relationship.

"No matter how smart it's, an animal is still an animal!" Jia Yiren objected loudly and ruthlessly.

Jia Xiande looked embarrassed, gently patted the widow on the shoulder and gave her some friendly advice, "Good sister, there's really no way. You won't lose any money, let's take the pig away. Just think of it as a good deed, a great virtue..."

"Are you going to let us die just because you can't bear to part with a pig?"

Jia Yiren's sharp question startled me, and I carelessly stuck my finger into the crack of the courtyard door.

"Which is more important, the life of an animal or the life of a human being? Is the life of so many of us not worth as much as that of an animal?"

Jia Yiren's sarcastic remarks made the widow look ashen-faced, and the atmosphere in the courtyard turned sinister. At first, everyone felt sorry for the widow who was alone and poor and had worked hard all her life, but in the end, only one pig had left in the pig farm. Therefore, no one was willing to step forward and be the bad guy and take her pig away. But after hearing Jia Yiren's words, they felt bad again and looked at the widow with some complaints and reproaches - accusing her of not realising the importance and blaming her for not knowing the general situation. Of course, a human life is more important than an animal life. Why let everyone die for a pig?

"I tell you, the black and white immortals have taken up residence by the bridge in our village and they are not going anywhere! They have chains in their hands and are waiting to tie us up one by one and take us away! When the time comes, no one can escape and we will all die!" Jia Yiren waved his arms vigorously, his face flushed and spat.

The widow had no power to refute him, nor did she dare to refute his words.Having understood the fate of the last pig, she seemed to be pronounced dead, and she collapsed to the ground, silently opening her mouth, and her chest rising and falling violently.

"I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes!"

Jia Yiren nodded his forehead and added. Some anxious people in the crowd were trembling with fear, and their faces were as dusty as the dry land.

"Come on, carry the pig away!"

Jia Yiren spat, pointing at two slightly stronger young men in the crowd with a haughty look.

The two young men took the carrying pole and rope handed to them by the others, looked at each other, muttered "bad luck" quietly and with drooping faces, and went very reluctantly to the pig. The clever pig, as if it had understood that it could not escape the fate of being slaughtered in the end, stood obediently without any resistance. They tied the pig's two front legs and two hind legs together, pushed it to the ground and then attached the rope loops to the two ends of the carrying pole. I noticed that their hands were constantly shaking as they tied the rope.

The widow stared blankly at the pig and the people slowly moving away, gasping and holding her breath for a long time before she could utter an "ah ah", and then she screamed loudly as if a switch had been flipped. She slapped the ground with her hands in despair, and dust flew all over the sky following her sad wails. The widow's heartbreaking cry made me duck my head, and then I thought of the crazy woman. So I walked away too, choosing a path away from the crowd.