Of Mountains and Rivers

Chu Huan's impression of the children of the Liyi clan is just one word: wild.

One is to play wildly—they usually don’t have to go to school or cram school anyway, and they run all over the mountains and plains like wild horses all day long.

The other one is a wild personality - this typical case is Xiaofang, that flamboyant girl, with sharp teeth and a sharp mouth, who can kill wild boars and beat her crying little brother.

Their childhood was wild and wild, and they dared to be presumptuous in front of the patriarch, but it was such a group of wild children who were collectively frightened by a slight earthquake.

The earthquake was actually only slightly felt, and it passed in a few minutes. It stands to reason that the southwest region is located on the Himalayan volcanic earthquake belt, and the crust is somewhat hyperactive. What a strange thing, let alone the children, don't the older ones know what an earthquake is?

What surprised Chu Huan even more was that when the ground trembled, these children looked at the sky together with a strange tacit understanding.

Is it related to some of their beliefs?Maybe just like the ancients believed that the lunar eclipse was caused by the dog eating the moon, the Liyi people believed that the earthquake was related to something in the sky?

So what's with the look on their faces like they're facing a big enemy?

Soon, Chu Huan discovered that it was not only children who were facing the enemy.That evening, when class was over, there were a lot of people.Chu Huan’s teaching here is very free and loose. Basically, whoever wants to come can come. Anyway, the classroom is open. Generally, only half of the young and middle-aged people of the Liyi tribe come. Some people still have work to do, and the rest Going to patrol the mountains, the fast horses raised by their clan are for this purpose.

But on this day, the number of people next to Baishitou suddenly doubled, and some of them were supposed to go to patrol the mountain.

This little trick can hide others, not Chu Huan's eyes, but his gaze swept over the mountain patroller, but he just pretended not to know, and gave his Mandarin science lecture as usual.

Even his teaching assistant and patriarch, Nanshan, looked very serious. Chu Huan noticed that he was holding something like a scepter in his hand. He had seen it once at Nanshan's house. It was hung with a lot of cold weapons. The appearance that was so carefully cut that it looked almost gorgeous was incompatible with those cold iron guys.

This kind of thing whose form is greater than content, Chu Huan guessed, may be a symbol of the status of the patriarch.

"Earthquake—that's it. The meaning of vibration, earthquake, is that the ground is vibrating." Chu Huan remembered what he was talking about, he paused, and added, "Usually it is caused by the movement of large rock layers underground, like wind and wind. Like rain."

At this time, he heard Hua Guduo's little follower say in Liyi dialect: "It's not like the wind and rain, it's...the door is open."

Chu Huan had never heard of the word in front of "door", and he didn't know what it meant.

An adult's hand was stretched out from behind the boy, and he slapped the talkative little boy.

Chu Huan pretended not to hear the boy's words as if ignoring the weapons on the mountain patroller, and continued his topic nonchalantly, but at this moment he could clearly feel that after the little boy said that sentence, the atmosphere in the open space suddenly became tense stand up.

This day's class was finished in a depressing atmosphere, and even Dashan, who was usually very devoted, seemed a little absent-minded. The people of the Liyi tribe didn't stay to sing and dance for a while as usual, and they quickly dispersed in silence. The cubs running around were also sent home by their parents.

Nanshan walked towards Chu Huan: "I'll walk with you for a while."

Chu Huan responded, and at this moment, a gust of wind blew away the thin dark clouds in the sky, Chu Huan glanced at the sky inadvertently, and suddenly stopped in his footsteps.

That's... a full moon like copper.

Strange, Chu Huan couldn't help stretching out his hand, and pinched his brows hard. He clearly remembered that the day before was still a slender crescent.

It is impossible for the moon to be inflated, so could it be that he remembered it wrong?

Hallucination?Memory confusion?Or is he even more brain-dead?

As far as Chu Huan's self-perception is concerned, he feels that it is impossible for him to be that crazy.

But if it is not his own problem, how can objective natural phenomena be explained?

"...Chu Huan?"

Nanshan called him several times before Chu Huan came back to his senses: "Well, what?"

Nanshan looked at his face carefully: "Your face is a little pale, are you sick?"

His hospice-like expression immediately reminded Chu Huan of the rumors he heard in the afternoon, and he finally found a channel to divert his attention, so that he no longer entangled in whether he was hallucinating.

Chu Huan gave Nanshan a sad look, and really wanted to ask him, what exactly did he do that made people misunderstand, which gave Nanshan the wrong impression that "this person belongs to a species that can be poked to death by a tree branch".Although he has already tempered his face and put his personal image aside,...for some reasons, Chu Huan still doesn't want his image in Nanshan's heart to be so unheroic.

Chu Huan abruptly broke the subject of Nanshan, pointed to the stick in Zhinanshan's hand, and asked, "By the way, you are holding this thing today. Is there any major event happening in the clan recently?"

Nanshan was taken aback by his sudden question, and after a while, he nodded hesitantly. Chu Huan could see that it was not convenient for him to explain the details to himself, but he was too honest to prevaricate nonsense. One set, trying to figure out how to speak.

"Yes," Nan Shan admitted after a while, "You... well, you try not to be alone these days."

Chu Huan glanced at him. Although Nanshan didn't dodge or avoid, there was a kind of "don't ask" message in his eyes.

Chu Huan immediately realized what was going on, and he stopped asking questions like a follower of kindness, and casually boasted to the patriarch's scepter in Nanshan: "Is the top of your thing inlaid with emerald or jasper? It's so bright green."

Nanshan: "Does it look good?"

Chu Huan nodded: "Not bad."

Generally speaking, praising something about someone else is actually just a link between the past and the future of the conversation between two people. The speaker and the listener will not be too distracted, and they rarely have other meanings, but Nanshan is obviously not an ordinary person.

Chu Huan hadn't landed the word "Not bad", Nanshan's fingers had already clasped the biggest gemstone on the scepter, his slender fingers suddenly bent into claws, and without a word, he used brute force to pick the stone off , holding the bald scepter in one hand, handed the gem to Chu Huan in the other, and said sincerely: "I'll give it to you."

Chu Huan: "..."

Nanshan weighed the stone in his hand, and suggested, "Let me make a hole for you, so you can hang it around your neck."

A big fist-sized jewel hanging around the neck?It will definitely play a pivotal role in promoting cervical spondylosis.

No, the point is—this thing is a gem, right?Not a big candy bar, is it?

Chu Huan: "No, no, that's not what I meant."

Nanshan tilted his head in doubt: "Don't you like it?"

Chu Huan was a little exhausted: "...No, I didn't mean that either."

The two stood facing each other for a moment unable to communicate, separated by a green stone, Chu Huan couldn't figure out what he meant.

Chu Huan smiled awkwardly, and patiently explained in front of the cultural gap like a moat: "In our side, people usually don't give each other such precious gifts for no reason."

Nanshan stared at Chu Huan without blinking with his ignorant and beautiful eyes, and said without hesitation: "Why? I think you are more precious."

Chu Huan was speechless again.

He could swear to the sky that he absolutely didn't think wildly on purpose, but the way Nanshan said this seriously made it difficult for people to hold on. Chu Huan felt as if his heart skipped for no reason. Going down to the ground and wandering out a bunch of garbled characters.

He was tongue-tied for a long time before he kept his serious face like a gentleman, and said with a slightly dry voice: "Verbally, we usually don't say this kind of...uh, this kind of thing that we only say on special occasions."

"Oh, don't say that," Nanshan nodded with a vague sense of understanding, expressing that he was taught. However, just before Chu Huan let out a dry laugh, he asked again with clear eyes. , "If I really like you, what should I say?"

Chu Huan choked on the saliva on the spot and coughed to death.

Nanshan was very confused, looked at Chu Huan with a little embarrassment and smiled: "I made a mistake again."

In his eyes was a bright and clear light, and Chu Huan felt that his own filth was fully reflected in it.He collected himself, his palm felt a little numb, and took Nanshan's scepter and gemstones - originally inlaid on the top, Nanshan snapped them off with his teeth.

Chu Huan looked at it for a moment, and remembered that he had a small box of 502 glue: "Let's go, I'll stick it for you. It's well inlaid. Why do you break it off?"

"It's nothing, that's useless," Nanshan followed him, not caring too much, showing a natural aura of local tyrant, "If only you could stay forever—will you stay forever?"

Chu Huan paused when he heard the words, hesitated for a moment, and when the words came to his lips, he cautiously detoured: "How should I say this? The world is impermanent, right?"

For questions that are difficult to answer, turn around in a tactful manner. Most adults can also hear the strings and know the meaning, and most of them will not ask further questions.

But Nanshan once again showed his extraordinary.

Nan Shan asked with straight eyebrows, "Ah? What do you mean?"

Chu Huan choked for a moment, thought about the wording, and found that no matter how he worded it, it was nonsense, so he had no choice but to follow the way of speaking of the Nanshan patriarch, and said straightforwardly like a mallet: "...meaning no."

"Oh," it was straightforward enough this time, Nanshan was silent for a while, nodded, seemed a little sad, and after a while, he said, "I saw something written on the book you gave me, called' People can sit on an airplane and fly to the clouds, but is there really a car that can fly into the sky on the other side of the river?"

Chu Huan: "Yes, I'll invite you to sit down when I'm free, and fly to my house to play."

Nanshan: "Where is your home?"

"My home is..." Chu Huan's voice suddenly paused, and he was stopped by the question.

Where is his home?

He has no home, only a small apartment without a living room, and a real estate inherited by Chu Aiguo. He didn't even bother to rent it out.

So it's just a house, it's property, can it be called home?

Nanshan smiled: "I don't know what you said, it's far away, right? I can't go, I can't leave the clan too far, but in the future... maybe when the children in the clan grow up and learn Chinese well, I can go out with you to see the outside world."

When he said this, there was a longing that people couldn't bear to break, and Chu Huan swallowed back the unpleasant sentence "the world outside is chaotic".

He let Nanshan into his small courtyard: "Come in, I'll stick to you... eh?"

Chu Huan saw a snake coiled at his door, and the uninvited visitor was sticking out his tongue at him like a watchdog.