Of Mountains and Rivers

"You have a lot of old wounds." Nanshan put down the medicine bowl, "This is the medicine that the elders boiled for you. Drink it and it will make you feel better."

Chu Huan poked his head and glanced at the so-called "medicine"-if it was a bowl of swill, pigs would have to rebel.

He wrinkled his nose and smelled it, and deeply felt the dark cooking talent in the blood of the Liyi clan.

Oh... except Miss Chun.

Chu Huan held his breath before drinking and fully adjusted his mental state, but he still underestimated the lethality of the elders. Due to such cruel and inhuman abuse, his whole tongue went on strike, and Chu Huan hurriedly took the pillow I gulped down the bowl of water next to me to suppress my nausea, and then asked weakly, "I... did I seduce your elder's wife?"

Nanshan replied solemnly: "No, the elder's wife has been dead for 15 years."

After he finished speaking, he probably felt that something was wrong, and after thinking about it for a few seconds, he recalled: "Are you joking just now?"

Chu Huan: "..."

Nanshan thought about it carefully, carefully analyzed the context, and searched out the memory: "I see, what you just said was 'the hatred of killing your father and taking your wife'?"

After a series of complicated reading comprehension, he finally smiled knowingly.

Lively laugh out the taste of the passage of time.

Chu Huan was helpless.

He felt that he had basically recovered his strength after lying down for a day and a night, so he got up.

Since the clothes on his body were already out of shape at that time, the clansmen took them off for him, repaired them, folded them and put them next to the pillow. He is basically naked now.Chu Huan hesitated for a moment, and quickly assessed his figure in a short time. He felt that he was not bad, so he lifted the quilt with confidence, and did not shy away from Nanshan at all, pulled the clothes and put them on his body slowly.

"How to wear a shirt in the most handsome posture" was once a major research topic of Chu Huan during his adolescence.

As a result, Nanshan didn't think much when he was scrubbing and applying the medicine. At this moment, he suddenly felt that he couldn't look directly at him, so he looked away awkwardly after a few glances.

"Since the child has been brought back, I have to go." Chu Huan said while buttoning his shirt, "You guys...what's the name of that one? Druids?"

Nan Shan looked at his nose, nose and mouth and said, "Mutai."

"Well, that's the one, what does the name mean?"

"It means 'monster of the wind'."

Chu Huan: "Crazy monsters? Mad dogs? Well, no matter what it is, it's almost a disaster anyway. Why is it so serious? Where do they come from? Are there natural enemies? Will they cause casualties?"

"Yes," Nanshan said, "people die every year."

Chu Huan paused: "Why don't you ask the local government or the garrison for assistance?"

Nanshan: "No."

Chu Huan: "Why not?"

Nanshan seemed to be sitting there organizing his words, trying to explain the incident, but failed in the end, so he stood up and said to Chu Huan, "Come with me."

Nanshan took Chu Huan to a cave far away from the settlement.

The elder wearing a bellyband was standing at the door, looking at Chu Huan with scrutiny.

His eyes were full of probing, which made people very unpleasant. Chu Huan frowned slightly, but limited by the code of conduct of "respecting the old and loving the young", he felt that it was inconvenient for him to have the same knowledge as such an old thing whose loess was buried on the top of his head, so He just nodded politely and said hello: "Elder."

The elder ignored him, just looked at Nanshan, with the corner of his mouth curled down, moving slowly, the pocket on his chest made him look like a turtle with its shell on its back.

"You are the patriarch, I can't control it, you decide for yourself." He said, took the torch from the entrance of the cave, and walked in first.

Nanshan gave Chu Huan a hand, and dragged him to follow the elder into the cave. The dancing flames lit up the cave, and Chu Huan's eyes turned around carelessly, then suddenly focused—he saw the wall at the entrance of the cave. Hanging a rifle.

It was a rifle full of signs of time.

Nan Shan took down the gun with both hands, and handed it to Chu Huan. Chu Huan looked at it carefully for a moment, and said in a low voice, "Five or six."

Elder: "This is a weapon that can kill wild animals from a long distance."

Although he had never attended Chu Huan's class, he could speak fluent Chinese with a strange accent.

Chu Huan corrected politely: "We usually call it a gun, a rifle—if it's convenient, can I ask where it came from?"

The elder took out a small piece of grass from his belly pocket, stuffed it into his mouth and chewed it, like an old goat with a bad temper: "Nanshan was not born at that time, even his grandma I just grew up a few years ago, and that day, heavy fog covered the land in the clan, which was the first night of the shaking period."

The old goat's words were puzzling, so Chu Huan had to interrupt: "Excuse me, what's the date?"

Is this the season of high earthquake incidence?

The elder gave him a sideways look, as if he was a little dissatisfied with his ignorance, but due to the presence of the Nanshan patriarch, he swallowed his words when they reached his lips.

"Yesterday was the first day of the shaking period." Nanshan explained next to him, "Elder, I didn't have time to tell him - the first fog in winter every year is a warning, and the shaking period will enter in about a few days after that. Once it enters the shaking period, the channels inside and outside the clan will be disconnected."

Chu Huan was at a loss: "Is the disconnection a literal meaning?"

Nanshan didn't quite understand the "literal meaning" and other meanings. He thought for a while, and explained some words vaguely: "The meaning of 'disconnected'...the meaning of 'disconnected' means that the outside world no longer exists. Yes, do you understand?"

Chu Huan shook his head - not at all.

The elder raised two fists: "There is a world on this side of the river, and there is also a world on the other side of the river. We live here and you live there. Before the shaking period, the two sides of the river were connected together. Once the shaking At the beginning of the period, the passage in the middle was cut off, and now no one can get out of that river, because the other side of that river is no longer your hometown, but 'nothing'."

Does this speak human words?

Nanshan said: "Yesterday you walked into the river just before the shaking started, so although you almost lost your way, you came here in the end-if you walked into the river after the shaking started, you would find yourself crossing the river very quickly , but on the other side of the river there may only be a large barren mountain, and you cannot return to us."

Chu Huan: "..."

Nanshan asked patiently: "Is that clear?"

The elder groaned angrily, impatient with Chu Huan's slow reaction.

Chu Huan looked at the stinking goat face of the elder, nodded with a smile on his face and said, "I probably understand a little bit, you can continue."

At the same time, I thought to myself: "Understood the bastard, where is this going?"

The elder went on to say: "On the eve of the shock period, some people from the other side of the river strayed into the river and lost their way. At that time, some tribesmen happened to be on guard in the river, so they led them in——Our ancestors have a story about the people on the other side. The record, but it has always been just a legend, until that time, our generation has really come into contact with it."

Chu Huan listened to this passage. Judging from Nanshan's age, his mother may have been born in the 60s and [-]s. If, as the elder said, these people came when she was young, and she carried a rifle with her...wouldn't it be Could it be a soldier who lost his way and was left alone for various reasons during the self-defense counterattack?

"My Liyi tribe has always been a visitor. Originally, there were visitors from afar, and they should stay in the tribe for a while, but the shock period is approaching, and it is really inconvenient for the tribe to keep guests. So the leader of the tribe at that time—Ah of Nanshan Mom, I prepared presents and decided to send them away the next day." The elder squinted his eyes and looked at a distant place, "But I didn't expect that the 'shock' came too fast, and it's the same this time, It seems like every time an outsider comes in, the amount of time we're in the shock period shortens."

"The clansmen were forced to confront the enemy before their wine sobered up. Groups of Mutai appeared on the land. The guests were shocked at first, and then drove them away with the thing you held in your hand," said the elder. He said, sighing, "Every winter, many warriors of my mountain guard clan will die. This is the first time I have seen such a powerful weapon, but..."

As the elder said, he led Chu Huan into the cave.

The fire illuminated the cave inside, Chu Huan was startled suddenly, a chill ran up his spine - he saw a few men in the cave, they were sitting or standing, in different shapes, and their clothes could already be put on The old military uniforms in the military museum look lifelike, like a group of extremely fine wax figures.

Chu Huan looked at these people in amazement, and then carefully raised his hand to open the clothes of one of them. The clothes were sewn with information such as the number and name of that person. He found that he was right. He was indeed a veteran of that year. .

Chu Huan involuntarily stretched out his hand to sniff the man's breath - decades have passed, they have no breathing, no heartbeat, and no decay, the skin is still soft, and there is still body temperature... It seems that time has stopped there In an instant, the air around them condensed into invisible amber.

"In the dense fog, their movements became slower and slower, unnaturally slow, but I couldn't feel it at all. I called out to them in horror," the elder pointed to a soldier, who still kept turning his head, his face The expression seemed a little puzzled, "Then the clansmen watched them slowly solidify."

Chu Huan's voice was dry: "What does 'solidify' mean? These people... are they dead or alive?"

"There is neither life nor death," Nanshan said. "You think, when the shock period begins, the world 'over the river' is equivalent to non-existence, so of course the people from the other side of the river also 'non-exist', since They don't actually exist, so what's the difference between life and death?"

Chu Huan had goose bumps all over his body on the spot.

It was a long time before he recovered his voice: "You mean, the 'existence' of these people has been erased."

The elder nodded: "We have tried many methods. When the 'winter' of that year passed and the two banks of the river were connected again, we used horses to pull their bodies and wanted to send them across the river, but just as we crossed the river, In an instant, these people suddenly disappeared from our horses. The tribe leading the horses was terrified, and ran back to report, but saw them again at the place where these people 'frozen' at the beginning."

In the same place, in the same state.

They can't get out anymore.

There was silence in the cave, and Chu Huan frowned tightly. After a while, he said, "I'm also an outsider, why am I still standing here?"