Of Mountains and Rivers

When people are close to the sinking ground, the most intuitive reaction is fear.

This kind of fear is groundless and illogical, like animals facing natural enemies, they may not really know the fate of facing natural enemies, and they have no time to think too much, and that fear is naturally born to save their lives, so that When they approached the mountain gate, they couldn't help but want to flee.

Even Ruge couldn't help but pause in front of the mountain gate.

I saw the hazy boundary outside the mountain gate tumbling endlessly like thick clouds, like a greedy tongue, trying to break in several times, but was blocked by the fluorescence of the holy spring.

Nanshan patted Luge, motioned him to get out of the way, took a step forward, and tentatively handed out the burning scepter of the patriarch.

The patriarch's scepter has been known as a "sacred object handed down from generation to generation" for many years, and it has not slacked off like its peers, the small walnuts, so that it has grown patina. Apart from being burnt out, it seems to be able to ward off evil spirits.

The firelight on the scepter was like a wedge, separating a gap in the haze that could swallow everything.

It is like an insignificant miracle, but it shocks those who witness it with their own eyes.

Chu Huan stared at the blaze, and quickly passed a sentence in his mind: "The wind blows from the end of Qingping."

The cold fire shrouded a small area around the scepter. Only then did a few people see clearly that there were not only stones and trees left in the collapsed area—other things still existed, but they were selectively covered by something. up.

Only in the place illuminated by the fire, the truth covered by the haze is suddenly revealed. The gate of the mountain is still full of corpses piled up there, and the blood of different animals emits strange fluorescence under the light of the scepter fire, mottled. of.

However, the monsters and animals that were originally alive all maintained a struggling and frightened posture, and were fixed in place. At first glance, they seemed to be a group of bizarre statues.

Chu Huan finally saw the appearance of the eye-eater clearly, and there was one in front of him—the shape and appearance of a big beetle, entrenched in awe, with its front paws standing high, and every eye on the whole body was opened to the maximum, like carrying a beetle on its back. A whole bunch of scary faces.

Nanshan: "We are tied together with a rope. From now on, no one will leave my side."

The four people pulled each other with ropes, and under the protection of the patriarch's scepter, they walked slowly into the sinking ground.

The surroundings gradually dimmed. With the light of the scepter, they seemed to have walked into a long and dark museum. The wax figures on both sides were not aesthetically pleasing, and they were all scary.

Yuan Ping was the last to walk in. When his whole body was submerged in the haze, when he turned his head again, he found that the mountains, rivers, grass and trees on the other side of the mountain gate were all gone.

This section of the road made people feel agitated. At first, even Yuan Ping, who was the loudest, didn’t make a sound. The few people seemed like little bugs on a road of no return. I don't know where to go.

The last time when he was close to the sinkhole, Chu Huan heard whispers in his ears, but this time, he stretched out his hand to press the walnut on his chest, but felt that it seemed to be dumb, and hadn't said a word for such a long time.

There was no movement around, and the few people shrouded in the light of the scepter could only hear their own footsteps, as if they were a world by themselves, extremely lonely.

After walking for an unknown distance, Yuan Ping finally couldn't stand it anymore and whistled.

Yuan Ping wasn't used to sneaking around, and he didn't say hello to others when he was convulsed. The first time he made a sound, it really shocked the other people.He played "The Painter", but his sense of music was not good, and his tune was erratic. In this situation, instead of alleviating the darkness, it brought a sense of terror full of childlike fun.

Chu Huan kicked him on the foot: "Please shut up."

Yuan Ping refused: "I'm trying to liven up the atmosphere."

Chu Huan: "You're trying to create the background sound of a horror movie—I think this place is special...how should I put it? It's very idealistic."

Nanshan: "What is 'idealism'?"

"I don't know much about philosophy. I just read some popular science stuff. For example, 'materialism' means that something exists in itself, so you think it exists, and 'idealism' means something. It exists only if you think it exists." Chu Huan said, slowly raising one hand, as if trying to reach out of the scepter's aperture, "I feel very idealistic here, I I suspect that these things exist only because we see them, and if we can’t see them, I’m afraid..."

Nanshan grabbed his wrist and pulled it back before he boldly stretched out his hand: "What are you doing!"

Chu Huan: "Just touch it and try it, but I think I will miss it."

Nanshan said sharply, "You don't want your hand anymore?"

Chu Huan: "..."

Trained?

Chu Huan froze for a moment, feeling like he had tasted the taste of a married man for the first time.

After a while, Chu Huan shook Nanshan's hand cautiously: "Report to the leader, can I ask you something?"

Nan Shan glanced at him, Chu Huan bent down to pick up a stone, and smiled obsequiously at Nan Shan.

Several people stopped, ready to see what he was going to do, Chu Huan put the stone in his hand, and threw it back in the direction of the road.

They all knew that there was a large group of monsters in the place they just passed through. Although the monsters became "invisible" after the fire was far away-but they should still exist.

In other words, the flying stone will hit many invisible obstacles.

But the stone flew straight out without encountering the slightest obstacle, drawing a round and natural parabola until it landed.

It turned out that the place where the fire could not be found, the place where they could not see, and the monsters that had piled up like a mountain, "did not exist".

This horrific experiment made the instigator Chu Huan himself have goosebumps all over his body. Yuan Ping murmured beside him, "This is unscientific..."

Chu Huan turned his head and asked Nanshan: "Leader, in view of this unscientific environment, what should we do next? Where to go? Do you have any other instructions?"

Nanshan didn't disappoint him, probably because he didn't have so many half-understood science in his heart, he was just confused for a moment, and soon regained his composure: "Let's go find the holy book."

No one has seen the holy book, but it appears to be extremely powerful in the legends, as if it predicted the events of 500 years before and after. According to people's word of mouth, it is almost like an instruction manual in the fallen land—or, open it The key to it all.

The idea of ​​Nanshan is very clear. The only problem is that the "Holy Book" is not in any library in the world. It is a legend, and the place where it fell is also a legend, and the legend is just unreliable.

The most difficult part of their trip is not the boundless haze, but that they need to collect various legends from various sources, and then try to piece together a boundless way of life among these fragmentary legends.

Of course, now that he has come, Chu Huan is ready to face this situation. He nodded in a very stable mental state: "Where is this so-called "Holy Book", do you have any idea now?"

This time, Yuan Ping answered the call.

"The most widely circulated saying is 'at the end of the world'." Yuan Ping opened his mouth, "I personally think this is very irresponsible. We all know that the earth is round..."

Chu Huan really didn't want to listen to such nonsense remarks, so he interrupted him: "Let me remind you, you may not be from Earth anymore—is there any other valuable legends?"

Ruge, who had been silent by the side, suddenly opened his mouth and said, "I have an impression."

Ruge has been the patriarch of the gatekeeper since the first day the gatekeeper appeared in this world. His memory is complex and vague. It is an encyclopedia that has been hodgepodge from countless generations. He touched his shoulder. The snake, the poisonous snake, Little Green, has been tightly coiled on his body, since they walked into the cave, it seems to have no energy.

Luge stared at the patriarch's scepter of the mountain guard, narrowed his eyes, and his eyes seemed to drift far away. When he tried to recall, there was a kind of indescribable oldness in those eyes.

"I remember like this," Luge hummed softly for a long time, "at the end of the holy mountain, at the top of the holy water, at the heart of the boulder."

This part of the lyrics sounds quite strange. Forget about "heart of stone", it can be barely understood, but which world's strange rhetoric are "end of the mountain" and "top of water"?

Yuan Ping said bluntly: "Patriarch, did you remember wrongly for too long? Shouldn't it be the end of the water, the top of the mountain?"

The gatekeeper who dared to imply that the elders of their clan were confused, Yuan Ping was probably the first in history. Fortunately, Ruge raised him as his son and didn't care about it.

"It's true." Luger said frankly, "It's because it sounds wrong that I remembered it for so many years, otherwise it will be so long ago that I would have forgotten it."

Several people fell silent at the same time, feeling that this line of thinking was unreasonable.

Chu Huan pressed on the temples of his glasses. At this time, this high-tech gadget has more limited functions, basically only the basic functions of timing and telephoto are left, and it has almost become an electronic watch.

The time showed that they had been walking in the sinkhole for nearly ten hours, but Chu Huan found that he was neither thirsty nor hungry. His metabolism seemed to have stopped, but his body did not feel weak, as if he had become a machine. perpetual motion machine.

How can a person move without eating or drinking?

If someone walks into the sinkhole after them, and if they also hold external artifacts like the scepter of the Patriarch of the Mountain Guardian, will the people who walk in later look at them the same way they look at those eye-eaters... Have they become statues?

"Don't talk about this, come with me," Nan Shan said suddenly, "Let's go to Chen Xing Island."

Just when the words "Shen Xingdao" came out, Chu Huan's ear suddenly felt itchy, and he couldn't help turning his head, as if someone said something in his ear, it sounded like a laugh, and then a cry sigh.

Chu Huan pinched the small walnut on his chest with his hand, and felt its slight heat again.

"Shen Xing Island was a forbidden place many years ago," Nanshan said as he walked, "I heard that our place was full of people at that time, if the passing merchants had something from Shen Xing Island, even if it was a small Stones will also be sold at a high price—it is said that the way to the island is full of hidden reefs or something, anyway, it is beyond the reach of manpower, and it is very mysterious."

"Earlier, there were many boring people who thought they were warriors and visited Shen Xing Island, but no one could come back." Ruge interjected, "Gradually, no one went to die. While getting more and more mysterious, it also started to become scary."

After finishing speaking, Ruge thought for a moment: "However... I forgot if you didn't mention it. I remember that when the legend of the first fallen land was spreading, there were rumors that it was from Shen Xing Island."

The group's itinerary was very urgent. At the beginning, several people discussed it. Every night, they took turns to watch the night. The night watchman was responsible for ensuring that the patriarch's scepter was always burning, but they soon discovered that when people were in the cave, all fatigue was psychological. However, if Chu Huan didn't report the time, they wouldn't feel tired or how far they had walked.

Time becomes something unnecessary.

Several people have no lack of field experience, and it is not difficult to distinguish the direction without the sun.

Passing through the forest of steles where the mountain guards patrolled the mountain, the record of the last time Nanshan led people to patrol the mountain was engraved as if it was written yesterday. I saw someone here.

The experience of seeing people was not pleasant at all. At that time, Chu Huan was enduring Yuan Ping's ear-piercing whistle, when he suddenly heard a little noise.

This time, the auditory hallucinations that rang in his ears were very clear, almost as if they were real. It was a woman, and she spoke with a slight milky voice. She should be young, and she called a person's name .

Chu Huan couldn't help standing still, and repeated it in a low voice. He seemed to be involuntarily influenced by the owner of the voice, and when he called out that name, his tone was almost full of affection.

Yuan Ping stopped and rubbed his cheeks, and asked Nan Shan, "Is this your nickname?"

Chu Huan put a finger up on his lips, and then searched around. The four of them were tied together, and if one moved, the others would follow suit.

Yuan Ping: "You're looking for... ah!"

He suddenly stepped on something under his feet. Yuan Ping looked down and saw that he was not well. He quickly took a step back and bumped into Ruge. After licking him slobberingly, Yuan Ping suddenly became even worse, and let out a scream with a different tone.

The firelight on the scepter waved away the haze, and several people saw clearly that what Yuan Ping stepped on was a young girl. She was prostrate on the ground with a terrified and desperate expression, with one hand propped on the ground and the other stretched forward. He opened his palms, as if he was pushing something.

Her body was still soft, with the unique warmth of a living person.

There are countless specimen-like animals and plants in the dark, and the sudden appearance of a person with body temperature has a different psychological impact on people.

Chu Huan circled her a few times: "Nanshan, do you think she looks a bit like those veterans in your cave?"

He had never seen other people in this world before, but he only heard what the mountain guards and gatekeepers said, and it didn't feel real. Until he saw this little girl with his own eyes, Chu Huan suddenly realized that there was a particularly illogical thing.

Suppose, for some reason, some places suddenly become unsuitable for human habitation, then the most natural reaction of the survivors must be to migrate collectively, and the destination of the migration is of course the place that has not had time to fall-if this continues, Shoushan Shouldn't their sacred mountain be crowded with refugees from all over the world?

Even monsters know how to break through the mountain gate, why don't people know?

How come there are only two races of mountain guards and gatekeepers from beginning to end?