me and my monster neighbor

The ridge forms a natural dividing line, dividing the scorched earth riddled with holes and the green oasis into two sides.

Xu Lala parked his bicycle under the ridge.

To the east of Thirteen Stone Fortresses, the gurgling stream of Jiutian River is half-covered by lush forests, and animals with unspiritual awareness are running wildly by the stream, without vigilance.

Xu Lai and Yuanchu stood on the ridge. He looked back at Yuanchu and said, "As long as you continue to go up along this river, and when you reach the end, there will be a large field of hibiscus trees with red flowers, and the hibiscus trees form a circle. , holding—a spring eye, I—found you in that spring eye in the first place, you are just a stone egg.”

Yuan Chu looked into the distance, his eyes passed through thousands of mountains, and he only responded with a voice: "En."

Xu Lala raised his eyebrows: "Go and have a look?"

Original answer: "No."

After a pause, he added, "I can't go."

The spring of the Jiutian River is hidden in the southern corner of the Demon Realm Continent. It is feared by all demons, and it is an existence similar to the law of Wanyao Palace.

If it is said that the demon world hides in the darkness, and Wanyao Palace is the source of all evil, then the spring of Jiutian River symbolizes light. The sun rises above Dongshan Mountain, bathes in the Tang Valley, and brushes Fusang on the top. This is the bathing place for the sun. Every day, a new rising sun rises from here to the sky.

——Yin and one yang, live together, shadows are born in light, although the demon world is covered by darkness, but the light will never die out, just like the spring of Jiutian River nourishing the peach blossoms east of the thirteen stone barriers for millions of years.

As for the original, his existence was not tolerated by the light. When he chose to blew himself up, the Wanyao Palace should have smashed his corpse into tens of thousands of pieces, gathered his blood in the ocean, and built his flesh and blood into mountains. He should have become The nutrients from the demon world re-nourished a new master of Wanyao Hall.But the law didn't choose him, but Wan Yao was willing to make a fool of himself for him.

Fenghuang desperately brought the stone eggs transformed by Yuanyuan to the spring of Jiutian River. Fenghuang's death burned a piece of scorched land stretching for tens of miles, but Jiutianhe Spring silently "protected" Yuanyuan for a full 100 years.

The spring of Jiutian River is incompatible with Wanyao Palace.

The human race is also at odds with monsters.

But it was the spring of Jiutian River that nourished Yuanyuan, and Xu Lala, a prophet of the human race, let him see the sky again.

……

Xu Lala couldn't help but look at Yuan Chu, only to see a subtle change in his expression.Xu Lala was quiet for a moment, then said after deliberating, "It doesn't matter if you can't go, I'll just describe it to you."

Yuanyuan stared ahead, without turning his head, but he said, "I can see there."

Xu Lala opened his mouth, then closed his mouth again when he heard the words, his lips were slightly pursed into a line, he looked into the distance with his original gaze, he could only see a piece of lush green life, but that was enough.

—For a while, the two remained silent in tacit understanding.

At the beginning, he could see thousands of miles away. Going upstream along the Jiutian River, he saw a large group of hibiscus trees, like a group of young girls playing barefoot in the water on the bank. The mountain spring, the shadow of the tree is graceful, and a hibiscus leaf naturally breaks away from the branch and falls on the water surface, making several circles of ripples of different shades.

In the center of the spring, a series of small air bubbles emerged for a long time, and the hibiscus leaf swirled a few times, and then was swept away by the airflow at the bottom of the spring, and soon left the spring, being supported by the water of the Jiutian River. Next, start its own new journey.

Yuan Chu asked: "You were the one who carried me up from Jiutianhequan, right?"

In fact, it is more accurate to say that it is "fishing" rather than "holding".

Xu Lai ignored the details that he used a branch to salvage the stone egg, and said vaguely: "Well...the stone egg at that time, let me think about it, it was probably as big as four or five fists of mine."

Xu Lala's right hand was clenched weakly into a fist, and he stretched it out in front of Yuan Chu to make a gesture.

"The surface of the stone egg is a little rough, but such a big stone has almost no weight. The stone has a concave surface, which should be caused by the blowhole in the spring all the year round. It just fits on my abdomen and the size is suitable. I Just relying on this to pretend to be a stone spirit..."

Xu Lai even forgot when was the last time he talked eloquently.

When he was in the real world, he didn't talk much, and his daily communication with his aunt was a fixed number of words. He and the two dogs probably talked more than people.

Later, he accidentally fell into the world of monsters. He and his monster neighbors have never really been honest with each other, and occasionally they communicate with each other and cover their bottoms.After that, He Chuchu "escaped" and embarked on the road of no return to subdue the four demon spirits. In fact, he and Chuchu didn't talk much, but they communicated more frequently with the four demon spirits.

But today was the first time that he was nagging and talking non-stop, and Yuan Yuan was responsible for being a quiet listener.

In a sense, the original is his first audience.

It is also his only audience.

Xu Lai and Yuan Chu stood side by side with the thirteen stone fortresses. Their feet were the dividing line, and the angle of the afternoon sun was not so slanted. They stepped on the shadow and the ridge that divided the oasis dry land into two halves.

After hearing the whole process of his "rebirth" from Xu Lai, Yuanyuan asked at the end, "What about you?"

Xu Lai turned around suspiciously: "What?"

The original eye pupils seemed to be painted with a layer of radiant golden paint under the sun, he hardly blinked, and the golden eyes looked straight at him, "I want to know what happened to you in the other world .”

Xu Lala's lips moved, his thin lips parted slightly, but he was speechless for a while.

The breeze gently lifted the broken hair on his forehead, and the ends of the hair brushed against his eyelids, forcing him to blink uncomfortably.

Before Xu Lai opened his mouth, Yuan Chu did not speak again. He just waited quietly, waiting for Xu Lai to open his heart to him, just like he had waited quietly in the spring of Jiutian River for a full 100 years. arrival.

Xu Lala subconsciously avoided the original gaze, his gaze was flustered and wavering, wandering in the vast and boundless distance.

Xu Lala opened his mouth again, his voice became hoarse for no reason.

"In that world, I was just an ordinary high school student, without any superpowers, and I didn't experience any earth-shattering life—if I had to say it, it might have been during the summer vacation after my sophomore year that my parents divorced Yes, that was the biggest incident that happened to me in the past ten years. Then I took a break from high school for a period of time, and this year I will transfer to a new school. Reading books is a student’s job, but it doesn’t matter anymore, I’m not Good boy in the traditional sense.

"After my parents divorced, I followed my father, but my father threw me to my aunt as soon as he turned around. He went to work in other places alone without any worries. My mother went abroad. After their divorce, the whole year In the past year, my mother has not come back to see me."

Xu Lai will always remember the midsummer of his sophomore year of high school, when green vines climbed up the decaying walls, and the home was built with red bricks, gray tiles and green fences, knowing that he was hidden in the dense branches and leaves, with a loud voice, and prepared to make noise all summer.However, the quarrel between his parents only lasted for more than half a month, and then a paper of divorce agreement was made, and it was broken up cleanly.

On the day his mother moved out of that house, his mother was packing her luggage in the house, his father was standing in the house smoking a cigarette, and Xu Lala was sitting in front of the French window sill, his tense profile reflected in the glass window.

The weather is stuffy and stagnant, no one is turning on the air conditioner, and the house smells of sweat and smoke, it's all terrible.

Xu Lala was holding a piece of bubble wrap that had just been taken out of the express box in his hand, rustling, he squeezed the bubbles continuously, making several popping sounds intermittently.

- A "pop", followed by a series of "pops".

At first there was a rhythm, and then the rustling sound intensified, his depression was on the verge of collapse, like a mountain rain was about to come, the bubble wrap was kneaded into a ball, because of the force, the pink blood under the fingernails gathered again Scattered, scattered and gathered again, ten fingers connected to the heart, like a heart that is constantly spouting and contracting, the sound of explosions is noisy, scrambling to be the first, out of order, completely breaking the cicadas singing pinellia in that summer vacation.

In the end, the bubble wrap was thrown out by him heavily, but landed lightly, disturbed thoughts and impatient heartbeat intertwined into rapid and heavy breathing.

The door opened and closed again, and the afternoon that was so hot that the summer cicadas had no time to cry ended with the sound of the bubble film bursting.

Before she left, and after she left, Xu Lala sat in front of the window - motionless, but his heart was far less indifferent than the surface.

There is a courier box lying at his feet. This is a new photo frame that he ordered for more than half a month before receiving the delivery. He originally wanted to reframe the group photo of the family of three, but he has not let his parents know about the existence of this thing. The photo frame is like his sensitive and fragile young heart, lying quietly in the box and smashed to pieces.

……

Xu Lai fell silent again after talking about this.

Yuanyuan asked vaguely, "Are you abandoned?"

"I……"

Xu Lala glanced at him, but didn't answer right away, because another memory popped up in his mind.

After that, Xu Lai was taken by his father to his aunt's house.Xu Lala was alone, with two dogs beside him, watching his father's car drive away in the dust, left his hometown, and went outside to do business.

My aunt is a chic non-marriage advocate, standing beside him in pajamas, with her arms around her chest, teasing him nonchalantly: "Are you about to cry, do you need me to comfort you?"

Xu Lala said blankly, "You can comfort me."

The aunt snorted and said rather reluctantly: "It's not that your father doesn't want you, it's that he doesn't want you to go around and suffer hardships with him."

Xu Lala lowered her eyes: "What about my mother?"

The aunt laughed and said, "Your mother doesn't want to suffer by herself, so she doesn't want you."

An adult—one sentence is enough to pierce through the heart of a 16-year-old boy.

Xu Lala said coldly: "Can't you lie to me?"

The aunt tilted her head in a funny way, bumped Xu Lai's shoulder, and said sarcastically, "You've heard these things about me for a while, right? If she's not worth your waste of affection, why should I lie to you?" ? But if she is worth it, I can't fool you even if I want to."

The aunt's ridicule finally made a small splash in Xu Lala's heart like stagnant water. He glared at his aunt in dissatisfaction, like a hedgehog with fried hair: "Do you think I am childish now?"

The aunt forcibly pinched Xu Lai's cheek, and said with a smile: "You have lived with your mother for 16 years, whether she treats you well or not, whether she is good or bad, who can know better than you? You You actually came to ask me this kind of question, wow, you are so mature."

"But," my aunt didn't care about Xu Lala's resistance, she used both hands to ruffle his hair vigorously, "before you are a minor, they should be responsible for you, and only you have the right to decide whether to forgive them."

But Xu Lala only heard his aunt's last words at that time. He was immersed in his own world, Ye Bianmu, convinced that he was abandoned by the whole world, his heart was covered with hard armor, and sharp thorns grew all over his body.At that time, the only effective way for him to ensure that his feelings were not wasted was not to give his feelings to anyone.

The him at that time became the later him, a weird person who was wary of everyone and only reserved his warmth for small animals.

But as long as he thinks about it, he clearly knows that at least his aunt has not abandoned him. Although the aunt is very out of tune, she is a very good person.

During his half-year absence from school, he only saw two silly dogs accompanying him, but forgot that his aunt was also accompanying him.

My aunt was also noncommittal about his decision to suspend school, and she fried eggs on her own, saying only: "Except for violations of discipline and law, especially pornography, gambling and drugs, as for the rest, you can do whatever you like. I will give you half a year." Adjust your state, and when you come back, you have to go back to school and study hard for me. People who don't study will become stupid, not to mention you don't have much room for decline."

My aunt said I didn’t care about him, so I really didn’t care about him. Xu Lai was on the road of rebellion—whether he went or not, he had his ears pierced and got tattoos. Smoking on the balcony.

Xu Lala took off his collar, showed the tattoo on his left shoulder to his aunt, raised the corners of his mouth and smiled viciously, and asked, "Does it look good?"

My aunt squinted her eyes in the curling smoke, and when she saw the three little bean sprouts clearly, she laughed loudly and said, "Your eyesight is alright hahahahahaha, cough cough."

She was choked by herself and kept coughing, and then wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, not knowing whether it was from laughing or coughing, and said: "But I would like to remind you that some university majors explicitly prohibit tattoos. You'd better understand it first." one time."

Xu Lala took her aunt's words as deaf ears, sat down on the wicker chair next to her aunt, then picked up a cigarette between her fingers, turned on the lighter and lit it.

Xu Lala spit out white mist provocatively, tilted his head and glanced at his aunt.

Aunt smiled and got up, ruffled his hair, and taunted him as usual: "You are awesome, but this is a lady's smoke."

……

Xu Lala subconsciously touched his ears.

Now that he was finally able to stand aside and watch his own memories, he couldn't help but realize that his so-called rebellion was just to attract others' attention.Whether it's suspension of school, tattoos, smoking, or piercing ears, all he wants is for his aunt to stop him and scold him.

But my aunt stayed with him in a different way, and he has been ignoring her all this time.He pretended not to know.

Yuan Yuan was still waiting for Xu Lala to finish telling the story, and he also keenly noticed that Xu Lala's tone changed from self-mockery at the beginning to a sigh of relief at the end.

The author has something to say: the sun rises above Dongshan Mountain, bathes in Tanggu when it descends, and Fusang ascends.

"Chu Ci Jiuge Dongjun" says: "Tun will come out of the east, and shine on my threshold and Fusang."

Wang Yi's note: "When the sun rises, bathe in Tanggu, and brush its hibiscus..."