Lord, he is not a man [infrastructure]

Tang Bo didn't want to be troublesome, so everyone ignored these puppets and just hurried on their way.

In fact, they have nowhere to go. Since a few days ago, they have been opening their own path. If there is no Yanren who can find a better path for them, the time they spend on the road will at least double.

The salt ligament they walked was either the riverside road or the grassland, which was relatively easier than going through jungles and rock piles.

But the road ahead could no longer see a large area of ​​grassland, it was all primitive jungle, and they had to go through the dense forest to turn into the valley.

Yan Ren got off his horse from time to time to determine the direction. The map was too general. If he really relied on that ancestral map to find the salt mine, he didn't know when he would find it.

Gu Ding just watched Yanren touch a certain plant with his hands for a while, and pick up some soil and put it in his mouth to taste.

Four days later.

"This way, everyone must follow closely." Yan Ren turned his head and waved.

Tang Bo rode on a horse and checked the map. According to the map, the salt mine is located in a mountain nest called Devil Mountain, a hundred miles east of Wuyunling.

There is also a thin line on the map, which seems to represent a path.

But now they didn't see this path. There were strangely shaped trees everywhere. These trees didn't grow leaves very much, and they looked very scary at night.The ground is covered with tangled weeds and vines. It seems that no one has walked by for a long time. Let alone people, there seem to be few wild animals here, and the roar of birds and insects can hardly be heard.

"Do you think it's very hot here?" Piglet kept raising his hand to wipe his sweat.

Others are also hot, and the children are no longer hugged together, and they are all fanned to cool off.If they were not afraid of insect bites, they would have taken off their coats.

Although it has already entered summer in terms of time, it is not normal for this place to be so hot.

Tang Bo also felt this: "The temperature here is at least ten degrees higher than outside, but no matter how hot it is, don't take off your clothes, and don't open your neckline."

Everyone knows what is good or bad, and no matter how hot it is, they will not mess around.

Yan Ren suddenly clenched his hands in front of him and raised them up, motioning for everyone to stop.

Tang Bo bypassed Baidou in front and rode to Yan Ren, "What did you find?"

With a serious expression on his face, Yan Ren pointed forward with his horsewhip: "If I didn't find the wrong way, there is Devil Mountain ahead, but...you see."

Tang Bo has already seen many old and new puppets hanging in the woods ahead.

There are so many puppets that you will meet them wherever you go.

"Could it be that the locals are superstitious and think that there are real devils in the Devil's Mountain, so they use this method to block the devil from coming out?" Tang Bo speculated.

Yan Ren hesitated: "It is possible."

Tang Bo thinks this is a good thing, at least it will make it easier for them to mine salt mines, and they don't have to worry about being discovered in a short period of time. If they are discovered, they can pretend to be demons and intimidate the nearby residents so that they don't dare to approach.

But this is under the premise that there are really no devils in Devil Mountain.

Yan Ren said anxiously: "The Devil's Mountain is at least a hundred miles away from the village I met before. Except for hunters, generally no one will run so far."

Tang Bo got off the horse and signaled Gu Ding to sit on the horse and not move, and he approached the puppets alone.

Everyone else looked at him worriedly.

Tang Bo didn't touch the puppets immediately, but observed more carefully.

"The latest puppets look like they've been around for a while," Tang Bo said.

Yan Ren also got off his horse and came over to check. His special ability allowed him to judge more accurately. He observed the color and fracture of the wood, and then looked at the moss and ash around the wooden man, and judged: "The newer ones are at least half a year old. old……"

Yan Ren walked for a while, pointed to a puppet that was almost growing with the vines and said: "Although I don't know when these puppet were hung here, but this one has been at least ten years."

Tang Bo rubbed his chin: "I remember Donglin told me that poisonous gas may be coming out of the salt-producing mountain nest all year round, and people, birds and beasts who approach it will die, so the local people call this hill Devil Mountain. Is it true? Could it be because of this?"

Yanren frowned and shook his head: "If it's because of this reason, my ancestor will definitely mark it on the map. At least he will remind us that there are golems here. But he didn't say it, and he didn't mark it on the map. There are no such puppets."

"It seems that something more peculiar and frightening happened to this Devil Mountain, and this incident can affect the small village of Wu Yunling a hundred miles away."

Tang Bo looked at this hill with an altitude of at most 700 meters. If they are tourists or passers-by, after drawing such an inference, the most sensible way is to stay away from this devil mountain and never enter it.

Don’t you see one of the favorite settings of horror movies is to let the protagonists or supporting characters “knowing that there are tigers in the mountains and prefer to go to the mountains of tigers”, let the audience scold them for being stupid, and because of “the danger is coming soon”, the adrenaline rushes .

But they are not acting in a horror movie, and they have a reason to go to the mountains.

Besides, Tang Bo suspects that the reason why Devil Mountain emits poisonous gas has a lot to do with salt mines. Some salt fields will produce a large amount of dense halogenated gas. This gas is so strong that it can kill living things, especially harmful to plant growth. .

This is the reason why no grass grows near the salt lake.

If there is natural gas emerging near the brine, the halogenated gas is mixed with methane, which is more toxic.

And according to Donglin and Yanren's description, this new salt mine is nested in this mountain nest. Just looking at the surrounding mountains, this mountain nest is probably surrounded by hills on all sides, and it is hotter here than outside. Miasma is most likely to form in places.

Halogenated gas plus miasma, doesn't this form poisonous gas?

But why does the poisonous gas here affect the Wuyunling village a hundred miles away?

Could it be that the poisonous gas here floated out?

"Find a safe place to stay first." Tang Bo remounted his horse.

Gu Ding has been close to the Devil's Mountain so far, but he has not said a word.

Tang Bo was thinking about something, but the child's strange silence did not attract his attention.

Yanren led everyone to camp in a grassland near Devil Mountain. The reason he chose this place was because the grass here was relatively normal.

"Is the weed growing in Devil's Mountain abnormal?" Tang Bo asked Yan Ren in a low voice alone.

Yan Ren said with concern: "The plants in the Devil's Mountain repel me very much. They refuse to communicate with me. I don't know the grass on the ground. It's not a weed that can grow normally, and those trees are too."

Yan Ren licked his lips, and said in a lower voice: "Have you seen those trees? None of them have leaves. This season should be the period when the leaves are relatively luxuriant."

"Maybe it's a tree species that doesn't grow leaves." Tang Bo said optimistically.

Yan Ren shook his head, "It's not right."

"You stay here to guard everyone, don't let them enter the mountain." Tang Bo ordered.

Yan Ren was surprised: "Lord, do you want to enter the mountain alone?"

Tang Bo nodded, "I'll go in and have a look. What's going on with this mountain, maybe I can only know if I go in and have a look, and I need to make sure if there is really a salt mine here."

Yan Ren immediately said: "I will go in with you."

"No. It's faster for me to move alone. If it's really dangerous, it's inconvenient for me to take you with me."

"Lord, if this salt mine doesn't work, we can find other ones. In fact, this salt mine is so far away from our Bailu collar, it's not convenient or cost-effective to mine." Yan Ren was still worried. He admired Tang Bo as a lord, He also did things with gusto in Bailuling, because Tang Bo valued him, and his life was no worse than when he was a young master, so he naturally didn't want Tang Bo to be in any danger.

Tang Bo laughed because of "our white deer collar" in Yan Ren's mouth, "Don't worry, I'm not a stubborn person. If this place is really not suitable for mining, I will never waste any more time here."

Yan Ren couldn't convince Tang Bo, so he could only let him enter the Devil's Mountain alone.

Tang Bo was still afraid that Gu Ding would follow, so he gave Gu Ding an order to keep an eye on his younger brothers, and also assigned him homework, asking him to take a few children to do their homework.

Gu Ding obediently agreed, and was killed by Tang Bo.

But not long after Tang Bo left, he said he was going to sleep and asked no one to disturb him.

Gu Ding looked like he didn't sleep well last night and was very sleepy. Everyone believed him.

But when Gu Ding got into the carriage, he climbed out of the window and slipped away quietly while everyone was not paying attention.

Gu Ding didn't tell anyone that he felt an indescribable intimacy after approaching the Devil's Mountain. The closer he was to the Devil's Mountain, the stronger the intimacy.

When he stepped on the land of the Devil's Mountain, he became more and more sure that there was something in the Devil's Mountain that was attracting him.

Tang Bo got lost shortly after entering the Devil's Mountain.

He thought he was walking towards the top of the mountain, but at his speed, after climbing for more than two hours, he was still not close to the top of the mountain, and the surroundings were still those strange trees without leaves.

Tang Bo climbed up to the top of the tree, stood on the top of the tree and looked forward. Seeing this, he narrowed his eyes.

The top of the mountain was gone, and the foot of the mountain was also gone. As far as he could see, there were dense clusters of strange, leafless trees.

hallucinations?

Natural maze?

Tang Bo snapped his fingers and said, "Hey Crab, give me strength!"

Tang Bo's eyes changed, he was no longer so lazy, and his whole body seemed to have turned into a sharp knife out of its sheath, sharp and dangerous.

The river crab naturally has the ability to destroy all evil spirits. If what he saw just now was an illusion, it should have been eliminated by now.

But the surrounding scenery did not change, which meant that what he saw was not an illusion, but reality.

A wisp of white smoke rose from not far away. Tang Bo changed his angle and saw a corner of the eaves.

Tang Bo jumped down from the tree and walked towards the wooden house.

This time it didn't take him long, and he approached the wooden house in the dense forest in just over half an hour.

The chimney of the wooden house was smoking, and there were several piles of firewood on the open space outside the wooden house, and there were several racks for drying furs.There are still some dried wild vegetables and dried animal meat hanging under the eaves of the wooden house, and there is also a large broom in the corner of the verandah of the wooden house.

Very lifelike, looks peaceful and peaceful.

Tang Bo stroked the firewood and fur with his hands, which was very real, not like an illusion.

He also didn't feel any uncomfortable energy in these things, just like the most common Orion's things.

Except for one thing.

Tang Bo looked at the wooden figure hanging under the eaves of the wooden house. This wooden figure was much more delicately made than the ones he had seen before. Not only were the proportions of the limbs more normal, but even the facial features were engraved on the puppet's body. A pullover was made of linen, and a belt was carefully tied in the middle of the clothes.

This wooden figure is so delicate that it doesn't look like a rough-made golem, but more like a doll carefully made by an adult for a child.

When Tang Bo's fingers were about to touch the puppet, there was a creak, and the door of the wooden house opened.

"Hello, guest from afar, have you lost your way?" The girl, who was dressed in rough linen clothes but couldn't hide her natural beauty, smiled at Tang Bo.

The girl has long and curly hair, which is loosely braided into a long braid, with broken hair falling down her cheeks.

The girl slightly brushed her hair by her ear, raised her head and said, "It's raining, the weather in the forest is so changeable, the sun is still shining in the morning, and it will change before noon. Come in quickly, guests, it looks like it's going to rain It's been a long time, and it will be very big later."

Tang Bo stretched out his palm, and there were indeed raindrops falling from the sky, and there were more and more raindrops.

As the crackling raindrops fell, Tang Bo naturally walked under the eaves of the corridor.

Tang Bo pointed to the puppet and asked the girl, "Is this a puppet?"

The girl was stunned and laughed: "Yes, this thing is indeed called a golem. Don't worry, it is my guardian golem. As long as you don't hurt my mind, it won't hurt you. Come in and sit."

Tang Bo followed the girl into the cabin as if he didn't know the danger.

The wooden house is clearly partitioned, there are no rooms, and different functional areas are distinguished only by the height difference of the ground.

Fireplace, desk, wooden table and chairs, a wooden bed.

There was a lot of dried meat hanging from the beams of the house, and a hemp rope was pulled in front of the window, on which clusters of plants that looked like medicinal herbs or wild vegetables were tied.

There is a wooden shelf by the door, on which are some daily necessities and some stone tools and bone utensils.

Beside the wooden frame are several wooden barrels, and the wooden barrels are covered with lids.

The whole wooden house is neat and clean. There is a small clay plastic bucket with a few small flowers on the wooden table, and there are small flowering plants on the window sills, which add a lot of vitality to the cabin.

Just looking at this wooden house, it can be seen that the girl is living a much better life than most of the white deer leaders half a year ago.

"Guests, please sit down and drink some water. The water here is very clean and sweet." The girl scooped up a bowl of water and put it in front of Tang Bo.

Tang Bo opened a chair and sat down in front of the wooden table, "Do you live here alone?"

The girl shook her head with a smile, and said unsuspectingly: "No, my brother lives with me. He went hunting, and he should be back by night."

"Really. You are the only family around here?" Tang Bo stroked the bowl of noodles with his finger.

The girl turned her back, as if she was busy with something in front of the desk, and replied, "Yes, this place is in the woods, it's not very safe, everyone is used to living in the village."

"Then isn't it dangerous for you brothers and sisters to live here?"

"We have a guardian puppet." The girl's voice was very excited.

Tang Bo touched the table with his fingers, all of this was very real.

Maybe he should look at it from another angle. He didn't enter the illusion, but just entered another dimension?

Or what they saw before the Devil's Mountain was not real, but what he saw now was real?

There was the sound of rain outside, and through the wooden window, one could see that the rain had been connected into one piece.

Something is approaching.

"Ah, my brother is back!" The girl let out a joyful voice, and flew to open the door like a bird, and kept shouting to the outside: "Brother, hurry up!"