We found the village called Ulan Bulang as quickly as possible, and then carefully selected a guide in the village. The Helan Mountains run nearly north-south. If you want to go from east to west, it may only be thirty or forty kilometers wide, and there are many
The locals all know the road, but walking from north to south is not that simple.
During the search, many villagers said that a man named Batu could accurately guide people through the entire Helan Mountains. We were very happy and went to look for this Batu.
Batu is a burly Mongolian man with a green beard. I guess that when he takes off his clothes, he will be able to reveal a palm-wide heart-protecting hair. When the two parties talked, Batu said that there is absolutely no problem in being a guide, as long as he greets
Lanshan Mountain, no matter where we go, he can take us there. Seeing that he is not too old, I am a little doubtful. In my impression, if his hair and beard are not white, he is not qualified to make such big words.
Batu may have noticed my concerns and was a little angry.
"Don't believe me? Go around and ask, are there any places in the entire Helan Mountains that I, Batu, don't know about?"
He said it very definitely, and there was some pride in his tone. The monk talked to him and quoted him. Of course, Batu was not as thoughtful as the monk, so he told us some things in a playful way.
The ancestors of the Batu family all live in Ulan Bulang. As the saying goes, the Batu family basically makes a living by going into the mountains to hunt and collect herbs. Batu's father is an experienced hunter. It is said that he can hit with a gun with one arm.
The blue sheep on the cliff is very famous in the neighborhood. He gave birth to his only son when he was thirty-three years old, so he cherished his only son very much.
However, since Batu was born, bad luck has been haunting him. Not only is he frail and sick, he often falls into coma for no reason, lasting for two or three days at a time. During his coma, everyone in his family can hear the unconscious Batu speaking.
Suddenly, he laughed in a high-pitched voice. The laughter was very weird, as if something was strangling his neck and scratching his armpits, forcing him to make such strange laughter. Batu's father was so worried that he tried everything he could think of.
I tried all the methods, but nothing worked. Within a month, Batu would fall into coma two or three times, and he would become as skinny as a stick after being tortured. People in the village thought that the child would not live long and would definitely die young.
When Batu was twelve years old, an old Han man came to the village and asked the villagers about a kind of milky white stone. Although Batu had been tortured by strange diseases all year round, he was still a human being and would go out for a walk when he was not sick.
Then they met this old man. The old man was immediately shocked when he saw Batu. Batu’s father felt strange and went over to talk to the old man. The old man opened his mouth and told the symptoms that Batu usually suffered from, and then said, this child is alive.
Only twenty years old.
When Batu's father saw how arrogant the old man was, he thought he was a doctor. At that time, he almost knelt down to the old man and begged him to treat Batu. No matter what medicine he needed or how much it cost, he was willing to pay for it. The old man pondered for a long time.
Only then did he say that Batu was not ill, but he refused to say anything else.
Batu's father believed that the old man was an expert, so he knelt down and refused to get up. He begged hard. The old man couldn't bear his request, so he said that he could show him the way. Whether he could save Batu depended on God's willingness.
He was willing to take care of him, and this method would be very troublesome. Batu's father had almost despaired of his son's strange disease, but when he saw some hope, he immediately said that no matter how difficult it was, he would do it.
The old man mixed a red powder he brought with water, then dipped it in with a brush and drew a strange pattern on Batu's back. When he said this, Batu took off his shirt, revealing his generous
He showed us his back, and there was indeed something similar to a talisman on his back. The color was bright red, just like it had been painted with blood. I was surprised and wondered what kind of thing this was. It had faded away after so many years.
Don't fall off.
Then, the old man told Batu's father to take Batu himself and walk the entire Helan Mountains in the longitudinal direction. Batu would be bled three times along the way. And this process was done every two years.
, a total of four procedures are required. After eight years, Batu will be exactly twenty years old. If he survives past twenty, then he will be fine.
In my opinion, this kind of thing is nonsense, but Batu's father did it because he had no other way to save Batu, and another big reason was that the old man said something to him before he left.
He said something: You are the one who caused the trouble, but the younger generations have to bear it.
Within a few days, Batu's father took the twelve-year-old Batu and started traveling through the Helan Mountains. Following the old man's instructions, Batu's father bled Batu. In Batu's own words, he had done nothing in those few years.
He went hiking with his dad.
The father and son traveled through the Helan Mountains four times at a time. When Batu was twenty, the strange coma actually disappeared, and Batu also survived the age of twenty safely, but the next year
, his father passed away, and he was still young when he died.
As he said this, Batu felt a little sad. I can't say whether I believe in this kind of unofficial folk history, but Batu has drilled back and forth in the entire Helan Mountain several times, and he is more than enough to serve as a guide.
We immediately formally hired him, and then I told Batu that we didn’t need to walk all over Helan Mountain, we only needed to go to Yuntan Peak. Batu was stunned and asked, what is Yuntan Peak?
I couldn't help complaining in my heart, maybe the place name Yuntan Peak was really the name given by the Taoist master back then.
"Where do you want to go? At least there is an approximate location. Otherwise, how can I take you?"
"Take a look at this." Mustache showed Batu the picture he extracted from the code. Batu really wasn't bragging. After looking at it carefully for a moment, he saw that it was a picture of the northern foothills of Helan Mountain, but this
The picture is not very clear, and there are no place names that should be included.
"The place we want to go is on the map."
"I don't understand." Batu returned the map to Mustache and shook his head: "Where are you going?"
Xiaozhu and I looked at each other, and it seemed that we were really at our wits end. Do we have to search bit by bit at the northern foot of Helan Mountain? The last thing we can afford is time. But other than that, we really can’t think of anything else.
Even people like Batu who are familiar with the terrain don't know about Yuntan Peak.
"Batu, then you can take us all over the northern foothills."
"Walking through the entire northern foothills?" Batu was startled at first, and then looked embarrassed. He said that he also raised some livestock, and if he stayed in the mountains for too long, his income would be affected.
The monk immediately gave Batu an unimaginable price. In less than three seconds, Batu’s frown became as smooth as silk. He told us that he was actually a very kind person. As soon as we saw him, we felt
We are destined, so we are willing to take us to visit the Helan Mountains.
The matter was settled in this way, Batu let us all into the house, and while cleaning up the place where we sat, he talked to us enthusiastically. His talk was very inconsistent with his body shape, and he was very flexible. He asked us if we were here to play.
I am still here to cause trouble. If I am here to have fun, there are several good places in Beilu, and then I mentioned a list of place names.
Among these place names, there was one place that immediately caught our attention. Batu said that it was a mountain eye.
"Mountain Eye?"
Batu nodded, and then explained to us. The mountain eyes he mentioned were not mountain eyes in the ordinary sense, and had nothing to do with Feng Shui leylines, but a peculiar geographical landscape formed naturally. Batu even
The painter talked for a long time, but we still couldn't understand what he meant, so he said that actually, we can't describe it. In short, after one look at that place, people will never forget it. It is very shocking.
We all began to make plans in our minds, and almost unanimously asked Batu to lead the way to this so-called eye of the mountain first. Because when there is no clue about a thing, we can only try our best to explore it from some abnormal angles.
"No problem." Batu agreed readily.
We stayed at Batu's house that day. Basically, people in the village did not graze cattle, so all kinds of dairy products and fried rice were bought from outside. Batu entertained us to drink and talked about some things about Helan Mountain.
He said that there had been many wars around Helan Mountain in ancient times, and a lot of people died, especially when Genghis Khan destroyed Xixia. Helan Mountain was a natural barrier for Xixia against the Mongols. It is estimated that because of national sentiments, Batu’s words about Mongolia
The cavalry were all righteous men. Under the protection of Changshengtian, they successfully broke through the Helan Mountain defense line, killed the foolish and unscrupulous late emperor of Xixia, and liberated the working people of all ethnic groups in Xixia. Everyone was happy to say that.
In my mind, Helan Mountain is a very magical place, especially the tombs of the emperors of the Western Xia Dynasty. It is said to be very mysterious. When the Germans took aerial photos for the first time of large earth-like objects spread over fifty square kilometers, they were still unaware.
I knew that there were more than a dozen ancient emperors lying down there.
Another famous thing in Helan Mountain is the rock paintings. These rock paintings may be the relics left by the indigenous people who were active here in the years before the founding of the Western Xia Dynasty. In the past 80 years, a pair of rock paintings accidentally discovered caused a sensation in the entire archaeological community.
I saw this rock painting in a magazine. Although the content of the rock painting is a bit exaggerated and abstract, the lines are simple and smooth, and normal people can understand it. The painting is actually an astronaut wearing a spacesuit, and this rock painting is
The time of creation was determined to be seven thousand years ago.
After drinking a little bit, everyone slept deeply that night. The next day, Batu hired horses for us. He could drive the horses as far as possible along the road. We brought a lot of equipment and relied on people's backs all the time.
It would be too much to keep walking, so Batu also took out a new-looking shotgun from his home. As soon as he touched the shotgun, Batu thought of his father again and sighed for a while.