The question Zhao Yingjun asked happened to be what I wanted to ask. The people in the village were all so strange. Only this villager, who was about fifty years old, came over on his own initiative, which seemed a little strange.
This man seems to be an honest man. We are very poor here and rely on the weather for a living. I estimate that his real age is younger than his appearance. He has probably never left the village in his life. He cannot even speak the worst Mandarin and speaks a local dialect.
The dialect sounds rather obscure to me, but Zhao Yingjun can understand it, and coupled with the villager's gesticulating gestures, I can barely understand it.
He said his name was Li Shunzi, a native of the country. Then he said that there was a reason why the villagers dispersed in a hurry, because in the direction Zhao Yingjun mentioned, there was a mountain about forty miles away from the village. This was the same as what we had touched before.
The situation is consistent.
In the past, the villagers were not afraid of those mountains. People who caught rabbits and hunted goats often went into the mountains anyway. However, in the past half month or so, a series of incidents have occurred, which made the villagers scared. At the beginning, there were two
A man who went into the mountains to hunt for yellow sheep disappeared. The hunters in the mountains had the map of this area in their minds and were very experienced. They would definitely not get lost. But if the man never came back, it could only mean that something happened to them.
The village organized people to go into the mountain to search, and about five or six people went in. Just like the first two, they never came back. There were no clues, and no one was alive or dead. As a result, gossip started flying all over the place, saying that the village was not good.
I know what made the mountain god angry, and everyone who entered the mountain was swallowed up. I thought to myself, how old is this, and I still believe this. However, the village is too closed, so some people really believe such gossip.
In order to prevent the remaining people from getting into trouble again, the village stopped searching and could only hope that the missing people could come back on their own, but that hope was definitely slim. Therefore, the mountain became a restricted area for the village, and the ticket Zhao Yingjun offered was very tempting.
But the villagers are still very sensible and cannot risk their lives for money.
"What about you? Aren't you afraid if you lead us?" Zhao Yingjun asked.
"There is no way." Li Shunzi's wrinkled face immediately wrinkled into a ball, and he didn't know whether to cry or laugh: "If you use wooden money to treat the baby, the baby will die."
Li Shunzi has an 18-year-old daughter who fell ill and stayed at home for at least two months. She was so skinny and yellow, but her family was so poor. And what happened in the mountains was very deceiving. The land here is not good.
Crops fail every year, and people in the village hope to get some mountain goods in the mountains and ask people to take them out to exchange for some money. If they can't enter the mountains, this way of making money will be cut off, and life in the village will be even more miserable.
Zhao Yingjun and I were trying to distinguish Li Shunzi's expression. He didn't look like he was faking it, because when he talked about the doll, tears fell from his eyes. For such an old man, if he hadn't been sad, he would have been helpless.
It won't be like this.
There was no flaw, he was just an ordinary mountain man. Zhao Yingjun readily agreed and gave Li Shunzi the few banknotes he had taken out before.
"I'll give you this much first, and then I'll give you this much more after we take us to a place where we can treat your child."
Li Shunzi almost knelt down, so grateful. He probably didn't want other villagers to see him leading people into the mountains, so he ran home to get some things, took us around the outside of the village, and then walked there
There is a road into the mountains. According to the approximate location guessed by Zhao Yingjun, our total distance is 120 miles, and we will have to walk 80 miles in the mountains.
Li Shunzi is indeed an honest person, very sincere. Zhao Yingjun and I brought a lot of things, so he rushed to help us get them, and he was very attentive. Zhao Yingjun joked with him, and Li Shunzi just chimed. He said that walking on this mountain road is more difficult.
, we have traveled more than 200 miles back and forth, can we get a little extra luck when we reach the destination?
"This is a trivial matter." Zhao Yingjun patted his pocket: "We are rich, handsome, and you can lead the way. I won't lose anything to you."
The first Shiliping Road is relatively easy to walk, but we also have to walk until nightfall, and we can enter the mountains tomorrow. There is not much vegetation in the mountains here, some of the mountains are still a little green, and some are simply nothing.
It's not long, but when you look at it from a distance, it's mottled and looks like Brother Wen's head.
Zhao Yingjun and I couldn't bring tents and other equipment, but fortunately the weather was hot, so we could get some sleep. Zhao Yingjun asked Li Shunzi: "In your opinion, what will happen in the mountains?"
"No one can tell." Li Shunzi smacked his lips: "Is it the fault of not offering sacrifices to the mountain?"
In the impression of Li Shunzi and even his father and grandfather, nothing happened to this mountain, because in the past, people in the village hardly farmed and relied entirely on this mountain for food and livelihood. Therefore, every year, the villagers would worship the mountain. However,
In the past few years, there have been fewer and fewer elderly people in the village, and young people rarely take these things to heart.
"I'm not sure, it's just that the mountain god is angry and doesn't allow us to go into the mountains to find things for hunting anymore." Li Shunzi yawned, cradled his neck and began to settle accounts silently. He said that he would do it while we were in the mountains this time.
Pick up things from the mountains, sort them out, sell them, and raise more money.
Zhao Yingjun looked at me. Rumors about the mountain god being angry are not credible, but there may be something really wrong in this mountain.
"This is a good fortune, but if it goes too smoothly, it will be boring." Zhao Yingjun also yawned: "Go to sleep, let's see the rich and handsome man bravely venture into the unknown wild mountains tomorrow."
"Youngjun, who is the bad guy between you and me? Why have we been fine for so many years, but something will happen as soon as we come here?"
"The answer is obvious. Look at the sullen look on your face. This means that I have a hard life. If it were anyone else, you would have already covered me to death."
The next day, we officially entered the mountain. The rumors in the village were so evil that Li Shunzi was very nervous when he entered the mountain. He kept shivering and looked around. Although Zhao Yingjun still looked carefree on the surface, he must have maintained his attitude.
We were quite vigilant. But after entering the mountain, we really couldn't see anything wrong.
The road in the mountains is very nonsense. There is no fixed number of how much you can walk in an hour. Maybe you can walk three miles in one hour, but you may only be able to walk three hundred meters in the next hour. I can’t bear it after a while carrying such a heavy thing.
, Zhao Yingjun is in good health, and Li Shunzi also works all year round, so they shared some of my equipment.
When I rested that night, the soles of my feet were all covered with blisters. When I was in Shiyanchuan, I learned some experience, boiled some water, and popped all the blisters on my feet, otherwise I would leave tomorrow.
The road was dead. I secretly calculated that at the current speed, it would take at least three days to walk eighty miles into the mountains. I don’t know how tired I would be after walking there.
This is not the scariest thing. I feel that if I am unlucky and have no harvest this time, my life may be accompanied by long journeys in the future.
Li Shunzi dug up something similar to yams and roasted it on the fire. It was very fragrant. I dipped it in the glucose powder I brought and ate it. It tasted good. Li Shunzi looked at the powdered sugar and swallowed. I gave him some, but
He was reluctant to eat it, so he wrapped it and put it away, and wanted to go back and leave it for his daughter to make sugar water to drink.
Poor parents in the world. Seeing Li Shunzi loving her daughter so much, I suddenly felt sad because I didn't know if my dad used his heart to love me.
Just as I was thinking about it, Li Shunzi handed me a bottle of water, and then tentatively asked me what I was doing in the mountains. I made up a random reason, and then Zhao Yingjun wandered back from not far away, and he took it from me.
With half a bottle of water in his hand, Li Shunzi scolded Li Shunzi harshly, telling him not to ask so many questions, otherwise the money would be deducted.
Li Shunzi was so frightened that he didn't dare to say anything. Zhao Yingjun looked around and saw that there was nothing unexpected, so he asked me to sleep with Li Shunzi and keep him company for a while. But after I lay down, I couldn't fall asleep. I don't know.
Did you eat too much at night? You always felt thirsty. You got up in a daze. Zhao Yingjun was drinking water next to you. I also took a bottle and drank it all in one go.
But after drinking it, I got out of control and I still felt very thirsty. I drank two bottles of water in one breath and felt that my stomach was bloated. However, the thirst in my mouth not only did not disappear, but became stronger.
To be honest, at that time, I seemed to have completely forgotten everything in my mind. I only had one thought, which was to drink water. Pure white water was like a drug at this moment, making me unable to stop even if I wanted to. I just drank it.
He untied his backpack, poured out all the food and water inside, grabbed it and started drinking. Zhao Yingjun also rushed over, picked up two bottles of water, and poured them into his mouth together.
"Something's wrong, something's wrong..." He muttered vaguely while drinking water.
At this time, Li Shunzi, who was sleeping in a ball next to him, got up and ran quickly into the distance under the moonlight. He made a lot of noise, and Zhao Yingjun and I noticed it, but we turned a blind eye because thirst took over.
Every cell in the body can do nothing but drink water.
The two of us drank like this, one bottle after another. I could feel that my belly was almost transparent, but I couldn't control it. The water was too heavy, so we didn't bring much, so we needed to plan along the way.
In just a short time, Zhao Yingjun and I drank almost all the water.
I was already lying on the ground unable to move. My stomach was as distended as a round ball. If I moved even a little bit, I felt like my stomach would explode. But I still looked around, squirming inch by inch, trying to find among the pile of empty bottles.