Purpose
“Is it that easy to tell?” After being exposed by me, the deputy looked at me and sighed a little frustratedly, “I think my performance was very natural.”
I looked at him like he was an idiot and thought to myself, nonsense, you know too much.
They were eager to feed us the key clues, and they quickly corrected the discussion when they saw it was a little off. Is this the perspective of an ignorant passerby? Who do you think is the consultant?
The deputy said angrily: "Maybe I am just particularly smart."
Before I could finish my words, he suddenly approached me, and it looked like he was trying to hold me hostage because his plan had been exposed.
But San Yi and the other guys were quicker than him. I heard a particularly intimidating sound of an arm breaking through the air. The deputy's eyes widened, and he immediately raised his hands and shouted, "Surrender! Just kidding! I'm a good guy!"
Almost at the same time, he was pounced on by several guys, and he cried out "ouch" and was crushed by their weight.
I have seen a video before, where a young man jumped into a zoo to tease a giant panda, and the giant panda grabbed him by the thigh and crushed him. The scene was extremely weak and helpless.
Now this is almost a funny scene.
But this guy is too weak. He is a civilian, but his reaction is slower than mine. I even thought that if the guys didn't rush over, I could knock him down by myself.
It's rare to see a fighter weaker than me, I laughed secretly, feeling good about myself, and then I asked him to confess and tell me everything.
The deputy struggled to make a sound, and said unconvincedly, "I'm really smart... OK, OK, I do know something, I've been here!" He shouted to give him another chance, and he was very well behaved this time.
Sanyi looked at me and I nodded.
The deputy was then released and quickly got up. He honestly said that he only had a partial memory of what happened twelve years ago, and many things were very vague and uncertain.
"There are some things I'm not sure about either. Maybe they're just my imagination after a long time. If I rashly say them out, it might just interfere with my thinking." The deputy said, "So I thought, why don't I just say what I'm sure of first, and then we can think and guess along the way... I'll tell you when I remember everything later."
I deliberately said "oh" and said, "Then what are you going to tell us later? Say 'you have a friend'?"
This guy was trying to play innocent and said yes, but when he saw me smiling, he immediately backed off and said with a low head, "A friend of mine gave me some important clues. Do you want to listen?"
"Yes."
The deputy straightened his expression, asked me to stay away, and asked other guys for a small hammer the size of a palm and a file.
With a thud, I don't know how he managed to hit the stone pillar. The stone pillar seemed to be very cold and hard. When I pried it with a hammer, I found that it was very weak and a small piece of it was knocked off with a brittle sound.
We took it and passed it around, and found that it was completely different, having turned into a bright white color similar to stainless steel.
There is even some gray powder on the broken surface.
I subconsciously sniffed it and found a faint unknown smell. I couldn't tell whether it was good or bad, but it just brought a sharp and piercing feeling that was equally repulsive.
What is this, a pineapple of metals? Calcium oxalate crystals turned into spirits?
However, the color change happened almost instantly, and the speed of the black and white conversion was very puzzling.
I held the fragment and looked at it, and found that it had been knocked off several layers of knife edges, and the sides were smooth enough to reflect a person's reflection. Looking at the cracks on the stone pillar, they turned into an opaque bright white, just like the wounds.
No, it seems that these blade-like structures are bright white. The dark blue color of the stone pillars is a visual misleading.
The deputy waited for me to finish looking at the fragments in my hand before saying, "Look at these knife edges. The tiny gaps in the middle are triangular openings."
My eyes lit up and I immediately felt the wonder.
"So the basic structure of the metal stone pillars - these blades - actually act as mirrors?"
When light shines directly on the mirror surface of these tiny blades, it will be reflected many times and gradually weakened, which actually makes the light almost disappear. To us, the stone pillar has almost turned black.
I seem to understand a little bit how the Nian family uses this stone forest.
Since the rigidity of this thing is not very high, the Nian family can just dismantle these "knife-edge" structures piece by piece like peeling shale, and then assemble them again.
This process does not require any technical content, nor does it require any superb operations, and there is no need to understand what the stone forest is. Just use it as a precious building material.
When I was in the small town, I had guessed that a very important component in the rules of the "Dongxue" ghost story is the fire, or a continuous huge light source.
But in the Yishu Underground Palace, with the glow of the sun and the moon plus an active volcano underground, it can be said that there is light everywhere and there is nowhere to escape. In this case, the element of light source seems to be unavoidable.
The other two basic elements, "screen" and "shadow", are too idealistic and difficult for people to actually touch or change.
Now, the strange material of Shilin seems to have solved a big problem:
Since Dongxue itself is more like a kind of cognitive existence, is it possible to make "light" invisible in human perception?
Since the light source does not exist, can it be considered "darkness" in the definition of ghost stories?
But this is essentially just a scam. The "light" is hidden rather than absorbed and disappears, so "light" and "darkness" still coexist at the same time.
At the same time, the continuous refraction of light in the "walls" that seemed to be shrouded in darkness caused local temperature rise, and even the blade mirror provided countless tiny "screens" and projections that shuttled back and forth.
High temperature, projection, screens, overlapping light and darkness, it turns out that we can now re-understand them from this perspective.
This process is so simple and exquisite that it subtly takes away some of the interpretation of the definition, so that the regular expression of "Dongxue" is controlled within a certain range of expression.
The Nian family really didn't have that much power, they just kept using the potential connections between the rules of the ghost story to make small twists. The accumulation of countless details led to the miracles we finally saw.
I feel amazed. It seems that humans have always explored and transformed the vast world with their wisdom and tiny bodies.
However, looking at it this way, the so-called "quarrying" of the Nian family seems very simple.
Twelve years ago, the "quarrying" of those mountain people seemed to be a different matter.
The deputy smiled sadly and asked me, "Advisor, who in this world do you think would pay attention to strange stories?"
I was about to answer, but he asked a counter-question, "Is it possible that there are people who don't even notice the occurrence of strange stories, who are completely ignorant and blind to them...but still come here again and again for very simple and ridiculous reasons?"
Amidst the sometimes fast and sometimes slow heartbeats, my deputy and I looked at each other, and at that moment our emotions seemed to have reached a common level. I understood the facts he might be saying, but I still felt indescribable absurdity.
"——They just know that there seems to be a large area of ore or metal here. Because their ancestors recorded that there were foreign visitors who went into the mountain to carry something."
The deputy said, almost strangely, "You know, in some places scrap metal is about 60 cents a pound."
Damn, my mind went blank and I heard myself swearing.
"After the Nian family abandoned and sealed this stone forest, no one expected that a group of mountain people who had no contact with or sense of strange stories would approach it."
The deputy said that the group of mountain people went into the mountains with the intention of stealing ore and iron, and they really had no other purpose.
They had not seen the stone forest, nor did they know what it looked like. They had only relied on records and rumors to circle the location of the stone forest and not allow any outsiders to enter or leave.
To them, the Stone Forest is just a legend similar to "there are treasures in the deep mountains", and they believe it without a doubt, and even kill all outsiders who may enter the mountains.
In order to find the stone forest that was actually right in front of them, the mountain people made a natural decision:
If they can't find it themselves, they can control a group of people who are absolutely weak and won't leak the information to go into the mountains and keep looking. For example, the children.
In order to prevent these abducted children from escaping, the mountain people also strictly controlled the amount of food and water they consumed, and cut off the salt supply in their food, causing these children to become confused and extremely weak.
But the problem is, taking my own experience as an example, if a person is exposed to the contamination of ghost stories or ghost story-related parasites for a long time, it is possible that he or she will slip into darkness little by little.
That is to say, those children might suddenly see the stone forest one day and discover these strange and magnificent sights.
You might even find the strange salt dust quicksand that appeared in Taizi's memory. If you go a step closer, you might even find broken limbs and strange crabs vomited out along with the quicksand.
In that situation, would the child be able to control his hunger and weakness, control his survival instinct, and disguise the changes caused by these abnormalities so that the mountain people would not notice?
I'm afraid that's impossible.
An idea suddenly occurred to me: "Assistant, did you hand in the fragments in the stone forest in the end?"
The deputy smiled, with a hint of sarcasm:
"Ordinary people only come to see it once every ten days or half a month, so even the ghost stories cannot taint them. They can't even see or touch the fragments of the stone forest that were knocked down."
"But they thought that someone must have hidden the ore. As for why the children did not starve to death, maybe they found an old air-raid shelter and the food reserves inside. So their idea was to force the children to hand it over."
"No matter what I say, it doesn't make sense. Children can't lie. I'm desperate and there's nothing I can do."
I don't know why, but the deputy's tone gave me a bad feeling, and I felt that from that moment on, the situation that year began to change irreversibly.
“I don’t remember much of the last scene.”
The deputy said, “But twelve years ago, it seems that a child stood up and learned to lie without any instruction.
She lied that she was destined to become a goddess and could bestow treasures on people. She said that she could survive even without food, water, or any movement, and she confronted the mountain people and reached a deal with them.
The ignorant mountain people didn't believe it at first.
But miracles happened again and again. The girl became weaker and weaker but was still alive, and the mountain people felt panic and ecstasy.
In order to confirm the girl's supernatural powers again and again, they even tied her up and imprisoned her. When it was dark, the seemingly cowardly children held sharp fragments of stone pillars and quietly cut the restraints bit by bit, allowing the girl to relax her bruised hands and feet.
There were also children who propped up the rubble to form a dark wall to cover the girl for a while so that she could take a short rest.
"We need enough food, water, and healing for our injuries."
The girl said this, and although she was young, she seemed to have received a good education. She spoke in a very organized manner, and her slightly trembling voice tried to remain calm: "Otherwise, even if we could become 'invisible', there are so many of us kids who can't escape far."
Faced with the man-made miracles and with the help of "non-existent" weird stories, the mountain people finally believed in the existence of the goddess.
The deputy didn't know why those marks on the stone pillars were made.
But the birth of the first mark was just for the girl to calculate the arrival of each day. The danger she wanted to record and warn did exist, but it did not come from the stone forest or from strange stories and changes, but from the group of greedy and tyrannical adult mountain people.
On the day when the standoff ended, the mountain people came over with great piety and sincerity, and offered large amounts of water and food.
"This is what happened before the Zhang family came." The deputy said with a hint of fatigue. "All the information I can remember and give is already here."
In this abruptly ended story, the dawn of victory seemed to be just around the corner, but I did not feel excited at all. Instead, a chill surged in my heart.
Because I still remember one terrible thing:
The reason why those mountain people welcomed the Zhang family and the "Master" Taizai was because an accident happened in the small village and they were eager to cover it up by talking about ghosts and gods.
The mountain folks say: "Cats and dogs bark, rats scream on the roadside" and most importantly, "children's laughter can be heard late at night."
In those man-made sneaky stories, those who would laugh in the middle of the night and make evildoers suspicious were all killed without exception.
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