Record (typo fixed)
Thinking of this, the dreamy grid of light before my eyes weaves in the stone forest, bringing a bizarre and unpredictable feeling.
I suddenly had a doubt. Could human power really create such a thing? How could the mountain people in the original small village maintain and take care of such a bizarre thing and treat it as normal?
In the memories provided by Taizi, those people undoubtedly maintained a very secular, barbaric and backward attitude, and did not look like they could face matters related to ghost stories without going crazy. To put it bluntly, if they behaved like ghosts and cultists, it would probably be more normal.
Let’s talk about the Zhang family:
When the group of people who were following them walked into the stone forest and witnessed such a scene, the archives only recorded the relevant information of searching the mountain to rescue people and throwing food. This could not be explained by indifference. It was more like a deliberate neglect.
I even suspected that we who were present had some kind of collective hysterical hallucination, and Shi Lin might be hallucinating, otherwise there was no way to explain the logic.
Or perhaps, there simply wasn't such a spectacular and terrifying scene twelve years ago, so it was naturally glossed over and ignored.
But in this way, I found that the problem came back:
If the Stone Forest has slowly become what it is today over the past twelve years, who is running the quarry? How is it possible that there are no traces of long-term life left?
Could it be that a group of snail girls live here and can be self-sufficient by blowing some fairy air?
Maybe it's because I have too many problems and I don't have to worry about them. I was actually amused by my own joke.
Another thing to note here is that twelve years is too long a period of time. It is said that most of the guys who experienced the Shilin incident have passed away due to various accidents.
Xu You's memory was severely confused by the prophet and cannot provide much reference value. Therefore, the only thing our group can compare with is that dusty file.
"Don't you have any other records?" I turned to ask my deputy, "Will Xu You and his men not brag to you when they return?"
The deputy was slightly stunned and cried out in grievance, "I was only a few years old at that time. It's not my turn to tell anyone." He lowered his head and was so fragile that he walked aside dejectedly, as if he couldn't stand it.
But when he lowered his head and moved, he was stunned again and said hesitantly: "Hey, is there something wrong here?"
As he spoke, he circled the stone pillar from several different angles, then squinted his eyes and got closer in the strong light. After looking at it for a long time, he carefully touched the sharp surface of the stone pillar.
I was startled. This kid was too aggressive. But I saw him waving his arms to the sky to ask the people above to "turn off the lights". The bright light suddenly turned off. Our eyes went dark. It took us a long time to adapt. The grayness in front of our eyes squeezed out a few more tears.
Before I could stop him, the deputy handed my hand back to me and said, "It's okay, it's okay, I'm not hurt," with a hint of cunning on his face.
Then I realized that this guy didn't have thick skin at all. The "thin calluses" on his hands were clearly the result of several thick layers of glue that wrapped his hands like a coating.
I looked at it with both anger and amusement, and sure enough, there was no injury. Then I looked in the direction he pointed, and saw a very inconspicuous scratch as thick as a hair on the "smooth" surface of a stone pillar, about the height of a person.
The mark was a bit crooked, and it was scraped horizontally in the blue-gray, with some white-gray residue on it.
"It seems like... it was scratched on it with a stone."
San Yi also came over puzzled. He picked up a stone from the side and drew a line under the carving.
The two different carvings, new and old, are very similar when put together, but the original owner seemed to have not had very strong hands, and had to use force and repeatedly to carve out a single line. The traces of overlapping lines in the brushstrokes are very obvious.
And if you look closely at this scratch, the lower part is heavy and solid, while the upper part is light and empty, and the brushstrokes are also strange.
What is this?
I stood still and compared myself with the height. This height and this strange way of applying force gave me a familiar sense of déjà vu.
At this moment, the three of them all started picking up stones from the ground and making gestures in the air.
After comparing, I finally found that my rich childhood experience was slightly better, and I figured it out in an instant.
I told my deputy to stand beside the stone pillar and be careful not to get scratched by the blade. "Squat down a little, yes, down, you're a little tall."
He squatted down in a daze. I had already stretched out my hand and made a horizontal stroke above his head.
"squeak--"
Amid the rough and harsh scraping sound, the deputy's face changed, as if his hair stood on end. "Damn it! A kid is drawing his height!"
I dropped the stone and patted the stone powder in my hand. Walking along the stone pillar to the side, I soon found that other nearby stone pillars had similar incisions, but with slight differences in height.
A scene appeared in front of me. It was of two children in charge of quarrying. One of them stood honestly in front of a stone pillar, while the other one stood on tiptoe, raised his arm high, and carefully marked the height changes for his companion.
This is actually a very childish action.
Just putting it here, the three of us looked at each other and felt a gloomy sense of discomfort.
A voice came from the helicopter above my head, saying, "The children we rescued back then, I remember the records saying they were pale and thin, couldn't even stand up straight, and many were simply deformed and disabled."
Not only that, the original words in the attendance notes were, "The ascites is as severe as being pregnant for ten months, and the limbs are extremely weak." They are all big in size and small in body, not much better than the refugees in the disaster.
The harsh living environment does not allow children to retain their innocence.
If not for this, most of the content in the archives would not be related to search and rescue and resettlement, and Zhang and his men twelve years ago would not have been so angry as to raze the entire village to the ground.
At this moment, I remembered that the records said that most of the mountain people who were relocated knew nothing about it, and I felt uncomfortable all over.
Then there is the Nian family. Judging from their style of doing things in Foghorn Town, they are indeed determined to do whatever it takes, and their methods are bloody and cruel; but the brutality and cruelty revealed in the quarry is still subtly different from the overall impression given by the Nian family.
If I have to say something... the difference is that no matter how much the Nian family struggles, they are still obsessed with the definition of "human".
It seems like people here at the quarry are not treated as human beings.
This may sound a bit hypocritical and emotional, but I really think so. Although this is the site of the work left by the Nian family, it seems to have largely retained its original appearance without being disturbed or modified too much.
Putting all these contradictory information together gives me a very strong feeling: the Nian family may have just discovered the stone forest and took some building materials from it for use. They didn't do anything else and probably didn't have the energy to do anything else.
Something else happened here, which neither the Zhang nor the Nian families knew about.
I asked my deputy and Sanyi to look around again to see how many scratches there were and whether there were any similar marks.
He called the other guys over and asked them to spread out and search around the stone forest.
After about an incense stick of time, a tall fellow first discovered the clue. He came over to report that he had seen the height scale at a very high place on the stone pillar.
With this unexpected discovery, we also had a helicopter hover overhead to observe the part of the stone pillar that was closest to the clouds.
During this inspection, a strange message appeared:
There was a height mark like this on the stone pillar every three or four meters. It looked as if the group of children were using themselves as measuring tools to divide the stone pillar into sections.
But the stone pillars are full of sharp edges, let alone the children, we all have to be careful when climbing up fully armed. This is not possible at all, and it is hard to think of the meaning of doing so.
We discussed it for a while, and one of the search guys cautiously asked if it was possible that those were not height markings, but just scratches left by some kind of climbing and fixing tool.
He gave an example, saying that when repairing electric poles, electricians would use an arc-shaped climbing pole foot pedal to assist in climbing and stopping. During use, it is driven by both feet, and even well-trained children can operate it.
Perhaps a similar tool was used here, but it caused some wear and tear on the surface of the stone pillar during use.
The deputy shook his head and tried his best to defend his honor as the first discoverer. He retorted that there was no benefit in doing so, and there were only traces every three or four meters. Which foot pedal could allow one to fly into the air and run upwards?
The discussion reached a stalemate here. I saw the two of them glaring at each other, and the headache of raising a naughty child became more and more intense.
Seeing my undisguised disdain, the deputy, who was indeed young and hot-tempered, immediately said that he would put on his equipment and climb one himself to show us.
San Yi suddenly laughed at him, "You are the only civilian among us. You may not even be able to beat the consultant."
I took a deep breath, stopped the bickering, and kicked everyone.
It's funny, after I kicked him to silence him, the deputy stared at the stone pillar for a long time, and he actually found something.
I listened to him mumbling for a long time, and then he came over to me uncertainly and asked, "Advisor, do you feel that... the color of the stone pillar becomes lighter from the bottom to the top?" He then raised his arm to use his skin color as a reference for me.
My eyebrows jumped. I always felt that this guy was playing the pig to eat the tiger. How come he always made key discoveries? I looked at him meaningfully.
But we are all family here, so I don’t care about his possible little tricks for the time being. I look closely and indeed I can see a slight difference.
It was true, the stone pillar at the bottom was a little lighter than the one at the end of the field of vision. But the color difference was so slight that it seemed more like the result of psychological suggestion.
Finally, modern technology came into play. We all took out our phones and flashed them, compared the photos everyone had taken, and threw them all into the photo editing software.
"The color values are really different." San Yi laughed, "And, they seem to be synchronized with these height scales."
I didn't mean to say it, but I had an idea:
“Have you ever seen bamboo planted?”
A bunch of young guys looked at me, confused. After a while, one of them raised his hand and said hesitantly, "Does Japanese knotweed count? We are familiar with it because we can cut it open and get the water to drink."
Well, that's pretty much it. I won't dwell on the details and just let them imagine it and make a pose of plant growth.
"You say... Does this look like bamboo joints?"
If I remember correctly, bamboo grows very slowly in the first few years, and most of the nutrients are used for root growth. In the later period, it grows wildly almost every day, and the speed of node generation is very fast. Therefore, the color of the bamboo nodes below is often dark, and the color of the upper ones gradually becomes lighter, which is very similar to the current situation.
The deputy's expression changed slightly: "Advisor, what you mean is... the children always stand and draw the line based on their own height.
But the next day, the notch automatically moved to the top as the stone pillar rose. Day after day, without any complicated or dangerous operations, the notch moved along with the stone pillar and eventually reached the top.
"These stone pillars... no, bronze pillars, can these metals grow by themselves?"
This is where the problem lies.
My heart was heavy. If this guess was true, a group of children who had a very difficult life insisted on measuring the growth of the bronze column every day.
Why is this? Does it mean that the growth or activity of this thing is dangerous and may bring about some rapid and fatal changes?
Or, is it possible that the so-called "stone quarrying" that has been missing all the time, during the growth of the stone pillars, will produce some kind of byproduct temporarily, and this byproduct is extremely important? Or even the real purpose of the mountain people?
You have to know that it is difficult for children to concentrate because of their developmental imperfections, and it is not something that can be corrected or restrained by saying they are naughty. If it is true as speculated, then it must be extremely strong pressure that can turn it into a habit, so that a group of children can continue to do it.
I took a step back and motioned for the other guys to come forward and surround the deputy. My eyes fell on the glue coating on his palms that seemed to have been prepared in advance.
He was stunned, and looked at me with a wry smile, his expression helpless. Finally, he just raised his hand and touched the back of his head.
"Deputy, I forgot to ask one thing. The Zhang family said that most of the new generation are adopted orphans, right? What about the children rescued from the quarry?
I've seen records that all of them were entrusted to suitable families for care and upbringing. But there should be some children who also stayed in the Zhang family, right?"
Because there are living records of the parties involved, it is very likely that the archival records are appropriately brief in order to conceal the pain of the parties involved and protect the past secrets of the children.
"…So, how old are you?"
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