The nights in the mountains always get dark very quickly, especially on this day. In just a moment of distraction, it was already completely dark.
At this time of day, Wen He, who had been tired all day, would have fallen asleep early. But at this moment, she didn't know whether it was the silence of the old house after the hustle and bustle that kept Wen He awake, or the words spoken by the village chief and the villagers during the day that kept echoing in her mind and prevented her from falling asleep. She tossed and turned over and over again and couldn't close her eyes. So Wen He simply put on her coat, got up, and walked to the tomato field outside the old house.
Small tomatoes began to sprout in the tomato field again. The big rooster had already moved the nest back with the little yellow chickens. When Wen He walked over, the big rooster was trying hard to pull out the little yellow chickens that were surrounding it and trying to burrow into its fluffy feathers one by one, as if he disliked the little yellow chickens for occupying the nest he had dug.
Seeing the rooster like this, Wen He couldn't help but reach out his hand and touched the rooster's head like Ashan. Suddenly, the rooster seemed to smell a familiar scent, but did not attack. Instead, it tilted its head in confusion and made a "coo" sound, as if asking Wen He what he was doing.
To be honest, Wen He didn't know what he was doing. He just rubbed the big rooster's head a few times and stared at the fight between the big rooster and the little yellow chickens. It seemed that in the end the big rooster could not withstand the siege of the little yellow chickens, and finally had no choice but to let the little yellow chickens burrow into its feathers to keep warm.
I don't know how much time had passed until a cold wind suddenly blew in the night. The big rooster's originally arrogant expression suddenly became tense. Suddenly, he began to nervously throw the group of little yellow chickens around him one by one, and his fluffy chicken feathers suddenly stood up.
Wen He seemed to be familiar with this phenomenon. It seemed that whenever a sunny-looking boy appeared near the house, Big Rooster and the others would become nervous as if facing a great enemy. Sure enough, the next moment, there were a few light footsteps and the voice of that very familiar boy behind Wen He.
"I'm sorry, Ah He, I broke my promise today."
"Will you break your promise tomorrow? Ah Shan, you promised me that you would work with me to cultivate the farmland, but we're still a long way off."
"Don't you understand yet? Ah He, my fate with you should end here..."
Today, Ashan was still dressed as a teenager as usual, and looked no different from any other teenager. However, Ashan today was not as sunny and innocent as before. His face was filled with a dead silence that Wen He could not understand at all. He raised his eyes and looked at the dark mountain in front of him, as if he saw something, but also as if he saw nothing.
After a long while, he finally came over, patted the rooster's head a few times, regardless of the rooster's stiffness, and sat down beside it. He was like the sunny young man Ah Shan again, smiling brightly and beckoning Wen He to sit next to him. "Ah He, why don't I tell you a story? This is the story of a friend of mine. Do you want to listen to it?"
The friend that Ah He was talking about was actually the youngest and sickest son of a large landlord a long time ago. However, because his biological mother was a slave, he had been criticized all his life and was not liked at all. If the landlord had not been short of a few grains of rice, his friend would probably not have survived even when he was in his infancy.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. Due to frequent wars, the people were in danger. Later, a plague spread in the village. No one knew when the rumor came out, but everyone said that the mountain god had been angered, and a boy must be sent into the mountain to be sacrificed to the mountain god in order to appease his anger.
The landlord wanted to claim this great achievement. After all, he had many sons, and one less or one more would not make much difference. If he didn't like one, lost one, or one died young, he could still have a few more. But there was only one chance to seize power and prestige.
So, the landlord's least favorite and sickly child was sent to the mountains by his servants.
When the child was sent in, he was just two years old. He couldn't speak yet and could barely walk. In other words, it was already difficult for him to struggle to survive. If nothing unexpected happened, the child would be left alone in the cold mountains and would probably become silent within two days.
However, after the plague swept through the entire village, everyone died, including the landlord's family. But the child did not die. He was kept alive by the mountain's nursing. The grief-stricken mother wolf, having lost her cubs, took the child back to her den as if he were her own cub. She nursed him every day until he was alive. The child grew up slowly and silently in the mountains.
Until the child was about eight or nine years old, the mother wolf died of old age. From then on, the child suddenly stopped growing and remained at the age of eight or nine. No one knew when he stopped feeling hungry and seemed to be able to sense everything in the mountain.
But he also envied the children who occasionally came to the mountains to play, so he asked the mountains to dress him up like those children, so that he could play with them and learn to speak like them. Until one day, when those children warmly invited the castrated child to their homes, he suddenly realized that he could not leave the mountains.
It was at that time that the child suddenly realized that he seemed unable to leave the mountain. His life was given by the mountain, and his life was connected with the mountain. He lived when the mountain gave birth to him, and he died when the mountain died. Later, the child gave himself a name that belonged uniquely to the mountain, although he had never had a name before.
After that, the child never came out again for a long time. He hid in the mountains, quietly watching everything in the mountains, until about fifty or sixty years ago, when he was discovered by a boy named Bai due to an accident.
The child thought that the boy surnamed Bai would soon forget about him, just like the other children before him. However, he never expected that the boy surnamed Bai was very stubborn. He seemed to believe that the other party was his good friend. He came almost every day. Even if he didn't see anyone, he would stay there for several hours. After leaving disappointed, he would come back the next day with full energy.
The child couldn't resist, and no one knew when it started, but the two gradually became familiar with each other and became best playmates. The child also made a deal with Dashan, wanting to grow up with the boy surnamed Bai. Dashan agreed, and his body, which had stopped growing, began to grow again like a normal person.
But the good times didn't last. After nearly a decade of living like this, the boy's parents became successful in the city and wanted to take him there for a better education. But the boy surnamed Bai, no, he was already a teenager at that time, and he didn't want to leave. He felt that life in the mountains was good and he didn't want to leave. Besides, his best friends were there.
The child knew that it was time to say goodbye again, because the parents of the boy surnamed Bai had already come into the mountains, and he knew that the boy's parents insisted on taking him away from the mountains for his own good.
So, the child was clever enough to create a small "accident" and "fell into the river and drowned". And because the "water flow was too fast", even the "body" was not found in the end.
"Look, Ah He, my friend isn't a good person. You'd better not get so close to him. Maybe you should listen to what the villagers say. Don't get too close to the mountains. Some things... are better off not existing..."
Ashan's voice slowly echoed in Wen He's ears, as if he suddenly sensed something. When he turned around, Ashan had disappeared. The rooster's tense nerves had also relaxed, and with a "cuckoo" sound, he finally buried his head in his wings and fell asleep.
But Wen He was not sleepy at all. He quietly enjoyed the night breeze for most of the night. Suddenly, he rushed back to the old house, turned on all the lights in the room, and took out all the ancient books left by the old man. Except for the ones he had already read, he flipped through them one by one, and also opened the ancient books related to ascetics and metaphysics, which he had not originally intended to read.
Ancient books that record related matters of ascetics and metaphysics are obviously much more complicated than commonly used formations.
Wen He also saw the introduction to the relevant evil spirits and the methods of suppressing them. Among them was the "mountain ghost" that possessed Ajun that day. It was a low-level but difficult evil spirit. Among the methods of suppressing it, there was an introduction to Zhang Daxian's magic weapon "Binding Rope". Of course, there were other methods of suppression, but in the last column there was a somewhat strange pattern of an animal that seemed somewhat familiar.
There were similar patterns engraved in many other places. Wen He did not look closely, but after looking at the location where the pattern appeared, he initially inferred that it should be similar to encryption. To check it, he needed a symbol from a more advanced ancient book, because in the later chapters involving evil spirits and big monsters, such a pattern appeared everywhere. There was only a brief introduction, and no method of cracking or suppressing it was recorded on it.
Of course, Wen He spent the night flipping through ancient books. Since it wasn't about this, he glanced through them briefly and flipped past them. It was almost dawn when he finally found the relevant information he wanted to know. It read: 'Mountain gods live and die with the mountains. Their origins are unknown, from where and when. They exist with plants, animals, and even humans, but none can leave the mountains... Unless they sign a new contract with the mountains, relinquishing their deity status and letting the mountains appoint a new one, then the deified one can reenter the cycle of reincarnation..."
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