February 12th.
In the middle of spring, in the month of Mao, all things begin to awaken.
In this chilly spring, the wind on the river is as cold as a knife, and the hundreds of thousands of mountains are dejected like dead graves.
There is a county on the bank of Yinyi River.
That was a county called Chang.
In another deep forest in the Shiwan Mountains.
The rumbling thunder was getting closer and closer, and a strong wind was blowing in the mountains. The dark forest was shaking violently under the pressure of the wind.
The weather is about to change and there will be a rainstorm.
Snap!
Above the head, a flash of lightning tore through the dark and terrifying sky, and the sky and the earth instantly turned pale white.
The lightning also illuminated a long-abandoned wild temple standing in the mountains.
Outside the temple, there are bushes and trees that are twisted and ugly, with old roots sticking out of the ground and covered with moss.
Revealing the original.
And deep.
This is a concave basin surrounded by high mountains on all sides.
The dilapidated wild temple is right in the center of the basin.
The wild temple is built entirely of black rocks, but it has an indescribable weirdness and awkwardness because the design of its beams is very strange, low in the middle and high at both ends.
And there are only doors.
There are no windows designed to circulate air.
rumble.
rumble.
The thunder was getting louder and louder, and the forest was so dark that it was almost impossible to see the way forward or back. There were shrubs and thorns everywhere that cut hands.
Jin'an, covered in mud and in a mess, had been lost in the mountains for a day and couldn't get out of the deep forest no matter how hard he tried. Fortunately, he finally found a place to shelter before the heavy rain.
Jinan traveled through time.
It's been a day since he traveled to this world.
Who would have thought that when he went on a self-driving tour alone to Kunlun Mountain, known as the hometown of gods, in August and September, he would accidentally travel to the unfamiliar mountain forest environment in this cold spring season.
Crackling.
Rain beat down on the leaves. It finally rained that day, and it soon turned into a downpour.
"Dad, Dad, Dad, come quickly, there is a temple ahead where we can hide from the rain."
"Xiaobao, don't run too fast. The mountain roads are slippery and you can easily fall when it rains."
A father and son ran into this wild temple in the rain, hugging each other.
"Ah! Dad, why is there another person here?"
A young boy of about thirteen or fourteen rushed into the temple first. He was caught off guard and frightened by Jin'an, so much so that he jumped up screaming. He had not expected that there were other people in this remote temple in the mountains.
"Xiaobao, stop running around and stand next to Daddy... Sir, are you here to take shelter from the rain as well?"
The father had a dark and solid body, and looked like an honest mountain man. Although he had a strong local accent, Jin'an still understood about 70% of it by guessing. It was a bit like the accent of Guichuan area, but not quite.
This father and son in the rain look like woodcutters going into the mountains to chop wood, carrying bundles of firewood behind them.
The clothes he was wearing were ancient Chinese costumes, with coarse linen clothes inside and animal furs outside to keep warm.
The scene before my eyes was like walking into the set of a costume TV drama.
Jin An was stunned.
At the same time, snap!
Another flash of lightning streaked across the sky overhead, painting the wild temple a pale white.
At the same time, it also illuminated a clay statue of a woman enshrined in the wild temple. Perhaps because it had been abandoned for too long, the head of the clay statue had disappeared.
I wonder who this headless temple was originally dedicated to?
Seeing that Jin'an didn't answer, the father and son thought that Jin'an was not good at talking, so they kept their distance and busy themselves.
They found some dry grass from the temple to use as kindling, and then picked out some firewood that was not wet by the rain. The father skillfully took out a tinder and lit it.
Soon, a warm bonfire was lit in the wild temple, and then the dry food they carried with them was taken out.
It was a frozen, dry, hard, cold pancake.
The father and son heated the pancakes over the campfire and ate them with rainwater collected in bamboo tubes.
Gurgle gurgle~
Smell the aroma of roasted pickled mustard greens pancakes.
Saliva secretion in the mouth.
Jinan's stomach growled with hunger.
Jinan blushed.
He had been lost in the mountains for a whole day and had not eaten a single grain of rice. He was now cold and hungry.
"Little brother, you must be hungry. There is still half a pancake left here. If you don't mind, take this half pancake to fill your stomach first."
The middle-aged man's father had skin that was dark and rough from years of wind and sun. He did not reject outsiders coldly. Instead, he warmly handed Jin'an half a pancake.
Jinan was indeed very hungry. After expressing his gratitude, he wolfed down half of the pancake.
After this incident, the relationship between the two sides became much closer, and Jinan also roughly understood the basic situation of the father and son in front of him.
The father's name is Wang Tiegen and the boy's name is Wang Xiaobao.
The mountain in front of us has no name in the local area. There are many ordinary mountains like this around. The father and son are mountain people living nearby. They usually make a living by chopping wood and hunting.
In the past, they would never go so deep into the mountains. The main reason was that when they went into the mountains to chop firewood today, they suddenly encountered a group of wild boars moving.
Hunters in the mountains all know a saying: one pig, two bears, and three tigers.
Wild boars are ferocious, and even bears and tigers dare not provoke adult wild boars.
The father and son fled in panic and accidentally went deep into the forest, which led to the scene before us.
…
As they chatted, the night grew darker and they began to feel very sleepy. The three of them fell asleep one after another against the wall.
I don’t know how long I slept.
In a daze.
Jinan heard some noise.
He opened his sleepy eyes.
I saw Wang Xiaobao crawling up from the haystack.
The child rubbed his eyes and walked out of the wild temple while unbuckling his belt.
"Xiaobao, where are you going?"
Wang Tiegen woke up in the middle of the night and shouted sleepily.
"Dad, I'm going to pee." This was Wang Xiaobao's reply.
"Then pee at the door, don't go far."
"Um."
Jin An didn't know why he was so sleepy tonight. His eyelids felt as heavy as if they were filled with lead, and he soon fell asleep again.
There is no reference to time in the mountains.
Jinan didn't know how long he slept this time.
...He was awakened by Wang Tiegen's anxious shouts.
"Xiaobao!"
"Xiaobao!"
"Xiaobao, where are you? Don't scare me, Daddy!"
Jin An turned over and woke up in shock: "Uncle Wang, what's going on? I remember Wang Xiaobao went out to pee, didn't he?"
"He never came back?"
Wang Tiegen was already crying anxiously at this time: "This is all my fault! I don't know why I fell asleep so soundly today and didn't keep a close eye on Xiaobao!"
"Just now I dreamt that Xiaobao was crying and shouting in pain. He cried and said that there were ghosts in this temple and that the clay statues were eating him. He was about to be eaten up and told me to run for my life!"
"When I woke up, I searched the entire temple, but I couldn't find Xiaobao!"
The child’s disappearance made Wang Tiegen extremely anxious.
Jinan was surprised.
He subconsciously looked at the clay statue in the temple whose head was missing.
This time when he looked at the headless clay statue, he felt a chill in his heart for some reason, as if someone was staring at him.
In Jin'an's time, people did not believe in ghosts and gods. He took a deep breath, plucked up his courage, picked up the axe that Wang Tiegen had placed on the ground, strode to the headless clay statue and started chopping it.
Plop.
Plop.
As a result, a boy's arm that was bitten off by teeth and a bloody head of Wang Xiaobao actually fell out of the clay statue.
"Xiaobao!"
Wang Tiegen screamed, rushed to his son's head, and cried bitterly.
But Jin An stood before the clay statue, not daring to move, his expression frozen. Because in the clay statue, besides Wang Xiaobao's mutilated body, there was also half of Wang Tiegen's highly decomposed body! Judging from the degree of decay, he had been dead for at least ten days or half a month!
However, Wang Tiegen was now at his feet, holding his son's head and crying heartbrokenly.
Jinan is in trouble!