Lost (short story) Zhang Baotong

By this time, they were too tired to walk, so they collapsed on the half-dry grass to rest. The sky was bright and somewhat dazzling. Chen Yi lay with her eyes closed, panting slightly, and her mind couldn't help but think. Thinking back to the experiences he told her about life in the wild last night, I felt like I was following him into his life. This is the feeling she is experiencing right now, full of hardship and loneliness, desolation, without food, and the road to go seems to have no end. She didn't know if this was the life she had always dreamed of and longed for. Then the aphorism he had spoken to her during her trek in the mountain stream yesterday evening echoed in her ears:

If you encounter setbacks,

That's your wealth;

If you feel the darkness,

It was dawn.

It is only now that she truly realizes that life is a real experience and tribulation, not the sentimentality and casual imagination of the idle time. Zhao Jiping turned over and lay down in front of her face, and put a yellow wild chrysanthemum in front of her nose to smell. She smiled softly, and there was a chrysanthemum scent in her smile. The smell was fresh and pure, and he was fascinated. He looked at her tenderly for a moment, then lay his face against her chest, quietly listening to her peaceful heartbeat.

There are no trees on the mountain beams, only bamboo forests and meadows. In the open space where there are no bamboo forests and green grass, red rhododendrons with large or small leaves can be seen dying in the cold wind. Looking into the distance, the peaks of the forest and sea, the clouds cover the fog, and they are blown by the wind, such as the sea of fog rolling. They began to descend the mountain.

The side of the hillside is rocky and thick, and when you look up, you can see herds of bison and antelope leisurely feeding on the steep cliffside on the opposite mountainside.

Further down, you will enter the dense forest. The sun burrowed into the clouds, and the forest was dark and silent. At the turn of the forest, Chen Yi said that she wanted to relieve her hands, so she asked Zhao Jiping to wait for her by the grass in front of her. Zhao Jiping walked to the edge of the grass and stopped, leaning against a tree to rest. After a few minutes, he couldn't help but wonder when he saw that Chen Yi hadn't moved, so he walked back to find her. As soon as he walked to the corner, he saw Chen Yi running towards this side in shock, and when he saw him coming, he shouted, "Run." ”

Zhao Jiping didn't know what was going on, so he stopped and looked over there. I saw a large herd of takin running madly. The ferocious momentum seemed to be trying to find them desperately, and the sound of the speeding hooves sounded like drums. Zhao Jiping had never seen such a frightening scene. He turned around and pulled Chen Yi and ran desperately towards the forest. He thought that takins had poor vision, and that they could get out of danger as long as they ran out of their sight. But, to the worst of all, they ran to the side of the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain is a bottomless cliff. At this time, dozens of takin had already galloped towards them, only about thirty meters away.

"We're done. Chen Yi cried and mourned, showing extreme horror and despair. Zhao Jiping knew that they were already in a catastrophe, but they couldn't just wait for death. At least he couldn't let Chen Yi get hurt. Thinking of this, he pressed Chen Yi to the ground, learned the howl of a hyena, and rushed towards the fierce takin head-on with no life. Unexpectedly, the takin seemed to be frightened, panicked, and then turned around and ran. Soon escaped without a trace.

When Chen Yi ran over, Zhao Jiping was already paralyzed on the ground, and his body was so weak that he couldn't stand up. After a long time, he said in shock, "Are we still alive?" Chen Yi nodded, knelt in front of him, shed tears, and hugged him tightly. Her heart was pounding, and she felt that life had never been so precious. In her affectionate embrace, his heart quickly calmed down. Looking at her tearful soft and moist eyes, he couldn't help but kiss her eyes, and with a characteristic smile, he said playfully, "Flowers become fruits through the wind and rain, and life goes through hardships to achieve glory." ”

She liked his cheerful and open-minded personality. This is just in line with the kind of free and romantic mood she admires. So, she smiled at him and kissed him.

On the way down the mountain, Zhao Jiping was very tired, he felt a little fever after the rain in the morning, his stomach was so empty that he couldn't straighten his waist, looking at the steep mountain road downhill, he really wanted to fall downhill, and rolled down the slope to the bottom of the mountain. Chen Yi was also exhausted and couldn't help it. Her feet had already blistered with blood, and she gritted her teeth in pain when she walked. She really wanted to lie down on the ground and sleep for a few days. However, in this primeval forest and scrubland, there is always the danger of encountering wild beasts. The sun in the clouds is already in the west, and the afternoon is running out. They have to get out of here as fast as they can.

When he went down to the foot of a mountain and climbed up another mountain, Chen Yi's legs were a little unable to support him, and his arm throwing a bamboo stick was numb and unconscious. But Zhao Jiping's solid figure was always shaking in front of her eyes, as if it would never fall. She knew it was a silent command, forcing her to follow him on and on. It can be seen that there is indeed a tenacity and enduring strength in his life, a tenacious and unyielding desire to survive. She thought that if they could really get out of this boundless forest and mountains, it must be his quality of life that saved them.

They stumbled down several ridges in succession, and then they entered a narrow valley. The stream flowed along the valley floor and along the rubble pile, and from time to time there were rare birds chirping in the grass. After walking for a while, Zhao Jiping saw a few wild lilies blooming on the edge of the ditch and cliff, so he went down to the stream, uprooted those wild lilies, picked off the white seeds like garlic at the roots, soaked them in the stream, and handed them to Chen Yi. There are too few things to fight hunger, and after eating, I feel even hungrier. They walked along the stream, looking for more lilies.

On the edge of a dense green vine branch by the stream, Chen Yi saw a cyan fruit, so he picked one for Zhao Jiping to see. Zhao Jiping looked at the green fruit for a while, and felt that it looked like kiwifruit, so he took a bite and tasted it, this fruit was bitter and sour, so sour that it could sour people's teeth, and he said, "Yes, it's kiwifruit." ”

The two of them stood by the green vine branches by the brook and began to pick the fruit and eat it. They were so hungry that they could not care about the sourness of the fruit, so they ate it vigorously. After a while, they heard the sound of "chirping" in the forest of the cliff behind them, and when they turned to look, they saw a large group of golden snub-nosed monkeys crawling high above the branches of the trees overhead, at least one or two hundred, staring at them with extremely hostile eyes, with a posture of attacking at any time.

Chen Yi pulled Zhao Jiping's shirt and said, "Hurry up, this is their fruit." When Zhao Jiping saw it, he immediately became nervous. He knew what would happen if the horde of monkeys pounced on them. They retreated in fear until they jumped over the stream.