At noon on the eighteenth day of the first lunar month, in the depths of Shennongjia, there was wind in the mountains, which was blocked by the forest and turned into countless small wind whirls, and the cold swished straight into the bones. The sky was drizzling, as if it was very poetic, but if you looked closely, the rain was actually countless tiny ice crystals.

There is still snow in the shade and low-lying areas, and the temperature should be a few degrees above zero, but the humidity is relatively high, and there is a lingering chill everywhere you go.

Zhuang Mengzhou wrapped in a mink fur, carrying a demon king wooden long stick in the peaks and hills of the forest, the road is very difficult to walk, he exhaled white vapor in his mouth, walking is already a little hot, took off the hood with a big hat, silver hair was rolled up by the fine wind in the forest.

Shi Buquan beside him probably felt bored on the road, and said on the side: "Mr. Zhuang, your mink fur is a little wrong now!"

Zhuang Mengzhou wondered, "What's wrong?"

Shi Buquan: "Animal protection organizations will protest, there is nothing without that, haven't you heard that slogan?"

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Cold, damp and rainy, cold and bone-chilling, what should I wear in this weather?"

Shi Buquan: "Of course it's a down jacket, there was a news about the good quality and low price last winter, El Niño caused the cold snap in the Arctic to go south, and North America cooled down on a large scale, and many robbers changed careers and robbed down jackets on the road!"

Zhuang Mengzhou: "That's not called changing careers, it's called changing the subject matter! What is the down jacket made of?"

Shi Buquan: "Down." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Be specific!"

Shi Buquan's voice became lower: "Goose down or duck down." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Mink is an animal, geese and ducks are not animals, and now they are all artificially raised." The Buddha said that all living beings are equal, and you can't discriminate! It's not enough to pluck other people's down to make clothes, and I haven't seen you eat less every time you roast duck or goose?"

Shi Buquan smiled: "It seems that you can only wear a cotton jacket, and that old-fashioned earthy yellow military coat is quite suitable, which is both warm and windproof." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Where does the cotton come from?"

Shi Buquan: "What is planted in the field, and picked by cotton farmers." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Cotton is also a living thing. ”

Xian Hao, who was walking in front, couldn't help but interject: "According to Buddhism, plants and trees have no alaya consciousness and do not enter sentient beings. ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "How do you know that the grass and trees have no alaya consciousness, in case they become refined?"

Xian Hao: "That's not what I said. ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Who said that?"

Xian Hao's tone was a little uncertain: "It should be what the Buddha said." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou raised the bar and said: "Have you heard it with your own ears? Let me tell you the truth, if animals can't be eaten, plants can't be eaten, won't everyone starve to death?

Shang Ni in the back also spoke: "The Buddha said that he doesn't eat meat, Mr. Zhuang always knows." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Don't talk nonsense! Wuliang Guang has never said that Buddhists are not allowed to eat meat, this is the rule set by Emperor Wu of Liang." I think this rule is very good, at that time, those monks did not produce, did not serve, did not pay taxes, if they still had to eat meat every day, how could they afford to provide for it?"

Shanny: "Who is the Infinite Light?"

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Immeasurable light is immeasurable light, do you have a good look at the ones I recommend?"

Shanny: "Oh, I remember, this area is the ruins of an ancient village. ”

They walked in the deep mountains and dense forests, the vegetation in this area is very lush, the primeval jungle is covered with a thick humus layer, and it is also covered with a lot of dead branches and leaves, and there is snow in many places, and there are no relics at all. But Shanny said there was, so there must be.

Ding Qi has been walking in the front, smiling and listening to the small talk, at this moment he also stopped and dug out a piece of something next to a small mound, turned around and said: "This is really an ancient village ruins, it should be left by the ancient Ba people." ”

The Ba people are a tribe that lived in the Shennongjia area in ancient times, and are also distributed in the Sichuan Basin and the Huguang Plain. The mound that Ding Qi had just turned over was actually a house that had collapsed for an unknown number of years, weathered and covered with vegetation, and there was hardly the slightest trace of it, but he dug up a broken pottery shard.

Broken pottery shards in the plains, as long as they are dug into the ground, can be found almost everywhere, and they are traces of artificial activities from various historical eras. However, this kind of thing can also be found in the primeval jungle deep in Shennongjia, indicating that there was a village here a long time ago.

They are located on a relatively flat place, sheltered from the floods of the rainy season, and close to the water source, which is indeed a good place to build a village, but now it has become a dense forest, and many trees may have grown for thousands of years.

This fashion girl wondered again, "Mr. Zhuang, what are you doing?"

I saw Zhuang Mengzhou use the long stick in his hand as a spade, brushed aside the dead branches and leaves, and picked up the soft humus layer to continue digging down, and then took out an object from under the soil layer and said: "I picked up the treasure of the Xiaoyang Kingdom, do you believe it?"

What he held in his hand seemed to be a necklace with a very primitive style, a rope made of gray-yellow fine linen silk, and a bone ornament the size of a one-dollar coin was hung, and the decorative lines engraved on the surface looked like a walking person.

Ding Qi walked over and took the string of ornaments, wiped the black dirt on it, and said: "I don't believe it, how can the treasure of the world control be picked up anywhere, but this thing is really a bit of a doorway, the ordinary rope has probably been rotten for so many years, and it is really a treasure of the world control!"

Ding Qi, Xian Hao, Zhuang Mengzhou, Shi Buquan, and Shang Ni went to Shennongjia to visit Xiaoyang Kingdom in the first month. The original plan was just for Ding Qi and the other three to come to explore the road first, but the last time I went to Cuirao Village, Shang Ni didn't catch up because of something at school, and Shi Buquan also stayed in Nanlan Community to take care of the family, so this time the two of them must also come along.

The location of the ruins of this village is only five kilometers from the site of Ding Qi's last attack, which can be said to be very close.

Ding Qi got the charm, and with his cultivation, he could sense that it contained the information of a world, and when it was found here, it should be the treasure of the Xiaoyang Kingdom. The portal of Xiaoyang Kingdom has not been found yet, but this thing has been dug out first, Shi Buquan asked: "Mr. Zhuang, you are honest, did you bury this thing here in advance?"

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Your little girl is an expert, look at that pit, don't you know if I buried it?"

Shang Nizhen ran over to study the soil pit dug by Zhuang Mengzhou, shook her head and said, "Judging from the traces of soil burial, no one has touched it for at least thousands of years, let alone a trace of new excavation. ”

Xian Hao said to Ding Qi: "It's not surprising, think about how we found the shaking light back then?"

Ding Qi: "Yes, it was dug out of the riverbed outside the high platform. ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Teacher Ding, what's the name of this thing?"

Ding Qi: "It seems to be made of grinding skull, and it is called Xiaoyangding." ”

How did he know the name of the Treasure of the Controlling Realm, and he didn't find any written records, but the Treasure of the Controlling Realm itself contained a lot of information, and he was proficient in the method of induction, and Ding Qi said yes.

Shi Buquan looked around: "The key has been found, but where is the door?"

Zhuang Mengzhou asked Ding Qi: "Teacher Ding, do you remember the Jianzi Village outside Cuirao Village?"

The situation is indeed somewhat similar, there is a village deep in the mountains. The difference is that Jianzi Village still exists today, and only a remnant of this place is left that is difficult for ordinary people to find. Ding Qi nodded and said: "It seems that our path is not wrong, and we may be able to find the gateway through here, but the village here has disappeared for thousands of years, and the inheritance of Xiaoyang Kingdom may have long been severed." ”

Shi Buquan: "Maybe people have moved away?"

Ding Qi shook the Xiaoyang Ding in his hand and said: "People may have moved away, but the treasure of the control realm has been left, which means that the inheritance has been lost." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou: "Xiao Nizi, take a good look at it, are there any traces of ancient roads behind the village?"

Shanny: "Yes, come with me." ”

The gateway to the country of Xiaoyang is easy to find, walk through the dense forest to the high place, and you can find it when you look up. There is a huge arch-like trace on the cliff in front, which is more than four zhang high and more than two zhang wide, like a naturally formed relief. If you take a closer look, you can see that it is actually an artificial relic, but after years of erosion, the chisel marks of that year are no longer recognizable.

This is actually the gateway of the secret realm of heaven and earth, or its location coincides with the portal of the secret realm of heaven and earth.

Ding Qi put away Xiaoyang Ding and said: "Look at this posture, this portal has not been opened for thousands of years, but maybe there are still people living inside." Let's not use the Treasure of Realm Control, just dive in, and try not to alarm the people inside. ”

The so-called infiltration is to enter with a secret method outside the square, without opening the portal with the help of the treasure of the control world. If this outside world has been isolated for thousands of years, ordinary people may be in danger when they enter, maybe they will be inexplicably infected, and if there are still people living and breeding inside, they may even bring a plague to the local people.

So Ding Qi was very cautious, and only five people came to the first exploration, and there was no problem with the five of them. After passing through the portal, everyone was a little stunned, they were in an abandoned temple.

Why is it said that the temple, the surrounding buildings are very tall, made of stones, each stone is very beautifully chiseled, but it is obviously abandoned for a long time, and many places have collapsed, with traces of the weathering of time. And where they were, it was like an altar in the central square of the temple.

Shi Buquan: "Sure enough, there were people living here, and the fact that such a building can be built shows that the scale of the ethnic group is not small, and the level of productivity is also very high." ”

Zhuang Mengzhou added: "The level of organization is not bad! I don't know if this tribe is still there." ”

Ding Qi looked up into the distance and said, "It should still be there, but it is no longer human, otherwise how could this place be abandoned?"

Shi Buquan exclaimed exaggeratedly: "Oh my God, there is so much gold and silver here, have we drilled into the gold mine?"

There are many gold and silver ornaments in the remaining buildings, many of the patterns inlaid in the reliefs are made of gold, and there are many gold statues of animals, plants, birds and beasts. Even some of the collapsed houses had a gold roof, not just a layer of gold leaf, but a large gold shell.

In addition to gold, there are silver products here, but the surface of silver has become dark and black after so long, and it is not as conspicuous as shiny gold.

Xian Hao: "Seeing that the gold and silver left over are not easy to dismantle and move, so I just threw them away." ”

Shanny: "I don't think it takes much work, don't the locals even bother to do this kind of thing?"

Shi Buquan: "Maybe there is no one here for a long time, or there is no shortage of these things here, take away what is easy to take, and leave it if it is not easy to dismantle." ”

The temple is desolate, with sparse trees growing on rocks, and walking down the hill from the ruins of an ancient path, you can see the fields ahead from the high slopes. There are villages, rivers and fields in the fields, and you can see people moving. Xian Hao frowned and said, "The appearance here is a bit like Cuirao Village, but I always feel that the atmosphere is not right, and I am a little angry." ”

Although Ding Qi's impression of Xie Jingzhi was not very good, the secret realm of heaven and earth in Cuirao Village gave people a feeling of vitality. But this place seemed to lack that vigorous vitality, and Ding Qi also frowned and said: "There seems to be an intoxicating atmosphere between heaven and earth, that is, there are similar ingredients in the air. ”

There is indeed an intoxicating aura in the air here, very, very faint, ordinary people can't detect it at all, but they can't escape Ding Qi's senses. The five of them came to the field, but they didn't alarm anyone in the area, they were just secretly observing what kind of world this place was, and the more they looked at it, the deeper their brows became more and more furrowed

Three days later, the five of them gathered on a hill next to the field, and you looked at me and I looked at you, and they couldn't hide their disappointment. The situation of Xiaoyang Kingdom is basically clear, the geographical scale of this outside world is quite large, but it is not as large as Xiaojing Lake, there are more than 2,000 people living in isolation, but it is obvious that the civilization here has declined or obviously degraded.

There is also a temple in the middle of the plain, which is not only different from the abandoned temple in the mountains in the distance, but also far inferior in scale and construction technology. If the abandoned building in the distance is a real temple, then the temple of the clansmen today is simply a clumsy illegal building.

Most of the houses in the village are very shabby, mostly with earthen walls and grass roofs, and some stone materials. However, many of these stones are obviously the remains of some ancient buildings, and there are still many exquisite ornaments on them, which are piled up into various foundations and wall foundations.

It is strange that in such a primitive and backward village, there is a water and sewage system, and the ditches dug along the sides of the road and in front of and behind the houses are covered with stone slabs in many places, which divert water from outside the village. People's domestic water and sewage are separated by two sets of canal systems.

To have such a plan is already a sign of a fairly developed civilization, and it is a little abrupt to appear here. This probably shows one thing, the productivity and agricultural civilization here were very developed in ancient times, and some traces are still preserved today.

The clothes worn by the locals are also very simple, a thick gray cloth woven from plant fibers, and when you look at it from afar, it looks like everyone is wearing rag bags. The local staple food is a barley crop, which is basically harvested by wild seeds, and its farming method is a bit like the five heart grains, and the harvested wheat grains are not ground to make cakes, but directly boiled and eaten.

But there is one crop that is cultivated by hand, and almost all of the land with convenient irrigation conditions and artificial reclamation is planted with this kind of thing, which Tinzi calls cotton trees.

Through the secret investigation in the past few days, Ding Qi can also draw a lot of inferences. The birth rate here is very high, but the infant mortality rate is also very high, and the total population size is slowly decreasing. Judging from various traces, the total population of its history may have exceeded 10,000 at its peak, but now there are more than 2,000 people left.

As for the level of medical care, the only medicine in the area is the cotton leaves, and the only way to cure the disease is to pray in the humble temple, and the sorcerer-like figure gives the cotton leaves a soup after they have been mashed.

In fact, there are cotton trees everywhere here, and cotton leaves are found in every house, so why go to the temple to ask for it? Because it represents the blessing of God, and it should also have a placebo effect for the local residents.

The cotton tree is an evergreen shrub that grows up to three or five meters tall in the wild, it is not a kapok, and the flowers on the tree resemble cotton peaches, which have a lot of light yellow fibers, which the locals use to process cloth. However, the main purpose of artificial cultivation is to chew it, and in the cultivated and irrigated fields, the branches are inserted to grow to a height of more than one meter, and the young leaves on them are plucked for consumption.

Fresh young leaves can be chewed and eaten directly, or dried into tea leaves for storage, and dried leaves can be ground into powder and washed with water, or chewed directly. Almost all of the adult men in the area are fond of chewing cotton leaves, and they carry a bag with them when they go out, and neighbors are accustomed to entertaining guests with them.

No alcohol is produced here, and the people certainly don't drink alcohol, and their diet is extremely simple, living in abject poverty, and chewing cotton leaves is the most important entertainment. The men prayed to God several times a day, and at other times they chewed cotton leaves for pleasure, or gathered together in twos and threes, or found a comfortable place to lean in their homes alone.

The women took on more of the work, including farming, cooking, taking care of the children, and harvesting the grain, while the men did only occasionally in the excitement of chewing cotton leaves. But women rarely chew cotton leaves, because in the local perception, it is a gift from God to men.

Only a few older women of some age and status usually chew some cotton leaves, and other women only take them as medicine when they are sick. Of course, there are also women who will secretly chew a few tablets when men are not paying attention, but this situation is rare after all, and it is difficult to form a habit.

They found the native plant of this cotton tree in the mountains and wilderness where the locals could hardly set foot and did some research, and found that its sap had a special effect on people. It can make people excited, feel clear, forget about hunger and fatigue for a while, keep them energetic, and can bring a sense of pleasure and satisfaction.

Ding Qi is not an ordinary person, and of course he will study the more special uses of this kind of thing. The native plants found in the mountains and wilderness have very strong medicinal properties, and when they are strong to a certain extent, they can be regarded as a miracle medicine in a sense. If the method is used correctly, it can help to stay clear and not drowsy at the same time, and even experience a more acute state of perception. However, if it is not used illegally, it is harmful and useless, and it must not be used too much.

As for the cotton trees that have been artificially planted in the local area for generations, their medicinal properties have weakened a lot. After chewing, ordinary people will also feel energetic, active and inexplicably excited. But when the properties of the medicine subside, I will feel depressed and confused, and I can't do anything.

Needless to say, you can also know that chewing this kind of thing for a long time is harmful, not only not conducive to the physical and mental health of individuals, but also more harmful to the whole society.

It is surprising that such a place is full of gold. There are many gold and silver products in the local area, and even ordinary people eat boiled wheat grains in dilapidated houses, using pitted gold bowls. There are large gold mines here, and Ding Qi and they have also found the remains of ancient mining and smelting, and silver is the companion of smelting gold mines.

However, the local gold mines have long ceased to smelt, and those ancient mines were abandoned many years ago, but there are still a lot of gold and silver artifacts left behind. Today, artisans can re-melt ready-made gold into new, regular-shaped objects, and silverware is the highest level of craftsmanship that has survived in the region.

There is more gold here than silver, and silver is harder and suitable for making all kinds of knives, and here it is something better than gold, and the common people use gold, and the chieftains of status use silver.

In such a world, people don't know what to say, Ding Qi They are here to investigate the situation in Xiaoyang Kingdom, not to complain. Several people sat there in silence for a long time before Shannie took the lead and said, "Are they savages?"

Ding Qi smiled bitterly: "Yes, they are also human. ”

ps: Wow, today's super long chapter double update, a total of 14,000 words, you can enjoy a monthly pass!