Season 2 Chapter 14 Strong Run 2

The maple leaves are red in February, and an ancient poem echoes in ** Qiang's brain, and he seems to see the maple leaves fluttering in the sky falling one by one.

As soon as his eyes opened, he was still entangled in the endless red light.

"Run your mother, run and run every day, run around and run what the hell is it." **Strong was unusually irritable and shouted furiously in his heart.

"Stop, stop, I'll stop you."

** Hate yourself and want to die.

At this moment, a ray of sunlight broke through the husk of the red light, transmitting the warmth to ** Qiang's face.

"Hurry up, you're still asleep, you really have a big heart."

When Qiang opened his eyes, a strong man with a thick beard, a shaved head, and a rattail on the back of his head was patting his face.

"What's going on?" Qiang jumped up and found himself back on the earth's ground, a wind with sand and dust blowing into his nose, full of the smell of home.

The strong man looked at ** Qiang with a complicated expression, "Let's go, go up to the city tower, they are coming"

** Qiang found himself wearing an antique robe, with a mountain man armor on his chest, looking up and down, he was well equipped, and he was dressed as a general, so he quickly touched his head, and sure enough, he didn't slip away.

Looking around, there was a long axe under his feet, the head of which was wrapped in thick linen, and he lifted it up and walked towards the city gate, all armed samurai along the way, and everyone had mixed expressions on their faces.

**After walking for a while, I found that no matter what, I could easily see the top of other people's heads, and after careful analysis, I instantly understood that my height of 1.8 meters was so outstanding.

Along the gray and black steps up the city wall, through the arrow chop to look out, under the city tower is a deep trench, full of sharp wooden stakes, along the trench to the distance, dozens of black pressure phalanx slaughter densely arranged in the distance, hunting flags fluttering, a team of captains in robes and cotton hats of the samurai swayed slightly, drawing bows and arrows, sharpening knives and feeding horses, arranging engineering equipment, all of them are gearing up, ready to do a big job.

It was impossible to see how many people there were in the dense phalanx, and the black oppressive phalanx stretched all the way to the horizon, and at the end of the sight, hundreds of huge yurts loomed.

He retracted his gaze and looked at his city gate, where the stone plaque read the word "Lingzhou".

"Grass, Lingzhou, the Mongol army, the battle of Western Xia to destroy the country!" **Qiang smiled wryly.

** Take a closer look, the city gate has been sealed by a boulder, people outside can't get in, and people inside can't get out.

All the samurai around him looked at each other with blank eyes and suspicious expressions of despair, and many of them trembled slightly in their calves, and the weapons in their hands swayed from side to side.

A few horns sounded, the formation of the phalanx outside the city began to change, and countless pairs of eyes began to converge in the direction of the strongest one.

A few horns sounded on the castle tower, and all the warriors silently began to prepare to draw their bows, waking up the strong men who came over, handed themselves a pair of simple and hard bows and arrows, and picked up a few iron-headed bows and arrows from the accumulation point downstairs, and the feathers on the tail of the arrows looked old, like defeat in the wind.

The dense phalanx of the Mongol army outside the city began to move slowly towards the city walls, and it didn't take long for the first phalanx, consisting of shields and huge wooden planks, to gather within range.

The samurai on the castle tower began to fire arrows, which were nailed to their shields and bounced off the planks, more or less well, and their bows and arrows shot through the gaps in the defense to one or two people behind.

After three volleys, the Mongol army took up positions at the edge of the trench and stacked huge planks on top of each other to form a defense. The samurai inside took a moment and began to fire a salvo at the city walls.

The quality of the salvo of the Mongol army was very high, and the dense rain of arrows outlined a thick circular shock wave, lapping against the city walls, knocking the death knell over and over again.

** Qiang looked at the rear of the first line of the Mongol army, and looked at the warriors in charge of the siege equipment with a happy expression of screws, and the binding planks of the binding planks seemed to be a long, long time before they could take their turn.

The two sides will shoot you for a while, and I will shoot for a while to test the firepower, and after a day of playing, the sky gradually gets dark, and the samurai on the city wall begin to take turns to eat.

The old and weak women and children lined up in a long line with their heads in their hands, bringing the food to the samurai, ** holding a notched porcelain bowl, which contained a few chestnuts, a green vegetable, a pile of soybean paste and a small piece of mutton, and a small wine as light as mash in the worn old porcelain bottle.

All the warriors were silently eating with their heads down, and the old and weak women and children who delivered the food waited with complicated expressions to finish eating and putting away the bowls. The innocent child's innocent gaze flashed back and forth, constantly sweeping over all kinds of samurai.

** Qiang for a while Bala swallowed the food and walked up to the city wall, in the phalanx outside the city, the lights were brilliant, and the Mongol army sat in front of a pile of fires, roasting whole sheep, drinking wine, singing and dancing.

**Qiang waited on the city wall until the second half of the night, estimated that there was nothing to do today, sleeping on the ground, looking up at the stars above his head, twinkling and shining, like smiling faces laughing at his own encounter.

The next day, the Mongol army began to carry sandbags to fill the trenches, the warriors on the city wall were numb to shoot, and there were constantly Mongolian soldiers who were bitten by bows and arrows, but they were fierce and fierce, it didn't matter, on average, it took a dozen bows and arrows in the body to kill a Mongol soldier.

Rao was like this, and the warriors of Western Xia did not have the slightest excitement, and they all frowned and looked at the Mongolian army formation that had not decreased at all, and their faces obviously showed a color of despair.

On the third day, the ditch had been filled, the Mongol army began to advance, the bows and arrows of the Western Xia warriors rained more closely and rapidly, and a large number of bows and arrows were beckoned down by Hulala, and the Mongols also moved their true character, fiercely fought back, and kept returning the bows and arrows, and the bows and arrows piled up behind the city wall were still piled high, and there was no sign of falling at all.

"Energy is conserved, matter is not extinguished." ** Qiang remembered the words of Zheng Jiannan in the 23rd century.

On the seventh day, the Mongol army began to put up the engineering ladder on the city wall, and began to fight with ants, and the Western Xia warriors began to greet each other, boiling oil, stones, and burning red iron chains to kill a group of people at once.

Rolling oil, the stones Mongols didn't seem to intend to return, the stones at the piled up point fell quickly, and the long queues of old and weak women and children carried the stones of various shapes on their shoulders, numbly wiped off the sweat, and returned to the inner city in silence.

On the fifteenth day, the trenches were covered with the corpses of the Mongol soldiers, emitting a foul smell that the Mongols were so busy attacking the city that no one cared about them.

The corpses of the Western Xia warriors were all transported back to the inner city by the old and weak women and children.

On the twenty-third day, ** Qiang walked down the city wall and began to eat today's dinner, a piece of yellowed steamed buns, a pile of soybean paste, a large piece of fragrant cooked meat, eat it in your mouth, shave off the fragrance of the spice, and there is a faint salty taste.

On the thirty-third day, all the children who had reached the height of 1.3 meters went up to the city wall, and some of them excitedly drew their bows and arrows and threw stones. Some were at a loss, standing in place silently with tears in their eyes, and a few saw the corpses that fell to the ground when they saw the brains flowing out, and they knelt on the ground together and vomited.

On the forty-fifth day, the siege towers in the Mongolian phalanx began to advance slowly, the gurgling sound of wheels crushed the hearts of every Western Xia warrior, rockets and crossbows greeted the siege towers, and heart-rending cries came from the burning siege towers, and the air was filled with the thick aroma of burning proteins.

On the fiftieth day, **Qiang bandaged a few wounds and started today's dinner, a bowl of sparse wild vegetable porridge that could not be fished out, a few stewed cooked pork ribs-like fragrant meat, put it in his mouth and chewed for a long time, spit out a few bones, **Qiang knew, it was definitely not the joint bones of any animal.

On the sixtieth day, the outer city was already crumbling under the swords and axes of the Mongolian army, and it was strong to work three shifts a day, and the Mongolian soldiers touched the wall while sleeping.

On the sixty-fifth day, in the hand-to-hand combat for several days, ** Qiang was already covered in wounds, and the knife medicine had been cut off for a few days, and as soon as the battle was over, he hurriedly looked for medicine on the bodies of the soldiers on both sides.

On the sixty-seventh day, ** Qiang, who slept very lightly at night, saw some Western Xia warriors, pulled off the clothes on the corpses of Mongolian soldiers that they had hidden during the day, dressed themselves, slipped down the city wall along the night, and mixed into the Mongolian army formation.

On the seventieth day, the outer city could not be defended, the bows and arrows at the accumulation point had bottomed out, and the remaining warriors, in the dark night, retreated to the inner city.

During the day of the seventy-first day, ** Qiang looked back at the ruins of the inner city, the houses were destroyed, the stones were used to smash the Mongol army, the wood was concentrated in a dozen large fires, the fire was boiling the big iron pot on it, and the old and weak woman carried a corpse that was still steaming, stripped off her clothes, dismembered it, and threw the severed arms and stumps into the cauldron.

Qiang eats these boiled meats every day, complaining about how he doesn't even put some coriander, and birds can fade out of his mouth.

On the one hundred and third day, ** Qiang was seriously injured in many places all over his body, and he walked down the city wall with hunger and dizziness, and the man who woke up Zhang Jianqiang sat opposite him, his eyes revealing strong numbness and exhaustion.

"If your arm falls off, it falls off, why do you still hang it on your chest?" Zhang Jianqiang didn't look up, snoring and eating boiled meat.

"I can still use it this way, or tomorrow will be your meal." The man's complicated gaze was fixed on his severed half of his arm, and Bai Sensen's white bones were wrapped in bright red flesh.

Zhang Jianqiang glanced up at the man, his eyes drifted to the open ground behind him, everyone picked up the flames, the smoke was rising, the steaming cauldron was bubbling, the ground was covered with broken human body stumps, and the old and weak women and children with miserable expressions skillfully cut the corpses, as if they were doing something irrelevant, occasionally, someone would wipe the sweat on their faces with their hands, and after the palms swept over, they left bright red blood marks on their faces, making it impossible to tell whether they were leaving sweat or tears.

Zhang Jianqiang remembered the great achievements of Mongolia that he had heard about.

In 1211 AD, Genghis Khan led a large army south to attack Jin. In 1215 AD, the capture of the capital of the Jin Kingdom carried out a month-long massacre of the inhabitants of the city, and only evacuated after complete looting and destruction. More than a million people have died. The ancient city of Zhongdu, which was two or three thousand years old, has completely disappeared, and the current Zhongdu does not have any buildings before the Yuan Dynasty, which is the reason.

Zhang Jianqiang looked at the old and weak women and children in the square again, all of them were as thin as hemp sticks, but they didn't dare to be the slightest slack, and they were speechless and waited for the samurai masters to eat and drink well.

In 1219 A.D., Genghis Khan led an army of 200,000 troops to the west and launched a war of aggression against Huathornzm. He marched in several directions, divided and surrounded each strategic town, broke through each one, and used brutal means such as large-scale massacres, razing cities, and issuing prisoners to take the lead, so as to deter the enemy and relieve his worries. The initiative on the battlefield was all on the side of the Mongols.

In 1220~1221 A.D., Genghis Khan captured the new capital city of Samalgan, which had a population of more than 200,000 people, and the corpses pillowed each other, and lay in the countryside in a messy manner. Except for a few young and beautiful flower girls who were conscripted into the army, everyone else, including children, was beheaded. The rest of the city was then slaughtered, with a total of 50,000 Mongol soldiers, an average of 24 civilians each. A total of 1.2 million, just like slaughtering a pig and slaughtering a sheep. Historically, Khorezm had a large population, but after the Mongol War, the entire country basically disappeared, and the tragedy of the massacre can be imagined. Its king fled westward, and Genghis Khan ordered Subutai and Jebe to pursue him. Therefore, the Mongolian army crossed the Caucasus between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea to the west and penetrated into Russia.

In 1223 A.D., the combined forces of Kipchak and Russia were defeated. In addition, Genghis Khan marched his army to pursue the prince of Khorezm, Zayadin, and defeated him in the Indus Valley.

In 1225 A.D., Genghis Khan returned to the east in triumph and divided the land of the Western Regions and his newly conquered lands among his four sons, which later developed into the four khanates.

In 1226 A.D., Genghis Khan attacked the Suzhou of Western Xia, and was resisted by the Western Xia soldiers and civilians, and after the city was broken, Genghis Khan ordered the slaughter of the city, and only one hundred and six households in the city were spared death.

After serving these samurai masters, the old and weak women and children began to collect the leftovers that the samurai had eaten, that is, some unclean bones, everyone was hungry and thirsty to chew the flesh on the bones, the small bone marrow in the cracks of the bones, they ate carefully and carefully, but it seemed that they could never eat enough, and a million of these bones could not fill the stomach that had shrunk and collapsed.

In 1227 AD, Genghis Khan died shortly before the destruction of Western Xia, but before he died, he made the decision to slaughter the city of Western Xia. After the death of Genghis Khan, the Mongol army complied with Genghis Khan's edict and carried out the slaughter and burning of the city, and they not only slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people in Xingqing Province. And it will burn the tombs, palaces, and palaces of the Western Xia kings, and burn the written records of the Western Xia, and the Western Xia civilization will be completely destroyed. In addition, in addition to the massacre of all the Western Xia royal families, the entire Xixia Dangxiang ethnic group was exterminated, most of the Dangxiang people were killed, and many tribes were killed. Those who survived had to flee to Tibet, Yunnan and other places, hide their names, and change their ethnic groups.

Zhang Jianqiang looked at the inner city wall that was not real, and the shouting and killing sound in the sky accompanied by the black smoke of the beacon fire pulled out a long shadow and floated into the sky above the city, looking down from the bottom up, like a malicious smile.

On the 202nd day, the Mongol army began to collect the corpses in an organized manner, and at the same time began to loot the bodies of the warriors of both sides who had died on the city walls, leaving the Western Xia defenders with a window of time running out.

On the second hundred and twentieth day, Zhang Jianqiang grabbed his head and smashed the man, but saw that the man was still not dead, as if he had something to say to himself.

"I'm afraid I can't really help with this, I don't know if I'll eat your part, I can't promise not to eat you." Zhang Jianqiang is comforting the man on his deathbed.

"The Royal Palace...... Palace...... The nobles repaired an underground passage, and the city was ruined...... Run when the city is broken......" The man closed his eyes forever.

Zhang Jianqiang looked around, no one heard this conversation, he bowed his head and was silent for a while, threw the man's body out of the city, and watched as the Mongol warriors recovered him and stacked it with hundreds of people to be burned.

"Eternal life in the fire." Zhang Jianqiang muttered.

On the 253rd, the elderly, weak, women and children who were cooking in the open field were surrounded by a large number of samurai, and immediately cried and cried and the earth shook.

Zhang Jianqiang, who was standing on the city wall, turned around and saw a large number of old and weak people, who were shot on the ground in an organized manner, and it seemed that today's rations were for these old people.

On the 263rd day, the remnants of the women were surrounded by samurai, their tears streaming down their faces, their scrawny hands tightly crossed in silence, and their soft sobs were like a terrible cry in this desperate environment. At the sound of an order, these former wives and daughters were shot to the ground.

"They're useless," Mr. Zhang muttered.

On the 262nd day, the city was broken!

Zhang Jianqiang was hit by several arrows, the end was well equipped, there was no fatal injury, but the bleeding was very serious, his face was pale, his steps were vague and he kept running forward, and behind him was the Mongolian warrior who rushed out from dozens of gaps, the scimitar flashed, and his eyes were fierce.

Run to the palace!

Zhang Jianqiang only had this one thought, Rao is back shook the mountain, crying and killing the sky, and he didn't care about it completely, and when he ran to the Venus in his eyes, he finally saw the palace.

But it was empty, and when I arrived at the designated place, I saw a deep tunnel, and it seemed that the nobles also fled in a hurry, and there were a lot of soft things scattered along the way.

You also lose some dry goods, you have nothing to eat or drink, what is the use of gold and silver treasures? Zhang Jianqiang jumped to his feet in a hurry, but he didn't dare to stop at all, he ran wildly, ran all the way out of the inner city, and came to the outside of the city.

The sun sets all the way, and the desert is lonely.

**Strong can no longer feel the warmth of the sun, it is like the master of the communication room who goes to work on time every day, hanging in the sky regularly, regardless of joy and sorrow, Kala is always OK.

Strong felt that the last trace of power in his soul had been drained, as if he had left himself, and the loess in front of him reflected the light wave particles of the sun, which seemed to indicate that the road would never end, and seemed to indicate that it had reached the end.

**The strong and broken cowhide boot touched a protrusion on the ground, cut his toe, and his own blood flowed out. Looking down, the protrusion was shiny, knelt down, and dug up the protrusion for a long time, like a broken mirror, covered with thick loess.

**Qiang wiped off the loess on it and wanted to see himself in the mirror, but a middle-aged uncle walked out from the depths of the mirror.

"You ......" the two said in unison.

"It turns out that there is a real time travel." The uncle in the mirror actually flashed a lonely expression on his mechanical face.

"How did you get to where you are today?" **Strong vicissitudes of life.

"I see a lot of the future become history." Uncle answered all the questions with a philosophical reflection.

"Good, I need trauma medicine right now, water, food, and a time machine to go back to the 21st century." Strong eagerly said.

"I'm just a supercomputer, not a Variety Star, anyway, this movie is really good." Uncle replied.

"What's that?"

"You know, after countless vicissitudes of life and the sun, I watched all the movies of the centuries and once again appreciated the power of the great civilization of mankind."

"You're really big-hearted, I'm going to die, you know?"

Strong's last bit of heartbeat is slowly failing. He lay on the ground in despair, watching the huge star hang in the sky and watch a life about to die. A wave of returning anger came to my heart, fate is really fucking fucked, Lao Tzu is not convinced!

"Blindfolded, there were no longer people who were calling out that day......"

Strong felt a relief from nothingness, his eyes went dark, and the world was quiet.

The moment I entered

I want to die in your arms

I saw my other body

Drift to that faraway place

My body is here

But where is it hiding?

Imagine yourself every day

Always in another place

Love is like a flower, it never opens

Grows like weeds

They are always flying around like flies

Eating away at my body around me

**Qiang felt that he had suddenly lost all his senses, and could even clearly see his corpse lying on the ground, covered in iron, stiff and cold, and his face was serene, but he was like a balloon held in his hand by the corpse, and he could only look down at the final appearance of his life in the air, but he couldn't walk away or escape.

"People really have souls after death, and the technology of the 23rd century can almost prove it." The super uncle in the hands of the ** strong is amazed.

"It turns out that people die like this, if human beings know that people still have souls after death, maybe many things will not be so serious."

Qiang looked at himself elsewhere, and it seemed that some thoughts were fluctuating.

"You don't understand, if people really have souls after death, this will be a systematic project, involving the ultimate philosophical proposition of the universe, that is, the three major questions, who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? "The super uncle talks eloquently.

"Now my question is how to get back to my time, I miss everything there, it's not perfect, it's all the opposite, but I really want to go back." **Strong two lines of hot tears rolled down.

The super uncle didn't speak again, and the two stared at the corpse on the ground in silence, letting the sun set in the west above their heads, and the stars in the sky were cold and white, day after day, the sun and the moon alternated. The corpse began to slowly decay under the erosion of time, like a rotten in the wind.

I don't know how long it took, a distant sound of horses' hooves sounded at the end of the horizon, and the ** strong in mid-air raised his eyes into the distance, and saw a long horse team slowly entering the field of vision, like a funeral procession sad and dull, the women in the team saw the ** strong corpse, but all of them were only swept away, completely as a horse bone that was about to be swallowed by the wind and sand.

**Qiang looked at the people in the team who were all dressed as party members, and it seemed that they were the remnants of the Western Xia Kingdom. Where will the road lie ahead? History must have been arranged.

A slender party woman with a good face stood silently in front of the corpse of ** Qiang.

Xia Qing! Zhang Jianqiang exclaimed in his heart, that's right, it's that Xia Qing!

Xia Qing's eyes revealed a compassionate color, she put her hand into the treasure bag on her waist, took out a piece of linen white cloth, spread it out in two by three, wordlessly covered the face of the ** strong corpse, pressed a handful of loess, stood silently for a while, turned around and left.

** Qiang wanted to shout loudly, but his mouth was sealed by the strong wind mixed with loess, and he looked at the white cloth on his corpse's face shaking.

Just when the tail of the long horse team was about to disappear, a woman dressed as a party nobleman stood in front of the **** strong corpse again, staring blankly, half loud, beckoning, beckoning four or five strong men, everyone dug a pit on the spot, and buried the ** strong corpse under the command of the noble woman.

At the moment when the aristocratic woman turned around, **Qiang saw her face clearly, it was still the eternal Zheng Jianan.

**Qiang stood in place and watched the horse team disappear into the sky, as if he had thought a lot, but he didn't seem to think about anything.

Qiang decided to do something, his emotions stirred, and the infinite heat flowed from head to toe.

"Brother, let's run!" ** With a powerful shout, he clenched the super uncle tightly, stepped out of his thousand-pound legs, and tore out the waves of the entire space like an iron palm floating on water, and everything in heaven and earth began to flow around him.

** Qiang saw the familiar red light drifting in front of him again, and as soon as he felt it, he immediately stopped. But he stayed on the streets of the hot southern country, with the sound of gunfire and the shouting of life, "Only the Three People's Principles can save China!" ”

Keep running.

Feeling it, he immediately stopped, and in a sea of army green, the excited people held the red treasure book in their hands, and reverently shouted at a tall building on the ground, "Long live Vice Chairman Lin!" ”

Keep running.

Feeling it, it immediately stopped, and the huge LED screen of the skyscraper resounded "Today's national death cases of SARS have reached ......"

Keep running.

Why can't you go back? Why can't you go back?

The voice of the strong heart sounded over and over again, and suddenly, an electric current struck between his eyebrows, he stopped, thought for a while with a grim face, and smiled with relief.

On the bank of the Yellow River in Lanzhou City in 1950, a figure appeared out of thin air, and the squeaky waterwheel kept turning.

On May 15, 200, in Lanzhou City, a gray-haired, tall old man walked on the street outside the Holy Heaven High School with a stern face, his eyes were like torches, as if he was waiting for something, and he seemed to be swearing to himself.

"I'm grass, you're old, the time is not accurate for me, don't you dare to make a nonsense!"

The super uncle lay in the pocket of ** strong, "Don't worry, the time has been accurate to the decimal place, now you have to quickly find the mud truck and control it in a very short time." ”

"Can you say something I don't know, of course I know to find that mud truck, who wants to know where this baby is hidden!" **Qiang looked around anxiously, and finally, at the end of the road, he saw the forever mud truck.

The old man suddenly swelled, shouted, and rushed towards an oncoming large mud truck on the highway, a person and a car met head-on at the corner of the street, the old man was skilled, rubbed, climbed the left door, opened the door with a chirp, entered the cab, and saw the driver lying on the steering wheel, but it had been a sudden death for a long time, looking up, through the front windshield can already clearly see, a group of students wearing blue and white school uniforms back.

**Forcefully pressed the steering wheel, and Xia Qing couldn't be found from the back of the student, but what does it matter!

"Energy is conserved, matter is not extinguished!" ** Powerful shout, with all his strength to the steering wheel full of a turn, the mud car made a screaming sound, the front of the car a 180-degree rotation, hit the wall of the supermarket, after an earth-shattering shock, the mud car was deeply embedded in the outer wall of the supermarket, the whole front of the car was squeezed into broken biscuits, broken parts, human limbs and stumps thrown to the ground.

In every night

I woke up from my dream

See my heart

It was drifting out the window, the moment I entered

Love is like a flower, it never opens

Grow like weeds like crazy

Love is like a flower, it never opens

Grow like weeds like crazy

**A strong spirit, looking up at his watch, it was already one o'clock at noon, he disappeared from twelve o'clock at noon to now an hour, looked at the surrounding scene, he was in that spicy hot shop, Xia Qing was sitting in front of him.

**Qiang looked at Xia Qing carefully, Xia Qing glared back at her not to be outdone, the bright red two lips were full of chili oil, these two lips used to say sweet words that made people feel uncomfortable, these two lips used to say cruel words that made people angry, and now, she calmly placed them on Xia Qing's cheeks.

"What's wrong with you?"

Qiang Liang didn't speak for a long time, and finally opened his mouth.

"Xia Qing, I'm sorry, let's break up!"

"Why?"

"We don't owe each other any more!"

After Qiang finished speaking, he got up and went out, leaving Xia Qing to sit alone.

The sun outside the store pierced into his eyes, **Qiang squinted to adapt to the light, and saw the honest old man squatting at the door, snoring and eating spicy hot, and saw **Qiang come out and opened his mouth with a strong voice.

"Now you get the idea!"

Qiang looked at the sun in the sky and didn't speak for a long time, as if he understood something, but he didn't seem to understand anything. (To be continued.) )