A rambling rain completely changed his grandfather Guo Ma, and at the same time almost destroyed Tianshui Village.

It was a rain that I don't know when it started, and it rained for ten years and eight months.

On the bluestone path of Tianshui Village, you can see rickety rats everywhere. They were skinny and sick.

They ate too much moldy grain and developed a strange disease.

In the barn, the seeds of those grains began to sprout and grow wildly, and the tender green leaves soon poked out of the walls made of bluestones.

The men squatted under the damp eaves for a long time to watch the rain, and everyone had hemorrhoids.

In the first year, the women happily walked along the rain-washed bluestone road, talking about the importance of rain for plant growth.

But from the second year onwards, with an outbreak of a large number of cows, mare and ewes, the women shut up.

At first, they heeded their grandmother's warnings and carried the carcasses of the cows, mare and ewes outside the stockade and threw them to the wet beasts that were shivering in the rain.

As the livestock died more and more, they despaired, looking at the frantically growing grain in the barn, and then at the poor animals, the women began to steal the carcasses of the animals.

"For God's sake, don't eat all that rotten meat." Grandmother's lips trembled, and she turned her back to the sky, letting the rain wash her wrinkled face.

This time, Guo Yang finally discovered that his grandmother's eyes had long been blind, leaving only two empty eye sockets. When the rain fell into those two terrible eye sockets, it would flow down my grandmother's nose, mouth and ears.

Because of his grandmother's resolute attitude, Guo Yang's family has never eaten the carcasses of livestock, which makes the whole family at a loss.

Guo Yang's father and mother, Guo Lu and Guo Ye, had to go to the barn every day to take a look, secretly breaking handfuls of tender green crop seedlings and swallowing them.

The aunts were so hungry that they stopped developing, like a pack of wild cats, making strange chewing noises every night.

"Don't eat those rats!"

"Don't eat those damn bugs!"

Later, the grandmother couldn't stop the aunts from stealing food, so she simply locked them up in a windowless stone house.

From then on, every night, the stone house would be filled with the sound of "creaking" picking at stones with your fingernails.

And this rain caused the most serious damage to his grandfather Guo Ma.

He had been drenched in rain all day and night, and his hides, which had been covered with notes and calculations, began to mold and emit a strange smell that made my teeth ache.

Without the starry sky, without those most basic data, Guo Ma's work was forced to stop, and this was the only source of his fall.

"The world is made up of five basic substances: water, fire, earth, and metal. This is the age of water, and all the creatures on the earth will be devastated by their own crazy growth. ”

Grandfather Guo Ma listened attentively, and he planned to give up this world.

He calmly instructed Guo Yang to go to the river to find a full seed and plant it from his mouth.

"I will grow into a towering tree, my forehead will enter the starry sky, my roots will go deep into the earth, and my body will be your refuge."

When he said this, his grandfather opened his mouth.

Guo Yang looked in amazement at his grandfather Guo Ma's empty mouth, which contained half of a worn tongue, three teeth that had not yet fallen out, and some black substance, which seemed to be a kind of ore powder.

Grandfather Guo Ma pointed to the sky, pointed to the earth, and pointed to his empty mouth, and motioned Guo Yang to throw the fat ewe-like full seed into it.

Guo Yang hesitated for a moment, and mischievously threw a pill he had refined into his grandfather Guo Ma's mouth.

With a "hissing" sound like a broken bellows, his grandfather Guo Ma's tall body suddenly twisted, like a wounded snake, still twitching and trembling.

Guo Yang was frightened, looked left and right to see that there was no one, and jumped into another stone house like a rabbit.

……

It was a small warehouse dedicated to his grandfather Guo Ma's private collections, and no one was allowed to enter it except his grandmother.

Now, this has become Guo Yang's personal domain. He followed his grandfather's example and sorted everything into categories on rough wooden shelves.

In a corner of the warehouse, Guo Yang is learning alchemy every day.

He refined everything he could find around Tianshui Village, and finally found to his dismay, except for three plants that could be refined into pills, everything else was waste.

Moreover, he didn't know the growth time and medicinal properties of those three plants, so he simply asked his grandfather Guo Ma to be the first person to taste the pill.

The rain kept falling, endlessly.

Guo Yang hadn't left the small warehouse for many days, and he meditated hard and read the manuscripts of his grandfather and Wang Hai seriously.

These first-hand accounts are important and have had a profound and long-lasting impact on him. So much so that many years later, when the thirteenth wife, whose face looked like his grandmother, appeared, he was in a trance, and he couldn't tell whether he was Guo Ma or Guo Yang for many days.

……

This rain almost destroyed Tianshui Village.

Fortunately, just as everyone was about to migrate to the east together, the rain stopped.

Many people stood on the bluestone path, not daring to look up, afraid that the dazzling light would make them dizzy.

The women immediately took out everything in the house and exposed it to the sun. The hides, tables, stools, and all sorts of gadgets from the birdmen made a beep and pop sound in the scorching sun.

Some of the children born in that rain did not dare to go out, like poor little wild dogs, full of awe of the sudden appearance of light.

The grandmother dried everything in the house for two or three days, until the wooden tables cracked a few finger-wide cracks, and then she ordered Guo Lu and Guo Ye to move them into the stone house.

Grandmother walked straight into her grandfather Guo Ma's room, and the stone house without a roof was warm.

Grandfather Guo Ma sat on a stone and looked at the moldy hides.

His body has become about ten years old, but his mind is still that of old Guo Ma.

"Alchemy is one of mankind's greatest inventions." Guo Ma looked at his wife, who had become a rag because of her old age, and said solemnly.

"Oh my God, who did that? Who got Guo Yang into this room! Grandmother was furious.

She finally found Guo Yang who was learning alchemy in the small warehouse, and the slap was a slap.

"I don't think I've disciplined you in all these years, and you're starting to go crazy. Back then, my mother gave me and a hundred shells to you, so that you could live a good life and not think about it all day long. Now it's good that you got my grandson into that kennel of yours, and I think you really don't clean it up! ”

Guo Yang looked at his grandmother who was trembling all over, and his face was dazed.