When Guo Yang married his thirteenth wife, he remembered his grandfather, the old man who was so obsessed with thinking that he almost gained eternal life.

At that time, there were only about 30 households in Tianshui Village, and dozens of stone houses were built along the mountain.

The mountains are stacked on top of each other, and you can't see the edge at a glance.

In front of the stockade is the river.

The water is clear and flows slowly along the rocky riverbed, neither hurried nor slow, stretching the time for a long time.

At that time, the people of Tianshuizhai wanted to record some important events and people, and they would often use stones to carve crooked and strange symbols on the wall.

However, every three days, everyone basically forgets what those weird symbols mean.

The names of the people of Tianshui Village are also very sloppy, in order to facilitate memory, everyone is surnamed Guo, who has a child, some elders see or think of something, they call it by the way.

For example, Guo Tian, Guo Yun, Guo Worm, Guo Shi, Guo Yang, Guo Who.

……

Every spring, a flock of birdmen would build improvised wooden houses by the creek and introduce their new products to the inhabitants of the stockade to the sound of tinkling bronze ritual vessels.

The first thing they brought with them was salt, a crystal that makes the sun's rays brighter.

A small, but lean old man jumped aboard a rock by the river, and the water soaked his hides.

He called himself Wang Hai.

However, this name is only remembered by Guo Yang's grandfather Guo Ma in the water village throughout the day.

Wang Hai stretched out a black and thin hand, with thin nails, and pinched a crystal-like thing in the tips of his index finger and thumb, and loudly declared: This is salt.

The crystal that shone white in the sun made the women of Tianshui Village suffer.

At first, the men ran home in high spirits, carrying hides, grain, and wild fruits, and scrambling for some salt.

But when they carefully licked the crystals that made the sun glow white with their tongues, they frowned and threw the salt to the ground.

The women of the stockade burrowed into the crowd and picked up the salt.

"Ah, it tastes great!" The women stuck out their tongues and licked them, and said loudly.

The men, on the other hand, didn't bother to settle accounts with Wang Hai at all, so they were attracted by seven or eight female birdmen.

They crouched in front of a wooden platform, raised their thick necks, and watched the women with a black bird tattooed on their bodies, swinging their snake-soft waists.

The men watched the dancing of the female birdmen for an afternoon, and then lazily went home to eat. They were amazed to find that the salt in the food became much more delicious!

As a result, the women of Tianshui Village have one more job: every winter, under the cliffs and on the river beach, looking for the kind of crystals that can shine white in the sun.

However, the birdman named Wang Hai is still very kind. Later in the spring, he taught the women of Tianshui Village how to soak the salt soil in a wooden basin, and when the sun evaporated all the water, a layer of white crystals would appear underneath.

……

"All things in heaven and earth are gods!" Once, when Wang Hai led their birdmen to Tianshui Village, he solemnly told everyone this secret.

Seeing the somewhat confused expressions of the people in the stockade, Wang Hai turned over his hand and took out a black divine stone.

He tied the black stone to a rope and threw it in the river. He led the rope into the distance, and the black divine stone was tied by the rope at the bottom of the water, making a tinkling sound.

When Wang Hai pulled the sacred stone out of the water with a rope, the people of Tianshui Village were dumbfounded.

The sacred stone was densely covered with a dark red gravel. Someone tried to remove the rubble, but was surprised to find that as soon as he let go, the rubble flew to the stone on its own.

Guo Yang's grandfather, Guo Ma, an old man who could think about the sky all day, replaced the divine stone with three full cows.

"I want to awaken the gods of Tianshui Village." Grandfather Guo Ma went home with the sacred stone, and he didn't even bother to watch the dance of the female birds.

As soon as he returned home, he locked himself in a stone house and carefully studied the mysteries of the sacred stone.

He followed Wang Hai's example, tied the sacred stone with a rope, and dragged it all over Tianshui Village for a hundred miles.

As a result, in addition to piles of dark red gravel, he also unexpectedly found a small black bottle.

……

"This is a naturally formed bottle, which contains a substance similar to this sacred stone, so it can be attracted by the divine stone. However, there is no value. ”

Another year passed, when Wang Hai led his birdmen into Tianshui Village again, his grandfather Guo Ma hurriedly took the bottle to Wang Hai and asked him to help identify it with great expectations.

Wang Hai studied the small bottle repeatedly, and threw it into the grass.

"Since the Divine Stone that was exchanged for you last time didn't bring you any gain, this time, you can choose one of the three treasures I brought as compensation." When Wang Hai smiled, he showed a mouthful of white Sensen's teeth.

Guo Ma quickly recovered from the frustration of the Shenshi incident, and he excitedly opened the wooden chest where Wang Hai had treasured his treasures.

A knife, mixed with an ore called iron, could easily cut through any copper pot, spear, and cowhide armor in the stockade.

A large crystal ball, put your hand on it, close your eyes, and say a few strange spells in your mouth, and the crystal ball will emit a kind of light, and everything that is shrouded in that light will be drowsy.

The last artifact was a pile of badly worn tortoise shells with intricate symbols carved with knives.

Guo Ma was immediately attracted by the pile of tortoise shells. He picked up the pile of tortoise shells wrapped in animal skins, and happily returned to the stone house that belonged only to him, never to come out again.

And Guo Yang, who he had forgotten, was like a dog, drilling between the long legs of those birds.

He found that the men of Tianshui Village, as long as they paid two shells, could reach into a large wooden box and find a small gadget.

A small puppet, a white stone, something called a comb, and so on.

Guo Yang ran back to his stone house and searched through the cabinets, but he didn't find a single shell.

He knew that it should be his grandmother who was afraid that his grandfather Guo Ma would be deceived by those birdmen and hid all the shells.

Guo Yang wandered around the birds' camp boredly, kicking the small flowers and plants with his feet.

Suddenly, a sharp pain pierced the heart, so that Guo Yang's tears almost fell.

A small black bottle flew up from the grass with a "whoosh" and landed in the river.

On the surface of the water, there were circles of ripples.