In the fifteenth year of Shaoxing, April 12, it was sunny.

According to the Yellow Calendar, it is advisable to build, break ground, bathe, and pray for blessings on that day; Do not open the market, enter the house, make a bed, make a stove, and travel.

In early summer, the scorching sun shines through the dense branches and leaves, the stars sprinkle on the ground, the official road full of wild grass is empty, it seems unusually deserted, and a few bird calls are occasionally heard in the distance, making this official road through the dense forest more and more quiet.

A few birds and finches that stopped on the ancient tree vigilantly observed the surroundings, not knowing what they were looking at, and suddenly several birds and finches almost simultaneously flapped their wings and broke through the air, and disappeared in an instant, only a few feathers fell with the wind, and the official road was quieter, and there was a trace of gloom in the quiet.

I don't know how long it took, but pedestrians finally appeared on the official road, and the words from afar also made this silent mountain forest a little popular.

I saw a donkey cart pulling goods slowly moving forward in the distance, and an old man and a young man followed the donkey separately and left and right.

"Dad, you shouldn't have stopped me just now, this kind of person who goes on the road without eyes should be scolded to death."

"Son, you have to change your temper. You don't look at how old you are, if you do this, how can you marry in the future, and your father won't be able to support you for a lifetime. ”

"Dad, why are you elbowing out. You forgot that the car driver just now, such a wide road, in broad daylight, hit us head-on, if I hadn't been quick-eyed, you would have been hit by them. ”

"Isn't that all right, Dad? When you go out, more is better than less, endure the calm for a while, take a step back, and endure more in case of trouble, which is always right. ”

"You see, my clothes are torn by that car, how can I bear it. This is a new dress made for the New Year, I didn't want to wear it, so I let the short-sighted ones be torn, you can bear it, I can't bear it. If I don't scold his ancestors for eighteen generations, I can't swallow this breath. ”

"You were taught before, and you forgot it so quickly? When you're out and about, make less trouble and talk less. I don't have any memory at all, so what can I do in the future? The old man walked in the middle of the road, patting the donkey on the back helplessly, as if he were talking to it.

"Dad, I remember all your words, but I just can't get angry in my heart." The girl said as she lifted the branch and shone it on the donkey's buttocks. The donkey took small steps and ran up, leaving the two of them a few feet away before slowing down.

"Then tell me who was sitting in that car just now?"

"How do I know, I saw that the chauffeur was as dirty as it was out of the ground, and he was definitely not a good person."

The old man shook his head and sighed: "Do you see what is pulling the cart?" ”

The girl raised her branch and patted her head, and thought for a moment, "It looks like a horse." It's too fast to see. ”

"It's a horse, it's a tall horse. There are only three places where this kind of horse exists, one is the military camp, the second is the government, and the third is the wealthy family. We can't afford to provoke these three kinds of people, not only can't we provoke them, but once we meet them, we can hide as far as we can, and don't provoke them. ”

"Then what kind of person did you say was in the car just now?"

"In my opinion, most of them are from wealthy families."

"Why, in my opinion, it looks like an official government."

"Fool, when the people from the government come out, how can they run so fast and not bring their entourage? It must be a rich and noble family, passing by this barren mountain and wilderness, and when they are afraid, they run desperately. ”

"Coward, there are people more than ten miles ahead, what is there to fear. It must be that I usually do too many bad things, so I am afraid of ghosts in broad daylight. The little girl said casually, but the old man was so anxious that she wanted to cover her daughter's mouth, and the girl was startled by the old man's expression.

"Dad, what's wrong with you? What am I saying wrong? ”

"Barren mountains and mountains, don't talk about ghosts and gods." The old man looked around vigilantly and lowered his voice.

"Dad, in broad daylight, the sun is on your head, what are you afraid of, even if there is a ghost, it won't dare to come out." The little girl didn't believe in ghosts and gods at all.

The old man coughed dryly, "Dad, I haven't seen any wind and waves, when have you been afraid." I'm just afraid that in this secluded place, someone will pretend to be a ghost and take advantage of the fire to rob. As he spoke, he quietly inspected the dense forest by the roadside.

The little girl shook her head, apparently not believing her father's words. "From here it takes less than two hours to reach the county seat, who dares to rob here, how can there be such a bold bandit."

"When you're out and about, be careful. Let's go, I always feel unsure. After the old man finished speaking, he beckoned his daughter to speed up and chase the donkey cart in front of him.

"What a fuss." The girl muttered a sentence in her mouth, and when she saw that her father had thrown her away, she hurried a few steps to follow, not daring to leave her father too far.

The father and daughter, who caught up with the donkey cart, did not say anything more with their own hearts.

The breeze blew, the leaves above their heads swayed and rustled, and the birds and insects that accompanied them along the way were completely inaudible here, except for the familiar and rhythmic sound of the donkey cart, no other sound could be heard in the forest.

The silence around made the old man very uneasy. This is not a good sign, I am old, I have encountered a lot of big and small storms, and I have walked this official road no less than a hundred times, but I have never been so restless as now.

There was an ominous atmosphere around him, and the old man thought to himself, and then he took action, only to see him raise the whip in his hand, and the donkey just turned his head to see the movement of his master, and before the whip fell, he raised his feet and ran.

"Son, hurry up." The old man urged.

"Dad, I can't walk. It's cool here, let's rest for a while. The girl fiddled with the hole in her dress, and her heart ached, and she scolded the driver a thousand times in her heart, and she still felt unrelieved. She is immersed in her own world, completely unaware of her surroundings.

"Rest out of this forest, and go quickly." The old man was no longer gentle, and he was already starting to feel a little nervous.

The girl sensed a strange atmosphere in her father's tone, let go of the placket in her hand, and glanced left and right at the dense forest, but the forest felt that there were no other life, and a trace of fear suddenly arose in her heart.

She hurriedly took a step closer to her father, and followed closely beside the old man, not daring to fall down for a moment, nor to speak again.

As she walked, there was a faint strange smell wafting into the girl's nose, and when she tried to smell it carefully, the smell disappeared again. After repeating it a few times, she could clearly smell the strange smell, and the feeling became stronger and stronger.

"Dad, do you smell it, it smells so bad." The girl fanned the air in front of her nose with her hand, and no matter how much she tried to drive it away, the temperature still went straight into her nostrils.

The old man was thinking about other things, and after being reminded by his daughter, he realized that there was an ominous smell around him. He sniffed it carefully, and suddenly his face changed drastically, and beads of sweat instantly appeared on his forehead.

His expression was seen by his daughter, the girl didn't know why, but she could clearly feel that her father was very nervous, she was also inexplicably scared, and her usual clever speech became dull.

"Dad, what's going on?"

The old man did not speak, but grabbed the donkey that was moving forward, stopped, and raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The smell was so familiar to him that even after twenty years, he still couldn't forget it. After the First World War of the Daimyo's Mansion, he went to clean the battlefield, and what he smelled was this smell, and for half a month after coming out of the battlefield, he could only drink water, and that kind of torture he will never forget.

The smell of blood is strong, there must be a lot of casualties, could it be that the Jin Army is here again? After thinking about it, no, it has been less than five years since Song Jin negotiated peace, and it is impossible for the Jin army to fight so quickly, and even if it does, it will not hit the mountains. The old man stabilized his mind, thinking of the carriage that was running wildly before, could it be that what he had just thought about came true, and he was really going to meet a robber?

I heard rumors of robbers in this area before, but no one had ever seen it, and I hadn't heard of anyone in the surrounding ten miles and eight towns who had been robbed, so no one believed it. The pungent fishy smell kept wafting in, and it seemed that the rumors were not unfounded.

More than half an hour has passed since the carriage, and no movement has been heard in front of it, and the robbers will definitely not stay on the official road for a long time after robbing the property, and it is estimated that they will run away early. He is not afraid of dead people, after all, he also went to the battlefield in his early years, but he just can't see the blood-red scene all over the ground, and he is terrified when he thinks about it.

Looking in the direction where the smell of blood wafted from, the old man remembered what the general had said to them decades ago when they were cleaning up the battlefield, and he still remembers it clearly. "People who die in the distance, we can give them a straw mat and a cup of loess, let them bury their bones in a foreign land, we must not let them be violent corpses in the wilderness, no matter what happens when they are alive, when they die, we must let them be buried in the ground!"

The soul returns to its hometown and enters the earth for peace. Since moving south, the older he gets and the more he sees, the more deeply he feels. If you are unfortunate today, you have to take care of it anyway.

"You go first." The old man couldn't help but say, and quickly helped the little girl onto the donkey's back.

"I'm not leaving, I'm going with you." The girl also guessed that something might have happened, and struggled to jump off the donkey's back. The little girl looked like she was not afraid of heaven and earth, but in this gloomy forest, she really didn't dare to let her go alone.

The old man could not let her come down easily, and as soon as the girl turned sideways, he held her to the right, and then raised his hand to shine a whip on the donkey's buttocks. The donkey was in pain, and ran away with the little master's legs, regardless of her reluctance.

I don't know what kind of scene is in front of her, she can't be seen as a little girl who has never been in the world, and she can't see it.

Watching the girl gradually disappear in front of his eyes, the old man straightened his bent back, as if he had become a soldier again.

He walked in the direction of the bloody breath and walked towards the woods step by step.

He looked at the corpses scattered in the bushes, the blood on the corpses had already coagulated, and he took a cursory look at the wounds of several corpses, almost all of them were killed with one blow, and it was obvious that the other party did not want to spare their lives at all.

This is a big case, not a confrontation between the two armies, they can't be hastily buried in the matter, and the dead people must not only be buried in the ground, but also have an explanation. The old man threw away the branches and leaves he was holding, turned around and walked out of the forest, and wanted to hurry to report to the official.

"Help Me ....."

The sudden shouting behind him made the old man's heart jump, and he was so frightened that he couldn't lift his feet when he stood there, and beads of sweat the size of beans rolled down. Resisting the urge to run away, he turned back sharply to see a man struggling to get up.

And the living.

The old man's heart was relieved, and he quickly turned around and took two steps, and came to the man.