The huge brazier in the center of the huge cabin on the ground floor was lit, and the light in it was refracted by several copper mirrors in fixed positions around it, illuminating almost the entire cabin.

Tang Qianrou stood in front of the brazier, frowning at the coal burning in it, not understanding why after hundreds of years, the coal still maintained such a high flammability.

Ah Le, who had been spinning around in the cabin, returned to the brazier, looked at Tang Qianrou and said: "This place is really weird, it looks like an iron-making place, but why did you choose it here, it is still in an ancient ship, is it really like what your mother said, this ship was built here later, but why don't you just make iron in the cave, but instead get a ship?" ”

Tang Qianrou shook her head: "I don't know, it's still a mystery, but you have to be clear, the day when human beings understand cast iron, human civilization has made a qualitative leap, according to the material of production tools, human history can be divided into three eras, the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, also known as the three phases." ”

Ah Le frowned: "You don't want to teach me a lesson, do you?" ”

"I don't have that energy, I'm just analyzing myself, why there is such a ship here, why is there iron here." Tang Qianrou turned to look at the tools in the cabin, "The earliest artificial smelting of iron products is not the later pig iron smelting technology, but block ironmaking, that is, at a high temperature of about 1150 degrees, the iron ore is directly reduced to solid iron with charcoal, and the later pig iron smelting technology is to turn the iron ore into a liquid state, pour it into the mold and pour it into the mold to cast, although our China block ironmaking technology is later than the West, but soon discovered how to smelt pig iron, you look at the furnace ......"

Tang Qianrou led Ah Le to a strange-looking furnace: "This furnace looks similar to the current smelting blast furnace, with the tap hole below, the core for heating in the middle, and the place where the iron ore is put on the top. ”

"But this stove is no longer in use, and it should be said that this stove may not be used at all." Tang Sirong's voice came from the door.

Tang Qianrou didn't turn around, but just asked, "Why?" ”

Tang Qianrou walked over slowly: "There are too many air inlets in this furnace, and doing so will only cause the coal in the furnace to burn faster, relatively speaking, there is only a short period of high temperature, and there will be no continuous high temperature, you should know this, I taught you before." ”

Ah Le looked behind Tang Sirong and asked, "Where is the reed flute?" ”

Tang Sirong glanced at Ah Le and said, "She said she was going to get off the boat to study the soil." ”

Ah Le nodded, not doubting anything, because no one would have thought that Tang Sirong would be so ruthless to the reed flute.

Tang Qianrou finally turned to look at her mother: "You say, why did you build a ship here?" ”

"As you can see, for the bottom of the cabin, I think it has a direct relationship with the air pressure and the air flow." Tang Sirong slowly walked to the wall of the cabin and pointed to the small windows with movable lids on them, "You see, these windows can be opened directly, and the air can be convection, and there are blowers around, so that the cabin can be continuously ventilated, so that the people who work here will not suffocate and faint, and second, if there is no air flow, the coal cannot be burned." ”

Ah Le nodded beside him: "Yes, combustion is a process that causes objects to oxidize rapidly and produce light and heat. ”

"Yes, that's something that kids understand." Tang Sirong walked slowly in the cabin, "The reason why I didn't smelt directly in the cave, I think, is also to let the air flow quickly in a relatively small environment, if it is in a huge cave outside, if you want the air to flow so much, with the technology at that time, it is completely impossible." ”

Ah Le looked around and said: "However, there is a contradiction here, if the air flows for a long time, it is not good for the storage of coal, but if it is closed for a long time, plus other factors, it will lead to spontaneous combustion, in short, I just don't understand why a ship is built." ”

Tang Qianrou thought for a while and said: "My mother is right, air circulation is one point, and the other point is probably what needs to be covered, and there must be coal mines around here, which is 100 percent." ”

Tang Sirong nodded and said: "And there are iron mines, don't forget, there are no man's land in Mongolia all around, almost no one has come to exploit them, maybe there are oil fields." ”

As he was talking, there was a sudden sound of gunfire outside the boat, Ah Le was startled, and subconsciously said, "You guys stay, I'll go out and have a look!" ”

Al drew his gun and rushed out, and soon returned to the deck, where he saw Gulal and Victor standing back to back, guns and aiming around, as if looking for something.

Ah Le looked around and asked, "Why did you shoot?" ”

As soon as Ah Le finished speaking, he saw Gulal suddenly turn the muzzle of the gun towards him, Ah Le was startled, rolled sideways to the side of the deck, and at the same time Gulal also pulled the trigger, but the bullet was fired continuously above the position where he had been standing.

When Ah Le turned his head, he clearly saw a black shadow flashing from there, and the speed was extremely fast.

Ah Le immediately retreated to Gulal and Victor's position and asked, "What is that!?" ”

"I don't know!" Gulal looked around with a gun, "I just know that it must be a predator!" ”

Victor also said: "I checked before, there are more than a dozen small caves over there, the caves are all dug out by some kind of animal with their claws, there are things like hay and dry branches inside and out, as well as soft soil and sand, and there are leftover animal bones, but most of them are wolves, think about it, in the grassland, what animals can use wolves as their staple food!?" ”

Ah Le glanced at Victor and shook his head: "I don't know." ”

"Even if you don't know, you should know how terrible that thing is, right?" Gulal's breathing became rapid, "Didn't you see that before?" It's nimble, it's good at climbing, it's fast, I fired several shots and didn't hit it, I don't know what it was! ”

Ah Le pointed to the cabin and said, "Go into the cabin and hide, there is only one entrance and exit, if that thing chases in, we can at least concentrate our fire on the only door it can enter and exit!" ”

Just as Gural and Victor rushed to the door of the cabin, Ah Le suddenly remembered something, grabbed Gulal, and asked, "Where is the reed flute!?" ”

Gulal was stunned for a moment, thought for a moment and said, "I was captured by that thing!" ”

Ah Le's eyes widened, and he asked angrily, "Why don't you stop it?" Why not chase it? ”

Just as Gulal was about to continue the lie, Victor said on the side: "Boss, you don't have to help that old woman lie, hey, your name is Ah Le, right?" The girl named Reed Flute was pushed off the boat by her employer! We saw it with our own eyes! ”

Ah Le was stunned, and after being stunned for two seconds, he grabbed Victor: "What did you say?" You are responsible for what you say, you know? ”

Victor nodded, and didn't push Ah Le away: "I don't have to lie, not to mention that I am still our employer!" ”

As soon as Victor said this, the black shadow jumped down from the upper cabin deck again, stretched out his claws and swung directly at Ah Le, Gulal saw that the situation was not good, and directly hit Ah Le with his body, and while rolling, he fired several shots at the thing.

After the thing was shot, it slowed down and, with a scream, flipped off the side of the ship.

Gulal immediately chased after him, and immediately pulled out his flare gun and fired a shot into the sky above the thing from which it had fled, observing it carefully by the light of the flare, and when he could see the blurred back of the thing, he was stunned.

Victor and Al ran to Gulal's side, looking at the place where the flares shrouded in light, and saw only strange rocks, but no trace of them.

Ah Le asked, "What's that?" ”

"That's ......," Gulal said, shaking his head again, "how is that possible?" ”

Victor looked at Gural and asked, "Chief, what the hell is that?" ”

It took Gulal a long time to reply: "It's a bear." ”

"Bear!?" Ah Le looked ahead again, and at this time the flare had already landed on the ground, the light had weakened, and the cave in front of him gradually fell into darkness again.

Victor shook his head: "No way, where do bears come from here, even in the grassland, they are very rare." ”

"No, there is." Ah Le took a deep breath and said, "There is a kind of Gobi bear in Mongolia, which is an endangered animal, and Mongolia has legislated to prohibit hunting decades ago, but that kind of bear only lives on the Mongolian Gobi, how can it appear here?" ”

Gulal shook his head again: "It's not a bear, it looks slightly smaller than a bear, and in terms of action, it's more like a human, but it's more agile than a human, like a monkey." ”

Ah Le pondered for a moment and said, "Could it be a human bear?" But the so-called man-bear is not as you described, I have heard Mongolian comrades-in-arms say before that there is a creature called a 'ghost bear' on the border between Mongolia and Russia. ”

When Victor heard the word "ghost bear", he couldn't help but be surprised: "Ghost bear? Does that really exist? ”

Gural looked at Victor: "You know the ghost bear? What is that? ”

Victor said: "The legend of the ghost bear has been circulating in the border area for decades, and at least dozens of people have witnessed the appearance of that thing, which is similar to what you said before, like a man and a bear, extremely fast, and very flexible. ”

The legend of the ghost bear that Victor refers to is rooted in the era of the Great Mongolian Purge, when countless people were killed on trumped-up charges and a large number of corpses were added every day. On the border between Russia and Mongolia, a large number of political prisoners were sent to a small village called "Shore Wind", and their original destination was to Siberia, but when the train arrived here, the army in charge of escorting them suddenly received an order to "execute on the spot".

Throughout the evening, the people of the village hid in their houses, hugged each other, and closed their eyes to the gunfire and screams outside.

When night fell, soldiers drove the villagers out of their houses at gunpoint and took them to the border woods, where they saw countless corpses, some of which had been smashed by light and heavy machine guns.

Under the threat of the soldiers, the villagers began to dig pits and dug all night before burying all the bodies in the ground, and several of the less courageous villagers suffered a nervous breakdown.

The next morning, the soldiers retreated with the train, leaving only the smell of blood and bullet casings still lingering in the village.

The village chief called a meeting of the villagers, told them not to go to the grove where the bodies were buried, and put up a sign there falsely claiming that it was a minefield, because the soldiers had told the villagers before they left to make the villagers forget what happened the night before.

But the lifeblood of the village, the most important source of water, is behind the forest, so the villagers have to bypass the forest every day to get water, and spend at least half an hour back and forth.

However, on the third day after the soldiers left, two hunters from the village went out hunting, and on their way back to the village in the early morning, they passed by the woods and found that some corpse pits had been dug open at the edge of the woods.

The hunter was surprised, and he didn't care about the village chief's advice, and decided to go and see what was going on, he was worried that an outsider had discovered the burial ground, and decided to dig up the corpses to find something valuable, because that kind of deep pit was not something that animals could dig out with their claws, but when they got closer, they found the human limbs around the corpse pit, and the marks of the torn bites on the stumps, that they concluded that it was some kind of large animal.

The hunters rushed back to the village to report to the village chief, who rushed to the scene and judged through various traces that it should have been done by a bear, and only a bear would have that much strength, but the strange thing was that they had never heard of bears eating human corpses, because most bears would not be interested in dead things under the premise that they were not very hungry, let alone corpses that had begun to decompose.

Remembering the threat of the soldiers before leaving, the village chief decided to take his men to squat around the woods and kill the animals that were being scraped in order to keep the secret hidden deep in the woods.

That night, the village chief and the village men lurked around the woods, and finally found the monsters falling from the trees in the early hours of the morning, and they could see clearly by the moonlight that it was a monster that looked like a man and a bear, but because there were too many of those monsters, they could not do anything, so they had to watch the monsters eat the corpses, and leave satisfied.

The village chief knew that if this continued, the secrets in the woods would be discovered sooner or later, and he could not seek help from the army, which would be tantamount to luring wolves into the house, so he had to find a way to collect oil and burn the forest completely with a fire.

When the woods were burned, they found the so-called "man-bears" burned to death in them, and counted three of them, and if you didn't look closely, you might think they were charred human corpses.

But it didn't end there, summer passed, autumn came, and one night when winter was approaching, the village was attacked by that kind of animal, and a dozen or so "man-bears" came out of nowhere to attack the village, killing most of the villagers.

The slaughter lasted all night, and it was not until early in the morning that the "man-bears" left with their booty in their mouths, and the corpses were still bleeding, and no one ever saw these strange things again, and it was from that day that the story of the ghost bears spread.

Victor recalled, and affirmed: "This is what my grandfather told me, because he has a friend who has experienced this firsthand, and if you don't believe it, you can ask, and this legend is still circulating in the border area." ”

Gulal and Ah Le were silent, but Gulal could see that Ah Le was absent-minded.

Ah Le finally looked up at Gulal and Victor and asked, "Why did she kill the reed flute?" ”

When Victor was about to answer, Gulal took the lead and asked, "Who are you with this reed flute?" ”

"It's not about you!" Ah Le said angrily, he couldn't suppress his anger, "You just need to answer my question!" ”

Gulal shook his head: "I don't know. ”

Victor explained: "Before that, the employer had separated the two of us, and when we came back from the reconnaissance, and as soon as we climbed into the boat, we saw the old woman pushing the reed flute down, and told us to treat it as an accident. ”

Gulal sneered and said in a mocking tone: "I said, my subordinates will not do that kind of dirty thing, this is retribution, it was you who indirectly killed the reed flute!" ”

"Shut up!" Ah Le grabbed Gulal, "I didn't kill her!" ”

Gulal grabbed Ah Le's wrist: "Then you answer me, why did you kill my men, if you can answer this question, maybe you can figure out the reason why the reed flute was killed!" ”

Ah Le stared into Gulal's eyes, completely unable to understand why Tang Sirong wanted to attack the reed flute, let alone understand that the strange old woman could still have a calm expression on her face after killing someone, as if she had just stepped on an ant.

Thinking of this, Ah Le recalled everything that the employer asked him to do, he had to admit that this incident could not only allow him to take revenge on Wan Qingquan, but also get a large sum of money, he needed revenge, and he needed money, but in the end, he killed an innocent girl.

Innocent Girl ......

Ah Le's head began to ache sharply, he let go of Gulal, hugged his head, and shouted desperately: "I didn't mean to, I didn't know you were in that room, I don't know, I really don't know, I don't know......"

Gulal and Victor glanced at each other, both of them were from military backgrounds and had been on the battlefield, and they instantly understood why Ah Le suddenly became like this, because they had both had similar experiences and had this painful battlefield syndrome.

There is no doubt that from Ah Le's performance, both of them can infer that Ah Le once killed civilians by mistake on the battlefield, and it should be an innocent girl, so it will cause him to feel guilty to this day, and it will cause him to find a way to protect it when he sees the reed flute.

After a long time, after Ah Le calmed down, he began to vomit while lying on the ground, and after vomiting for a while, he said slowly: "I thought your people were going to violate the reed flute, so I started, and after I started, I found that there was another person not far away, I was afraid that the matter would be exposed, so I didn't do anything and killed all the other people who were investigating on the ship......"

Gulal frowned and shook his head, pulled out his gun, and aimed it at Ah Le's head: "Very good, it's good if you admit it, you need to apologize, but not to me, but to those brothers of mine, I will send you to meet them, you can say sorry to them personally!" ”

Ah Le didn't dodge at all, nor did he resist, he just closed his eyes.

However, Gulal put the gun back into its holster, and Ah Le looked up at him.

Gulal said: "I really want to kill you, but if I do this, it is equivalent to lowering our overall chances of survival, so whether you are dead or alive, wait until we leave this ghost place alive!" ”

Victor breathed a sigh of relief, his mood was also conflicted, although he also wanted to avenge his comrades, but the ghost bear that appeared earlier made him realize that if this team wants to survive, it can't be without Ah Le.

But at that moment, Gulal and Victor both remembered what Tang Sirong said - if something loses its value under a special premise, it can only be discarded, otherwise it will become a burden to everyone.

Therefore, while everyone is trying to live, they must also strive not to become a burden to others.

... 2k reading web