The space was filled with darkness and the smell of fireworks and time. The only lights are a few long, narrow observation windows, let's call them windows.

Looking out of the window, the clouds were very thick, and they had not dispersed since the day the father and son came to the fort, and they were crowded not far overhead, gray, white, and cold. Only two or three hours at noon every day, the piece above the head will light up and be dim, like the dusk of tundra winter.

The only light from the window illuminated the little boy in front of the window, but it made the rest of the place seem darker and quieter.

"Old man, when do you think it will be sunny this day?"

The boy withdrew his gaze from the window, he liked the deer outside the window, and when he looked at the deer, the snow-white knife in his hand was still rolled up with narrow shavings.

No matter how clever the deer are, they have to come out to feed, and only when the snow stops can the deer find the buds under the snow layer. The woodland under the window now has a foraging fawn, but it is apparently unaware that it is being watched. The observation windows on the rock wall have a large drop, and the few are not visible at all on the jagged rock face. So the deer couldn't see the young man's peeping eyes, let alone the killing machine polished inside.

The boy likes deer because Uncle Mark always asks the old man to cook a Chinese meal when he hunts deer during the hunting season. At this time, the brass pot at the bottom of the pressure box at home will be solemnly invited out, like the treasure of the nine generations, and then it will be placed on the table for several weeks and difficult to remove.

After the deer hunting, everyone's favorite group sat together and watched the soup slowly tumbling in the pot, and the interest gradually became full with the fire of the charcoal box under the pot. At this time, the young man's eyes would stick to the small knife in his old man's hand, and see it like the slippery and cool snow flakes, shuttling on the snow-white porcelain greasy bone stick, and slicing bright red and delicate venison; Watching the venison in the hot hazy pot, as soon as it was dipped in the thick flavor plate, it swirled in front of the spoiled boy. The heat and the aroma of the meat will come to the face, and it will be hot in one bite, and there will be no solution to the satisfaction.

Thinking of these old days, the little boy swallowed his saliva, and his cooing was very clear in this fortress.

As if to hide his greed, the work on the young man's hands did not stop. Placing the sharpened shaft of the arrow, the boy took another material and muttered into the dark corner.

"Old man, you said you didn't even kill a chicken, did you do it?"

The boy was busy making slender wood into a round and straight arrow shaft. The material is very hard, the cutting is fine, grinding is a problem, there is no special cutter, it is difficult to make straight and round. Until the boy found that the cement mortar surface in the bunker had not been renovated, this was the best sandpaper. Grinding the rough shaft along the corner, the boy always gets a few good shafts to pass the time.

There was no timely response to what he had just said, and for a while a figure rose from the corner and walked to the window.

The man glanced at the remnants of snow on the stones in the forest under the window, and saw that there was obvious ice at the edges, and then withdrew his gaze back into the darkness, and lazily dropped the sentence: "Look at it in two days, there will be deer coming out, and it will not be too cold if it is not sunny." ”

When he had finished speaking, the man fumbled for his clothes, carried a large black vat on his back, and said to the boy, "I went out and collected the sugar." Didn't come back before dark, you know what to do. ”

The little boy lowered his head and snorted, as if in response to his dissatisfaction.

In the windless and silent snow outside, the hatch suddenly opened from the inside out, but the people inside did not jump out immediately, and counted down a few times before they climbed onto the ground, half-masked, their eyes alert.

Surrounded by rock walls, the snow outside the cabin is a small valley, and the sugar maple in the valley is tens of meters high and stretches inward, and there is no bottom in sight. In the outermost part of the maple forest, the trees are all plugged into the sharp-beaked faucets, and the sugar boxes of different sizes are tied. Most of the sap in the boxes had stopped flowing, extending into the boxes with thin threads, the liquid covered with pale golden ice.

The man walked up to a sugar maple, pulled out a dagger and poked into the box, picked out a piece and put it into his mouth, the corners of his eyes couldn't help but bend up, and then he took a funnel connecting the barrel from the side of the vat he was carrying and stuck it on his right shoulder.

The bucket and the funnel were wrapped in cloth, and there was a circle of paper around the side of the funnel, which was the box of 127I that the father and son found in the fortress, to prevent radiation, and now the waste is reused, which is just right.

Removing the candy box, the man skillfully poured the sap inside into the funnel with his backhand, and knocked out a few pieces of frozen maple sap when he was done. The forest was quiet, and the faint smell of maple sugar during sugar picking was locked up by the valley and the maple forest, and only the wind swirled and rolled up the snow particles to tease the sugar picker's boots.

The sugar picker's steps finally stopped next to a maple sugar tree, and a few leaves were nailed by the branches to the eye-high height of the trunk of this tree, not only this tree, but also every dozen meters of trees with the same signs, an artificially marked passage extending into the depths. The golden leaves and brown bark of the tree are very conspicuous, stretching out for three or two kilometers, and it is still not finished.

Looking at this unfinished adventure, the sugar picker remembers the first time he came to the woods, and hunger and helplessness kept him from going far. That was the first day, he woke up hungry, and in a hurry the boy bolted the door of the bunker from the inside, and plunged headlong into the maple forest full of valleys. His heart was pounding, his stomach aching against his heart, and his unspeakable hunger beating his reason, until his snow-white teeth desperately gnawed at the trunk of the tree, and the sweet sap soothed him.

As if feeling the pain of tooth loss again, the sugar picker woke up from his memories and walked the way he came. The sky suddenly lit up, and the sugar picker saw the hatch of his home from a distance. On the mottled and faded hatch, more than a dozen finger marks and blood marks turned black, revealing naked malice, which was particularly eye-catching.

The blood streak had dried up for a long time, but it still toyed with what he had deliberately tried to forget. When he returned to the hatch with his bloody hand, he slapped the thick hatch with his bloody hand, telling the little guy to open it, and saw the frightened eyes through the crack in the door, and his eyes were full of strangeness and fear.

The stinging memory in his heart made the sugar picker hesitate and buckle the hatch twice, and after a while he heard the sound of the door latch twisting open.

"Old man, you're back!" The boy stretched out his arms and took his father's bucket, and the joy and happiness on his face could not be concealed, and the raised bangs slid to the sides, revealing eyes that were squinted like crescents, not at all like those days.

After putting the bucket away, the little guy just wanted to hug his father, and then he braked sharply and withdrew his arms.

"Old man, you really need to wash your clothes. The whole inside stinks from you."

"Huh? Does it stink so much? The sugar picker woke up from his stupor and raised his sleeve suspiciously and sniffed: "Either tomorrow, I'll wash it tomorrow." ”

"Old man, do you know what real laziness is?" The young man looked at him with disdain: "It's just that he doesn't do anything himself, and he still annoys others when he helps him." ”

"Okay, I'll boil the sugar first, and I'll change it when it's warm." The sugar picker closed the hatch again, buckled the latch, and took the bucket into the innermost sugar room. There was still a charcoal fire in the stove in the house, and he picked up some twigs and dead leaves from the pyre beside the stove and started a fire, and it was time to make a fire to keep warm.

The fort is easy and safe to heat. There is a natural rock gap in the air inlet between the furnaces, and the air outlet is connected to the hidden pipes, and when the sugar is boiled for a clock, the fortress will be warmed up, and the temperature will not be frozen to death in the dream.

With a fire, he poured the sap from the bucket into the pressure cooker on the stove. A pot of sugar maple juice is boiled for two or three hours to concentrate into maple syrup, and the steam during the boil is also collected and cooled into drinking water. The father and son didn't know what the alcohol was like outside, and sugar and drinking water were the best reassurances.

After finishing the boiling sugar, the man walked to the storage shelf to sort out the sealed maple sugar. When the furnace was first cleaned, a number of empty bottles were found in the corner, ranging from new and unused glass bottles to bottles of tomato sauce, as well as a large mess of military rations. The label on the sauce bottle has eroded and there is nothing to be seen, only two printed codes on the inside of the cap: 200106102127MGJ32 and 200212212127MKO89. The sealed iron sheet of military rations is also rusty, there is no more information.

After picking out two empty bottles of sugar, the man returned to the stove and took off his clothes that had never been changed, and when he changed them, the man noticed the handwriting on a small piece of white cloth on the inside of the neckline: Qi Yu. That's your name? Pulling a burning piece of wood from the stove, the man walked out.

When the sugar picker, or Qi Yu, walked into the living room, the little guy was still sitting in front of the small window and working. Qi Yu wrapped himself in a thick blanket, handed the clothes and firewood to the little guy, took the arrow shaft in the little guy's hand and polished it.

The little guy took the clothes in disgust, and walked to the water room with firewood, which was pitch black and there was the sound of gurgling water. The little one pinned the firewood to the latch of the door, and washed his clothes by the fire. The clothes of the two fathers and sons can barely be seen to be the same style, and the big road goods sent by the parent-child children's camp are unexpectedly strong along the way. The clothes of the two in the water were twisted together, like the intimacy between father and son, and they could barely be seen under the light of the fire.

The water room is like the sugar room, half of which is made of original rock, and a small stream of water flows down the rock wall and then flows out somewhere. There is also a whimpering wind that passes through the thin waterway. Every time he did the laundry, the little one was so scared to death that he left the hatch open.

When the little guy came out after washing his clothes, Qi Yu had already finished his work, closed the shutters on the observation window, and added a cover made of bark. Qi Yu saw that the little guy was about to take the washed clothes to the sugar room to dry, so he greeted him.

The little guy sneered at him with his wet clothes: "Old man, I haven't seen you so active?" Do you want me to help you wash your socks? ”

"Hmm. The sugar is almost ready to be filled, and I'm going to do it. You go to bed early, and tomorrow we'll go and get that venison pot back." Qi Yu snatched the clothes from the little guy's hand.

"Hmm!" The little guy's eyes lit up, "Then you get it early, I'll wait for you." ”

"Okay." Qi Yu walked into the sugar room with his clothes, and dried his clothes to dry. By the light of the fire, Qi Yu saw that the collar of the little guy's shirt was also sewn with a white cloth with words: Qi Ji.

Qi Yu added enough firewood to close the hatch, and when he returned to the main cabin, the firewood in the main cabin had been extinguished, and it was pitch black, and the little guy's sleeping bag had already heard an even cry. Qi Yu shook his head dotingly, walked to the door of the main cabin, listened to the movement outside, checked the latch, put down the jar with glass shards under the door and in the corridor, and returned to his sleeping bag. The little one seemed to sense his father's arrival, and squirmed his sleeping bag closer to his father's side.

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Author: This volume has been concluded, setting the background and some of the mysteries, in the last paragraph of the final chapter of Chapter 51. I hope you have a good time