Afraid of staining my husband's clothes, he held me in his left hand and my little mud-stained leather shoes in his right hand.

Mr. is not bound by mortal dust, he could have taken me to the white python cave one step at a time, but he said that the road must be walked step by step, and the scenery must be seen slowly in order to feel the fun.

There was no sound along the way, and even the usual insects and birds could not be heard, and on the road to the fork in the white python cave, the thorns all over the ground automatically opened in front of Mr., and then merged together, but I didn't care about this in my heart.

I asked him, "Sir, my grandfather said that the mountain god lives in the white python cave, and it has horns on its head, four wings on its body, and it can eat people, isn't it terrifying?" ”

"Don't worry, there's no mountain god in there anymore."

"That is to say, it turns out that there is really a mountain god!" I looked up at my husband excitedly and said.

"If you believe it, you have it, but if you don't, what does it matter?" The gentleman smiled and replied nonchalantly.

"I believe it, but why is the mountain god gone now? When did it not exist? If there had been no mountain god earlier, wouldn't the girls who had sacrificed to the mountain god in the past bury their lives in vain?"

There were many questions in my heart for a while, and they were all suddenly spoken like a gun.

When I was a child, I heard a legend about the sacrifice to the mountain god. At first, there was a very old tree in the middle of the corpse grove in the corpse valley, and it was said that if the bottom of the tree turned white, people would drown in the whirlpool lake on the mountain.

More than 90 years ago, the tree turned white, and sure enough, then people drowned in the whirlpool lake one after another, and no one knows when they died, but when the corpses floated up, they were all swollen and swollen, and there was no normal appearance, and the skin on the corpse was also Zouba's, and when the hand touched it, the skin broke open and fell.

This is much easier than the ancient method of peeling with a thousand cuts.

In fact, the same is true in real life, the tree will be white once or twice every two or three years, but it will return to normal after three or five days.

But this time the tree turned white, and it remained white for months, and every few days people drowned in the lake.

In the end, the people had nothing to do, and decided to make a big sacrifice to the mountain god according to tradition, begging the gods for protection.

This was no ordinary sacrifice, they offered a young woman to the god of the mountain, a woman of great learning, who was exceptionally recorded in the genealogy because of her extraordinary talent.

She was only nineteen years old when she was chosen to sacrifice, and she was an old girl at that time.

They buried her in the cave with a chicken, a sheep, and a piece of jade, and sprinkled a bucket full of glutinous rice as sacrificial rice in the cave, and then for three days, the entrance of the cave was filled with fragrant mist.

I don't know what the purpose of this sacrificial method is, the old people's statements are different, and none of them are very convincing. But soon after, the girl who had been sacrificed to the gods was seen lying naked in a ravine at the foot of a mountain, and when she was found, her body had turned into a rotten piece of flesh crawling with maggots, and no one would have recognized her if it had not been for the expensive wedding dress beside her.

In fact, a long time ago, there was a tradition of human sacrifice in various places, but with the passage of time, the degree of economic and cultural development in various places is different, so that this kind of traditional dross that violates human nature can only be seen in some remote and small places.

The methods of sacrifice vary from place to place, but the ending of those sacrificial women is much the same, the whereabouts of those who end up are unknown, and the tragic death of the corpse.

It is said that earlier, all the ranks of women who sacrificed were enshrined in the temple of Mother Earth at the corner of the street. It's a pity that more than 40 years ago, someone burned down the Earth Mother Temple, and the tablets, statues, and heavy village chronicles inside were also wiped out in that fire.

"It's just that people have selfish desires and use God as a raft, and I really think that I have figured out the will of God, but as for why the mountain god didn't have it, it's a long story." The gentleman still spoke in a calm tone, as if the red world had nothing to do with him, and nothing could stir up a little wave in his heart.

"Tell me about it." I smiled flatteringly and tugged at my husband's sleeve.

The gentleman smiled at first, then softened his voice and said, "Good." ”

After that, he rubbed my head before he continued: "Anyway, I'm with you to relax, so it's okay to just tell you about it." ”

"Hmm." I happily agreed.

The gentleman put the shoes on the ground, hugged me and put them on, and then took my right hand.

Only then did I realize that while I was talking, we had reached the entrance of the White Python Cave. The entrance of the white python cave is not big, more than a meter high, hidden between a group of big stones, looking into it from the outside, the cave is black, I can't guess what is hidden in the darkness, just look at the entrance of the cave, like a giant animal lurking there will open its mouth to eat people, waiting for the passers-by to throw themselves into the net.

There was a continuous cold wind blowing from the cave, and the voice of a woman was like a whimpering voice.

Standing at the mouth of the hole, we were both scraped straight.

I couldn't help but shiver, the wind was blowing on the body, and I was wearing a skirt, thinking that it was cold outside, and I would pay it back when I got to the cave.

Fortunately, it is already dusk now, and you can see a large area of sunset in the sky outside the cave, and the new green on the ground after the rain is refreshing.

"Sir, I don't want to go in, you see the scenery is so good, let's just take a look here." I'm a little nervous again, after all, it's not a good habit to go back on your word.

"Whatever you want." The gentleman rubbed my head.

Just as I was about to tell my husband that we should change places, his black robe suddenly covered me.

"Sir, I'm afraid this robe can be used as a quilt, you see, most of it is spread on the ground and stained with mud." With that, I took off my robe and held it in my arms.

"It doesn't matter." As he spoke, he led me to a large smooth stone, and folded my withdrawn robe over the large stone, which was still a little damp.

He sat down first, and then beckoned to me: "Come here, it's too cold on the stone, the girl sits straight on it and faces her poor health, sit on my lap, the story is very long, and the sunset will be a while." ”

"Good!" I sat down obediently, and as soon as I sat down, I felt as if I was buried in my husband's arms, and I didn't feel a little cold.

The gentleman's low, gentle voice began to speak overhead, and there was silence all around, except for the sound of the wind coming from the cave. The mountains are steep, the glow is dense, the deep mountains and old forests, the pines and cypresses, the fallen leaves are all over the ground, and the people in Xuanyi look down at the little doll in their arms to tell stories.

At that moment, it was as if in this heaven and earth, only this one was real.

"The gods of the White Python Cave were not originally born in the White Python Cave, which is also rare among the gods, he is very young; Because of coincidence, less than a hundred years after its birth, there was incense to pay tribute.

In order to repay the favor, he planned to reincarnate to benefit one party with himself, so he privately went to find the white-clothed underworld in the underworld to help; At that time, he was also in office at the beginning, and he took people to three trips after two catties of spirits. The rules of the underworld are strict, such as this kind of original can not be reincarnated privately, but Meng Po does not think so, in her place, anyone who comes to the three paths, as long as he has a bowl of soup in his stomach, regardless of the reason for your life and death, he can go to reincarnation and enter the world.

He was reincarnated as a human as promised, but he forgot all the past; His reincarnated background was not satisfactory, he also suffered countless hardships in his childhood, and he also did sinful evil deeds in order to achieve his goals in the past, and finally had the achievements of the rich side. He had gained enough power and money, and he had become a good enough person, but he was still alone, and he didn't trust anyone, and he suddenly lost the direction of his life.

He was not afraid of death, but he did not reject living for a long time, but in the prime of life, he was terminally ill, and he thought that maybe it was retribution, but he did not think of remedy, and even did something just for enjoyment, completely ignoring worldly opinions, even if it was not really a bad thing.

Then a child with a difference broke into his world, as if he was the center of the child, and the child's whole world revolved around him, and the child changed him, and she made him feel how terrible death was, and he began to fear death. His body had begun to decay, and the child was in his youthful and dazzling years, but he had been tormented by his illness like a little old lady. He only felt that he owed the child a lot, and wanted to do something for her, such as fulfilling a small wish for her, and the child said that she only wanted him to live a long time and live longer than himself.

He just felt that he wanted to live, to live hard, even if he could only spend one more day with the child in the world, no, maybe he could no longer call the woman a child, he no longer regarded a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl as a child.

Later, he took the girl to travel all over the country, and while playing, he also used huge financial resources to do countless good deeds of repairing bridges and paving roads to relieve disasters and famines, but he raised a bodhisattva's heart, which can be regarded as the result of the same end of different paths, and completed what he was supposed to do; Maybe it's because human perseverance is really strong, or maybe it's because he's different from real humans, but it really allowed him to live for ten more years.

In the last few years, they came to settle in Goya, because his body could no longer support them for a long journey, he was afraid that the child would be bored, so he took her back and forth in the neighborhood over and over again, he tried his best to make the child happy, and tried over and over again to arrange a as good as possible for the child, at least not lacking in material things, but the child still regarded him as the center of the world, and she refused all his arrangements. In this way, he expects that he is not worried that she will work hard to live to old age alone in the world.

After that, he treated sentient beings better, and only hoped that in the future, when he was gone, all sentient beings in the world would be able to treat her better.