"So, you escaped by the big tree that grew in the cave?" I asked Lao Yang. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

He shook his head, his expression was still cold and indifferent, and a cold gaze shot out of his sunken eyes, and the whole person looked like a dried corpse.

He moved his throat and said to me weakly:

"It's not what you think, the tree died in my fifth year of being trapped in the cave. The lightning strikes of the outside world when the tree collapsed, just blocking the shaft, and after losing sunlight, the leaves of the cave tree began to wither, and after a while, the tree lost its vitality completely. For some time at first, he and I fell into a deep despair, and we frantically cursed the heavens, insulted everything, and blamed each other and bit each other. But later, we all realized that the tree was really dead, and our only hope was gone. ”

Lao Yang continued:

"The death of the tree hit us like never before, when I was just an adult, and I thought that in a few years, I would be able to escape this nightmare. But everything was ruined, God wouldn't let us out alive, and the initial efforts and expectations were all in vain. In the next few years, we continued to survive, fishing in the underground rivers, hunting the bats on the top of the cave with stones, the taste of the bats was not good, but the nutrition was okay, you know, the fishy smell was very strong, we had no salt, and the people became very weak, without strength, and the only bones and skin were left thin.

"Occasionally, I catch snakes that fall through the cracks in the shaft, and the snakes taste good and chewy, but the meat is too small and the quantity is not much. We catch burrow worms for protein, and this bug is a bit like a centipede, we stone it to death, and then wait for a while before I put it in my mouth and chew it. Think about it, what would it be like if it wasn't dead and the stump in its mouth was still squirming and struggling under your tongue?

"There are shells in the underground river, and that's a great food. You know, in the upper reaches of the stream that flows into the bandit cave, there is a pond, and in the silt of the pond, many shells are hidden, and some of the shells are washed away by the flood and washed into the hole along the stream, but the number is limited, and it is difficult for us to eat a feast of shells. Our main food source is still fish, and there are many fish in the cave, and there are many species, which are larger, slower, and easy to catch. ”

When I listened to Lao Yang talk about surviving in the cave, I heard him describe to me that I swallowed the cave worm, and I couldn't help but churn in my stomach. I was filled with emotion and thought: How much suffering has he suffered over the years?

"Who the hell is that old man?" I couldn't help but ask Lao Yang, "How did he get trapped in the cave?" What did he go through? ”

Lao Yang leaned his head back, staring blankly at the ceiling opposite, probably recalling something. After a while, he suddenly lowered his head, looked at me fixedly, and his mouth moved:

"It was an old man, he was in his 60s when I first entered, but his appearance, his extremely old appearance, his rickety back, made him look like an old centenarian, with a dry body, a wrinkled face, like an orange peel, all of which didn't look like a man in his sixties. But he told me that living in a cave, if you don't have enough nutrients, you can age very quickly. I can understand, look at me now, like a person in my 20s?

"In the first few days, the old man told me about his experience in the outside world, and told me completely why he had fallen to this point. But what is this to tell you? Wait for me to think about it. ”

When Lao Yang said this, he fell into a long silence, and I understood that he was sorting out his thoughts in his mind and organizing appropriate language, and I didn't dare to interrupt him, so I sat on the side and waited patiently.

It was a full twenty minutes before he spoke again, and said:

"It's a very complex story with a lot of characters, but I can only tell you it in a nutshell because we don't have any more time. You know, in the border area between Xiangxi and Guizhou, before the liberation, it was always a region ruled by bandits and warlords, and at that time everyone had knives and guns, because I don't know when, you will break into your house with a few bandits, kill all the living people, snatch everything that can be robbed, women, livestock, tools and instruments, and burn the house when you leave, so as not to leave people with a solid handle.

On the outskirts of the city walls, there is still a big tree that is hugged by four people, you know, it is a barking tree, nailing people to it, starting from the neck, peeling off the human skin little by little with a sharp knife, and then drying it to make a human skin drum. This terrible human skin drum is always beating when it is burning and looting. At that time, although the bandits were controlled by the warlords, the warlords were quite corrupt, and as long as the bandits took half of the looted property and paid tribute to the warlord leader, then the existence of this group of bandits had secret legitimacy. Bandits generally hide in the deep mountains and caves, wandering around to commit crimes, ordinary people they also look down on, only in the autumn harvest, to grab some grain and women, their main objects of robbery, are passing merchants and some landlords and squires. Skinning people is a tool for their deterrence, after all, ordinary people will be afraid when they see a bloody corpse that has been skinned.

On the eve of liberation, among the 100,000 mountains in 28 counties of Xiangxi, dozens of bandit forces were hidden, all of which had their own territories, but some bloody disputes inevitably broke out among the bandits in order to compete for favorable areas. The bandit leaders took advantage of the treacherous terrain to entrench themselves in the mountains, claiming to be the king and hegemon, setting fire to the wind high, killing people in the dark moon, robbing houses and houses, and doing all kinds of evil.

The old guy followed one of the bandits at that time and did a black-hearted deal. The bandit leader's name is Wu Yunfei, originally a local bully who likes to dance with guns and sticks, studied in private school for two years, joined the army at the age of 16, and was later expelled from the army for disobedience.

This Wu Yunfei has joined the army, understands the greedy nature of the warlord leader, and it is precisely by taking advantage of this to make transactions with the warlords in secret, exchanging the stolen gold and silver for weapons and ammunition, and constantly increasing his strength, after the forties, he has established a powerful armed force in the mountains, obtained his own area, and co-opted the villains, raided other bandits, and further expanded his strength.

Wu Yunfei established a village on the top of a mountain called "Feilong Mountain" at that time, and there were no too many requirements to join Wu Yunfei's team. This Wu Yunfei is very cunning, all of his subordinates have murders, even if he defects to the warlord government, it is a felony to kill the head, and he is using this handle to firmly control the entire team. Those who have no head generally dare not approach the stockade, and once they are discovered by bandits, they only need to die.

But one morning, a Taoist priest in a robe suddenly appeared in front of the stockade, claiming that he wanted to join the team, but he couldn't get a head for a while, so Wu Yunfei opened the net.