My name is Wang Yang.

The place where I was born is in a small old village called Wangjia Village in the northern Jiangsu region.

Until I was six years old, Wangjia Village was peaceful and peaceful, at least on the surface.

But when I was six years old, a group of people suddenly came to the village. Since then, Wangjiacun has never had a day of peace, and strange things have happened one after another.

And the source of these strange things comes from a tree, an ancient and obscuring plane tree.

This plane tree grows at the head of Wangjia Village, the trunk is so tall and thick that it takes four or five big men to hug it, and its branches stretch out to the sky with teeth and claws, whether it is day or night, it will cast a huge and mottled shadow in Wangjia Village, which is daunting.

No one knows how long this plane tree lived, but I only know that when I was a child, my grandfather told me that when he was my age, his grandfather was telling him stories about this plane tree.

More than 100 years ago, the Empress Dowager Cixi ordered the world's strange people to hunt the phoenix for her to make a coat, and it is rumored that if the phoenix coat can be worn on the body, people will be rejuvenated and reborn.

Some strangers said that there is only one phoenix left in heaven and earth, and the phoenix is a sacred bird, which can suppress evil spirits and keep peace forever.

The Empress Dowager Cixi was in her twilight years, not to mention the old Zhu Huang, and her son and ministers also bullied her to be dizzy, and secretly tried to regain power with her, seeing that the golden coffin and jade bed had been prepared in the Houling, the Empress Dowager Cixi became more and more uneasy, she didn't want to die. She sent people to secretly arrest hundreds of Taoist disciples' disciples and family members to threaten, and hundreds of Taoist priests had no choice but to be ordered to pursue the Phoenix Ruins.

After a year's long journey, they finally found the trace of the phoenix in a valley at the southern foot of Kunlun Mountain with the technique of searching for the hole of the paper crane and tracing for thousands of miles.

The phoenix is a sacred bird, born with a spirit, seeing the Taoist priest stepping on its territory, it will attack it angrily, hundreds of Taoist priests surrounded the Liuhe Taoist array, the phoenix was seriously injured, and fled in a hurry, hundreds of Taoist priests in the phoenix under the Taoist spiritual search technique, chasing the phoenix reluctantly.

The phoenix fled, flying all the way south, after seven days and seven nights, the exhausted phoenix fell on a plane tree that looked very old and very old, this plane tree was the plane tree at the head of our village, the phoenix pecked off a few branches of the plane tree, under itself, spit out a few mouthfuls of light like sparks from the mouth, and after a while the plane tree began to smoke and fire.

But who knew that at this moment, the sky was suddenly cloudy, and it rained heavily, and the heavy rain extinguished the fire on the plane tree, and it didn't take long for the group of Taoist priests who chased and killed the phoenix to rush here and surrounded the seriously injured and dying phoenix.

Seeing that the phoenix could not escape, it sent out a terrible and desperate scream to the sky, and a few Taoist priests found that something was wrong, and it was too late to stop it, and a thunderbolt slashed directly at the phoenix, and when everyone raised their heads again, there was still a trace of the phoenix on the tree, leaving only a burning fire.

The phoenix forcibly caused its own catastrophe and committed suicide.

After the phoenix died, she did not leave any feathers, and the Empress Dowager Cixi was furious, convinced that she had been deceived, and she beheaded all the Taoist priests and their teachers who rushed back to restore their lives.

Among those Taoist priests who did not return to Beijing for pilgrimage, one of them stayed for some reason, and built a Taoist temple on the mountain behind our village, named Taiyin Temple.

The current owner of Taiyin Guan is the son of the person who built the view back then, that is, my later master, and I will not mention it here.

It is said that Wangjia Village is spread because of the legend of the phoenix, so many people call Wangjia Village Luofeng Village.

Since then, the village has been dry year by year, and there is no rain all year round, and the originally good mountain village has become dry land, and several big rivers and Baishi mountain springs around the village have almost bottomed out in more than a hundred years, and the whole village has relied on an old well not far from the plane tree to live.

I don't know if the legend of the plane tree and the phoenix is true or not, I only know that my grandfather never let me play under this plane tree, not even close.

Grandpa said that during the Japanese invasion of China, a Japanese officer fell in love with this plane tree, and he ordered his subordinates to cut down the plane tree to make a bed board for him, the bed board made of the plane tree is not only malleable, the material is very light and elastic, and it exudes a fragrance, which helps to sleep, especially the plane tree that is over 100 years old, and the aroma of the plane tree can cure all diseases after smelling for a long time.

But because the plane tree was so huge that it took four or five men to hug it, and there were no tools at that time that could cut such a thick tree, the Japanese officer ordered eight Japanese soldiers to cut down the tree with steel knives.

One of the Japanese soldiers spent half a day cutting the bark of the plane tree, and a little blood oozed out of the broken bark, not much blood, but it was very fishy, and the eight Japanese soldiers were stupid, why did the Chinese tree still bleed?

One of the eight Japanese soldiers, who was a literary soldier who spoke Chinese with the Japanese officer, told the others to stop cutting down the tree after seeing such a strange scene, and asked the villagers of Wangjia Village about the tree, and after hearing the villagers of Wangjia Village tell him that the tree was a sacred tree, the literary soldier returned to the camp and told the Japanese officer.

The Japanese officer listened to the words of the literary soldiers, and was very disapproving, he called all the villagers of Wangjia Village, and said that only China would engage in these feudal and ancient things, and he said that he had gone through dozens of battles, large and small, and his body was full of gunshot wounds and knife wounds, which could not kill him, and a broken tree in a broken village could help him?

So the Japanese officer himself went into battle, rolled up his sleeves, and really carried a steel knife to cut down the tree, and he cut a palm-sized gap in the root of the plane tree, until the blood flowed straight and flowed all over the ground, and the blood still exuded a scorched smell. Cutting here, the Japanese officer raised his head and sneered, saying that the so-called sacred tree was nothing more than that.

As soon as the Japanese officer finished speaking, his eyes and nose began to bleed, as did the group of Japanese soldiers next to him, screaming in terror to no avail, and almost in an hour they were bleeding and dried.

And the villagers of Wangjia Village watched the tragic death of these Japanese soldiers in this way, and no one persuaded them from beginning to end.

Later, another officer stationed in the Japanese barracks in the town heard about the killing of the plane tree, and brought a strangely dressed man to investigate, who wore a high hat, had no eyebrows, and had a copper compass in his hand and circled the plane tree twice, and then collapsed to the ground in fright, and then slammed backwards faster than a rabbit.

The next day, the Japanese officer and the man who had been scared away returned, both wearing imp masks, and bowed to the plane tree from a distance a few times, after which they never returned.

Later, two Japanese soldiers who could speak Chinese were overheard discussing privately that the man with the top hat was their national teacher.

Ever since I heard this story told by my grandfather, the plane tree has become my shadow, and in the days that followed, every time I passed by the village after school, I would deliberately stay away from the plane tree, and I didn't even dare to look at it, for fear that something would jump down from the plane tree that covered the sky and catch me to eat.

The people of our village are both respectful and afraid of the old plane tree, some people worship it as a god, and they will get some sacrifices to put under the plane tree during the New Year's festival, and some people are afraid of it like a ghost, and they wish that anyone who dared to cut down this old tree that scared people to death.

After the implementation of the large-scale dry system, there were several villagers who made a fortune, and the family moved to the county seat that year, and one of them also said to others when he moved: "Wait for the tractor to drive and don't go to the village, I'm afraid that the tree will be worried." ”

This old plane tree has survived hundreds of years of wind and rain, it can be said to be the symbol of our village, no one in the Japanese dared to cut it down, and no one dared to cut it down during the Cultural Revolution, but with the development of science and technology and the popularization of education, when I was six years old, it coincided with rural land reform, house demolition, road rectification, and the people who dared to cut it down finally came.

Disaster has finally struck.