Jiannan Road, located in the middle of the lofty mountains, is the southwest border of the Great Xia Dynasty, reckless forests, snow-capped mountains and deserts, the long river of the moat lies in it, and there is no trace. Legend has it that in the depths of the snow-capped mountains, there is an ethereal mountain hidden, the weather in the mountains is unpredictable, the clouds are deep and the fog is locked, the lightning flashes and thunder, and the treacherous abnormality.

According to local legend, the Ethereal Mountain is home to many gods who control everything in the Kennam Road and the primeval forest, from the vicissitudes of the storm to the safety of the local people and caravans, however, no one knows the exact location of the Ethereal Mountain, let alone actually seen it. For no one who went to find it came back alive. What I know is only the name left by the ancient legend - the Holy Maiden of the Snow Mountain.

In early spring, the drizzle is silky. In the bustling crowd of the town, there was a thin black boy, a thin shirt, a blue robe, a pair of straw sandals on his feet, and a thin red horse in his hand.

There are many shops on both sides of the street, and the merchants are shaking rattles, walking the streets and alleys, shouting business, for fear of missing a customer, the black and thin boy bought some fragrant paper money in the shop specializing in groceries in Mishiba, and then bought a few packets of realgar powder in the herb shop of the Tian shopkeeper, and then led the horse back, and the lively hawking on both sides did not arouse his interest at all.

The town is outstanding, the mountains and rivers are beautiful, just like other towns in Jiannan Road, life and leisure, the streets are lined with teahouses, if you encounter the days of three, six and nine to catch the market, whether it is the son of the family or the mountain village man always like to spend such a copper plate, sit in the teahouse for an afternoon, and only reluctantly leave the teahouse when the sun sinks and twilight, and go home respectively.

The boy led the horse and stopped in front of a teahouse called Chunlai. In the teahouse, an old man in a Confucian shirt sixty miles away was waving his feather fan and patting the wood in shock, talking about the stories that the townspeople love to hear.

"The colder you get, the more you shiver, and the hotter you get, the more you sweat. There is no hot day in winter, and there is no cold in winter when it is hot. The coal is all black (Shu dialect, very black), if you don't believe it, you will wash it white. Dirty coal mines, stinky paper mills, bitches out of the sauce purple shop. Why do you want to say these few words of bad poetry, because in Jiannan Road, in my Shu land, there are two popular words now, that is, cultivating immortals, it is said that in the ethereal mountain, on this day, the holy woman of the Snow Mountain sent twelve golden immortals, King Kong Arhats came to the Great Xia Palace and saw Haotian God....... , don't talk much, each has a branch......"

The young man stopped and listened for a while, grinned, and a subtle smile appeared on the corner of his mouth, in the young man's heart, this storyteller is always saying the right nonsense, can coal be whitewashed?

The town is called Sun Town, and it is rich in coal. There are 25 coal mountains in the depths of Yunwu Mountain, so the craftsmen engaged in coal mining are unkempt and black-covered every day, and work all day long in order to get three meals.

Snow Mountain rice paper is a major feature of Sun Town, the rice paper made by the workshop, not to mention the Great Xia Dynasty, is in the Western Elysium, the scriptures copied are all copied with the high-quality rice paper of Sun Town, which is said to be preserved for thousands of years. However, the workshop that produces rice paper in the snowy mountains is stinky, and the smell of rotten eggs wafts at any time.

Sauce Zifang is the most special place in Sun Town, where the royal sons from all states and provinces, the children of the family, and the traveling caravans chant poems against each other, and thousands of dollars buy drunkenness and thousands of dollars buy sleep.

The young man led the horse, continued to walk forward, went out of the city gate to the west, that is, the back mountain, walked five or six miles in the mountain road, a person and a horse walked into a large bamboo forest, the warm moisture of the bamboo forest came to his face, the young man's nose moved, the corners of his mouth turned up, and two lines of hot tears rolled down his cheeks, and there was a tombstone standing next to the gurgling stream, which read "the tomb of the ocean of the ancestor river" The young man knelt silently beside the tombstone, rubbed his eyes, took out the prepared incense paper from the back basket, and lit it with a fire fold, but saw that the ashes of the incense paper flew in front of the tombstone.

The young man in the town is surnamed Jiang, his name is Xiaobai, he is an orphan in Luoguo Lane in the town, he is thirteen years old this year, he is a native of Sun Town, Jiang Xiaobai's father and mother were celebrities in the town, and his father Jiang Haiyang has a craft, and the silk rabbit he does is very prestigious.

Since the founding of this dynasty, Jiang Haiyang's ancestral craft has become famous in Jiannan Province, not only the states and governments of Jiannan Province will send people to buy tens of thousands of silk rabbits every year, but even the major families, the royal family will sometimes buy dozens of hundreds of silk rabbits, so in the town, Jiang Haiyang is very respected.

Mother-in-law Yuniang, with a soft temperament, is a well-known beauty in the town, since Xiaobai remembers, his mother has been at home to take care of him as a child, do some housework, and wash clothes. I remember when I was five years old, it was a snowy afternoon, the sky was dark, Xiaobai was alone in the corner of the courtyard playing with the little wooden figure made for him by his mother, and suddenly the two little wooden figures scattered on the ground jumped into the air and set up a small wooden sword in mid-air. In the courtyard, an old man with white eyebrows fell from the sky, fairy wind bones, fluttering with the wind, standing in the wind and snow, but the snowflakes could not fall on his body, and the snowflakes could only stay outside his body like silk wool, and they melted in an instant.

"Little baby, your mother is here. ”

Xiaobai just rubbed his eyes and didn't make a sound, although he was an ignorant child, he was naturally wary of strangers, he just looked at the old man for a long time and muttered a few words.

"You, who are you, I~ I don't know you, why are you looking for my mother?"

The old man just smiled and was not in a hurry to answer, the wooden door of the room "creaked" open, and the mother's elegant beauty appeared at the door.

"The one who should come will come, come in, Grandpa Ma. ”

The old man glanced at Xiao Bai, bowed to Yu Niang, in the void, Yu Niang's hand was slightly raised, and the old man involuntarily stood up and walked into the room.

On that day, there was no trace of my mother's parents, and my father just muttered to the sky when he came home, "Yu Niang, you are still gone after all, I don't blame you, I blame this red dust." The father turned around and looked at Xiaobai, who was still unknown, with a firm gaze, as if he was entrusted.

"Xiaobai, remember, in the future, you must have a conscience, be brave, be strong, set a rule for your father, and when you have the ability, you must help those who jump into the lake on the end of the world, after all, one day, you can really understand the meaning of the red dust, and you will see your mother. ”

Although the five-year-old child was not sensible, he nodded firmly when he saw his father's grief-stricken expression.

"Xiaobai, let's go play in your room. ”

When Jiang Xiaobai obediently entered his room, Jiang Haiyang came to the rabbit pen fence, picked up the rattan stick about four feet long in his hand, luck was in the stick, and in an instant the rattan stick turned into thousands of stick shadows like flying swords and went straight to the carotid artery of dozens of white rabbits in the fence, and the white rabbits fell to the ground and died, silent.

Jiang Haiyang raised his hand, dozens of rabbits hung on the bamboo pole in the yard, and two short swords about three inches long flew out of his cuffs, brushing and brushing silver flashes, first the rabbit skin automatically fell off the rabbit's body, and then the rabbit's internal organs and rabbit legs were raised one after another.

This is Jiang Haiyang's experience for many years, quickly peeling the skin before the blood is completely coagulated, starting from the hind legs, scratching the skin without hurting the flesh, after tearing the skin of the legs, cut off the tail, gently cut it from the buttocks with a knife, and then use the sword qi to pull the skin, straight to the neck, and then cut off all the rabbit skin, and then disembowel to remove the internal organs, chop off the hind legs.

On the windowsill, Jiang Xiaobai was dumbfounded, and he didn't dare to speak, his father was a mountain and a god in his mind at this moment, and he never felt that Mu Ne's father was so kind and so majestic.

When his father was busy in the stove room, Jiang Xiaobai fell asleep on the bed, that time, he slept very deeply, so that the next day when the cold afterglow of the sun shone on his thin cheeks, he woke up from the dream of gnawing rabbit heads and eating rabbit meat, his father lay next to him, when his immature little hands shook his father's shoulders, he found that his father's whole body was cold, his breath was completely empty, and his three souls and seven spirits were gone.

Since then, Jiang Xiaobai has become a lonely ghost and a helpless orphan who no one cares about, carrying a treasure bag, eating hundreds of meals, and wearing hundreds of clothes. I became a carpenter in the workshop very early, and at first I could only do some rough work of logging, sawing, and planing boards, and followed an old man with a strange temper, who worked hard as an apprentice for several years, and with his steadfastness and hard work, he just pondered some doorways, and his skills were praised by the master and his brother, but the world was impermanent, and the old man of the class once got drunk and fell into the duck river west of the town, and never got up again.

The people in the small town are sloppy, and the east and west families talk about things, and they all say that Jiang Xiaobai was born in July and a half, and he was born with seven bad lives, and his father and mother were masters, and since then, Jiang Xiaobai has walked on the street, and pedestrians have avoided him like a rat.

The young man knelt in front of his father's grave for a long time, his legs seemed to be a little numb, he stood up suddenly, almost stumbled and fell to the ground, he stretched out his hands, balanced his body, stood straight in front of the grave, and muttered to himself, "Daddy, I came to see you, you left, and did not pass on my craft of making silk rabbits, I was on the windowsill that day, I saw how you slaughtered the free child, and I practiced the essentials countless times, but ~." I still don't know the essentials, I haven't learned your ability to marinate rabbit meat, so no one in Sun Town's silk rabbit has been able to make the kind of taste you made since you left, Daddy, can you tell me how to make a good silk rabbit ....... ”

The boy confided in his father at the grave, as if he wanted his father to give him an answer, but in the bamboo forest, the green leaves were swinging, like the sound of turning a book.

The young man was silent for a while, and then said to himself, "Daddy, my mother has not heard from me for so many years, I know that you must know where she is, why didn't you tell me at that time." After a pause, the boy seemed to remember something, "Daddy, I have kept your rattan sticks, short swords, and silk rabbits that day in the cellar at the back of the yard. You can rest assured, I will definitely keep it, that is, the shopkeeper of the herb shop said that he wanted to buy two silk rabbits, I didn't agree, and, you have to save some of the paper money I burned for you today, as long as it is used until seven and a half years later, I will burn some more for you, and you must pay attention to your physical ...... over there."

The boy chattered, completely immersed in his own world, and his thin figure had been standing in front of the grave for a long time, as if waiting for his father's response, until at last he shook his head, packed up his basket, and led his thin red horse out of the bamboo forest lonely.