After the fire burned all night, the white flames seemed to have finally reached an agreement with the torrential rain, and when the sky was clear, they were extinguished and subsided, and the heavens and the earth returned to calm.

The eastern sky was blue with duck eggs and clouds, rain and dew were dripping from the leaves, and birds were singing again in the mountains and forests, as if they had no idea what kind of night had just passed.

Lin Yuqing sat on the tree, and when the fire was extinguished, he slid down the tree and, at the risk of being discovered by the jury, ran to the village—or rather, the ruins that had once been the village.

He found the iron pots that had been set up at the east end of the village yesterday evening, which had been burned out of shape, and the ancestral hall, the house, and the newly built shelves had all become a thick pile of black ash remnants.

But there were no bones, not a single one, not even a single chicken or dog, as if the fire had only burned down an empty village.

When he realized that his family had left, the boy stood under the blue and white sky, bowed his head and wiped his eyes at the sound of birds and birds in the early morning.

"It must have been discovered by Rhodes when they came to investigate the situation," Nagarjuna jumped on his shoulder quietly at some point, "Your father must have been unable to find you in a hurry, so he had to take the villagers away first......

Lin Yuqing let out a thick nasal voice: "I know." ”

"They can't resist either, in case more judges come......"

"yes. ”

In the face of such a forest fish, Nagarjuna didn't know what to do: "That...... Shall we get out of here, then? Maybe the jury is coming. ”

"Hmm. The boy was surprisingly obedient, and walked back into the woods without saying a word.

"Do you know where they might have gone?" asked Nagarjuna, softening his voice and crouching over his shoulder.

"I don't know—" Lin Yuqing just replied halfway, and then stopped again. After thinking about it, he wiped his red nose: "I only know that they will not flee to the Eastern Tongyuan Empire. ”

Nagarjuna tilted his head, his big silver eyes full of confusion.

"I've heard that it seems that the ancestors of our village escaped from the Tongyuan Empire back then, maybe they committed some crime. Lin Yuqing frowned, "Anyway, everyone doesn't like it there." ”

For a fallen spirit, Nagarjuna doesn't know about these countries, ancestors, or whatever, and doesn't care about it.

When Lin Yuqing began to guess which direction the villagers would flee to, Nagarjuna finally couldn't help but open his mouth and yawn with white teeth, despite his efforts to control himself.

Lin Yuqing turned his head, just in time to see a teardrop oozing from the corner of his eye - Nagarjuna noticed his gaze, and immediately froze, and then straightened up, his expression became serious, as if he wanted to cover up the indecency just now.

"Last night I was not lightly injured and exhausted all my Kundalini," it cooed like a dove of justification, "I am not only tired but also very weak, and I have to go back to your body and recuperate for a while." ”

"You go to sleep," Lin Yuqing wanted to reach out and touch its forehead, but he had learned a lesson because of this, and his hand was halfway up and put it down again. "I've already thought about it, I want to go to Jiyingling to inquire about the news. When I get there, no matter what method I use, I will definitely find you spirit stones to eat. ”

"Spirit Stone?" Nagarjuna, who had only been in this world for a month, tilted his head again in confusion.

"Well, I've heard that all the nobles who have fallen spirits will prepare spirit stones for them, and the price of one piece can be worth dozens of sheep - this can't be bought! I once heard a story about a nobleman who was not doing his job properly and was down-and-out, and wanted to ask the Earl for a fief, but he couldn't go empty-handed, so he planned to give a batch of spirit stones as a gift. He had worked hard to save up money for a long time, but he still couldn't afford to buy so many spirit stones, but in the end, he used the money to buy a large piece of land!" Lin Yuqing laughed heartily, as if he had forgotten all his troubles for a while, but his voice suddenly stopped smiling.

After walking rustling in the woods for a while, he suddenly spoke up again: "When I was studying in the town before, I had a friend from a neighboring village, who was obviously not old enough, and was recruited into the spirit stone mine. Later, he heard that the mine had collapsed and he was also dead. The villagers made a fuss for a while, and now the mine is still recruiting people. ”

In fact, Nagarjuna didn't listen to anything. Little by little, it didn't take until he finished speaking that a spirit woke up.

"Oh, good. I'm going to rest," the sleepy Falling Spirit, still not forgetting to emphasize on his shoulder, "You must be careful along the way, and you can't play a child's temper anymore." ”

Lin Yuqing simply withdrew it back into his body.

"Of course I'll be careful. He muttered.

Although he was said to be childish, he felt that he was much more mature than Dolan, his father, and Nagarjuna, and their thoughts were like being trapped in a box, and it was not his fault that they couldn't get out.

- Just thinking of Dolan, Lin Yuqing couldn't help but let out a long breath. The humid air of the morning after the rain stuck to the skin heavily, and no matter how heavy the breath was, the chest was still stuffy.

In the wet mountain grass, every foot is splashed with muddy water. The clothes that had been soaked through last night are now half-dry and half-wet, sticky and uncomfortable. After reaching noon with the growing sun, Lin Yuqing finally couldn't stand it anymore, and sat on the ground with a bang, leaning against a tree, and closed his eyes in a daze.

As if waking up from a dream, he somehow remembered a small incident that happened one afternoon two years ago.

At that time, Dolan, who had just escaped her childlike appearance, had already faintly revealed the hints of her adult appearance: as a girl, her nose bridge was straight and high, and her jawline was hard and neat, perhaps not enough to "look like a little girl". It's just that when she pursed the corners of her mouth and smiled, she was unexpectedly good-Lin Yuqing always felt that she looked another kind of softness.

That afternoon, the only two children in the village who were the same age ran out of the village.

He forgot if the sun was good that day and what the weather was like. But he remembered that a small pebble had rolled into his boot and had made him all the way, and when Dolan insisted that he had heard something and went around a mound to look for it, Lin Yuqing quickly sat down on the ground, took off his shoes and shook them vigorously a few times, but he was still slumbered when he put them on again.

Tossed around a few times, and when he finally got the stuck stone, Doran came out of the other side of the mound—she didn't come out empty-handed.

At first, Lin Yuqing thought she had found someone's lost sheep. But the voice was too thin and too immature, like a thread that would break at any moment, and when he turned his eyes, he found that Dolan was holding a little brown-red creature in his arms, and hurried up to it, and when he saw it clearly, his mouth opened wide.

It was a cub of a red lynx.

"Mom has been dead for a long time," Dolan said this with a wipe of her face, only to tell Lin Yuqing that she still had a little black dirt on her hands. She looked down at the cub with a gentle expression: "I have no milk to drink for a few days after I was born, and I am so hungry that I actually started to scream." ”

The red lynx never barks, even when it is wounded. They also walk out of the moonless mountains and forests like ghosts in the night, silently bite cattle and sheep, and are reserved to eat only the freshest internal organs.

"What then? Bring it back to the village, and you'll be killed. Lin Yuqing carefully touched the cub, and its cry suddenly became louder.

The two fourteen-year-olds were suddenly full of gloom. They knew that it was not good for the red lynx to eat domestic animals, but the little creature in front of them, screaming and trembling, seemed to be unable to decide whether it should live simply by whether it was good or bad. But they had no milk or meat, so they could neither keep it here nor take it back to the village.

"I secretly hid it in my clothes, you keep watch for me, and we will run back to my house in one go," Lin Yuqing thought for a while and said, "Even if my father finds out, he will never kill it." ”

He is confident in this. In fact, he has always been a little suspicious, maybe it was because he was unwilling to kill chickens and cattle that his father became the village chief, because the village chief had another ration, and it was okay not to rely on livestock to supplement it.

It's just that this idea was proposed, and Dolan just nodded, but Lin Yuqing himself vetoed it: "No, it's not right." Father won't kill it, but he won't agree to let us keep it, maybe throwing a bite of meat out will still kill it. ”

The two were silent for a while, and Dolan suddenly whispered, "Then let's find a way to let the village chief keep it." ”

Lin Yuqing was stunned for a moment, not understanding what she meant.

Dolan had been holding the lynx in her arms, and at this time she gently smoothed its fur with her fingers, and although she had moved very lightly, the little lynx's thin little body was pushed and swayed. But as if it was longing for **** touch, it immediately raised its head, screaming, and stepped on her arm with its front paws, as if it would be able to eat milk in this way. Dolan looked at it for a moment, and said in a low voice, "I'm not afraid."

Immediately afterwards, the little lynx's piercing and terrible cry suddenly woke Lin Yuqing from his memory, and his heart was still pounding.

He looked around, and the mountains and forests were still quiet and humid with the sun. He didn't know if he had just fallen asleep or if he was just stuck in his memories. But then things came up uncontrollably like a tidal wave.

If you were an adult, there might be a better way, but the two of them were really at a loss at the time. After Dolan broke the leg bone of the little lynx, she asked Lin Yuqing to hold it and run all the way home according to his method, and that night, she showed the dying little thing to her father.

Just as Lin Yuqing thought, his father watched it crawl with a broken leg, and he didn't mention the word "throw out" at all.

The little lynx lived in his house for more than two months, and Dolan often put her goat's milk in a bucket and gave it to Lin Yuqing. When the wound was healed, it was released back into the back mountain when the minions were first profitable, and the villagers never found it, because the red lynx never made a sound.

Lin Yuqing had heard many stories about animals that he could still recognize after many years, and although the little lynx never attacked their village, it never appeared in front of his eyes again, and was never seen again.

I don't know if it's because I think of my father, I think of Dolan, or I think of the red lynx, Lin Yuqing turned over and sat up, and he didn't feel sleepy. He thought about his thoughts for a while, and when he saw that the sun was lighter, he set off again in the direction of Jiyingling.

In his sixteen years, Lin Yuqing was only taken to Jiyingling once by his father when he was still young.

He hadn't been to the Union capital, but he thought it would be similar to it in the evening: he had never seen so many people in his life, and he hadn't heard so many strange tones.

Lord Count Mesoko of Jiying Ridge is also the master of all the mountains and plains in the vicinity, and like the successive lords of the Mesoko family who have ruled this area for nearly a thousand years, this old earl is neither good nor bad. When it was time for the annual tax collection, the commoners could hardly remember the lord, and since the tax burden was not heavy, the count was even more forgotten day by day.

The lord didn't take care of things, but Jiyingling flourished.

It's a place of swords and money, prosperity and chaos. Because of its proximity to the border, Jiyingling has become known as the city of freedom - there is a widely circulated saying that in Jiyingling, everyone who walks carries with them a secret, an unfulfilled desire, and an orange.

Lin Yuqing had also heard of this sentence, but he didn't understand it at all, and he didn't bother to think about it. When he was still a mile or two away from Jiyingling, the boy seemed to have smelled its unique aroma of roasted garlic sausage.

The city's most popular snacks are roasted garlic sausages, berry biscuits and hot ale — he hadn't eaten in two days, and his stomach was pounding all the way. Feeling the scattered surplus money in his trouser pocket at some point, Lin Yuqing couldn't wait to spend it.

However, when Lin Yuqing actually approached the city gate, he realized that the city seemed to be a little different from the Jiyingling in his impression.

At this moment stood a group of soldiers at the gate, divided into two columns, with swords at their waists and spears in their hands. They carefully interrogated everyone who wanted to enter the city, but they did not pull up a long line outside the city gate because of this—the crowd outside Jiyingling City was scattered, not as crowded and bustling as they had been in their impressions.

Lin Yuqing paused, watched from a distance for a while, and found that some people were sent back by the soldiers, some were taken away, and some went in smoothly. He watched for a long time, but didn't see anything, so he simply gritted his teeth, bent his neck and followed behind a big man, and when he was finished being interrogated, he followed him step by step.

"Eh, stop!" a soldier spotted him at once, "who is this little flower?"

The big man hurriedly waved his hand and said that he didn't know, and entered the city with a slump of feet. Lin Yuqing was stopped and muttered "your grandfather" in a low voice.

"What did you say?"

"My name is Lin Ye, my lord. ”

The soldier lowered his head, and a pair of round eyes rolled around him. "Where are you from?"

Lin Yuqing swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

Just now, the big man claimed to be a local, and he had just returned from a trip to Fangguo. The woman, who had been dressed in powdery powder and exposed a lot of skin, said that she had come all the way from the north with a small group of Inquisition soldiers, and the soldiers looked at each other and let her in with a grin.

Lin Yuqing knew that he didn't look like a person from Jiyingling, and after two days of running, he probably looked like a little flower. He didn't know what place name he would be sent away, but he knew which place name he would get in.

It depends on whether the soldier believes him or not.

"I'm here from the capital on the night," Lin Yuqing slowed down, and the voices of the knights that night echoed in his mind over and over again. He tried his best to imitate the elegant capital accent of the knights, and said vaguely: "I went out with my parents, I was robbed on the road, I was separated, and I came to Jiyingling to look for someone. ”

Coming from the capital is fake, but the search for people is real. The soldier was stunned for a moment, and looked at his face carefully, as if to gauge how much of his emotions were true, and asked a few more questions, and finally raised his chin: "Go in." ”

The soldier, like Lin Yuqing, knew at first glance that he was a native of the neighborhood, and that he might have been recruited as a private soldier by the Mesoko family, so even if he pretended to have a plausible accent to the capital, he confused the soldier.

Lin Yuqing was like a pardon, and hurried into the city.

A special smell mixed with sweat, spices, horse odor, roasted garlic sausages and new wine suddenly swooped people's faces, making the Jiyingling in memory come alive at once. The last time he came back was also at this time, and he still remembered the crowd of people who came and went and hit him and couldn't stop swaying back and forth-Lin Yuqing looked left and right with a bit of novelty, but couldn't help muttering.

Compared with his impression, today's Jiyingling seems to be a little deserted.

The bluestone road for the carriage and horses was empty, except for the sound of horses' hooves sounding in the distance, and he looked at it for a long time, and only one donkey cart passed. Seeing that the cars and horses were sparse, the pedestrians did not take the sidewalk on both sides of the sand road, and went on the bluestone road with a big smile.

The Oriental who liked to wear long robes, the entertainers who wandered the city, the drunkard who always showed a belly, the samurai with long pigtails, and the man who carried a large wooden mechanism on his back and was shy at the sight of his pocket—these interesting characters in memory were all rare at this time, and I couldn't see a single one for a while. Pedestrians keep their heads down, often in a hurry, their faces expressionless, and the sound of playing and singing in the air in the distance is fluttering and leisurely, and it is a little lonely.

Lin Yuqing's curiosity was disappointed, and he turned his neck to look around, and his heart began to feel a little bottomless. Pinching the money in his trouser pocket, he approached a wall and shouted into the open wooden window on the wall, "Eh, is there anyone?"

The wooden window is large and has a countertop inside. When you look at it, you will see that behind the countertop is a tavern with a wooden table with stools, but now there is no one, and it is emptier than the street. There is also a price sign hanging on the window, which can be used by customers who buy and take away to order drinks and food. Hearing someone call, a sturdy girl with freckles walked out of nowhere, and asked Lin Yuqing slowly, "What to buy?"

Her lips were very thin, the corners of her mouth drooped downward, and she seemed to be very untalkative.

The boy squinted, and under the increasingly impatient gaze of the sturdy girl, he studied the price tag again.

"Roast garlic sausage," he said, pressing a few copper coins on the wooden windowsill, "this is all my money." Can you give me a cookie?"

The sturdy girl counted the money one by one, but did not answer.

"A glass of mulled ale would be fine. Lin Yuqing leaned closer and said.

"Hah!" the girl finally let out a snort, and turned to leave with the copper coin in her hand.

"Wait," the young man hurriedly grabbed the windowsill and poked his head in, "don't send wine, at least let me inquire about something, right?"

The sturdy girl hesitated for a moment, but finally turned her head: "What's the matter?"

"Why is it so deserted in Jiying Ridge?" Lin Yuqing hurriedly asked, "When I came back, it wasn't like this. ”

"Miss Earl's family is going to pray for blessings," said the sturdy girl, who thought for a while, before she said slowly, "so no one will be allowed to pass near the main road today." ”

As soon as Lin Yuqing heard this, she knew that she would be wrong about what she meant. A little girl, let alone praying for blessings, even if she goes to jump into the river, it will not make Jiyingling deserted and martial law. Seeing that the sturdy girl was leaving, he couldn't cry or laugh, and was about to stop her, when suddenly two wooden doors on the opposite side were divided, and a high voice filled the tavern: "Is there anyone?"

His gaze swept over the visitor, and Lin Yuqing immediately shrank his head before he turned his head and hid next to the wooden window.

Although he was a strange soldier he had never met, the emblem on his shoulder was familiar—embroidered with an ear of wheat and a shield on a snow-white background, which was the coat of arms of the Holy See.

"Your Excellency. He heard the stout girl scream—still slowly.

"Put this in your tavern," the high-voiced soldier said, followed by the sound of a rattling of paper. "A new circular has just been issued, that whoever discovers the deeds of these men shall go to the Earl's Court to receive their reward...... Just post it there, so that everyone who drinks can see it. ”

The sturdy girl let out an "oh" and asked, "Who are they?"

"There's a boy of fifteen or sixteen, and some villagers from Ellington to the east. After the soldier finished explaining, he suddenly became impatient: "-You will know if you look at it!"

"It doesn't look like a child. The stout girl muttered under her breath.

What the soldier said next, Lin Yuqing didn't hear clearly. He crawled under the wooden window, and did not dare to go on the main road, but simply plunged into a small dark alley.

He never expected that the Holy See jury would be so persistent with him. Not only him, but even the people in the village were targeted. It's funny, what emperor, pope, maybe it's too far away, but it doesn't make Lin Yuqing afraid. But at the thought that even the Earl's Court had issued a notice, the young man panicked.

"Phew, the knight chief is deflated, and he wants to arrest me!" he scolded, cheering himself up. Looking left and right, the boy ran down the alley in all directions, to the depths where there were fewer and fewer people.

By the time Lin Yuqing finally stopped, he hadn't seen anyone for a long time.

He was standing in a pathway, and the light of the sky was falling down the high blue-gray wall, illuminating the dust floating in the air. Occasionally, I don't know who coughed, and it floated far away in the air, making it seem that the neighborhood was quiet.

When the soldier was not in sight, he felt that he should not have run - the roasted garlic sausage had not yet been reached. At the thought of roasting sausages, his stomach suddenly squeaked unwillingly. Remorseful, he approached a half-hidden window.

Is there anything to eat inside?

Lin Yuqing thought about it, was dizzy by the hunger in his belly, and decided to be a gentleman on the beam. He was quick-moving, and even though the window was open high above his head, he still told him to step on the rocks and drag the creeper up with him. Grabbing the windowsill, the boy rolled over and fell to the ground with a thud.

"Look around!" shouted at him, startling him, forgetting the pain, and quickly climbed under a nearby chair. The floor is paved with smooth gray masonry, and the room is so spacious that it doesn't look like an ordinary home.

"Lock the door and don't let the messy people in. The person screamed again just now, and finally made Lin Yuqing understand that it wasn't for him-

"You're just messy people, okay. A girl's clear voice echoed in the huge empty room, "When I pray, you two go out!"

The end of this article?

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Author: All the mustaches and tails

Creators: @斯库里, Wang Jianxiong, @张高兴儿, @赵皓阳-Moonfans

Official Weibo: @坠灵公约

Producer: @不空文化

Producer: @铜雀叔叔

Official fan Weibo: @坠灵公约不用催

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