The border of the Xia Kingdom, the northwest desert.

This is a vast desert, where the sun is golden during the day, but the temperature plummets at night, and the cold is biting.

The desert is like an invisible monster, devouring all life. For tens or even hundreds of miles, it is difficult to see any living creatures. The years seem to stop here, and the cycle repeats, and there is not much difference between a year and a day.

Shacun is in the middle of the desert, perhaps the poorest and most miserable place in the Xia Kingdom. The village could not grow crops, so the only way to do this was to fill the royal vehicles with sand and wait for the government to send someone to transport them away, in exchange for a little dry food, to maintain the basic life of more than 300 people.

In fact, the imperial court of Xia Kingdom does not need sand, and the reason why the people are mobilized is nothing more than to prevent the people of Shacun from starving to death. As soon as the sand leaves the sand village, it will be dumped on the way and returned to the boundless desert.

Of course, such a meaningless move is not understood by the ordinary people of Xia Kingdom. The Xia country is very large, the territory is vast, the population is hundreds of millions, the prosperous Jiangnan is like a dream, and the majestic northern capital is bustling, how can anyone understand these trivial things.

On this day, it actually rained in Shacun. Here, there may not be a single rain a year, and it is often dry, like God stingily shedding a few tears.

But this rain is very different, after the lightning and thunder, the raindrops the size of beans pour down, as if to vent thousands of years of dissatisfaction. The people of Shacun hid in their homes, excited and apprehensive.

It rained for a whole day and night, and the next day, everyone in Shacun was awakened by the cry of a baby.

In the very center of the sand village, I don't know how a swaddling baby appeared, apparently the baby inside was crying. This sound is no less shocking than yesterday's thunder. Many years later, when the child's deeds were reported back to Shacun, the old people in the village would twist their beards and say with a smile: "I saw that he was extraordinary!" ”

At that time, the people of the village looked at each other, they did not know who this baby was, where did it come from, and what to do? At this moment, a trembling grandmother walked out, carefully holding the swaddling clothes, and entered the small stone house in the north of the village under the surprised eyes of the villagers.

The people in the village were surprised not by Grandma's actions, but by the fact that they didn't know Grandma at all, and even the stone house she went into didn't exist before the rainstorm. In other words, Shacun suddenly has an extra grandmother and an extra baby.

That's not all, on the same day, a new stone house was added at the gates of the four directions of the village, and four old men also appeared at the same time.

For a long time, this group of abnormal people naturally attracted the attention of the villagers. But the people of Shacun are simple and kind, they just heard that Grandma's surname is Du, and as for the four old men, they don't talk to others, so they call them East Old Man, South Old Man, West Old Man, and North Old Man.

The village chief delivered them food on time every month, and they settled down in Shacun with peace of mind.

Naturally, this baby also stayed in Shacun, it was a baby boy, except that he was black and strong, he looked no different. The child came to Shacun after the rain, and the villagers called him Yuwa, but Du Grandma said lovingly: "This baby, he has his own name, and his mother named him Jun'an."

As time goes by, Junan is getting more and more different. The children in the village are hungry because of malnutrition, but Jun'an has to be strong. Even compared with his peers who served in the rich places of Xia Kingdom, he was not inferior.

Jun An is also quite bold and naughty, making chickens and dogs jump in the sand village all day long, and even take a group of children to play in the desert outside the village.

In fact, there is really nothing fun about the desert, in addition to the monotony, there are sandstorms that can happen at any time, and if you go wrong, you may suffer from heat stroke and dehydration, and you may never go back if you lose your way. Prior to this, almost no children were allowed to go out, even adults, and they were just picking sand near the village.

However, the appearance of Junan changed all that. When he was just five years old, Jun An shouted Xiaosha and Erdan, who were the same age, to go out for a walk. It is said that when he had just passed through the north gate, the old man from the north came out to take a look, and was stunned for a while, but did not make a sound, and slowly stomped back into the house. That time, Jun An took a few children to play in the north of the village until dark, and secretly returned to the village.

After these things happened a few times, the people in the village were not surprised. How far can a small child go? Gradually, they put their minds at ease. Jun An has always been brought up by Grandma Du, and this mother-in-law doesn't like to talk much, only in the face of Jun An is chatter, but she didn't prohibit Jun An from going out, and others can't say anything.

Only the village chief was still very worried: "What should these children do when they go out and encounter rattlesnakes?" ”

Some people in the villagers disagreed: "Village chief, you are too worried, you have encountered rattlesnakes near our sand village over the years?" It's long gone! ”

The village chief's eyes widened: "If it's not as dangerous as a rattlesnake, what do you know!" ”

The face of the scolded villager changed slightly, and it took a while to calm down: "Village chief, what you said!" That thing may have long since left. ”

It's no secret. Although Shacun is now dilapidated, it has extraordinary significance in the Xia Kingdom. The royal family of the Xia Kingdom originated here, and the leaders of the Xia Kingdom rose up here, and then they seized the entire Xia Kingdom.

It's just that after the nobles of the Xia Kingdom moved into the capital, this ancestral land gradually became barren.

In the final analysis, the royal family of Xia is surnamed Xia, and the current Shacun people have no blood relationship with them, and they are all descendants of the soldiers and tomb guards who stayed behind to fight the border back then. In the more than 10,000 years since the establishment of the Xia Kingdom, the people of Shacun have gradually been forgotten, and only when they exchange a cart of yellow sand for food, will some people vaguely remember the glory of this land.

The people of Xia don't remember this place, but there are other creatures who do. Next to the sand village, there used to be rattlesnakes. They are two meters long and swing their tail rings when they meet people, which is terrifying. The most terrifying thing is that they will entangle the person they see until the end, and they will never die.

After the desertion of the sand village, the people in the village talked about rattlesnakes.

However, such a powerful rattlesnake was cleaned up by a monster with six legs and four wings overnight.

The villagers were terrified and passed the news to the government. The Imperial City sent the famous Archmage Kuanyun, and that was more than a month later.

Kuanyun just probed for qi, and told the villagers that the creature that killed the rattlesnake was called the fat nephew, which was the six-legged and four-winged snake, which was a strange snake, and where it appeared, there was a great drought. It's just that since the fat nephew hasn't hurt anyone for so long, as long as he doesn't provoke it, there should be no problem.

The people of Shacun don't understand this, they only know that they are safe for the time being, they only know that they can't just walk around in the desert, let alone take the reckless role to attract the fat nephew. However, the time to come was provoked by Jun An, who was only fourteen years old that year.