Ruoshan sighed slightly, and he patiently explained in a different way: "I will also go out, what if this kind of thing happens when I am not there? ”

The pothos seemed to understand, nodded and said, "Oh, yes, the clansmen should all practice how to hunt." Then he clenched his little fist and said, "When I grow up, I must be better than Bo Zhuang and Zhong Zhuang, and I can also beat that bad bird!"

Ruoshan nodded and smiled: "Very good, ambitious!"

And the tiger baby and Pan Gu were eating happily in the hut next to them, although they heard the mountain master and the pothos talking, but they didn't pay attention to what the pothos said. After dark, the clansmen went back to sleep in the house, but the tiger baby ran to the Ruoshan house and was surprised to find that the mountain master was fiddling with something he had never seen before.

The mountain master took out a pottery dish that usually holds water, but the pottery dish was filled with oil squeezed from hemp seeds, and then half of a grass stem was immersed in the oil, and the other half was stretched out of the edge of the dish. The internal fibers of this grass stem are very dense and soft, and the water absorption is very good, which can absorb all the hemp oil in it. Then the mountain lord took out the flint and lit the fire with hemp silk and set the grass stalks on fire.

The grass stalk didn't burn quickly, a flame rose from the top, and the dim light faintly illuminated the entire stone house. The tiger baby was dumbfounded, and asked in surprise, "Master Shan, what is this?"

The mountain master replied, "This is a lamp, a lamp lit with hemp oil!"

This is the first time that the tiger baby knows that there is such a thing as a "lamp" in the world, and it is so magical. The tiger baby knows what fire is, the fire can emit light and heat in the dark, people can sing and dance around it or keep warm, but this is completely different from the feeling of "lamp", the lamp is the light that breaks through the darkness.

He sincerely admired: "Master Shan, you are amazing!"

The patriarch of Ruoshan smiled bitterly: "It's not that I'm amazing, but I've seen a lamp outside the mountain." It's a shame that someone else is truly amazing, but I don't know who it is. ”

The modesty of the mountain master made Huwa feel that he was powerful and almost omniscient. The tiger baby looked at the magical lamp and said, "Saucers, grass stalks, and hemp seed oil, all of them are available in the village, and I have seen them, but I can't imagine that they can be turned into lamps!"

Wakayama nodded, as if to say to himself, "There was no lamp in the world, until someone created it, and then there was something called a lamp." But no matter what a lamp is, use a saucer, a grass stalk, and hemp seeds like that, and it will appear, and then you can give it a name, like a lamp.

In other words, before there was no lamp in the world, in fact, the lamp already existed, and it only depends on whether people know about it, and whether they can find it and light it. In this way, everything in this world actually had a reason for its existence before it appeared, otherwise they would not have appeared. The subtlety of all things, whether we know the Tao or not, or how much we know the Tao, it is always there. ”

These words are obviously too profound for the tiger baby, today his young heart has been shocked too much, the mountain master first fixed the huge strange bird in the early morning, and after dark, he actually lit a lamp! In the eyes of the tiger baby, the mountain master is already a god-like existence.

Because of this, although he couldn't understand what Shan Ye was saying, he deeply imprinted every word that Shan Ye had just said into his mind. It's not something a child wants to remember, it's just an almost indelible impression of nature, like the light he saw for the first time. Then the tiger baby asked the simplest question: "Why did you light the lamp tonight?"

Shan Ye looked at the light and said thoughtfully: "Because I am thinking, how can we know the mystery of everything and understand what we have not known before? This is like lighting a light in the dark." Speaking of this, he seemed to come back to his senses, realized that he was talking to a child like Huwa, and said with a smile: "It's dark, what's the matter with you coming to me?"

Only then did Huwa remember the serious matter: "Pan Gu can't sleep, he always hums there, maybe the wound is very painful." Is there anything you can do to keep it from hurting?" "Something like this should usually go to Granny Shui, but Granny Shui has already rested, and Yama Ye is next to it, and there is still movement in the house.

Ruoshan got up and grabbed something from a clay pot in the corner of the house, handed it to Huwa, and said, "Let Pan Gu eat these, and it will be able to fall asleep." ”

The tiger baby opened a pair of small hands and held it carefully, glanced at it under the light, and recognized that this was the shelled hemp seed kernel, and the smell was already ripe. The people usually eat hemp seeds directly, which taste very fragrant, and only remove the shell when it is necessary to extract oil specially. Eating too much hemp oil may cause dizziness, but the hemp seeds that the clan usually eats every time they eat it will not cause dizziness.

Huwa asked curiously: "Master Shan, in addition to squeezing oil and lighting lamps, can hemp seeds relieve pain in wounds?"

Shan Ye explained: "It's okay to eat a little bit of this kind of thing every time, but if you eat too much, people will get dizzy." As for pain relief, it's because I've treated it specifically, and it's not like ordinary hemp seeds can be used like this. Seeing that the tiger baby was still standing there with hemp seeds, he asked again, "Do you have anything else?"

The tiger baby got the things and didn't leave, of course, there was something, he looked up with a little face, with a look full of admiration, and asked abruptly: "Why can that strange bird catch things in the air, but the red-billed falcon and Lin Xiao can't, is it because the strange bird is very big?"

Ruoshan was stunned, and then replied: "That's not it, it's only because it has a very special ability." ”

Tiger Baby: "Is it different from Lin Xiao and Red-billed Falcon? Is this ability to catch things in the air? Do such strange birds have this ability?"

Ruoshan: "It's not like this, that kind of bird is called the White Feather Gu Eagle, but not all White Feather Gu Sculptures have this ability, it's very rare." There may be some forest owls or red-billed falcons that have this ability, but they are also very rare. ”

This kind of thing is difficult to explain to the tiger baby, even if it is not clear to an adult, but the tiger baby nodded her little head and replied very seriously: "Oh, I understand!"

Wakayama asked rhetorically, "What do you understand?"

Huwa: "I originally wanted to ask—for what patriarch can you fix that strange bird, but others can't? It turns out that the patriarch also has special skills, but the other people in the village can't!

Ruoshan was stunned again, nodded and said, "That's right." ”

Tiger Baby: "But how can you have that kind of ability, do you have to be the patriarch?"

Ruoshan hurriedly shook his head again and said, "No, I learned and refined it first, and then I became the patriarch." ”

Huwa: "Why can you learn such a skill, but the others in the village can't?

Ruoshan thought for a moment before replying: "This is not an ability that ordinary people are born with, and not everyone can learn it, it also requires talent and luck. It's like lighting a lamp, and you see what you can't see in the dark. ”

Huwa: "Oh, I see, you have to be able to light a lamp to learn this skill. ”

Ruoshan laughed and said: "It's not that you can learn it by lighting a lamp, it's just a metaphor, you know? For example, if we say that a stone looks like an egg, it's called a metaphor, but a stone is not an egg." ...... Forget it, you're still too young, you'll understand when you grow up! Pan Gu is humming again, go back quickly. ”

In the eyes of the clansmen, the patriarch Shanye, who knew almost everything, was almost overwhelmed by the repeated questioning of the tiger baby at this moment, and hurriedly sent the child back. After the tiger baby left, Ruoshan still sat at the stone table and quietly looked at the little light, and reached out and flicked the grass stalk that was used as a wick out.

A slender figure walked in, barely making a sound, it was Granny Shui. She sat down across from Wakayama and asked softly, "Why did you light the lamp tonight?"

Ruoshan seemed to have known that she would come, and he didn't look a little surprised, and his eyes fell on her face from the light, and he replied softly, "Because I can see your appearance clearly under the light." ”

At this moment, the tiger baby had already fed Pan Gu and eaten those hemp seeds, Pan Gu no longer hummed, and soon fell asleep dizzy. And Huwa thought about what the mountain master said just now, he seemed to understand a little bit of what a metaphor was, but other things seemed to be more confused. He didn't have any extra thoughts, just thinking about it, he felt even more dizzy than Pan Gu, and soon fell asleep.

Ruoshan and Ruoshui spoke very little, and the tiger baby didn't hear it, and he didn't know that Lu Daoshan Ye actually lit the lamp tonight to wait for Granny Shui. Ruoshui asked Ruoshan the same question as Huwa, but Ruoshan gave a completely different answer. If the tiger baby hears it, she may feel even more confused, what does Granny Shui look like, doesn't the mountain master know, and he has to deliberately light the lamp to see?

Even if the mountain master wanted to see it, why should he cost oil to light the lamp at night? How clearly he could see it in the daytime! Such a perplexity might naturally be understood when he grew up, but the words that the mountain master replied to him would not have an answer in the life of countless clansmen for generations in this wilderness. If you don't understand, you don't understand, there are endless unknown mysteries in this world.

In the light, Ruoshan said again: "The tiger baby came just now and asked a lot of questions, which is exactly what I once thought." ”

Ruoshui: "I heard it too, this kid is too young to understand him." ”

Ruoshan said: "Even if he is already an adult, can we really explain it? You and I were fortunate enough to enter the initial realm, and we received the guidance of the mountain god, and we have cultivated all the way to this day, and we know what is going on with the magic power of the Dao and how to use it. But can we explain to our people what it is, and why we can cultivate it?

It's been a long time since I've thought about these questions for years. But when I lit the lights tonight, I thought again, there has been such a mystery in the world for a long time, and it depends on whether people can find it, and how much can they discover? After all, we know too little about the Tao—— I asked the mountain god back then, and the mountain god also replied in the same way. ”

As he spoke, he turned his head to look out of the house, the night was boundless in the wilderness, and the light he lit could only faintly illuminate the contents of this stone house.