In the thick aroma of butter tea, Daddy begins his story.

"That night, I stayed alone in a tent and spent a difficult night. As soon as it was dawn the next day, I packed up my tent and set up two wagons and went out of the mountain. But I didn't go back to the village, because I didn't know how to explain it to my companion's family, so I stayed for three days halfway down the mountain. Three days later, in the evening, the droughts came out of the mountains to look for me.

"When I saw them, they were carrying a man on a stretcher.

"Ran Xiang came up to me with his head bowed and said in a slow tone, 'It's a pity that your companions have been invaded by the dead for too long, and when we arrived at the base camp, six of them had already been killed by the demons, and we had to destroy them on the spot to prevent them from developing into demon fighters. Only one was cured by us. In order to avoid unnecessary trouble, we erased his memories for the past few days, and he is still in a coma. You can let him rest here for the night and wake up tomorrow morning. ’

"I walked up and saw that it was He Laosan.

"The loss of my companion was a huge blow to me, and eight people went into the mountain alive, and now only me and this half-dead sleeper remained. My tears flowed down involuntarily, and it was like something invisible in my throat that was clogging my breath, and as I tried to exhale the invisible, I let out a wail.

"I squatted on the ground and cried for a long time, and I couldn't calm down for a long time. When I think about this experience, everything is so unbelievable, it doesn't seem like it should be in the real world. I fantasized that it was just a dream, but my friends who glowed blue in front of me tore my fantasies to shreds. They stood so vividly in front of me that I couldn't deny it.

"After standing silently watching me cry for a long time, Ran Cho Tho said, 'We are sad and there is nothing we can do. Until we fully identify and eliminate the mysterious forces of evil, such tragedies may continue to play out. We want you to join us in confronting this human threat. ’

"I was stunned and asked, 'What can I do for you?'

"Ran Tho said: 'You have done a lot for us in ten years, and our whole clan is full of gratitude to you. When we face the catastrophe together, we will have the opportunity to fight side by side. I just hope that when you are faced with a choice, you will remember what I said today. ’

"I didn't understand what he was saying.

"Ran Xiang Tho looked at me with a blank expression, smiled and said, 'Don't think too much about it first, everything in the world is predetermined. Everything you don't understand now, you will eventually understand. ’”

"Isn't that what you tell me often?" I interjected.

"Yes, that's what he said, and he made me understand the true meaning of it. This is a simple sentence, but it requires a person to use all the joys and sorrows, and even life to interpret it.

"Ran Xiang Tho finally said: 'I know that people within a radius of hundreds of miles are pointing to this mountain forest to live, and within half a month, we will dispatch the whole clan to clean up the bones exposed to the wild on the mountain, and at the same time, we will continue to track down and treat the intruders of the dead. For the mountain walkers, there is no need to worry about entering the mountain in the future, as before. What you see in the mountains, including our presence, must not be publicized outwardly. ’

"After the drought man left, I set He Laosan in place, set up a fire to boil hot water, and wiped his hands and face for him. Stayed by his side all night.

Early the next morning, He Laosan woke up.

"When he awoke, he asked me, 'Why are we here?' I remember that you stayed in the camp in the valley to look after the tents, and we went up to the pine ridge to cut the rafters......,' and he stopped halfway through to grab his hair, hesitated for a moment, and said, 'I only remember that we arrived on the ridge before dawn and sat down on the dead pine tree that had fallen down the previous year and had been stoned to death, and I don't remember what happened next.' What about the others?'

The dead pine he was talking about was the oldest pine tree on the ridge, with a trunk as thick as three people hugging each other. In the twenty-fifth year of the Republic of China, that is, four years forward at that time, the Red Army passed through the snow-capped mountains and encountered an interception by the warlord Commander Lu. Since then, the old pine has died.

"In the winter of the previous year, a dozen people from the neighboring village were cutting rafters there, and it happened to be a heavy snowy day, and the snow overwhelmed the dead pine trees with only half of the trunks, killing seven or eight people. At that time, after the tree fell, some were stoned to death on the spot, and some were injured, and because of the night, no one cleaned up the corpses. Three days later, when the injured man went out of the mountain to find someone, he could not find the body, and the family only grabbed a handful of soil from the edge of the dead pine and went back to bury it.

"When I heard him say that they were resting on the old dead pines that had fallen down, everything understood. The seven or eight corpses did not disappear at all, but were smashed down by the old withered pine and pressed into the soil. This time, the seven of them sat in the trunk of the tree, and they were alarmed by the corpses of the demons, and they became the prey of the corpses of the demon spirits.

"Of course, I couldn't tell He Laosan about these things, so I made up a lie: 'That morning, not long after you went up the ridge, I heard shouts on the ridge. I quickly put on my clothes and ran up, and when I saw that the ground was full of blood, the others were gone, and you were the only one lying on the ground, having passed out. I stood on the ridge and saw something moving in the bushes to the west, and then I heard seven or eight wolf howls. Everyone else was taken away by wolves. I managed to drag you down the ridge and put you on the wagon. Then he dismantled the tent and took you out of the mountain. Seeing that you have been in a coma, I didn't go back to the village directly, and took care of you here, and today you finally woke up. We can go home. ’

"He scratched his head again and said, 'There are so many of us, it stands to reason that the wolves will not attack.' Alas, it may be a winter wolf, unable to find food, very hungry. As the saying goes, a dog jumps over the wall in a hurry, and it is normal for a wolf to hurt people in a hurry, but pity a few of them who died in the wolf's mouth. He began to cry as he spoke.

"We went back to the farm that day. No one suspected that several other people were taken away by wolves, because the accident encountered by the mountain walker on the mountain, which everyone wanted to get, and they were also mentally prepared. In that difficult and difficult era, in order to survive at the most basic level, people knew that there was great danger in engaging in some trades, but they had to face it calmly. ”

Listening to my father talk about the person who survived in the end turned out to be He Laosan, I felt extremely different, and I couldn't be excited, I was about to ask about He Laosan today, but after thinking about it, didn't I already ask just now, and the answer I got was that sentence that was not painful or itchy, and it was not clear. I had to do it.

"I'm going down the mountain, and I'm not going to live on the mountain tonight. "When the fiery red sunset on the western mountains slowly faded, leaving only a dark purple halo that gradually sank into the mountains, the old father got up and said.

"I'm going to see He Laosan, an old man for so many years, just died, I'm really a little reluctant. Before I could ask him, he said again.

The kerosene lamp was not lit tonight, and it was like a father's mourning for his old friend.