Chapter 30: The Black Felt Boy

Los Angeles is located in the southeast of Great Xia, so the four seasons here are not distinct. The same is almost true for the entire Yinxun Prefecture, even in winter, there will be no snow unless it catches up with the abnormal solar terms of the year. The only thing that makes the locals aware of the arrival of winter seems to be that the nights are colder than usual, and ordinary people have to wear more clothes when they travel at night. Otherwise, the dew at night is heavy, and ordinary people who have not cultivated martial arts will be hurt by the dampness of the night in the long run. In addition, even the smell of the New Year gradually thickens after entering the wax moon, which will also remind the locals that it is the winter season. In fact, the vast majority of people in the south have never left their hometowns in their lives, and they have never been to other states in Daxia in their lives, and it is difficult for them to imagine that in Zhongyao Prefecture and the places north of it, there will be goose feathers and heavy snow in winter, and the field of vision is full of snowy winter. For northerners, a snowy winter is the real winter, and for southerners, a slightly cold and wet weather is winter.

Yun Xuelan has been away from home for three months. Today happens to be Laba. The boy celebrated his sixteenth birthday seven days ago. On the first day of the lunar month, the boy settled in a town called Feizixiao, the closest to Yangu Village. The town is under the jurisdiction of Nanling County, and Feizixiao is not the original name of this town, but was given this name by the emperor of the previous dynasty because of the production of a kind of lychee. Legend has it that a lord of Zhongxing in the previous dynasty, in his twilight years, saw his wife brought to the banquet by a prince at a palace banquet. The emperor fell in love with the woman at first sight, and after returning to the harem, he suddenly found that the six palaces were colorless. The emperor couldn't sleep at night. One of the emperor's close ministers knew about the Sacred Heart, so he asked the emperor to stab the prince to death, so as to include the beautiful woman in the harem. The emperor concocted the same method, and finally got the company of the beauty. The emperor was very kind to this woman, and soon changed her title to a noble concubine. This woman is a good eater, especially fond of the fruits produced in the Nanling generation. Therefore, the fruit is not easy to preserve, and it changes color and flavor in one day after being picked and removed from the branches, so it is called lychee. The emperor saw that his favorite concubine had been frowning for many days, and asked the reason why he missed the lychee in his hometown. So the emperor issued an edict that those who could offer fresh lychees would be rewarded with a city. At that time, Nanling County was too guarded and came up with a plan, since it was not easy to preserve the lychee after leaving the tree, it was better to transplant the lychee tree directly to the palace. So he spent a lot of men and horses, and hired many warriors at a high price to escort a hundred lychee trees to the imperial capital. But after a bumpy ride, only 437 fruits remained. Despite this, the beauty finally showed a long-lost smile after eating fresh lychees. The emperor was happy, rewarded a city as a private land to the Taishou, and gave the local lychee as the concubine smile, and the town of origin was also given a name.

It's winter now, and it's long past the season of picking and eating fresh lychees. But in Feizixiao Town, there are still a few shops selling pickled lychees. Although the sky-high price of lychees in the eyes of ordinary people is just a matter of throwing out some silver in the eyes of the young man, he himself is not very keen on lychees, so he has no intention of being the kind of person who is stupid and has a lot of money.

The boy just ordered a bowl of local fish ball noodles at a restaurant called Zuixianlou. The fish is repeatedly beaten on a wooden board with a sledgehammer for three or four hours until the fish is elastic and tough, and the taste is excellent after being made into fish balls. After the teenager's strong insistence and assurances that the poor taste would not cause trouble, the restaurant guy still let the chef lay poached eggs in the noodles. At first, the shop guy thought that the boy was here to smash the field, and then he would make a big fuss about the bad taste of the poached egg noodles and affect the business of the store. Later, the young man insisted hard, and was even willing to add money, but the guy just thought that this was a foreigner who wanted to learn from those gentlemen to do something eye-catching, but he didn't have so many family backgrounds to let him lose everything, so he could only come here to rely on a poached egg to live the ordinary young master's addiction.

The boy didn't care what the shop guy thought of him. He just wanted to eat a bowl of longevity noodles with poached eggs. In the past, every year on his birthday, his sister would cook him a bowl of noodles, the noodles were clear soup, only a few green onions were sprinkled on top, and a one-sided poached egg was placed on top. His sister told him that his mother had taught him this. When my sister was young, her birthday mother would also make her a bowl. It's just that my sister hasn't eaten for a few years, and my mother can't cook noodles for her anymore. Later, Yun Xuelan grew up and learned to cook, and the first thing he learned was to cook noodles and make single-sided poached eggs. So every year on my sister's birthday, the boy would also go to my sister with a bowl of noodles. Accustomed to eating delicacies from the mountains and seas or valuable ingredients that help cultivate martial arts, this bowl of noodles on the birthday of the sister and brother is the most heartwarming taste for the siblings. The boy was eating noodles, thinking that his sister's birthday was approaching, and his sister would get married next year, and the boy felt a faint sadness in his heart.

The boy who had eaten noodles was already sixteen-year-old Yun Xuelan, he did not choose to spend the night in the town, but bought a horse in the carriage and horse shop, this kind of carriage and horse shop has a business name in many cities in Daxia, all the horses are old horses retired from the army or injured horses, horses need to be filed in the Yamen of Daxia, if the horse is lost or died, there must also be a special record, so the person who buys the horse will get the relevant certificate of the horse, if the horse without the certificate will be regarded as a private theft of military horses, in Daxia at least to be sentenced to exile. Of course, for a royal mansion like the Yun family, which is itself in charge of a garrison, it is normal to raise and use military horses. But Yun Xuelan hid her identity this time, and it was inconvenient to call horses from all over the world casually. The horse he rode on his journey was abandoned shortly after leaving Cloud Hidden City. More importantly, most of the military horses in Great Xia come from the north, and Yunyin Mountain Villa is located in the southeast, and the resources of war horses are extremely scarce, so Yun Xuelan will naturally not easily mobilize such scarce resources.

The boy rode out of town near dusk, and after seven days of travel, he finally arrived at Los Angeles tonight.

The moat of Los Angeles is very wide, and there are many lotus leaves with the size of an umbrella floating on the river. There are also swimming fish and turtles released by the people of the city and Buddhist believers in the river, and the people of the city will also put krathongs in the river during festivals such as Shangyuan or Qixi Festival, and the moat is more like a landscape of Luoshi City.

All the way from east to west, Yun Xuelan came to the east gate of Luoshi City. The drawbridge lies quietly on the river, and the drawbridge is wide enough to drive four troikas side by side. It was still ugly, and there was still more than an hour to leave the city gates. Therefore, there was only one boy riding in the city, and the little beast in the young man's arms that was drunk and sleeping. The little beast has become a drunkard since he tasted the wine once, and it is the kind of person who has a very poor amount of alcohol, and the little beast has not been awakened by the fierce fight in the tea shop before, perhaps he has trusted his human companion enough to sleep in his arms with confidence and boldness.

Although the boy won the previous two wars without danger, it cost the boy a lot of his mind, and the boy also made a lot of blood for his own cleverness. Now that everything is silent, the moon is bright, and the young man also feels a little sleepy. The horse beside him was already asleep. The boy sat down by the moat, his eyes closed, breathing. The moonlight shone on the boy, who looked like a silver-plated Buddha statue. The bright moon in the small world in the young man's body and the bright moon in the sky seem to echo, the moonlight enters the young man's body from the young man's skin, circulates in the meridians, and finally reaches the dantian, which is absorbed by the pool water condensed by the bright moon in the body and the moon, becoming brighter and brighter. After coming out of the tomb, the young man realized that if he cultivated under the bright moon at night, he would have twice the result with half the effort. Yuehua can not only nourish the meridians of the young man's body, but also repair injuries inside and outside the body. The bright moon in the inner world can also absorb the moonlight and strengthen itself. At present, Yun Xuelan is still in the Lower Martial Realm, and he is not able to cultivate and invoke the Heaven and Earth Yuan Qi, but he was also a martial artist of the Five Realms, so it can be expected that if he cultivates the Yuan Qi when the moon and stars are scarce, there will definitely be more miraculous effects. Yun Xuelan has already opened up the thirty-three acupuncture points in his body, if he opens three more acupoints, he can enter the Heavenly Milk Realm without any worries, if he can open a few acupoints in the Heavenly Milk Realm by chance, then he can not only enter the middle martial arts perfectly, but also far surpass the combat power of people in the same realm and be invincible under the upper martial arts realm.

But the boy was not complacent because of this, the stone he pressed in his heart was only a little lighter, but it didn't really fall to the ground. The vine silks in his meridians that were like spider webs, although the energy seemed to have been suppressed after refining the moon spirit and absorbing the thunder into his body, and he had not made waves in the young man's body for a long time, nor did he show any signs of absorbing the vitality of the outside world. But the boy could feel that these things that had caused him countless tortures and suffered an unknown amount of suffering had just fallen into silence, like the dormancy of a volcano instead of death, and he didn't know how long it would take for it to suddenly erupt, and I don't know if the power of this eruption would be even more terrible than before. The boy didn't know when the vine silk would wake up, maybe it was because he was in the middle martial realm, maybe it was longer. But no matter what, if it can't be eradicated, this hidden danger not only grows in the young man's body, but also in the young man's heart.

What he was afraid of was not the sharp pain that the vine silk brought to him, he had endured these severe pains for more than ten years, if he really couldn't bear it, the young man would have given up cultivation long ago after the first breakthrough. For martial artists, cultivation is like mountaineering, some people wear Dharma robes, step on cinderella, and hold treasure-level trekking sticks of excellent grade, so climbing is much easier and smoother. But some people can only go barefoot, and even have to carry heavy burdens on their shoulders. Although the trail is the same, the cost and experience of climbing the mountain are completely different, and those who climb the mountain barefoot have to suffer severe pain in the soles of their feet every time they step on a stone, a dead branch, or even a grain of sand. And the heavier the burden on their shoulders, the harder their march became. If the people who travel with you are a little vicious, they will leave thistles and rusty nails along the way up the mountain. Even standing on a mountain and throwing arrows down or pushing down boulders, you can imagine the fate of these unarmed mountaineers who carry their loads.

And Yun Xuelan has been the latter in the past ten years. But the difference is that the boy is not barefoot, nor does he carry weights, and those obstacles along the way are also cleared for him. But the boy is like a sore under his feet, and it is difficult to heal. No matter how good the shoes are on the feet, no matter how thick the soles are, they only block the sand and gravel on the ground and do not hurt the feet of the travelers, but if the feet of the walkers themselves are wasted, every step is like the tip of a knife dancing, and the young man climbing the mountain is like going up the knife mountain. That's twelve years. Although for a young man, the pain brought to him by the vine silk during cultivation was unbearable, like a thick callus on the soles of his feet. Get used to pain.

The teenager did not dare to face and even feared that he would lose his cultivation again as a wasted person for programming. When the teenager first experienced this three months ago, he may have been more relieved, and although it was difficult to accept, it was not impossible to face. But loss is different from loss, and the first loss is far less than the loss after the loss is regained. Because if he hadn't experienced becoming a waster once, Yun Xuelan's fear of this matter came more from the unknown and his own wild speculation, which can be said to be self-inflicted, and it was the dazed and uncertain fear of the unknown. And the young man really experienced losing his cultivation and becoming a wasted person, especially in a family like Yunyin Villa, especially if he had the identity of a young owner. He had seen the look of pity and concern in the eyes of the people of the Lodge, whether sincere or false, and he had heard the cynicism and vicious words of the people behind their backs, either unintentionally or deliberately. He also felt the disappointment, disdain, helplessness, and contempt of the people of the mountain villa for him, and all kinds of emotions gathered from all kinds of people like streams flowing into the sea to the young man. Although the young man is mentally mature, he is only fifteen years old, and facing so much pressure is like a frenzied flood discharge into a reservoir surrounded on all sides, and there will be a moment when the embankment cannot withstand the collapse.

The boy was in a hurry to leave the villa as soon as he recovered from his injuries, in addition to hoping to find the method that Mr. Zhongli said about removing the hidden disease in his body as soon as possible, but also wanted to avoid the people in the villa and the different hearts. Although it has only been a few days, Yun Xuelan has already experienced the true feeling of being a wasted person. Now, he is refining the Moon Spirit meridian in the tomb, and he has been able to regain his cultivation after recovering from his injuries. Naturally, he didn't want to go through the same pain again. I am afraid that many people would rather die than bear the blow of this kind of loss and regain. If he is a beggar, he may find the world difficult, but he is still willing to survive. If a rich man becomes a beggar overnight, he may be hit hard, he may be depressed, but there is a possibility of survival, if the rich man who has become a beggar is allowed to become rich again, compared to how he worries every day about how to stop becoming a beggar. I sat up in a dream, and the so-called nightmare was to see those unbearable hearts again.

Therefore, Yun Xuelan's biggest heart disease at this time is the hidden disease in his meridians. Fortunately, although teenagers occasionally worry, they are not so self-pitying, complaining or giving up on themselves. He believed that Mr. Zhongli had said that since the old man had said that he might find a cure for his stubborn illness during this trip, the young man would move forward towards this hope.

The boy sat cross-legged for a long time. There are many people around him one after another. Most of them are residents living in nearby villages, some of them go to the city to deliver food, some go to the city to buy and sell, and some go to Los Angeles to seek medical treatment and get medicine. In short, most of the people lined up at the city gate at this moment are people who want to wait for the city gate to open and hurry into the city to do urgent business.

Some of the people who drove the car were lying on the haystacks on the board, some of them put down their stilts and smoked dry tobacco, chatting with familiar or unfamiliar people around them, and a few stars twinkling under the city walls, and some people took out dry food wrapped in oiled paper from their bosoms to dispel the chill before dawn. Most of these people outside the city are nearby villagers. At the foot of the state capital, although life was not poor or even very comfortable, the peasant family was still accustomed to a simple life, and the road from the village to Los Angeles had been walked for more than ten years or even decades, so there were not many people carrying torches or lanterns. No one will notice the teenager by the moat.

Yun Xuelan was closing his eyes, and suddenly felt someone tap his shoulder, and a somewhat soft but still ruffian young man's voice sounded in his ears: "Little brother, look at your outfit as a foreigner, right?"

Yun Xuelan noticed when the other party approached her, but she didn't feel the other party's killing intent, and the other party acted generously and didn't sneak around, so Yun Xuelan didn't stop the other party from approaching. He looked up and saw a young man in a gray cloth shirt and washed white bright blue pants. The young man wore a crooked black felt hat, and his face was a little thin, but his skin was fair and somewhat delicate. Yun Xuelan thinks that he is already a bit of a boy and a girl, but compared with the person in front of him, he is really inferior to himself in appearance. If the young man in front of him changes into his daughter's dress, I'm afraid no one will see that he is a man. If you can change out of this rustic shirt, dress up, and put on a fresh and refined white dress, you can go to the aunt to be a candid rabbit. Thinking of this, Yun Xuelan and my mother said, could it be that I also have Longyang?

The young man wearing a black felt hat also took advantage of Yun Xuelan's head to see the latter's appearance clearly, and couldn't help but be stunned, perhaps because he didn't expect that the handsomeness of the young man in front of him was not inferior to his own at all. What's more, the young man was dressed in a green shirt, sitting here with a graceful demeanor and elegant manners, and even staring at himself did not have the slightest recklessness or abruptness, but felt that the other party's eyes were brighter than the bright moon.

Yun Xuelan originally wanted to take a look at the other party, but he didn't expect that he had stared at the other party for a long time, and he already felt that his behavior was a little rude, although the other party patted him on the shoulder and was rude first. But Yun Xuelan found that the other party was also staring at him, the hand on his shoulder was a little sweaty, and he thought of his random speculation just now, he couldn't help but ask a little embarrassed: "You, are you the rabbit master?"

"Phew!" the young man in the felt hat came back to his senses, scolded lightly, and then rolled his eyes and said, "If I really am, little brother, would you like to spend this good night with me?"