To the south of Taipingfang, where the Anling of Beizhen is located, is Tongyi Fang, which leads the central axis of Chang'an in the east and the singing and dancing city of the imperial city in the north.

In such a bustling area, the simple mansion that is no more than ten steps wide is particularly eye-catching, and it is incompatible with the surrounding mansions.

A young man in the courtyard, about thirteen or fourteen years old, was skillfully washing rice and cooking.

After counting the hours, when the rice bran in the pot is steamed, the master should come back.

He fished out a pickled radish from an old urn, sliced it with a hob, and then placed it in a coarse porcelain plate with great care. After hesitating for a long time, he muttered "Master should work hard today", and grabbed a handful of sun-dried peanuts from another jar and put them on the plate.

When he was done, he sat down on the edge of the courtyard and flipped through the broken book that the master had given him.

He was already familiar with the contents of this book, but the master still asked him to read it every day, saying that it was a craft that had been passed down from generation to generation, and that he could not lose it.

Flipping through the yellowed books that have fallen off the pages in his hand, his heart has already wandered thousands of miles. Now, although I can only afford to eat rice bran and pickles for two meals a day, I finally have a shelter from the wind and rain, and I no longer have to run from the thatched hut to the neighboring land temple to shelter from the rain when the rainstorm comes, and I have to sleep on a wet straw mat when I come back at night.

"The master is coming back. Today, I learned a new poem from a gentleman from another city, and I want to read it to my master. Although the young man's eyes were still on the book, he thought mentally that although the master couldn't understand the clichés of chewing words, he always smiled when the young man shook his head and read out the poems.

Today's life is still very hard, the young man wants to read but can only read secretly in this small courtyard, if he goes out and holds a book, even if the law of Da Zhou will not be blamed, there will still be people who make irresponsible remarks.

But people who have really suffered from hunger will always cherish the days when they have something to eat. So he didn't feel that it was too difficult, and the current days were enough for him to be satisfied.

The boy was an orphan for ten years. Ten years ago, the world was in turmoil, when the Shennong army had arrived in Julu City, thousands of miles away from Chang'an, and could enter Chang'an in less than a month, and countless Chang'an people fled from the national capital and were displaced.

He was only four years old at the time, and he still spoke childishly, with a little milky smell, stumbling around in the suburbs of Chang'an. When you're lucky, you can pick up some rotten vegetables from the abandoned homes of the homeless, and when you're unlucky, you can only nibble on the bark and grass leaves.

At first, he always had diarrhea, and those bad or raw foods entered his immature belly before he grew up, which was no better than eating a sharp knife. Many times his stomach hurt and rolled on the ground, and his young face was covered with mud mixed with tears, wrapping him like a little clay doll.

He always called his mother when he was in pain, but he never got the slightest response from the woman in his memory.

This is the first time he left his mother, as long as he cried and called his mother, there would always be a woman who hurriedly ran over to protect him in her arms, patted him gently on the back, and muttered in distress, "Don't cry, don't cry, a man won't cry." ”

But he still likes to cry, because he knows that as long as he cries, his mother will come and hug him.

As long as his mother holds him, he is not afraid of anything.

But this time, he cried for a long, long time, until he fell asleep, and then he cried and woke up, but he was still alone, abandoned in this world.

So he got up from the ground, wiped away his tears, and patted himself on his chest to coax himself.

"Don't cry, don't cry, manhood doesn't cry. I'm a four-year-old man, it's time for me to protect my mother. ”

There were also homeless people who passed by and wanted to take him away, but he bit the arms of those people, and after letting them go, he ran back into the mountains and forests from the crowd. He can't go, and once he's gone, his mother won't be able to find him.

Then continue to sleep in the mud like a wild boar. He likes to sleep in the mud, wrapped in mud, and his small body is not so easy to be spotted by the homeless.

But the most terrifying thing is the stray wild dogs. These dogs, like him, were abandoned when the displaced people left Beijing. But instead of treating him as a companion to the sick, they kept chasing and biting him, trying to use him for their hunger.

I don't know whether he was lucky or unlucky, so he was neither starved to death nor bitten to death in this barren mountain with a limit. After experiencing so many unbearable abdominal pains, I don't know if he finally knew what foods he could eat and which ones he couldn't, or whether his young spleen and stomach had finally grown armor in the grinding, and he gradually stopped hurting.

Gradually, I learned to deal with those wild dogs.

I gradually understood that I couldn't call my mother back, I could only call wild dogs.

So at the age of four, he wiped away his tears, took his face full of dirt, and walked from staggering to vigorous, just in the mountains and forests in the eastern suburbs of Chang'an, playing with heaven and earth.

It's just that the days of starvation are still there.

On this day, he lay on the ground and dug for earthworms all day, digging his hands full of blood.

When his hands finally became numb and he couldn't feel the pain, he finally dug up seven earthworms. These seven earthworms are his food for a day today. Of course, it wasn't enough for him to eat, but at least he could live one more day.

What can you do if you live one more day? Give yourself one more chance to find your mother?

This is the greatest advantage of children, who are always less prone to despair.

He put the earthworms in the sackcloth he had picked up, listened carefully to the wind and grass around him, and after making sure that there were no wild dogs nearby, he sat on the ground and wiped the blood off his hands with his clothes.

Just as he was turning over and lying on the dirt to rest, a thin figure walked in the distance. He sat up and looked at the man.

It was strange that he hadn't noticed a figure coming here just now, but when he saw that person, the figure was so obvious that it seemed to suddenly emerge from heaven and earth.

The child did not run away, because the slow steps of the man, and the rickety figure, looked very old and not difficult to deal with. He wanted to ask the man for news of his mother's parents.

The man gradually approached, and his figure looked very gloomy in the autumn wind of September. After the autumn rains, the ground beneath his feet was muddy, and the man became a little shorter with each step, as if he was about to sink into the mud and crawl out of hell step by step.

The terrible autumn wind still wailed, cruelly tearing the dead leaves from the branches, separating them from their flesh and bones, and then ruthlessly discarding them into rotten bones on the ground.

The figure was getting closer, and the child could already hear the sound of him crushing dead leaves as he fell, and pulling out the mud as he lifted each step.

The sun was setting, and the figure was facing away from the sunset, making it difficult to see the shape.

Until the sun goes down completely, like a miserly merchant blowing out the last oil lamp, leaving only darkness.

The autumn wind is still there, and after sunset, the sound of the wind blowing the woods is more like a terrible ghost crawling out of the nine shadows, screaming in the night.

The figure finally approached, and the child waved to him, and was about to speak, when suddenly a gust of wind blew, and he saw that the linen cloth on the man's face was blown off by the wind, and under the moonlight was a terrible human face that seemed to have been fried in an oil pan, hideous and twisted, and opened his bloody mouth, and laughed at the child.

The child's eyes widened, tears that had not been shed for a long time filled his eyes again, and he cried out in horror: "Mother! There is a ghost! Mother! Mother! Come and save me!"