Deep mountain trails.

A young man in plain clothes walked slowly, carrying a shriveled cloth bag on his left shoulder, a dark spear in his right hand, his angular face was slightly black and red, his skin was rough, and the expression on his face seemed to be happy and timid.

Rounding a bend, the young man stopped, leaned over and picked a handful of mountain flowers by the side of the road, carefully tied them with grass and vines, and held them in his hands.

Along the stone path all the way up, there are gradually clouds and mist to cover the eyes, and a piece of green bamboo appears on the side of the road, the breeze blows, and the bamboo leaves rattle.

Listening to this familiar voice and looking at this familiar scene, the young man took a deep breath and quickened his pace.

Under an ancient tree, an old man and a woman are playing against each other.

The woman looked down at the chessboard, pondered for a long time, and suddenly whispered happily: "Daddy, I thought of it!"

She picked up a white child, slammed it on the chessboard, and then looked up with a smile and opened her mouth to speak, but the old man opposite was not in his seat. She realized something, the smile on her face faded little by little, and she slowly tilted her head.

A familiar and somewhat unfamiliar face came into view, shook in her mind a few times, and finally overlapped with her longing face!

The old man stroked his beard and smiled, "I'm back." The tone seemed as if the person in front of him had just left for a moment.

Zhao Ziming smiled and nodded, "Well, I'm back, Master." ”

He walked under the tree, put down the spear, pulled the woman's soft wattle, and put the bouquet of mountain flowers in his left hand in her hand, "Twins, marry me." ”

......

His name is Mad Dog, he is a little beggar, I don't know how old he is, among all the little beggars, he is not the strongest, but when he fights, he is the most ferocious, so everyone calls him Mad Dog.

For as long as he can remember, he has wandered around the city of Heyang.

A big corrupt official came to Heyang, who was tyrannical and unscrupulous.

In the second year after the corrupt officials came, there was a severe drought in Heyang, and a large area of land was not harvested. In the third year, during the sowing season, the torrential rain did not stop for three months, and flash floods and mudslides occurred frequently in various parts of Heyang, and countless fertile fields and good lands were destroyed.

Natural disasters and man-made disasters are coming, and the people of Heyang are not happy.

Naturally, Heyang City is no longer as prosperous as it once was.

The little beggars in the city were almost dead, either starving to death or being beaten to death while fighting for food—there have been a lot of strong beggars in the city lately—all of whom were refugees from the neighborhood.

Compared to his peers, Mad Dog is ferocious enough and has a clever brain, so he barely survived.

However, he was too thin after all, and in terms of strength, he was no match for the refugees, and he could get less and less food. Finally, after five days of being without anything, he couldn't hold it anymore and collapsed on the steps of a family's backyard.

The night was cool, and the moonlight was miserable.

The mad dog was lying on the ground, his brain was muddy, and his nose was like a gossamer. Suddenly there was an exclamation in my ears, it was a girl. The mad dog remained motionless.

The girl approached, stretched out her finger to probe the mad dog's snort, and ran away again.

After a while, the mad dog smelled a wisp of aroma.

It's the smell of food!

He didn't know where he got the strength, opened his mouth and bit it violently.

Fluffy and sweet.

The girl's name is Xiaocui, one of the seven Xiaocui on this street, and her appearance can barely be regarded as a small jasper, and she is a maid in Yihong Courtyard.

The prostitutes have no worries about food and clothing, and Xiaocui is well-behaved and sensible, with sharp hands and feet, so she can often get some food, although it is just leftovers, but it is also eaten.

From then on, if the mad dog really couldn't hold on, he would come here late at night, and every time, he could get the food given by Xiao Cui.

There is not much food, a handful of peanuts, or two steamed buns, or a few slices of dried meat, but it is enough for the mad dog to regain some strength and continue to struggle for survival.

When the mad dog gobbled up, Xiao Cui watched with a smile on the side, and when he finished eating, she would occasionally say a few words to him, ask a few questions, and then hurry back.

At one point, Cui gave Mad Dog a new name, Xiaomu—she could only write those two words.

Mad Dog folded the piece of red paper with his new name written on it and carefully took it into his arms.

A year later, Xiaocui died, and her body was discarded haphazardly in an abandoned alley, wrapped in only a rag, covered with bruises, and a mess in the lower yin.

The mad dog buried Xiaocui, wandered outside the backyard of Yihong Courtyard for half a month, and finally heard what he wanted to know from the two old mothers who were doing chores.

Yu An, the eldest son of a corrupt official, has a brutal temperament, does not learn and has no skills, and specializes in finding flowers and willows, and Xiaocui died at his hands.

Three years later, there was a small gang in the west of Heyang City, the Cuimu Gang, and the leader of the gang was Mad Dog. He learned a lot of kung fu from somewhere, and soon unified the large and small forces in the west of the city.

Xicheng District is the poorest and most dilapidated district in Heyang City, and the mad dog at this time, although it can call the wind and rain here, is not a big man in the eastern, southern, northern, and central urban areas.

He frantically expanded his power outward, and of course, his strength was also increasing rapidly, and no one knew what kind of exercises he practiced or what martial arts he used, because all the people who fought against him died.

After seven years, the Cuimu Gang wiped out the third largest gang in Heyang City, and Mad Dog officially entered the top social circle in Heyang, and soon after, he met the father and son of the Yu family at a banquet.

Mad Dog finally got his hands dirty.

Yu An's corrupt official father is a hidden master, mad dog fought with him for a day and a night, and the two of them destroyed half of Heyang City with their violent Yuan Li.

Mad Dog wins.

On the roof of the Yihong Courtyard in the west of the city, he used all the torture he knew, tortured Yu An for half a month, and finally burned him to ashes.

On that day, the mad dog also died.

Afterwards, according to a criminal investigation master who rushed to investigate, what Mad Dog practiced was an evil skill of burning life and sacrificing the soul, and those who practiced this skill would suffer the pain of ten thousand ants every day when they were born, and after death, there would be no chance of reincarnation.

......

This is an incomparably vast forest, with trees up to 100 feet high, and even giant trees towering into the sky.

Click!

A half-decayed tree slowly fell, crushing the large jungle next to it, and the ground was covered with a thick layer of fallen leaves, and for the first time in a thousand years, the sun shone on.

Saplings break through the ground and scramble upwards to compete for sunlight and nutrients. There is a sapling that grows the fastest because it has a soul.

The other saplings are growing instinctively given by nature, and it knows to make simple changes on its own initiative, such as not absorbing harmful heaven and earth energy, and spending half of the night's dormant time to absorb nutrients.

It soon grew taller than the saplings, and grew into a small tree, its branches spreading out to block all sunlight, and the little competitors below it withered and became its nourishment.

But there is an even greater threat, the surrounding trees have begun to grow their branches and leaves horizontally towards the space above it, and it must grow taller as soon as possible to break through the impending blockade, or it will also face death.

It grew stronger and stronger, and the canopy was about to cross the blockade, but the arrival of a group of monkeys caused it to suffer a heavy blow, and its young leaves were plucked, and many branches were broken.

It took a few days to heal its wounds, and to make up for it, it cut its dormancy time in half again, which would affect its constitution and attract insect infestations, but it couldn't take care of that much.

It succeeded, and finally broke through the blockade and came to a safe height, at which no tree could hide it, and the sky above it was much wider.

There is no wind in the lower jungle, so when the cool wind blows its leaves for the first time, its soul jumps and it begins to feel a new world.

It only took ten years to grow from a sapling to a hundred-zhang tree, and after reaching this height, its growth rate slowed down suddenly, no matter how hard it tried to absorb the Heaven and Earth Vitality, it still grew slowly, no different from other big trees.

It leaves the task of growth to instinct, and its soul carefully observes everything around it: wind, rain, thunder, fire, sun, moon, stars.

Ten years later, it had seen what it could see countless times, it began to feel bored, restless, lonely, it longed for freedom, but time and body stuck it in place.

Day after day, year after year.

It was angry, mad, desperate, frightened, sad, and so on for five hundred years, and at last, at last, it weakened, fell into a long sleep, surrounded by darkness.

A millennium later, the survival instinct awakens it.

This ancient forest is experiencing an unprecedented storm, countless trees are blown off by the strong wind, and even uprooted, and even those thousands of giant trees are shaking in the wind.

Its essence is now four hundred feet long, and its branches are luxuriant, so that the wind is so strong that the thick roots in the earth have begun to loosen, and once the body falls, the soul will surely perish.

At death's door!

As if returning to the beginning of the groundbreaking, it regained control of its body, absorbing the vitality of heaven and earth to consolidate its roots, and at the same time adjusting the position of branches and leaves with the help of the wind.

The storm stopped, it didn't fall, and though there was only a bare trunk left, it was still standing, the sixth surviving of the forest—the other five were all giant trees.

After this catastrophe, it calmed down, vaguely knowing how to find the freedom it wanted.

It is no longer angry, no longer crazy, no longer desperate, no longer afraid, no longer sad, it calmly looks at the same scene every day, calmly absorbs the vitality of heaven and earth, and calmly grows upward.

100,000 years!

It's huge!

On this day, the sky at the top of its crown was shrouded in boundless dark clouds, and the sun and moon were without light, as if they were in the last days.

Countless silver thunderbolts fell from the clouds like rain, hitting its branches and leaves.

Three days later, all its branches and leaves were annihilated, and only the pillar-like trunk remained.

The thunderstorm is sudden, and it falls into a waterfall!

And in three days its trunk was cut to two thousand feet.

Three more days, ten zhang.

The thunder stopped, and the dark clouds gathered in the sky and turned into dragons.

The black dragon is circling down!

The world was darkened, and then the light was restored.

It's gone.

There is a huge black crater on the ground, which is boundless and bottomless!

A little green light flew out of the crater, but it was a small emerald bird.

It flapped its wings and soared into the sky.