1067, Northern Song Dynasty, Kaifeng, thatched house

☆☆☆

This is probably the most difficult habit for Chris, who wakes up every morning and asks himself the same question: What kind of world will appear when you open your eyes?

At this moment, she did not open her eyes, but she found that she could feel everything. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info It's as if the entire sensory system has undergone a complete upgrade, becoming efficient and sharp.

A breeze blew in through the open window, and the air was crystal clear, filled with the scent of leaves and damp earth. Occasionally, the sound of birdsong is heard and pleasant, and the slightest coolness in the wind seems to announce that summer is coming to an end. Chris curled up in the sheets in weariness, reluctant to open his eyes. Walking on the glacier in the darkness last night, with the dazzling blue orbs and the violent impact, it was like a dream, as if it happened in a place that no one had reached for a long, long time.

It was the old man's thatched hut, and she could smell the herbs hidden among the straw mats. The last time he was assassinated, he was saved by the fairy benefactor, and it was in this bed that he woke up.

She opened her eyes and said in her heart: This is the Great Song Dynasty.

In the middle of the night, she looked at the ceiling through the gauze tent. The thin white mosquito net made her eyes hazy, and she seemed to see three spheres, floating side by side in mid-air. The yellow moon, close to the full moon, is bright and soft. But next to it, there are two larger spheres, the twin blue planets. The shape, the color, Chris used to see in the photos taken from the perspective of space, it is the earth that ordinary people are used to seeing, but the appearance of the same two is incomprehensible.

Chris narrowed his eyes, staring intently at the two earths. Maybe it was just her own delusion, it must have been an illusion, she closed her eyes, and after a while, took a deep breath, opened them again, and the spheres were all gone, leaving only the white mosquito net hanging there above her head.

Chris felt that everything seemed different. When I woke up, it was as if the world was strange.

This is the Song Dynasty, and it seems that it is not.

Is time and space confused, or is your mind confused?

In the end, what came to Chris's mind was a human face. It was a familiar face, and when a mouth spoke, many wrinkles would appear around the corners of the mouth, but the wrinkles made people feel awkward, especially between the nose and the mouth, there was a black gap, and if you looked closely, it was a navel eye.

The image was so real that Chris sat up from the bed suddenly, she lifted the thin quilt on her body, ripped off her underwear, and looked forward to seeing her flat belly, but this time, the dream became a reality, and there was a face on her stomach!

Chris was shocked, and shouted in English to the face on his stomach, "Ronquesu!!"

Ronquesu seemed to be very tired of Chris's soprano, and said impatiently: "Don't shout, I can hear it, don't shout!"

Chris now has difficulty controlling his voice, and he can't calm down the horror, and his heart is beating faster. She looked at the face of the bulging belly and wondered if she was dreaming? Just try it! She held out a finger and approached the face with a slight tremble. After hesitating for a long time, she saw the protruding nose and slowly reached for it.

But before her fingers touched the nose of that face, she could already feel the heat coming out of that nostril. When she touched it, her hand quickly popped away as if it had touched static electricity.

It's not a mistake in my head, and it's not a prank, but it's a true and unmistakable fact. But the fact is like the end of the world, and Chris wants to scream.

She kept her voice as low as she could, and said angrily to the face, "Why are you on my stomach?"

"It's not the first time I've done this. Ronquesu raised his eyebrows deliberately, and Chris's stomach had a few more wrinkles.

Chris was a little dizzy and couldn't turn the corner for a while, she asked, "What...... What do you mean?"

Ronkssu rolled his eyes, but instead of answering directly, he changed the subject and said, "Didn't you do a lot of research on our tribe when you came to Alaska to negotiate with me?

"That's not to please you......" Chris held her forehead with her hand, she felt a headache, and forced herself to look directly at that face, "No, don't change the subject, answer me quickly!!"

"Whoever made you impatient, I'm just explaining it to you. ”

Chris lay back in bed, and judging by the few interactions she had with Ronk Soda, the man was either reticent or would talk at length, and once he did, he hated being interrupted. So she closed her eyes and silently listened to the face on her stomach and continued.

Ronkssu said unhurriedly: "We Inupit people are limited by glaciers and cold weather, so there is little contact between the various tribes. Although they have been in a relatively closed state for a long time, resulting in various differences in the living habits of various tribes, all Inupit people are influenced by the same ancient culture, and in our eyes, there is no possibility or impossibility, everything is possible. ”

So, you want to tell me that you're normal on my stomach, aren't you?" Chris thought angrily. Thinking of the strange scene of her face falling with her breathing, she felt that even breathing had become a burden now. She shook her head vigorously, trying to get the strange image out of her mind as quickly as possible.

"We Ta'iu'miut call ourselves the people-of-the-sea, and the oldest legend in our tribe is the 'Wizard of the Sea'. He was the messenger of the sea dragon 'Tizheruk', so the sea dragon gave the wizard great powers. ”

Chris remembered that she had read stories about it - in Inupid mythology, it was a monster that looked like a serpent, but had a seal head, a snake body, and fishtail flippers. It is said to love to swim out of the deep sea, attack people on the docks, and drag them into the water. In Chris's impression, it is fully capable of playing the role of a monster protagonist in a horror movie, but he didn't expect Ronkssu to call it "Sea Dragon".

"We also believe that everything has a soul, and that there are many such supermaterial souls in heaven and earth, and they all have their own form of existence and have their own place in nature. The soul can be outside of the physical appearance, so it can enter or leave the human body or any other object. Ronquesu raised an eyebrow and continued with a proud gesture, "Of course, this is not something that anyone can do, only wizards who have been empowered by the sea dragon can. ”

The wizards are out!

Chris unconsciously let out a disdainful breath from his nostrils.

"The sorcerer enters the body of a human or animal, stays quietly in their body, gazes at the world before him with his eyes, and what comes to his mind is not a landscape, but a complex, supernatural, and exciting world. Ronkssu raised his eyebrows and asked, "Whether it is attached to an animal or a human, the wizard will appear in the position of the abdomen." Don't you remember what you and I saw the most ornaments on the walls when we were in our blacksmith shop?"

Listening to his question, Chris began to struggle to remember.

Ronksu Senogetak was, first and foremost, a respected educator in the Barlow region, who had his own set of educational theories and did not advocate the abandonment of the Inyupitt traditions. He published many children's textbooks, which told the history and stories of their race in a lively and vivid way, which was very popular with everyone; secondly, he was an amateur blacksmith, striking iron using the oldest methods of the Tagumuts, and he also had his own blacksmith workshop, which sold small pieces of iron ornaments on weekdays; third, he was the spiritual leader of the Inyupitt people of the Alaska North Slope Autonomous Region, and he was a hero in protecting the "Holy Land" by exposing the conspiracy of the big oil companies.

In the face of this big man in the north, Chris was very cautious in the first meeting, only talking about business, but she also took the opportunity to find out the other party's preferences. At the second meeting, she made a special visit to the blacksmith shop in Ranksuo.

What is the most ornamental item hanging on the wall?

It was a small workshop, and on the wall behind the counter hung a tapestry of Inuupit's traditional colorful patterns, on which hung a few pieces of iron made by Ranksu's own hands. Chris remembers three of them as oddly shaped: one was an iron basin with a pattern fired in the middle of the basin of a beetle with its belly facing up, with curved horns and two black fangs, and a small circular pattern on its belly that represented an abstract human face, and the second an iron mask. The mask is in the shape of a fox that is sticking out its tongue and grooming its fur with its big furry tail, and the fox also has a human face on its belly. The eyes of the mask were the crooked smiling eyes of the man's face, the grinning mouth under the crooked nose, the grinning eerie smile, and the sharp teeth, and the third was a wall ornament that stood out most to Chris: a man with his limbs outstretched and his head down, his expression frightened, as if he had fallen from a thousand feet in the sky. And his belly was occupied by a human face, which looked very calm with its dark eyes and staring straight ahead.

Thinking of this, Chris got goosebumps, she sat up abruptly again, she thought she had crossed over, but the Lanquesu on her stomach made her feel terrified.

Ignoring Chris's reaction, Ronquesu continued: "Although animals have souls, they are still human beings, because people not only have souls, shapes, positions, and breaths, but more importantly, they have names that can respond to the call of the 'Black Stone'. ”

Blackstone!

A creepy feeling gripped Chris, like a giant's big hand gripping her tightly and then jerking her back into terror. Ranksu's words kept ringing in her ears, "Blackstone's call", and it was obvious that the whole thing was not as simple as she imagined.

Chris's whole body was cold, and she suppressed the urge to ask questions, and she waited, waiting for Ronquesu to say it himself—his fourth identity.

"We in the Sinogtuck family have always been wizards who serve Lord Sea Dragon. "Ōjūrük dragged people from the docks into the water just to let people discover the secrets buried beneath the glacier."

As the shamans of the tribe, my ancestors were inspired by the sea dragons, and they have been trying to discover this secret. It was only after a long, long time that the 'White Rock' was found under the deep ice. They also discovered that there was an even more magical 'black stone' hidden in the 'white stone'. The ancestors regarded the 'White Stone' as the soul of the white world, and the 'Black Stone' guarded by the 'White Stone' possessed supreme energy and governed all of nature. The ancestors received magical powers from 'Shiraishi', and from then on, they had a new name 'Shiraishi Wizard'. The soul of a wizard can enter the body of the chosen person of the 'Black Stone' and fly over the world of gods. The iron tools you see in my blacksmith shop, whether animal or human, the human face on the belly represents the soul of the wizard, which is my current state. ”

Ronquesu told an Eskimo myth, every word was so moving and profound, it sounded as if he was telling someone else's story, but in Chris's heart, in the depths of the layers of flesh, she knew that this was not the case, and the protagonist of his story was herself!

"Do you understand?" asked Ronquesu.

Chris swallowed hard and said, "Are you the 'White Rock Wizard'? Then I am the one chosen by the 'Black Stone......'!

As Chris's mind finally began to return to the normal track, Ronkssu breathed a sigh of relief and said, "To be precise, there are a total of twelve White Stone Wizards responsible for guarding the Black Stone, and I am the leader of the White Stone Wizards, responsible for leading the people chosen by the Black Stone!"

Chris cleared his throat and asked his stomach solemnly, "What does it mean to be chosen by Blackstone? Why me?"

"Why you? I don't know. ”

Ronquesu recalls that time when he and the Twelve Wizards gathered in the Ice Cave, and the 'Black Stone' shone like never before, and the name reflected in the light was Christina L. Smith. Of all the chosen ones, her life fluctuations are most in line with Blackstone's, and this has never been the case. This also made him think for a while that she was the one who could really bring out the power of the Black Stone, and that she might be able to change the entire human world.

Now, though, Ronquesu has a hint of suspicion.

"To tell you the truth," he said, "I have never seen a chosen one as sluggish as you. People in the past, at worst a week or two found me, and you have been in this world for a few months, without any realization, no progress, let alone discovering my existence. ”

Chris thought to himself: I thought I had traveled to the Song Dynasty, I was unfamiliar with life, was it easy for me? I thought I was dull, I had to find you, why didn't you jump out sooner? )