Being fooled by fierce beasts to travel through the beginning is fleeing famine

Chapter 180 Uphill (seeking Subscription for Monthly Pass)
Now that these clues have been found, of course we have to investigate, even if we still can't get out in the end, it's better than sitting still and waiting for death.

Continue to walk along the mountain wall. Now this direction should be heading north. The mountain wall gradually lowered. When she reached the back of the second row of yards, there was only one person left on the mountain wall.

There is no way to go any further. There are already two rows of yards here, so there should be no one else's house.

The old lady said that there are only two rows of families in the village, so what happened to this family?The one built was staggered by dozens of meters from the second row, and it also blocked the way up the mountain.

That's right, it blocked the way up the mountain, and the yard happened to be built at the lowest point of the mountain wall.

This yard is bigger and better than other yards in the village.

In other houses, the walls are made of stone, and the roof is covered with thin stone slabs, which are used as tiles. The roof of this house is made of real tiles.

The courtyard wall was also higher, so she couldn't see the situation inside the courtyard, but could only see a row of high roofs inside.

Qingyan guessed that this family was most likely the family of the patriarch and village head. His family was the most prosperous in the village and had the best living conditions.

It’s just that the yard of their house was built here, but it’s a bit intriguing. It’s definitely not for no reason. his yard.

The two rows of yards in front were adjacent to the mountain wall with a distance of more than ten meters wide, but his house was not only staggered by a row, but also directly blocked.

Qingyan backed away, because she heard the sound of someone moving in the yard, she must be making breakfast too.

Looking left and right, on the left is the side of the courtyard wall of a yard, behind the wall is a road, and beside the road is a vegetable field.

There is also a road behind her, and another vegetable field to the south is the back gable of a house.

If she climbed onto the mountain wall, as long as people in the village chief's yard can't find her, people in other places should not be able to see her.

Qingyan retreated a few tens of meters to the south, farther away from the village chief's house. The height of the mountain wall in this place is about a head higher than her height, so it shouldn't be too strenuous to go up.

She backed up a little, then ran up, jumped forward, stepped on a bump with her right foot, and clambered on top of the mountain wall with both hands at the same time.

With both hands and the right foot underneath, exert force at the same time, and lift your body up as soon as you raise your breath.

When she reached the top of the mountain wall, Qingyan quickly squatted down and looked in the direction of the village chief's house. Sure enough, there was a young woman washing rice in the yard.

I don't know if she heard it in the county before, but the only surviving granddaughter-in-law of the village head's family looked only in her twenties.

If so, Qingyan thinks she can guess the current time, it may be four or five years ago.

With this thought in mind, she decided to go back and ask the old lady for a while, and now she will investigate it by herself first.

I lowered my body and reached out to touch the grass under my feet. That's right, it's the grass. It's no different from the ordinary grass on the mountain. It's very lush, which is normal in this season.

The trees next to it are tall and low, and I touched them, and they are real.

Qingyan went straight between the trees and went further west.

She thought she would reach a place similar to a wall soon, but she didn't. After walking for several minutes, she was still in the woods.

She stopped and stopped going forward, but returned along the same road.

The speed of returning was faster, and he returned to the previous mountain wall in a short while, indicating that he should not have encountered any illusion or ghost hitting the wall just now, that is to say, if he walked west, there was really a forest.

Not wasting any more time here, she went into the woods and continued to walk south with a few trees away from the village below. As long as she looked to the right, she could see what was going on in the village, and she was not afraid of going wrong.

The further south you went, the higher the mountain wall, and soon you returned to the southernmost row of yards, and stopped at the fourth yard away from Yin Keqin's house, which is where she threw the stone before.

She couldn't guarantee it in other places. She heard the sound in this place, and there must be a stone wall.

Sure enough, she found a stone wall within a few steps, but...Qing Yan blinked her eyes and looked back, forth, left, and right at the "stone wall" in front of her.

Did she really think wrong?This place does not belong to a closed space, the village is real, and so is the mountain?
In front of her was a huge stone with a diameter of about four or five meters. It was erected here. Throwing a stone from the bottom of the mountain could indeed hit it here. It was really an inch.

She looked down, bent down and picked up a fist-sized stone, which was the one she had thrown before.

When she was picking up the stone, she took a closer look at its shape, thinking that it would be easy to retrieve it later, and there were marks on the boulder from the stone she threw, so it should be unmistakable, she was still very confident in her strength.

Only in this way, the clue will be broken again.

Qingyan walked around the boulder without giving up and walked towards the back. After walking for about 15 minutes, there were forests and many weeds on the ground, but she didn't encounter any animals, not even small flying insects.Not to mention snakes, insects, rats and ants.

After walking for a few more minutes, she felt that the distance was a little far away, so she didn't go any further.

She has carefully observed along the way, whether it is trees, grass or stones, there are changes, so she is not spinning around in one place.

Qingyan felt that the time was almost up, she sighed and walked back.

At this time, the old lady should have already prepared the meal, and the other party might be worried if she doesn't go back for a long time.

And she was already hungry, it was really inconvenient not to have Chou Chou by her side, now she had nothing but two spirit stones on her body, and there was no prey on this mountain, so even if she wanted to continue exploring, she had to be full.

When walking back, there is no need to go down from the previous position. I pulled a few vines and held them in my hand, and connected the vines together while walking back.

When I got to the edge of the mountain wall, I made a gesture with the rattan, and I couldn't reach it. I walked west for a while. It's just that there are a lot of broken stones on the ground below, and it is inevitable that they will be injured.

Tie the rattan to a thigh-thick tree trunk, and slide down the stone wall along the rattan.

After landing, Qingyan didn't put the cane away, but put it there, thinking that she could go up here again after eating.

As for people seeing her, she is not afraid, it is just a cane, if you see her, you will see her, if someone takes her away, at most, you can go around to the previous place.

When walking back, there were faint voices coming from the yard by the roadside. It should be that several families had breakfast together.

Until they walked to the courtyard next door, there were crying sounds from inside, there were women and men, it should be the selected boy and his mother.

Apart from the two of them, there were comforting voices from a few men beside him. It should be the boy's father and brothers. After all, as I said before, he is the youngest son of this family.

Qingyan sighed with some sympathy, and went back to the courtyard next door.

The old lady was standing at the door of the main room, and she seemed to be waiting for her. When she came back, she didn't know whether the expression on her face was happy or sad, but it was just complicated anyway.

Qingyan understood miraculously. The other party was happy that nothing happened to her, but sad that she didn't find a way to leave.

Qingyan smiled and said: "Is the aunt waiting for me? I made a big circle and spent some time, making the aunt wait for a long time."

He glanced at the pole and bucket on the side of the water tank, but he didn't see Yin Keqin, so he asked again, "Where's Brother Keqin? Haven't you come back yet?"

The old lady shook her head and said, "He went to the next yard. Keqin has a good relationship with the second son Kemian of the next door. I heard that his younger brother was selected. Go over and have a look."

Qingyan nodded, that's why.

The old lady frowned and glanced at the next door, shaking her head and sighing as she walked into the room.

Sitting at the table, he picked up the chopsticks and handed them to Qingyan who came in together, "Let's eat first, don't wait for him, he should be back in a while."

Qingyan took the chopsticks and sat next to the old lady. On the table were three well-filled bowls of millet porridge, as well as pancakes posted yesterday and a bowl of pickles.

The millet porridge had just been served, and it was still a little hot, so the two of them were not in a hurry to eat it.

The old lady whispered: "Did you go to the mountain?"

Qingyan looked at her and nodded, "I went up from the shortest part of the mountain wall behind. There is a big yard there, is it the village chief's house?"

Seeing the old lady nodding, she asked the doubts in her heart, "These two rows of houses are some distance away from the mountain wall. Why did the village chief build another row alone? It is still close to the mountain wall. Is there any need for him?" Is there a guard at home?"

The old lady took a look at her and walked to the door, looked out and came back before whispering: "What did you find?"

Qingyan shook her head, "I'm just a little skeptical, but I didn't find anything. By the way, I saw a woman in her twenties in his yard. Is it his daughter-in-law?"

The old lady nodded and continued to whisper: "This is the youngest granddaughter-in-law of his family. The eldest granddaughter-in-law and the second granddaughter-in-law disappeared the year before last, and now this is the only woman left in their family.

Everyone guessed that the reason why the patriarch's house was built there was because the entrance to the altar was in the backyard of the patriarch's house, and everyone knew that every sacrifice would enter the mountain from the backyard of the patriarch's house.

It's just that other than the patriarch and the elders are not eligible to participate in the sacrifice, so we don't know if it is true.

Keqin often went hunting in the mountains, and he had looked in that direction before. Because of his father and brothers and sisters, every time he went up the mountain, he would go there to look for it.I wanted to see what the so-called altar looked like, and whether those sacrificed people were still alive, but I never found out..."

Qingyan couldn't help interrupting the old lady when she heard this: "Ma'am, you said that brother Keqin often hunts in the mountains, so does he have to travel a long distance to catch his prey?"

The old lady shook her head, "That's not true, although it's not on the side of the mountain, there are dense forests, and there are pheasants and hares if you walk a short distance. You can get some back every morning, and you still have time to go to the town to sell them in the afternoon." It shouldn't have gone too far."

"That's weird."

Qingyan told the old lady what she found on the mountain, "I walked for nearly a quarter of an hour after going up the mountain, not to mention pheasants and hares, I didn't even see any birds, not even snakes, insects, rats and ants. "

The old lady frowned and fell into deep thought, and said after a while: "From what you said, it seems that no bird has flown by every three days.

Because every time I sacrifice, I can't help but think that the three people at home have gone, so I don't have the energy to think about things outside. People in the village basically don't go out. I really don't know what's going on on the mountain.

Now that I think about it, something is wrong. During these three days, the night was very quiet, even the crickets were gone.

It’s okay if it’s winter now, but this summer has just passed, and there are the most bugs on the mountain at this time. The night before yesterday, I could still hear a few night owls or old yelling, but now there is nothing. "

Qingyan was stunned again, she didn't care about it before, she just thought that it was late autumn when she came here, and now it has become early autumn, and now she suddenly remembered when she was in Yunling County, she heard those people say that every time Qi When the mountain village disappears, it should be when the summer is hot.

There seems to be something wrong here again.

Qingyan didn't think about it by herself, and asked directly: "Auntie, is there a fixed time for each sacrificial offering? Is it always in early autumn?"

The old lady shook her head, "Not necessarily, sometimes it's just after the summer harvest, sometimes it's just after the autumn harvest, and there are more summer harvests, when the grain just arrives, you can use the grain to go to the town to exchange some tributes back. "

Qingyan understands, this is the end of the story, since there are more summers, then it is when it is hot, and it is normal for those people to think so.

After all, sacrifices are held once every three years, so who would watch them every day if there is nothing to do, it would be good to pay attention once or twice.

After solving this point, the two began to talk about the problem on the mountain again, and Yin Keqin also came back at this time.

Because the two of them were chatting and hadn't moved their chopsticks, the millet porridge was just right now.

Yin Keqin came in after washing his hands outside, and sat at the dining table. The old lady handed him the chopsticks and told him what the two of them had just said.

Yin Keqin couldn't care less about eating, and fell into deep thought. After more than a minute, he said: "We actually had doubts before. Ke Mian and I also went to the mountain on the sacrificial day three years ago, and found out that these three days At that time, there was no way up the mountain on the east side of the village, and I couldn't find it no matter how hard I looked.

The two of us also climbed to the mountain from the west to see it. After walking a long distance, all the mountain goods and prey were gone, not even the cave where we used to hunt and rest.

If it wasn't for the fact that the village at the foot of the mountain is still there, and the people and yards inside have not changed, we would have thought we had gone to another mountain.

Because of this, we are even more afraid of our ancestor's ability, and think that he may really have supernatural power..."

(End of this chapter)