The bad emperor of Tang Dynasty

Guo Nuan and Yan Zhuang talked with Pei Dunfu for more than half an hour in the Governor's Mansion. The time was not long. It was nothing more than an official procedure. After reading the letter, I opened the seal and read it face-to-face. When I learned that my old friend in the distance was still thinking about me so much, the exhausted look on my face suddenly disappeared, and I was full of joy.

"The one who knows me is Mr. Pei Kuan." Pei Dunfu sighed. For a foreigner who is an official in a foreign country, it is so emotional to receive greetings from friends in his hometown unexpectedly. Can calm the mind.

Before leaving, Pei Dunfu personally sent off Guo Nuan and the others to the steps of the Dudu Mansion. He stood on the steps and patted Guo Nuan on the shoulder. The younger generation cared and whispered to Guo Nuan:

"Young man Guo, work hard when you arrive in Leizhou. The old man is optimistic about you. Mr. Yan has the talent to help the country and the world. In the administration of the county, if you encounter difficulties in everything, talk to him more. You will be able to solve them. If you can't solve them, you can send them People go to the Governor's Mansion in Guangzhou and say, I, Pei Dunfu, will support you when the sky falls."

Guo Nuan was encouraged by the words of encouragement from his immediate superior, Pei Dunfu. He took three companions to bid farewell to Pei Dunfu, boarded a carriage and walked overland, and they continued to drive towards the cape of the southwest mainland.

Leizhou is about [-] miles away from Guangzhou. Guo Nuan drove a horse-drawn carriage along the ancient red clay roads in the mountains.

The road in the south of the Five Ridges is treacherous and tortuous, with many mountains and sparse villages along the way. Sometimes the horse-drawn carriage travels for dozens of miles before encountering the tile-roofed houses of one or two families at the foothills in the distance.Looking at the winding mountains and the deep and quiet dense forest, the barbarism in this area is indeed true.

Mosquitoes and miasmas breed in many hot and humid places in the mountains. Not to mention the vicious mosquitoes, there are also many poisonous snakes and poisonous insects hidden in the vegetation. Due to the rich resources of poisonous insects in the deep mountains of Lingnan, it is rumored that the Miao indigenous people in Lingnan have a traditional custom of collecting hundreds of insects to make poisonous Gu. The technique has always been mysterious and insidious, and most of the people who were poisoned by the poisonous Gu almost died after being poisoned.

The stomach is flatulent, the complexion is black, and it feels like a cone piercing the bone and a thousand arrows piercing the heart. In short, it is too painful to live. In the end, it will bleed to death from the seven orifices. The way of death is extremely tragic.

As for miasma, it is poisonous gas produced by rotting animals and plants in the tropical rainforest. Miasma is also called miasma mother. It often accumulates in mountain jungles. Intangible and transparent as air.Miasma is extremely mysterious, and it can be divided into two types. One is formed by flying mosquitoes and belongs to biological groups, and the other is poisonous gas, including marsh gas.

A gust of wind blows by, and if passers-by pass by the miasma, or smell a fishy, ​​sometimes sweet smell, the people and animals affected by the miasma will immediately fall ill.Departing from Guangzhou this time, Guo Nuan went to the market to buy a few bottles of realgar wine and some coix seed, which can prevent miasma poisoning after taking these food cooking wines.

Guo Nuan drove by Litchi Mountain. There are dense clusters of ancient litchi trees growing on the mountain. Most of the old trees are 60 to [-] years old. At this moment, it is late autumn in September, and the fruiting season is already past. If the litchi trees are full of trees in April The branches, like red round gemstones, are extremely attractive.

Lingnan is rich in lychees, which taste fresh and sweet, and the flesh is crystal clear, but they are not easy to preserve and are very perishable. If you want to eat Lingnan lychees in Chang’an, which is thousands of miles away, you have to transport them quickly and enjoy them as special offerings from the imperial court, just like Xuanzong’s concubine Yang. Yuhuan is famous for eating Lingnan lychees in history. There is a saying that "a concubine who rides the world of mortals smiles, and no one knows that it is lychees."

Passing Shili Litchi Mountain, there is a waterfall hanging under the mountain, and there is a deep and clear pool under the water curtain. The stone scales in the pool are scattered and protrude from the water surface. If you look carefully, there are groups of green carp swimming among the aquatic plants at the bottom of the pool.

Several people got out of the car to a clear spring next to the pool, took a cup of spring water to quench their thirst, then washed their hair and arms, and felt the rushing and tilting hundred-foot waterfall above their heads, and the flying waves scattered into water mist accompanied by a huge roar.

Continue on the road, pass the Chengzhou stele boundary, and look down the cliff of the road. There is a Qinghe River below. Squatting under the scorching sun to collect sand by the river, I saw that each person was washing the sand with a pottery pot. Yan Zhuang knew a lot about the geography and humanities of various places. The pottery is the gold miner.

Go south for another hundred miles and come to Lianzhou on the coast. This place is close to the coast. There are dozens of islands in the sea. There are pearl ponds on the island. The water in the pond is deep and blue. In the mature season, the local governor will go to the island with the pearl supervisor, and the pearl divers sent by the government will go to the island pool to dive and salvage mussels to obtain seawater pearls.

Guo Nuan and his party settled down to rest at the inn in Lianzhou County. The pearls traded here are large, round and plump, and they are shiny and milky white.Guo Nuan bought 9 pearls from the sea pearl shop near the inn, each of which was of the highest quality with a diameter of over [-] mm. He planned to return to Chang'an to make a pearl necklace for his wife and mother each.

On the third day after they left Guangzhou, they had traveled more than 600 miles and came to Longzhou. There is a kind of ore called amethyst, a kind of fluorite, which is brittle and hard. The ore is a lavender crystal that can be ground into powder. Add vinegar to make potion, decoct and take it orally, it has the effect of calming the mind, especially for pregnant women.

Guo Nuan thought about Shengping who was pregnant, so she simply bought three catties of amethyst sand from a stall in the local market, and when she arrived in Leizhou, she used the post station to quickly transport the powder to Chang'an.

The next stop was Guangxi. The four of Guo Nuan couldn't find a place to stay in the wilderness, so they had to stay at the Orion's house by the roadside. The Orion's family was very hospitable. The family had a man, a wife, and a five-year-old boy. The male host is a local Han nationality who speaks Cantonese, which is the Cantonese of later generations, which belongs to the language similar to Guangzhou vernacular and Hong Kong dialect. The female is from the Li nationality.

Guo Nuan worked in a foreign company in Hong Kong for a period of time in his previous life, and he learned to speak Cantonese. When he communicated with Orion's family fluently in Cantonese, Yan Zhuang, Ah Fu and Fatty all stared in disbelief. They didn't understand a sentence, and they didn't expect Guo Nuan to speak Lingnan dialect at all.

Orion has been hunting in the mountains for many years. He is very familiar with the conditions of the high mountains in Guangxi. He likes to share anecdotes and strange things with guests like Guo Nuan. The male hunter said that there are sperm centipedes in the mountains here. A few villagers caught a large centipede with a length of three feet and eight feet in a net cage in a deep pool in the mountain forest. After disemboweling and dissection, they took out a strange and bright pearl from the centipede, which was as big as the mouth of a bowl!

It is expected that there is a freshwater river leading to the sea in Changxi. This giant centipede contains pearls cultivated in its belly. It is estimated that it dived into the sea along the river to catch pearl mussels and swallowed them. Such a huge pearl, I heard that the pearl was later purchased by a wealthy timber merchant in Guangxi with a huge sum of 60 yuan, and these villagers became rich overnight.

Although it is difficult for Guo Nuan to imagine the giant centipede more than 20 years ago, Guo Nuan and the others saw the centipede used by Orion's family to make wine. Centipede, such a long centipede also surprised Guo Nuan and the others. The fat man said that he lived in the Guanzhong Mountains, and he had only met a one-foot-long centipede. Little witch.