Chapter 199: Rest without Borders
When he went home at night, he didn't tell his mother about it, and he didn't know what he was thinking at the time - the world of children is always so weird. My mother made the same clam soup, but today she was happy to say that there were two very small sea cucumbers left that could not be sold. She stewed them into the soup and urged him to try them.
He felt very full and had no appetite at all. The two or three mouthfuls of raw "fish" meat swelled in the stomach like a water-absorbing sponge, filling the intestines and stomach. In order not to disappoint his mother, he still took a few sips and found it tasteless. He dealt with it for a while and then said he was going to bed. His mother was still worried, thinking he was sick.
He was obviously very sleepy at night, but he couldn't fall asleep and tossed and turned. He didn't eat a lot, just the normal intake for a teenager, and he didn't feel it had any special taste at the time. It is not as delicious as fresh fish, nor is it as unpalatable as rotten fish. He still remembered the texture of the meat, neither firm nor loose, just different from any fish and shrimp he had ever eaten. As for the taste, it's not as alluring as it smells.
But now, his memory is always beautifying that moment. The farther away he was from that moment, the more profound his impression of it became. The smell has become so fragrant that I can't help but salivate just thinking about it. He ate a lot of food in the future, but they all tasted tasteless to him, as if his appetite had been spoiled at that time. He could no longer get satisfaction and happiness from any food. Although he remembered it clearly, it probably didn't taste so delicious at that time.
"The shark meat has deprived you of your sense of taste." Liu Shenghan said, "I have heard of very few examples... The sensation of shark meat in everyone's mouth is different. Some people think it is delicious, some people think it smells bad, and you think it's delicious. It's as plain as water. But there may be another possibility, that is, it was an extremely delicious delicacy in your mouth, but because of the lack of supplies at the time and your long-term fasting, you were unable to detect and understand the taste at the time. As you As I smelled and ate more and more things, I gradually realized what it was like to taste at that time.”
"Maybe... I think so too. But it doesn't matter anymore. I have forever lost my ability to understand the concept of 'deliciousness'. Only when I taste food that makes others fascinated, I feel that it has some taste. "
Only then did they realize that Priest Chu didn't eat much either at the last banquet or this time. I thought that like many monks and Taoists, he was unmoved by worldly things like food. It turned out that he was not interested at all.
"Is losing the sense of taste the curse of the sharks?" Aoyan asked.
"No...immortality is."
"Oh My God……"
"Eating shark meat will keep you away from death. If you don't suffer fatal injuries, it is impossible to just wait for yourself to grow old and die." Chu Tianhe stated quietly, "But at that time, few people knew this. That's right. The sharks at that time were also very afraid of people, because people would capture them and sacrifice them to the king. But it was just a novelty. If most people knew that it had such an effect, they would probably find ways to do it very early. Drive them all away and kill them all... There is a legend about the sharks, I believe you have heard it from them."
Several people nodded.
Chu Tianhe continued. After that, he only relied on the minimum food supply to keep himself from starving to death. As he grew up, he never mentioned this matter to anyone, and he never saw any sharks, living or dead. When he was in his twenties, he said goodbye to his mother and boarded a merchant ship that had just opened navigation to the northern continent. It is said that it is a vast land, full of wealth and opportunities of one kind or another.
Twenty without regrets. He made a lot of decisions, met a lot of people, experienced a lot of things, and learned a lot of things. He has worked in many jobs: from boatman, fisherman, tracker, to horseman, butcher, porter... He is a very motivated person, especially after seeing real prosperity, he is even more unwilling to be a frog in the gutter for the rest of his life - ah , at that time, he did not know that he had an almost eternal lifespan.
Standing at thirty. When he was thirty-two years old, he met his father, a carpenter who taught him for the longest time. By chance, he learned that his senior father had been a bandit on a certain mountain when he was young. After checking some things with each other, Chu Tianhe found that he was most likely his father's brother. The teacher’s father himself has no children, so
He returned to his hometown to do carpentry after the air traffic between the two places was established. Once when they were passing by a fortune-telling stall, the two of them were stopped by a charlatan who said that the child would be auspicious and would live a long life. The teacher was very happy, so he paid for it and asked his husband to give him a name. Because the teacher's father is different from his biological father, who only has a nickname and no surname. The master's surname was Chu, and the husband said that he was short of luck in life, so he was given the surname Chu as well, and he was officially adopted as his adopted son - although their relationship was more like a close friendship. The name is not important, because it is too ordinary, and he can't remember it even now. However, the teacher's father was ill-fated. He fainted while working and fell from a shelf on the third floor. He broke his head and shattered the ground.
No confusion at forty. But at this age, he still has many unanswered questions, and he still feels that there is endless knowledge in this world that needs to be learned. He doesn't have a wife, that's not to say he hasn't met one. Before he was forty, he took money very seriously, was busy with all kinds of jobs, had no fixed place to live, and paid no attention to his wife, children, and heirs. When he was in his early forties, he saved some money and saw that all his former friends of the same age had wives and even children, and a family of three or four was enjoying the joy of family life. It is impossible not to envy nature, so I leave it to the matchmaker. There was a girl in her twenties. Her husband died and she remarried. We had agreed, but the girl's family took it all together and felt that he had not even saved enough money for a house in his forties, was unreliable, and regretted the marriage. There is also a girl in her thirties who has nothing wrong with her except that she is a little stupid, which doesn't matter. Unexpectedly, during the visit, the girl turned from stupid to crazy, suddenly went crazy and bit him, and this time the marriage was in vain. He later felt that he didn't have to marry a wife and have children, it was just that everyone around him was doing it. If he didn't do it, he wouldn't die. Why should he spend the rest of his life doing something that he was actually unprepared for?
At fifty you know your destiny. When he was fifty years old, his mother, who had worked hard all his life, died of illness. He doesn't usually exchange many letters with his mother because he was illiterate in the past. Although he has learned a little now, his mother still can't read. So, they just sent some things to each other, and asked couriers or coworkers to deliver messages. Moreover, in the past thirty years, he often went on business with others, constantly traveling back and forth across the sea between the two places. One day, a co-worker who had worked together at sea returned to his hometown and found that his mother had died of illness at home, so he immediately wrote a letter to inform him of his return. He came back in a hurry and held a scruffy funeral. According to custom, he pushed his mother, who would never leave this beach again in her life, onto a raft dedicated to Poseidon. The people there firmly believe that Lord Poseidon will accept all lives fairly. He knew more about faith and had a mediocre view on this matter, but his mother firmly believed in it. He grieved for a while, like all ordinary people who lose their mothers.
At sixty, my ears are smooth. He is neither sad nor happy, and still lives a mediocre life. Over the years, he has met many fortune tellers, monks and Taoists, and he has also calculated many hexagrams, most of which were contradictory to each other. You can imagine how many scammers are involved. What the fortune tellers said the most was that he was destined to have a wife, and he never married anyone else - anyway, he never liked anyone. More people did say that he had a long life and could live to be one hundred and twenty years old, which made him laugh at the time. However, maybe it’s quite accurate? In the past sixty years, he has never had any serious illness, and now he feels very strong. He made a few friends with whom he often interacted, and after ten or twenty years, they also passed away one after another. Sometimes he attended their funerals, sometimes he didn't - he was too poor to do so.
At seventy, do whatever your heart desires.
He met an expert, a fairy girl who looked to be in her fifties. The fairy said that he had a long and almost infinite time, and even directly asked him if he had eaten anything that he should not have eaten. He thought about it again and again, and recalled that everything he ate in his life was tasteless. It must have been the meat given to the sharks back then. The fairy aunt suggested that he find some immortals to give guidance and make more connections with immortals. Although his life span is extremely long, his appearance will continue to age with age, and his body bones will become fragile. If he looks even skinnier and scarier than a centenarian, I'm afraid he won't be favored by others. So he followed the fairy aunt's advice to get to know the immortals and learn the magic of immortality. At the age of 60, he finally learned how to disguise himself and transformed himself back into a young man. By consuming a variety of medicinal elixirs and constantly practicing magical arts and martial arts, he was finally reborn and regained a young body for his old soul. It was also at that time that an immortal who gave him guidance gave him a name and changed his name to Tianhe.
Naturally, human beings cannot cross the gap between heaven and earth, and the same is true for immortals. It's just that through practice, you can get hundreds of years more time than ordinary people, and then you can show your dignity with a decent appearance.
The child is buried. But he himself actually had a time that even immortals would envy.
But he still felt more alone than ever.
What's good? Only those who have no desires or pursuits can become immortals, but pursuing longevity and being greedy for life and afraid of death, isn't this the greatest greed? He couldn't understand it, and there was much more he couldn't understand. Wandering among the crowd, listening to the cries and laughter of children and the playfulness of young men and women made him feel extremely noisy. He didn't bother to have these things...even though he never had. He missed the age of understanding these things, and they never came again.
It doesn’t matter, it’s not a valuable thing worth mentioning…
After learning that his lifespan was longer than that of those immortals, he felt even more bored. At least the former could still do meaningful things in their limited time, no matter for others or themselves. He feels that he may be a "submissive" person, and he can accept it calmly and even cheerfully no matter what happens. He has lived a full human life...and this life continues with no end in sight. He has traveled to many places, including his parents' hometown and his own birthplace, and even visited more distant countries. He has heard many grand histories and witnessed many small stories.
From the initial surprise, to the accustomed calmness, to the vague boredom, and now the insensitivity. Can humans break through the limitations of species? Maybe not, the shackles of human nature restrict too many things. Dynasties change, city-states rise and fall; myths return, legends reappear... No matter what you see, hear, touch or say, the bigger it becomes, the more empty it becomes; the smaller it becomes, the more nothingness it becomes. Human beings repeat the sad past again and again, and stage the meaningless farce of old and new wine bottles.
He is acting out of confusion, and he is not sincere because he is confused. Time has passed and circumstances have changed, but we are still the lonely wild goose. Everything begins and ends.
There is nothing new on the dusty web.
No family, no lovers, not even friends - and can't have any. No one can accompany someone whose life is longer than their own. Regardless of the moment of separation or death, it is hard to say whether they can persist until then. What's more, this empty heart can't be filled with anything. Over time, nothing can be put in.
He also visited many people, people who were outside the world. Scholars are immersed in inquiry and can still be intoxicated by the endless flow of knowledge; believers can also find comfort in fantasy and longing by worshiping gods and Buddhas. He had nothing, nothing to understand. He didn't have his own god...but he met a "god", one of the two people he rarely remembered deeply.
One was the Gandharva, the god of incense who had not yet ascended the throne at that time.
"This kind of fragrant pill can bring people back to life." He was holding something in one hand, and there was one in the other hand. "And this is the resurrecting pill. It is an imitation made by the northern continent in our name. It's nothing. It can be used, but it can only temporarily bring back a few strands of the soul of the deceased, which will soon dissipate. And our soul-returning incense can regenerate skin, flesh and bones. The skin is in tatters, so what is the use of the afterimage of the soul? With our It’s nothing more than an illusion.”
"What if someone accidentally eats it?" Chu Tianhe asked.
"This little resurrecting pill can temporarily calm the souls of humans that are about to dissipate, but it's not very useful. You know, humans are very fragile, right? But the living must be careful with my resurrecting incense. There are sharks in it. The bone powder is used as a medicine." The Gandharva looked at him meaningfully, "You and I are destined, so I will give you one, but you must use it properly."
And the other one is a painter.
"If a painting is properly preserved, it can be stored for thousands of years. Paintings preserve beautiful things in this moment forever. The same goes for people."
"But he can't speak or move."
"People who always live in a certain moment must be lonely, right? It's no different from a painting."
"...Then would you be willing to make a painting that can both talk and move?"
"Huh? Let me think about it...if that's the case, maybe it's pretty good, right?"
This painter aroused Chu Tianhe's slight interest. After all, he was different from the people he had seen over the years. It would be great if the painter could survive forever. He really wanted to have a friend he could talk to.
But it was a pity that the painter died, and he never thought of it. They didn't know each other for long...and he was alone again.
He is the lonely eternal being.
He is the original lost one.
