The old woman invited Luo Binhan to climb onto the wooden frame and sit side by side with her to talk. However, the wooden frame looked very weak and was being supported by four savages on their shoulders. This mysterious sense of status made Luo Binhan feel very uncomfortable. , as if he was participating in some kind of night tour of ghosts and goblins.
He declined the invitation and marched alongside the wooden frame. This caused a barrier to communication between them. The woman was too old. The few simple conversations they had when they first met seemed to have exhausted her energy, leaving her unable to speak loudly anymore. During the rest of the journey, she just squinted her eyes quietly and looked ahead as if sleeping. Luo Binhan was thinking a lot, taking advantage of this silence to look at these horribly old "prophets".
They were almost decaying to the point of losing their human form, and would no longer be able to engage in farming, fishing or hunting, but at the same time they received extraordinary courtesy, which was really a luxury for a primitive society. But then again, it's amazing enough that these old people have survived to this age. Luo Binhan felt strongly that he knew too little about these savage tribes and was not even sure whether they had private ownership - this was related to how long "Brother Little Box" could own his iron box.
After they climbed a low mountain, the marching team paused to rest. Luo Binhan finally got alone with the old woman. He sat outside the wooden frame and looked at her face to face.
Most of these old people have bald heads, or only a few dry and fine braids remain. Among them, the old woman's hair has been preserved well and has not turned gray. The light brown color proves her unique ancestry.
"You're not from here, are you?" Luo Binhan asked bluntly.
The old woman squinted at him and nodded slowly.
"Why are you here?"
"Fate," said the old woman, "has led me here, uniting the paths of two stars into one."
The tone of her voice was like a prophet's, but there was no trace of another world. Luo Binhan weighed all the questions in his mind and picked out the one he was most concerned about right now.
"You said you had a daughter before," he demanded. "Do you still remember her name? Tell me about her in detail. How did she die?"
The old lady stared at the light of the bonfire for a while.
"I have almost forgotten it." She confided in a low voice. "In the past, I investigated a tobacco company's products in order to prosecute their products and came to the birthplace of the leaf. I met her father in a nearby town. I never thought about getting married, but I had a daughter with him. The memory of marriage is very blurry. But I still remember the last day I stayed there - darkness fell that day, and the two people I loved most could not escape bad luck. They both I stayed there forever, and I and the last Yukimura were taken away by these saints. What a distant memory, the darkness pretended to be his and my daughter that day, trying every possible means to trick me into staying. He hugged me Weeping bitterly, kissing my legs and feet, taking the opportunity to seep the darkness into me. But by then I had seen through their disguise and drove them away with the sacred leaves."
Luo Binhan looked at her bare legs. The fracture was hidden under the cloth cover, but the neat outline of the section was still visible.
"So, they broke your leg?"
"No," the old woman said leisurely, "Darkness, what it eats is the blazing light, not flesh and blood. It takes away my compatriots in order to cover up its fragile womb. But mortals are powerless, we I could only run away, run away, all the way from my hometown into the mountains. In the process, my legs were irreversibly eroded, and the saints had to help me purify them... Ah, there were many people present at that time. , Xili, Sandra, Du Mu, I still remember each of my companions who escaped together, and now, I am the only one left."
As she spoke, Luo Binhan watched quietly as the shadow of the torch danced across the ground. He thought of many things that he had never thought about before, but none of them seemed surprising. In the end, he asked the old woman: "Why you? Of all the people who fled, you are the only one who has survived to this day?"
The old woman's hanging skin pulled again. With an expression that was almost joyful, she put her hand into the useless loose collar, groped back and forth, and finally took out a ball of dark green dried leaves in Luo Binhan's astonished eyes.
"Holy leaf," she said, "I came here initially to prove that it was the devil's bait, but in the end I was saved by its holy power. Even the darkness will be drunk in dreams, and then they will be careless and uncontrollable. To the souls of the dead, truth is the greatest pain, more painful than any weapon or tooth.”
"But that's not enough to kill them, is it?"
"No one can kill darkness." said the old woman. "It gives birth to flesh and blood, but it is not flesh and blood. It brings death, but it will not die itself. You can only coexist with it until the eternal light comes."
Luo Binhan shook his head. He has heard many fairy tales, but still does not believe that the eternal light will exist.
"Eternal light can only exist in individuals at most." He said to the old woman, "There has never been eternal light in this world."
"The past has not been," the old woman replied, "but the future is coming."
"What the hell is this prophecy, or is it your own idea?"
"It's fate."
Luo Binhan shrugged nonchalantly and said, "Then can you really predict?"
"What do you want to know?"
"Tomorrow's weather." Luo Binhan said, "Tell me, will it be sunny tomorrow morning?"
It was hard to tell whether this was a prophecy, but when the old woman looked up at the sky for a while, she gave Luo Binhan a very definite answer. This suited Luo Binhan's needs, so he decided not to pursue the rationale.
"Since the weather is good tomorrow." Luo Binhan continued to tell her, "You can get up early, go for a walk outside and look at the rising sun."
The old woman's gaze was a bit funny. She looked at Luo Binhan teasingly, and then patted her broken leg.
"Just understand the spirit." Luo Binhan said, "Why are you so picky about words? If you are not satisfied with the walk, just let someone else take the walk for you."
He left when the savages set off again, parted ways with the old lady with a broken leg, and returned to his aircraft. As soon as he sat down, Fina, who was hiding on his back, climbed down and sneakily touched the ring between his fingers with her claws.
Luo Binhan touched its head, wondering why that boring thing could keep it happy. Then he remembered that when Fina drank the fragrance of domestication, this unlucky ring was the first thing to surprise her. Could this be some kind of nestling effect?
He decided to do some experiments another day, such as asking Yaleriga to make the sound of the ring more special, which might cure Fina's problem with playing with the ring. This idea still echoed in his mind when he returned to the Silence. He took off the ring and put it into the cage with Fina, and then returned Li Li's black box to the warehouse. After doing all this, he came to the room with the burgundy ponytail and asked ∈ to unlock the door.
The burgundy ponytail jumped out from inside and hung on him with a murderous look.
"Where did you go?" she asked angrily, "You want ten mushrooms and you keep me here? And you smell like a woman!"
Luo Binhan pulled her off him and said, "You know she's a woman again."
"Bah, you're so weak." The wine-red ponytail said sarcastically, "You can't even sleep with a man!"
Luo Binhan was too lazy to argue with her on such a win-or-lose topic. He directly grabbed the other person's arm and said: "Do you still want to see the savages? If so, be obedient to me, otherwise I will ask you to pick ten cordyceps right now, and you stay here for me until spring and autumn come." "
This time the burgundy ponytail finally shut up. Luo Binhan let out a very comfortable breath and pulled her out of the door.
"Where are you taking me? To an empty warehouse?"
"Look for your mother." Luo Binhan said.
