Before the Silence landed, Yaleriga estimated the various situations they would encounter. She felt in her heart that this might not go well. However, the investigation progressed smoothly after landing.
That's literal. They followed the wind of the land. They had met people who looked so similar to Bodie and Yi that they were almost indistinguishable. They also used an almost identical set of gestures, with only a few words differing: they used a different gesture to refer to the ground beneath their feet, and when Bodie asked about the Ageless Man, he never seemed to know. pass the word. In addition, most of them were surprised by Bodie's clothing. That's because it's as cold as its name suggests.
Yaleriga brought the golden ball and photography equipment found from the base. She showed the images of Jin Qiu and Ji Xun to everyone she met on the road. She would also ask if she had seen a boy who looked very similar to the image, but was much younger.
No one recognized the golden ball, but when they saw the image, their reactions surprised Yaleriga. At least half of the people claimed to know the person in the portrait. And even if they didn't make any assertions, they thought based on the character's ears and dress that this was a character they had heard of often in the past.
"Mr. Ji." They uttered these syllables in the awkward and unfamiliar alliance language. They believed that the syllable itself was a name.
Where is his residence? Yaleriga asked. Everyone points in the same direction. Follow the wind and current. This seems to be completely public news.
They traveled more by aircraft and did not worry about the sightings of the residents, because Yaleriga expected that there would be no threats here, and she was also worried that staying too long would cause Bodi and Yi's rhythmic disease.
However, both Bodie and Yi adapted surprisingly well to their environment. During the dozens of hours of travel, none of them showed any physical discomfort.
On the last leg of their journey to the destination, Bodi became silent, always sitting in the last position of the aircraft, staring at the land outside the window with gloomy eyes. And Yi is full of novelty in this new world. He often chatted with Yaleriga, who was driving the aircraft, and asked her if she could learn to use this kind of chariot. His fear of Qiaoqiao Tianyi also gradually disappeared during the journey. When the latter spread its wings and soared around the aircraft, his eyes always followed it through the window.
The flight ends where the water originates. That's not the edge of the world, but a towering mountain. The peak stone of Dengzhi releases a constant and cold blue light. At high altitudes away from rivers, moisture condenses into frost and transparent ice, leaving little snow and even harder to find permafrost. Here, sandy land is always regarded as a precious resource. Hardy aquatic plants became a source of food and feed.
At the foot of the high ground that calmed the wind, next to a stone pond, they found an old sound plumber and several of his family members. Because of his past contributions, this old man has a phonetic name called "Zha". Yaleriga showed the golden ball and the image to the Zha family, and their reaction was the same as everyone else: they didn't recognize the golden ball, but they were familiar with "Mr. Ji".
Where is his residence? Yaleriga still asked.
Zha raised his wrinkled face and looked at these strangers. His exposed face and hands bear many horrific scars, and there are some obvious deformities in the joints. He was certainly no match for this group of tall, strong young outsiders, but his reaction was as bland as the others.
He gestured for them to follow him, then grabbed a sonic lamp filled with ore and led them to the high ground. After only about four or five hundred steps, under a desolate rock covered with thin frost, they saw a simple house made of hardened grass-based laminates and rock beams. It was no different from Zha's residence in terms of materials, but its area was much smaller.
Everyone stopped when Zha took out the house key. The old plumber unscrewed the simple and rusty iron lock and walked into the house as naturally as the owner. He put the lamp on the only square table with grass base in the room, grabbed the ice bricks and sweet spices from the locker, and heated a few cups of hot water on the electric stove. Except for Qiaoqiao Tianyi who pretended to be a beast of burden covered with a thick blanket and eagerly peeked through the crack in the door, the other three people walked in and sat down on the only bench. It was not prepared for three guests, so Yi looked particularly uneasy next to Yaleriga.
He entrusted this place to my care. Zha told them with gestures. Many years ago, when his sister was born, "Mr. Ji" came here from the uninhabited other side of the highlands and built this house according to the local customs. That was a year when no collectors came to visit, the wind was biting and life was tiring and hard, so no one cared where he came from. People occasionally mentioned the new residents who appeared on the edge of the highlands, and he quietly joined this vast land.
The exact time of his appearance is not known, as he hardly left home, not even to the market. Zha, who was not old enough to work at that time, was the first person to walk into the simple, box-like house. While playing around, he lost a valuable mineral and could never find it. When his parents talked about this incident, they criticized him for being playful and dismissive, but they could not find the missing mineral.
Maybe it was picked up by the person who lived on the far side. They concluded this. It was just a compromise to give up the search. But somehow, this idea was deeply ingrained in Zha's heart. During a certain period when his family was resting, he slipped out of the room and walked along the ice-covered path until he came to the permanently closed door of the single house.
He knocked on the door. From behind the door appeared a sullen and unimpressive face. An ordinary middle-aged man. Even though he looked as unfriendly as every adult in the place, he allowed Za to come in and sit for a while.
Most of the things in the house of the solitary man were very simple, but some of them were interesting to the children. Zha noticed that some papers on the table were whiter and more delicate than the grass stems and leaves composite paper he usually saw. There are also some fragments of ore, although they are not the ones he lost, but the color and luster have never been seen before.
At that time, he did not know the laws and codes, and he had never seen how collectors punished those who hid minerals. With the innocence of a child, Za asked the solitary man, wanting to know which cave those minerals were found from. The owner of the house told him with signs that those were not obtained from the ground.
"Synthetics," the homeowner said.
Zha didn't recognize those syllables. But anything that could be referred to by syllables, he knew, must be a name. When he went back and told his parents the truth, he saw their parents' horrified expressions. They asked Zha to pretend not to know about it unless the collectors asked him about it.
He began to understand something.
In the second year after Zha entered the house where he lived alone, the collectors followed the wind and water and visited each house. They hung the people they captured on the road with chains on the bottom of the chariot. All the children who saw this scene knew better.
The gatherers heard about the new arrival, and rumors that he never went to the market, and swarmed toward the edge of the mountain. When people saw the queue of chariots flying in the sky with long strings of people hanging on them, they all covered their doors and windows as equal and silent as the land, waiting for the chariots to return from the direction they went.
No one can explain exactly what happened that day. Collectors are known to be unafraid of sharp objects, heat, or electric shock. Their skin is covered with mineral bones, and they have eyes that are naturally capable of emitting electric shocks. These envoys come from the dark abyss above and are responsible for accumulating the crystallization of light from the earth. They sacrificed minerals to Krishna to prevent him from going mad with excessive jealousy and swallowing the entire land.
Naturally, sacrifice is very important.
They described the wrath of Black Sky, which first dropped countless electric currents thicker than an arm, sweeping away the houses on the ground that concealed light; then sent fire monsters flying in the wind to evaporate all water sources; and finally, the darkness that destroyed all life All life will die in the poisonous breath it spits out.
Of course, obedience is very necessary.
All residents who kept their doors and windows closed could vouch for their complete compliance. However, on that day, the angry sound of Krishna shot from the ground to the sky. The terrifying light passed through the cracks in the house, turning the mountains and everything in the house into black and white. That huge sound was different from the eternal noise of the earth groaning in the darkness that they heard every day and were already accustomed to. It was like a hammer hammering violently on the soul.
The chariot with its long hanging string did not return.
