"Would you like to buy some practical things? I'll need them down there." The old hawker rummaged through the piles of sundries stacked on the wooden boards of the dry well. There were all kinds of strange things, including a broken telescope, an old black fan, and some There were snacks and dry food that had been there for who knows how long, and there were also some weird things that I couldn’t tell what they were.
Wei Jing picked for a long time, first bought some dry food for his luggage, then bought a few cups of herbal tea to fill the kettle, and then picked up a fan. He thought that there was a musty smell in the area, and if it went "underground", it might be even worse. It's not breathable, so it's good to have a fan to fan yourself.
Wei Jing paid the full amount and still stood there stupidly. The old vendor asked, "What else do you want to buy?"
Wei Jing asked timidly: "Does the dry well on Qishui Street refer to this well? Can you please, old gentleman, lift up the wooden board so that I can "go down"?"
"This is really my first time here!" The old vendor smiled hoarsely, pointed to the dilapidated house on the side and said, "Go over there!"
Wei Jing smiled awkwardly, holding Ah Xi and pushing open the wooden door. He saw that the floor in the hut was empty, and there was a large ladder diagonally deep into the ground.
"This is really strange..." Wei Jing couldn't help but feel a little scared when he saw that the ladder was bottomless. After hesitating for a while, he took a deep breath and then stepped down the stairs.
The stairs are dark and long, with huge pillars and beams on both sides from time to time. Towering wood is the strongest wood in the world, and it is the most stable as the beam of the underground street.
The stairs seemed to be as high as ten floors. As Wei Jing walked, he became more and more tired. Ah Xi in his arms kept moving because of the discomfort. Wei Jing had to stop and sit on the wall of the stairs to rest. .
At this time, the long staircase was silent and dark, and the only sound was the sound of footsteps gradually getting closer and further away. It took a long time before one or two people passed by Wei Jing.
Wei Jing was frightened in his heart, and clutched the bag tighter and tighter. Suddenly something occurred to him, he opened the bag and fumbled around, and suddenly shouted: "My 'little Wei' is missing!"
"Ah, it must be that bitch!" Wei Jing shouted. It turned out that the doll given to him by Wen Yuxue disappeared for no reason. He remembered that during the chase in the alley last night, Bei Xiaolu once snatched away his baggage and still held it in his hand. Looking around and playing around. While hiding in the bamboo basket, I heard from the Tianlong Dihu Gang that the head of Feixue Villa was a big thief. The big thief should be the old woman, and Bei Xiaolu was the old woman's granddaughter.
Wei Jing remembered that when he and Bei Xiaolu met for the first time last night, Bei Xiaolu also stole some night pearl from Mrs. Wei, and was captured by the Wei family's servants. Bei Xiaolu was obviously a powerful thief. He must have offended her verbally. She held a grudge in her heart. Although she listened to her grandmother and returned the baggage, she still secretly touched the doll.
"Damn it, it's so damned, it's all the way down the Feixue Villa!" Wei Jing cursed angrily, the fear in his heart lessening. After resting for a long time, he picked up Ah Xi and started walking down again.
After walking and walking for a long time, the stairs appeared to be divided, some leading to the same floor on both sides, and some continuing downward.
Wei Jing finally saw the wider and parallel passage. He lowered his head and saw that the stairs leading down were even darker, so he stopped going down and turned to the fork in front.
It was a long and dark road, with walls on both sides made of mud, stone and mud bricks, and there were some thick and towering wooden pillars as foundation beams at intervals.
On the walls on both sides of the passage, you can occasionally see some dark broken windows and old signboards, which really look like streets buried underground.
The long road seems to be endless. Only at very far distances will an oil lamp appear on the wall, barely providing some light. And every once in a while, there will be branch roads leading to both sides. As we walk, we will see all around us. There are also more people.
Wei Jing saw some vagrants lying around in the corner, so he followed suit and found a cleaner corner to sit down, placing Ah Xi next to him - neither he nor Ah Xi had the strength to continue walking.
He kept fanning himself, feeling that the musty smell around him was so heavy that it almost suffocated him, but the fan itself carried a thick musty smell, and the more he fanned it, the worse the smell became.
He took out dry food and herbal tea and shared them with Axi. While eating, he stretched out his hand to touch the stone wall and wooden pillars. There were some writings on them, mostly meaningless graffiti words. The writing was old and dated. There were also some sentences with understandable meanings mixed in, such as "Zhang XX, Tian XX" "A certain year, a certain month, I made a vow of love at this moment..." or "Captain Li of the fourth team, led the whole team of 16 brothers, stood firm and annihilated more than 60 enemies..." etc.
After eating the dry food, Wei Jing leaned against the wall in a daze, stroking the mottled marks on the wall, fantasizing wildly, and unknowingly dozed off, gently brushing Ah Xi's back, and spent his first night in this underground street. .
*******************
"Is today the second day or the third day? There is no daylight in this underground street. I don't know whether it is day or night. This is not the way to go..." Wei Jing pulled up his pants. He had just walked in the underground street. He used the corner of the empty room to relieve himself and buried it with the sand in the corner.
After a long period of daze, he would lose his temper and get up to move around. He found that the empty houses on both sides of the street had not been inhabited for a long time. They were even more dilapidated and smelled so bad that he almost suffocated, and he couldn't see his fingers out of his hand. Only then did he understand why the homeless people along the long road would rather nest in the corners with tiny lights hanging on them than live in houses. Those lights are few and precious, and there are always more homeless people occupying them. No one can quietly steal the lights back to the empty house and keep them for themselves.
He returned to Ah Xi. After two or three days of rest, Ah Xi's broken leg slowly recovered, and she could at least sniff around with a limp on three legs.
Wei Jing looked at the baggage and saw that all the dry food and herbal tea had been eaten. He and Axi were both starving. At this time, he had been in the underground streets for two or three days. He was no longer so scared, but became a little curious, so he led Axi and started walking deeper.
After walking for a long time, he was surprised that on both sides of the long passage, there were gradually more and more people doing business, and some businesses were gradually visible, selling beef pies, pork buns and other foods. Most of the rooms on both sides of the street are occupied, unlike the empty houses in the front area.
Wei Jing was so hungry that he didn't care whether those pies and steamed buns were as smelly as the tea from the old vendor above. He strode towards a shop selling pies, not caring that the shop was old and dim and the surroundings were dirty and greasy. He took out the money to buy some beef pies and ate them.
"Huh?" Wei Jing was a little surprised. Although the pie was not delicious, it was not as hard to swallow as expected. He chewed heavily and ate several pieces of pie at once. He also fed Ah Xi two pieces, and asked the boss for two bowls of water, one for each of Ah Xi, and drank them.
After eating and drinking, Wei Jing wiped his mouth and felt better, so he continued walking forward. The next two or three streets are more lively, with more people moving around, and occasionally children can be seen playing around.
Wei Jing walked around curiously and saw all kinds of strange shops on both sides. There were shops selling snake soup and snake soup; there were shops selling strange toys; there were also some drug stores where bottles and jars were full of strange poisonous insects, including centipedes. There are several cabinets. Wei Jing stuck out his tongue, thinking that most of these centipedes might have been caught from all corners of this underground street that extended in all directions!
Wei Jing noticed that some shops or even houses that were close to each other would have flags of the same color or pattern hanging outside their doors, indicating that they belonged to the same sphere of influence.
Another phenomenon that struck him as strange was that every household, regardless of its sphere of influence, had two or three pots of strange grass placed inside and outside the door. He noticed that part of the strange smell in the entire underground street came from these pots of strange grass. The grass is mixed with the old musty smell that has accumulated in the entire underground lake for many years.
The first store is quite gorgeously decorated. Although it is not as good as the bustling merchants in the city center above ground, it still looks particularly eye-catching in this old underground city. At least the few luminous pearl lights outside the burgundy lacquered wooden door. It's very shiny and charming.
A beige linen flag was hung at the door of the store. The pattern on it was two crossed scimitars.
A few children with runny noses gathered outside the store and chatted. Wei Jing also joined them. Most of the stores sold dolls. The fat boss sat on a bamboo chair in the store with a smile, waving a fan to cool the air. .
