Chapter 12 Section 1

My story has another beginning, and this beginning is written on another stack of manuscript paper.As mentioned above, there are a lot of manuscript papers piled up and down on the incense table. If all the writing is about the beginning, it will completely confuse me——During the late Tang Dynasty, Xue Song camped on the hillside in western Hunan.At first, he dug trenches on the hillside and erected fences, but after only one rainy season, the trenches were silted up by sand and turned into a circular depression, and the fences were also eaten by termites.At first glance, the tree trunks planted on the hillside look the same except that they are lifeless from the rain; when you look closely, you can see that they are half trees and half mud.The thick and thin wood at the mouth of the bowl will break if you push it with your hand, which is far from the obstacles used in the military.Because termites are hidden in the soil and cannot be seen, Xue Song believes that the most hateful thing on this hillside is rain.

During the dry season, Xue Song cut down bamboo from afar to build a shed on top of the trench to protect it from the rain and solve the problem of the trench being silted up.When he set up the shelf and went to collect plantain leaves to put the roof on the shed, the termites ate the bamboo again.Only then did Xue Song realize that the most abominable thing on the hillside was termites.So he picked up the hoe to plan out all the morning termite nests on the hillside.This was a popular decision because termites eat: adults, pupae, and eggs.In particular, the queen of termites is a complete and nourishing thing, but the nest of termites is covered by a thick layer of hard soil, which requires someone to dig it open.So Xue Song walked ahead with a hoe on his shoulders, and all the Miao children within a radius of 30 miles came to follow behind him, ready to pick the ocean off—they all knew that the Han people didn't know how to eat termites.The termites also mobilized to fight Xue Song, and the weapon of the fight was saliva.Mixing 10% termite saliva with 10% soil is hard soil, mixing 1% saliva with 30% soil is like cement, and mixing 1% saliva with 100% soil is as indestructible as steel.Of course, if the nest is built purely with saliva, it will be as hard as a diamond, and Xue Song can't even scratch the skin.But when building a nest in this way, the termite's halazi is not enough.

Xue Song used a hoe to plan the outer wall of the ant nest, and the termites could hear clearly in the nest, so they spit desperately to build the wall; the closer Xue Song sounded the hoe, the more they spit desperately, almost spitting out blood.So the more Xue Song dug, the harder the soil became; his hands were covered with blood blisters.At last he stopped digging himself.The termites used their will and saliva to keep the ant nest, and the Miao children saw that Xue Song had no beginning and no end, so they picked up the broken soil on the ground and beat him, causing him to flee.The next morning, Xue Song appeared on the red soil slope again, carrying a hoe, and the Miao children followed behind him, ready to pick up foreign land.This thing goes on and on, seemingly endlessly.The gist of this matter is: a swarthy man, carrying a hoe, was running on the red soil hillside, and he couldn't tell whether he was sunburned or blackened by the hot wind.He tried to dig out all the termite nests, but he didn't dig out a single one; he also broke a lot of hoes and caused a lot of blood blisters.Xue Song himself didn't know why things happened like this.

I clearly remember that subtropical laterite hillside. In the midsummer, the gravel in the soil shone white—including quartz particles like coarse salt and mica like cicada's wing fragments.This kind of soil is like a grinding wheel, grinding the hoe to a bright spot.The weight of a new hoe is very heavy and difficult to handle. The more you use it, the sharper it becomes, and the weight becomes lighter.It got smaller and thinner and finally disappeared at the top of the hoe handle.Sweat soaked his neck as he swung the hoe in the scorching sun, and his neck became as red as a turkey.Does this mean that I am Xue Song?

In this story, Xue Song has been busy on the hillside year after year, leaving only some shallow pits and some half pillars eaten by termites. When the rainy season comes, dogs grow on these pillars. The dung moss grows more and more, like some terrestrial corals.When the rainy season came, Xue Song hurriedly built a small hut for himself to live in. This kind of hut could not keep out the pouring rain, so the inside was always wet, and the rain was no less than outside.Over time, moss grew on his face, mildew grew on his body, and he got rheumatism on his legs, like a dead tree sinking at the bottom of the water.When the dry season came, there was no tree in this place, and it was very hot, and it seemed that it was not cooler inside the shed than outside; Xue Song stayed in the shed, his eyes were red, and he was in a bad mood.When a gust of wind blew, the shed immediately collapsed, because the bamboo that supported the shed had been eaten by termites, leaving only a layer of skin to pretend to be bamboo.Only then did we know that it was cooler in the shed than under the scorching sun.If things go on like this, Xue Song will either get moldy in the rainy season or be exposed to the sun in the dry season, and the story will not go on.

Later, someone told Xue Song that termites would eat anything but live plants, so he planted some thorny plants beside the trench, for example, immortal chapters, overlord whips, etc. Once a mother bamboo is irrigated with the water from the mountain, it will soon become verdant—inside and outside the village, there are bamboo bushes and shrubs everywhere, and ditches underneath.From then on, Xue Song was freed from the torture of digging ant nests on the hillside.He set up a stockade like this, but it doesn't look like a camp of an army, but like a subtropical labyrinth.From a practical point of view, it was not weakly defended, for in the grass and bushes there were countless uninvited ant nests and earthen nests, and an unknown number of cobras haunted them.No one dared go into the bushes but Piggy.But Xue Song has a head full of military academics, because under the entry of "building a city in the field", words such as ants, bumblebees, and even piggy appear, and Xue Song feels that he has completely degenerated.Now that he has fallen, it doesn't matter if he falls again.So he allowed himself to snatch Miao Nu as his wife.

In my manuscript, the story of Xue Song robbing his wife is very simple and clear: Xue Song is strong and bold; he met the red line in the woods, and the latter was shooting birds.He liked the little girl with the red ribbon around her neck and snatched her right away.As for the snatching method, it is also very simple: grab her neck with one hand, pinch her legs with the other hand, lift her onto the shoulder, and just carry her away.Hong Xian struggled as hard as he could, feeling as if he had hit a wall: Xue Song's strength was enormous.Hong Xian thought: Since it fell into such hands, forget it.She lay on Xue Song's shoulder without moving; in the cold dampness of the forest, she was thinking about what kind of treatment she would encounter.This formulation is too simplistic, which is why I don't like it.