Chapter 15 Beast III Animals and Extinction

October 29, 2008 at 22:42 Overseas, Bofanzhou has a hot climate. There are almost no forests and bushes growing here. It looks like a large piece of mud floating in the sea.Therefore, the residents of the Central Plains also called it Fuyanzhou. Although there are few shrubs and herbs here, three strange kinds of trees grow sparsely.One of them is called the flail tree.Throughout its life, the tree has no branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, and no insects around it.As it ages, the bark of the flailac gradually turns white and smells like fermented grain.The locals worship it as a sacred tree.There is also a kind of tree called gum stick wood.What grows under its bark is not wood, but glue.These glues have an unbearable stench, which can kill people if they smell them for a long time.If someone can barely resist the attack of this smell, put it in a copper pot and gradually boil it dry, you can get a powder similar to ambergris, called dragon glue.

The most valuable of the sparse vegetation in Fuyanzhou is called the Ata tree.It is not tall, its branches and leaves are soft like a maple tree, and the leaves change shape with the seasons like a maple tree.If its bark is slightly cracked, sticky sap will slowly ooze from it.The local people took the juice back and dried it to become a medicine called Xunluxiang. They mixed it with honey to form a pill, and took it with rice wine every morning. After ninety-nine years, the spirit can be separated from the body. Bo Fanzhou also produces a small animal named Qu Qu.It has no hair all over its body, only a thin green hair from the bridge of its nose to the tip of its tail.Atta tree sap is the food of Qu Qu.Turning repeatedly in the stomach and intestines of the succulent, finally a small amount of sap escapes mixed with the feces, falls into the soil, and new saplings can be born.

Qu Que has a stubborn temper, and he barks sharply no matter whether he is dealing with Arab merchants or nomads on the plateau.But they admire the civilization of the Central Plains very much.As long as they saw a person wearing the robes of the Central Plains, they would rush up, hugging his ankles and refusing to leave.If it is a writer with a kerchief, a scholar with jade ornaments, and a prostitute who is good at word games, it will be more obedient. The placket acts as a follower. Some followers tried to drive them away, but it was always ineffective.Some beat them, hoping to end the harassment.But Qu Qu still followed suit.What's even more disturbing is that Qu Qu seems to be an undead animal. No matter whether you use a sword to chop them, tie them to a fire for barbecue, or poison them, you can't put them to death.Even starvation is ineffective, and Quincy can endure more than 10 years between feedings.Some medical practitioners and Taoist priests, such as Ge Hong, a warlock in the Jin Dynasty, once pointed out that the secret of Qu Qu's immortality is enough to explain its food, and that fumigated Luxiang has powerful healing and self-cultivation effects.

Some followers found that the knees seemed to be the lifeblood of the knees.If they are hit on the knee so hard that the patella breaks, the crocodile will suddenly spring up, fall heavily, and die.After the spread of this technique, Qu Qu's harassment of the people of the Central Plains was greatly reduced.Not long after, someone discovered that although the squatted muscles had a rancid smell that was unbearable to eat, the knee bones they used to kneel down to scholars were crisp and juicy, a rare delicacy.The broken bones were taken out, marinated with plums, dipped in miso and roasted. Gentlemen of the Central Plains used this dish to entertain scholars who had been promoted in the imperial examination.Later, this food became the favorite of all scholars in the Central Plains Dynasty, and was given the unique name "Meigu".

After the mid-Tang Dynasty, the aborigines of Bofanzhou never exported this kind of beast to the Central Plains.A Mongolian merchant in the 13th century heard the news of this animal from the Arab population: People have not seen the Ata tree for more than a hundred years, and they even almost forget what the tree looks like, let alone make a living from it of Qu. There are two theories about the fate of these two creatures.One theory is that people hunted and killed all of them in order to feed on the cartilage of the knee flexor, which led to the extinction of the Ata tree.Another way of saying is that the over-collecting of Luxiang made the Ata trees finally be cut down, and Qu Qu gradually retreated from the world because of lack of food to find.