Chapter 2 second quarter

That year, in the mountain town full of chestnut trees, one day, people were startled by a loud crowing, and looked up to see a group of gray-green big birds flying across the sky. They all looked the same, with a duck face, With a mouse tail.People in the city told each other in panic, saying it was a bad omen. From that day on, a terrible plague occurred in the beautiful mountain city.The lice that gnawed at the mice jumped from one person to another. People had fever, chills, and vomiting out of their intestines. When they died, their armpits and groin were covered with pustules. The streets were filled with the dead who were too late to be cremated.It was filled with the smell of incense and corpses, but in the mountain city like purgatory, there was a little girl's melodious singing like a wind chime.

In a white corner house on the hillside, Bai Ruolan was lying on the bed covered with a feather quilt, sleeping soundly.Her six-year-old daughter, Lan Yue'er, lay in her mother's arms, opened her dreamy eyes, and murmured a song, attracting blue butterflies flying around her head. Bai Ruolan is more beautiful than usual when she is asleep.Her skin was white and shiny, as if wrapped in a crystal clear film.She is the most beautiful woman in the mountain city, and people call her "Queen Ruolan" in private.Shancheng is not her hometown. When she came, she was pregnant with her daughter and had no husband by her side.She traveled all night, and the night she stepped into the mountain city, she passed out outside the only church in the city, and a young monk found her.

The monk later called young men in the city to build a white corner house for Bai Ruolan.Five months later, on a stormy night, Lan Yue'er was born here. The premature baby was smeared with the mother's fetal blood, and his clear eyes cast a curious glance at the world.Bai Ruolan, who was suffering from labor pains, weakly picked up a piece of cotton to wipe the blood off her daughter's body.She found that the little baby had no wrinkles and was more beautiful than herself, as beautiful as an ancient elf. There was a purple-red birthmark on the back of the left ankle, which looked like a rose.Suddenly, the air was filled with the scent of flowers, and the sky sprinkled purple roses, and the petals floated into the house through the window, covering the cradle she prepared for her daughter.

Bai Ruolan couldn't remember whether she had seen this purple-red blue moon rose in a dream or during the labor pain that almost tore her apart.She rocked the basket on her lap, and the little man was fast asleep, with his bright red mouth tightly compressed in a pitiful expression. "Let's call you Lan Yue'er." She said to the baby in the basket. She stroked the baby's warm, fragrant head with her fingers, wanting to cry but scared. "Lan Yue'er, you need to be more ordinary, more ordinary." She said to the child full of sorrow. Bai Ruolan did some embroidery for others at home, and made some candied chestnuts to sell in the market, and all the money she earned was donated to the church.She was full of grief all her life, often kneeling quietly under the statues of saints and sincerely repenting, praying for the merciful God to forgive her daughter's sins in prayer.

Almighty God seems to have heard Bai Ruolan's prayer.Lan Yue'er grew up just like any other child in the city, with one exception: she was still beautiful, even more beautiful than when she was born.The singing that accompanies her beauty often attracts blue butterflies to dance above her head. Lan Yue'er could sing before she learned to speak.When Bai Ruolan was pregnant, one night, she woke up from the bed and heard singing like the sound of nature. She thought it was her suitors singing love songs under her window again. She poked her head out of the window, only to see a field of bright yellow moonlight and a small nighthawk with long eyes, the color of which was like a dead leaf.Suddenly, she discovered that the singing was coming from her womb, her unborn daughter singing.Tears streamed down her face, moved by her daughter's sad singing.At this time, she already understood that her daughter will spend her life in misery.

Bai Ruolan's own life was ended by the plague.When she got sick, she didn't suffer like the other poor dead.There were little red spots on her body, and she died as if sleeping. Lan Yue'er found that her mother had lost her breath. She lay down and sang to her mother's corpse for thirty days and nights.On the thirty-first day, the red spots on the corpse faded, and Bai Ruolan was more beautiful than before. Bai Ruolan had countless suitors, but she seemed indifferent to the love in the world.The young monk who had rescued her on the day she entered the city had decided to serve God for the rest of her life.After seeing Bai Ruolan for the first time, she couldn't turn her head back.

He kept finding excuses to paint the house for her. As a result, the paint on the roof became thicker and thicker, which made it especially warm in winter.In summer, no matter how hot the sun is outside, it is still cool inside. Until Lan Yue'er was three years old, the young monk still struggled to climb up to the roof every day to paint.Bai Ruolan finally couldn't help but said: "If this continues, the roof will collapse." "Marry me." The monk couldn't help saying. Bai Ruolan was embarrassed and unable to answer, but the monk thought her silence was a woman's reserve.

"Then. I will wait by your window for a hundred days." The monk put down the paint on his hand, and waited day and night in front of Bai Ruolan's window.On the ninety-ninth day, she said to the monk: "Go back, don't wait, wait another hundred years, and I won't marry you." The monk cried in embarrassment.Never in his life had he cried so bleakly.Lan Yue'er took pity on him, rolled up her bed sheet to wipe his tears, and later even lent him the bed cover.After returning, until the day of his death, the monk was still talking madly at the paint at home. When the plague came.All those men who have admired her and that mad monk.They all died on the bed under the torture of fear, only Bai Ruolan.In the lingering singing of Lan Yue'er, it turns into a ghost that no longer has earthly love.

After her mother died, Lan Yueer walked alone through one deserted town after another with the last can of rock sugar chestnuts made by her mother. She was the only one who survived the plague. Those lice didn’t even dare to touch her. her.