Chapter 3 third quarter

The epidemic spread from one town to another.Then came famine and war, the ditches were filled with starving people, and even the river was gray. After Lan Yue'er left the mountain city, she kept walking towards the west.Among the fairy tales her mother told her, she was most fascinated by the story of "Flowers Bloom Magically".My mother said that there are many beautiful elves living in that magical land, and they are the most beautiful elves in the world.Clever and noble, can make the most moving music.There grew a kind of flower whose white petals shone with eternal gold.Like the stars in the sky, they will never wither, and people who eat them will live forever, and the longer they grow, the more beautiful they become, and the longer they grow, the smarter they become. "Just go straight west and you'll get there," her mother told her.

Lan Yue'er has been walking towards her dream land, not feeling hungry.She slowly ate up the can of rock sugar chestnuts, just to remember the taste of her mother.Later, she simply ate when she wanted to.Sometimes they dig out some roots from the soil to eat, sometimes they drink the dew from the leaves, and when they are tired, they sleep in the barren fields. Since her mother died, she no longer sang, and those blue butterflies seemed to fly away from her life.She walked for more than two hundred days and came to a small village ravaged by war.There has long been no grass growing here, everyone who can leave has already left, and all the roots that can be eaten have been eaten up.

That afternoon.She was squatting in a field that had been turned over countless times. Originally, she just wanted to find something to eat, but unexpectedly dug out a skinny radish. "Carrots are fine too." She thought to herself. When she was about to take a bite, a hand quickly snatched the carrot from her back from behind.She turned around and saw a boy a little older than her, shirtless, without a pair of shoes on his feet, skinny, with a protruding belly, and his face and hands were covered in mud.He wolfed down the turnip and stuffed it into his mouth with all his might, looking like a poor, famished animal who was no longer human.

She looked at him fixedly, and the boy found that she was smaller and thinner than him.She stared at him with large eyes of wonder and sympathy.He suddenly felt ashamed, stretched out his thin hand, returned the leftover half of the radish to her, turned around and left. She took the half radish in his hand, not because she was hungry, but because she thought it was fun.She ate and followed him. Every time she took a bite of the radish, the crisp sound was a torture to him.He turned around, swallowed, and asked her, "Why are you following me?" She didn't answer. He deliberately turned a few corners, thinking that he had got rid of her, but found that she was still following behind, like a little one, unable to get rid of.

It was already dark, and when he walked forward, she also walked forward, and when he stopped, she also stopped.He pretended not to see her, but the tears flowed uselessly down his nostrils.flow to the lips.That was the first time he robbed someone.He missed the taste of the half radish, and even more the half radish he didn't eat.This little guy followed him like a shadow, just to remind him that he was a thief. He wiped the tears from his face with his fingers, turned around, put on a strong and fair look, and said to her: "Well, I will find half a turnip and give it back to you, and then you will stop following me." .”

She nodded.Looking at him with a beautiful little mouth. "My name is Yan Guxing, what's your name?" She still had her little rosy mouth open. "where is your family?" She blinked, but didn't answer. "Only you?" The bright eyes on the small face looked at him like a foreign girl who couldn't speak. "So you're a mute." Lan Yue'er didn't speak, she just didn't want to talk, just like she didn't want to sing.After her mother died, she walked alone on the road for more than two hundred days without saying a word to anyone.Sadness and loneliness filled her, and she went into hibernation.

"Are you also homeless like me? Homeless children have a look." He said as he walked. It was late at night, and he was so tired that he could almost hear his stomach growling.How he wished he could sleep.When you fall asleep, you can forget the taste of hunger, and you may even dream that you eat a lot of radishes in your dream, and then fall asleep contentedly while stroking your warm stomach. "Sleep for one night first. Let's go find radishes tomorrow." He told himself, and also told her. That night, they slept in a deserted grave.In order to erect the roots of the tree, people even dug out the dwarf trees next to the tomb for shade.In the soil that has been turned over thousands of times, there are several coffins that have been buried long ago, and there are skeletons lying in them.

"Are you scared?" He asked Lan Yue'er, his feet trembled slightly, he didn't know if it was from hunger or fear. Under the gloomy moonlight, Lan Yue'er's star-like eyes looked at him quietly, without speaking.With him around, she didn't feel afraid. "I'm not afraid." He said and lay down, huddled up with his head buried in his hands.Lan Yue'er was lying at his feet, he didn't dare to open his eyes, but he could smell flowers in the air. The next day, hunger woke him up from the gray-blue twilight of the morning.He opened his eyes and found that Lan Yue'er had already woken up, standing and looking at him.He got up shyly and said, "Let's go."

Lan Yue'er is lucky, ever since meeting her, Yan Guxing can always find something to eat.They walked together for more than 70 days. They once found taro and sweet potatoes in the fields, and once even found a dead bird, but they never saw radishes, not even half of them. Then one day, they came to a fork in the road, Yan Guxing wanted to go north, but Lan Yueer stood on the road facing west and refused to go. "Didn't you hear people say that there is no war in the north?" he said. along the way.Lan Yueer always listens to him.She ate very little and left most of it for him.Only this time, she seemed insistent.

"Well, it's the same wherever we go, so let's go west." He followed her, and Lan Yue'er smiled happily.He loved talking to her, and although she didn't answer a word, she seemed to understand him. He told Lan Yue'er that he was an outcast. "Someone put me in a straw basket and threw me into the sheepfold in the middle of the night." He said, shrugging his shoulders, as if he no longer felt desolate. "The old shepherd found me the next day when he woke up and heard the cry of the baby. He fed me with the ewe's milk and carried me to the fire in the house, and then I stopped crying. The old The shepherd is very old, has lost a few teeth, and is almost blind. He can use a little green bird for divination." He said with a smile.

"He said my life was a strange one, and he couldn't figure it out after so many calculations. But the old shepherd was quite sure that I was born on the day the swallow nested in the tree, so he told me to go alone. My little one, you Have you ever seen a swallow build a nest?" Lan Yueer nodded. "Shouldn't I be born of a swallow? The old shepherd said that some birds look like humans, with a human face and human legs." Laughing and shaking his head. "Little one, do you have parents?" Lan Yue'er raised a finger. "Only one?" he guessed. She nods. "Mother?" Lan Yueer nodded silently. "where is she?" Lan Yueer blinked her eyes, said nothing, looking pitiful. "I see." He said old-fashionedly, "Actually, I don't like carrots at all, what about you? Little one?" Lan Yueer wrinkled her nose and shook her head. Yan Guxing smiled childishly: "Then let's stop looking for carrots." Before them was a new journey, along the road to the west, through rivers and swamps, waking in the wild orange groves in the morning, and roosting in dark caves at night, illuminated only by the light of insects.They are like two children sleepwalking together, thinking that fate will bring them to the agreed place.As long as they see the stars, they are intoxicated speechless.Along the way, he told his own stories intermittently, and also told some stories that the old shepherd had told him, such as the legend of the magic carpet and the magic lamp.Lan Yue'er always rests her head on her hands, listens intently, and blooms towards him like a little wild flower, encouraging him to continue talking. Yan Guxing told Lan Yueer that when he grew up, the old shepherd would teach him to shepherd sheep.The life of the shepherd boy is very comfortable. He only needs to take the sheep to the mountains to graze every day. After they grow wool, they can shear the wool and sell it for money. "When herding sheep, you have to be careful of an old woman wearing a black veil. She is the incarnation of a witch. She will turn into a wild dog in an instant to scare the sheep away and tease the poor shepherd. So. When the shepherd drives the sheep , holding a crutch in his hand, which is used to deal with the wild dogs transformed by the witch. Fortunately, I haven't met the witch yet." One day, he told Blue Moon the story of the Golden Fleece. "They look like ordinary sheep, but when they grow their fur, they grow layers of golden wool and walk like a golden ball of hair. But you have to watch carefully It, if they hear a wolf howl, they'll freak out the whole story." "One day, when I went home from herding sheep, the old shepherd disappeared, and so did the little bird, leaving only a few feathers on the ground." At that time, the old shepherd was very old, he would sleep and wake up, and his eyes were even worse, but he saw his own destiny in divination. One day, when he was sick, he murmured to Yan Guxing, "My child, I will die in a far away place. When I die, my body will be covered with bird feathers, and I won't even have time to sigh." Yan Guxing once heard the old shepherd say that when a spiritual bird knows that it is about to die, it will spread its wings and fly to the "Forgotten Island" in the south.The island is shrouded in clouds and mist, and there is no one left.at that time.The old shepherd was very old and could only drink some sugar water to survive.Yan Guxing guessed that the old shepherd didn't want to die in front of him.That's why he and the three sheep were left behind. In order to make the story more magical, he told Lan Yueer that the old shepherd and his little bird both flew to the Forgotten Island, because they left in such a hurry that they didn't even have time to leave a farewell sigh.When he said this, Yan Guxing didn't seem so sad.After all, the old shepherd was his only relative, and he missed the old man's smell of sheep and green grassland. It was this kind of loving smell that picked him up from a straw basket. Compared with the Golden Fleece, Lan Yue'er prefers the story of the Forgotten Island.She even wondered if the Forgotten Island would be magically blooming.At that time, she thought that all the beautiful things came from the magical land of flowers. "Little one, the Forgotten Island is very far away, because people who came back from there have forgotten everything on the island, so no one can tell the location of the Forgotten Island." Yan Guxing was intoxicated in the story he made up, and said like a dream with. They walked for more than two hundred days, like two forgotten children, eating some wild fruits and helplessly eating some dead birds that could not fly to the forgotten island.They frolic like puppies in the wildflowers, doing something childlike and happy.The world has forgotten them.One day, they came along the west road to a misty wilderness filled with thick fog, and there was not even a lone star in the sky. In the darkness, they saw a wolf with a white star on its face. The wolf stared at the two trembling children obsessively, opened its bloody mouth, but suddenly turned into a human and disappeared in the mist. "It's a werewolf!" Yan Guxing shouted.However, in that smoky space, he couldn't be sure whether what he saw was a dream or reality. Only Lan Yue'er believed that they were about to reach the magical land of flowers blooming.It wasn't until many years later that she knew that she would never be able to reach the magical land of flowers with Yan Guxing.They walked for another thirty days in the wet cloud and mist, and green foam appeared on the heads of both of them, and moss grew on their clothes.Until one day, they wake up smelling the smell of green grass in a psychedelic way, and find themselves lying on the hillside with tender grass, and there is a vast horizon in front of them, and the sun is already hanging in the blue sky.Wild flowers and grasses adorned their feet. "Little one, look! It's the horizon!" Yan Guxing exclaimed excitedly. They headed downhill toward the horizon, looking for a river or stream.You can't hear the gurgling water, but you can hear the cry of sheep.Yan Guxing followed the sound, and saw a single lamb grazing, looking ignorant. Yan Guxing picked up the sheep and found that it had grown another hoof from each of its four hooves. "It got lost," he said. Lan Yue'er rested her head on the lamb's belly, her longing eyes seemed to say that this sheep belonged to them. "We'll wait here to see if anyone comes looking for it," Yan Guxing said. They waited in place for three days and three nights, making sure that no one came to ask for it, so they happily took the sheep away. "Maybe it will grow a golden fleece." Yan Guxing said longingly, "After selling the golden fleece, we can buy some more sheep, and the sheep will give birth to more sheep, and we will raise a large flock of sheep on the grassland. Take a walk. At that time, we only need to sit on the horses and drive the sheep." He said happily, full of longing. On the road they broke a branch to make a walking stick, and led the sheep with eight hooves to find the best pasture.While the sheep were grazing, Yan Guxing made some beautiful kites out of rags.The kites he made seem to have wings and can fly to the farthest sky.Once, when the wind was strong, Lan Yue'er almost floated into the sky with the kite, but Yan Guxing grabbed her ankle in time and pulled her back. Along the way, their skin was tanned beautifully, waiting for the wool to grow on the sheep.One night, when they were tired, they casually tied the kite to the leg of the lamb.When they woke up the next day, the sheep and the kite were gone.Yan Guxing took Lan Yue'er to look around until the sunset, and he looked at the sky dejectedly.Announced: "It flew away." Lan Yue'er remembered the songs she sang in the mountain city, one of which was a pastoral song sung by the shepherd when she was driving the sheep. After she stopped talking for a year, seven months and thirteen days, she suddenly opened her mouth to sing.Those blue butterflies that had already flown away from her life flew over her head again.The sheep with eight hooves staggered back, still with a kite tied to its feet. "Little one, so you are not dumb!" Yan Guxing shouted excitedly. "My name is Lan Yue'er." The angelic voice said with a smile.