"Meaning? Hehe—" the old man laughed, the gullies on his face crowded together, making him look very pervasive: "It doesn't make sense, this is just a tomb room for imprisoning me."
This huge and majestic catacomb hides a secret.
But when the old man talked about all this, he didn't have the slightest feeling of nostalgia or recollection. He seemed to be simply telling a story. Come together.
Many, many years ago, in a poor and closed area, there lived such a group of people...or a nation.
This group of people has lived in this area for many years, year after year, generation after generation. Their clothing and customs are unique, and they rely on mountains and rivers to make a living by hunting and farming. And they are extremely xenophobic, and foreigners who come here will be excluded. Earlier, if there were innocent foreigners living here, their handling methods were even more cruel, and they would directly kill that person.
It's just that with the progress of the times, this closed nation has no choice but to contact the outside world. They still maintain a high degree of vigilance, distinguishing their own tribe from others, and calling themselves the Yan tribe.
The Yan people have a crazy belief.
Because the area where the Yan people lived was barren and remote, and the harvest in the fields was not very good, they almost all relied on the kindness of God to live their lives. However, the nearby mountains and forests are particularly lush, and there is a prairie farther to the north, where many animals appear. The Yan people gradually make a living by hunting and grazing, and migrate farther to the north, but even so, the poor The number of Yan people is still getting smaller and smaller year by year, and hunger and cold have enveloped their entire lives.
They began to pray to their gods.
What is the "god" that the Yan people believe in is unknown, but all the Yan people believe in it crazily. They think that the gods can help them get out of trouble. They think that as long as they continue to believe in the gods, all problems will be solved. It will all work out.
According to the customs of the Yan people, every few decades, they will choose a patriarch from among a bunch of newborn children. The patriarch will be the "spokesman" of the gods. The people of the Yan people believe that the gods will possess their patriarchs. Lead them to glory.
Therefore, whenever a new patriarchal election begins, these poor children will receive all kinds of training, they will have the best food and housing conditions, but they will have to accept all kinds of inhuman conditions from the time they can walk. Training and torture, they will go hunting in the forest alone since they were in their teens, and they will stay in the forest for more than half a year. If some of them die unfortunately, it doesn't matter, there are a lot of substitutes, surviving children, is the ultimate winner.
"I am the last one alive among those children." The old man on the tree sighed while telling these stories, he was dull for a while, and continued to tell: "Yes, when I become the final When the next patriarch is appointed, it is also the beginning of the Yan Clan's... demise."
There are no gods at all, no frightening or miraculous legends, no one is looking after this sad nation of the Yan Clan, and the existence of the patriarch is just the beginning of a new tragedy.
Because of the sparse population, the people of the Yan clan pay great attention to offspring. Every woman must give birth to many children. Men even regard these women as some kind of tool to continue the blood, so there is almost no such thing as getting married. As long as a certain girl in the clan reaches the age of fourteen, any man in the clan has the right to enjoy her. When women no longer have the ability and physique to reproduce, they will even be extremely cruelly abandoned.
Yes, at that time, there was such a woman who was abandoned and fell ill. From the perspective of this backward and closed nation, this was considered terminally ill. There was no need to waste precious food on this seriously ill woman. Even though she had been pregnant for six months, she was in a weak state at the time and was unable to keep the baby. Premature babies were more likely to die, and even infected the mother's disease.
The people of the Yan clan immediately decided to abandon her. People were afraid that her strange disease would be contagious, so they drove her into the forest, hoping that wild animals would eat her.
The desperate and extremely weak woman walked in the dark woods with her belly outstretched. She was not lucky at all, and no one would come to rescue her, so she soon encountered hordes of wolves in the woods. Surrounded, surrounded, she thought she was going to die, to be ripped apart and eaten, along with the poor, unborn child in her womb.
But no, the wolves surrounded her, but did not eat her. Yes, this is a miracle, probably because the woman's big belly made the leader of the wolf pack realize something, they drove her into their lair, looking for wild fruits and water every day, and even some bloody wolves Cuts of animal meat are given to women.
The woman survived, and every night many she-wolves would sleep around her to keep her warm, her belly was getting bigger and she knew she was going to give birth, but she was going to die too, and the serious illness took her down She didn't know if she would be able to give birth to the child. She hugged a female wolf in the wolf pack, which was the partner of the head wolf. She begged it: "After I die, please let my child live." to the world."
God must have heard the voice of this great mother.
The woman closed her eyes forever during the childbirth, so the she-wolf pounced and tore open the woman's stomach, and took out the bloody fetus inside. This was a moment of joy, because the child was alive!
Healthy and intact survived.
The children are raised by the wolves as their own. The wolves are extremely protective of their cubs. Human babies grow slowly and have low mobility, but they have never been abandoned. They patiently teach everything they know bit by bit. Given this child, the child raised by wolves is completely different from ordinary children. He is more ferocious and cruel, full of bestiality, unable to speak human language, only howling at the moon like a wolf, unable to walk on two feet, but It has extraordinary mobility, and its claws and teeth are very sharp.
But man is man after all, even though he was raised by wolves, this child is still extremely intelligent, he soon realized that he was different from the pack of wolves, sometimes he would see the hunters of the Yan tribe in the forest, he knew that he was different from the pack of wolves. Those humans are the real kind.
But the wolf boy has never had the idea of returning to his own group. He has a deeper affection for the wolves. The wolves all have extraordinary group concepts, and this has also extended to him.
Therefore, the wolf boy just looks at those humans from afar, spies on them, learns and imitates in the dark, after spying for a long time, he can occasionally understand the words of those humans and learn something from them, but more, the wolf The child is no longer willing to explore.
Wolf children are full of curiosity about humans, but they are also full of fear. Humans can skillfully use fire and various weapons. Even if their reaction, physical strength, and physical qualities are not as good as wolves, they can still successfully hunt wolves. group. They are powerful, though wolf cubs sometimes find that they are far more cruel to their own people than to their prey.
When the patriarch selection activity of the Yan Clan started, more than a dozen lonely and helpless human cubs were sent into the huge forest. He was also full of curiosity about them, and he chose One of the human cubs followed behind him cautiously. This was the first time in his life that he boldly tried to approach a human being.
And this human boy chosen by the wolf boy is the last surviving patriarch, and he is regarded as the so-called "god".
What happened after that can actually be guessed easily. The teenager who was helped by the wolf boy survived successfully. He and the wolf boy became friends. During the half a year in the forest, he lived with the wolf boy every day. , they cuddle up to sleep at night and help each other hunt prey during the day. The human boy taught the wolf boy human language and told him all kinds of knowledge, and the wolf boy taught him the rules of survival in this forest.
Half a year passed quickly, and the day of the Hui people came. The boy did not bring the wolf boy back to the human residence. He knew that all kinds of struggles and undercurrents were raging in his own nation, which a simple wolf boy could not understand. Therefore, he is also very smart, and quickly learns how to protect his friends. It's just that the young man is also immature. Because of the wolf child, the young man is very familiar with the forest. His help has made the Yan people realize that they can hunt prey faster and better!
Therefore, the boy was soon regarded as the patriarch, and even after that, when the season of hunger came, the greedy Yan people decided to drive out all the wolves in the forest in order to get more prey. Although the patriarch strongly opposed it, the people of the Yan clan attacked in groups. The patriarch didn't want to betray his own nation, but he didn't want to hurt his friends either. After weighing his interests, he still acquiesced to the behavior of the clansmen.
His behavior is beyond reproach. After all, he is already the head of the clan. He must consider his own nation. He has been destined to do so since he was born. He is the patron saint of the entire nation. From his birth to adulthood, he has received all Education is telling him this, these fates cannot be reversed by a child raised by wolves.
The patriarch let his people go, but it also put the wolf group into a desperate situation. The wolf group where the wolf boy was located was exterminated, and the wolf parents who raised him also died. Brought back to human territory.
People are afraid of this wolf boy, because of his unique beastiality and terrible and cruel ferocity, people think that this wolf boy must be a ghost with many evildoers! The superstitious Yan people feel that as long as this ghost is eliminated, the gods will favor the Yan people again and bring them to incomparable glory.
Everything fits together and then misaligns.
Blinded by hatred, the wolf boy couldn't imagine his only trusted friend betraying him. But the patriarch was also very soft-hearted, he let go of the wolf boy secretly, but it also brought unimaginable disaster to his own race.
—
At this point in the story, the old man on the tree stopped. He looked down at the ghosts and his party, and said to them: "Actually, you can roughly imagine what happened next. That child... hehe, he took revenge on me crazily. He returned to the forest, he summoned all the wolves in the forest, and even went outside the forest to gather strength desperately, and then he led a huge team to start a battle with the Yan Clan."
The ghost bit its own lip, narrowed its eyes and was about to say something, but Alan next to him took the lead and asked, "You both lost in the fight? Or did you win? Or the wolves won? But why did you build this building?" What about the tomb?"
"Actually, this battle ended with the victory of mankind." The old man lowered his head, his voice filled with sadness: "Yes, I won, but I regretted it because... the person I value the most , he perished with the extinction of the wolves."
"You love him?" asked the ghost.
"I love him." The old man said, tears seemed to glisten in his cloudy eyes: "When I saw him for the first time in the forest, I was overwhelmed by his figure, and that was the happiest moment in my life. There is nothing more beautiful than that time."
"That's why I regret it. I regret it very much. This also filled me with hatred. I began to hate my nation, my people, and I hated them!" When the old man said this, his face gradually distorted. It was also shaking around, and at the same time, the roots and vines under the feet of Ghost and the others began to twist violently.
The old man's eyes were tearing apart, and his tone was fierce, but he laughed out of nowhere: "So on that full moon night, I pretended that I was possessed by their so-called 'gods', and I told them that the ghosts of evil spirits linger, At any time, I will possess others to destroy our nation, so I instructed them to build a tomb dedicated to the gods, buried me with him, and told them that they must pay tribute every year. Funeral objects, I want to completely disintegrate this damned nation bit by bit, I want to make them disappear from the river of history! I want to use their ridiculous gods to destroy them!"
"So... is this the truth about the joint tomb?" Duan Li said, he didn't know when he changed the fox mask on his face and replaced it with a ghost mask. The meaning of the mask seems to represent something, the truth is always sad.
The old man looked at Duan Li, and suddenly smiled again: "My story is over, I know why you came here, and I also know that your ultimate goal is to get out of this tomb, right?"
"Will you help us?" Ghost paused, he still had a glimmer of hope, so he had to grasp the tail of this hope and asked cautiously.
The old man snorted coldly, continued to sneer and started roaring: "Help? How ridiculous! Don't you understand what I mean? No one can escape from here, from the moment the tomb is closed! This place will belong to me forever ! Everyone in this tomb! It can only be me and his funeral objects! None of you can escape!"
"What if I want to escape?"
Just as the old man finished yelling the last sentence, a cool voice suddenly rang out. At the moment when Ghost and the others were fascinated by the story, no one noticed that there were two more people in the huge tomb room, Luo Jian and Xing Xing. Yan was standing beside Ghost and the others, Luo Jian took a deep breath, looked up at the old man on the tree trunk, raised his voice again and said, "If I want to leave here, will you let me go?"
The old man suddenly fell silent and stared blankly at him.