Lin Mu packed up the small things in the house that Qin Chuan moved back to, and prepared to move directly to the Great Wilderness.
Lin Mu was cleaning up the debris in the attic, and they were pulling their hind legs from time to time at the side of Emperor Wu, and then they were pushed aside by the little ginseng who was also going to the Great Wilderness.
"Don't cause trouble for Lin Mu!" said the little ginseng, crossing his hips.
"It doesn't matter." Lin Mu rubbed the head of a small ginseng, and neatly arranged things with his hands and feet.
Emperor Wu picked up a booklet that had just been put into the box, and muttered, "This booklet looks so long ago."
Lin Mu tilted his head and glanced: "It's all from my childhood."
My mother was not willing to throw any of them away, and even after he threw some away, my mother would pick up the book from the trash can, clean it up again, and put it away properly.
Lin Mu looked at the book, recalled it for a moment, and said, "I liked to draw random things when I was a child, so my mother just collected it and ordered it into a book."
"In her words, the traces of growth should be kept for future self and relatives."
Lin Mu said that he paused here and silently looked at the box of crayons that was not used up when he was a child. After a while, he suddenly said, "Actually, I want to leave it to my father."
Dixiu sat quietly in the corner of the attic, helping to organize things.
His movements are also very unfamiliar, but he doesn't always make trouble like Emperor Wu, but his efficiency is slightly slower.
He heard Lin Mu's words, raised his head, slightly raised his eyebrows, and did not speak.
These things were indeed for him.
Dixiu had already noticed it—Lin Xueji always believed that he did not die.
Dixiu remembered that Lin Xueji once told him that photos were a magic weapon to save time.
Text too.
So she likes to take pictures, write a diary, secretly save her time, and look at it later.
She also likes to express her thoughts generously.
Like is like, hate is hate, love is love, she has always been straightforward and bright, like the summer sun, blazing and unstoppable.
It was only after Lin Mu that Lin Xueji stopped writing a diary for fear of exposing the existence of Lin Mu.
So she took more pictures.
The entire attic is full of cardboard boxes, large and small, and these cardboard boxes are the time boxes of Lin Mu and Lin Xueji.
Lin Xueji did not write a diary herself, but coaxed Lin Mu to write it.
Even though Lin Mu didn't like taking pictures, he still pouted unhappily when his mother took several large photo albums.
Just open a cardboard box, and there are photo albums, books full of various texts, and toys from Lin Mu's childhood.
Some are beautiful and bought, and some are ugly, made by Lin Mu and Lin Xueji together.
Later, those little toys got better and better.
The things in this dry, dark and crowded small attic can be seen by piecing them together, and you can see the complete eighteen years before Lin Xueji's death.
But Dixiu was never able to muster up the courage to completely dig out the contents of the attic.
He knew that these things were not entirely prepared for Lin Mu to be able to read the retrospective later.
Half—or even most of the reason, Lin Xueji prepared for him.
She believed he was not dead.
If you don't die, you will always come back.
Maybe a few years, maybe ten years, maybe when Lin Mu is old, he will not appear.
But she still recorded it all.
She wanted to tell him her thoughts, her life, her experiences and everything about her.
Even if his own body has died, he is still full of hope, wanting to catch a tiny stream of water from the torrent of time, quietly collect it, wait for the phantom that does not know when it will return, and then hold it to him. .
Every time he thought of how Lin Xueji kept these things, Di Xiu felt extremely timid.
After being timid to come back for so long, I never dared to open up these ashes.
The Imperial House does not understand this.
He looked at the picture book, which was bound a little rough, and simply opened it—
Then he snorted in surprise: "Di Xiu, isn't this you?"
Lin Mu and Di Xiu were stunned when they heard the words, got up and glanced at the page of the album opened by Emperor Wu.
A tree is drawn on that page.
A big green tree with green branches stretching in five directions, the red sun and blue clouds are painted on the tree, and two stick figures, one big and one small, are holding hands.
It was drawn with crayons, and the strokes are quite immature, and the name of these paintings is also seriously next to it: "Big Tree Dad".
Di Xiu looked at the painting in a daze, and Lin Mu was stunned for a while, then scratched his head and said, "I don't remember when it was painted."
There were so many things that happened when I was a child that most of the things that impressed Lin Mu were not pleasant experiences.
"But I liked to draw when I was young, because drawing is much more interesting than writing." Lin Mu said, turning around and continuing to pack the boxes.
Diwu flipped through the album, held his cheeks, and speculated: "What kind of psychic dream? It should be Lin Mu who dreamed of you."
Di Xiu slowly came back to his senses and nodded.
The psychic dream is not particularly uncommon, and the little monsters who are still in their infancy can occasionally dream of some vague fragmented pictures. These pictures are usually inherited from the blood.
Diwu glanced at Dixiu, and simply shoved the album to him: "Look at it for yourself, I went to the mountains to help."
Emperor Wu and Qin Chuan agreed that the mountain god would stay here to help him restore the mountain, so for the time being, they had to stay in the Central Plains. The Emperor Wu was full of cause and effect, and the risk of staying in the Central Plains was much smaller than the risk in the Great Wilderness.
Dixiu watched Diwu go away, looked down at the picture album in his hand, rubbed it lightly, heard the sound of Lin Mu pulling the tape off, raised his head, and said, "Take your mother away too."
Lin Mu cut off the explanation, sealed the cardboard box, and said, "Of course."
The father and son packed up and fixed everything in the house, and then handed over the house to Yan Xuanjing, who was helping out in the mountains.
"Let's go to the cemetery," Lin Mu said.
Yan Xuanjing glanced at Di Xiu in a trance like sleepwalking, and simply went with Lin Mu.
Di Xiu sat in a daze in the passenger seat, holding the picture album he just turned out in his hand.
When they got to the cemetery, Di Xiu got out of the car first.
Lin Mu paid the money, pulled Yan Xuanjing, and the two stayed in the management room at the door.
The cat in the management room was still so squeamish, and when it saw Lin Mu, it rubbed up against him and fell limply at his feet, with its tail wrapped around Lin Mu's ankle, and meowing loudly.
Lin Mu simply sat on the steps, stroking his cat and telling his clients that he was no longer doing green plants.
The street office already knew what he was going to leave, and didn't say much, but unceremoniously deducted his salary for this month.
Yan Xuanjing stood aside, looking down at Lin Mu stroking the cat, and then looking up at Di Xiu in the cemetery.
Not the same as the last time I came to the cemetery.
This time, Emperor Xiu was not just a phantom, but a solid human figure.
He stood there, looking strangely helpless in the autumn sun.
Lin Mu stopped tapping his phone and looked up into the cemetery.
Di Xiu had already squatted down and was looking at the photo on the tombstone, speechless.
"I still don't even dare to speak." Lin Mu had excellent eyesight, and looked at the father in the cemetery who was staring at the tombstone in a daze, and sighed, "Coward."
Yan Xuanjing retracted his gaze, raised his hand, picked up the raccoon cat that was rolling in Lin Mu's arms, and threw it aside.
"Last time, he didn't say anything." Lin Mu tilted his head slightly, "I guess after I left, he still didn't say anything."
"What?" Yan Xuanjing was a little confused by Lin Mu's words, "There is no soul in that tomb, so nothing can be conveyed."
"It's not a matter of whether it's passed on or not." Lin Mu stretched out his hand and pulled Yan Xuanjing's sleeve, dragged him to sit down, and said, "This tombstone is just a sustenance for the living."
Many people have a lot of things they can't say to the living, but they can say a lot at the graves of the dead.
Complaining, missing, hatred, malice, joy...
The dead are always able to accept everything in silence.
"Dad should have a lot to say to mom." Lin Mu clenched his hands into fists, folded his chin and squinted slightly in the autumn sunset, "I don't say it, probably because I didn't really let go of my mother's death. Bar."
When Yan Xuanjing heard the words, he looked up at Di Xiu who was standing in the cemetery, and didn't quite understand this feeling.
Lin Mu looked at Yan Xuanjing and sighed slightly.
He can understand.
Of course, Dad couldn't let go of Mom's death.
—Because my mother always had hope and left in a wait that didn’t know the end.
If it's an accident, if it's the end of life, if it's a completely foreseeable death, then as a youkai who often faces death, of course, you can accept it calmly.
Just like the little monster who calmly accepted the death of his brother before.
But that's not the case with Mom's death.
She is waiting, looking forward to hope.
She carefully kept the time when Di Xiu was not involved, waiting for him to come home, wanting to give him a surprise.
But before she could wait, her whole life had already withered away.
Just like what Lin Mu said when he knew that Dixiu was still alive—
"You're so late." Lin Mu said at the time, he said, "It's too late."
Di Xiu rummaged through the study, groped for the things in the attic, and was satisfied to see the slightest trace of time, but he never had the courage to fully spread it out and accepted it.
Once these are fully accepted, the reality of Lin Xueji dying in the long wait will overwhelm the sky and make him unavoidable.
"Coward." Lin Mu said this again, playing with Yan Xuanjing's hand, and sighed in an old-fashioned manner, "I still have too little experience!"
Yan Xuanjing turned his eyes slightly, held Lin Mu's hand with his backhand, intertwined his fingers with him, and reminded, "According to the age of becoming an elite, Young Master Di Xiu said that he is three or four thousand years old."
"But he didn't really come out to contact the outside world for a few more years than me." Lin Mu did the math, then nodded, "It's even shorter than me. After all, my father has been imprisoned for so many years, and these years don't count."
The old monster who has lived for three or four thousand years will not be swayed by such emotions, Lin Mu thought.
Fearing or even running away from the guilt and guilt that is about to be carried is not something a mature man would do.
Dixiu, who was squatting in front of the tombstone in a daze, sighed softly.
-Lin Muke didn't lower his voice, but Dixiu, whose demonic power had soared after restoring his body, listened to the words of the two juniors completely.
"... I was looked down upon by my son." Di Xiu looked at the tombstone and sighed softly.
Then he said softly, "But he's right."
After Dixiu said this, he froze for a while, and after a while, he said softly, "It hurt at that time, but I carried it over and didn't die."
"But I couldn't escape either." Di Xiu said in a low voice, "But my luck is much better than the emperor's house. He still has to stay in the Central Plains to avoid the cause and effect."
My luck is also better than Qinchuan, better than Mirage, and better than Nie Shen.
While thinking about it, Di Xiu said, "Better than Yan Gui."
Yan Gui chased his daughter-in-law for 400 years, how could he be lucky.
"I'm very lucky." He said with a smile, lightly, "It would be better if you were alive."
pity.
Eight out of ten things in life are unsatisfactory.
"I also want to thank you for believing in me."
But Lin Xueji still couldn't wait for him after all.
Dixiu fell silent again.
He looked at the photos on the tombstone for a long time, and finally took out the key Lin Mu gave him, opened the small base under the tombstone, and took out the urn inside.
"I remember you said that you really want to see what the Great Wilderness is like."
Di Xiu carefully wiped the box clean, and tapped the surface of the box with his fingertips.
"I'll take you home."