Qin Ci was so hot that he was about to collapse. The world he was in was getting hotter and hotter, and the density of the air was changing due to the heat, which distorted the scene in his eyes, as if the air was also burning.
Qin Ci looked at the sea of fire on the other side of the cliff. There was a huge figure faintly in the firelight. With the change of the air in the fire, it was seriously distorted and deformed, and even his waist was broken at one point.
When Zhu Haowen rushed back, he held a box in his hand: "Old Qin, the fire has already ignited on the other side, we have nowhere to go."
Qin Ci retracted his gaze, feeling more and more that he might have had an outrageous and terrifying hallucination just now.
Qin Ci turned his eyes to Zhu Haowen, and his voice became hoarse due to thirst: "I only found a few charred conch shells and clam shells, as well as some sea fish and unnamed sea creatures, all of which were roasted. It can be used as our food temporarily. Haowen'er, what do you have in this box?"
Zhu Haowen put the box on the dry and slightly hot ground: "It was very light in my hand. I didn't open it at the time, so I thought I'd come back and watch it together."
Qin Ci gave a wry smile: "You hope this thing is like Aladdin's magic lamp. When it is turned on, a demon like smoke will appear, to satisfy our desire to escape from the sea of suffering."
Zhu Haowen remained expressionless in the heat: "I'm afraid it's an empty box."
So, the two put the box with the ancient pattern on the ground in the middle, and Zhu Haowen lifted the lid. The gesture was like lifting the lid of a crab that he didn't like to eat very much.
The box was indeed empty.
But this "empty" is only relative to the physical space. If it is calculated in decibels, this box can be said to be quite "full".
As soon as the lid was opened, both of them heard the sound inside the box, and the sound was whistling and filled the whole world.
That is the sound of the ocean, the waves are turbulent, hitting thousands of miles.
Qin Ci closed the lid of the box, and the sound stopped instantly, as if the stop button was pressed for a certain video.
Zhu Haowen tried to open the lid again.
The sound of the huge waves came out again, and when it was closed, the sound disappeared.
"I didn't expect that what I got was a music box." Zhu Haowen said blankly.
"This..." Qin Ci found that Zhu Haowen's metaphor was impeccable here, "This music box is actually similar to those shells and sea fish I picked up. They are all things from the sea. I don't think we will miss out. Finding these things for no reason must have something to do with the sea."
Zhu Haowen: "It's to show that our situation is 'distressed'."
"Di--" a loud time chime, clear and unusual in the hot and difficult world, as if the power suddenly went out in the dog days of the night, and the air conditioner made such a sad "di-" before it stopped running.
The two were obviously familiar with this voice, and they didn't have to look at the phone to know: "Two hours have passed."
Zhu Haowen: "No progress."
It would be a lie to say that there is no rush, but both men tried their best to maintain their composure.
Qin Ci looked at the direction he was staring in just now, the steep cliff, and the endless sea of fire ahead, which was prohibitive.
The two were forced to stop when they came here, and then they split up and explored two paths. As a result, Qin Ci found some seafood, and Zhu Haowen found a music box.
"Hao Wen'er, I saw a person in that place just now." Qin Ci felt that his expression was not enough to understand, so he pointed to the front of the cliff: "The back of a person, that person is bald and tall. ."
"You mean, on the other side of the sea of fire, in the fire, there is someone?" Zhu Haowen asked very seriously, and he didn't doubt that Qin Ci was dazzled by the heat.
"Yes, it's in the fire. It's not a real person, but an image, so I can see it so clearly." Qin Ci's eyes stared in that direction, and he gradually raised his eyebrows, "It appeared again. , that person appeared again!"
Zhu Haowen also looked in that direction and stopped speaking for a while.
"Hao Wen'er, did you see it too?"
Zhu Haowen looked at it carefully for a while: "What did you see is the back of a person?"
"Yes, with his back to us, bald, wearing a robe, as if waving..." Qin Ci looked at it with difficulty, "That, like a hand but not like a hand."
"It's a broken hand." It was Zhu Haowen who spoke.
"You saw it too?!" Qin Ci suddenly realized that the man's hand was very strange, but it was actually because part of it was missing.
Zhu Haowen: "Are you sure what you see is a back?"
"It's a back, it's getting clearer, I can see the back of his head."
Zhu Haowen frowned slightly: "I saw the front."
"Huh?" Qin Ci felt that he was actually taken aback by Zhu Haowen's words. To be honest, that strange back already looked very strange. What would Zhu Haowen see from the front
Zhu Haowen stared at what was in the firelight, and looked at the other party's longing eyes: "I think this front and the back you see are the same person, no, this is not a person, just like a person."
"What is that?" Qin Ci felt that all this was very weird. Why would two people see the front and back of the same thing? It was obvious that he and Howen were looking from the same direction.
"It's a monkey," Zhu Haowen felt that his statement was inappropriate, "it's a giant ape, a fire-baked giant ape, with a bare head and no hands, but he seems to want to express something to us, even a little humble towards us. It means begging."
Qin Ci still can't figure out why two people see the front and back of a monkey at the same time, but this obviously won't give an answer immediately, and now he can only find other clues: "What is the age of the monkey in the fire? Do you say it? In my impression, it seems that it is only in the Year of the Monkey that people will draw monkeys on New Year paintings."
Zhu Haowen looked at the giant ape in the firelight, heard Qin Ci's voice in his ears, and couldn't help but admire his companion's calmness at the moment: "Old Qin really has you, and you still remember the New Year pictures."
"Aren't we entering the New Year pictures? What we are looking for are also the fragments of the New Year pictures." In Qin Ci's opinion, these ideas of his own should be deserved.
Zhu Haowen also associates the monkey in the fire with the old customs: "I heard that some places are dedicated to Monkey King, this can't be Monkey King... It doesn't look like..."
"It's also possible that this monkey is bald, isn't Sun Wukong a monk?" Qin Ci said.
"I used to play a computer game about the twenty-eight constellations. There seems to be a constellation called the Fire Monkey. It should be something related to fire and monkeys." Zhu Haowen thought it was strange, and he actually remembered it for several years. An unremarkable character in the game I played before, probably because of these three words reminded me of the big-mouthed monkey.
"It's true that you say that. When I was learning acupuncture and moxibustion, a Chinese doctor mentioned that the acupuncture points on the human body are related to the twenty-eight constellations in the sky, and there is indeed a fire monkey in it." Qin Ci also remembered.
"Aren't you a Western doctor?" Zhu Haowen felt that he was a little off topic.
"It's not wrong to know more about medical knowledge," Qin Ci followed Zhu Haowen to a question, and soon returned to reality. The back of the monkey in the fire was still there, waving his broken hand, as if to greet two people. People go with it.
"It seems to be in a bit of a hurry," Zhu Haowen also stared at the monkey in his eyes. "It's almost going to kneel down for us, and I don't know what it wants to pray to us."
What the two of them have now, apart from those sea fish and clam shells, is this box that can emit the sound of the sea.
"Does it want this box?" Qin Ci picked up the box and showed it to the monkey.
The monkey was a little excited, waving his hand.
Zhu Haowen said: "I don't think this is what it wants. It has been begging hard just now. If it gets what it wants, it should be quiet, not anxious like this."
"Okay, then let's try something else." Qin Ci picked up another sea fish, this time the monkey didn't move.
"This fish is of no use to us. We still have some, so let's throw it to it." Zhu Haowen said.
As a result, the sea fish that had been roasted into dried fish was thrown into the sea of fire by Qin Ci, and it was obviously far away, but it reached the monkey.
"It ate the fish." Zhu Haowen looked at the monkey chewing dried sea fish, "Let's give it the same thing again."
In this way, almost every one of the charred seafood that Qin Ci picked up along the way was thrown into this fire monkey's mouth.
When Qin Ci picked up the last thing, Zhu Haowen first interrupted him about to throw the object: "What is this? It doesn't look like an octopus, it doesn't look like a shell, it's too ugly."
"I happen to know about this thing, because it can be used as medicine." Qin Ci said, "It was called turtle feet in ancient times, and the scientific name is turtle feet. It should belong to an arthropod. Because this thing is not easy to excavate, the yield is not high."
Zhu Haowen heard Qin Ci's words in his ears, but his eyes were drawn to the fire monkey, because the fire monkey was much shorter than before. Looking closely, it was actually kneeling.
"It turns out that this turtle's foot is what it wants most." Zhu Haowen said, picked up a somewhat disgusting-looking turtle foot, and threw it at the fire monkey.
The fire monkey quickly held it with both hands, but did not get up, and continued to kneel.
In this way, Zhu Haowen threw the four turtle feet in a row, and the fire monkey stood up, spread his arms, and actually gave birth to his hands at the end of his sleeves.
These turtle feet gave fire monkeys hands.
"This monkey dresses and behaves like a monk," Zhu Haowen said.
"Is there any legend of the monkey monk in the fire?" Qin Ci found that he could only think of the Monkey King on the Flaming Mountain.
"This monk loves seafood so much. He was definitely not born in a fire, and he is definitely not a true vegetarian monk. Since the turtle's feet can become his hands and even his feet, it shows that monkeys and turtles have some origins." Zhu Haowen analyzed.
"Monkey in the water." Qin Ci repeated this sentence, "Is it a water monkey?"
"What it is?"
"I read a paper on genetics when I was in college, which quoted a scientist's point of view, saying that humans originated from water apes, and over time, they gradually divided into two branches, one went to land, Gradually evolved into a great ape; the other one continued to stay in the water, and I don't know what it evolved into, maybe it was a water ape or something." Qin Ci tried to recall the content of the paper, "I remember when we were I am very interested in this statement, and a classmate said that there are traces of this water ape, and there are records in ancient times, it seems to be called the sea monk."
At this time, the ape in the fire started to jump, and it seemed very excited and anxious, and kept beckoning to let the two people come over.
"The action it made seems to be to let us jump off a cliff and enter the sea of fire." Zhu Haowen thought this proposal was a bit ridiculous.