When the two heard this, they knew that their identity had been seen through by the other. They smiled at each other and turned around.
The peasant woman stepped forward with a smile, led the two out of the big house, and walked through the streets of the city.
The streets were quiet again. Gu Qingqiao couldn't help thinking of the situation in the evening. At that time, after a day's rest, the children had no scars and regained their innocence and vitality.
"Are you the city owner?" Mu Xiyun asked.
The peasant woman smiled and nodded, "What do you think of my city?"
Mu Xiyun pondered: "You gave these poor children a home, but..."
The city lord raised his eyebrows, "What do you think is wrong?"
Mu Xiyuan said: "I have some immature inferences, I don't know if they are right or not."
"Oh?" the city lord said: "Tell me about it."
Mu Xiyuan looked at the direction the children had just entered the city, "Those children were all abducted and sold, transported here, and lost their lives. It is said that souls who died unjustly have concerns or grievances in their hearts and will not be reincarnated. Instead, they linger in the place where they died. These kidnapped children have been tortured at a young age. Their confusion and concern for their relatives make them experience the pain of the day of death over and over again. Time does not stand still on them. forward."
"Yes, those poor children, both in life and after death, are so miserable."
The city owner stood in front of a small courtyard, and a seven- or eight-year-old child greeted him. The two had very similar noses and eyes. The child called out affectionately, "Mother!"
Taking the child's shoulders and rubbing the top of his hair, the city owner said to the two: "Come in and sit down." After a pause, she smiled again: "No need to pretend."
Came into the city in disguise but was seen through, and the two were a little embarrassed.
Gu Qingqiao brought a basin of water, poured some medicinal powder into it, and brought it to Mu Xiyun to wash his face. After a wash, the camouflage was gone, and the delicate and gentle face of Xianjun was revealed.
Gu Qingqiao took out a bottle of reductive pill. Since the last time he suffered a loss, he took care to ask Mo Yan to give him some medicine to avoid the embarrassment of not being able to return to the original state.
After a while, the two changed into their daily clothes and sat in the main room drinking tea.
The city lord looked at the clear and upright posture of the two, and looked at the child beside him, and sighed: "If you can grow up, I am afraid that you will be a dozen years older than them."
The child smiled and said sensible: "I'm just that old, it's good to be with my mother."
The city lord smiled and said slowly, "Forty years ago, I was just a peasant girl named Wen Niang."
Like thousands of ordinary peasant girls, Wen Niang helped her parents and took care of her younger siblings since she was a child. At the age of sixteen, he married a farmer from a neighboring village, and a year later gave birth to a boy named Xiaojie.
If it weren't for that plague, Wen Niang would be like most women in the world, loving her husband and teaching her children, and living a normal life.
Unfortunately, fate did not let her do.
When a plague hit, her husband, her parents and brothers all died in the plague, but only Wen Niang and her child survived.
Most of the land in the village is barren. Wen Niang works in the fields during the day and spins and weaves at home at night. A person worked hard to pull the child to the age of eight, and she could help herself with some small work. She finally felt that there was some hope in life.
She will never forget that day.
I came back from a hard day in the fields, but I didn't see the child coming up to greet me. Wen Niang called a few times, but no response was received, she was already panicking, and when she opened the door, it was even darker in front of her.
The items in the hut were rummaged, and the few valuables had long since disappeared, along with the eight-year-old Xiaojie.
She spent one night calling in the village and fell ill in bed the next day.
Lizheng's daughter-in-law from the village came to visit and told her that there were a few outsiders in the village yesterday, and Xiaojie might have been taken away by those people.
The women in the village came to comfort her, and they all persuaded her to open up and find another opportunity to marry, and she would have a family again. But who doesn't understand how difficult her life will be in the future
Without giving those people a chance to sigh, Wen Niang disappeared that night.
With a few changes of clothes and only a little money left, she dragged her sick body and embarked on the long road to find her son.
Walk through mountains and rivers, cross rivers, and make a living from laundry and sewing for people along the way. This woman named Wen Niang went all the way to inquire, and almost traveled all over the Central Plains.
That day, she lost her way in the mountains, and the cold rain in winter caused her to develop a high fever. Walking around in the mountains with her eyes half closed, she saw the city in a trance.
Sitting outside the city wall, she heard the cry of the child.
The cry gave her strength, she begged the soldiers guarding the city, and wanted to go in to find her child, but where would anyone sympathize with a peasant woman with no money and no looks
Pleading day after day was of no avail, and crying year after year blinded her. One day, she found herself out of the body, a voice said to him, let's go, reincarnate, your misery is over.
"I haven't found the child yet, how can I end it?" She walked towards the city without looking back. The soldiers guarding the city couldn't see her. She finally walked into the city she longed for in her lifetime and saw the city's scene.
like hell.
Carload after carload of children were transported here and locked in the pavilion one by one. The children's hands and feet are covered with transverse wounds. These people go to collect the children's blood every day and send it into the alchemy furnace.
She couldn't understand what they were doing, but she watched one child after another die from blood loss and were abandoned outside the city.
Year after year passed, the bones outside the city had piled up into mountains.
Every year, mothers come to look for their children. Like her, they cannot enter the city gate and die in depression.
Year after year, the souls of the mothers were reluctant to leave, wandering in and out of the city together.
One day, a child escaped from the pavilion. The small body trembled and ran desperately to the city gate. But how can a thin and weak child compete with a strong adult
The big man chasing him and the soldiers guarding the city laughed, and he was forced to turn around like a cat and a mouse. Finally, the child who was so weak that he could no longer run was picked on the tip of the gun.
"Mother!" The child screamed before dying.
The souls of the mothers were shaken by the cry, and the silent weeping of the souls suddenly turned into a heart-piercing call. The gust of wind roared, and the fire swept the whole city, and everyone in the city was immediately scorched to the bone.
A strong light flashed, and the city lord gradually took shape in a blackened ruin. She is Wen Niang, and also all those mothers who can't be found.
"Yes, I am not a human being, just a resentful spirit, the resentment spirit of hundreds of mothers who have lost their children." The city lord sighed.
"Later I rebuilt the city and took in the souls of countless children. The strange thing is that the spirits of the little devils kept coming. These children all had similar experiences. They were loaded by carts, and they were taken blood for alchemy. These little devils are obsessed with If it is too deep, the scene of being resold for blood will be repeated over and over again, and I will wake them up from their nightmares over and over again." The city owner smiled bitterly: "Although there is only one day of happiness, this is what I can give. all of them."
"What about the demons and the women who entered the city?" Mu Xiyun asked.
"You said those foxes and boars? They're just monsters in the nearby mountains. They didn't do anything wrong, so I asked them to come to the city to help. As for those women..."
The city lord looked up at them, "I am a resentful spirit after all, I can't practice or transform. My strength comes from the obsession of mothers. So I will take in mothers who are looking for children. If they are willing to join me, they can If you don’t want to, I will erase their memories and let them go.”
In the big house in the morning, the one with a clear face is the woman who dedicated her soul to the city lord, and the dark shadows are the phantom images in the city.
"With all due respect," Mu Xiyun pondered, "there are so many young children in the city, you open a mountain every five years, and each time you find five women to meet the children. How short a life is, you can't be like this. Transcend the souls of all children."
"Alas," the city lord sighed, "Why don't I know? A year after rebuilding the mountain city, my Xiaojie has been found, and my obsession has disappeared. If I am willing to give up my demon body, I still have a chance to reincarnate. However, after that Not long after that, an expert came here."
"Master?" Gu Qingqiao asked, "What kind of master?"
"Looking at his face, he is probably about fifty years old," the city owner recalled: "The white robe on his body is similar to that of this Immortal Monarch. By the way, he also carries a sword engraved with cloud patterns."
Are the white robes and cloud patterns from Moyun Mountain
The resentful spirits at that time were still a little ignorant, they only knew how to constantly appease the children's souls, but they did not hide their whereabouts.
The man had mana and went straight into the city. After the same scene in the early morning, he found the city lord.
In those few years, the city owner had not yet accepted the mothers who were looking for their children into the city, and only planned to use up the power of obsession in their bodies, so they took their children to die together.
Day after day, Tong Ling was comforted to almost exhaust her mind power. On that day, after experiencing the exhaustion in the morning, Wen Niang had almost no strength and lay on the bed weakly. I thought in my heart that I was about to be relieved, and maybe I could leave in a day or two.
The man directly broke into the city owner's house. Facing the panic-stricken Xiaojie, he just smiled and stepped forward to input a spiritual power to Wen Niang.
Wen Niang, who had a little strength, told him her story and expressed her wish to die.
After pondering for a while, the man said: "I know that your life has been miserable and unusual. It is a blessing to be able to find your own child, and it is natural to want to end all this. However, have you ever thought about the more than 100 people in your body? Mother, most of them have found their children here, but why does the scene in the morning continue? Why do children's souls continue to come to your city? If the city is destroyed, the use of children to donate blood and make alchemy has been banned. You stop, in the past ten years, you should be able to transform most of the children."
"You mean...?" An idea came to mind, and Wen Niang shuddered.
"The alchemists have not stopped, they are still killing children."
Why are some people so cruel? Wen Niang looked at Xiaojie sadly, when will all this stop
"I'm also investigating this matter, but there is no result yet." The man said: "If you still want to do something for these children, please keep this mountain city going. Someone has to tell the world what happened here. "
"How long will it take?" Wen Niang asked.
"I don't know how long it will take," the man said. "I will continue to investigate this matter. Twenty years, we made an appointment for twenty years. If the truth has not been found out by then, you don't have to wait any longer. How? ?"
Wen Niang turned to look at the two of them, and said, "I agreed to his twenty-year contract. He set up a magic circle for me to hide the mountain city, and let me keep incorporating the soul of the mother who was looking for my son into myself to maintain my magic power."
"Continuously merging?" Gu Qingqiao wondered.
"Yes," the city lord said, "the master said that if you want to transform more child spirits, you must incorporate more ghosts of resentful women. I have indeed done this for a few years, but my life is so heavy, among which I can't bear all the karma. So I made a rule of opening the mountain every five years, and arranged for those little foxes to find someone to come in every time the city opened. I just want to maintain this city with the smallest sacrifice. The presence."
The city owner sighed: "When the city is opened every five years, one or two of the five mothers will always stay behind. That's how I can persist for so long. In the past twenty years, I have also received several immortal practitioners and told them about it. Here's the story, but there's no news since they left."
I don't know if it's because of my incapacity, or I don't think this matter is credible. Those people never came back, and I don't know if anyone is still investigating the matter.
"Let's go," the city owner seemed a little tired. "The guards at the city gate will let you out. I hope you can continue to pursue the truth."
Walking out of the city lord's courtyard, the two walked towards the city gate while recalling what they had seen in the morning. Mu Xiyuan sighed: "Speaking of which, this city owner is also a pitiful person. However, this city's resentful spirits and a mountain of demonic aura have not attracted the attention of the Xiuxian world, which is unbelievable."
Gu Qingqiao continued: "I also think there is a problem with this. The expert's suggestion to the city owner is noble in purpose, but the method is difficult to understand. If you want the world to understand, you can directly invite the patriarchs of the immortals. Yes, why do you want to secretly maintain the existence of the mountain city? Moreover, the resentful spirit absorbs people's souls and merges into her, not only is the karma difficult to bear, I am afraid that even if she gives up the demon body in the future, she will not be able to enter the reincarnation again."
"There are many doubts here. If we leave like this, I'm afraid we will never have a chance to come back."
The two slowed down.
Suddenly, the barrier around the mountain city flashed, and the sky seemed to be split open. Mu Xiyuan raised his head suddenly, and a black cloud came quickly over the mountain city.