A man and a woman came over. They were tall, with more profound facial features than the people in the Central Plains, honey-brown skin, long black hair braided into strands and decorated with feathers, green, blue, white, and other strange colors painted on their faces, and their clothes were somewhat revealing, with key parts covered with special clothes decorated with gorgeous feathers.
They held bows and arrows and carried quivers on their backs. The colorful feathers on the arrow tails protruded from their strong shoulders like some kind of decoration.
While Mu Lin was looking at them, they were also looking at Mu Lin. He was wearing a coarse cloth and a brown robe, with his hair tied up with a wooden hairpin. His appearance and clothing were very different.
The woman looked at Mu Lin and said to her companion excitedly, "Hey, Baler, he is a Han Chinese, and he has come here without being attacked by the King of the Forest. It must be that the God Tuya has blessed him!"
The man called Baler shrugged: "Xia, maybe he was just lucky and didn't meet the King of the Forest."
Mu Lin interrupted them with a clear cough: "Hello, my name is Lin Feng, I come from the outside world. I didn't expect to see a living person in the deep rain forest. I have no ill intentions, I am here to find someone. Do you live here?"
"We are from the Korta tribe, Lin Feng, you are Han Chinese, right? Ah, we haven't had any outsiders visit us for a long time, who are you looking for? Maybe we can help. I mean, the only living people in the rain forest are our people..."
Unexpectedly, he met a member of the Korta tribe, and he looked very friendly. Mu Lin smiled and said, "I'm going to find Jiang Mingyue and ask him to cure the disease and save people."
Xia looked puzzled: "Jiang Mingyue... this name sounds familiar..."
Bale's eyes changed, and he was suddenly filled with awe: "You mean the poison doctor? He hasn't used this name for a long time... But we can take you to find him."
Thea's face showed the same awe as Baler's. "Baler is right. We can show you the way... But I want to remind you that the poison doctor usually doesn't see outsiders. You must be very careful when you visit him. It will be terrible if you disturb his peace."
Mu Lin thanked them and followed them calmly.
Thinking back on their previous reactions, I couldn't help but wonder. How terrifying is this 40-year-old, notorious, irritable old man in southern Xinjiang? Is he the kind of man who usually has a gloomy face full of poisonous sores, and can spit murderous intent from his scary blood-red eyes at a glance, or even stuff raw centipedes and scorpions into his mouth with his bare hands
With the guidance of the local indigenous people, they turned several turns and the vegetation gradually became sparser from tall to short, and the view gradually became wider. They soon arrived at their destination - the foot of a gentle mountain surrounded by layers of bushes, with a dozen stone houses scattered there.
The warm mountain breeze blew on Mu Lin's face, and the corners of his lips curled up slightly. Compared to the airtight forest, it was like going from hell to heaven.
"The poison doctor is in the southernmost stone house. You can go find him."
Mu Lin followed Xia's finger and looked towards the particularly distant stone house. Compared with the other stone houses, there seemed to be nothing unusual about it. Or perhaps it was her illusion, the whole stone house was filled with a gloomy atmosphere.
Time was of the essence, so Mu Lin said goodbye to Xia and the others, and walked straight over there regardless of the curious looks from the people around him.
He stopped at the door. There was a pile of jars in front of the stone house. Thanks to his good hearing, Mu Lin could faintly hear the rustling sound of countless insects crawling in the jars...
It is said that people in southern Xinjiang like to raise poisonous insects, not to mention poison doctors.
There were books on this subject in the East Pavilion, and Mu Lin felt her scalp tingling when she read them. She vaguely remembered a long paragraph: choose the fifth day of the fifth lunar month to go to the wild to catch mice, butterflies, lizards, scorpions, centipedes, poisonous bees (the poisonous fungi in the woods on the mountain rotted after being exposed to rain and turned into giant bees, with a black body and a sharp mouth, 3 cm long), wasps (the kind that build nests in trees), blue snakes, white flower snakes, green snakes (a kind of poisonous snake, green, often living in green grass or trees, also called bamboo leaf green), wind snakes (a kind of poisonous snake, with black spots on the body and a triangular head, also called cobras), golden ring snakes (commonly known as golden iron, with yellow and black rings on the body), and many other poisonous animals, put them all in a pottery jar, let them bite and eat each other, until the last one is left alive, suffocate the last living animal, dry it, add poisonous fungi, datura flowers and other plants and your own hair, grind it into powder, and make a poisonous medicine. If the last living thing left is a snake, it is called a snake poison. Similarly, there are butterfly poisons, rat poisons, bee poisons, scorpion poisons, centipede poisons, lizard poisons...
A gust of cold wind blew by, and Mu Lin shuddered. He withdrew his gaze from the jar, walked forward and knocked gently on the door.
"Get out!" A hoarse and angry male voice came from inside the door.
Mu Lin: “…”
"I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Poison Doctor. I'm Lin Feng, and I've come from the Central Plains to ask you for the antidote to the Dangerous Moon Burning Heart Gu."
"No, get out!"
"… "
Mu Lin took a deep breath and said, "Whatever you want, we will do our best to satisfy you as a reward."
"Go... Wait! Can you find me anything?"
Mu Lin sensed room for negotiation from his words and raised an eyebrow through the door, "Of course, what do you want?"
"Ninety-nine living hearts."
"… "
"Why, you can't do it?"
"Life is precious. I'm sorry I can't do it."
"Then stop bothering me and go away!"
"In fact, you can't cure the Dangerous Moon Burning Heart Gu, right?"
"Bullshit! It's obviously you who can't meet my conditions. If you keep bothering me, you'll be fed to the snakes here."
"Do you have any other conditions? The kind that doesn't require human life."
"No, get out!"
The veins on Mu Lin's forehead throbbed, and she turned around and left almost immediately. There was no point in arguing with Jiang Mingyue here, so she might as well ask the Korta people if they had any solutions.
Unexpectedly, she was quite popular here, just like the man from Wuling who accidentally entered the Peach Blossom Spring in the human world's novel by Mr. Wu Liu. Although she was not invited home by everyone and had wine and chickens for dinner, they held a grand bonfire party for her that night.
The night sky was clear, the stars and the moon were shining brightly, Mu Lin and a group of Korta tribe members held hands and sang and danced around the campfire, laughing heartily. They all called her "the lucky one blessed by the god Tuya."
As the party was coming to an end, there seemed to be fewer people. Many men and women who had fallen in love with each other suddenly disappeared. Mu Lin asked Xia curiously, and Xia blinked mischievously: "They went to the bushes to do something happy."
Mu Lin seemed to understand something from Xia's mischievous eyes. Her cheeks turned slightly hot and she lowered her eyes.
Xia put her hand on Mu Lin's shoulder, "Hey, Lin Feng, maybe we can give it a try?"
Mu Lin felt that her expression revealed a certain alluring charm, which was both provocative and dangerous. As a woman, Mu Lin couldn't help but feel numb in her heart, but she still shook her head honestly: "No, Xia, we can chat."
Xia took her hand back and ruffled her hair, looking somewhat uninterested. "Well, before I change my mind, what do you want to talk about?"
"I don't think I'm the first Han Chinese to come here. You're so kind and friendly to me... without any suspicion. I'm very grateful, but I'm also a little curious. Can you tell me why?"
"Well..." Xia was a little surprised that Mu Lin would ask this. If he was so honest, she really didn't understand the thoughts of this Han Chinese man. Xia pulled Mu Lin to sit on the haystack. "This is what you people in the Central Plains say, 'It's a long story.' You may know Mr. Rong. I mean, his name is Rong Jinduan, nice, right?"
Mu Lin didn't know this Mr. Rong, but he nodded in support anyway.
"Mr. Rong is a Han Chinese who came back with the poison doctor 20 years ago. He is the poison doctor's man and was not eaten by the king of the forest. We dare not oppose him to stay. This decision is right. He is a very good person and knows everything. He taught us a lot of things, such as how to collect herbs in the forest, which herbs can be applied to wounds, which can be used as seasonings, and how to express ourselves better, especially young men and women like me. He taught us a lot of words from the Central Plains, so we can chat like this..."
Mu Lin had asked during the day, the so-called king of the forest is the giant red-eyed python. It generally does not eat members of the Korta tribe, but only eats people from outside.
"Where is Mr. Rong now?" Mu Lin was very sure that he didn't see any people from Central Plains here.
Xia turned her gaze towards the dark stone house at the southernmost end and sighed sadly, "The poison doctor got angry and left."
"Huh? If you look at it this way, I would have thought that Mr. Rong was eaten by the poison doctor."
"How could that be? Although the Poison Doctor is scary, he never eats people. Actually, the Poison Doctor is very kind to Mr. Rong. He never scolds him and even takes him to the forest to catch insects and make poison. Mr. Rong gave the Poison Doctor his Chinese name..."
Jiang Mingyue, a gloomy and violent old man. Okay, the poison doctor might not have been old back then, but how can the two be associated together
Mu Lin interrupted her: "They have such a good relationship, why did the poison doctor want to anger Mr. Rong and leave?"
Mu Lin guessed darkly that Jiang Mingyue was actually very happy when he first got this name, and he was kept in the dark. Later, he found out that Jiang Mingyue was actually a girl's name, and he was so angry that he turned against Mr. Rong.
"I don't know either. Who dares to explore the affairs of the poison doctor? They think they have lived too long." Xia shrank her neck.
This is the only breakthrough point now. Mu Lin thought, "Did Mr. Rong leave anything behind?"
"Before he left, he gave the poison doctor a broken wooden box, which was thrown out by the poison doctor. Mr. Rong was far away at the time and didn't see it, so Bale picked it up out of curiosity. He looked at it for a long time but couldn't open it, so he quietly showed it to me. I didn't know how to open it either, so we didn't dare to give it back to the poison doctor, so we simply hid it under his wooden bed."
"Can you show it to me? After all, it's from the Central Plains, maybe I can figure it out."
"Of course, but you have to keep it a secret!" Xia went into Bale's house without hesitation, and then there was no sound.