Distant Mountain Battle Song

Chapter 20 The Chameleon's First Change

"Plop, ha plop."

Yun Ce could tell that the woman's way of speaking sounded a bit like the dialect of the Minnan region, or rather, the dialect of a small place in that Minnan area. What was most striking was that it was a variant of the dialect that had evolved over many years.

That makes it impossible to guess.

However, Yun Ce still accurately translated what the woman had just said, which meant—river mouth, river mouth village.

This wasn't just Yun Ce's wild guess; it was written on the gate in the middle of the wooden wall—Hekou Village!

Yun Ce couldn't understand the elegant pronunciation passed down from the Han Dynasty. In order to become an official, he practiced calligraphy and learned to write well, including Han Dynasty clerical script. This kind of calligraphy is profound and can calm people's hearts when written well. Therefore, he naturally recognized the large characters on the gate.

Those who haven't experienced such a bizarre event cannot understand the greatness of the First Emperor's standardization of writing.

However, this doesn't make sense. Yun Linchuan said that the Yellow Emperor rode a dragon and flew to the sky. Does that mean that after the Yellow Emperor came here, he reenacted history?
This is impossible. History is actually a series of coincidences. It is shaped by people and events. Even if the Yellow Emperor ascended to heaven on a dragon, he would at most look like Yun Ce now. He could not possibly recreate the history of Earth.

Putting aside everything else, just considering the evolution of characters, it's impossible for the Yellow Emperor to have directly transformed the original characters created by Cangjie into Han clerical script. Carrying a large bundle of tree bark, Yun Ce pondered for a moment and then came to terms with the Han Dynasty people dressed in front of him.

China has a long history, and billions of people once lived on that land. There must have been many unknown things that happened during that time.

Yun Ce was still being led by the woman. When they arrived at the village, they found that there were guards at the gate. The guards were also women, not very old, probably around thirty years old. They were not very good-looking, but had a good figure.

"Giggle and click..."

The woman said something to the two relatively young women.

The two women abandoned their guard duties and surrounded Yun Ce. For some reason, they liked to touch and pinch his face and chest. When Yun Ce tried to dodge, they laughed so hard they couldn't stand up straight.

After entering the village, Yun Ce understood why women were guarding the gate. The men were all disabled, some missing a leg, some missing two legs, and their injuries varied widely. Those who had lost an arm were considered the best among the disabled.

He thought these men might be more composed, after all, Yun Ce could smell their military scent from more than ten meters away.

A man who had lost both legs but still looked fierce came up behind Yun Ce, grabbed two stools, and pinched Yun Ce's buttocks, saying to the woman, "Gibberish, gibberish."

The woman looked at Yun Ce triumphantly and said, "Waaaa, waaaa."

Yun Ce broke free from the cripple's hand and kicked out. The legless man stretched out an arm to block, but was kicked away by Yun Ce. After rolling a few times on the ground, he returned to Yun Ce's face. A dark, iron-like arm lashed out at Yun Ce's groin like a whip.

Yun Ce grabbed the crippled old man's hand and, with a little force, flung the lewd old cripple up and threw him toward a haystack in the distance.

The old cripple's body crashed into the haystack, and it took him a while to crawl out of it. He shouted at Yun Ce, "Clang, clang, creak, clang!"

Upon hearing this, the woman jumped high into the air, ignoring the tree bark that fell to the ground, and dragged Yun Ce towards a wooden house. Behind them followed a group of women and children who could run and jump, as well as a group of cripples who walked in various ways.

After entering the wooden house, the woman locked Yun Ce inside and stood at the door spitting at those outside. The people outside also spat at her, and eventually, outnumbered, she angrily slammed the door shut.

Upon seeing Yun Ce sitting on the bench, she seemed to cheer up again, and took out a green, bun-shaped object from a basket hanging from the beam and handed it to Yun Ce.

Yun Ce remained unmoved, so the woman picked up the green thing, took a bite, and then handed it to Yun Ce.

Yun Ce frowned, didn't take it, picked up a small stick, and wrote on the ground in Han Dynasty clerical script: "Who are you? Where am I?"

When the woman saw Yun Ce scribbling on the ground and realized it looked like words, she jumped up and exclaimed, "Sirigela! What a mess!"

Yun Ce handed the wooden stick to the woman, who grabbed it and, biting her tongue, wrote a large character on the ground stroke by stroke—E.

After finishing writing, he patted his chest and said, "Yes, sir."

Yun Ce nodded to indicate that he understood, and then wrote his name on the ground for the woman named E Ji to see.

This time, the woman refused to accept the stick, and her already pale face turned even darker.

Yun Ce groaned inwardly, which meant that this woman would write her name.

Now, Yun Ce is anxious to define himself and wants to understand this world. He has met his own kind but cannot communicate with them, which drives him crazy.

Fortunately, the woman seemed to have some wisdom. She hurriedly ran out and returned fifteen minutes later, carrying an old, crippled man with a white beard on her back.

The old cripple sat down opposite Yun Ce and took out a few wooden tablets from the basket. Yun Ce lost interest in talking to him.

“Words are as precious as gold and jade, how can they be written on the ground?” Yun Ce looked at the wooden tablet that the legless old man had just finished writing on. He used the water in the earthenware basin that the woman had brought to wash away the charcoal stains. He took the brush from the old man’s hand, dipped it in the charcoal water, and wrote on the wooden tablet: “What place is this?”

After looking at Yun Ce's handwriting for a moment, the old man picked up his brush and wrote: "Muyun Prefecture, Dingbian County, the sixth brigade of the Chuyun Colonel, the seventh scout team, also known as Hekou Village."

Yun Ce nodded, washed the charcoal stains off the old man's bamboo slips, and rewrote: "Who is the emperor?"

The old man stared at Yun Ce for a long time before writing: "Emperor of the Great Han Dynasty".

"The emperor's name."

The old man snatched the bamboo slips from Yun Ce's hand, his originally kind face now covered with frost. Without saying goodbye to E Ji, he propped himself up on two small stools and left.

As Yun Ce watched the old man leave, he realized he might have offended him. He sighed, then sat on the bench with his legs drawn up to him and began to rock back and forth.

Eji handed a piece of greenish food to Yun Ce, and took one for herself, eating it with Yun Ce bit by bit.

As it was getting dark, Eji gave Yun Ce a bed, which was covered with thick dry grass and a mat made of some unknown fiber.

In the center of the house was a hearth. When the blood moon came out and the temperature dropped, Eji would light the hearth. The wood crackled and popped, and the smoke from the fire would drift out through a small window about a foot square in the wall.

Yun Ce didn't take the sleeping bag out of the Dragon Ball. He just lay on the small bed dressed. The bed was next to the fire pit. The wind blew in through the crack in the door, hitting E Ji first. After being heated by the fire in the fire pit, it fell on Yun Ce, making him feel a little warm.

Eji didn't sleep. Instead, she stared wide-eyed at Yun Ce's back. Her burning gaze fell on Yun Ce, but he felt at ease because her eyes were pure, like the eyes of a mother beast looking at her cubs.

Upon discovering that this place was backward in production, technology, and people, Yun Ce's mood was not good, just like when he visited a poor and remote mountain village years ago.

He knew just how difficult it was to make an impoverished mountain village prosperous. There might be people who had successfully helped impoverished mountain villages become wealthy, but Yun Ce had not done so, at least not by his own strength. Instead, he had to rely on the Yun family's vast network of connections to barely complete the task.

Now, he has fallen into poverty again. Fortunately, this time he is an observer, a recorder, and does not have to be responsible to the people here.

In Yun Ce's eyes, E Ji's family was really poor. The only thing that showed their wealth was a piece of meat hanging over the hearth, blackened by smoke. The meat was not big and seemed to be the rib of some kind of wild animal. The left side was slightly darker in color and had a fresh cut, so it must have been cut not long ago.

The days here are long, and the nights are long too. The fact that Eji made up the beds when it got dark means that people only had one thing to do during the long night ahead: sleep.

Even after a long day, Yun Ce was still not sleepy. He could feel the liquid metal moving around in the Dragon Ball wristband. Metal beads kept jumping off the wristband and then falling back down. Sometimes the beads jumped in a very regular pattern, and sometimes they seemed to be jumping around randomly. Yun Ce felt like it was calculating something.

When the blood moon rises, the night becomes very eerie. Unlike the silvery white of the full moon or the pitch black of the crescent moon, the blood moon seems to wrap the earth in a red veil.

Yun Ce got up and left the bed. Under E Ji's watchful eye, he opened the door, which was full of cracks, and sat on the threshold, looking at the night sky that was gradually becoming familiar.

The full moon and crescent moon that were visible during the day have disappeared, and a blood moon hangs in the sky, as if a pair of blood-red eyes are staring at the earth.

Eji also got out of bed and sat down on the threshold next to Yun Ce, saying, "Gibberish?"

Not knowing what Eji was saying, Yun Ce nodded. Just as he looked down, he noticed a silver-white display screen on his wristband. On the screen was a line of text: "Where did you come from?"

I had just finished reading this line of text when four or five lines of text appeared below it.

"Where are you from? 70%"

"Whose son are you? 38%"

"Can you stay, 21%?"

……

"Gibberish, pat pat."

"My brother is dead, 85% certain."

"Can you be my younger brother? 36%"

"Can you stay? 21%"

After reviewing the analysis of the liquid robot, Yun Ce turned to E Ji, who was looking at him expectantly, and said, "It's good. I'm lonely too."

(End of this chapter)