[Stolen pen fan] The ultimate extreme

Walking forward from the intersection guarded by the snake, the road suddenly became steeper.Gradually changing from a steep slope of [-] degrees to a steep slope of [-] degrees, the so-called artificially excavated steps are actually just depressions, so the road ahead has become a need for limbs.

Because of the hand injury, the black blind man's breathing became a little deeper after walking for a while.

"The feeling of the wind should not be far from the exit." Zhang Qiling stopped and rested his body on the road ahead. Because the angle was too steep, it still looked like he was standing.

Seeing this, the blind man also stopped, lit a cigarette, and the fireworks flickered on and off according to the frequency of his inhalation. After biting into his mouth and taking a few puffs, the blind man took the cigarette out of his mouth: "If this is really the territory of the Queen Mother of the Ancient West, then that girl from the Old Nine Gates wouldn't be so lucky. The Ghost Gap just happened to be the core of this ancient city."

"It's very possible. I seem to remember who she feels like."

"Who?"

But Zhang Qiling didn't answer Hei Xiazi's question. He had already started to climb up.

The exit should be far away from the valley road of the Grand Canyon, because they are standing in the clouds at this time.In terms of feeling, the altitude should have reached more than 1000 meters or more.

"This road doesn't seem to be used for escape. I don't know what to build it for." As the altitude increased, the temperature dropped a little, and the blind man let out a sigh of relief.

It seems to be going up.Zhang Qiling had already turned on the wolf-eye flashlight, because this altitude was right in the clouds, so the visibility was very low.

"bump."

The blind man fired a shot, and after walking a few steps, Zhang Qiling saw a bleeding pheasant on the road.The black blind man picked up the pheasant and pointed to the right: "The place is a little wider there, and you can use a branch to make a fire here, you know how to do it."

Zhang Qiling turned his head and gave Hei Xiazi a nonchalant look, then picked up some dry branches nearby, took out two flints and wiped them, he was very skillful in making a fire.

The black blind man took out his own machete that matched the one on Zhang Qiling's body, cut a branch into a long stick, dug some wet mud on the spot, wrapped it on the chicken, and roasted it on the fire. From the pheasant.

The aroma of the pheasant gradually came out after the soil was burnt red, and the black blind man took out a pair of gloves from the equipment—it turned out to be a special glove used by a certain sect of tomb robbers in the past to prevent corpse poisoning.These gloves, which are rare among tomb robbers today, were used by this person to insulate heat, pick mud, and pluck chicken feathers. It was a waste of money.

After plucking the chicken feathers, Hei Xiazi then put the chicken on the fire to roast, and Zhang Qiling picked the bottom of the fire from time to time to ensure that the fire would burn more vigorously.

The blind man flipped through the equipment, then chuckled: "Bringing this is really useful."

Look at what he touched, it was a small bottle of salt and pepper.

"It will attract guests." As soon as Zhang Qiling finished speaking, Hei Xiazi heard a very subtle voice, and looked up, the other party felt Hei Xiazi's gaze and the aura emanating from these two people, and stopped in his tracks.

A red fox.Very beautiful red fox.

Seeing the fox stop, Hei Xiazi unceremoniously tore off the soft chicken and threw a chicken leg to Zhang Qiling.Zhang Qiling stared at the chicken leg in his hand for a while, and then began to eat at a leisurely pace.

The red fox couldn't help but raised its claws to get closer to it, and the blind man threw the leftover bone with some meat on it.Immediately the animal let out a merry purr and devoured it.

This search and rescue turned into a picnic, and the black blind man didn't feel wrong at all. The leftover chicken heads and so on were all fed into the fox's stomach.

After the fox finished eating the chicken head and bones, he ran to the blind man and rubbed his head against the blind man's arm to show his favor. This behavior made the blind man and Zhang Qiling startled.

A fox is a wild animal, and it cannot be bought with a little pheasant meat, unless the fox was raised by people in the past.The fox circled around the blind man twice, ran forward two steps, turned back to the blind man, circled twice, ran two steps, and looked back at the blind man and Zhang Qiling.

"This seems to mean, let us follow it?" The black blind man rarely showed any expression other than confusion, "Is this fox a spirit?"

At this moment, Zhang Qiling had already started to walk, intending to follow the fox.

"Obviously I attracted the fox, why did I hook you up." The black blind man laughed jokingly, "Is it really a vixen? That's understandable. Foxes live in the mountains, and I probably haven't seen anyone wearing sunglasses like me. , so I plan to find someone who looks normal to perform the magic."

The fox led them away with all sorts of crutches. He didn't know how long they walked, but he knew they had been going up the mountain.It seemed that when the day was about to dawn, the fog dissipated, or they had climbed above the clouds and fog, and in front of them was a magnificent cave.

The natural shape of the stones in front of the cave can be described as ingenious. One left and one right faintly resemble a Bodhisattva stepping on a lion and an elephant, but it is actually a statue of Samantabhadra Manjushri carved out of nature.The jagged stones nearby are like all living beings waiting for the Bodhisattva to open up his wisdom and make wishes for him.But this hole is said to be a hole, but both ends are connected.

Entering the cave, I saw the words "This cave reaches the sky" engraved on the wall, which is simple and powerful.

It turned out that the red fox led them to the legendary Tongtian Cave. It is said that this is the place where twelve Chinese monks who went to the Western Regions to preach scriptures in the Tang Dynasty went through hardships and found the place where they became immortals when they found the holy mountain of Buddha.This legend is a bit interesting, because the purpose of Buddhist monks' practice is to get rid of the cycle of reincarnation, and according to the Buddhist law, becoming an immortal is still within the cycle of reincarnation.

Becoming an immortal should belong to the category of Taoism, and the earliest record about "immortal" in ancient Chinese classics is:

"To grow old and not die is to be immortal."

There are still some incomplete murals in the cave. What's interesting is that this mural seems to be incomplete because the painter didn't finish it, rather than the incompleteness caused by wind and rain erosion.

"It seems to have solved a problem unintentionally." Zhang Qiling groped among his belongings and took out a cylindrical delicate object, which the black blind man recognized as the one he had found at the Thousand Buddhas Sacred Scenery before.This thing refracts and projects the built-in paintings from different angles through the pearls and hits the murals on the wall. Although it is almost dawn, because it is in a hole through the middle on both sides, this thing can still be finished within half an hour. use.

Zhang Qiling groped on the cave wall, found a depression, put the cylindrical object into it, and adjusted it with two fingers.At first, what he saw in the cave were the reincarnation motif murals that Hei Xiazi had seen before, but with the movements of Zhang Qiling's fingers, the appearance of these murals kept changing.Not long after, the mural on the wall facing the depression showed a complete state.

This mural records an unknown secret of the emperor of the Tang Dynasty.

Emperor Taizong had a dream one day that his 11th year in Zhenguan was approaching.The emperor woke up from his dream, looking around in a daze, terrified.Before that, the emperor was a devout Taoist, but at this time someone introduced him to an incredible person.

The man told the emperor that if he wanted to live longer, he had to go west.It is not acceptable for Taoist priests to go west.In the Western Regions, or even further west, people there believe in Buddhism, and monks can be very respected there.At this time, the emperor remembered that there was once an eminent monk named Xuanzang who wanted to go west, but this eminent monk had already left Chang'an for 8 years.

So the emperor sent the man to the Western Regions with a group of monks.This group of monks did not know the emperor's wishes. Although it was strange to go to the Western Regions to spread scriptures suddenly, and some small countries in the Western Regions, such as Qiuci, had more customs of worshiping Buddha than the Taoist Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty; but for the monks Going west is their ideal. Master Xuanzang, who left 8 years ago, has become a legend at this time, so these monks embarked on the journey to the west without any complaints.

The story of the mural ended here, and this story did not end. Zhang Qiling silently lifted out the cylindrical object, and the mural on the wall returned to its incomplete state.

This is quite different from the story of Taizong’s journey to the underworld in the legend of Journey to the West, but the plot of Taizong’s journey to the underworld in the legend of Journey to the West is also different from the Tang Dynasty’s Dunhuang picture book "Taizong’s Introduction to the Underworld".

There are also some life story paintings on the side, which are pictures of the little fox and the mysterious man living here.

Apparently, the mysterious person Taizong saw and these monks came here and lived here.As for folk operas, legends, murals, and story books, they were all produced through mythological processing on the basis of this fact, and in the process of spreading, they changed the situation of Taizong's dream limit and the final limit.

"I'll go to the other end to see if there is a way down the mountain." The blind man patted Zhang Qiling on the shoulder and walked out from the other end of the cave.After a while, he came back: "It seems that you can go down there."

The place Heixiazi pointed to seemed to be a ditch washed out by melting snow in winter. According to common sense, it should be possible to go down the mountain.The red fox didn't follow them anymore, but stood at the entrance of the cave and watched the two of them leave.

This fox is not big, maybe it is the offspring of the fox raised by the mysterious person living here, maybe not.But it seemed so humane that it led them to find the other half of the mural in the object in Zhang Qiling's bosom. I don't know if there is the same aura left in that object as this Tongtian Cave, so it led the two to arrive. Tongtiandong way to repay them.

The descent was unexpectedly smooth, and when they were almost at the bottom of the valley, the two realized that they had circled around, and they were in the place where Heixiazi felt that there was something wrong last night.Now that they have reached the ground, the two decided to go and have a look.

Because he had already reached the bottom of the valley, Zhang Qiling restored his stature to that of Old Li, and the two of them lowered the rope from top to bottom to explore the situation of that cliff.Hei Xiazi was waiting for news from Zhang Qiling on the top of the cliff because his hand was injured.Zhang Qiling went down to dig the problematic soil for a while, looked at it with a flashlight, and turned back to climb to the top of the cliff after a while.

"How is it?" Hei Xiazi threw a cigarette to Zhang Qiling, Zhang Qiling took it but didn't smoke, played with it in his hand and then threw it back to Hei Xiazi.

"The cave below is the kind of grotto dug by monks. It seems that no one has discovered it yet. I took a rough look. There are Chinese and Kucha scripts, and there are some murals similar to Dunhuang Buddhist grottoes, but they are not worth much to me. big."

"It's not of much value to you. If people from the archaeological team find out, they will be very happy, but we don't seem to have any obligation to inform them." The black blind man smiled, "If you let them come here to dig, maybe your The trip will be delayed."

"These caves should be built by those monks. It seems that they all stayed here in the end and did not go back to the Tang Dynasty."

The blind man sat for a while, then stood up and fired a signal flare.After a while, there was a response from the camp.Without delay, the two walked towards the camp.

When they arrived at the camp, they found that Xie Xinning was already in the camp.She looked a bit embarrassed, with several injuries on her body.

"Her left ankle is dislocated, and she probably needs to rest for a while." Pan Zi told the blind man about Jie Xinning's situation, "Why did you suddenly disappear when you were searching for someone last night?"

"I don't know, I can't see you all of a sudden, I don't know if it's the vixen who wanted to find me and let me have an affair, but it probably turned out to be because he saw an uncle following me, so he let me go It's gone." The blind man laughed casually, and Pan Zi gave him a stern look, but finally his eyes fell on the gauze on his arm, and he didn't say anything else.

In the end, Xie Xinning expressed her unwillingness to continue to follow the archaeological team, because she was injured by the fall and was required to stay in bed for two weeks.

However, after the archaeological team left, she got off the bed, moved her hands and feet, and looked no different from ordinary people.Afterwards, Xie Xinning disappeared in the hospital where she was staying and returned to Changsha.

In a small courtyard, she washed her face and peeled off a thin piece of skin.This kind of mask can't be worn for too long, she needs to live here without seeing anyone for a few days, and then put on a new one.As for the face reflected in the mirror at this time, if Zhang Qiling or Wu Sansheng were there, they would definitely not admit their mistakes.

Chen Wenjin.

After freshening up, Chen Wenjin turned around and went back indoors, and wrote down a paragraph in his notebook:

In the canyon of Aksu, I found a way to go to West Queen Mother City.

In the house on the left there was a darkroom for washing. Chen Wenjin took off the photos on the folder, tore off the words just written down in the notebook, and put them in an envelope together with the photos.

[Note:] According to the Notes of Tomb Raiders, the Kingdom of the Queen Mother of the West is in Qaidam, and the Qaidam River flows through Aksu.Legend has it that the Queen Mother of China and the West met Zhou Tianzi near Tianshan Mountain.Here, a city under the rule of the Queen Mother of the West is set in the Tianshan Canyon, which is acceptable geographically.

【Note 2:】The Aai Grottoes were discovered in 99.The time period here is before 99 years, so it is "never discovered".