Manual of the Monster in City

10 The Forgotten God

In history, Shenting County suffered a very serious earthquake, but there are only some vague records about this earthquake.

There are two things that can be confirmed.

The first point is that before the earthquake, Qing ZF cooperated with the foreign railway company to demolish the local temple, but because of the earthquake, this matter eventually fell through.

Secondly, after the earthquake, the young people in the village thought it was the spirit of the earth. They gathered and rushed into the ancient temple. They broke the statue in anger and finally triggered a small-scale conflict. However, because the old beliefs have been forgotten in a few years, and the new village chief mediates from it, no major incidents have been triggered.

——Excerpt from "Investigation Report on Ancient Temples in Shenting County" compiled by Xiaobai

————

This is how my plan began.

A rescue plan for an innocent girl who was sent to the temple by ignorant villagers to be the wife of a god;

The other is to change the silly mind-emancipation plan here.

I gradually couldn't tell which one was more important in my heart.

I told her the story of my traveling and studying in the West. I was very fortunate that I prepared newspaper clippings. When I first saw a newspaper in the West, I was very interested in these pictures and texts. I deliberately made a small book and clipped all the interesting news that I saw in the newspaper.

London Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty as far away as the legend.

The opening of the train, the invention of the steamboat, the invention of steam machinery and electricity.

All of this was new and interesting to me back then, and of course the same was true to the little girl Jiang Zhi. She pestered me every day to tell her what she had learned in Western countries, knowing that she liked to listen, I was very happy, always racking my brains, and telling her things in a different way.

I talked about the raw meat ham in Spanish restaurants that I didn’t dare to swallow at first, talked about the twists and turns of waterways in Venice, and talked about climbing the narrow stairs to the bell tower in the leaning tower of Pisa. To the exquisitely carved gas street lamps all over the streets, to the brightly lit cities on the other side of the world...

In order to stay in the temple all the time, I also began to actively help.

I found that every morning she would go to the woods near the temple to pick fruit, look for wild vegetables, and make some simple traps to catch rabbits. I took the initiative to follow.

I have never done these things, but I find it interesting and I hope to help her. Otherwise, living here without spending any money will inevitably make life boring for a long time.

Although Jiang Zhi looked like an elf girl who walked out of western fairy tales, she was innocent and did not hear about world affairs. But these ancient skills are very skilled.

She taught me to identify all kinds of wild vegetables in the forest, taught me what are poisonous things to not eat, taught me to release animal pups caught in traps, taught me to identify plants of various medicinal materials, and said that these can be exchanged for money in the village flower.

But I also told me not to uproot those rare medicinal materials, and to carefully cut off the upper part, so that the root system will remain in the soil. People in the future can also find these...

She called it a gift from the gods.

Every day when she came out of the woods, she would pray in front of a tree at the entrance, like a prayer ritual that foreigners often do. Although I am a Christian, I am not religious. I just feel that I believe in the religion of foreigners. It looks very "modern".

A piece of the bark of the tree was hung up, revealing the snow-white inside, and the girl's childish brushstrokes carved a face on it.

The appearance of the face is somewhat similar to the face painted with gold powder on the mud puppet statue I saw in the temple. It is only distorted by the girl's immature and childish painting method, but the awkward face can be generally recognized.

Whenever she knelt in front of the face carved in the tree and prayed, I would wander around boredly, whipping the surrounding bushes with the twigs I picked up, but I was always afraid that the small sound would disturb To the girl in prayer, she always goes farther.

Until she smiled and said: "Okay!" She would stand up and take the wild vegetables and fruits back home. Prey and herbs are not common. Every time she finds her, she is very happy.

Probably because the traps she made were so simple, she just relied on digging pits and picking up some branches to make traps. They were all natural materials and could easily be broken away by animals. And there is no bait at all, only waiting for an animal to accidentally walk up to the trap covered by the branches and fall into it.

I think that Westerners also have many hunters. The hunters there use the iron to make terrifying iron traps. It is said that even grizzly bears can be hunted. So she also told her about these practices, saying that in the future, she could also make some simple iron traps and prepare some things as bait.

But she seriously rejected my proposal. She said that all of this was a gift from the gods and that these methods should not be used because of greed.

really? Believe in that kind of thing.

Sometimes I feel that my plan is about to succeed. Once I talked about what I saw and heard in the Western world. That time I talked about the fairy crossing the ordinary British subway and the steamship that looked like a small floating city on the sea.

Jiang Zhi said with emotion that she really wanted to go there, and also wanted to taste the black soup coffee that was still bitter with milk and the colorful but tooth-sweet macaron.

So I hit the iron while it was hot and fanned her up:

"Why don't we go and take a look. The outside world is huge, not just a palm-sized place like Shenting County. The world you know is just a small black spot on the map. And there are countless things in this world." There are many different civilizations and customs, and there are all kinds of beautiful buildings. There are even too many things like gods. Different countries and different places have gods praised by people. It is said that each They have all performed miracles. In such a big world, you shouldn't have been confined to such a small place all your life."

In fact, I have prepared these words a long time ago. Before that, I have repeatedly brewed them many times and strived to have a kind of rendering power to make people confined to the countryside bravely go out and enter the world.

But this time it failed. This ignorant and ignorant deer-like girl seemed to have a bottom line in her heart that she would not give in anyway.

"Why?" I was a little unwilling.

"If I leave, what should the people in the village do... and Lord God... If I leave, Lord God will be very lonely." Her voice was extremely ethereal, with a soft cheek when she said this. Bathed in the beating firelight in the room, the night is so quiet that one can hear the heartbeat.

"Your gods don't necessarily exist. Some philosophers in the West even think that gods are just imaginary things." I really don't give up and want to find an exact answer from her.

"Enough... Enough!"

She lowered her head deeply, her bright eyes sinking into the shadow hidden by the brow bone, but I still seemed to be able to see and feel the brightness. "Master God...absolutely...absolutely exists! It actually...actually has always been guarding everyone in the village."

The next day I didn't mention this with Jiang Zhi again, nor did I pick and hunt with her.

But I didn't plan to leave. I thought about staying up all night as if something in my heart prompted me to make a decision. While she was not in the temple, I put on my backpack, bought some dry food and water from the village, and left the temple.

I spent several days sleeping in the nearby mountains, just to investigate the geology here, and I wanted to find a reason to change the route of the train.

Geological prospecting is one of the compulsory courses in railway transportation. It is not difficult for me. I collected and compared rock samples at different altitudes, analyzed the structure of the rock formations, and finally concluded that this mountain is not suitable for tunneling. , The conclusion is easy to cause collapse.

Finally, I completed a full twenty-page report, packed different samples in paper bags, marked them with different numbers, and sent them together with the report.

The recipient was my tutor when I was studying abroad, and he happened to preside over this construction work.

After everything was done, I finally breathed a sigh of relief and returned to the temple, with lighter footsteps. But as soon as I walked near the temple, I saw her. She was sitting in front of the temple, her thin figure looked very lonely in the wind.

She rushed into my arms with tears, her beautiful and lively voice choked, and said to me: I thought you would never come back again...

I will not leave. will never.

I said to her softly, stroking her back. I hugged her tightly. Something surging in my heart, like a sea tide catching the sky.

Maybe that night, she looked serious when she said that--

"Master God...absolutely...absolutely exists! It actually...actually has always been guarding everyone in the village."

Really childish words. But I seem to feel a strange power from it...I can't tell.

I only know……

I will not leave. will never.

————

"So... you stayed here because of this, are you reluctant to leave for a long time? For this...a promise?" Jia Qingming gradually recovered consciousness from his memories.

He looked at the bright red wedding gown in the old wooden box and suddenly felt a little moist in his eyes. It seemed, and before that, tears had already flowed down his cheeks.

Those old past events flooded with the memory of the possessed house ghost. To him, it was like turning up his own personal experience, past pain or happiness, and experiencing it again.

The house ghost did not answer him, nor did he leave his body.

"What did you do with crying and laughing since just now?" Yuan Baiyang asked him expressionlessly, or the expression of seeing a fool.

Because this guy can't see anything, Xiao Hei's words are just meowing sounds to him, and things like house ghosts are completely non-existent in his dimension... So just now Jia Qingming...

He really looks like a fool crying and laughing there alone!

but--

"Why is it your turn to complain about me with such a dead face?!" Jia Qingming complained desperately.

As soon as the voice fell, he seemed to hear something. Just now, before the memory of the house ghost began, he also heard something strange more than once.

This voice... seemed to come from the collapsed idol.

"Be careful!" Xiao Hei called out suddenly.