Splendid peasant girl busy farming

The old lady on the raft

When Luo Fengtang awakened the blood of the Taizu and broke open the stone gate with force, in the secret room at the other end of the stone gate, the soul of Yang Ruoqing, who was retreating and dispensing medicine, seemed to have left her body and drifted to a strange place.

In this place, it is difficult to tell whether it is day or night, because the sky has both the sun and the moon.

The sun is not red, but white.

The moon is red.

The white sun and the red moon hang side by side in the sky, making this place gloomy and gray, day and night, and things like ashes are floating in the sky anytime and anywhere, and the leaves and grass on the roadside have faded from their bright green. It was also bleak.

It seems that someone is singing, the singing is ethereal and far away, intermittent, sometimes absent, and it floats into the ears is a sad tune, which makes people feel depressed and lonely to cry.

Yang Ruoqing walked barefoot in this strange place, in a trance, feeling like she was dreaming.

A river appeared in front of it, the river was roaring, and the wind was blowing.

She wandered by the river.

Although she didn't know where she was going next, there seemed to be a voice guiding her to cross the river and go to the city opposite, as if that was where she should belong...

A leather raft floated over from the other side of the river, and the boatman seemed to be an old lady from the back.

Yang Ruoqing continued to wander, standing by the river and staring at her own reflection in the river, her mind was still dazed, although the voice had been guiding her to the other side of the river, but there was another obstacle in her heart.

It made her resist, as if something was holding her back, as long as she crossed the river, she would never be able to come back, and she would never be able to say goodbye to those things...

As the raft approached, the old lady rowing turned around.

The old lady turned around slowly. She was wearing black clothes, with a bun behind her head and a long ivory hairpin.

The old lady obviously didn't have a veil covering her face, but she couldn't see her irrelevant appearance clearly, like a mosaic.

She looked at Yang Ruoqing kindly, and asked her with a smile: "Girl, why are you here? Did you go the wrong way?"

Yang Ruoqing has been looking at the long ivory white hairpin on the old lady's head, feeling familiar, as if she has seen it somewhere but can't remember it.

Her reaction was a little sluggish, her eyes slowly shifted to the old lady, and she said in a low voice, "I don't know why I came here, where is this?"

The old lady said with a smile: "You don't even know where this is, so you ran over here, what a silly girl!"

One silly girl at a time, with such a friendly tone, Yang Ruoqing smiled embarrassedly.

Pointing to the city on the other side of the river, she asked the old lady: "Old man, I want to go to that city, can you drive me there?"

"Then do you have money? If you have money, I will take you there." The old lady said.

"I have money!"

Yang Ruoqing said, how can I have no money, I vaguely remember that I seem to be a very rich person.

She felt all over her body, but couldn't find a copper plate.

Only a gold ring was found on the ring finger of his right hand.

"Give me your gold ring," said the old lady.

Yang Ruoqing shook her head resolutely, and blurted out: "That can't be done, this is my life!"

my life?
She was stunned, but she couldn't remember the origin of the ring.

My mind was empty, as if I had lost a lot of things, and I just acted on an instinctive feeling.

"Haha, the ring is your life, what about the person who gave you the ring?"

Asked by the old lady, something seemed to split open in Yang Ruoqing's empty head, and many things rushed to squeeze out of that gap...

"Also," the old lady on the raft seemed to be a chatterbox, and continued, "You can't go to that city over there now."

"Why can't I go?" Yang Ruoqing asked again.

The old lady said, "You can't cross this river."

"Why can't you go?"

"The end of this river is the city. There is a big vicious dog guarding the gate of the city. The vicious dog has three heads. It is old and fierce. It likes to eat tender meat like you woman."

Yang Ruoqing felt chills all over her body.

Standing stiffly by the river, not knowing what to do.

"But, even if I can't go to the city, I don't know where I should go?" Yang Ruoqing said to herself.

"Old man, can you tell me where I come from and where I should go?"

The old lady just smiled, clasping her hands in front of her body, Yang Ruoqing could feel that there was a benevolent face behind the mosaic, and that the other party had no malice towards her.

"It's hard for you to go back yourself, it depends on whether someone is willing to come and pick you up."

"Huh? Pick me up? Who will pick me up?"

"Hehe, the secret cannot be leaked."

Yang Ruoqing felt that the old lady's words were too profound and left half of what she said.

"Old man, your clothes look baggy, but why do I think you are very thin?" Yang Ruoqing looked at the old lady's body, and the more she looked, the more she felt that there was only a skeleton frame left in her clothes.

The old lady touched her empty sleeves, and smiled again: "I used to be hungry for a long time, this meat, that's when all the meat fell off, and it can't grow back when it's gone. "

For some reason, upon hearing this, Yang Ruoqing's eyes turned red.

She wanted to cry, but found that no matter how sad she was, she couldn't squeeze a tear. Her eyes seemed to have lost some function.

"Don't cry, silly girl, it's been so long, it's hard for you to still have this heart, old lady, I'm content!" the old lady said again.

Yang Ruoqing raised her head and looked at the old woman on the raft, she took a few steps forward, her feet almost touched the river.

"Old man, what can I do for you?"

"By the way, didn't you just say that you want this gold ring, come on, I'll give you the gold ring, and you can exchange it for some money to buy some delicious tonics!"

Yang Ruoqing really took off the gold ring and handed it to the leather raft.

The old lady sighed in relief, "With your words, it's better than anything else."

"I don't want your things, that person is coming to pick you up soon, you go back quickly!"

"Old man, don't go..."

"Go back, go back!"

When the voice came, the old woman who was chatting and laughing before suddenly appeared in the middle of the river with the raft under her feet.

When I looked again, the leather raft had disappeared at the end of the river, condensed into a small black spot.

Yang Ruoqing stared at the direction of the raft in a daze, letting the biting cold water beat against her instep.

When she was at a loss, a strong wind suddenly blew up between the sky and the earth, and she faintly heard the sound of tigers roaring and dragons moaning above her head.

The sound was deafening to her.

After the ground under her feet trembled violently, the river in front of her suddenly raised a huge wave several feet high, and a burning arm broke through the huge wave and stretched out of the water, grabbing her.

She screamed and was dragged into the bottom of the river...

(End of this chapter)