Chapter 104: Coming and Going
Chen Jue found a pottery jar in the old house to pick the rock cabbage yesterday. He dug some soil and buried it again. Anyway, it was not a precious medicinal herb and could be used as a potted plant. He didn't know whether it could survive. If it could, he would leave it to Brother Biao's family to play with.
Carrying a backpack full of things, I quickly walked to the top of the small hill in Wazhai and looked at the rising sun in the east, which was scorching red.
Chen Jue took a deep breath of the refreshing cool air on the plateau in the early morning, then took out his mobile phone, turned on the compass function, chose a direction that deviated by about 25 degrees from yesterday, and moved forward straight again.
Since he had just learned the skill of flying through flowers and catching butterflies, Chen Jue deliberately walked slower this time. Instead, he practiced this skill of dodging and evading when passing through the dense forest.
After crossing mountains and rivers and walking for a whole morning, Chen Jue came to a U-shaped river about 10 meters wide. He stopped and planned to take a rest by the river and have a bite to restore his strength.
In just one morning, he had already upgraded this skill of flying through flowers and catching butterflies to Level 2. Just like the skill of flying over eaves and walking on walls, it was upgraded very quickly.
I sat down on the clean pebbles on the beach beside the river, took out my phone and looked at the offline map, and found that this river should be a tributary of the Dulong River.
There are two relatively famous rivers in Gongshan. Apart from the Nujiang River, the other one is the Dulong River.
There was no human habitation nearby, and the cell phone signal was simply Xed, indicating that it was out of service range.
He took out the compressed biscuits and energy drinks and ate them slowly, admiring the clear blue river water in front of him, and gazing at the snow-capped peaks and emerald green mountains in the distance. Chen Jue felt refreshed.
Vancouver also has a similar wide river called Tang River, which is the mother river of the local people of Vancouver and has nurtured generations of people. However, Tang River is now seriously polluted.
In the early years, due to the development of the local economy, the shoe and leather factories and chemical plants along the river secretly discharged sewage into the river, and the water in the pond, which was originally used to wash rice and cook, became foul-smelling. After decades of governance, it has only seen some results in recent years, and the river has begun to turn green and return to its former clarity.
But compared to the Dulong River tributary in front of him, there is still a big gap. After all, the water in front of Chen Jue is melted water from the snow mountain, and the water quality is definitely above the second-class standard, so clean that it can be drunk directly. However, the unfiltered boiled water in the wild contains invisible bacteria and parasites, so Chen Jue still dared not drink it directly.
After eating a piece of compressed biscuit and drinking a bottle of energy drink, Chen Jue lay down comfortably on the dry pebbles in the shallows, basking in the sun which was not very hot after the beginning of autumn. His whole body was warm and the mountain breeze was blowing, which was very comfortable.
Suddenly I glanced up and saw a big bird circling in the sky.
"eagle?"
Chen Jue muttered something. There were similar birds of prey living in the mountains of Chencun’s hometown. When he was a child, he often saw them circling in the sky, but in recent years, they have become less and less common.
To be precise, the raptor that Chen Jue saw should be called a black kite (yuan), a national second-level key protected wild animal. It breeds and lives in Gongshan. It is a medium-sized raptor with a body length of more than 60 centimeters. When it is an adult, its wingspan is over one meter. There is a large white spot under its wings, and it likes to fly alone at high altitudes.
After just staring at it for a while, Chen Jue felt that there was something wrong with the flying posture of the black kite.
I saw it circling lower and lower, and with a final scream, it dived towards the other side of the river.
Chen Jue was now very curious and crawled up from his lying position.
Looking in the direction where the black kite fell, I saw a young girl with long hair and a backpack on her back, wearing a colorful vertical striped robe, lying on the bank of the green river more than 20 meters away, leaning over to drink water.
As for the black kite, it swooped to an extremely low position, and finally flapped its wings twice to slow down, then slowly and gently landed on the shoulder of the strangely dressed girl.
The clear blue river, the girl leaning over to drink water, the vast wild mountains and dense forests behind her, and the black kite quietly resting on the girl's shoulder. These scenes came into Chen Jue's eyes, and at this moment, it seemed that a unique scene of harmonious coexistence between humans, nature and all living things was formed.
Chen Jue was a little stunned, seeing a stranger in such a deserted place, and feeling that the strangely dressed girl exuded an indescribable peculiar charm . He frowned slightly and was about to shout out to say hello to the other party.
The girl with the basket on her back stood up, glanced , and finally reached out to tease the black kite on her shoulder and sent it up into the sky. She smiled at Chen Jue, then immediately turned around and walked through the dense forest behind her.
The other party appeared very suddenly and walked very quickly, but that quick glimpse left a very deep impression on Chen Jue!
Because in the brief , Chen Jue discovered that the girl was wearing a string of seven-colored gemstone beads around her neck. Although he didn't see her face too closely, under the bangs on her forehead that were blown up by the mountain breeze, Chen Jue saw a light blue pattern that looked like clouds and flames.
In addition, the other party's action of turning around and diving into the woods was also somewhat unusual in its speed.
"Monkey-shaped body technique?"
"wrong!"
“Should there be a horse shape mixed in?”
"No, no! It looks like a deer... wait, there shouldn't be deer-shaped movements in Xingyiquan... It doesn't seem to be boxing movements... so weird!" Chen Jue has been practicing martial arts intensively during this period, and has read a lot of boxing information in group files. He is familiar with the moves of various boxing schools, and has watched several kung fu-related documentaries. He can basically tell the opponent's martial arts background at a glance.
But the movements of the girl with the basket on her back when she left were so light and swift that she treated the branches, weeds and rocks as nothing. Her movements were no worse than the two light skills that Chen Jue had practiced himself.
Chen Jue thought it was some special martial art, but after careful consideration, it didn't seem to be any of the known boxing skills.
I don’t understand!
He sat there thinking for a long time, but still couldn't figure it out, so he had to stand up and cross the river in front of him to catch up and ask.
Being able to meet such a strange and interesting person in such an environment, Chen Jue's desire to explore and learn was aroused.
Although I didn't see the girl's face very clearly, from the temperament she exuded, I could tell that she was definitely a beautiful and extraordinary woman.
Chen Jue was not attracted by the beauty, he just wanted to catch up with her and talk to her to see if they could be friends and ask her what kind of martial arts she practiced.
After searching for a long distance along the river, Chen Jue still couldn't find a way to cross the river.
He was carrying a backpack, which contained a cell phone and some other daily necessities. Chen Jue didn't want to get his belongings wet, so he temporarily suppressed the idea of catching up with him and asking.
…
Disturbed by the girl with the basket on her back, Chen Jue lost interest in exploring the dense forest further away. He returned to Wa Village along the same route he came from, practicing the skill of flying through flowers and catching butterflies.
By the time he reached Wa Village, his Flower-piercing and Butterfly-catching skill had already been upgraded to Lv2 (366/500), and he would probably be able to break through in less than half a day.
At the end of the day, the agility had increased by 0.02, and the free attributes had accumulated by 0.05, which was a little less than yesterday.
It was already dark when he arrived at the earthen wall house in Wazhai. He jumped onto the top of the wall and took down the key. He opened the door, went into the house, put his things down, then turned around, went down the mountain and ran to the town for dinner.
It was the same local restaurant. Tourist buses were bringing tourists to the town one after another. The owner was doing a booming business and was so busy that he had no time to rest. He invited Chen Jue to sit at a small table in the hall.
Chen Jue took the menu and ordered a few dishes. He kept thinking about the girl with the basket on her back whom he met during the day. He pulled the shop owner aside to chat for a while and asked about the brightly colored vertical stripes.
"Colorful stripes, like a dress?"
"Does he have a string of beads around his neck and tattoos on his face?" asked the shop owner who was taking orders in a notebook. Chen Jue nodded.
"That's a Dulong woman! Very rare around here! Here we have more people from the Lisu and Dai ethnic groups." The shop owner introduced with a smile, and after writing down the dishes that Chen Jue ordered, he sent the order to the kitchen.
In fact, what the local restaurant owner didn't know was that the nearby areas he mentioned were at most a few nearby villages and stockades, with a range of no more than ten kilometers. But the ruthless man in front of him was a rare person who could walk a hundred kilometers in the deep mountains and forests day and night.
"The Dulong tribe?"
Chen Jue muttered the word twice, opened his phone and searched online, and found that this was also a relatively rare ethnic minority.
The entire tribe has a population of only a few thousand people, and they are mainly distributed in the Gongshan area.
Both men and women have loose hair, and the girl has the habit of tattooing her face. The pictures and information displayed on the Internet are indeed dressed exactly the same as the girl with the basket on her back who was seen during the day.
In addition, the information also says that the Dulong people believe that all things have spirits and worship natural objects, and many members of the tribe maintain extremely primitive religious habits.
Recalling once again the scene where the girl with the basket on her back affectionately teased the black kite, as well as its unique temperament of living in harmony with nature, Chen Jue felt that the information on the Internet was not fabricated.
You should know that taming a bird of prey like the black kite is an extremely difficult task. Only a few ethnic minorities in the flower-growing country have inherited similar eagle training techniques.
Without great talent, special skills, patience like an animal keeper, and special communication skills with animals, it is difficult to tame these wild birds of prey.
