The Three Mornings and the Dark Moon
Lu Ren received a wedding invitation. He didn't have many relatives and hadn't been invited to a wedding for a long time. What was even more strange was that the one who invited Lu Ren to the wedding was not a human, but a monster.
The invitation was delivered by Si Yuan on a certain working day.
Lu Ren opened the invitation and found that the protagonists of the wedding were written on it: the groom Jiao Jiao and the bride Kun Peng. Jiao Jiao was the villain who had taken Lu Ren to the ghost market, and it was there that they found Jiao Jiao's cousin, Kun Peng.
Lu Ren still has vivid memories of this couple with such a huge difference in size.
Lu Ren remembered that when he had just returned from the ghost market, he once asked Si Yuan: "Why is Jiao Jiao such a small monster, but his cousin is Kunpeng? The gap between them is too big."
Si Yuan just shook his head when he heard this, indicating that he didn't know either: "I only heard that Kunpeng was lost when he was young."
Although Si Yuan's answer seemed to reveal some inside information, it left too much room for imagination. Lu Ren never had much imagination, so he just thought about it for a while and then put it out of his mind.
Now, faced with the invitation that suddenly arrived, a new problem was placed before Lu Ren: How to give the gift money?
Hearing that Lu Qingzhou was also invited, Lu Ren went to consult Lu Qingzhou during his break on weekdays.
In response to this, Lu Qingzhou said that monsters don’t care about these things, and they usually go to banquets empty-handed.
Lu Ren finally felt relieved, but just as he thanked Lu Qingzhou and was about to return to work, Lu Qingzhou stopped him and said casually, "But you'd better bring one or two self-defense items with you."
Lu Ren:?
It is said that a long time ago, wedding banquets between monsters were very crazy. People sitting at a table at that time would often "accidentally" put the hands of the guests who led the way into their mouths while eating. This led to the disappearance of several guests after a wedding, which gradually became a normal occurrence.
"Of course, after so many years of publicity and persuasion by the Foreign Household Investigation Bureau, this bad habit has been greatly improved." Seeing Lu Ren's dark face, Lu Qingzhou comforted him.
So Lu Ren, who was trembling with fear, spoke tremblingly and confirmed again and again: "In other words, there will be no such thing as eating guests now, right?"
Lu Qingzhou nodded: "Yes, if the food is good."
Lu Ren: ???
It seems that what you gave me is not a completely affirmative sentence.
For the sake of his own safety, Lu Ren plans to hire Qilinzi and A Bing as his bodyguards. Qilinzi and A Bing have been in tears at school recently, and they don't want to get up early every day. In addition, some time ago, in order to escape his regular job, Bian Cheng used some backdoors to become a biology teacher at Qilinzi School, successfully leaving a serious psychological shadow on many young students.
Let’s not talk about anything else, but the time when Bian Cheng wanted to explain the human body structure to his students, he actually invited Jun Fang to the school, and then cut Jun Fang in front of many students - Jun Fang’s body was once a human, and he had no sense of pain and would not die, so it was indeed a good teaching aid.
The bloody scene and Bian Cheng's grinning face were deeply imprinted in the minds of every student present. And because Bian Cheng used Lu Ren's face, it directly led to Qilinzi and A Bing being frightened and crying whenever they saw Lu Ren smile for nearly a month.
In order to prevent his smiling face from becoming the most terrifying thing in the entire Ten Realms in the near future, Lu Ren promptly complained to the school as a parent.
Bian Cheng lost his job as a result.
Qilin cub has finally slowly gotten over his psychological trauma. What he does most now is to watch Shan Gui live broadcast his life in the mountains on his small tablet after school.
After returning to the mountain, Shan Gui did not forget his live broadcast career, and even broadcast the restoration of Shan Gui Temple, digging wild vegetables and bamboo shoots, etc. Closely following the theme of modern people's yearning for pastoral life, he has accumulated considerable popularity in the human world and the mountain and sea world, and even has an official fan club.
Faced with this situation, Donghuang Taiyi was almost chopped off. He often called Lu Ren to his office during working hours, and then pointed at the live comments on the screen calling Shan Gui "wife, wife, wife", and asked Lu Ren: "How can I know the home addresses of these people?"
Lu Ren: ...
Anyway, after Qilinzi and A Bing learned that they needed to take half a day off from school to go to Beiming, they cheered and agreed to go with Lu Ren.
The wedding venue was set in the North Sea. There was only boundless sea water there. The only place where terrestrial creatures could settle was on the Dachun. The Dachun was a tree that was really big. Its roots went through the entire deep ocean and took deep roots in the seabed of the North Sea. The diameter of the trunk was comparable to that of a small island, and it was lush and leafy. After generations of reproduction and growth, towns were built , where about 30% of the residents of the entire North Sea lived.
Kun decided to set the wedding venue at the top of Dachun, a place that overlooks the entire Beiming.
Because the journey was long, Lu Ren arrived a day early and spent the night in the town at the bottom of Dachun. The next day, he would sit on Kunpeng's back and head to the wedding scene.
Because Qilin Cub could only take half a day off in the afternoon, Lu Ren set out a little late. When he and Lu Qingzhou arrived at Dachun together, it was already evening. But this did not hinder Jiao Jiao's enthusiasm. When he met Lu Ren at the dock under Dachun, he seemed very excited and kept waving to Lu Ren: "Young Master! Young Master!"
Lu Ren also smiled and said to Jiao Jiao, whom he had not seen for a long time: "Long time no see, congratulations."
After hearing this, Jiao Jiao blushed in embarrassment: "Hehe, if it weren't for your help, I might not have found my cousin yet."
Although Jiao Jiao looked very excited, for some reason Lu Ren always felt that he looked a little haggard.
"Maybe it's because the wedding preparations are too busy." Lu Ren thought so. He was just a little confused and didn't take it to heart.
Before they had time to check in, Jiao Jiao insisted on inviting Lu Ren and Lu Qingzhou to have a drink in advance. After all, they were close friends in the ghost market. It was a happy day, and Jiao Jiao had good intentions. In addition, Qilinzi, A Bing, and Lu Qingzhou were all there, so there was no danger, so Lu Ren naturally did not refuse.
The base of the trunk of the big chun tree is like a busy port city. All fishing boats coming to Beiming have to pass through here. Over time, this place has become a bustling market.
The lights in the taverns and teahouses were as bright as day, and the patches of lights illuminated the sea not far away, as if a raging fire that would last for generations was ignited on the sea.
Jiao Jiao was very thoughtful. He used beer specially brought from the human world to entertain Lu Ren instead of some unknown wine that could make one sleep for a hundred years. Lu Ren was thankful, but in order not to spoil the groom's mood, he also drank a few more glasses.
Jiao Jiao kept laughing during the meal and was so happy that he couldn't even close his mouth.
"When I was a child, I saw a little girl crying under a tree in my hometown. When I asked her where her home was, she said she didn't know. I asked her name, and she still said she didn't know. Then the child who came with me said that she was abandoned by her family. The little girl heard it and cried even harder. I beat the child who said that she was abandoned by her family, and then told them, 'Who said she was abandoned by her family? She is my cousin.' In the blink of an eye, more than 300 years have passed."
Jiao Jiao felt some emotion when talking about the past.
After a few more rounds of drinking, Lu Ren asked casually, "By the way, why did you choose this day to get married?" It's neither a New Year nor a festival, so is it a special day?
Jiao Jiao scratched his head and said, "It's not a special day actually. It's mainly because my life span is coming to an end."
Lu Ren, who was still holding the cup, was stunned for a moment after hearing Jiao Jiao's words: "Ah?"
Jiao Jiao then explained to Lu Ren: "Although we Jiao Jiao are monsters, we are the lowest kind of monsters with a very short lifespan, usually just over 300 years old." Jiao Jiao's voice was very calm, as if he was not talking about his own business.
Three hundred years is a very short time for a monster like Kun. After all, Kun just took a nap, but Jiao Yao spent two hundred years searching for him.
Two-thirds of Jiao Jiao’s life is just as long as Kunpeng’s nap.
"In fact, I wanted to tell my cousin that we should not get married. Kun can live for tens of thousands of years. She still has a long life ahead of her and will soon forget me."
Jiao Jiao looked at the wine glass in his hand. The clear liquid reflected the soft moonlight, just as bright as his cousin's eyes in his memory. He had a sweet smile on his face, probably recalling some beautiful memory. He said, "But my cousin refused."
Lu Ren listened to Jiao Jiao quietly, not knowing what to say, so he could only swallow the wine in his hand in one gulp.
Maybe because he was smaller, Jiao Jiao got drunk faster than Lu Ren.
Kun, who had transformed into a human form, came to pick up Jiao Jiao. She was wearing a floral dress and had a dried imperial flower pinned to her ear.
After the two men walked away, Qilin cub hugged Lu Ren's thigh with a pouty mouth, then raised his head and looked at Lu Ren with tears in his eyes, and asked : "Aren, are you going to die too?"
Lu Ren didn't know how to answer Qilin cub for a moment. He was afraid that telling the truth would hurt Qilin cub's heart, but he didn't want to lie in front of the child.
So Lu Ren avoided the question, looked at the direction where Jiao Jiao and Kun were going, and couldn't help muttering to himself: "In the eyes of monsters, how do they view the short lifespan of humans?"
Lu Qingzhou, who was standing by, asked Lu Ren, "Do you know how old the tree we are standing on is?"
Lu Ren shook his head.
Lu Qingzhou said, "I don't know either."
In ancient times, there was a tree called Dachun, which had a spring of 8,000 years and an autumn of 8,000 years. A year in the life of a Dachun lasted 16,000 years, and how many 16,000 years had such a large tree already lived?
Lu Qingzhou told Lu Ren: "Your lifespan is to us what our lifespan is to Dachun."
"Whether it is a life of petty intrigue or grandeur, for Dachun, it is just the time when a leaf falls. But what remains is memory, and memory itself has nothing to do with the length of time."
It is just the sound of a leaf falling, but it can seem so long. The sound will continue to echo and collide in the endless river of time until it becomes clearer and clearer.
After hearing this, Lu Ren looked up at the tree called Dachun. The rustling leaves seemed to be giving a silent answer. Then he lowered his head, smiled, stroked the head of the Qilin cub, and said, "Don't forget me."
Even if it's just the time it takes for a leaf to fall.
① "Xiaoyaoyou" by Zhuangzi.
(End of the book)
