Paintings of Terror

Qin Ci was almost exhausted from the heat. The world he was in was getting hotter and hotter. The density of the air changed due to the heat, causing the scene in his eyes to be distorted, as if the air was also burning.

Qin Ci looked at the sea of ​​fire on the other side of the cliff, and there was a vaguely huge figure in the light of the fire. As the air in the fire changed, it was severely distorted and even his waist was broken.

When Zhu Haowen hurried back, he held a box in his hand: "Old Qin, the other side has already lit up, we have no way to go."

Qin Ci retracted his gaze, feeling more and more that he might have had an outrageous and terrifying hallucination just now.

Qin Ci turned his gaze to Zhu Haowen, and his voice became dull with anxiety: "I only found a few charred conch shells and clam shells, as well as some sea fish and unnamed sea creatures, all roasted. If you do, it can be our food temporarily. Hao Wen'er, what's in your box?"

Zhu Haowen put the box on the dry and slightly hot ground: "I was holding the extra light in my hand. I didn't open it at the time. I wanted to come back and watch it together.

Qin Ci smiled bitterly: "You hope this thing is like Aladdin's magic lamp. When it is turned on, a smog-like monster will appear to satisfy our desire to escape the sea of ​​suffering."

Zhu Haowen remained expressionless in the heat: "I'm afraid it's an empty box."

So the two people put the box with ancient patterns on the ground in the middle, and Zhu Haowen lifted the lid. The gesture was like lifting the lid of a crab that they didn't like very much.

The box is really empty.

But this "empty" is only relative to the physical space. If calculated in decibels, this box can be said to be quite "full".

As soon as they opened the lid, both of them heard the sound in the box, which filled the whole world.

That is the sound of the ocean, the waves are raging, hitting thousands of miles.

Qin Ci closed the lid, and the sound stopped instantly, as if the stop button was pressed for a certain video.

Zhu Haowen tried to open the lid again.

The loud sound of the huge wave came out again, closed, and the sound disappeared.

"Unexpectedly, what I got was a music box." Zhu Haowen said blankly.

"This..." Qin Ci found that Zhu Haowen's metaphor is impeccable here. "This music box actually has the same meaning as the shells and sea fishes I picked up. They are all from the sea. I think we won't Finding these things for no reason, all of this must have something to do with the sea."

Zhu Haowen: "It's to show that our situation is'deep and hot'."

"Di——" A loud time chime sounded clearly and abnormally in the hot and unpredictable world, as if the power was suddenly cut off during the dog days, and the air conditioner made such a sad reminder before stopping operation.

The two people are obviously already familiar with the voice, and they don't need to look at their phones to know: "Two hours have passed."

Zhu Haowen: "No progress."

It is false to say that it is not anxious, but both men try to maintain their composure.

Qin Ci looked at the direction he was staring at, the steep cliff, and then the endless sea of ​​fire, it was prohibitive.

The two of them were forced to stop when they got here, and then explored two paths separately. As a result, Qin Ci found some seafood and Zhu Haowen found a music box.

"Hao Wen'er, I just saw a person in that place." Qin Ci felt that his expression was not clear enough, so he pointed his finger at the front of the cliff: "A person's back, that person has a bare head and a burly figure. ."

"You mean, on the other side of the sea of ​​fire, in the fire, there is someone?" Zhu Haowen asked very seriously, without any doubt that Qin Ci was dazzled by the heat.

"Yes, it's in the fire. It's not so much a real person, but an image, so I can see it so clearly." Qin Ci stared in that direction, and gradually raised his eyebrows, "It appeared again. , That person appeared again!"

Zhu Haowen also looked in that direction, and stopped making a sound for a while.

"Hao Wen'er, have you seen it too?"

Zhu Haowen looked at it carefully for a while: "What do you see from the back of a person?"

"Yes, with his back facing us, his head is bare, and he is wearing a robe, as if he is waving his hand..." Qin Ci looked at it laboriously, "That's like a hand but not a hand."

"It's a severed hand." Zhu Haowen was speaking.

"Did you see it too?!" Qin Ci suddenly realized that the man's hand was strange, but it was because part of it was missing.

Zhu Haowen: "Are you sure you saw a back figure?"

"It's a back, it's getting clearer and clearer, I can see the back of his head."

Zhu Haowen frowned slightly: "What I see is the front."

"Huh?" Qin Ci felt that he was actually bluffed by Zhu Haowen's words. To be honest, that strange figure from the back looked very strange, what would Zhu Haowen see from the front?

Zhu Haowen stared at the thing in the fire, staring at the other person's longing eyes: "I think this front and the back you see are the same person, no, this is not a person, just like a person."

"What's that?" Qin Ci thought all of this was very weird. Why would two people see the front and back of the same thing? Obviously he and Haowen are looking at the same direction.

"It's a monkey," Zhu Haowen felt that his statement was improper. "It's a giant ape, a giant ape in flames, with a bare head and no hands, but he seems to want to express something to us, even a little humble to us. The meaning of begging."

Qin Ci still couldn't figure out why two people would see the front and back of a monkey at the same time, but this obviously won't have an answer immediately, and now he can only find other clues in a different way: "About this kind of monkey in fire, what is the age? Say it? In my impression, it seems that only the Year of the Monkey will people draw monkeys on the New Year paintings."

Zhu Haowen looked at the giant ape in the fire, and heard Qin Ci's voice in his ears. He admired the calmness that his companion still maintained at this moment: "Old Qin really has you, you still remember the New Year picture now."

"Aren't we entering the New Year pictures? What we are looking for is also the fragments of the New Year pictures." In Qin Ci's view, these ideas of his should be met.

Zhu Haowen also associates the monkey in the fire with the old customs: "I heard that some places are dedicated to Monkey King. This one will not be Monkey King... it doesn't look like..."

"It's also possible that this monkey has a bare head. Isn't Monkey King a monk?" Qin Ci said.

"I used to play a computer game about the twenty-eight stars. It seems that there is a star called Fire Monkey, which should be related to fire and monkeys." Zhu Haowen thought it was peculiar, and he remembered it for several years. An unremarkable character in the game I played before, probably because these three words reminded me of Big Mouth Monkey.

"That's true. When I was learning acupuncture and moxibustion, a Chinese medicine doctor mentioned that the acupuncture points on the human body are related to the 28 stars in the sky. There is indeed a fire monkey in it." Qin Ci also remembered.

"Aren't you a western medicine doctor?" Zhu Haowen felt a little digress.

"It's not wrong to know more about medical knowledge," Qin Ci ran a question after Zhu Haowen, and soon returned to reality. The back of the monkey in the fire was still there, waving his severed hand, as if greeting two People go with it.

"It seems to be a little anxious," Zhu Haowen stared at the monkey in his own eyes, "It is about to kneel for us, and I don't know what it wants to pray to us."

What the two people have now, except for those marine fish and mussel shells, is this box that can emit the sound of the sea.

"Does it want this box?" Qin Ci picked up the box and showed it to the monkey.

The monkey was a little excited, waving his hand.

Zhu Haowen said: "I don't think this is what it wants. It has been begging hard just now. If it gets what it wants, it should be quiet, instead of anxiously moving like this."

"Okay, let's try something else." Qin Ci picked up another marine fish, this time the monkey didn't move.

"This fish is of no use to us, we still have a better one, so let's throw it to it." Zhu Haowen said.

As a result, the sea fish that had been roasted into dried fish was thrown into the sea of ​​fire by Qin Ci. It was obviously far away, but it happened to reach the monkey.

"It ate the fish." Zhu Haowen watched the monkey chewing dried sea fish, "Let's give it to him again."

In this way, almost every piece of the burnt seafood that Qin Ci picked up along the way was thrown into the fire monkey's mouth.

When Qin Ci picked up the last thing, Zhu Haowen first interrupted his movement to throw the object: "What is this? It's not like an octopus, and it's not like a shell. It's ugly."

"I happen to know this thing because it can be used as medicine." Qin Ci said, "It was called tortoise foot in ancient times, scientific name is tortoise foot, it should belong to a kind of arthropod, because this thing is not easy to dig, so the output is not high."

Zhu Haowen listened to Qin Ci's words, but his eyes were attracted by the fire monkey, because the fire monkey was much shorter than before. Looking closely, it was actually kneeling.

"It turns out that this tortoise foot is what it wants most." Zhu Haowen said, picking up a tortoise foot with a disgusting appearance and tossing it at the fire monkey.

The Fire Monkey quickly held it in his hands, but couldn't get up, and continued to kneel.

In this way, Zhu Haowen threw away four tortoise feet in a row, and the fire monkey stood up, opened his arms, and his sleeves actually gave birth to hands.

These tortoise feet caused the fire monkey to give birth to hands.

"This monkey dresses and behaves like a monk." Zhu Haowen said.

"Is there any legend about the monkey monk in the fire?" Qin Ci found that he could only think of Monkey King on Huoyan Mountain.

"This monk loves seafood so much. He was definitely not born in a fire, and he was definitely not a true vegetarian monk. Since this tortoise foot can become his hands, even his feet, it shows that the monkey and the turtle have some connections." Zhu Haowen analyzed.

"Monkey in the water." Qin Ci repeated this sentence, "Is it a water ape?"

"What it is?"

"When I was in college, I read a paper on genetics, which quoted a scientist’s point of view, saying that human beings originated from water apes, and over time, they slowly divided into two branches, and one branch went to land. Gradually evolved into a great ape; the other stayed in the water, and I don’t know what it evolved into, probably the water ape.” Qin Ci tried to recall the content of the paper, “I remember we were I was very interested in this statement. A classmate said that this kind of water ape has traces to follow, and it is also recorded in ancient times. It seems to be called the sea monk."

At this time, the ape in the fire began to jump, seeming very excited and anxious, and kept beckoning to let two people over.

"The action it made seemed to make us jump off the cliff and enter the sea of ​​fire." Zhu Haowen thought this proposal was a bit absurd.