Volume 3 Chapter 7: Jiapuzi

After a five-hour trek, the next afternoon, we finally climbed over Snakehead Mountain and arrived at the first small village at the foot of the mountain. We thanked the secretary who had brought us here, and then parted ways at the entrance to the village. Lao Yang had been here before, and took me inside to find the village where he had stayed the last time.

This The village is built along the steep mountain, with stone houses built in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The village road is a completely cobbled slope road. The foundation of the house at the top of the road is more than 100 meters higher than the one at the bottom. The mountain stream flows through the ditch on the side of the road, and there is green moss everywhere. I I saw that the walls of many houses had tombstones from different ages mixed in, which showed that in ancient times it was a common practice to dig up tombs to take bricks.

We bought some dry food from the house where Lao Yang had stayed before, took a bath in the stream at their home, then washed and dried our clothes.

It was impossible and unnecessary to catch up It was impossible and unnecessary to catch up with the five people in front of us. Anyway, we had successfully crossed the mountain, and now we had to rely on Lao Yang’s so-called mark to find the place where he had been three years ago.

I asked him what mark he had made, and why he was so confident that he could still find it now. Lao Yang told me that the sacrificial pit he visited last time had to pass through a very peculiar landscape called “Jiazi Valley”. Everyone in the village knew about that place, and after passing through that landscape, it wasn’t far from the place he said. However, Jiazi Valley was more than 40 kilometers away from the village, almost in the heart of the primeval jungle.

Because of the painful experience of entering the mountains without a guide, we consulted the secretary to find a guide to take us on the more difficult journey ahead.

The secretary asked his young son to take us to an old hunter. We followed the naked child around the village a few times, and came to the front of a two-story tile house. The child pointed to an old man with a white beard who was sunbathing there and said, “That’s him, Old Liu.”

Old Liu Liu was a migrant who had fled to this area as a young man and had settled down here. He was in his eighties and still in good health. Almost all the expedition teams, archaeological teams and tomb raiders that entered the old forest at first had to be accompanied by him several times. He was happy to eat this meal, because it was fast and easy to make money, and he was in a high position. When we explained our purpose, he was not surprised. He just shook his head at us and said, “No, you can’t go to Jiazigou at this time.”

I was I was puzzled and asked him, “Why can’t we go into the mountains? It’s a great time to hunt. If we don’t go in at this time, when can we go in?”

He asked his son to give me some tea and said, “In this season, the mountains are particularly evil, and they are very haunted. I’m over I’m over 80, I’m not going to lie to you. The place in Jiazi Valley is actually a path for the ghosts. If you run into them and have to let them pass, you’ll be possessed and have a very evil spirit.”

I had never been to that place and didn’t know what kind of geographical environment it was. I thought it was funny, but the older generation had their own worldview, and we couldn’t force them. After begging in vain, I had to ask him about the route into the mountains.

The old man told us that from this village, if you enter the Qin Chuan mountains, you will walk west for seven days and there will be a Tianmen Mountain. On both sides are cliffs that are impossible to climb, but there is a strange crack in the mountain that can only be passed by two people side by side. “One-line sky,” which is also what Lao Yang said, ‘Jiazi Valley.’ According to legend, at the end of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, someone in the area saw a Northern Wei army enter Qin Chuan via the plank road. The army When the army passed through this mountain crevice, suddenly the mountain shook, and the huge crevice suddenly closed, trapping the troops inside the mountain.

When the Qing Dynasty came, several feng shui masters came here to find a grave for a rich man. After entering the mountain for more than ten days, they almost didn’t come out in human form. They all said that there was a Huangquan waterfall in the Tianmen Mountain, which was connected to the underworld.

At first, the people in the mountains didn’t believe it, but later many people said that they heard the sound of galloping horses in the mountains. At first, the people in the mountains didn’t believe it, but later many people said that they heard the sound of galloping horses in the mountains. Some people even said that the soldiers of the underworld were the ones who passed through the Huanquan Waterfall between the two realms of Yin and Yang, and that the Northern Wei army at the end of the Northern and Southern Dynasties was the ghost soldiers returning from the world of the living to the underworld.

Master said that we could walk up to the Tianmen Mountain, but after Tianmen Mountain, that was the limit that people could reach for generations. No one knew what was in the jungle beyond that. From ancient times to the present, no one who went in, whether it was the Tartar army of the Qing Dynasty or the defeated soldiers of the Kuomintang, none of them have ever come out. He is too old to take me, and no one else in the village has ever been there. If we really want to go, he can give us a direction. As long as we follow what he says, we will definitely be able to get there in seven or eight days. But he is not responsible for what happens after we get in.

Grandpa said in his notes that when searching for a tomb, one should pay special attention to places with detailed folklore. So I listened to this part of the old man’s words with particular attention, and I already had a certain degree of certainty in my heart. The place we were going to was indeed in that area.

After thanking the old man, we wanted to leave. The old man probably had few guests, so he was very enthusiastic and insisted that we stay for dinner. We insisted on leaving. He There was nothing he could do, so he gave us a few pickled meat dishes. I didn’t want them because I thought they were a hassle, but when I saw that there was roast pork in them, I remembered that I had been eating only dry food for the past few days, and my stomach was really not doing well, so I took them.

After a day of rest, we set off again. This time, we had a clear goal. We followed the direction of the compass, gritted our teeth, crossed mountains and rivers, and plunged into the most mysterious and vast primeval jungle in the heart of China.

Along the way There was nothing to say, and I didn’t want to record the hardships in words. I only knew that after seven days, Lao Yan called out and saw the top of Tianmen Mountain appearing above the treetops, and we stopped to reorganize, finding that we had become no different from wild people.

Lao Yan looked around and told me that this is the place! Through this clip, there is a small canyon over there, and the burial pit they found is in there.

I climbed I climbed up a huge old fir tree, picked up the binoculars that only worked on one side, and looked. The mountain shape of Tianmen Mountain was tall and straight, the mountain was very strange, and the ghostly pine trees on the mountain were very strange. But the mountain didn’t look like a door, and I didn’t know where the name Tianmen Mountain came from. The line of sky in the middle looked like a thin black line from where I was standing.

We We climbed up the low ridge and continued to approach Tianmen Mountain. We walked along the mountain and looked at the terrain ahead. It was almost noon when we reached the foot of Tianmen Mountain. The beginning of the Jiazi Valley was a rocky ridge right in front of us.

The Qinling Mountains is really a wonderful place, especially those areas that have not been developed for tourism. There are many wonderful views. Looking up directly from the cliffs of Tianmen Mountain, you will find the terrain extremely spectacular. To put it more simply, it is as if a huge mountain rock has been split by a sword, forming a small crack in the middle. is the Jiazigou Valley. Because the terrain of the mountain is extremely high, the view of the sky here is different from those of the low mountains. Looking up, you can only see a very thin ray of light. In the distant sky, it really seems as if the entire sky has been condensed into a single line. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, you can’t appreciate it.

In the Jiazigou Valley The bottom of the valley is strewn with rocks, and there are clear springs on both sides. The rocks are covered with green moss, and it is very difficult to walk. However, it is not as narrow as it looks from a distance, and the light is very good. Because the mountain at the beginning is not very high, there is not a line of sky, but rather “a piece of sky.”

Old Itch recollecting, it would take at least an afternoon to get through this ravine, and the wind was very strong inside, the ground was damp, and it was very inconvenient to start a fire, so we stopped not far from the entrance, lit a bonfire, and started eating lunch. We put the pickled vegetables that the old man had brought us into the leftover canned food, and then heated them over the fire, eating them like a hot pot. pot-like. The mountain people cook with a heavy taste, so the taste is not very good, but compared to our dry food, it is already many times better, so we have been saving our food for the past few days. Now that we are close to our destination, we can let go and embrace it. My old itch and I almost gorged ourselves, and quickly ate the pickled meat clean.

I didn’t not full, and thinking of the mountain chicken and bamboo shoots that we had left, I decided to eat them all. But when I reached for the bag, I realized that it was gone.

I looked around, but couldn’t find it. I was very puzzled, so I asked Lao Yang, who was cursing, “Damn it, who spit the bones into my collar!”

I realized that I had almost swallowed the bones when I was eating, so I couldn’t have thrown them away.

Just when I was I looked up and saw a dozen golden monkeys, who had climbed onto the cliff above us. One of them was holding the bag I had used to carry the chicken and bamboo shoots, and was eating the chicken inside.

It soon finished eating everything and then climbed down, staring at our backpack.

I didn’t know I couldn’t tell, but the monkeys probably thought that our bags were full of food and wanted to steal it. Just as I was thinking this, the monkey let out a scream and all of a sudden all the monkeys started to approach us.