I lay on his back and asked him, "General Ji, where is your ivory?"
He stopped and thought for a moment, "Damn, let the dog chase you. I wonder where you lost it?"
I said, "Mine is still there. Don't you feel uncomfortable?" Mine is still in your arms.
"Oh, I feel it now. It turns out that there are two places that are irritated." He joked and said, "Why don't you give it to me?"
I said, "Looking at how long you have carried me, when I go back, I only need a small piece, and when I chop it off, the rest will be yours."
As we said that, we noticed that there was a light of fire on the ridge behind us. It was a group of people holding torches who were searching for us. We put aside our jokes and concentrated on running.
The sky has completely darkened, but the road is easier to walk. Ahead is a winding woodcutting road, whitening in the night, with dark sides on both sides. I don’t know how deep it is under the cliff.
We kept moving forward along the path. In the middle of the night, after we had shaken off the pursuers, I got off the general's back. He supported me and continued walking forward.
At dawn, we discovered that we had walked down the mountain road without knowing it, and we didn’t know how far we had walked.
On the roadside, we found an earthen kiln with smoke coming out. After a while, a middle-aged man with soot on his face came out of it. He was less than fifty years old and had rough hands.
Holding a newly fired clay pot in his hand, he walked to the side. The place was full of finished products of various specifications. The clay pot was carefully placed next to it.
We walked over and he also noticed us. I tried to say to him: "A dog returns oil—take a clay pot and drip it—but what?"
He looked at me with an honest and puzzled look on his face. General Ji didn’t know what I was talking about and looked at me curiously. In fact, I didn’t know what I was talking about either.
He rubbed his hands together and then pointed behind him. We followed the direction he pointed and saw several thatched houses. He meant that those were his homes and invited us to go there because he was already leading the way.
There are only three people in this family. There is a little girl who is making breakfast with her mother. The steamed sweet potatoes have just come out of the pot and are steaming. Seeing how tired we are, the hostess doesn’t say much. She picks out a few large pieces and hands them over.
into our hands
The little girl was only seven or eight years old. She was rubbing mud with her little hands dirty. She stared at us with her big eyes. As soon as I teased her, she turned around and ran away.
While we were eating, we were discussing how to go back. After walking for most of the night, we looked at the rising sun and found that the general direction had not been lost.
I had just finished eating when I heard a burst of footsteps and shouts coming from the other direction. On the road behind the thatched house, I saw a man sitting on the back of a tall elephant, swaying towards me.
Come this way
We all looked stern and looked around. There was an open area. In our current situation, we definitely couldn't escape.
The kiln worker seemed startled and looked at us. He noticed our nervousness and pulled us towards a field of clay pots not far away.
There are all kinds of finished clay pots on the spot, big ones like water tanks, small ones in piles, and as big as teacups.
He pulled us to the innermost area, pointed at the two largest ones, and motioned for us to go in.
We had no choice but to do as he said, but we didn't find any malicious intent on his part.
General Ji hugged my waist, and I used his strength to jump inside. He took half a broken straw mat and covered me with it. As soon as his figure flashed, he also hid a strong smell of scorched earth. I covered it.
The pottery technology at this time was really in its infancy. There was a commotion of people shouting and drinking. I looked from the broken straw mat and saw that there were more than a dozen people coming this time, all with weapons in their hands, sitting on
The man on the elephant's back looks familiar. He is the half-bald man who tamed the elephant yesterday.
They were questioning the family of three, gesturing with their hands, and the kiln worker shook his head.
The Nama elephant was not honest. One of its trunks reached to the top of the thatched house, where there was a pile of dried sweet potatoes hanging out to dry.
It pinched a few pieces of dried potatoes with its nose and put them into its mouth. When it didn't want to send them back, its nose hooked on the straw rope on the roof and forcefully pulled the roof off. The group laughed wildly.
They laughed and walked towards us to see their domineering appearance. I really wanted to rush out, but that would affect this family. Before we can figure out a way to break the elephant formation, we still have to fight the decisive battle with the Iwami tribe.
some days
The man drove the elephant and walked directly into the pile of clay pots. There was only a loud crashing in his ears. The elephant's legs were kicking and stepping on it. The fruits of the kiln workers' labor were turning into a pile of fragments.
I squatted under the mat, feeling the ground under my feet following the elephant's steps. Every step I took, my heart beat in my throat.
The elephant was chewing dried potatoes with great relish, which made my teeth itch with hatred. I looked through the gap in the straw mat and saw its long trunk flicking past the mat above my head, and there was a rush of heat.
Smell Why didn’t its proud sense of smell detect me? Could it be that the smell of newly-minted pottery helped us?
I held the handle of the sword tightly in the clay pot, ready to jump out at any time. I planned to hit the head with a blow, destroying its nose first, and then talk about the rest.
Maybe they didn't find anything. Besides, the kiln worker said something similar to begging for mercy, so they finally stopped.
A few more people got into the thatched hut with the lid lifted, and took out a clay pot. They were so happy that they couldn't close their mouths, as if they had discovered a treasure. The woman immediately stepped forward to stop it, but during the pull, something fell out of it.
, but she got a slap in the face, and the things were taken away by them
Several people even went up to pull the woman, but the man held her back.
After they left, we came out and helped them put the roof back on and reinforce the thatched roof. While we were working, I quietly picked up the piece of stuff that fell on the ground and carried it in my arms.
In return, after seeing my painful expression, he pressed my back for about the length of a pack of cigarettes. When I felt my lower back starting to heat up, he took my shoulders with both hands and lifted a shoulder.
The knees were pressed against my waist. When I exerted force, I heard a "creak" and I suddenly felt much more relaxed.
When we asked the kiln worker for directions, we almost lost our temper.
He pointed to the southeast and said, "Bang, bang, bang." As expected of a man who was a Shaowan, he was used to hearing "bang, bang, bang."
When we asked Pingyuan King about it afterwards, Pingyuan King said that the place where the kiln worker was pointing had an unpleasant name, called Guangdao. There was also a larger tribe there, but the people there were pretty good. I had never heard of anyone there.
What robber
He finally found the arrow pot hanging under General Ji's waist, and a look of enlightenment appeared on his face. It turned out that he had never seen it before.
He led us, and after walking for a while, we reached another path, motioning us to follow the path, and then we waved goodbye.
In the evening, we found the empty stone village behind a forest.