three
I didn’t come back from outside until after 10pm on September 2nd.
My experience in these few hours should have extraordinary significance to this story.
I went out to meet someone in the afternoon. When I saw a comment in the Cooking Wine Smell column, I immediately went out. When I came back in the evening, I found that the original message in the column had mysteriously disappeared.
For the sake of the continuity of the story, I tried my best to suppress the urge to tell the story of the afternoon right away.
Four
September 3 (the fourth day of August in the lunar calendar, 2008).
Throughout the day, I called the number that makes wine and smell the aroma countless times, and a gentle and mechanical voice on the other end always repeated one sentence: The number you dialed has been turned off or is not in the service area.
I couldn't get the news about Cooking Wine and Smell, which made me restless. I couldn't imagine what he was going through. A picture of my own imagination appeared in front of my eyes: Cooking Wine and Smell was getting involved step by step in a road that was calm on the surface. In the dark, turbulent river, the heavy burden on his back bent his back, and the violent river water was slowly swallowing up his thin and stubborn figure. At a critical moment, he turned back to me when he was brewing wine and smelling the fragrance. smile, but his eyes are full of sadness, nostalgia, unwillingness, fear, helplessness and yearning…
Maybe things have just begun, maybe the horror will continue all the way.
All I have to do is accept and pray.
This trip to cook wine and smell the aroma was like a key, opening the door to my long-lost memories. My heart ached. What a pure and beautiful girl Yuchen was. Those past events were like a piece of yeast. Full spores of truth, goodness, beauty and love fermented in my life, filling my limited space and time, and accompanying me firmly along the way.
Since I couldn't get any news about cooking wine and smelling it, I decided to talk about what happened on September 2, that is, yesterday afternoon, in order to satisfy the netizens' desire to keep updating this post.
On the afternoon of September 2, I told netizens in the column about cooking wine and smelling the aroma that if possible, I would tell you some past events about cooking wine and smelling the aroma and Yuchen. Immediately, a comment appeared behind my post with the user name "I am Lan".
There are only a few words in the post, and it is full of warning: there are some people and things that cannot be spoken out! I have to say, you must never forget not to leave out—one person!
I was stunned for a long time looking at this post.
Is he (she) Lan? Is it the orchid mentioned above when cooking wine and smelling the aroma?
"I am Lan" soon followed and left my QQ number again. I quickly added "I am Lan", but no matter how anxiously I asked, "I am Lan" remained silent until I almost lost my patience and was about to log off. At that time, "I am Lan" sent a line of characters, and that line of characters was an address.
I decided to meet this "I am Lan". I have to figure out who this "I am Lan" is, and who the "one person" he (she) tells me not to forget or miss.
I grabbed an umbrella and went out. The sky was gloomy outside. I held the umbrella and walked on the road. The rain pounded on the umbrella, and some water droplets splashed on my face. I looked around and saw the distant streets. The dirty green street trees and the small square-shaped buildings were all immersed in the mist and rain, hazy, like an ink painting that fell into the water. Suddenly, I felt a chill in my heart for no reason.
It was very difficult to catch a taxi at Wuqiao South Bus Station. It took me a lot of effort to stop a taxi. When I got on the overpass, I looked at the small town outside the window. The high-rise buildings on the left swept back, and the yellow sky on the right As for the violent Yangtze River, I felt like I was walking on a cliff.
The footsteps of night are getting closer and closer, and in the mist, countless windows flash dim lights, and even the neon lights are as pale as a prostitute who has taken off her makeup.
Somehow, I became more and more uneasy.
The address given by "I am Lan" is a bar, located in the city center, half an hour's drive from where I live.
The taxi crossed the Yangtze River Bridge and drove along Binjiang Road. I looked around. I could no longer see the road signs on both sides in the increasingly dense darkness. The car had its big headlights on, illuminating the dense raindrops directly in front of me. Below, the road surface emits a faint reflection, and is surrounded by darkness, just like the sea on a winter night. The taxi is like a lit boat in the sea, traveling on a lost route.
Where is this lost ship taking me? In what situation should we put cooking wine and smelling it? I simply closed my eyes and let the taxi drive me around in the dark night.
Half asleep, the car suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes and saw a neon sign in an alley outside the car. It was indeed here.
I got out of the car and walked forward in a daze. It got cold so early in September this year. I couldn't help but shiver. The hot breath I exhaled was like a cloud of smoke rising to the sky. I looked at the sky. The autumn rain was pulling long bright threads, and the wind was getting stronger and stronger. , swooping down from high in the sky, picking up some tiny debris and flying in the air.
I don't know which plastic awning was not installed properly, and was shaking dangerously in the strong wind, shaking, and making a loud sound, like a fist hitting it.
I walked into this bar.
I knew it was inappropriate to rush to an appointment with a stranger like this, but I had to do it. I couldn't wait to solve the mystery in my heart.
In this simple bar, I sat in a corner with a copy of "Ye Yu Qiu Leng Lu" as an appointment sign in front of me. I waited alone for a long time. When I decided that this "I am Lan" could not come, I stood up. When I was about to leave, she really came.
Wearing a fluttering moon-white dress and long, glossy black hair, from a distance in the dim light of the bar, she looked like a plain-clothed woman in ancient times mourning her husband.
She took a look at "The Record of Night Rain and Autumn Lamps" that I placed in front of her, and sat down gently and deftly. When she sat in front of me, I realized how haggard she was. She had no makeup and a bare face, but she had a unique charm.
"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting for so long." I couldn't feel a trace of emotional warmth from her tone. It was cold, worse than the feeling of holding a piece of ice in your mouth in winter.
Seeing that I was silent, she looked up at me, and when I met her eyes, a familiar feeling suddenly arose. I've seen these eyes before!
"Your name is Lan?" I blurted out and asked, "Who is the person you told me not to forget?"
She lowered her head, holding the cover with two slender fingers, and opened the "Ye Yu Qiu Leng Lu" in front of her.
“Stop that column!”
I looked at her unusually fair face, where I could faintly see the green veins under the skin. I leaned out, approached her, and asked in a low voice but forcefully: "Is it dangerous to cook wine and smell it? You care about him, right?"
She let go of the page and flicked two fingers in the air, as if she wanted to shake something off.
"If you're really his friend, stop him."
I chuckled lightly: "Do you think making wine and smelling it will stop just because someone stops it? Quite the opposite!"
"You're not Lan! Lan should be with Cooking Wine and Wen Xiang at the moment. Who are you?"
She suddenly raised her head and stared at me with bright and even sharp eyes: "Don't be so self-righteous! If you can't bear the result, stop, you have no choice!"
"You mean, that column, or the search for brewing wine and smelling the aroma, will touch on some hidden things that others don't want to be touched?"
"If I were you, what I would do is, stop that column, go back to the cooking wine and smell the aroma, instead of being smart and reasoning here. Otherwise -"
"Tell me, what will you find after boiling wine and smelling the aroma?" I asked her after thinking about it.
Her eyes lit up again, and I was a little obsessed looking at her strange eyes.
She stood up, leaned over and whispered in my ear. Then, he walked towards the door without looking back.
I wanted to call her out, but no sound came out when I opened my mouth, and my outstretched arms dropped weakly.
When I got home, I turned on my computer and found that the reply "I am Lan" in the post had been deleted at some point.
I resolutely updated the post about cooking wine and smelling it. Because I know that stopping the post will not stop me from searching for the aroma of cooking wine.
one
Although love, beauty, happiness and those events that make us stand up when we are sad and shed tears when we are happy are connected bead by bead to form life, these are not all of our life. There are still some in life. Things that we cannot recognize and predict are happening all the time. Outside Liuhe, the sage remains and does not care.
Thankfully you haven't experienced it and I happened to.
My interest lies in telling stories, just telling a story. Maybe it will confuse your originally sober mind. I can only laugh at this. I do not bear the responsibility of letting you see the world through what eyes.
Having said this, I can tell this story without any burden and with ease.
This story originated from a friend of mine who opened a column in the forum of Sanxia Media Network, a local portal website in the Three Gorges area, to tell stories about ghosts and ghosts.
My friend gave this a rather poetic online name: Cook the wine and smell the aroma.
I followed the posts posted by Cooking Wine and Smells in that forum column every day, and from time to time I would reply to his posts to make nonsense or cooperate with him in creating terror and scaring people for fun.
In this era where everything has been renovated and played, people’s only pleasure may be the exploration of unknown things and the desire to encounter them, so in just a few days, the number of hits on his column soared like a rocket. Jump up and up.
After reading these stories about cooking wine and smelling it for several days, I gradually became a little uneasy and had a weird feeling in my heart that I couldn’t explain.
On the morning of September 1st, I went to the forum column again, browsed the updated posts of Zhuojiuwenxiang, and decided to remind him to pay attention to the balance between reality and the Internet, and not to mess up his life by telling stories.
I logged into my mailbox and wanted to send an email to Zhuojiu Wenxiang, but I found in my inbox an email that Zhuojiu Wenxiang had sent me a few minutes ago.
After reading the email sent to me by Zhuojiu Wenxiang, I immediately returned to the forum and posted in the column of Zhuojiu Wenxiang:
Dear netizens: Cooking wine and smelling the aroma are out for some reason, and I have been specially asked to say a few words on my behalf. This morning I logged into my mailbox and found an email inviting me to meet. There were only a few numbers in the email: Are you okay? Three years later, you are still so stupid. Let’s meet. After reading this email, I immediately set off. He didn’t tell me where he was going to meet anyone. He told me that when he opened the email, he noticed something strange: the sender’s address was blank! During the time I am away from cooking and smelling the wine, I will update the post on my behalf.
After posting this post, I have been waiting by the computer for emails to arrive, refreshing the inbox page over and over again.
Cooking wine and smelling the fragrance is a calm and emotional person. I am really worried about his unclear trip this time.
It wasn't until 2:00 in the afternoon that I finally received the email of cooking wine and smelling it.
Reading these words, I was extremely surprised, and my ominous premonition became even stronger. As a friend, I understand the pain of cooking wine and smelling the aroma. I also know the girl named Yuchen below.
But as a person with basically normal thinking, I couldn't wait to catch this guy back immediately. Because, I know more about Yuchen than cooking wine and smelling the aroma, but I have never dared or had the heart to tell him the whole truth about Yuchen. I want him to be a happy and hopeful person – the truth is always so cruel and ugly. What happened three years ago is still vivid in my mind and has always made me feel vaguely uneasy. I deeply understand that the search process of cooking wine and smelling the aroma is destined to be sad, and the result of the search is destined to be a disaster!
Therefore, I used the method of cooking wine and smelling it to tell my column login password, and added a title to his words: Sad Tribulation. Then I organized the text about cooking wine and smelling it, and posted it in the column:
September 1, 2008 (the second day of August in the lunar calendar, 2008), 7:30
I hurriedly sent an email to Yaya. Outside of the Three Gorges Media Forum, Yaya is the only friend I have in Wanzhou. I think that guy Yaya is still sleeping in. I often worry that his fat body, which grows like crazy after drinking water, will collapse his rickety little bed one morning.
The system prompted that the email was sent successfully. I unplugged the power, stuffed my laptop into my backpack, grabbed a few changes of clothes and went out.
I'm going to a date, a date whose consequences I can't foresee.
I sent an email to Yaya, asking him to help me update the post during the period when I am not able to access the Internet, including the text of this experience, and asked him to handle it for me – I will save it in the mailbox in due course.
Another meaning is that I want to tell one person, at least one person, that I have a bad feeling about my whereabouts during this period.
September 1, 2008 (the second day of August in the lunar calendar, 2008), 9:50
The bus I took left from Xishan Station.
As soon as autumn comes, it is raining heavily in Wanzhou. When driving on Binjiang Road, the quiet Yangtze River outside the window suddenly becomes spiritual after the ship passes by. It ripples with layers of fine waves, determined to wet this side of the city.
The car air conditioner sent cool and refreshing wind, as if blowing from the river. I couldn't help but shudder and frowned at the sky. The gray sky embedded in the car window was as gloomy as my mood, and there were dark clouds as thick as my thoughts.
Yuchen, is that you? Did you send that email? Yuchen.
I felt something wet crawling on my cheek, and it slipped into my mouth and it was astringent and bitter.
Yuchen, that girl with a lot of aura in her beauty, that girl whose smile can melt the most rigid heart. I'm here, I'm here to keep your appointment. I don't know where else to find you. I have only one way to find you, starting from the very beginning.
Three years. Yuchen, it’s been three years since you left without saying goodbye. I leave my heart and hope in the same place as three years ago, waiting for you. That email must have been sent by you. Yuchen, what do you want to tell me?
I raised my head numbly from the painful contemplation, and wanted to look up to the sky and sigh. I just raised my head halfway, but it was as motionless as a sculpture. What was reflected on the car window was my double pupils that were extremely enlarged due to fear. The fog was A heart is formed on the glass with a heart broken from it! That heart is so clear, it's just like someone drawing it carefully and deliberately after taking a breath of heat.
The water drops were slowly sliding down along the broken part of the heart, and finally, like a tear, they fell silently.
Yuchen! Is this broken heart yours or mine? If it were yours, why would my heart hurt like it was torn apart?
The bus passed through one tunnel after another, and the black and white images of the past flashed brightly and dimly.
Yuchen, I'm here, I'm about to arrive.
September 1, 2008 (the second day of August in the lunar calendar, 2008), 11:10
Yaya, please forgive me for not telling you that I am back to Liangping and I am going to find Yuchen.
When I saw that email without the sender address this morning, I knew it was Yuchen, and my heart told me it must be Yuchen.
The reason why I don't tell you is because I'm afraid you will stop me. You won't let me go find her. Because you simply don’t believe that some things exist in this world.
Yaya, I wrote this in the "Rotten Fat Sausage" restaurant at the north gate of the county after getting off the car, and saved it in the mailbox. I know you will stay by the computer and refresh the inbox over and over again. You are always so anxious about everything you do.
The "Rotten Fat Sausage" restaurant is still so dim and rundown, and the sausages are still so delicious and chewy, but what about the people who have visited with us before? "The human face is nowhere to be seen, but the peach blossoms still smile in the spring breeze."
Okay, Yaya, I'm going to start my search. Maybe I'll email you again tonight or tomorrow.
September 1, 2008 (the second day of August in the lunar calendar, 2008), 17:15
After a short rest, I climbed onto a minibus that drove from the county town to the township where Gaofengzhai belongs. After getting off the minibus, I transferred to a two-wheel motorcycle. After several hours of bumpy rides, I finally arrived. This is the village where Yuchen was born. As I said, I didn't know where to look, I had to start from where she originally started.
I have asked Yuchen many times to take me back to the beautiful hometown that she has described to me countless times, but in the end, I never had the chance to embark on the romantic journey in my mind with Yuchen.
Today, I came alone.
Is this the place where such a charming, refined and elegant Yuchen was raised?
Gaofeng Village is full of miserable mountains and cliffs. Time seems to have stopped here, still staying in the desolate era hundreds of years ago.
The bumps along the way made me exhausted, so I sat down to rest under a huge stone arch standing at the entrance of the village. In the increasingly gloomy dusk, I vaguely saw the words on the stone arch – Beijunrenli. . Those solemn and vigorous fonts show the antiquity of the archway. The reserve and majesty that make people look up to me made me think that maybe this was given by the emperor of some dynasty.
Yuchen said that her ancestor was a great master of Yiyi. Perhaps this archway was where the emperor commended her ancestor who noted Yi?
It was the end of dusk, and the misty rain blurred my vision. I seemed to be looking at the distant village through a filter. The plants sucked the rain greedily, and the dark green of the branches and leaves was spreading quietly.
In the increasingly dark twilight, I began to become anxious. I had to find Yuchen's home, and I had to settle my tired body.
I looked around, and the looming villages in the milky white seemed to convey a strange sense of pressure to me. Against the background of the suffocating gloomy sky, the mountain wind and cold rain beat against the cliffs, emitting bursts of sharp and desolate whistles. The deathly silent villages under the cliffs were chaotically arranged with black roof ridges, without any lights, milky white and turbid. The heavy mist seemed to come out of the iron-like black, but it would unstoppably swallow up the black of that night.
I turned around a steep and dangerous cliff, and saw a figure of a woman in white standing far away on a protruding rock on the other side of the cliff, her hair and dress messed up by the strong wind.
At this moment, the ringtone of my mobile phone rang – Chen Rui's "White Fox" – Yaya, my brother, it's your call. I panicked and cut off the melody that seemed more resentful in this scene.
I walked towards the woman in white, feeling grateful to God for meeting someone at this time.
Yaya, my brother, I will stay at this girl's house tonight.
When I asked this girl named Lan about Yuchen’s home, the girl looked at me in surprise for a long time with her big beautiful eyes, and then told me a little cautiously that she knew Yuchen, and she called me affectionately Sister Yuchen, she said, sister Yuchen is the most beautiful girl in their village.
She pointed to a place in the dark night and said that was Yuchen's home. However, I couldn't make it through tonight. She said it might be dawn when I walked to Yuchen's house.
Yaya, my brother, I have to finish these words quickly, my laptop has already issued a low battery alarm, and Lan's home has a power outage.
While I was writing these words, Lan walked into the room where I was staying with a candlestick. With the help of the candlelight, I was surprised to find that there was an ancient screen in this room.
This is a red lacquer screen with four leaves. It must be very old. What surprised me even more was the content of the simple and freehand woodcut paintings on the screen: the first one is a man and a woman looking at each other reluctantly; the second one is It is a woman weeping, and an old man with a strange appearance is standing next to her, handing her a xun; the third picture is a woman holding a pottery xun, looking up at the three-foot white silk on the beam; The fourth picture shows a woman lying in a coffin. Next to the open coffin stands a man dressed in Ming Dynasty military attaché attire, holding a xun in his hand.
These four red lacquer screens seemed to be telling a strange story, a story about reincarnation and undying love. I couldn't help but feel creepy. I thought of the broken heart on the car window in the morning, which appeared so inexplicably. It was Foreshadowing? Are you discouraging? I don't know what weird people and things are waiting for me ahead.
I just want to find Yuchen.
Yaya, my brother, I will spend my first night in this room looking for Yuchen.
When I was about to finish writing the email to you, I looked up and saw some strange shadows shaking on the four-paint screen, as if the characters in the story were really coming out of the painting.
two
On September 2nd, at 9 o'clock in the morning, I finally received another email from Zhuojiu. After reading these words, my original idea of stopping him from looking for Yuchen was a little shaken. I didn't expect that three years later, Yuchen would… Morning still occupies such an important position in the heart of brewing wine and smelling the fragrance, and it has not changed at all due to the passage of time. With complicated emotions, I posted the words about cooking wine and smelling it in his column:
September 2, 2008 (the third day of August in the lunar calendar, 2008), 6:55
Last night, I stared at the four red lacquer screens all night long. I connected and processed the woodcuts on the four screens in my mind. I was so scared that I didn't dare to sleep.
And later, my mind was always crowded and stirred by Yuchen's last appearance. It was as chaotic as a pot of unboiled porridge, with a thin layer of extremely tense film covering the surface. I felt a kind of pull and excitement. Suppressed by control, I suddenly doubted whether this search was rational and necessary.
After nearly ten hours of trekking, my body was very tired, but my spirit was unusually high. I really couldn't sleep. In the second half of the night, I simply walked out of the room and found a ray of candlelight coming from the next room, which was faintly glowing in the deep night. of blue.
My courage was not as great as I thought. When I saw this faint blue candlelight, my hands and feet began to tremble. I suppressed the inexplicable fear and secretly looked towards the window next door——
There is a dying candle burning on the ancient dressing table. The candle liquid flows through the copper candle holder with a simple style and cold texture. It is as sticky and sad as the tears of a departed person. The blue candle light illuminates a white dress. I couldn't see the woman's face clearly, but I could see that she was combing her long black hair.
That comb, that ivory comb studded with sapphires! Even if I may forget my name I will never forget this ivory comb set with sapphires!
Yuchen! Yuchen! At this moment, I was in a trance and traveled through the years, returning to the trinket stall in the ancient town of Lijiang, Yunnan. Yuchen grabbed this ivory comb, his eyes glowing with childlike joy, and asked me to buy it coquettishly.
Yuchen! My Yuchen! My throat was hot and hard, and I wanted to shout but couldn't make a sound.
Suddenly, a burst of xun music suddenly sounded in the rain-shrouded mountains and the silent courtyard. The resentful xun music pierced my eardrums like a cone. The woman in the white dress suddenly turned around. What kind of face was that? , No, that is not a human face at all! The misplaced facial features are twisted and squeezed onto a pale surface. It is simply a painting maliciously scribbled by a poor painter!
My constricted throat suddenly relaxed due to fear, and a scream came out of my mouth – ah! The candlelight in the room suddenly went out, and then there were rapid footsteps and the sound of the door opening in the next room and upstairs at the same time, and Lan and her mother appeared at the same time.
Lan's mother, a thin, dark and gloomy old woman, stood on the stairs holding a candlestick and looked at me coldly. Lan held a wooden comb in one hand and a mask of unknown texture in one hand and looked at me with concern.
"Just now, you -" I pointed to the mask and wooden comb in Lan's hand. I noticed that the comb Lan was holding was not ivory.
"This? Hehe -"
"Lan!" Lan's mother scolded Lan: "Go back to your room! It's so late at night -"
A sharp glance swept over me, making my cheek hurt. I think Lan's mother misunderstood me and thought I was peeking at Lan.
I stroked my hot and feverish cheek and was about to explain, but Lan's mother turned around and went upstairs, her long figure dragging slantingly on the stairs and slowly shrinking and retreating together with the hesitating candlelight.
Lanzhao stuck out his tongue playfully at me who was in a daze, and returned to the room with my clothes fluttering.
"Why did it turn into a wooden comb all of a sudden?" I shook my head in confusion. Maybe it was my eyesight, or maybe I missed Yuchen too much.
With this commotion, it will be daybreak soon.
Yaya, I simply stopped sleeping and wrote you an email. I wrote it on my mobile phone. My computer was completely out of battery.