Tales of Herding Gods - 1. Chapter 1 Don't Go Out in Darkness

It’s dark, don’t go out.

This sentence has been circulated in the Can Lao Village for many years. When it was passed down, there is no way to verify it. But this sentence is the truth, there is no need to doubt.

The grandmother of the Can Lao Village saw the setting sun hiding behind the mountain a little bit, and her heart became nervous again. As the setting sun sets, the last ray of sunlight disappears, and the world is suddenly silent, without any sound. I saw darkness slowly flooding from the west, swallowing mountains, rivers, roads and trees along the way, and then came to the Dilapidated Village and flooded the Dilapidated Village.

There are four ancient stone statues erected on the four corners of the Can Lao Village. The stone statues are mottled and dated. Even Si Granny doesn’t know who carved this stone statue and when it was erected here.

Darkness fell, and the four stone statues exuded a faint light in the darkness. The stone statues were still on, which made the old lady and the old man in the village breathe a sigh of relief.

The darkness outside the village is getting stronger, but with the light of the stone statues, the dilapidated old village is still safe.

Suddenly, Grandma’s ears moved, she was dumbfounded, and lost her voice: “Listen, there is a child crying outside!”

Elder Ma next to him shook his head and said: “Impossible, you heard it wrong…Hey, there is a baby crying!”

The cry of a baby came from the darkness outside the village. The other old people in the village heard this cry except for the deaf. The old people looked at each other. The old village was remote and desolate. Why would there be babies nearby?

“I gonna go see!”

Granny Si got excited, and ran to a stone statue in the village on tiptoe. Old Ma hurried over: “Granny Si, are you crazy? It’s dark, and you die when you leave the village!”

“When I leave the village with this stone statue on my back, things in the dark are afraid of the stone statue. I will not die in a while!”

The grandmother bent over and tried to lift up the stone statue, but she was hunched back and couldn’t lift it up. Old Ma shook his head: “I’ll come. I will accompany you with a stone statue on my back!”

Another old man limped over and said, “Master Ma, you only have one arm, and the stone statue on your back won’t last long. I have both hands, so I’ll carry it.”

Old Ma stared at him: “Death lame, can you walk with a broken leg? Although I only have one arm, this arm is very powerful!”

He lifted the stone statue with one arm and steadily steadied his steps. The stone statue was unimaginably heavy: “Old lady Si, let’s go!”

“Don’t call me dead old woman! Lame, dumb, you all have to be careful. There is a stone statue missing in the village. Don’t be touched by something in the dark!”

…

Ma Lao and Si Granny walked out of the dilapidated old village. Something weird did not know about them in the dark, but when they were illuminated by the light of the stone statue, they creaked back into the darkness.

The two followed the cry and walked a hundred steps to a big river, where the baby’s cry came from the river. The stone statue emits a faint light, and it is not too far away. The two carefully captured the sound position, walked up the river along the river, and walked dozens of steps. The cry was nearby, and Ma Lao’s one-armed was already difficult to support. The grandmother’s eyes lit up and she saw a little bit of fluorescence. It was a basket parked on the bank of the river. The fluorescence came from the basket, and the crying came from the basket.

“There really is a child!”

The old lady stepped forward and lifted the basket, but she was slightly startled and failed to lift it up. Underneath the basket was an arm that was soaked white by the river water. It was this arm that lifted the basket and the child in the basket until shore.

“Don’t worry, the child is safe.” Granny Si whispered to the woman underwater.

The female corpse seemed to have heard her words, released her palm, was washed away by the river, and disappeared into the darkness.

The old lady lifted the basket. In the basket was a baby in a swaddle. There was a jade pendant on the swaddle, and the jade pendant glowed with fluorescence. The light of this jade pendant is similar to that of the stone statue, but it is much weaker. It is the jade pendant that protects the children in the basket from things in the dark.

It’s just that Yu Pei’s light is very weak, and it can only protect the child, but it can’t protect the woman.

“It’s a boy.”

Back in the disabled village, the villagers in the village surrounded them, all old, weak, sick and disabled. Granny Si lifted the swaddle and glanced, grinning, her teeth scattered: “In our dilapidated village, there is finally a healthy person!”

The cripple with only one leg was surprised: “Old lady Si, do you plan to raise him? We can hardly even feed ourselves! I think we should send it out…”

The grandmother was furious: “Why do you want to give away the child that my mother picked up by her ability?”

A group of villagers only promised and did not dare to refute her. The village chief came over on a stretcher. He was a bit more miserable than the others. The others had hands and feet, but less than normal people, and he was helpless. But everyone respected him very much, even the fierce grandmother did not dare to be presumptuous.

“Since you want to raise him, should you give him a name?”

The village chief said: “Old lady, do you see anything else in the basket?”

The grandmother turned over and shook her head and said, “Only this jade pendant, there are no other pieces of paper or anything. There is a word on the jade pendant, it is a Qin character. This jade pendant has no impurities, and there is strange power in it. It is not a common product, it should be. Is it from a big family?”

“Is his name Qin or Qin?”

The village chief thought, and said: “Let him be named Qin, and his name will be Mu, Qin Mu. When he grows up, he will be asked to graze, so that he can live a life at any rate.”

“Qin Mu.” Granny Si looked at the infant baby, the baby was not afraid of her, she babbling and smiling.

…

On the riverside, the sound of the flute came, and the shepherd boy was sitting on the back of a cow and playing the flute. The flute sound was crisp and melodious. This shepherd boy was eleven or twelve years old, with beautiful eyes, red lips and white teeth, half-open clothes, and a jade pendant hanging on his chest.

This boy was the baby that Granny Si picked up from the riverside eleven years ago. Over the years, the old people in the village worked hard to raise the child. Granny Si didn’t know where to get a cow and asked Qin Mu, who was a baby, to drink milk every day. , Survived a period of easy premature death.

Although the villagers in the Can Lao Village are all fierce and evil, they are very good to him. Granny is a tailor. On weekdays, Qin Mu learns about dressmaking from his mother-in-law, learns to pick and refine medicine from the pharmacist, learns leg exercises from the lame grandfather, and follows the blind man. Grandpa learns to listen to sounds, and learns to breathe and breathe with the village chief who has no arms and legs, and the days pass quickly.

This cow was his childhood nanny. Granny Si originally planned to sell it, but Qin Mu was reluctant to give it up, so the task of herding the cow was handed over to him.

He often grazes cattle on the riverside, the green mountains are like daisies, blue waves and white clouds, and he is very comfortable.

“Qin Mu, Qin Mu, help me!”

Suddenly, the cow under him spoke. Qin Mu was taken aback, and quickly jumped off the cow’s back, only to see the cow with tears in his eyes and vomiting, saying to him: “Qin Mu, you Growing up on my milk, I’m your half mother, you want to save me!”

Qin Mu blinked, and tentatively asked, “How can I save you?”

The cow said, “You have a sickle around your waist, so you can save me from my sleep by peeling off my skin.”

Qin Mu hesitated, and the cow said, “Have you forgotten the grace of nurturing?”

Qin Mu raised the sickle and carefully cut the cowhide. It was strange that the cowhide was peeled off. There was no trace of blood flowing out, and the inside of the cowhide was empty, without flesh and bones.

When the cowhide was half peeled, a woman in her twenties and thirties rolled out from the inside. Her two legs were still wrapped in the cow’s leg, and the flesh was connected to the cowhide, but the upper limbs had been separated from the cowhide.

The woman with disheveled hair, grabbed the sickle in Qin Mu’s hand, who was already shocked, cut the cowhide on her legs and feet two or three times, looked at Qin Mu, guilty of guilty, put the sickle on Qin Mu’s neck, and sneered. “Little wicked man, I was turned into a cow because of you. For eleven years, I can only eat grass and feed you milk! Poor, I just gave birth to a baby before I became a cow. Turn me into a cow to feed you! Today, I finally got out of trouble, kill you first, and then bloodbath the wicked people in this village!”

Qin Mu’s mind was violent, and he didn’t know what the woman who got out of the cowhide was talking about.

The woman was about to stab him to death. Suddenly, her heart felt cold. She looked down and saw a knife pierced through her chest.

“Mu’er, your pharmacist grandfather asked you to go back and take medicine.” The woman’s body fell down, and behind her stood the lame grandfather from the village, with a kind eyebrow and a kind-eyed, honest face, holding a bloody knife in her hand, and smiled at Qin Mu. road.

“The lame grandfather…” Qin Mu’s body was weak. He looked at the cowhide and the woman’s corpse on the ground, but he still didn’t come back to his senses.

“Go back, go back.” The lame patted him on the shoulder and laughed.

Qin Mu walked into the village with one foot high and one low. When he looked back, he saw the lame man throwing the woman’s body into the river.

The impact of this scene was so great that he didn’t know when he returned to the village.

“Qin Mu! Dead boy, what did you tell you? Don’t go out in the dark!”

As night fell, the stone statues in the four corners of the dilapidated village automatically lighted up again. Granny Sima summoned Qin Mu, who was about to slip out of the village to check the cowhide by the river, and dragged him back.

“Mother-in-law, why can’t you go out in the dark?” Qin Mu asked, raising his head.

“When it’s dark, there will be some terrible things moving in the dark, and going out is to die.”

The old lady solemnly said: “The stone statues in the village will protect us, and things in the dark will not dare to enter the village.”

“Do other villages have such stone statues?” Qin Mu asked curiously.

Granny Si nodded, but her expression was a little worried, she kept looking outside the village, and whispered: “The crip should be back…I really shouldn’t let the crip out, this guy has only one leg…”

“Mother-in-law, something strange happened today…”

Qin Mu hesitated for a moment, and told the story of a woman coming out of the cow’s belly. Granny said casually, “You mean that woman? The lame man told me that he handled it well. You were weaned as early as four years old. At the time I said that I sold the cows, but you were reluctant, so I let you feed them. You see, something is wrong now? I said that you will have feelings for cows if you eat milk until you are four years old.”

Qin Mu blushed. Weaning at the age of four is indeed a bit too long, but it seems that the key is not to be weaned at the age of four?

“Mother-in-law, that woman was killed by the lame grandpa…”

“Kill well.”

The grandmother smiled and said, “That’s cheaper for her. She should have died eleven years ago. If she didn’t want to milk you, could she live till now?”

Qin Mu didn’t know why.

The old lady glanced at him and said, “This woman is the wife of the city lord of the Dragon City, who is thousands of miles away. The city lord of the Dragon City is lustful, and she is jealous. . And every time the innocence of a woman is destroyed by the city lord of the city lord, the wife of the city lord will send someone to beat the woman to death. I sneaked into the city of the city, and originally planned to kill her, when she saw that she had just given birth to a child. For three months, I thought that you had no milk yet, and she had milk, so she turned her into a cow and came back to milk you. But I didn’t expect that this woman would break the seal and be able to speak, almost harming you.”

Qin Mu was dumbfounded and lost his voice: “Mother-in-law, how can a person become a cow?”

The grandmother-in-law smiled, showing half of her mouth with scattered teeth: “Do you want to learn? I will teach you… the cripple is back!”

Qin Mu looked and saw that the cripple was walking limpingly, leaning on a cane in one hand and holding the prey on his back in the other. Darkness rushed to the village like a tide, and the grandmother hurriedly shouted: “Dead lame, hurry up, hurry up!”

“No hurries?”

The lame still walked towards the village unhurriedly. The moment he walked into the village, the intense darkness just flooded the village. The prey on his back was a gorgeous tiger. It was not dead yet. The tail was swept in the darkness. Suddenly the tiger uttered a roar. Qin Mu quickly looked at it and saw that there were only bones left on the tiger’s tail. All his fur and flesh and blood were gone, as if it had been chewed off by something.

He looked curiously at the darkness outside the village, where it was pitch black and there was nothing to see.

“What’s in the darkness?” He wondered.