The Urban Legends of Monsters: Cultivation

"When did you decide, Ying? We've been sitting here for three months." Huo'er just went out and flew around, but didn't find any delicious monsters, and came back angrily and yawned.

Shadow sat on the branch next to this busy road with his knees in his arms - of course, the passing humans couldn't see him. He looked at the people below very seriously and said to Huo'er: " I don't know what to do yet."

"Wow wow wow..." Huo'er made a series of strange calls. Since they left the forest, they have been sitting here watching people. Need to observe and stay here who knows that this observation has been observed for three or four months!

"I can't take it anymore! How long do you have to think about Ying? Just change into one. Is it difficult to become a human being? Is your mana regressing?" Huo'er began to shout.

"Just the appearance of a human being doesn't count as a human being." Ying said what Zhou Wei said to him.

"And even the 'inside' will become a human being?" Huo'er asked the person who started to scan the line of sight with his eyes, and figured out which one to cut open for the shadow to look at.

"I think maybe I have figured it out..." Shadow's words saved the innocent human beings who were passing by in time, so that one of them could avoid the fate of becoming a child of fire and using physical objects to prove what kind of samples inside human beings were. went on their way in peace.

Ying said thoughtfully, "I think you need a job first to be a human being." The people passing in front of you are hawkers pushing carts and carrying loads, drivers driving carriages, staff members in a hurry, and people carrying burdens. A master tailor A businessman with gold-rimmed glasses on his nose A teacher holding a stack of books A woman selling tea...

"Being a person must first find one thing to do!" Shadow affirmed his experience of sitting for more than three months.

"Oh." Huo'er nodded and asked, "Then what are you going to do?"

"What to do?" Shadow began to think again.

※ . . . ※ .

Three months passed and spring came to the tree where the shadows of the world sat, and new leaves had begun to grow.

Huo'er ate a chicken and two roasted sweet potatoes today and shrunk into Ying's arms contentedly, ready to take a nap. It is open-minded by nature, although the monsters that stay around this place day after day are also eaten up by it, and it has to start eating beef, sheep, chickens, ducks, potatoes, sweet potatoes and other things. Instead, it is not as impatient as it was half a year ago. Teasing the dog of this family, teasing and teasing the cow of that family, and even going to the school to listen to a few words from the book, come back to Xiangying to show off the life that he has lived very happily.

So when Shadow suddenly asked it, "Huo'er, what am I going to do?" It had forgotten about this before, and thought that Shadow came to human beings to be a part of this tree.

"What are you asking me to do?" Huo'er said in a daze: "Then you can go roast sweet potatoes. I want to eat another one, chi chi chi..." After that, she fell asleep.

"Roasted sweet potatoes..." Ying looked at the smoky stall under the tree and the black charcoal-like things the stall owner was taking out. The stall owner handed the roasted sweet potatoes to customers to pick up Money passed by someone else.

"Roasting something called sweet potatoes with fire is a job related to fire..." He felt that he might be able to do such a thing after living with Huo'er for so long.

※ . . . ※ .

"Roasted sweet potatoes... roasted sweet potatoes... fragrant and delicious... cheap..." After half a day, Shadow imitated a human and began to sell his roasted sweet potatoes.

As time goes by, Shadow feels that he has adapted to this kind of selling life, but I don't know why I haven't sold a baked sweet potato for a few days, and when people pass by him, they will cover their noses and use extremely fast speed. Even the beggar who was begging not far away was no exception.

The fire was lying in the middle of the stove—actually, Ying didn’t know where to get the charcoal fire, so he directly used the fire as fuel—tossing the roasted sweet potatoes into his mouth one by one while nodding “umm” : "It tastes good anyway, and no one will buy me another one." After finding a reason, throw another one in your mouth.

"Could it be that what I made was not delicious?" After so many days, Tianying also had a little awakening. "But Huo'er is very happy to eat, so there must be something else wrong..." (Is it true that Ying cultivated Huo'er? Ying's peculiar palate or fire's palate cultivates Ying's eccentric cooking. It's an ancient mystery) Ying has always been determined to give up, but when summer comes, he can no longer find sweet potatoes to roast. Don't think about switching careers (this is also because he will switch to another job after the season of roasting sweet potatoes in humans, or he will probably continue to roast there for a hundred or two hundred years).

After six months of roasting sweet potatoes, Shadow sat down on the tree again and started looking for what to do down there.

"Ying, go kill the pig." With Huo'er's suggestion, Ying started his butcher career again.

His career as a butcher ended when all the pigs he could find around were consumed by fire.

"Let's make fried chicken."

"You go to sell mutton, Ying."

"You go tell the story."

"Shadow..."

Five years later, the shadow is sitting on the tree again, a little decadently.

Maybe he can't do anything at all, he has no talent at all, and he has such thoughts in his heart, but he has no plans to give up or go back to the mountains. Maybe it's because he hasn't learned at all" Give up.” He was thinking in his heart that there will always be jobs that even oneself can do with so many industries.

"What are you going to do, Ying?" Huo'er couldn't think of anything else to support Ying, so he generously allowed him to make his own decisions.

Shadow stared at the few people passing under the tree.

A man violently threw the book in his hand to the ground: "I quit my job and go home to farm!" After saying that, he dropped his accomplice and walked away.

"Going to farm?" Shadow seems to have heard many times in the past few years among human beings. For example: if it's a big deal, go home and farm, and you won't starve to death. It seems that farming is the ultimate solution for human beings to solve problems. When nothing else can be done, human beings will go to farming, so what about themselves? Can you learn to farm?

"Huo'er" said: "Let's go farming..."

Section 2

It's not an easy task to just make wheat grow healthy to heading or make cucumbers grow on a cucumber stand without using spells, but humans don't use spells to farm, so shadows don't.

Ying now has two acres of land, although it is small and pitiful compared to the surrounding fields that stretch to the foot of the mountain in the distance, but it is enough for Ying.

After several years of experimentation, he planted one acre of wheat, half an acre of corn, and more than a dozen kinds of vegetables. In the past few years, he finally figured out some of these crops. Today, for the first time, a lot of wheat and various vegetables were harvested in the field. Now he began to think about what to do with the things after the harvest.

"Most sold and a small portion was eaten by myself." Shadow spent several days figuring out where other farmers' harvest went.

He divided up the big pile and sold it to the human town. After returning, he greeted Huo'er: "Huo'er, let's eat the rest."

Huo'er frowned at his least favorite vegetable.

This is how Ying and Huo'er began their very regular farming careers:

Each piece of land is sown at a fixed time every year and a fixed crop is harvested at a fixed time and then sold 70% of Ying and Huo'er (it eats only for Ying's nose) and eats the rest in one day 30% of the planted plants are then sold, eaten, and planted again... In some years, the rainfall is too heavy, sometimes the drought does not see a single drop of rain, and sometimes something called a locust flies over. Eating crops, these disasters, and dealing with disasters like humans do not use spells. If there is no harvest this year, then there will be next year or next year... As long as the land is still there, you can grow things and look forward to next year. He's already a skilled farmer but I don't know if he's any more human.

Ying sits on the ridge, although it's early spring, but he still wears an old sheepskin jacket and leaves the wool exposed. I don't know what's the use of the smoking bag, but other farmers took it in their hands, so he also took other people to knock on the ground from time to time, and he also learned that way. Although he was not good at calculating, he still wanted to calculate this year's harvest, but he thought that humans don't need to use magic to calculate the harvest and put his hand down.

Don't know where the fire flew to?

Shadow used a cigarette bag to poke a clod of earth so that a tender sprout was exposed. Today's sunshine is good, and Ying wants to practice for a while with his eyes half closed. Some people came from the distant fields, and the shadow didn't move at first, but those people went all the way into his fields and stepped on the fields that had just turned green.

A total of more than 20 people walked in the front and rode on horses. They all wore a kind of clothes called military uniforms and carried long or short things called guns.

Shadow watched the horses' hooves and the leather boots on human feet stepping on his crops. He remembered that the humans who occasionally passed by used to step on the ridge as much as possible.

"叽

"Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeing…" the man was still talking.

Ying decided to go to the loose soil and ignore this person.

"Hey Tai-jun, have you seen anyone passing by here?" Finally a human said something Ying Can understand.

"Yes." Ying thought for a while and answered seriously.

"Where did he go?"

Shadow points to them in a direction.

"How long has it been?"

"Three days..." At this moment, Ying felt that he hadn't seen humans for several days, not even those who usually farm like him.

"Crack!" The man riding the horse's whip landed on the shadow's head and cried "creepy".

"I think you're with them! What are you doing here?" The man who Ying could understand asked again, but this time his tone made Ying uncomfortable.

"I'm farming." Ying answered truthfully.

"Bang!" This time a man yelled at him by smashing the **** of his spear on his head.

Shadow is angry.

When he was in the forest, if he asked other monsters what to do and got the answer from the other, even if Fire wanted to eat him, he would stop him because he thought the person who answered his question should be grateful, but these humans get After his answer, he attacked himself.

So the humans around Shadow tried to grab their head and drag him away, adopting the usual solution when attacked by monsters in the forest. It wasn't until he turned the shadow knife back into his own shadow that he frowned at the corpses of humans: maybe he was too reckless, maybe that's how humans treat things? Maybe...

The warhorse seemed to know that the monster in front of him was no threat to him, and he ate the crops in the field generously, so he pushed it to other people's fields (despicable, Ying! How can you not be Liu Di? Do such a thing!) while pondering whether his actions are human-like or not.

The fire slowly flew over from a distance, and it was seen that it was not in a good mood. Before flying to Ying's side, he shouted: "I'm so mad that I ran around and couldn't find anything to eat. Those chickens, pigs, cows... It is said that they were all taken away by a 'Japanese'! "It's going to inquire about what this human being called "Japanese" looks like in the next step, and then use violence to tell him that one of the rules that must be followed in the world is not to **** food with fire.

"Wow, you got me a horse." Huo'er praised Ying after seeing the happy horse. The horse wisely ran away, but Huo'er didn't chase it because its eyes were drawn to the human corpse again, and thoughtfully said, "I haven't tasted human in all these years. What flavors are there?"

Two hours later, Huo'er was lying on his back on the ridge, holding his stomach and moaning. His stomach was so bulging that he couldn't fly. Ying looked at it worriedly. He forgot when Huo'er had the habit of eating all the food in front of him, but this time it ate too much.

"The taste of people..." Huo'er patted her stomach and said with a "bang bang" voice, "It's still worth eating."

Shadow is glad that Huo'er has found another food source So I felt relieved and squatted on the ground, knocking on the cigarette bag and watching the green wheat seedlings, thinking in my heart whether the vegetables should be planted.

Section 3

Shadow has finally figured out that the humans who walk around in groups wearing the same clothes and carrying guns are called the army.

He doesn't like this kind of human being.

They never pay any attention The arrival of the fire often means that the fire can pick and choose to eat.

"Whoosh!" A bullet flew past the shadows and announced the beginning of the war. Shadow waited patiently for them to finish fighting themselves and Huo'er so they could clean up their land and continue farming.

"Pop!" This time, a bullet hit him on the shoulder. He took the bullet in his hand and threw it on the ground.

The two armies fighting fiercely and an old peasant sitting on a ridge knocking on a cigarette bag formed a strange picture.

A figure blocked the shadow's light. When the shadow looked up, the other person rolled to the ground and the blood spread rapidly at the shadow's feet.

"Another two...and three..." Huo'er jumped up and down, calculating, "Today I'm going to die again..." The smile at the corner of his mouth was obviously a sigh, but he couldn't hide it This kind of thing that he likes the most without opening his mouth and waiting for food to appear in large numbers.

One of the armies began to retreat. Shadow knew that it was almost there, so stood up with a hoe. The trampled crops had to be lifted. The trampled ridges had to be repaired. Those buried in the ground can be used as fertilizer, but the places that cannot be restored should be replanted. Almost every war has been a part of the rhythm of his life for Shadow.

※※※※※

But there will always be something to interrupt his regular life.

"What are you doing here, fellow!?"

Shadow looked at the officer who asked him anxiously (he now understands that generally speaking, the officer on the horse is the officer, of course, if the gun carriage is dragged by the horse) and told him the truth: "I am farming ."

The officer waved and called the two soldiers before he could finish speaking. They couldn't help but stand up and ran to the hill far away from the battlefield before letting him go and hurried back to the battlefield.

When Shadow looked back at the battlefield, he saw a cannonball landed in his field, sending out a great fire and rushing high dirt.

"This year's wheat is over." Ying thought. In addition, he had a strange thought in his mind. He hoped that the officer and the two soldiers just now would survive today's war. Anyway, they said a few words to him, and one of the soldiers who was escorting him also told him that this year's wheat harvest would be good, based on his past farming experience. So they are different to Ying and those soldiers who treat him like a stone and a straw in the past.

This war is over again. When Shadow saw the bodies of the three of them on the ground, he didn't let the fire touch them, nor buried them in the ground as fertilizer, but built a grave for them like a human. Because there are many high and low graves in the fields around the years of wars, the land with only shadows is very flat, so that the land of shadows is more like that of human beings.

※ . . . ※ .

When the soldier fell beside Ying, Ying let Huo'er fly over excitedly to count, but found that the other party was still alive and flew away in disappointment.

"Gee...gum..." The soldier groaned and said something Ying couldn't understand.

Shadow looked at him and saw that he was very young for a human being "Twenty? Nineteen...maybe only sixteen or seventeen?" Shadow guessed his age.

"Mom..." A word that Ying could barely understand came out of his mouth. "Mum..." Ying watched as he grabbed the embroidery he took out of his pocket and kept calling his voice getting weaker and weaker. stopped breathing.

Shadow built his grave next to the soldier who said to himself that "the wheat will be a good harvest".

Some things, once started, will go on forever. Now the graves must be carefully avoided by hoeing, weeding, and watering every day. Those who want to protect their comrades in battle but are killed by bombings; those who do not want to be prisoners who shoot themselves; those who want to escape from the battlefield and who are shot by their comrades; there are also people who want to escape to Taiping and walk here to get cold and hungry And the dead; the shadow does not know when in the future his own land will be turned into a tomb.

※※※※※

"Grab one."

"Older is fine."

"Walk back and cross."

Several people who appeared suddenly held the shadow together and dragged him away.

"What are you doing?" Shadow asked, puzzled.

"If you tell me to go, just go and stop so much nonsense."

"I'm farming."

"Growing the land? Hahahaha, I don't need to plant in the future."

"Ping pong."

Shadow knocks them all out with one punch.

"What are they doing?"

"It seems to be something called 'grabbing strong men'."

"What is 'grabbing the strong man'?"

"...I don't quite understand that it seems that human beings need more people to fight and bring people who are not soldiers to the battlefield..."

"It turned out to be for making food, but I'm getting tired of eating it." Huo'er wiped her mouth and looked for something she didn't get tired of eating.

Shadows continue to sit there Why do humans fight? Many people will die in the war, so why do they put more people into it? Even the strong in the forest know that avoiding war is something that must be understood in order to survive. It seems that humans do not think so. It is very difficult for human beings to figure out their thoughts. Can they be more like human beings...

The number of wars is less. Although people come to forcibly arrest people from time to time, but now Ying has become an old man in his 60s, so no one comes to harass him. He planted his land quietly and harvested quietly. The technology of farming is getting better every year.

Section 4

"These are to be sold, these are to be eaten." After distributing this year's harvest, the filmmaker suddenly woke up "Huo'er, do you think I'm a little more human?"

Huo'er originally saw that he was dividing vegetables again, and knew that it was time to eat these things, but was about to slip away quietly after hearing his question, and then flew back to look at him up and down, and shook his head flatly and said, "It's not like that. ."

Shadow stays in the field all day long, and his knowledge of human beings is not as good as that of Huo'er flying around. Since Huo'er said so, let's continue farming. He planted the ground earnestly, and when the people around him shouted that the war was over, and that the establishment of a new country was loudly announced, it still did not affect his days. Shadow is more patient than anyone, so he repeats the days of farming year after year, believing that he will become more human in just a few years.

"Down with the old landlord! Down with the old landlord!" A group of people shouted and passed from the land.

"Cut the tail of capitalism! Cut the tail of capitalism!" Another group of people shouted as they passed by.

"Smelting steel, making steel..."

“…”

A young man was sitting in Ying's place. He was from the city. A student said what "going to the mountains to go to the countryside" and "re-education of poor and lower middle peasants" was arranged to live in Ying's house. Ying heard his mouth. Li has been muttering: "Where are you going? Where are you going?"

Shadow doesn't understand what he's saying, nor does he understand what the humans around him are doing.

The young student was thrown into the river that night when people fished him out of the river he was put on the river with his eyes wide open and his mouth slightly open for a long time and his family did not come to deal with it So Ying buried him in his own field after his funeral.

That night, Shadow looked at the grave in his own field for a long time under the moonlight and asked, "What do you think of human beings, Huo'er?"

"It's generally not delicious." Huo'er, who had just eaten, smacked her lips.

"I think humans are hard to figure out." Shadow frowned, recalling every human he had ever seen. "Maybe I'll never be a human..." Maybe he began to feel that he didn't want to be a human being. look.

"No, you're more human than before." Huo'er said half asleep.

"Where? Where?" Shadow refreshed.

"I don't know if it looks like it anyway." Huo'er snored soon after rolling.

Really, I'm already a little human-like. Ying continued to look at the graves. This time, what he thought in his mind was: what is a human being... do I really want to become such a creature...

※ . . . ※ .

"Brother, just listen to me, how much money can you earn a year by guarding this acre of land? Now everyone goes to the city to make a lot of money You won't regret it."

"You said it's easy for the city people to be smart, do we have money for us to earn?"

"You don't understand this, right? The people in the city are rich, and those rough jobs have to be done by someone else. Why not earn more in a year than facing the loess and turning their backs to the sky? !”

Ying had been listening to their conversation as usual, but the last words hit him hard.

“Who is still farming these days!”

Aren't humans farming? Only then did Ying realize that the land around him has become less and less, and it has become less and less residential, factories, farms... There are fewer and fewer people farming the land. This time, they left not to avoid fighting but Went to a place called "City".

"Humans are no longer farming..." What should I do?

"Humans, they're all busy making 'money'." Huo'er showed off his knowledge.

"Money?" Ying had some of the money he sold in exchange for what he planted. He didn't know what the money could be used for and piled it together in a jar.

"They go to big cities to make money." Huo'er continued to tell him.

"Go to the big city...to make money."

"Let's go Ying too? I'm tired of living here for decades." Huo'er revealed his true purpose. "The monster I caught yesterday said there are many monsters in the big city."

"The monsters also live there..." I hardly saw any monsters when I was farming here. I don't know why I recalled the days of getting along with the monsters in the mountains and forests. He pointed to himself and told himself what to do. Maybe he could ask other monsters for advice--everyone living among human beings should be all about cultivation and success...

※ . . . ※ .

The streets of **** city ten days later.

Shadow sat on a street lamp and watched the endless crowd. He had never seen so many people.

"Huo'er, what should I do now?" - In the city, he couldn't farm the land because he brought a **** that he had used for decades.

"Ying, do that!" Huo'er pointed at the roller coaster in the playground and said excitedly~IndoMTL.com~ Two days later, the report of the major roller coaster accident in **** city appeared in major newspapers and magazines across the country, and Huo'er left in a hurry this city.

Yy City Huo'er looked at the university class thoughtfully: "You should do that."

Three days later, news of a student who severely injured a teacher spread across the campus Ying and Huo'er embarked on their journey again.

ZZ City Huo'er looked at the majestic traffic policeman and shouted excitedly: "Ying, go do this!"

Four days later, the news of a series of serious traffic accidents in ZZ City appeared in major media and fire...

Lixin City Shadow is frustrated again. Huo'er was bored and kept looking at the cars coming and going, dizzy, and suddenly she had an epiphany: "Ying, go drive and pull me away!"

"Driving..."

"Right drive!"

"Then drive..."