Chapter 990 Running

Chapter 990 Running

He trembled as he flipped open the first volume. Suddenly, new content emerged from the record in 1998: "Only by sacrificing blood can the wrath of the earth be appeased."

Liang Lu's screams were heard in the distance. Qi Tongwei rushed out the door and saw her being hung on the old locust tree by three phantoms. The mark of the green bell had turned into a dark spell. The woman in green raised the silver bell, and the whole manor began to tilt, as if it was about to fall into the abyss underground. At the critical moment, Qi Tongwei grabbed the miners' relics in the memorial hall and threw the silver bell to the ground.

With a crisp sound of cracking, time and space suddenly twisted. Qi Tongwei found himself in a mine cave during the Wanli period. In front of him were miners who were half-naked and toiling. The supervisors whipped them on the back, and blood splattered on the rock wall, gradually forming a totem similar to the old locust tree. Deep in the mine cave, a woman in green was injecting her soul into the earth veins in exchange for the power to protect this land.

"We were all wrong." Qi Tongwei murmured to the void. When he returned to reality, the rainstorm stopped abruptly, and three shadows hung in the air, the murderous intent in their eyes gradually disappeared. Liang Lu lay dying in his arms, and the bloodstains of the Qingling mark were fading. Qi Tongwei took off his wedding ring and touched it with Liang Lu's Qingling mark. The moment the blood mixed, the ring turned into a stream of light and sank into the earth veins.

The old locust tree made a deafening roar, and as its roots surged, countless silver bells broke out of the ground, forming a complete figure of a woman in green. "You finally understand." Her voice was no longer cold, "I'm not asking you to repay, but to remember that every inch of land has memories, and every life has dignity." After saying that, she turned into stars and merged into the sky before dawn.

When the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, the manor was already in ruins. The bell-ringing rice fields turned into scorched earth, the monitoring station was left with only broken walls, and the twenty account books were burned to ashes. But in the center of the ruins, a new locust tree seedling was breaking through the ground, and crystal dew condensed on the leaves of the seedling, like countless small silver bells.

Qi Tongwei collected the ashes and mixed them into new soil.

The morning dew slid down the tender leaves, creating tiny ripples on the scorched earth, like countless miniature silver bells knocking on the earth.

Liang Lu came over wrapped in a blanket. The blue bell mark on her neck had faded to a shallow mark, but it was still slightly hot in the morning light. "Look." She pointed to the winding mountain road in the distance. A dozen trucks with the "Tianshu Group" logo were driving along the old road. The wheels rolled over the collapsed stone bridge, raising dust. The leading car rolled down the window, revealing the old face of Liang Lu's father. His hands were tightly grasping the window frame, and his cloudy eyes were full of panic.

"The mine collapsed again last night." The little fox was squatting on the ruins at some point, with a half-burnt copy of "Qimin Yaoshu" wrapped around its tail. The old rubbings sandwiched between the pages fell to the ground. "The industrial waste they buried underground has leaked, and the entire city's water source..." Before he could finish his words, the truck fleet suddenly lost control, and the tires sank into a sudden crack in the ground. The sound of twisting metal mixed with screams pierced the sky.

Qi Tongwei looked at the people struggling in the smoke and dust, and the ashes in his hands suddenly became hot. Memories came flooding back: the grim smile of his father directing the dumping of poisonous fungi 20 years ago, the blue light of the multinational company disturbing the earth veins with a sonic detector 10 years ago, and the sigh of the woman in blue before she disappeared last night. He sprinkled the soil mixed with spores on the new seedlings, and saw that the seedlings grew at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the totems on the branches appeared the same as the murals in the mine cave during the Wanli period.

That night, heavy rain fell again. The spores of the night-scented fungus in the ruins germinated wildly, and the hyphae penetrated the scorched earth, weaving a glowing network in the rain. When Qi Tongwei patrolled with an old-fashioned flashlight, the beam swept across the muddy ground and found countless footprints - some wearing the hemp shoes of Ming Dynasty miners, and some wearing modern hiking boots, all leading to the ruins of the old locust tree.

"The gears of cause and effect never stop." The voice of the little fox came from the top of the tree. It was wrapped in glowing mycelium, like an old monk in a cassock. "Look at the people in those trucks. Their fate was determined twenty years ago." Before he finished speaking, sirens sounded in the distance, and the searchlight of a helicopter pierced the rain curtain, illuminating the trucks of Tianshu Group that were being swallowed by the continuously gushing poisonous water.

Liang Lu found a yellowed copy of "Geomaine" on a shelf in the library. There was a faded contract between the yellowed pages. She unfolded it with trembling hands. On it was written in cinnabar: "If the earth veins are damaged in the slightest, your descendants will fall into the netherworld forever." The ink blurred in the rain and overlapped with the embarrassed figure of her father being carried into the ambulance. Outside the window, the branches and leaves of the new locust tree made a sound like silver bells in the strong wind, like the echo of an ancient contract.

The villagers gathered spontaneously beside the ruins. Aunt Wang lit wormwood to exorcise evil spirits, and Zhang Dazhu set up a temporary sound wave device to play Buddhist scriptures. When the chanting sound intertwined with the sound of rain, a miracle happened: the hyphae of the night-scented fungus automatically wove into a net, absorbing all the leaked toxic water; the roots of the new locust tree extended to the cracks in the ground and actually lifted up the collapsed ground. On the other side of the city, the test report showed that pollutants in the water source were disappearing at an odd speed.

Three months later, when officials from the United Nations Environment Program visited, they saw a completely different scene. An ecological museum was built on the ruins, with replicas of 20 account books inlaid in glass display cases, and each page used AR technology to restore the scene of the year. Liang Lu's father was lying on a hospital bed, mumbling that he would donate all his property for ecological restoration, and on his wrist, a silver bell-shaped birthmark similar to that of a miner appeared.

Qi Tongwei led the visitors to the newly built experimental field, where the improved bell-shaped rice was planted. Wind chimes made from the ashes of old locust trees were hung between the rice ears. "Listen." He gently shook the rice stalks, and the crisp sound was mixed with the sound of chanting. "Every seed remembers the past of the land, and every gust of wind tells the story of cause and effect."

Late at night, the little fox was telling stories to the children again. This time, it opened the book "Notes on the Earth's Veins" newly edited by Qi Tongwei. As the candlelight flickered, the words on the pages suddenly flowed: "The sky is vast, the wilderness is boundless, and the wind not only blows the grass, but also blows the cycle of fate." When the story reached its climax, a glowing leaf suddenly fell from the new locust tree, and the words "cause and effect" were clearly printed between the leaf veins.

The mountain wind swept across the dome of the ecological museum, blowing the replica of the account book in the display cabinet. On the yellowed paper, the record of the fungus disaster in 1998 overlapped with the ecological data in 202X, and the ink turned into light spots and merged into the starry sky. Under the neon lights of the city, those who had participated in the destruction received mysterious packages one after another, which contained soil collected from the ruins and a note that read "If you sow beans, you will reap beans, and if you sow resentment, you will suffer disaster."

Qi Tongwei stood under the new locust tree and watched Liang Lu running in the fields with the children.