1978 Synthetic Writers

Chapter 334 A Manuscript from the Capital

Xi'an.

The temperature in the northwest drops quickly, and heavy snow falls before December.

Lu Yao smoked a Happy New Year cigarette and shivered as he walked into the editorial office of Yanhe. He shook off the snow on his body and put his numb hands on the coal stove to warm them. Only then did he regain some consciousness.

"It's really cold today."

"It's not the coldest yet."

"Have you read the newspaper?"

"What's wrong?"

"Well, that old fellow Zhinev is dead."

"Who?"

"Xun Zong!"

"Oh, him, how did he die?"

"heart disease."

"Oh, this old man is sick. Didn't the newspapers always say that when he was giving a speech abroad, he would often become stupid and didn't know where he was or why he was there."

"What about this?"

The editorial department was discussing this heatedly. Such a big thing had suddenly happened to such a giant like the Russian bear, and it would have a huge impact on the international situation.

The international situation happens to be what the gentlemen like to talk about the most, and once they start talking about the whole world, they can't stop talking.

Lu Yao usually did not participate at this time. He sat quietly at his desk, ready to read the manuscript.

Don't forget that he is not only an author, but also an editor of the provincial journal "Yanhe".

He first wrote a notice and sent it to an author whose manuscript had just been published, with a total fee of 35 yuan.

"Writing a letter?" The comrade from the mail room came over to take a look.

"Yes, send me the payment slip."

"35? That's a lot." A colleague in the mailroom couldn't help but sigh, "It's been a blink of an eye. It's only been a few years. It's become a habit for writers to receive royalties. A few years ago, who would have dared to think about receiving such royalties?"

This statement was agreed by many editors.

Looking back a few years ago, when the system of remuneration for royalties was just restored, who would dare to think about such a thing as remuneration for royalties?

Editor Xu Jianming recalled: "I still remember that I received a notice from the publishing house, asking me to go to the finance department to collect the manuscript fee of 35 yuan, which was the remuneration for publishing a cross talk.

As soon as I got it, I went to find Chen Zhongshi. At that time, Chen Zhongshi was leading a group of farmers to fight against nature and learn from Dazhai on the river bank. When he saw me, he invited me to his home to drink water.

At that time, Chen Zhongshi's family was so poor that they didn't even have tea.

We sat down on the kang, and his wife started talking about Lao Chen: "It's useless to write all day long. He doesn't even provide a chair for the guests, or even order tea."

I still remember that scene. I took out the manuscript fee notice from my pocket and gave it to Lao Chen's wife: "Sister-in-law, I wrote it for nothing before, but I will get paid for it in the future!"

His wife took it, read it several times, clapped her hands and said, "I wish I could get this order someday!"

Lao Chen was also very excited at the time: "This way of making money is so brilliant and splendid."

As Xu Jianming recalled the past, Lu Yao couldn't help but recall the excitement he felt when he first received his royalties.

Well, let alone the first time, even now, he gets particularly excited every time he receives his royalties.

At this time, he took the letter given to him by the mailman.

Seeing such a thick stack, he was stunned for a few seconds, "Who sent such a thick manuscript?"

“This has to be a long novel.”

The comrade in the mailroom said, "The person who submitted the manuscript is called Jiang Xian, also from Beijing. I don't know if it's that person or if they have the same name."

"Jiang Xian?"

Lu Yao's eyes lit up and he immediately thought of something. He excitedly opened the letter and spread the manuscript flat on the table.

Inside was a novel manuscript and a letter.

Lu Yao first read the content of the letter:

"Comrade Lu Yao:
It’s nice to see you writing. How are you doing recently? After many days of unremitting creation, I finally lived up to your expectations and wrote what I think is an epic poem of the Shaanxi Plateau. I’d like to ask you to judge how it is, and I hope you can give me some advice.”

It’s Jiang Xian indeed!
Lu Yao felt extremely satisfied at this moment.

As early as this summer, when Jiang Xian was still in Shaanxi, they, "Yanhe", had asked Jiang Xian to write this article.

But no matter how hard Lu Yao waited, Jiang Xian's novel never arrived.

He was so eager to see Jiang Xian's work that he almost became a wife-waiting stone.

Now, it's finally here!
Lu Yao couldn't hide the joy on his face. He opened the manuscript on the table. The font was round and plump, it was Jiang Xian's familiar font, and it was very easy to recognize.

He glanced at the first line:
"The Last Hun!"

"Hun?"

Lu Yao's mind seemed to be struck by lightning, and he suddenly remembered something.

But there was no time to think about it, he took a sip of water, just like a sponge meeting water, a starving man spread out on the bread, and started reading the novel.

The first chapter of the novel is a prologue entitled "Attila's Parchment Book".

In the prologue, Jiang Xian first told a few legends, the first of which was the legend of the one-eared black wolf.

It is said that a male Red Sea wolf mated with a female Black Sea wolf and gave birth to a black wolf. This black wolf had sharp eyes, lacquer fur, and roamed the Western Regions with a long cry.

One day, the beautiful wife of the Xiongnu Khan Touman was taking a nap when she felt a black wolf crawl into her tent.

She screamed in surprise, and Touman, who had heard the news, rushed into the tent with a knife in his hand, and indeed saw a black wolf.

He raised his knife and chopped at the black wolf's head. The black wolf's head tilted and one of its ears was cut off. It screamed, rushed out of the tent and ran into the dark forest.

After ten months of pregnancy, Touman's wife gave birth to a great hero, Maodun, the pride of heaven.

Who is Maodun?
The second section is quickly introduced in the prologue.

Continuing the content of the previous legend, Maodun killed his designated successor brother Hu Yue and became the Great Khan of the Xiongnu.

The legend of the one-eared black wolf, whether true or false, fascinated Maodun, so he painted a one-eared black wolf on his banner as a banner.

This is the so-called wolf-hunting flag.

Following the direction of the wolf flag, Maodun quickly unified the Xiongnu tribes, and then unified the sixteen kingdoms in the Western Regions.

Finally, he surrounded Liu Bang's 300,000 troops, causing Liu Bang to suffer psychological trauma.

Maodun also left behind an arrogant remark: Wherever the cattle and sheep of my Xiongnu people graze, that is the Xiongnu’s territory.

Later, Maodun died. Legend has it that he was buried in Swan Lake. When he was buried, thousands of white swans covered the surface of the lake and lingered for a long time.

Seeing this, Lu Yao took another sip of water.

When Jiang Xian uses his unique and charming writing to tell these legends, a sense of magic and the heaviness of history comes over you.

The legends told by Jiang Xian are unique and strange, and these legends are interspersed with historical events that Lu Yao is familiar with.

This writing style is similar to that of "Red Sorghum". It can be said that it is just as Lu Yao and others expected. This is a Shaanxi version of "Red Sorghum".

Then look down.

Later, the story of "Wang Zhaojun Going to the Frontier" happened. As everyone knows, Wang Zhaojun was proud of her beauty and was unwilling to bribe the painter, so Mao Yanshou painted her as an ugly woman.

She followed the Qinzhi Road along the Ziwuling Mountains, crossed the northern Shaanxi Plateau, crossed the Yellow River, and arrived at Jiuyuan County.

She first married Huhanye Chanyu, and after his death, she married his successor, and then she married his successor's successor.

That is the third marriage of Zhaojun.

Lu Yao was well aware of this, but what he did not understand was the significance of Zhaojun's journey to the frontier to the Huns.

At that time, the Huns were divided into two large tribes, the Southern Huns and the Northern Huns.

The marriage of Zhaojun made the Southern Xiongnu theoretically a vassal state of the Han Dynasty. Later, there was the "Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms" rebellion, and Helian Bobo, a descendant of the beautiful Zhaojun, built Tongwan City in northern Shaanxi and established the Great Xia regime. The Northern Xiongnu, who had lost power, broke off their friendship and gradually moved away from the settled and civilized areas, starting their tragic migration.

This migration lasted for hundreds of years.

No one knows how the Huns crossed the steep mountains and turbulent rivers to complete this intercontinental migration.

They crossed the Wuhu River, the Yaosha River, the Volga River, the Don River, the Kuban River, the Dnieper River, the Danube River, and the Rhine River.
No one knows how they got across, how many people died on the way, and how many were born on the way. These are all mysteries.

From Chang'an, the capital of the Eastern world, to Rome, the capital of the Western world.

Attila, known as the "chosen one of heaven", was born on the left and right banks of the Danube.

Attila established his Xiongnu Han Kingdom in today's Budapest, a nation that had intimidated the Central Plains for many years and whose cavalry declared war on the Eastern Roman Empire.

After destroying the Eastern Roman Empire as easily as kicking a wild dog to death.

Attila forced his way across the Rhine and marched toward Rome, the center of the Western civilized world, and surrounded the city like an iron barrel.

In the East, a woman named Wang Zhaojun changed the history of the Huns, and in the West, there was also a woman who changed history once again.

This woman is Jing Nolia.

Unlike Wang Zhaojun, she was a real princess and the sister of the Roman emperor.

Every day twelve palace maids combed her hair, making her golden hair look like a golden waterfall.

At the same time, twelve palace maids braided the rest of her hair.

The long hair is also golden.

The palace maids braided it into the shape of wheat ears.

Rome exchanged Zinnolia for Attila's withdrawal.

After the wedding, Attila took Zinnolia back to the Hungarian steppes.

And the following year, Attila died there.

At the funeral, the soldiers brought many stones and piled up Attila's tomb.

Each stone indicates that Attila had killed an enemy during his lifetime, and the stone represents the enemy's head.

Finally, a mountain of stones was piled up on Attila's tomb.

"Thus, in human history, a powerful horse-riding nation that shook the foundations of the Eastern and Western worlds has withdrawn from the stage of history.

Their galloping figures, the fluttering wolf flags, and the prayers of the female shaman only remain as people's memories.

Of course, their boiling blood still flows in some human groups today, but this has nothing to do with the name Xiongnu anymore. "

"The Xiongnu people had no written language, and without written language there was no history to remember.

So, when Attila was dying, he stroked Zinolia with his hand and asked his prime minister to record what he knew about the history of the Huns on a piece of sheepskin.

This is the parchment book of Attila.

Attila's parchment book has been lost.

But for thousands of years since then, whenever a lamb was born, the first thing its owner would do was to lift up its soft fur to see if there was any writing on the skin.

Unfortunately, such a thing has never happened once in thousands of years.

However, during the Huns' tragic and magnificent migration, a Hun soldier who fell behind was forever detained on the land of northern Shaanxi Plateau.

We believe that the unruly "Hu Jie blood" will continue to surge to this day.

"

After reading the prologue, Lu Yao could no longer express the shock in his heart.

In just a few thousand words, Jiang Xian narrated the "Hu and Jie blood" of the Xiongnu from its beginning to its disappearance.

While Lu Yao was reading, he could hear the sounds of swords clashing and horses' hooves clattering from time to time.

Reading about the ups and downs of such a mysterious bloodline in history is like having your chest trampled by the hooves of a Hun's horse.

And what Jiang Xian said at the end, about the Hun soldier who stayed on the Shaanxi-Gansu Plateau, immediately reminded him of the rumor Jiang Xian had mentioned that night.

“.When the Xiongnu moved westward, the Xiongnu soldiers who fell behind left their bloodline here, and this bloodline remained on the northern Shaanxi Plateau.

To this day, there are still people on this land who carry their blood in their veins.”

That’s indeed the case. After Lu Yao heard what Jiang Xian said, he paid a lot of attention to other people’s feet for a period of time afterwards.

Of course, more attention is paid to the affairs of the Huns.

After much inquiry, he actually found a Xiongnu bloodline:
Liu Chengzhang.

This person is a writer from Shaanxi. He says that he is of Hun descent.

Many people should be familiar with the writer Liu Chengzhang.

Even if you haven't heard of him, you must have read his articles.

Because he has an essay called "Ansai Waist Drum".

In later generations, this essay was included in the People's Education Press's junior high school Chinese textbook, and many junior high school teachers required students to memorize the entire text.

“A group of young and energetic people.

Behind them was a sorghum field.

They are as simple as the sorghum field.

The whistling south wind blew the sorghum leaves and also blew their clothes.

Their expressions were calm and quiet.

The waist drums pressed against the sides of their bodies were dull, as if they had never sounded before.

"

At this moment, Lu Yao couldn't wait to turn to the next page of manuscript and read the first chapter of the novel.

The story takes place in a place called Wuerbao on the northern Shaanxi Plateau.

A Hun soldier heard the voice of a young woman shouting in the mountains. Tempted by the sound, he secretly left the team and did something that was bound to happen between men and women sooner or later.

Jiang Xian did not write whether it was voluntary or forced. Just like when he wrote Red Sorghum, his perspective jumped between the past and the present. He said:
"The Yang family tree does not record this incident."

"One day in the future, a descendant of the family named Yang Anxiang opened the ancestral grave. All he saw were the bones of these two romantic sinners, and he could not infer the reason for the adultery from these bones."

Such descriptions made Lu Yao always feel the grand narrative of the novel when he read it, and that he was only observing the tip of the iceberg of this vast history.

The narrative that interweaves history and magic in the novel also fascinated Lu Yao.

When Jiang Xian wrote about a woman having an affair with a Xiongnu soldier, he would say that the lingering love they sang to each other became a folk song passed down from generation to generation in northern Shaanxi:
Things like "It's dark and there's no moon, be careful not to step on the dog.", "He came at midnight and left at dawn, my brother is like a stealing dog.".
These folk songs were indeed those that Lu Yao had heard before, and they were catchy. No one knew who wrote these songs, but these songs existed as if every Shaanxi person should be able to sing them.

At this moment, Jiang Xian gave these songs an extremely magical imagination.

Because of this wrong thing, the man and the woman fell in love by chance, but since people of different races are not allowed to marry each other, they can only interact secretly.

But after some days, their affair was exposed.

The patriarch ordered his men to capture them, hang them up, and prepare to execute them.

At this moment, the baby in the woman's belly saved them.

In this sparsely populated village, out of worship for life, the patriarch decided to give them a chance to live but just drive them out of the village.

But before that, the clan leader picked up the machete that he used to kill the pair of romantic sinners.

他 说:

"This machete has not been sharpened in vain. Take it with you. It is the symbol of Wuerbao, and it is also my symbol."

"When your baby is born, the first thing you will do is look at the baby's toes."

"If the nail on the little toe is in two pieces, then raise him well."

"If the fingernail is round, then this knife is for him."

(End of this chapter)