My girlfriend is a Miao demon.

Interestingly, investigative journalists are tasked with uncovering the truth behind news stories, and Xiang Nanfeng had traveled thousands of miles countless times following the slightest clues. Yet, he never imagined that one day he would be searching for the missing Gui Luyao, walking 5.6 kilometers through the vast Shounan Mountains following sheep droppings.

At approximately 4:30 PM on January 4th, Xiang Nanfeng followed the trail and scent of sheep droppings, traversing mountains and valleys until he reached a sheer cliff.

This cliff was not formed naturally. It was originally a perfectly good rocky mountain, but it was cut in half by quarrying, which turned it into the cliff we see today. Dozens of meters to the east of the cliff, there is a sloping path carved into the mountainside, originally used by workers for climbing and blasting.

From here, the winding path descends the mountain to the foot of the precipice, below which lies a vast flat area of ​​over ten square kilometers, remnants of quarrying. In this flat area, about 800 meters north of the precipice, a hundred or so single-story houses stand out starkly. The mountain itself is white-gray limestone, and black sheep droppings, fallen onto the rock strata created by the quarrying, create a striking contrast, clearly visible. The sheep droppings descend along the eastern sloping path of the precipice, heading straight for the hundred or so single-story houses.

The map shows that the location of the houses is called Stone Village. However, Stone Village is not actually a village, but a quarry. Because the Shounan Mountain is mainly composed of limestone, and the main component of limestone, calcium carbonate, can be used to make cement, lime, and various building materials, starting in the 80s, several quarries were successively opened in the area north of Shounan Mountain and south of Wangshan. After the new millennium, due to the serious damage to the ecological environment caused by quarrying operations, all of these quarries were ordered to close by the government.

Most of the abandoned factory areas have been demolished, and the damaged environment is gradually being restored. This so-called stone village is actually just the office area and workers' sheds of an abandoned quarry.

After the quarry was shut down, most of the workers were laid off, while a few were retained by new environmental companies to engage in afforestation and other related work, restoring the damaged environment on-site. This allowed the abandoned factory area to be temporarily preserved.

Following the south wind and the dung, they quickly found the owner of the sheep, Mr. Zheng, who was 68 years old at the time.

He came to work at the quarry in the mid-80s. After the quarry closed down, he was employed to plant trees in the surrounding area for a few years and worked as a security guard in the factory area for a few years. Two years ago, he got too old, and the company refused to renew his contract. But Grandpa Zheng had lived here for half his life and was used to it, so he didn't want to leave. In this inconvenient and unsightly place, there were mostly empty houses. The owner of the environmental protection company, surnamed Dong, was originally the manager of the quarry. Out of old friendship, Mr. Dong simply found him an empty courtyard to continue living in.

This old man Zheng was in excellent health. After retiring, he always wanted to find something to do. Since he used to be a herdsman before he started quarrying, he simply bought 30 sheep and went to graze them in Shounan Mountain.

"Uncle Zheng, I just want to ask you, when you were herding sheep in these southern mountains, did you ever see a tombstone?"

"Tombstones? There are plenty of those. Loujia Village, Yongjia Village, Lile Village, Donglikan... Which village at the foot of the mountain doesn't have graves on the back hill? Anyone who died in the last twenty or thirty years has a tombstone, right? Why are you looking for this?"

"No, not the kind found in the mountains behind neighboring villages, but deep in the mountains, deep within the southern slopes of the mountain. Have you seen it?"

"Deep in the mountains?"

"Yes, the straight-line distance into the mountains is at least 8 kilometers."

"8 kilometers? No way, not even 800 meters. Who would deliberately bury a dead person that far away!"

"That's true... then let me rephrase my question. Uncle Zheng, could you help me think of something else? Let's not talk about tombstones or stone tablets. Have you ever seen a mountain like this inside Shounan Mountain?" Xiang Nanfeng waved his hand, pointing to the cliff behind Stone Village, "A mountain at least twice as high as this cliff, with a stone tablet near the summit. Uncle, you're a quarryman, you must recognize the stone. The stones in Shounan Mountain are all this kind of limestone that you quarry, which is usually quite brittle. But there's a stone tablet on that mountain, it's cracked, buried in the mountain, and the exposed part is about this big! It's tilted here..."

As Xiang Nanfeng spoke, he gestured the general shape of the stone tablet that he and Luyao regarded as their tombstone. Fortunately, his impression of that tablet was still very deep. After gesturing the shape of the tablet, he took out a photo from his bag. He had taken the previous night to the print shop in Lile Village to have it developed. It was a photo of several types of bluish-white stone that he remembered best matched the color of the tablet.

"Look, this is bluish-white stone, produced in another province. We don't have it in our province, and we certainly don't have it in Shounan Mountain. That stone tablet is probably made of this kind of stone."

"This...can I take a look at it...?"

Grandpa Zheng took the photos from Xiang Nanfeng and looked at them one by one, scratching his head as he looked. He probably didn't spend much time thinking, but Xiang Nanfeng, observing his expression, felt there was hope. Because of this renewed hope, he was impatient and urged him on impatiently:

"Well, Uncle Zheng, have you seen it before?"

"I see..." Grandpa Zheng scratched his head and frowned as he said, "I see... This kind of stone, you showed me this photo, I think I've seen it before. If you want to say it's a broken tombstone, it does look like one."

"Really? You've really seen it!" Xiang Nanfeng asked excitedly.

"Yes, I have seen it. It was indeed deep in the mountains. But it wasn't recently; I saw it thirty years ago, and it wasn't in the kind of place you're describing."

"Huh? Thirty years ago? Where? What place was it?!"

"A ravine, inside a ravine. Yes, inside a ravine."

"Are you sure? Are you sure it's in a ravine? Are you sure it's this type of stone?"

Old Mr. Zheng, whose eyesight was failing, held the photos up to his eyes, pasted them one by one, and looked at them again. Then he picked one out and nodded firmly, saying:

"Yes, it's this kind of stone tablet, this color! It's in a valley."

Xiang Nanfeng picked up the photo. The photo was of the Xilin Stele of Dongyue Temple in Beijing. It was carved in the seventh year of the Tianqi reign of the Ming Dynasty. There are three steles in total. The top of the stele is inscribed with the eight characters "Cao Laohu Guan Baizhi Shenghui" and the sides of the stele are carved with auspicious cloud patterns. It has a history of nearly 400 years.

Great, great! It's exactly the color, just the right color!

When Xiang Nanfeng first saw the stone tablet on the mountaintop, he blurted out that it was from Dashiwo, Fangshan District, Beijing. Now, the stone tablet that Grandpa Zheng picked out was the closest in color to the one he remembered seeing, except that one was on a mountaintop and the other was at the bottom of a valley, which was really puzzling.

But even finding a needle in a haystack, just a clue like a needle threading tool, is a great relief. Moreover, the same stone material and similar stone tablets, even if one is on a mountaintop and the other in a valley, both point to the same suspicion. Xiang Nanfeng immediately pressed for answers:

"Uncle Zheng, where is that ravine?"

"That mountain ravine..."

"What happened to that ravine? Do you still remember where it is?"

"Oh dear, I think I should remember, but it's such a long way from here! Do you really have to look for it?"

"Yes, I have to find it!"

"Okay, then you can sleep in the next room tonight. Leave early tomorrow morning at 4 a.m. I'll take you there. Anyway, I'm a shepherd, so it doesn't matter where I go."

"That's great, that's great!"

Nothing was said that night, and they set off at dawn. An old man and a young boy drove more than 30 goats up the cliff of Shitou Village and southward to guard Nanshan Mountain, crossing mountains and ridges, heading straight for Shibei Valley.

Along the way, with nothing to do, the two reminisced about their past to pass the time. Xiang Nanfeng told Grandpa Zheng about his acquaintance with Luyao, their love, and the subsequent disappearance of his lover, while Grandpa Zheng recalled his turbulent life and his connection with the mountains.

It turns out that the old man's original surname was Zheng, but he had never always had that surname. Although he had lived in Shitou Village and the quarry for half his life, his original home when he came to Wangshan was actually in Loujia Village, where Luyao rented a place - No. 45 Loubei.

The old man was originally from the north and was the only son in his family. In his hometown, he was not a farmer at all; on the contrary, he was a fitter at the largest steel factory in the area.

In the early 80s, a wave of people heading south to Guangzhou to do business swept the country. Coincidentally, the factory where Mr. Zheng worked was also struggling, and his parents had passed away one after another. Under the emotional blow and the lure of profit, Mr. Zheng decided to quit his job and head south to start a business. However, starting a business required capital, which Mr. Zheng had none of. He borrowed money to make up the difference, and traveled south on a debt-ridden haul. But less than half a day after getting off the train, he was swindled out of all his money.

The old man was a fitter, but he couldn't find work in Guangzhou. He couldn't pay back his debts and didn't dare go back to his hometown. But he wasn't the only one who had come to Guangzhou to start a business; his creditors back home would frequently send fellow villagers to collect debts from him. Later, while doing odd jobs, he met a man named Brother Jia from Wangshan, and the two got along very well. According to Brother Jia, the development momentum of their hometown, Wangshan, was no less than that of Guangzhou.

One day, Brother Jia received a call from his hometown, saying that they were opening a cement factory in Shounanshan, and the wages were incredibly high. His relatives back home asked if he wanted to sign him up.

At that time, Brother Jia asked Uncle Zheng if he wanted to go, because they were both working, and he could earn more over there. Besides, Uncle Zheng wanted to avoid his debts and wanted to save enough money to pay them off in one go, so he agreed to come to Wangshan with Brother Jia.

"Oh, so this Brother Jia, oh no, your Uncle Jia, is from Loujia Village?"

"Yes, Brother Jia is a really nice person. I stayed at their house when I arrived. But after we got there, we found out that they misheard us on the phone: the quarries here are all village-run enterprises, and the rock mass in Loujia Village is not suitable. Loujia Village does not have its own quarry."

"In other villages, there are more than a dozen quarries that are going to open, and they did register us. But only two of them have actually opened. The others are still getting equipment and going through the procedures. The one we registered for will not start work for another six months."

"But now that we're here, we can't leave again. It's not easy to find temporary work, but we can't just stay at home doing nothing. Brother Jia used to be a shepherd before he went out to work. The two of us took 100 sheep and herded them!"

"Back then we were young, and the two of us herded 100 sheep. There wasn't much grass suitable for sheep to graze in this area of ​​Shounan Mountain, so we had to walk a long, long way. It was summer then, and sometimes we would spend the night in a cave halfway up the mountain. The stone tablet you photographed, that's the one I saw when I was herding sheep with Brother Jia back then."

"What year was that?" Xiang Nanfeng asked.

"1985? Oh, no... it's 1984! I resigned in mid-1982 and went to Guangzhou. I worked in Guangzhou for a year and a half, and then we came here in March 1984."

"From 1984 until now? 27 years, 28 years! After 28 years, will that thing still be there?"

"It's definitely there, definitely there. Who would go deep into the mountains and forests! As long as I remember the way, and the way is right, I'm sure I'll find it. Oh, by the way, you said that broken stone tablet is a tombstone? I don't think so, it's definitely not."

Why?

"A tombstone needs a grave. There's definitely no grave there."

"What if the grave mound flattens out over time?"

"That's impossible. That place is very low-lying, in a ravine, with a stream running alongside it; it's very damp. Who would bury someone in a place like that?"

"That makes sense. So you're looking for the stream first, then following the stream to the ravine, and finally finding the stone tablet along the ravine?"

"Hey, yeah! You're a smart guy!"

"Oh, by the way, Uncle Zheng, why have you stayed at the quarry in Stone Village ever since you started working there? Are you unmarried?"

"Hey, don't even mention it, he got married and had a son and a daughter, but they couldn't make it work and got divorced."

"Divorced?"

"Brother Jia has a cousin who has three daughters and no sons. The eldest and second eldest daughters are married, and he only has eyes for me."

"I was young then, and I was in debt. All I wanted was to get married, so I agreed. After we got married, I lived with them and suffered a lot. At that time, I didn't know what 'marrying into someone else' meant."

"Later, when the quarry started operating here, there were workers' sheds and it was busy, so I lived in the workers' sheds. Even when I got paid, I had Brother Jia take the money over there. I myself was not allowed to go back for half a year."

"Then, in the late 80s, when I was getting my ID card and had paid off all my debts, I went back to my hometown. But when I got back, I found out that the Jia family had secretly moved my household registration there three years earlier. When I asked them again, they even changed my surname. So I had been surnamed Jia for three years without even knowing it! I couldn't stand that, so I just got a divorce."

"Huh? You can just change your surname like that? You don't need your consent?"

"Hey, things weren't like they are now. Back then, a certificate from the village committee wasn't enough. But Loujia Village was entirely populated by the Jia family, just that one big family. They couldn't just change things as they pleased!"

"Huh? Wait, Uncle Zheng, what did you say? Everyone in Loujia Village is surnamed Jia?"

"That's right! There's not a single person with an outside surname among them, and if there's even one, they'll bully them to death!"

"No, this village is called Loujia Village, shouldn't everyone be surnamed Lou? Why are they all surnamed Jia?"

"Hey, how do we find out? Look, we're here!"

As Grandpa Zheng spoke, he pointed to a spot more than ten meters away on a shallow stream and a pebble beach. Sure enough, there was a large rock lying flat on the ground, covered with moss, made of bluish-white stone, and resembling half a broken stele!

"Hey, why did it turn over?"