If I don't have money to go to college, I can only go to slay the dragon.

Tell a story from the past.

In fact, when I looked up and saw her in the yard that day, I had already guessed what kind of story would happen next, and what kind of ending this story would have.

But I still walked towards her without hesitation.

Because it is something that you know is meaningless, but you can't help but cling to it.

My name is Li Xingchu, a descendant of the orthodox Li family. According to the traditional patriarchal system, my official self-introduction should be "Li Xingchu, the legitimate second son of the orthodox Li family", but most of the time I introduce myself to the outside world as: Li Xingchu is male. His hobbies are ancient Chinese medicine and skydiving. He is unmarried.

My father is Li Yuande, an officer in the Li family's military department. He is also the head of the Li family of this generation. Above me, I have an elder brother who legally inherits my father's power, status and most of the property as the legitimate eldest son, and below me there are two younger brothers as the third and fourth legitimate sons.

At this point you can probably understand why I don’t like to mention my background when introducing myself.

If I were the eldest son, that would be okay, or if the contemporary eldest son was a playboy, that would be okay, but unfortunately my brother is very good. He has been so good since he was born that he puts others to shame. This Naturally, others include me.

But don't get me wrong, I never envied my brother. On the contrary, we always had a good relationship when we were young.

When I was a child, I encountered a wild leopard while hunting on the outskirts of Miyun City in Bei'an. If my brother hadn't stepped forward and scared the leopard away with his immature golden eyes, I would have been so frightened that my legs were weak and I was sitting on the ground. A handful of grass fertilizer.

I have been taught by my mother since I was a child that an elder brother is like a father. You should let your elder brother not fight or snatch. Sometimes in life, brothers must love each other and support each other. Therefore, the texts I memorized most since I was a child were "Kong Rong Lets Pears" and "Wang Tai Lets Dates". Not only did I memorize them, I also had to copy them.

But no matter how my elders admonished me or urged me, I would always memorize these two articles in front of them. This made them feel disappointed and felt that I had not inherited my father's excellent dragon genes. To put it bluntly, I am useless. Compared to my brother who memorized the Three-Character Classic and the Thousand-Character Classic at the age of three, my performance is quite inferior to others.

But in fact, only I know that, but there is a reason why I struggled to recite the two simplest articles. Who told me that I once heard my parents say when I passed by their door, wait until I finish reciting them. After those two articles, I was asked to memorize the "Forbearance Sutra" again to strengthen my character.

I then privately asked the uncle who kept the library how long the book was, and the answer I got was about 1,300 pieces of "Kong Rong Lets the Pear". I almost cried out of fright, and naturally it was talked about until I was an adult. The allusion to "Kong Rong Lets the Pear" that he could not finish reciting for three years was often brought up and joked by his elders at the table.

Before learning the lessons of humility and tolerance, I learned to act stupid in advance, and this skill was very useful to me in the following days. Whether it was studying, exercising, or daily performance, I would pretend to be stupid. , showing my rather untalented side.

Whenever I do something stupid or am not good at my studies, my elders will compare me with my elder brother and say, "Xingchu, look at your brother, and then look at yourself."

I stopped talking at this time, and when their conversation changed from me to praising my brother, I could calmly excuse myself to copy books, and go to the library to kill time. This resulted in me spending most of my childhood free time. Time is spent in the family library, which is so big from a child's perspective that it seems to include all the books in the world.

The most profound scene in my film-yellow childhood memory is that when I was a child, I was sitting quietly copying books in the huge library with tower-like bookshelves, and my uncle was leisurely basking in the sun on the Taishi chair next to me. While reading ancient books, the leaves were flying in the yard outside the library, and the sounds of children chasing and playing with balls in my home were both very close and far away from me.

It also benefited from the fact that when I was a child, I often went to the library to copy "Kong Rong Rang Li" and became familiar with the uncle who kept the library. In my memory, the uncle who kept the library was very old and had more wrinkles on his face than my grandfather's. Duo, I don’t know where my uncle’s home is, but I only know that as long as I want to find him, I can definitely find him in the library. Most of the time when I see him, he will still look like that: a recliner, a book, and a black suit. The white washed robe hangs on the body, hiding in the sun while squinting at the yellowing book in his hand.

I often wonder what is the charm of the books in my uncle’s hands that makes him stay in the library every day. I guess in my mind that they must be those little shameful books that adults talk about, or maybe they are wonderful comic books or something like that. (When I peeked behind me, I saw the little man with the painting on the book).

When I was a child, I was very brave. Because copying books was boring and impatient, I once waited for my uncle to fall asleep and secretly read the contents of the book in his hand. I found that there are indeed comic strips in the book, but the little characters are drawn very strangely, and there are many small words written on the little characters that make them look dizzy, but it is better than copying "Kong" which makes me want to vomit. "Rong Rang Pear", so I can watch it with pleasure.

After that, when I had nothing to do in the library, I read my uncle's books while he was asleep, just like comic strips. Over time, I memorized the little people and dense words in the paintings by heart. It was not until later that I realized that all those books were It's about ancient medicine, and the comic strips all show the acupuncture points of the human body. By that time, my interest in medicine had already developed.

My uncle never resented me for playing fish instead of copying books. On the contrary, he especially welcomed me to come to the library to read. Maybe now that I think about it, my uncle, who is as wise as he is, also knew my trick of pretending to be stupid when I was young. He welcomed me to the library just because I was bored and wanted to have more cute ones. The younger generation passed the time. But every time he saw me looking enviously at the girls of the same age who were picking up balls at the door of the library, he would hit me on the head with a folding fan, saying that if you are playful, I will sue your parents. The look in his eyes scares me.

My uncle would casually remind me of some ancient books that I couldn't understand. He was also the kind of elder who was good at telling stories. He could tell the story from the Compendium of Materia Medica to Li Shizhen's poisoning by eating dragon's blood and warning the world about the poisonous dragon's blood. There is an anecdote about the golden needle that guides the dragon to have a smooth birth without making elixirs.

My childhood idol was naturally Li Shizhen, who wrote "Compendium of Materia Medica". According to my uncle, a golden needle can travel all over the world, and people can be poisoned with bones. Li Shizhen used medicine to enter the path of alchemy. By the way, the second in the list is Sun Wukong, the Sun Dasheng in the version of "Havoc in Heaven" produced by Shanghai Art Film Studio. Children at that time all liked Sun Wukong, and I was no exception.

I like to dig into the library and read medical books. My parents only discovered this later. There were some minor objections in the family, saying that generations of our Li family were from the Ministry of War, and all the boys had to join the Ministry of War. He sacrificed his life and blood for orthodoxy. When the dissent was at its strongest, he explicitly prohibited me from going to the library, and collected all the medical books wrapped in martial arts novel shells hidden in my house and sent them back to the library.

I lost my temper for the first time and cried for a long time. It was also the first time in so long that I got slapped with a stick and was put in solitary confinement. But before it was closed for long, the uncle from the library opened the door to my room. Standing behind him were my parents who looked embarrassed.

This was the first time I saw that kind of expression on my father's face. I always thought he would never make mistakes - at least not in front of others.

That day, my uncle took me out of the house and told me that if I wanted to go to the library in the future, I could go there as often as possible and do so openly, but as one of the conditions, if I went to the library to read "idle books" in the future, I would have to take regular tests. It's basically an exam, and the questions are set by my uncle.

The first time I got the test paper, when I saw that all the questions on it were from the "Compendium of Materia Medica", I knew that my uncle was trying to mess with me. After finishing the questions, I felt guilty and handed in the paper to my father who was invigilating the exam. I thought my father would deny it, but I didn't expect that he just kept silent for a moment, put down the exam paper, bowed slightly to my uncle, and left with me.

My dad didn't say anything on the way home, he just held my hand and kept walking.

I clearly remember that from that day on, no one in the family stepped on me or my brother. When the elders mentioned me, they just smiled and nodded. The most common words they said were: "Looking across the horizon is a ridge, and the side is a peak." and "The willows and flowers are bright in another village" instead of the "Look at your brother, and then look at yourself" that we used to say.

Later I thought that the uncle in the library must be a reputable elder in the family. When I thought about all the details in the past, even when my father came to the library to take me away, he would take the initiative to say hello and salute the uncle sitting on the Taishi chair when he came to the library to take me away. During the holidays, I would also be asked to take dumplings made by my mother to the library. Many details prove that I have had a supporter since I was a child, and I am so lucky.

The days that followed were also lackluster, with nothing worth detailing or remembering. While my elder brother and later younger brothers followed my father in the yard and exercised, I was drawing densely packed acupoints in front of me in the room on the second floor. The dummies stabbed villains in various ways; my brother was obsessed with all kinds of dangerous knives and gun barrels, and he led his peers to act out various kinds of havoc in the small theater of the Heavenly Palace, vying to be the Monkey King, while I sat firmly on the stage. I was brewing the emotion of scolding "Sun Dasheng" for stealing my lines of Five Pots and Nine Turns of Golden Elixir.

The biggest commotion was when I saw various stories about collecting elixirs in the wild in medical books, and when I dragged my brother to the countryside to find elixirs under the pretext of hunting, I bumped into a leopard. But the final outcome of that incident was also the same. There was no danger, and there was no need to revisit the past and trace the details.

It was probably these things that made up my peaceful childhood, followed by healthy growth, a New Year with red envelopes stuffed in my pockets, good grades, finishing junior high school in China, and choosing a nearby school that I had longed for. Bei'an University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, where I met many like-minded friends.

This peaceful and fulfilling life lasted until I was in my early twenties or early thirties.

To be precise, it lasted until my twenty-third birthday, the day my brother came to me privately and made a request to me.

I probably haven't mentioned it before, but my brother's name is Li Mu. Yes, he has the same name as the Warring States general who defeated the Qin army without defeat in ancient times.

As the name suggests, my brother has been very fierce since he was young. He is invincible in beating boys of the same age in the courtyard. He is arrogant and has never been afraid of anyone. The only one he has lost and is afraid of is my mother's Nine Yin White Bone Claw. On the way to the library to read, I would see my brother being grabbed by the ears by my mother and going to other people's homes to apologize, most likely giving their children bruises and bruises.

My brother always likes to fight. His personality is like that of my father. He is quite domineering and always says one thing. Now, he will always be the Monkey King who fights against heaven and earth. The other children can only choose the remaining good roles to play. The most popular ones are the Jade Emperor and the Queen Mother, because the children who play these two roles can scold my brother. The monkey scolded them the hardest, but they were also beaten the hardest when they were beaten afterwards.

My brother has doted on me since I was a child. Although my mother has asked me to give way to my brother since I was a child and give good things to him first, but because I pretend to be stupid, in the eyes of my brother, I am just a person who cannot live up to expectations and needs his protection. Damn brother, in addition, when there are little plots, I always vote for my brother smartly and help him become the Monkey King, (I will always be the Supreme Master who alchemizes elixirs), so I Brother has always thought that I am very sensible and is naturally willing to take care of me. He is the first to be unhappy with anyone who bullies me.

He was such a good brother. That year, when I pestered him in every possible way and told him to go to the countryside to collect Ganoderma lucidum, he was willing to take me to the mountains with my father on the pretext of hunting. After that, he met a leopard. That thing. It is worth mentioning that after that incident, my brother was not very willing to take me to play, and I never complained.

Because in adult terms, my brother almost died in the mouth of a leopard that time. All of that was caused by me, who was lying on the ground unable to move. If my brother hadn't turned on him due to emotional stress and anger. Without the Golden Eyes, I’m afraid neither of us will have anything to do in the future.

I am very grateful to my brother, and I kept a silent attitude when he did not take the initiative to seek me out in the future. I just thought it was my naughty childhood that caused a psychological shadow on my brother. Such a young child was forced to face a monster bigger than him. A beast several times bigger would leave psychological scars on anyone else. This is something I have always blamed myself for. Fortunately, the leopard did not hurt my brother, otherwise I would have been even more uncomfortable.

In my memory, my brother did not go to any of the well-known universities in China after high school. With his grades and personal excellence, he was given the choice of domestic or foreign schools, but in the end he chose to go to the family school. The "private school" inside, the preparation camp called "Langjuxu".

It was a place that many little boys in the yard dreamed of. During the time when the martial arts wind was spreading all over the place, all the children thought that "Lang Juxu" was the modern version of the martial arts sect. If you could go in there, you would emerge as a great warrior, wearing a The banner of orthodoxy spreads chivalry and justice all over the world.

But being born in the "Legendary Li Family", I actually knew from a very young age that "Wolf Juxu" was not what those children thought. I knew very early that besides humans, there are other two types of people in the world. Things survive. One is called hybrid, and the other is called dragon. Most of the people in the yard are hybrids, and our goal is to drive out all the dragons.

I have never seen a dragon. My uncle in the library helped me to learn about the dragon culture. He explained to me many legends about Li Shizhen’s medical practice, which mentioned various dragon sites, diseases contaminated by dragon blood, and At that time, I only listened to the magical ancient medicine involving alchemy as a story, but gradually I didn’t know when I started to believe it.

——It took me a while to realize that it was no wonder that some children in the yard could beat four or five without breathing, especially my brother, who was like the reincarnation of a demon king.

The dragon clan is not mysterious to me, but I have never regarded the mission of slaying dragons as my responsibility. But it seems that my brother is quite interested in the proposition of "slaying the dragon". I remember he told me before that his dream has always been to kill a pure-blood dragon with his own hands. Sun Dasheng bravely broke into the Dragon Palace in Havoc in Heaven, and Nezha tore up the white dragon with his own hands in Nezha Haohai, all contributed to the formation of his ideal. .

Ever since he knew that we, the orthodox, are the inheritors of the dragon bloodline, that dragons have made trouble many times in the past with the intention of subverting human hegemony, and that "Langjuxu" is a secret training camp for cultivating a new generation of dragon slayers, my brother did not hesitate. After graduating from high school, I applied to my father to join the "Langjuxu" preparatory camp.

My father held a big banquet in the yard that night. He drank so much that his face was red. He stood in front of the clan ancestral hall and kept patting my brother on the back without saying anything. And that night, I also received the university notice. I just sat in the corner with a smile and congratulated my brother with tea instead of wine. I went back to my room very early and packed up the clothes and sundries that I was going to prepare for university accommodation.

I went to a normal university for four years, and my brother went to the mysterious "Langjuxu" preparatory camp. The two of us had basically no contact during those years, and we only saw each other during holidays when we went home to pay homage to our ancestors. , at that time, my brother became a little stranger to me.

The demon king who once lived in the compound has become mature and restrained. At 1.88 meters tall, he is more than half a head taller than me. His body as strong as iron and his dark eyes also symbolize his growth. In the ancestral hall, he Kneeling in front of the memorial tablets of our ancestors, my father stood aside and gently put his left hand on his shoulder, looking longingly at his increasingly broad back. My mother, brothers, and I all stood quietly. Watching from the corner, like an outsider.

After I graduated and became an adult, my brother and I's social interactions became relatively quiet. However, during the reunion, we could toast each other at the table, chat with each other about the embarrassing and interesting things in our childhood, and we could also receive messages from each other on our birthdays. Gifts, but they stop there and do not get involved in each other's social circles.

We can understand each other that this situation happened. This does not mean that our relationship has become worse, but that after becoming adults, each other has his own things to do. He is busy studying in "Langjuxu" I didn't understand the important matter of slaying dragons, so I was still hanging out in the family compound, unemployed, and by the way, I took over the library guard's job as a summer job. From time to time, I went to my uncle's yard to exchange ideas and learn ancient medical skills.

Our social circles are not the same, and there is no need to be the same. I just need to know that he is my brother. When I am in need, I reach out to him for help, and he will hold my hand without hesitation. , pull me up.

——But similarly, my brother is so convinced.

It was under such circumstances that on my twenty-third birthday, on the corridor of the inner courtyard of the courtyard, I met my brother who had been running away. When he found me, he looked a little tired and was wearing a dark and upright and heroic suit. Color tunic. Perhaps it was too late at that time and the lights in the pool were too dim to illuminate his tough and vigorous face that I remembered in the past, leaving me with an unspeakable tiredness. The first time I saw him As soon as I saw him, I knew he needed help, so he found me.

"Xingchu, I heard that you have been studying ancient medical skills with Aconite Liezu of the Zhao family in recent years. Have you achieved anything now?"