Father’s cottage: The mountain is called Longtoushan, and there is a temple on the mountain.

My father's village lies on the hillside. There is a mountain behind the village called Longtou Mountain.

Longtou Mountain is composed of three mountains, one next to the other from high to low, and the ridges are almost in a straight line.

The mountain is like a dragon's head, and the ridge is like a dragon's body. From a distance, Longtou Mountain really looks like a swimming dragon, with its head raised high and dragging its long body, hiding in the mountains of western Hunan.

This is a rare spectacle in the Xiangxi Global Geopark.

According to geologists, Longtou Mountain was hidden in the ocean 380 million years ago, and the stones were formed about 500 million years ago.

In other words, Longtou Mountain was formed during the Cambrian Period (542 million years ago to 485 million years ago).

The basis for saying that it was still in the sea 380 million years ago is that there are fossils of insect tubes in Lingguan Mountain opposite Longtou Mountain, and they were produced in the Devonian Period.

This kind of insect tube fossil was formed in the Devonian Period (405 million years ago to 350 million years ago) 380 million years ago.

The altitude of Longtoushan Mountain is only eight or nine hundred meters, while the altitude of Lingguan Mountain is over a thousand meters, and the insect tube fossils are also over a thousand meters above sea level.

Hundreds of millions of years have passed since the past, and the sea has turned into a mulberry field.

To put it more bluntly: the sea has dried up, but the stone has not rotted!

Today, Longtou Mountain is in Yongshun County, and Lingguan Mountain belongs to Baojing County. The two counties are bounded by a river, with streams on both sides crisscrossing each other and flowing into Youshui.

The locals introduced Longtoushan mainly to a large rock on the top of the shortest of the three mountains.

This big stone is hidden among the oak and cypress trees. When you look at it, it really looks like a raised dragon's head, with a dragon's nose, mouth, eyes and horns, etc., which is lifelike.

In my impression, the stone seems to be often covered with red cloth. The shortcoming is that the right side of the dragon's mouth is missing, and the upper and lower jaws appear uncoordinated and symmetrical.

The myths and legends about Longtoushan are very interesting.

Legend has it that Longtou Mountain is very spiritual. It lies on the mountain to rest during the day, but at night it changes its shape, causing trouble and eating and drinking.

However, its mistake is that the dragon's mouth should not face the direction of Baojing, but the dragon's body is hidden in the mountains of Yongshun.

"If you eat Baojing, you will always be prosperous." After the secret of Longtoushan was exposed by a Feng Shui master, Baojing people could not sleep at night.

On a dark and stormy night in January, a few dark figures secretly climbed up Longtou Mountain and knocked off the dragon's mouth with a hammer.

Legend has it that people who live at the foot of Longtou Mountain used to hear dragon roars in the middle of the night, but suddenly they stopped for a while. When they climbed up the mountain, they saw that the dragon's lower mouth fell to one side.

People also found that the faucet was covered with dog blood. It was bloody, which was not a good thing, so I asked a Feng Shui master to figure it out, and I quickly found out what was going on.

Now that the dragon’s mouth has been knocked off, let’s work hard to reconnect it.

So some unwilling Yongshun people asked Taoist priests to repair the dragon's mouth with a stone.

It is said that no matter how hard people try, the dragon head will never appear again.

Even the color of the dragon's head has changed from gray-white to earthy brown. Some people say it is dog blood soaked in, while others say it is a dragon dripping blood.

There is another saying: In order to relieve the stiff dragon head, the locals built a temple next to it and invited eminent monks to chant sutras day and night.

The brown dragon head, the incomplete dragon mouth, the stone walls used to build the ancient temple, the stone steps and ancient paths to go up the mountain are all well preserved today.

A legend is a legend after all. But after the locals said it and spread it around, slowly, it seemed to become a true story.

However, Longtoushan still has a story.

There is an ancient temple on the top of Longtou Mountain. It is impossible to verify when it was built. Judging from the remaining stone walls, it is small in scale, but very impressive.

It is said that the last monk in the ancient temple was named Monk Wang, and he did not leave until the early 1940s.

When I was a child, I heard from my uncle that Monk Wang did not become a monk or live in a temple. He had a home, a wife and children. He lived by a well at the foot of the mountain, plowing fields and doing farm work, and he was proficient in everything.

When someone came to burn incense and worship Buddha, he would just stand at the door of the temple and shout loudly. Monk Wang would put on his monk clothes and rush to the temple to chant.

When things are done, those who have money can collect money, and those who don’t have money can give things away. Monk Wang always carries such a backpack back and forth, always on call, very serious and pious.

My uncle said that Monk Wang’s nickname was “Six-fingered Boy”. He also had a little finger on the side of his right thumb, which was very special.

My uncle was born in 1928. He said that he had met Monk Wang when he was a child. He did not know his specific age, but he only remembered that he looked skinny.

Monk Wang seems to be a protector.

My uncle said that he had heard from his elders that when Monk Wang first came to Longtoushan, he often did not hide his six fingers, and later he stopped being seen.

My uncle saw Monk Wang several times, but he didn’t see what his fingers looked like, because he either held them to his chest or put them in his sleeves. Monk Wang's sleeves are very long.

Later, my uncle heard someone say that one night, for some unknown reason, Monk Wang burned off his sixth finger in the incense burner in front of Longtou Mountain.

No one knows why Monk Wang burned off the extra finger. No matter what, the pain of grinding teeth is unbearable for ordinary people.

Not long after, Monk Wang, who had burned his fingers, left, and his wife and children followed him. No one knows where the family has gone.

After Monk Wang left, the Longtoushan temple became deserted. In the 1960s and 1970s, some local people went to the temple to transport stones, remove bricks and tiles, and soon the temple collapsed.

In the 1980s, we often went to the foot of Longtou Mountain to graze cattle. There was a lot of climbing. At the ruins of the top of the mountain, I still remember the first couplet: From a distance, everything is empty, and my ears can understand the Tao. When I come here, my mind wanders.

The words are calligraphy, black, written on the left wall made of lime and glutinous rice. The right side has fallen off and there is nothing left.

Is this what Monk Wang left behind?

The temple gate is made of stone and is still well preserved. There is also a couplet at the mountain gate. The right couplet is clearly written: Tushita Realm in the Golden Realm.

The handwriting on the left couplet is blurred and cannot be read clearly.

Until the video of Longtoushan was posted a few days ago, a Guangxi netizen named Chen Ying told me that the left couplet should be: Brahma Palace in the Green Lotus.

I looked at the photo carefully and found that the first character was really the character "BI", and the last character was also the character "Gong".

I didn’t ask her too much. After searching on Baidu, I found out that this is an ancient poem, and the author was actually Wanyan Jing (1168-1208), the sixth emperor of the Jin Dynasty.

Wanyan Jing, also known as Jin Zhangzong, lived only forty years and reigned for twenty years. The "Mingchang Rule" he created was the most prosperous period of the Jin Dynasty.

Could it be that the temple on Longtoushan was built at this time?

During that period, Longtou Mountain belonged to the Southern Song Dynasty, and the relationship between the Song and Jin Dynasties was not bad at that time.

Well, let’s not talk about the time when the temple was first built. Just say that Yan Jing’s poems can appear on Longtou Mountain, which shows that the knowledge of the temple builders is extraordinary.

For a period of time, when locals talked about Longtou Mountain, they always said that it was remote, backward, inconvenient in transportation, etc. In fact, looking through the thick history books, this place is not that closed.

During the period of the Tusi of Western Hunan, Longtou Mountain was surrounded by Nanwei Prefecture, one of the three local prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Yongshun Tusi.

"Yongshun Prefecture Chronicles" says: "South Weizhou was called Zhongxizhou in the Song Dynasty and later South Weizhou."

In 1017, "Xizhou" was engraved Qin Yunzan in the inscription "Bronze Pillar" is the earliest known magistrate of Nanwei in recorded history.

Nanwei is located on the shore of You River, surrounded by water on three sides, built on mountains, and surrounded by dragons and tigers. Among the military forces of the chieftains in western Hunan, the navy was the most powerful.

Looking through the thick history of the Ming Dynasty, whether it was the Poyang Lake water battle between Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang, or the bloody battle between the chieftains of western Hunan and the anti-Japanese naval battle in the southeast, there are records of the great achievements of the Southern Wei navy.

In 1366, when Zhu Yuanzhang had just begun to build his imperial palace in Nanjing, Peng Jinsheng, the magistrate of Nanwei, showed his loyalty and donated nanmu to the court.

This unprecedented feat shocked the government and the public.

Yes, no matter how the external situation changes, the chieftain of Xiangxi remains loyal to the country, and every time at critical moments in history, he makes the right choice based on the situation.

In 1680, at Chenlong Pass in present-day Yuanling County, it was Peng Linggao, the magistrate of Nanwei Province, who led his troops to encircle and suppress the main force of Wu Sangui's rebel army from the back roads, and conquered Chenlong Pass in one fell swoop.

"The Great Victory at Chenlongguan" made Emperor Kangxi Longyan very happy, and he was awarded a seal of Yongshun Xuanwei Division based on merit.

This seal is still well preserved in the Laosicheng Ruins Museum, a world cultural heritage, and is a national first-class cultural relic.

Time passes.

When looking up at the bright starry sky in western Hunan, people may be deeply shocked by the echoes of history.

Today, the Nanweizhou Prefecture area has been changed to Nanwei Village, a village under the jurisdiction of Zejia Town at the foot of Longtou Mountain. Most of the villagers are surnamed Peng and claim to be descendants of chieftains.

Some people also say that it may have been during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty that after the great victory at Chenlong Pass, Peng Linggao, the magistrate of the Southern Wei Dynasty, began to major in Longtoushan Temple.

The reason given is that both the Jin Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty were founded by the Jurchen tribe. Peng Linggao had a close relationship with the Qing Dynasty, and because of this, he gradually learned and spread the Jurchen culture.

Wanyan Jing lived in the same period as the Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty. Due to historical reasons, it was unlikely that his poems would appear on Longtou Mountain in the Ming Dynasty.

Pursuing the truth in the vast history is a hard job, but the remaining couplets in front of the Longtoushan Temple give people unlimited imagination.

In recent years, the collapsed Longtoushan ancient temple has been rebuilt. The mountain gate has not been moved, the foundation remains unchanged, and even all the ruins and walls have not been moved, they are repaired as before.

The major is a young entrepreneur who went out from the foot of Longtou Mountain, a filial son who does not want to be named, and was my classmate in junior high school.

It is said that the mother of my classmate fell ill a few years ago and suffered from septicemia. She went to Jishou, Changsha and other places to seek medical treatment, but everyone thought it was a terminal illness and could not be cured.

During the days when they were together, the old mother told her son that she was only seventy-seven years old. In such a good society, she did not even live to be eighty years old, which was a bit confusing.

She began to reminisce about her life, hoping to find reasons and comfort from the "return of retribution" she recognized.

The old lady is a devout Buddhist. Looking back on the past, she said that when she was young, she went to Longtoushan Temple to carry bricks and tiles. Did she offend the Bodhisattva?

So, she told her son that she hoped to fulfill her wish and repair the temple on Longtou Mountain.

The son agreed wholeheartedly and went ahead with it. With some good men and women, the project was completed in less than two years and cost a lot of money.

After everything was completed, my classmate didn’t even leave her name or write an inscription on the monument. She just told her mother that her wish had come true.

Miraculously, it turned out that the doctor thought that the old lady could only live for half a year at most, but she insisted on persisting for more than three years and lived past the age of eighty before she died.

There is a god three feet above your head.

Some people say that this is the result of the old man's good deeds, some say that the Bodhisattva of Longtou Mountain blessed her, and some say that this is superstition...

In short, Longtou The temple on the mountain was restored. This was a great project completed by an ordinary person to satisfy some of his wishes.

The old man is gone, but he seems to have always lived in the memories of the locals.

Not long ago, we went to Longtoushan. Along the way, my father also told me about this old man, saying that she was a kind person and a soft-spoken person... ..

I called my old classmate, and he was reluctant to talk too much about it. He just said: In life, you should always do some good deeds that your parents want to do.

"Be kind to yourself and be kind to others. If everyone is kind, we will reach the other side together." While chatting, I couldn't help but think of this poem.

This poem is engraved on the stone wall of Fujian, a national forest park just outside Yongshun County and on the banks of the Mengdong River.

Longtoushan is about 30 kilometers away from Fujimen, not far away.

However, it seems to be closer from Longtoushan to Baojing County, only about 20 kilometers away.

Looking at Longtou Mountain from the direction of Baojing, the three mountains are well-proportioned, like an exquisite pen stand.

Car After another turn, the three mountains are hidden in the mountains in a straight line, with only the highest mountain peak exposed, like an eagle spreading its wings and about to fly.

“Looking at it from the side, it looks like a ridge or a peak, with different heights near and far.”

Photography and video in this issue: Liu Ming, Long Xiulin, Song Xinyu, Liu Hui, etc.