When the Tianguan Shenjiang on duty was alarmed and dispatched his troops again, the line of fire had already been pushed to the outside of Qingbo Gate.
The raging fire blocked the city gate, forcing humans and ghosts to not enter, so the general had no choice but to set up a wind curtain on the spot and draw up water from the river to prevent the flames from climbing over the wall and spreading into the city.
Li Chang'an and others were also blocked, so they went down anxiously, detoured to the south of the city, grabbed a ferry and went up the river.
Everyone rowed hard, and when they saw Fuguifang Pier, they suddenly changed their colors with fear.
Fuguifang was formed from a wharf and was built in a long strip along the river.
At first, everyone only thought that the fire was at the end near the city gate, but now on the boat, looking at the river bank from a distance, everywhere they looked, there were flames shooting into the sky.
People, animals, houses, and everything in Fuguifang seemed to have turned into ashes. As the thick smoke and flames rose, the cold river beneath their feet was reflected as red as blood.
"Taoist Priest?"
"Walk."
The ferry didn't stop.
child.
The children are still at the Salesian Home!
…………
It seems it's still a step too late.
The beautiful new thatched roof became the best firewood.
The Salesian House is burning.
The bright red firelight shone on He Wumei's pale face. She trembled and slowly fell to the ground.
But I can hear it.
"Wu Niang."
This is……
He Wumei jumped up in excitement.
He hurriedly followed the sound.
A small figure ran into his arms.
He hurriedly held up the little face in his arms.
Chunyi's face was smeared with runny nose, tears, and dust, and she burst into tears.
Behind, the old medical officer was holding a baby girl with a big black cat at her feet, leading the children to stumble over.
The old medical officer hammered his waist.
The children are crying.
The cat is also meowing.
The house was burned down, the clothes were gone, the dried fish was lost, and there was no money or food to bring out.
"It's okay, it's okay. If it's burned, it's burned. As long as people are still there, it's fine."
He Wumei regained her lost possessions, choked with sobs, and pulled the children into her arms one by one, rubbing their heads to comfort them.
All the ghosts felt relieved, their exhaustion and strength surged out, and they all sat down.
Only Huang Wei still stood blankly, facing the gate.
Everyone worked together to repair the beams, thatched roof, and door lintels that crackled in the flames. The herbs picked from the mountains early in the morning and late at night filled the thick smoke with their aroma.
And behind the blazing Salesian Hospital is the blazing Fuguifang.
"It's over."
he murmured.
"It's all over."
…………
The next day.
In front of the mountain gate of Lunzhuan Temple.
The sun is rising, and the sky is filled with red clouds, just like the firelight all night long yesterday.
"Otherwise, I'd better stay first..."
"What nonsense are you talking about? Is there another day for reincarnation? Go, go, what's the use of the old ghost staying here? Don't ask us to chase you away."
Amidst everyone's laughter and scolding, the old shopkeeper climbed the long steps of the Lunzhuan Temple, turning back and forth.
Everyone waved and watched each other at the mountain gate, feeling an indescribable sense of sadness. Over the past few months, we have shared joys and sorrows together, and after today, although we are still in the same world, we are forever separated.
I want to shout: "I must cast a good child!"
But now it is daytime, it is the hour of the living, and I have to keep my mouth shut, so I have to wave my hands vigorously.
Until the morning bells rang, the figure of the old salesman was drowned by the brilliant morning glow pouring into the city over the towering glazed golden roof of the Lunzhuan Temple.
Everyone stopped for a long time, and then left belatedly with inexplicable thoughts.
…
We helped put out the fire all night last night. This morning we hurriedly washed away the smoke and dust and came to see the old shopkeeper off. We were all tired and hungry.
So I randomly found a noodle stall to satisfy my stomach.
The fire caused a lot of noise, and of course it became the best topic of conversation today.
Two diners at the table were muttering.
Talking about the tragic scenes after the disaster.
The thin diner clucked his tongue for a while: "The good Fuguifang was burned down in one night. It's really bad luck."
"It's true to burn everything." The fat man sneered, "It's not necessarily bad luck."
"How to say?"
"What's the weather like in Qiantang at night? The fog is as thick as rain! If you really take one breath, you can spit out three bowls of water. Counting up, in the past few decades, have there been any fires at night that burned down the city?"
"You mean..."
"I have a brother-in-law who works as a patrolman at the top of the city." The fat diner vowed, "He told me that at midnight last night, more than ten places in Fuguifang were on fire at the same time. The fog was heavy at night and the fire could not spread. Just like this, it is not possible to spread the fire."
It was unlucky for a dozen or so families, and they were fine, but a strong wind suddenly blew up at that time, causing a fire that spread throughout the house!"
The thin man asked in surprise: "Where did the evil wind come from?"
"Why is it a demonic wind? I think it is..." The fat diner pointed to the ground and chuckled, "That Fuguifang is full of homeless people. They are rarely kind. They usually either sit on the dock and raise prices, or come into the city to steal chickens and dogs. I think they are.
If you accumulate too little virtue and commit too many sins, you will finally anger the ghosts and gods, so this is what you should do..."
"Bang!"
A clay bowl was slammed against the table.
The two diners were immediately startled and about to get angry.
However, he saw a large table next to him glaring at him angrily. Looking at the unwashed smoke and dust on his body, he knew that he had bumped into the real owner. Seeing the large number of people, he did not dare to say anything, so he walked away in despair.
After all this, everyone lost interest in eating, so they hurriedly filled their stomachs and hurried back to Fuguifang.
…………
Fuguifang burned for most of the night.
Until dawn, a brief burst of light rain suppressed the waning fire.
The fire came and went quickly, leaving behind smoldering ruins and corpses on the ground.
The Brown Clothes Gang organized several teams to collect the remains, but this was only a drop in the bucket for the huge Fuguifang, not to mention the survivors——
A woman returned to her burnt home with two children. The children were very young, one had just been weaned, and the other was no more than four or five years old. They were ignorant and crying because of hunger.
Her husband was lying where the door used to be, his whole body was blackened, one hand stretched forward in vain, and the other hand was clasping his throat. He was choked to death by the toxic smoke and hot dust.
The woman looked at him for a long time, then led the child around the charred corpse and pulled out a rice vat from the corner of the ruins.
Most of the rice grains inside had turned into coke, and had been soaked into black pulp by the rain. She fished out the barely edible portion and gave it to the two children who were gradually unable to cry.
She silently returned to her husband and dragged him to the ruins.
The neighbors have been waiting for a long time.
She handed her husband over to the other party, who returned the favor with the charred corpse of a half-grown child.
Huangwei and the scholars were confused and thought it was some kind of strange funeral custom.
Li Changan calmly told the truth.
Most of them are recently settled refugees who are alert enough to hunger and have enough experience.
All the ghosts changed their colors at once, either angry, frightened or frightened, but when they arrived, they all let out a long sigh and turned their heads away, unable to bear to look at it anymore.
He turned his gaze to the broken walls and ruins around him, trying to find some familiar traces that could provide some comfort.
This street market from the city gate to the pier is one of the few areas in Fuguifang that lives up to its name. Various shops and hotels gather together to entertain passing tourists and sell groceries from the north and south, as well as rare treasures from home and abroad.
The area separated by a short alley is dotted with messy workshops, including painters, carpenters, tinsmiths, barrel hoops, and hemp rope twisters... Li Changan and Huang Wei used the name of "house god" to fill many craftsmen here.
dead.
Further away, close to the dock, is a large area where laborers live. They have cleared small open spaces among the dense shacks. On days when they are not working, young girls and boys perform hometown music in the open spaces.
repertoire.
Now, it's all turned into ashes.
Only a small area of the Hua Weng Di store connected to the pier survived, perhaps because of timely response, or perhaps for other reasons, and it was particularly eye-catching among the ruins.
Most of the people who survived were settled here, and He Wumei and the old medical officer also treated the injured here.
Hua Weng never mentioned the past, but he must have been a skilled bureaucrat during his lifetime.
He arranged everything after the disaster in an all-round way and in an orderly manner.
But when everyone came back this time, they heard a burst of noise and abuse from a distance.
Could it be that someone is causing trouble?
Everyone was shocked and hurried over, only to see the victims crowding around several carriages. Mr. Hua stood at the door of his shop with a cold face, and his gang members were trying their best to maintain the scene.
There were rumors in the city that thirteen families came forward to summon various chambers of commerce and allocate supplies for disaster relief.
Could this be the convoy in front of me? The victims saw that there were too many supplies, so they started looting?
But after a closer look, all the ghosts understood that this was not the case, because there was a person in the motorcade who should never have appeared. The man was riding a tall horse and had tattoos on his arms. He was Luo Yong, the "Heaven Will Not Harvest".
Ask someone else.
This guy sneaked into the convoy, and when Hua Weng came forward, he suddenly jumped out and shamelessly came to earn the land deed in the name of disaster relief.
"Heartless thieves! Who doesn't know that it was you who set the fire!"
The abuse was like a torrent of anger.
If it weren't for the brown-clothed gang, if it weren't for the disaster relief convoy, if it weren't for the patrol gods hovering in the sky, the living and dead people around would have swarmed in and tore this guy to pieces.
Didn't think about it.
"Fuck your mother!" This guy was really bold and unscrupulous despite all the criticism, he sneered back, "I think you brought it upon yourself!"
As soon as he said this, it was like adding fuel to the fire.
The old woman who had lost her child wailed and vomited out deep-seated resentment.
The man with burns gritted his teeth and clenched the pole in his hand.
The members of the Brown Clothes Gang were about to lose their support, or rather, they were unwilling to support it.
Luo Yong said calmly:
"Did you forget the 'return money'?"
The turmoil all over the place suddenly came to a standstill.
In the Qian Tang Dynasty, although the emperor paid national taxes on food, there were still many people who paid filial piety to the ghosts and gods. When doing red things, you had to pay wedding money;
To provide for the noisy ghosts... It can be said that in terms of food, clothing, housing and transportation, ghosts and gods have their hands on everything.
The so-called Huilu is the god of fire.
Luo Yong stood proudly on his horse, waving his riding whip casually.
"Did you pay it?"
The old woman stopped cursing.
"Or did he pay it?"
The man let go of the pole in confusion.
The boiling anger of the crowd seemed to have been melted away by the autumn rain at dawn.
Luo Yong was still shouting loudly.
"I think that the salary money was just the hard-earned money used by the ghosts and gods to keep the house safe. I thought you were poor, so I didn't collect it on weekdays. I didn't try to push the envelope, but I only built a nest without respecting the gods. Finally, I angered the ghosts and gods and caused disasters. It's a pity.
, there are honest people in the village who are diligent and respectful to God, but they have been implicated by poor people like you, and their property and life have been thrown into the fire. One or two of them are so shameless that they pass the blame on me!"
This guy was cunning, and after seeing that the situation was under control, he knew he couldn't stay any longer.
Leave a sentence behind.
"Hua Lao, please think clearly, it's still the same price. I'm soft-hearted, so I have the right to pay the neighbors for the shao mai!"
The horse galloped away.
…………
"Dog thief! Dog thief!"
The scholar was so angry that he was shaking all over.
"Bullshit remuneration money! Everyone in the workshop works for a day and eats for a day, but they can't save much money throughout the year! Where do you get the spare money to give to evil spirits?"
"Keep it down, keep it down."
Huang Wei quickly grabbed the scholar and looked at the convoy frequently. In the convoy were not only good people from the chamber of commerce, but also monks from the temple.
"That is indeed Qian Tang's rule."
The scholar asked angrily: "What are the rules for cannibalism?"
Huangwei replied heavily: "The rules of the Thirteen Houses!"
The scholar paused and opened his mouth several times, but was finally speechless.
Huangwei breathed a sigh of relief, but then he became worried again. There was someone with a tougher temper and greater ability!
Searching hurriedly.
But he saw that Li Changan had already rolled up his sleeves and was helping to unload supplies for the convoy. His expression was calmer than ever before.
…………
That night.
Fly to the mountain.
Fortunately, when business was booming, he did not forget to repair the Taoist temple on the mountain, leaving a place for the people, ghosts, old and young in the Salesian Home.
Late at night, everything was quiet. Fortunately, the children who had been working hard to collect the medicine all day fell asleep. Li Changan quietly got up and put on his coir raincoat.
The moon was bright, illuminating the faces of the statues standing in the front yard with mixed emotions of sadness and joy.
Li Chang'an took incense and candles and worshiped them one by one. The last pillar was for a large stone statue, roughly carved in human form, holding an unsheathed long sword in his hand.
It was the statue of the god in the General Stone Temple in Fuguifang. The fire burned down the temple and the cloth wrapped around the sword. Only then did people realize that after more than two hundred years, the sword showed very little rust.
He knew that the statue of the god had a spirit, but at this time, people were busy taking care of themselves and had no spare time to worship the gods. They did not dare to abandon it at will, so they followed the usual practice and sent it to Feilai Mountain, where it was picked up by the Bronze Tiger.
Li Changan looked at it carefully under the moonlight.
The sword is more than five feet long, with a wide palm and a thick spine. It is a rare two-handed heavy sword. The blade is dull and dull, and the sword body is scattered with rust. It is not caused by hundreds of years of dust, but is probably the blood rust left by the fierce battles in the past.
Although the materials used are solid and the craftsmanship is excellent, it is just ordinary craftsmanship.
Its immortality over the years should be due to the continuous incense accumulated over a hundred years and the accumulation of a trace of magic.
But even if the stubborn stone has spirit, what's the use?
Not only can it not protect believers, but it can also be like the other statues in the courtyard - the Bronze Tiger needs divinity to suppress its violence, and the statues in the courtyard have been carefully selected.
There is no statue that has not been worshiped by others, and there is no statue that has not contained spirituality.
But they were all abandoned, reduced to this desolate mountain view, accompanied by ghosts, wind and cold rain, snakes, insects, rats and ants, gradually losing their spirituality and decaying with the vegetation.
So there is something.
Li Changan put on his bamboo hat and took off his long sword.
It’s useless to ask God, you need to ask for help from man.