Even though I had been away from home for three days, the atmosphere in the village was very different.
On the small mountain road into the village, there is a checkpoint set up by Minzhuang armed with spears, spears and crossbows.
When asked what happened to them, no one could tell the reason. They only knew that outsiders entered the village yesterday, and Mr. Liu sent them to set up several sentry posts on the mountain roads and hills.
After putting Yang Dingrui at home, Liu Chengzong rushed to nothing. His parents and brothers were not at home. When he looked at the house and stables, he saw that his brother's soldiers and horses were not there, which made his heart skip a beat.
After hurriedly placing Yang Dingrui's family members into the wing, they heard someone stumbling in from outside the door. When they went out to see, Shiliu, a little bald man, ran in with his head sullen. Liu Chengzong grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up. He had short legs.
Still flying in the air.
"What are you going to do?"
When the little bald head was lifted up, it was as if he had just woken up from a dream, and his eyes narrowed: "Brother Lion is back! The master got into a quarrel with someone, and asked me to get the cigarette bag."
Get a cigarette pouch?
Liu Chengzong knew that his father had a copper smoke pot.
This side is different from the north and south of the Weihe River. The other side is rich and can afford such novelty things. Jingyang is the largest tobacco cutting and distribution center in Qin, and you can also get it.
The soil in northern Shaanxi is thin, and it is not enough to grow crops. In the early years, tobacco was planted on a large scale. At that time, tobacco had just entered the Central Plains. People thought it had the effect of keeping out the cold, so they sold it to the border troops in Yansui, Guyuan, and Gansu towns.<
/p>
A few years ago, pay arrears started, and the military men had no money, and tobacco gradually disappeared in northern Shaanxi. Now you can still buy it if you want, but it's much less.
For the old man, he didn’t have the habit of smoking. In fact, most people in northern Shaanxi, including Cao Yao, were not addicted to smoking at this time. At best, he was just a prop.
Hearing that the old man asked Xiao Liu to come back and get the pipe, Liu Chengzong was happy, put him down and asked, "Where are we quarreling?"
Sixteen said: "Many people surrounded Uncle Liu's house."
Uncle Liu?
In this village located at the foot of the Black Dragon King Temple Mountain, 70 or 80 households all have the surname Liu. Liu Chengzong pursed his lips to ease his choking and said, "Then what does Uncle Liu do for a living?"
"There are many coffins in his house."
Got it, the coffin maker’s family in Xingpingli.
The coffin maker is an essential role in villages and countryside, just like pig butchers, masons, wandering doctors, matchmakers, oil presses, weavers, veterinarians, goddesses, troupers, sellers, and tofu makers. p>
In some places, the coffin maker is also a carpenter, but in Xingpingli, because the carpenter was sent to the corvee expedition in the early years, there is also a coffin maker.
Elderly people in the village usually start preparing their own coffins at the age of forty, sooner or later. Their ultimate ideal in life is to have a better house and sleep in it for eternity when they finish their journey.
After I bought these coffins, my family had a lot of space and put them in my own home. If I didn't have space, I sent them to the coffin maker's house for maintenance and painting every year.
So the person who has a lot of coffins at home must be a coffin maker.
Hearing that his father was quarreling with the coffin maker, Liu Chengzong stopped worrying and asked, "What about my brother, are you quarreling there too?"
"Guan Liu went to Guan Cao yesterday, right!"
As the little bald man spoke, he suddenly remembered and hurriedly said: "The management team told me that Brother Lion will go to the ancestral hall when he comes back. There is an injured outsider in the ancestral hall. He said that you will know what happened when you see him."
If Liu Chengzu is not mentioned in the co-authorship, the matter will be forgotten at the age of sixteen.
Liu Chengzong turned around and left. After taking two steps, he stopped and waved his hand and said, "Okay, you go get me a tobacco bag. I'll go to the coffin maker's house first and then go to the ancestral hall later."
Xingpingli is not that big. You can see the coffin maker's house just by turning a few corners when you go out. From a distance, Liu Chengzong saw a lot of people gathered around the door of the coffin maker's house, all of them old people.
The old people here are not just talking about their age. In the Ming Dynasty, they had more responsibilities. The chiefs changed every year, but the ones who remained unchanged were the elected village elders.
In the villages of the Ming Dynasty, as long as it was not a serious crime such as murder or rebellion, or any minor matter such as a fight in a household or a plot in the field, there was no need to go to the county seat.
Before he squeezed into the crowd, Liu Chengzong heard his father arguing with others. In fact, he was not arguing with the coffin maker, but with the village elder.
"Where else can we go to collect wood today? The thieves are in the north, and they will attack at any time. If we kill them, will they stuff us into coffins?"
Liu Chengzong heard that his father was persuading the elderly people in the village to give up their coffins, which made him frown.
The existence of coffins is very important to the elderly. The older people get, the less they care about life and death. They only care about the cemetery and the coffin after death.
In the past two months, they have been building a city in Liujiamao. The clan brothers felled forests, harvested wood, and excavated mountains to obtain rocks. Logically speaking, the gap in wood was not large. If they continued this method step by step, they would be able to build an earthen fence on the mountain hill by this autumn. As far as he understood, the situation was not urgent enough to require the elders of the clan to sacrifice their coffins.
The old man Qi leaned on his crutches and agreed to take out the coffins for those under fifty, because the elderly over fifty might need coffins at some point. My father still couldn't do it, so he had to take out all the coffins.
Liu Chengzong, who was dressed in armor, squeezed his way into the crowd. The old men were as old as two and a half of them, so they could only accuse each other as they walked.
When he entered the middle, he asked Liu Xiangyu: "Da, what happened?"
When Liu Xiangyu saw his son, he was overjoyed and said hurriedly: "You came just in time. The old Miao Village in the north was attacked by thieves. You have been to the old Miao Village and told the elders how many people there are in the old Miao Village and what the village is like."
."
The old temple village was broken into by thieves?
Liu Chengzong didn't have time to think about it, so he handed over to the elders around him and said: "Elders, I went north last month. There are seventy or eighty households in Laomiao Village. Two brothers named Lu are in charge, and they have a feud with the Dingjia Station.
, everyone has built a stronghold wall, and the young and strong have weapons."
"This junior just came back from Ansai City. On the way, I saw a severed hand in the river at Panlong River. I thought something happened upstream. I thought I would come back and take two horses to the north to have a look, but I didn't expect something like this happened."<
/p>
"Yes, it's Dingjia Station."
Liu Xiangyu took the words and said: "Lu Bin from Laomiao Village escaped death, and the people from Dingjia Station surrendered to the thief king Zuo Gua and massacred Laomiao Village."
"If an old temple with 70 or 80 households can't stop thieves, how can Xingpingli do it? We need to build a fence around the hillside as soon as possible. Not to mention the coffin, we even have to remove the door panels." Someone said: "Then go to Fucheng and invite the army. If you can't stop it, why build a wall of earth?"
"It's okay to invite the officers and soldiers. We know the officers of the Yan'an Guards well, so I don't think it will be difficult to collect food, but Xingpingli has to take care of their food and clothing expenses, let alone a hundred households. What's more, the thieves won't attack when the officers and soldiers come.
If we just keep raising it, how much more food and grass will there be in Xingping?"
"In the final analysis, you still have to rely on yourself."