A big river has wide waves, and the wind blows the fragrance of rice flowers on both sides.
In Yunzhou, the longest river is the Tongyang River. It starts from the Jiugao Mountain in the north of Dongshan County and flows southwest through the five counties of Dongshan, Dansheng, Zhengyang, Riyang and Yuxia before flowing into the sea.
When it first came out of the mountain pass, the Tongyang River was still a clear stream. It gradually flowed into the plains, nourishing thousands of households, irrigating tens of thousands of acres of fertile farmland, turning into ditches, and sweeping away sediment. By the time it reached Yuxia County downstream, it had become a turbid and turbulent stream.
Yellow water.
The county seat of Yuxia County, Mucheng, is built on the bank of the Yellow River.
Twilight City is a famous city with a long history, with a history of nearly a thousand years. It has witnessed countless joys and sorrows, the changes of several dynasties, and various changes in the world since the Woeful Moon.
Just a few decades ago, although Mucheng was already a county, it was famous for its high city and deep pool. It was a military town, not a prosperous city, with a population of only 100,000.
Later, the evil disaster became more and more serious, and the wilderness became very dangerous. The government organized the migration of the surrounding people into the city. Gradually, the inner city could no longer accommodate people, so they had to build the city wall outside, and then built it again and again.
In the past few decades, Twilight City has built a triple city wall, with a population of more than one million inside and outside, with rows of houses and busy streets. It has become a veritable super city.
It's just that the expansion of Twilight City is mainly to the east, because to the west of the city are rolling mountains, which are natural barriers for city defense, and there are also tombs where the ancestors of the people in the city rest for generations.
On one of the hillside, there are many scattered graves buried. Most of these graves belong to a single family, and there are no family ancestral graves to bury. But most of them are from relatively well-off families, and the tombs are fairly neatly built, and some members of the community have hired gravekeepers to keep them.
He would not be like a poor man with nothing, wrapped in a straw mat and stuffed into a mass grave.
Halfway up the slope, there is a tomb in front of a couple buried together. Someone has just swept the tomb. Flowers and fruits have been placed in front of the stone tablet. Incense and candles have been burned, and there is a faint smell of fireworks. The tombstone has just been wiped, and the name of the owner of the tomb has been wiped.
"Tang Guangyi was first examined, and Tan Letao was first concubine" is clearly visible.
The young man who had just been sitting in front of the grave quietly burning paper now stood up, finally spread the wine in his hand over the soil on the grave, and silently walked along the overgrown mountain road to a small grave on the other side.
Not far away, a young man with pale eyes also looked at him silently, without moving closer. He looked at the young man's figure as if he were looking at a piece of scenery.
The young man came to the grave on the other side. The grave was much smaller. The grave was only three feet wide, which seemed not big enough to bury the coffin. There was only a two-foot-high wooden sign on the mound. No name was written on it, but only one sentence.
"The door is unlocked, making it easy to come in and out."
It’s just that the words used in this sentence are incomprehensible to most people.
The young man came to the grave, looked at the writing on the wooden sign, suddenly grinned, squatted down and dug the soil with his hands.
The young man watching from a distance was slightly startled when he saw this scene and said nothing.
At this time, someone next to him shouted: "Hey! Where did this little tomb robber come from? You dare to dig graves openly in the daytime. You are too arrogant. You...you...aren't you that little guy from Lao Tang's family?"
The young man turned around and saw a little old man with sparse hair approaching with a walking stick. He looked kind-hearted as expected. He said with a sigh, "Uncle Zhao? It's me, Tang Zhao."
The old man, Uncle Zhao, looked carefully at the young man's face and exclaimed: "Yes, that's you, Tang Zhao. Although you have grown up after several years, you really can recognize this appearance."
Then I put the crutch down.
Tang Zhao smiled sheepishly. This Uncle Zhao was an old neighbor of his family. He was not a neighbor, and he was not very familiar with him, but he could always meet him on the streets. To say that the meeting back then was very ordinary, at most he would just nod and pass.
.
After all these years, my mood has changed when I see acquaintances again. The intimacy I felt back then has increased tenfold. It's like seeing a relative. I greet you: "I haven't seen you for many years. How is your health? How is your family?"
Uncle Zhao said: "Hey, my health is not bad. Look, I'm strong. There's nothing wrong with my family. It's just that the kid at home is ineffective. He's quite old and can't do anything. You say he has some potential.
, how can I still go out to visit graves at such an old age?"
Having said this, he looked at Tang Zhao and saw his scholar's attire, and said: "Have you passed the examination and returned home in glory?"
Tang Zhao smiled and said: "No, I can't study well. I didn't even pass the exam. Look at me like this, how can I look like I've returned home in glory?"
Uncle Zhao looked disappointed and said: "You don't have any clothes, so you just return to your hometown? Hey, that's no fun. But you are still young, and it is normal for you to fail the exam at this age. I thought you had bright eyes and you were born blessed.
He has good looks, is smart, and has a knack for studying. He will definitely be able to go to high school in the future."
He talked a lot, and before Tang Zhao spoke, he continued: "Don't blame me, if you went to a serious school, you should have obtained the honor a long time ago. I advise your father, even if he doesn't send you to the academy, he must find it for you.
A serious master. Look at your teacher. He speaks in a garrulous manner, has a weird accent, and always squints his eyes when looking at people. He doesn’t have a good heart at first sight."
Tang Zhao was just funny and did not share the same knowledge as the old man. He only said: "You have seen the wrong person. Teacher Chen has bad eyesight and is highly myopic, so he always squints when seeing things. He is not a bad person."
Old Man Zhao clicked his tongue and said, "So, you are still learning from him now?"
Tang Zhao stopped smiling, glanced at the grave behind him, and said, "My master passed away four years ago. This is his grave."
Old man Zhao said oh, and with a sad look on his face, he said: "It's gone? What a pity, he was a scholar after all. I remember he was much younger than me. How could he be gone when he was so good? So you are here for me?"
Did he add dirt? I thought you were digging a grave."
Tang Zhao said: "I am digging his grave."
…
Ignoring Old Zhao's stunned look, Tang Zhao smiled and said: "The teacher asked me to bury him somewhere else before he died, but I was young and weak at the time and could not fulfill his last wish, so I had to bury him here first.
Now that I have grown up, I will come back to help him move and bury him."
Old Man Zhao breathed a sigh of relief and said: "That's right. I'm just saying that you are such a polite student. How can you do anything illegal? I remember that your house has been sold. Do you have a place to live now when you come back?"
?If not, you can stay at my uncle’s house.”
Tang Zhao thanked him: "Thank you for your kindness. I won't disturb you anymore. I have something to do when I come back. That is, if I have time in the past two or three days, I can go back and meet my neighbors. I can just stay in an inn."
Old man Zhao said, "You've made a fortune if you can live in an inn. And you're not returning home in fine clothes? Hey, I said, you kid, don't want to take back your ancestral home, right? I'm telling you, it's not okay to cause trouble."
I know how angry you young people are, and you are always thinking of retaliating with tit for tat. You are too young and don’t know how powerful they are. They are powerful..."
Tang Zhao smiled and said: "Uncle, have you listened to too many books? Firstly, the house was bought by my father, and it was not an ancestral home. Secondly, I took the initiative to sell the house at that time. Although it was sold at a low price, it was considered that I was in a hurry.
, I appreciate the fact that they gave me the money honestly at that time, and I didn’t have to pay for it. Don’t worry, I didn’t come here to fight.”
Seeing that Uncle Zhao breathed a sigh of relief again, Tang Zhao asked: "But you just said that this person is very powerful... I remember that my original house was sold to a shopkeeper along the street. Isn't it him now? What kind of powerful people live in it?"
Could it be that they were requisitioned by the government?"
Uncle Zhao said: "You don't know. It's just a matter of being requisitioned by the government. If you ask them at most, they won't give you anything and kick you out. There is no danger. Now your house has become some kind of 'tangguo', it is a vicious evil spirit."
What's the name of this gang...the Five Poisons Club."
Tang Zhao raised his eyebrows and thought to himself: What a coincidence?
After sending Uncle Zhao away, Tang Zhao dug out Mr. Chen's box.
Yes, Mr. Chen is in the box.
According to Mr. Chen's wish, he was cremated and put in an ordinary lacquer box.
Mr. Chen said it would be best to scatter his ashes into the sea.
Even Tang Zhao couldn't understand Mr. Chen's willingness to crush his bones and throw away his ashes, but who asked him to mention it? How can he not respect his last wish when everyone is gone?
It would be too difficult to just throw it into the sea. Yunzhou is far inland, thousands of miles away from the sea. Where can I see the sea? Tang Zhao has never seen the sea now.
It's just that he hasn't seen it now, but he will see it sooner or later. He also hopes that one day he can visit Jieshi, view the sea, or even set sail. At that time, he will fulfill Mr. Chen's wish.
In fact, Tang Zhao occasionally thought that maybe the last place Mr. Chen wanted to go to was not the sea, but the hometown he could never go back to.
Tang Zhao's hometown is by the river. When you look upstream of the Tongyang River, you can see your hometown in the distance. Mr. Chen probably hopes that his hometown is on the other side of the vast sea. In that case, his ashes will drift with the waves.
, I can finally cross the ocean and return to my original hometown.
After putting Mr. Chen away, Tang Zhao and Wei Se went down the mountain and entered the Twilight City before the city gate closed at dusk.
After four years of absence, Twilight City is mostly the same as before, but there seem to be more people. Relocations are still going on, there are still people fleeing, and temporary shacks can often be seen on the streets.
Tang Zhao and the others worked hard all the way and arrived much earlier than the agreed time. They still had two or three days to move around freely before the exam.
So Tang Zhao went to the inn with a familiar face and a dangerous look.
No way, he didn't have any relatives in Twilight City. It was his parents who followed the relocation crowd into the city and lived in the second ring of city walls. As long as he had relatives, he wouldn't have been homeless as soon as his parents left.
As for childhood friends, of course there are neighbors, but as soon as we enter the city and there is no time to settle them, is it too strange to meet the neighbors first?
As the saying goes, things have changed and people have changed. After being away from home for four years, there is no one in my hometown that I can't wait to see for a moment. It's no wonder that Tang Zhao doesn't understand "nostalgia" very well.
Fortunately, he was very familiar with Twilight City, especially the middle city with the second ring of city walls. He found a cheap and clean inn in no time, asked for two rooms, and went to bed early.
When Tang Zhao got up early the next morning, he opened the door and saw a young man standing in the yard. He looked vaguely familiar. Behind him were four big men, all of whom were big and round. At first glance, they looked like family members. There were several people in the corners guarding the door on all sides.
, don’t let anyone in.
When these few people stood in the courtyard, it was like the King of Hell on a quiet street. The whole courtyard was completely silent, except for Tang Zhaohe and others in the dangerous room next to him.
Tang Zhao was startled and thought to himself: I didn't look for trouble, so why would trouble come to me? Is it a creditor? I don't remember having any unpaid debts in Twilight City.
When the young man saw Tang Zhao, he bowed respectfully and said, "Mr. Tang, I came here to pay homage to you on the order of the owner of the village."