Leading the horse biting head and walking along the dirt road for a few miles, he saw Gu Sheng and a few people rushing towards him from a distance. Among them was the man who was in charge of the carriages and horses of the Wuhe Escort Bureau. He was running very fast with a wooden box on his back.
After working hard and panting, several people rushed to the side of the cart. Seeing that the wheels were no longer in the way, the man looked at Wei Changpan with obvious resentment.
Wei Changpan used to do some odd jobs as a mason. He also repaired most of the roofs of his old house in Qingshan Town with his own hands. However, the ancestral hall is the most important place in a clan. Weddings, funerals, and sacrifices to ancestors are all major events.
Of course he couldn't just let him deal with it, he had to go to the city to look for craftsmen with good skills.
Pulling the bricks back to the bureau to unload them, Wei Changpan didn't bother to take a sip of tea, so he took Gu Sheng to the streets and alleys of Yuancheng to look for bricklayers who could do the job. The craftsmen who hadn't saved enough money for the winter heard that they would
Craftsmen came to recommend themselves one after another. But when they heard that the floor of the ancestral hall of the Wu and Escort Bureau was to be repaired, they were mostly put off. If you don't have diamonds, don't take up the porcelain work. Everyone in this industry knows this.
So among the few people left, the two of them pulled two people back together. The small floor of the ancestral hall with thousands of bricks did not require more manpower. They were all old craftsmen of some age, masons who were doing the work.
You can see at a glance that he is the leader among them. He does not actively solicit business and sits in the best position in the middle of the crowd.
Early the next morning, Wei Changpan and Gu Sheng led the two old craftsmen back to Wuhe Escort Agency. They happened to bump into the one-armed and one-legged old man named Zhang. The old man rarely came out to bask in the sun and take a breath. The old man on the bench squinted his eyes and saw
The two craftsmen brought back by Wei Changpan chuckled and said, "I also know that I invited these two people here. The ancestral hall is not somewhere else. If there is a slight mistake, all the bricks will have to be knocked again. I want to save the money of the two craftsmen."
, and ended up losing a lot in vain.”
Both craftsmen are old enough to know their destiny and are well-known figures in the craftsman's trade. If they really suffered a loss from their master when doing work, then no matter how high the price that family will charge in Bingyuan City, they will never find it.
A craftsman who is willing to work has his own rules in his profession, but no matter which profession he is in, he also has the dignity of that profession.
Although these two men asked for more than three times more money than ordinary masons, they worked very efficiently. In less than two days, they laid the entire floor of the ancestral hall. Even if they knocked bricks one by one, there would be no hollow sound.
Then he paid the wages and sent the two of them out of Wuhe Escort Agency.
"Forty-six taels of silver?" The floor of the ancestral hall had just been rested and it was not suitable to walk around much. The old man named Zhang asked Wei Changpan to move the Taishi chair and the copper stove to the end of the corridor outside the screen wall. He spent the whole day leisurely, unlike what he said before.
The old man, who didn't have long to live, actually changed his voice after hearing Wei Changpan say this number.
"It's forty-six taels of silver." Actually, this amount does not include the two craftsmen's two meals of wine and meat, but since he also ate some food, naturally he cannot be counted on the escort agency.
"Go to the escort agency's accounting office to get it."
"The accountant said that the ancestral hall has always been managed by you, senior, and the money appropriated by the escort agency every year will be directly handed over to you." For some reason, he had a weird intuition that his money would be wasted...
The old man stretched out two fingers from his one arm and said, "Twenty taels at most. The two people you invited cost more than a dozen taels of silver. Bricks are also expensive, so I can only give you twenty taels at most. I'll teach you a lesson."
"
....
Senior! Didn’t I tell you about the money to build the ancestral hall?
Come out!
Ahem.
Senior! We have been busy for a few days, and there is no credit but hard work, but we can no longer allow ourselves to add money to it!
Then I'll give you a little more...twenty-one taels, no more.
senior!
Okay, then twenty-two taels.
....
Half an hour later, Wei Changpan, who was thirsty, went to find a pot of tea and drank it. He wiped his mouth and said to the old man, "Forty-six taels of silver! I don't need a penny more, and I don't want a penny less! Senior!
If you are so virtuous and respected, you wouldn’t be willing to part with this little money, right?”
After being pestered by him for half an hour, the one-armed and one-legged old man was no longer in high spirits, but he still refused to give all the money to Wei Changpan, "Forty taels, forty taels at most."
Not a penny fell from the sky, so naturally it cannot be thrown away easily. Wei Changpan is a man who has experienced poverty and hardship. Even though he still has hundreds of taels of silver in his pocket, he is not willing to just let go of more than 6 taels.
No money required.
....
After another half an hour, the old man finally took the trouble, looked up to the sky and sighed, took out two twenty-tael silver notes from his body, and took out a few broken pieces of silver from his money bag and weighed them, "There are more than seven coins, remember to find more."
Ten copper coins."
Ten copper plates were handed to the old man's hand. The old man took a closer look and saw that they were all coins made by the previous dynasty with the words almost worn out. "Looking at the quality, they don't look like pure silver." Wei Changpan said confidently, "These ten copper plates are real money."
A real piece of copper."
"Look at how stingy you are. You don't look like a young man. You are worse than an old vegetable seller who cares about everything all day long." The one-armed and one-legged old man cursed and put the copper plate into his pocket. "Why don't you go and clean the memorial tablet in the ancestral hall?"
kerosene?"
After all, the newly repaired floor was slightly different from the previous one, and it was newly built. Every time he walked by, he stood on tiptoes and was careful, for fear of breaking any bricks and letting the stingy old man named Zhang knock them away.
A little money can be said to be the equivalent of being bitten by a snake once and being afraid of a well rope for ten years.
If you work as a sweeper in the ancestral hall, you will naturally have less time to practice martial arts every day.
It is not an easy job to wipe the memorial tablets on nearly three walls every day. You have to handle them with care. Many pieces of wood may still look shiny on the outside, but in fact they have been eroded by ants inside. You can even touch them with your hands to make them smell.
If there is a small crackling sound, you can only use a piece of fine cloth dipped in water to wipe it carefully.
Wei Changpan has seen the names on each tablet, and less than half of them are named Zhang. The shape is also slightly different from other tablets. They are neatly arranged behind the tablets of the ancestor Zhang Wuhe, and they are in their own way.
"Isn't it strange why there are so many people named Zhang in the memorial tablets in the Escort Bureau's ancestral hall?" The old man's voice came from behind him, "Because when Wu He Escort Agency was first established, uncles and brothers guarded the escorts together, and the Zhang family members
There are also a considerable number of people who have lived and thrived in Bingyuan City from generation to generation, and there are also a considerable number of people who died for the Escort Agency, so the ancestral hall of the Escort Agency can actually be regarded as the ancestral hall of the Zhang family."
"Zhang Bashun is the only bloodline among the Zhang family bodyguards of this generation. Otherwise, what he committed this time would not have been so easy. Since you are from Jiangzhou, do you know that there is a Zhang family in Qishan County who teaches martial arts?
The head of the family is called Zhang Wu?"
I didn’t expect that the old man would ask this question directly. Wei Changpan’s first
The first reaction was to draw the knife. Is there such an old killer in Kaolutai? Or is the entire Wuhe Escort Bureau from Kaolutai, so he fell into a trap? He didn't have time to think about it. He was missing an arm and a leg. The old man
It still gave him an incomprehensible feeling, like a well so deep that he couldn't see the bottom.
"I have a Jiangzhou accent but I live in Suzhou. I have battlefield swordsmanship, fists and kicks, and that knife." The old man sighed quietly. The knife was as sharp as before, but the person who used it was no longer the same person. "If the person in the escort agency
These are all people who are chasing you, and you definitely won’t survive until now, so there’s no chance you’ll have a chance to draw a sword against me.”
The Zhang family in the north has the surname Zhang, and Wei Changpan is not a stupid person. The connection is obvious at a glance, but he still can't believe such a coincidence. After following the escort team, he can find Heshimen.
The person he is related to is also the master’s family?
"Your master's tablet is over there." Wei Changpan looked along the one-armed arm to one side of the wall. Zhang Wu's self on the tablet was particularly clear under the light of the candle. "Although he left the border army when he was young, he went to the south of the Yangtze River to establish a sect.
, but after all, he has made a name for himself, and even though he is dead, the tablet can still have a place in the ancestral hall."
"Can you let me see your knife?" the old man said to him in a tone that was almost pleading. The scoundrel's demeanor that he had been fussing over a penny just now had now changed, revealing dignity and sadness.
Wei Changpan handed his sword to the old man with both hands. Seeing the old man's heavy expression as he sat down, put the sword on his knees and stroked the blade gently, he put aside the doubts in his mind, "Senior, I dare to ask you and my master
yes?"
The old man didn't answer. He put his face close to the blade and murmured, "Why don't you run back? Run back. The door of the escort agency will always be open for you..."
"Although your master doesn't want to come back, he still writes a letter to the Escort Bureau every year. I am his uncle, and he was the person I was optimistic about back then. He should have stayed and taken up the responsibility of revitalizing the Zhang family, but he ran away.
Army." The old man Xu Xu and Wei Changpan told about Zhang Wu's first half of his life. He had made a great name in the frontier army, and the cavalry he led is still one of the few in Dayao's border cavalry army that can compete with the prairie barbarian cavalry.
The troops that can still win in military-phase battles include soldiers who served under Zhang Wu and even became generals.
"The last letter he came from was two years ago. Perhaps at that time, he had a premonition that Songfengshan would win in the end and that Yanyulou would suffer a tragic end, so he arranged for his wife and daughter to go to his hometown in Jinzhou as soon as possible. Now he still has
He was raised in the home of his younger brother Zhang Bashun, and you are his last direct descendant. Although you have not been able to inherit his most proud skills, your swordsmanship is also a good martial art. Don't disgrace the reputation of the master."
Finally, the old man told Wei Changpan the reason why Wu and the Escort Bureau could not avenge Zhang Wu, "There are not many people named Zhang in the Escort Bureau now. Seeing that the situation is getting worse every year, even the successor to the Chief Escort Chief cannot be found.
Most of the remaining people are just looking for ordinary jobs, and it is impossible for them to work hard for someone they have never met before."
"I am the one who has one foot in the coffin. You young people have to do the revenge."