Chapter 23 Section 23

Hu Miao first calmly said to his mother: "Mom, everyone is very tired after working for so long. You can cook the dumplings and eat them. Pad the hunger first." His mother hadn't noticed any abnormalities yet, and said enthusiastically, "Okay. I guess this little wife is hungry too. I'll go cook first, and you guys continue to cook." Hu Miao got up first and said, "I'll help." He cleaned the cooking pot, asked his mother to boil the dumplings, then went to another room by himself, and brought out an earthen detonator.The small mine near his home used this earthen detonator to blast rocks.The detonator looks like a firecracker that has been magnified many times, or in other words, it looks like an ordinary big candle.

He went back to the dumpling-making room, casually placed the earthen detonator on the small table by the window, and continued making dumplings with them pretending to be nonchalant. After a while, his mother came back with the pot. She put a wet towel on the kang table, put the pot directly on the towel, and then warmly greeted the strange woman: "Come, come, don't be too polite, I'm afraid it will hurt you when you put it out." It's cold, why don't you scoop it out of the pot together. Eat while it's hot." After she finished speaking, she lifted the lid of the pot.

Hu Miao had known for a long time that his mother would bring the pot along with it. The hot steam in the pot surged up, the lights on the kang table were blocked by the hot steam, and the room suddenly became much darker. Hu Miao first took a stack of bowls in her hand, and said to the strange woman as if preparing to serve dumplings: "Sister, it's too dark in the room, please go over there and light the candles." The woman was very happy to see that there were dumplings to eat, so she took a match and immediately went to the window to light a candle. After a while, a loud "bang" woke up many people in the neighborhood.Hu Miaoxian's mother didn't know it beforehand, so she screamed out of fright.The windows were blown to pieces.

Hu Miao first looked in the direction of the woman, but the woman had disappeared without a trace.He didn't dare to rush forward, sat on the kang and waited for the neighbors and folks to gather before slowly walking out. Before he went out, he heard a fellow exclaim: "I have never seen such a big mouse in my life!" Others were amazed. When he walked out the door, he saw a mouse the size of a cat lying on the ground.He hesitated: Didn't that friend say that the snake fairy would trouble me?How is it a mouse? Hu Miaoxian's father advised him to bury it properly. Although it came to cause trouble, it must be buried in peace.

He felt that what his father said was reasonable, so he made a simple wooden coffin for it the next day, buried it in an inaccessible mountain, and erected a monument and fired cannons for it.The stele is engraved: "The gray fairy ascends the position of the fairy." In the northeast, the mouse fairy is called the gray fairy. After burying the mouse, he remembered that it was holding a baby when it came.Confused and flustered, they even forgot that there was a baby at home.