Chapter 17 third quarter

The two stood at the entrance of the alley, and quickly finished their respective twists.The tiger heard that the sound of picking cotton came from Miss Sun's house.Before the tiger came to Puji, Miss Sun was killed by the bandits, and her father, the old man Sun, soon suffered a stroke and died in bed for half a year.The house has been vacant for many years and has never been locked.If a craftsman such as a tinsmith or carpenter came to the village, he would settle down and work there. Strange to say, when they walked to the edge of the pond in front of Miss Sun's house, the sound of picking cotton suddenly disappeared.

"I just heard clearly that the sound came from that room. Why is there no movement?" "Let's go over and see if we can see it." The little thing said, "But but—" "What's the matter?" The little thing looked left and right at the two twists, rolled his eyes up and down, as if he was trying to settle accounts: "Two twists, one for grandma, and one left, is it for the magpie? Or is it for your father, Baochen?" "What do you say?" "Give it to the magpie. Baochen will not be happy. If you give it to Baochen, the magpie will not be happy."

"Then what to do?" "I don't think it's better than this. No one will give it to me. I'll eat it." The little thing said seriously. "Then you can eat." "Then I really ate it?" "Let's eat." said the tiger. The little thing didn't hesitate any longer, and immediately started eating. The yard is quiet and weeds are everywhere.A wing room on the east side was originally a stove house, the roof has collapsed, the door has been broken, and weeds have covered the threshold.At the end of the yard was the hall, the door was open, and the bright sunlight in the yard made it look dark.There are bedrooms on both sides, each with a small window, the window paper has changed from red to white, and it is dilapidated.In the grass there was a wooden plow and a mill, both decayed.

The tiger walked into the hall and saw two door panels supported by benches in the middle of the room.The door panel was covered with cotton.The big bow for picking cotton was leaning against the wall.The house was full of lint: on the beams, on the tiles, on the rafters, on the walls, on the oil lamps, everywhere.The person who plucked the cotton had left at some point. "Strange." The tiger said in surprise, "I heard the sound of Dangdang just now, why is there no one around now?" He plucked the string, and the big bow made a "Dang" sound, scaring the little thing. Shrink your neck.

"Let's go to eat." The little thing said. One of the doors leading to the bedrooms on either side was open, and a spider's web was knotted on the lintel.The other door was tightly closed.The tiger pushed it lightly with his hand, and it seemed to be locked inside.The cotton picker might be in the house, he thought.But what is he doing in the house?The tiger slapped the door hard twice, barked twice, but there was no movement. "I have an idea." The little thing said suddenly. "What idea?" "Why not, I'll eat the last one too!" He was still thinking about the twist.

"Didn't you say you would leave it to your mother-in-law?" "If the mother-in-law asks, let's say that the mother-in-law Meng didn't give it to me, is that okay?" he asked. The tiger smiled: "Fool, if you don't tell me, why would your mother-in-law ask?" "Then I'll eat it." The little thing stared straight at the twist in his hand. "Eat, eat." The tiger waved to him impatiently. The tiger saw that there was a table for the little four immortals in the corner.On the table are hookahs, cigarette rolling papers, a mask, a bowl of herbal tea, and a wooden hammer.Next to the hammer is a green kerchief, and on the kerchief is a bamboo grate for grating hair.Both the scarf and the grate are for women.His heart sank, he picked up the scarf and the grate, smelled it, and there was a faint smell of incense powder.He seemed to have seen this turban before, but he couldn't remember it for a while.He looked at the closed door again, thought for a while, and his heart pounded. Is there a woman in this room?If the cotton-pluckers were in there, what were they doing with the door bolted in broad daylight?

"Let's go." The little thing had finished eating the mahua, and was licking the syrup in the palm of his hand with his tongue, looking satisfied. The two of them went out of the yard one after the other, and the tiger turned his head to look behind as he walked out.When they walked to the entrance of the alley outside Granny Meng's house, they heard the sound of picking cotton again, "buzzing and buzzing". "What the hell." The tiger stopped suddenly, and said to the little thing, "Just as we were leaving, he played again. Why did he shut himself up in the house?" Usually no one lives in that house, so where did it come from? Grates and headscarves for women?Whose thing is that?Why does it look so familiar?The tiger followed the little thing, and walked home dully.Of course, what he thinks about the most is the non-existent relationship between men and women.The faces of women appeared before his eyes.He even wanted to go back and see what happened.

"Tell me," he walked a few steps, caught up with the little thing, pulled his shoulders, panted, and whispered, "Tell me, if a man and a woman are locked in the house during the day, they, they What will you do?" "Then you don't need to ask, day chant." The little thing said. When they walked to the door of the house, they saw a stooped old woman holding two children, looking around the yard, "That's right, it's here." The old lady said to herself. "Who are you looking for?" The little thing asked as they approached. The old lady glanced at him, said nothing, and went straight into the yard.

As soon as they entered the yard, they fell to their knees on the ground of the patio, crying loudly, scaring the magpies who were collecting the tents and shouting loudly. The one in the middle is an old woman with gray hair, about sixty or seventy years old, with a five or six-year-old child kneeling on each side.No matter how much Baochen questioned her, the old lady just cried and did not answer.After crying, he simply sang.While singing, he slapped the bluestone slab on the ground vigorously, blew his nose, and wiped it on the upper of his shoe.Seeing that the neighbors watching the excitement were already poking their heads outside the courtyard, Madam asked Baochen to close the courtyard door first, and then said to the old woman:

"Please, old man, if you have something to say, go into the inner room and speak slowly. I'm at a loss here, how can I make decisions for you?" Hearing what his wife said, the old man cried even louder.The two children next to her looked up at her, seemingly puzzled.Careful Bao Chen had already heard a general idea from her large part of the libretto just now, so he asked, "Tell me, who broke your daughter?" Only then did the old woman stop crying, looked up at Bao Chen, and said, "My two poor children haven't had a single grain of rice in three days..."

It turned out that I wanted to eat. Seeing that things had turned around, the lady hurriedly ordered the magpie to serve food under the stove.These people, also led by Bao Chen, came to the kitchen and sat down around a small square table. "You just said that someone spoiled your daughter? What happened?" Madam asked while they were eating. The old woman didn't lift her head, she just put the food into her mouth.After a long time, he muttered something: "I only know that he is a Puji man with a gold tooth in his mouth, and he is a butcher of pigs. I don't know his name." Mrs. Glancing at Baochen, he said to himself: "What she said, could it be the big gold tooth?" Bao Chen nodded, breathed a long sigh of relief, and said with a smile, "Old man, since you are looking for a big gold tooth, you are looking for the wrong door." "That's right," said the old woman, "I'll tell you the whole thing after I have two more mouthfuls of food." It turned out that this woman lived in Cheung Chau on the other side of the Yangtze River.Her son was originally a herb picker, named Cai Xiaoliu, who accidentally fell off a cliff and died last summer.A young daughter-in-law and a pair of children were left behind.This daughter-in-law was tall and fair, and quite pretty.Guarding a few acres of Susukida, life can be maintained.Unexpectedly, this year's Ching Ming Festival—— "On the day of Qingming, my daughter-in-law went to visit the grave of the dead ghost. When I came back, it was almost dark. When I walked to the edge of a broken kiln, I might as well jump out of the woods. My poor daughter-in-law was She was paralyzed by fright. Without saying a word, they took her captive to the broken kiln, and they kept her until dawn. The poor child walked and crawled in the morning, and when she returned home, only I took a breath. When I saw that her clothes were torn and she couldn’t even cover her breasts, I understood everything. I brought her a bowl of water, but she didn’t drink it. She just cried while hugging me. She cried in the morning until dark. At the end, she shook her head and said to me, Mother, I don’t want to live anymore. I asked her, who made it. I have a gold tooth, and there are two other people who have never seen each other. After she finished speaking, she cried again. When she had cried enough, I said to her, my child, if you really want to take the old way of seeking death, mother can't stop you , we women, when we encounter this kind of thing, only one will die. The ancients said that ants can steal their lives, let alone human beings? Their teeth are broken, and the blood can only be swallowed in the stomach. Besides, you have gone , leaving us three grandparents, the old one and the young one, what should we do? After my persuasion, she finally stopped mentioning the matter of seeking death. After resting on the bed for half a month, she gradually fell into a coma. The bed is working. It’s fine if things are like this. But this big gold tooth that is cut into pieces, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t talk about it yourself, you shouldn’t be drunk , at my uncle’s house in Cheung Chau, I was drunk in public, saying that I had become someone’s widow. Several people did it together, which made the little bitch very happy. The news spread quickly in the village, and also to her natal family Well, my short-lived daughter-in-law can’t even if she wants to live. But even for this reason, she still doesn’t want to die. She went back to her mother’s house, but her father and brother avoided seeing her. She died. On the day before yesterday, she suddenly came into my room fully dressed and said, should I jump into the well? There was no way out. Tears fell like pearls with a broken thread. "She said mother, I don't want to part with these two children. I think it's up to now, and I can only put my heart on it. I told her that the only death in the ages is hard, and it will pass by gritting your teeth. If you say death It’s better to hang yourself, otherwise, I’ll be ruined by a well. We are old and young, where can we get water to drink? At that time, her son was sleeping with me, sleeping soundly on the bed, so she lifted the quilt, Kissed his ass more than ten times and went out. She didn't throw herself into a well or hang herself, but jumped off a cliff." After the old man finished speaking, no one spoke.Both the magpie and the lady were wiping tears.After a while, Baochen said: "Since that's the case, you should report to the official or find Da Jinya." "Bodhisattva's father!" The old man slapped his hands and shouted, "We came to Puji early in the morning to find Da Jinya. He is not at home. His old mother is blind and over eighty years old. She said Da Jinya It’s true that Jinya is my son, and it’s true that he is a pig butcher, but he hasn’t returned to this house for more than two years. The bones left over from the meat sale would be fed to the dogs, and he never got one back. He doesn’t think of me like this Old lady. I will pretend that I never gave birth to this son. Whether he kills pigs or kills people, it has nothing to do with my wife. If you say that he ruined your daughter, you should report it to the authorities. Comparing with me, a blind man, I am just such an old bone, if you want it, just take it apart and make soup for drinking. "The words of the blind man made me speechless. I came out of the blind woman's house and walked to the entrance of the village. I lost my mind for a while, and the three of us cried together. We were crying when a manure picker came from the south. , when he saw us crying pitifully, he took off his burden and asked why, and I told him the whole story. After thinking about it, he said, this big gold tooth is no longer sold for meat, and dances in the school all day long I don’t know why. I said, since that’s the case, let’s go to the school to find him. He stopped me and said, you can’t go to the school. I asked him why he couldn’t go? He said, the school They are full of people without brains. I said, "Scholars have no brains. Is it true that mud-legged people like you and me have brains and brains?" This dung picker sat on the dung load for a long time without making a sound. Finally, he pointed us to come here to argue. He said that the big gold tooth is your daughter's subordinate. Since the big gold tooth is your daughter's subordinate, your daughter must also be a murderer Is the pig sold for meat?" What he said made the magpie burst into laughter. "If she's really a butcher, it's a blessing I cultivated in my previous life." The madam glared at the magpie and said coldly. Tiger and Xiaodong woke up after sleeping, and saw that the old woman from Changzhou hadn't left yet, and several people were still talking around the stove.Madam saw that she had no intention of leaving, so she asked Magpie to go back to the room to take out some broken silver and some old clothes, and gave her a spoonful of soybeans, a spoonful of rapeseed, and half a bag of barley. She kept it as seeds for the coming year, and then the old woman stood up and kowtowed to her wife, and led her two children happily back to Changzhou. As soon as the old lady left, the madam complained of a headache. She stood with her head against the wall for a while, said something "not good", and then collapsed limply.Baochen and Magpie quickly helped her to sit down on a chair, and Madam ordered Magpie to bring a bowl of sugar water to drink.As soon as the magpie brought the water, she suddenly gasped and spit out a mouthful of thick blood.Baochen and Magpie panicked.Several people got his wife to lie down on the bed, and Baochen rushed out to ask Sixth Master Tang to be a doctor. The little thing seemed terrified.Seeing Baochen saying that he was going to hire a doctor, he shouted at his back: "Baochen, you have to run quickly, run as fast as you can!" Hearing the little thing shouting, the madam burst into tears.She opened her eyes after a while, touched his head and said to him, "Son, you can't call Baochen, you should call him grandpa." Then she said to Tiger, "Take him out to play." , don’t scare him.” But the little thing refused to leave.As if he suddenly remembered something, he lay down next to Madam's pillow, leaned close to her ear and said something, Madam laughed. "Guess what the boy said to me just now?" the lady said to the magpie. "What made Madam so happy?" "I'm still happy!" Madam laughed, "He asked me if I would die." Then she turned to the little thing and said: "It doesn't matter if I say it or not, you can ask the doctor later." After a while, she said again: "It doesn't matter if the doctor said it, you have to ask the Bodhisattva." "What is death?" the little thing asked her. "It's like a thing that suddenly disappeared," said the lady. "But, but, where did it go?" "Like smoke, when the wind blows, it disappears." "Is everyone going to die?" "Yes." Madam thought for a while, and replied, "When your father-in-law was alive, he often said a word. He said, life is like a post. This means that this person is alive, like a thing. In the world, when the time comes, someone comes and takes it away." "Who took it?" "Of course it's Lord Hades." At this time, the magpie came over and pulled the little thing away from the bed, and said to the tiger, "Take him out to play, and don't say anything unlucky here." The tiger just came out of the wife's room with the little thing. He saw Bao Chen leading Sixth Division Tang rushing in. The Sixth Master Tang entered the door and asked Baochen: "Where is the blood that the old lady vomited just now? Please lead me to have a look first." Baochen took him to the hall.The pool of blood had already caused the magpie to sprinkle a layer of plant ash on it.Sixth Master Tang asked, "Is the blood red or black?" Baochen said, "It's red, the same color as the newly painted door on the temple." Sixth Master Tang nodded, leaned over to smell it again, shook his head, smacked his lips, and said "not very good" twice.Then I went to my wife's room for medical consultation. Madam stayed in bed for seven or eight days.The doctor's prescription was changed three times in a row, but it still didn't work. When Tiger and Xiaoxi came into the house to see her, they had already become unrecognizable.The smell of medicine permeates the house all day long.Everyone in the village came to visit, even my wife's relatives in Meicheng came.Magpie and Baochen also frowned, shaking their heads and sighing all day long. Once, the tiger heard his father say to the magpie: "If my wife really leaves, we father and son will not be able to stay in Puji." This touched the magpie's heart, and she bit her handkerchief and cried. up.Hearing what his father said, Tiger knew that his wife might be dying soon. In the middle of the night, while the tiger was asleep, he was suddenly woken up by someone.He opened his eyes and saw the magpie sitting beside his bed in a panic: "Get dressed quickly." The magpie urged, then turned his back, trembling all over. "What's the matter?" Tiger rubbed his eyes and asked her. The magpie said: "Quickly go and ask your godfather to come and have a look. Madam vomited blood again. She vomited a big bowl and her face turned black." "Where's my dad?" "Didn't he go to Meicheng?" Magpie said.After finishing speaking, she ran downstairs with a bang. Tiger remembered that his father went to Meicheng this afternoon to look after his wife's birthday.Granny Meng said that to make birthday materials, the big apricot tree in front of her house is ready-made. Baochen thought about it and said, "I'd better go to Meicheng and see a good one." The little thing was sleeping soundly, and he was hesitating whether to wake up the little thing and go with him, but the magpie urged him downstairs again. The tiger went downstairs and came outside the courtyard.The sky is full of stars, and the moon is already westward. Looking at the time, it is already the middle of the night.As he walked through the alley toward the back village, the dogs in the village barked one after another.Tang Sixth Division's home is next to the mulberry field in Houcun.His family has been a doctor for generations, and it has been passed down to him. It is already the sixth generation. He married three wives in a row, but he still failed to give birth to half a son.Baochen once entrusted his wife to come to intercede, and asked Tang Liushi to adopt Tiger as a foster son and pass on his medical skills.The Sixth Master Tang couldn't get in the way of his wife's affection, so he reluctantly agreed, "Please bring that child to your housekeeper, and let me take a look at his face first." It was the fifteenth day of the first lunar month of the year before last, Baochen was neatly dressed, carrying a lacquer box gift, happily bringing a tiger to visit his teacher.As soon as the doctor saw the father and son, he said with a smile: "Tilt your head, you are making your son recognize me as a godfather. It's a joke that I can't have a son." Bao Chen hurriedly said: "Where is this? This is the best of both worlds, the best of both worlds. This and that, the Tang family has no successors. Dogs can also have some skills in the future, and have a bowl of food in the world." The doctor said that he wanted to take a look at the tiger, but he didn't even look at him. He just glanced at him lightly from the corner of his eye, then shook his head and said, "Young master, let him learn from Da Jin Ya." Killing a pig is almost the same.” One sentence made Bao Chen laugh, neither anxious. After a while, the doctor said again: "I'm not joking, you see he has thick eyebrows and eyes, and his bones are heroic. Let him study medicine, I'm afraid it's overkill. If he comes from martial arts, he will have great fortune in the future. To be a doctor It is not a problem to have one or two governors." It was obviously a evasion, but Baochen still believed it.He went back happily with his son.He said that when Sixth Master Tang gave wrong medicines when he saw a doctor, he was not bad at all when looking at people.After that, Tiger felt that because of the prophecy of the "Fu Yin" of the Sixth Master of Tang, even the tone of his father's speech to him was different from usual. Tiger came to Tang Sixth Division's door and knocked on the door. After a long time, the lights in the room came on.This Sixth Master Tang really had a bit of fairy spirit, he didn't care who came, he coughed dryly twice in the room, and sent a sentence, "You go back first, I'll be there soon." As the tiger walked back, he suddenly became a little worried. He didn't ask who came to see him, so he let me go back first. What if I went to the wrong place?He was hesitating whether to go back and tell him, and before he knew it, he had already reached the edge of the pond in front of Miss Sun's house.In the dark night, he heard the courtyard door creak and open.Tiger was taken aback.He knew that there was a cotton plucker from other places living in Miss Sun's house, but what was he doing out at this time. Through the bushes, he saw two figures coming out of the yard, one in front and one behind.He heard a woman's delicate voice saying, "Are you really a pig?" The man said, "I was born in the first year of Guangxu." "You are not allowed to lie to me." The woman said. "Darling, you can figure it out yourself? Why did I lie to you?" After speaking, the man dragged her over, put his arms around her waist and kissed her. Could it be her?What is she doing here? In other words, the two of them have known each other for a long time, and this cotton-plucking person really has some background, but what they said, what is a pig and what is not a pig, sounds like a fog.Tiger's heart was pounding, and he remembered the green scarf and bamboo grate he had seen in Miss Sun's house a few days ago.It really was her. He heard the woman push the man away and say, "I'm wet again." The man just giggled. They said a few more words in low voices.The man turned and entered the room, and then the door closed.