sword sentient beings

Chapter 351 Homecoming
A big river has wide waves, and the wind blows the fragrance of rice and flowers on both sides.

In Yunzhou, the longest river is Tongyang River.Starting from Jiugao Mountain, the northernmost part of Dongshan County, all the way to the southwest, it flows through the five counties of Dongshan, Dansheng, Zhengyang, Riyang, and Yuxia, and flows into the sea.

When it first came out of the mountain pass, Tongyang River was still a clear stream. It gradually flowed into the plain, nourishing thousands of households, irrigating tens of thousands of acres of fertile fields, condensing ditches, and sweeping away the sediment. When it reached Yuxia County downstream, it had become a turbid and turbulent stream. Yellow water.

Mucheng, the county seat of Yuxia County, was built on the bank of the Yellow River.

Mucheng is a famous city with a long history. It has a history of nearly a thousand years. It has witnessed countless joys and sorrows, witnessed the changes of several dynasties, and also witnessed various changes in the world since the calamity.

Just a few decades ago, although Mucheng was already a county government, it was famous for its height and depth. It was an important military town, not a prosperous city, with a population of only [-].

Later, the evil became more and more serious, and the wilderness was already very dangerous. The government organized the relocation of the surrounding people into the city.Gradually, the inner city could no longer live in it, so the city walls had to be built outside, and then built and built.

In the past few decades, Mucheng has built a triple city wall, with a population of more than one million inside and outside, houses row upon row, and streets full of traffic. It is already a veritable super big city.

It's just that the expansion of Mucheng is mainly to the east, because there are continuous mountains to the west of the city, which is a natural barrier for city defense, and there are also tombs where the ancestors of the people in the city sleep for generations.

On one of the hillsides, there are many sporadic graves buried.Most of these graves are of a single surname, and there is no family ancestral grave to bury.But most of them are from well-to-do families, and the tombs are fairly neatly built, and the mobs hired grave watchers to guard them, so that they would not be like poor men with nothing, wrapped in straw mats and stuffed on random graves.

On the half slope, in front of a couple's joint burial, someone just swept the tomb. Flowers and fruits were placed in front of the stele, joss sticks were burned, and there was a faint smell of smoke.The tombstone had just been wiped clean, and the name of the owner of the tomb, "Tang Guangyi first, Concubine Tan Letao first," was clearly visible.

The young man who had just sat quietly burning paper in front of the grave had already stood up, sprinkled the wine in his hands all over the graveyard, and walked silently along the weedy mountain path to the small grave on the other side.

Not far away, a young man with light pupils also looked at him silently, without leaning over. Looking at the boy's figure was like looking at a landscape.

The young man came to the other side of the grave. The grave was much smaller, and the head of the grave was only three feet wide. It seemed that it was not enough to bury the coffin. On the mound of soil, there was only a two-foot-high wooden signboard. There was no name on it, but only one sentence.

"The door is not locked, so it is easy to enter and exit."

It's just that the words used in this sentence are incomprehensible to ordinary people.

The boy came to the grave, looked at the writing on the wooden sign, suddenly grinned, knelt down and scraped the soil with his hands.

The young man watching from a distance was slightly taken aback when he saw this scene, and did not speak.

At this time, someone nearby yelled: "Hey! Where did you come from, the tomb robber? You dare to openly dig the grave in the clear and sunny day. You are too arrogant. You...you... aren't you the little one from the old Tang family?"

The young man turned his head, and saw a little old man with thinning hair coming over holding a walking stick, he was really kind-hearted, he let out a sigh, and said, "Uncle Zhao? It's me, Tang Zhao."

The old man, Uncle Zhao, looked at the young man's face carefully, and said, "Yes, it's you, Tang Zhao. Although it's been several years, you've grown up, but you can recognize this face no matter what." Just put the crutches down.

Tang Zhao smiled embarrassedly, this Uncle Zhao was his old neighbor, not a neighbor, and not too familiar, but he could always meet people in the streets and alleys.To say that the meeting back then was very dull, at most we just nodded and passed.

These years have passed, and the mood is different when I see an acquaintance again. The intimacy of the year has increased tenfold, just like seeing a relative, and I greeted: "I haven't seen you for many years. How is your health? How is your family?"

Uncle Zhao said: "Hey, he's in good health. Look, he's in good shape. There's nothing wrong with the family. It's just that the kid at home is not good enough. He's too old to do anything. You say he's a little promising , can I still come out to do the job of visiting the grave at such an old age?"

Speaking of this, he looked at Tang Zhao, saw his attire as a scholar, and said, "You have returned to your hometown after getting a good reputation?"

Tang Zhao smiled and said, "No, I can't study well, and I didn't even pass the exam as a scholar. Look at me, how can I look like I've returned home?"

Uncle Zhao showed disappointment, and said: "No clothes, just return home? Hey, it was not exciting to watch. But you are still young, it is normal for you to fail the exam at this age. Back then, I saw that your eyes were bright and you were born blessed Zhixiang, smart and smart, is a seed for studying, and he will definitely be able to go to high school in the future."

He had a lot of old talk, and before Tang Zhao could speak, he continued to babble: "Don't blame me, if you go to a serious school, you should have earned fame long ago. I advise your father, even if you don't send you to the academy, you have to find someone for you. A serious teacher. Look at that teacher of yours, he talks in a daze, has a weird accent, and always squints his eyes to look at people, and he doesn't feel at ease when he sees it."

Tang Zhao was just being funny, and he didn't have the same knowledge as the old man, so he just said, "You are seeing the wrong person. Teacher Chen has bad eyesight and is highly myopic, so he always squints when looking at things, so he is not a bad person."

Old man Zhao said, "So, are you still learning from him?"

Tang Zhao withdrew his smile, glanced at the grave behind him, and said, "Master passed away four years ago. This is his grave."

Old man Zhao let out a sigh, squeezed out some pain, and said: "It's gone? It's a pity, he is a scholar after all. I remember that he was much younger than me. Why did he disappear after a good time? So you came here Did he add dirt? I thought you were digging graves."

Tang Zhaodao: "I'm digging his grave."

……

Not caring about Old Man Zhao's dumbfounded look, Tang Zhao smiled and said, "The teacher told me to bury him in another place when he was dying, but I was young and weak at the time and couldn't fulfill his last wish, so I had to bury him here first. Now that I'm grown up, I'll come back and help him with his burial."

The old man Zhao breathed a sigh of relief, and said: "That's right, I said you are a gentle student, how can you do something illegal? I remember that your house is sold, do you have a place to live now when you come back?" ? If not, you can go to the uncle’s house and settle down.”

Tang Zhao thanked and said, "Thank you for your kindness, and I won't bother you. I have something to do when I come back. That is, if I have time in the past two or three days, I will go back and meet the neighbors. Just stay at the inn."

The old man Zhao said, "It's a fortune to be able to live in the inn. You said it's not returning home? Hey, I said, don't you want to take back the ancestral house, kid? Let me tell you, you can't make trouble. Uncle knows how young you are, and you always think of retaliation. You are too young to know how powerful you are, and you have a lot of influence..."

Tang Zhao smiled and said, "Master, have you listened to books too much? One is that the house was bought by my father, it is not an ancestral house. Two, it was my own initiative to sell the house at that time. Although it was cheap, I was in a hurry. , People gave money honestly at the time, and I also accepted it, and there is nothing to look for later. Don't worry, I didn't come here to fight."

Seeing that Uncle Zhao breathed a sigh of relief again, Tang Zhao asked: "You just said that he is very powerful... I remember that my house was sold to a shopkeeper along the street, isn't it him now? What big power lives in it? Was it confiscated by the government?"

Uncle Zhao said: "You don't know, it's nothing more than being expropriated by the government. You ask at most and they won't give it to you. It's not dangerous to drive you out. Now your house has become a "tangkou", it is a vicious The gang, what is it called...the Five Poisons will come."

Tang Zhao raised his eyebrows and said to himself: What a coincidence?
After seeing off Uncle Zhao, 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 packed in an ordinary lacquer box.

Mr. Chen said that it is best to scatter his ashes into the sea.

Even Tang Zhao couldn't understand Mr. Chen's willingness to thwart his bones and ashes, but who told him to mention it?Everyone is gone, can you not respect the last wish?

Just throwing it into the sea is too difficult for a human being. Yunzhou is far inland, thousands of miles away from the sea. Where can I see the sea?Tang Zhao has never seen the sea yet.

It's just that I haven't seen it now, and I will see it sooner or later. He also hopes that one day he will be able to visit Jieshi, watch the sea, and even set sail. At that time, he will fulfill Mr. Chen's wish.

In fact, Tang Zhao occasionally thought that perhaps the last place Mr. Chen wanted to go was not the sea, but his hometown that he would never go back to.

Tang Zhao's hometown is by the big river, and when he looked down the upper reaches of the Tongyang River, it was as if he saw his hometown.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 current and eventually return to their original hometown across the ocean.

Putting Mr. Chen away, Tang Zhao and Wei Se went down the mountain, and entered Mucheng before the city gate was closed at Dusk.

I haven't seen you for four years, and Mucheng is basically the same as before, but it seems that there are more people.The relocation is still going on, and there are still people fleeing, and temporary shacks can often be seen on the streets.

Tang Zhao and the others rushed all the way, arriving much earlier than the agreed time, and there were still two or three days for free activities before the exam.

So Tang Zhao went to...the inn with a sense of danger.

No way, he had no relatives in Mu City. It was his parents who moved into the city with the relocated people, and lived in the second circle of city walls. If there were any relatives, they would not be thrown into the rivers and lakes as soon as their parents left.

As for childhood friends and neighbors, of course there are, but once you enter the city, it is too dusty to resettle, so you go to see the neighbors first, isn’t it too strange?

The so-called things are different and people are different. After leaving home for four years, there is no one who can't wait to see when I return home.It's no wonder that Tang Zhao doesn't understand "homesickness" very much.

Fortunately, he was very familiar with Mucheng, especially the Midtown on the second city wall, so he found a cheap and clean inn right away, took two rooms, and went to bed early.

Waking up early the next day, Tang Zhao just opened the door, and saw a young man standing in the yard, with a vaguely familiar face, and four big men behind him, all with big arms and round waists.There are still a few people in the surrounding corners guarding the four doors and preventing people from entering.

These few people stood in the courtyard, comparable to the King of Hell in a quiet street, the courtyard was full of people, except for Tang Zhaohe, who was still in the dangerous room next to him.

Tang Zhao was startled, and said to himself: If I don't seek trouble, how can trouble come to me?Is it the creditor?I don't recall having any outstanding debts in Dusk.

When the young man saw Tang Zhao, he bowed respectfully and said, "Young Master Tang, I'm here to pay my respects to you by the owner's order."

(End of this chapter)