Night Lights

Chapter 213 Braided Hair

The outline of the mouth, the gate of the tongue, the opening and closing of words, the bond of honor and disgrace; the thickness and shrinkage, observing people and things, the lips are like black and blue, suffering and poverty, the lips are cinnabar, and the food and clothing are good; the lips are thin and purple, poisonous and killing Interfering with one another; the lips are flat, one speaks lies, one's lips become sunken, and one suffers a premature death; one's lips are not formed properly, one's words are difficult to define; this is called "speaking lips." ——Excerpted from the eighth volume of Jiangyin in "The Book of Words Without Words".

……

Dang lang... dang lang lang!

There was a sound of knocking on the edge of the pot, and a bad old man came from the north of the alley.

Seeing that the old man's gray cloth mandarin jacket was torn into pieces, and the black cloth shoes were torn apart, he exuded a sense of poverty.He walked swiftly under his feet, carrying the household items on a shoulder pole, a steaming charcoal stove at one end, and a rosewood box at the other. There is a basket for picking up broken hair...

This one who came - it was Zhang Laoshan who took the lead to shave his head and face!

As the saying goes: If you don't have a lot of skills, you can't fill a mouth.

Zhang Laoshan is from Tonghe, quite capable.Every spring, when it gets warmer, he will carry a long-stem broom and walk around the streets to build chimneys for people; when it gets warmer, when the birds from the south come, he will be in the mound or miscellaneous woods outside the south gate Set up a small net to catch birds and sell them.After every rainy day, at dawn, he went to the street to sell umbrellas, and when the weather was fine, he changed it to mud tiles, pushed the walls of the houses to repair the roofs; Pour the boiled red fruit, pear slices and apricot water into the tank, top it with ice cubes, cover with a damp cloth, and sell it as ice soup for bone-chilling, tooth-pulling, thirst-quenching...

certainly.On weekdays, he is not idle, carrying a shaving burden to wander the streets and alleys, specializing in shaving people's heads and faces.

This is his job!
I heard from others that when Zhang Laoshan was studying art in his hometown, he worshiped a "monk who returned to the vulgarity", and he learned all the skills and skills of kung fu.He also rubbed kung fu into his hands, holding an old winter melon covered with frost and shaving it, and only shaved off a layer of hoarfrost on the skin of the melon. The surface of the old winter melon is bumpy.

at the moment!

Zhang Laoshan went straight to the street and looked up to see a courtyard surrounded by adobe walls.The courtyard wall is quite high, and only three or two green tile roofs are exposed on it.A few old jujube trees in the yard are black and purple, not sprouting, and their thorny branches are densely covered.There was no movement in the courtyard, no birds chirping in the trees, and no smoke coming out of the chimney. Looking at it coldly, it seemed like some strange person lived in it...

creak!

Zhang Laoshan's eyes jumped, he pushed open the courtyard door with his hands, and strode into the courtyard with a few strides.The yard is not big, quite empty, there is only one hut in the yard, there is light and darkness in the house.While talking, a person came out of the house with square steps and without any haste!What came was a skinny old man in his fifties, with a stooped waist and a bent back, wearing a plain black gown, with a white braid that reached to his waist on the back of his head, and a red thread wrapped around the end of the braid!
"Old customer!"

Zhang Laoshan hastily cupped his hands and shouted: "Look at the day, I'm here to braid you again!"

The thin old man smiled slightly, cupped his hands and replied, "I'm going to trouble you again!"

After a brief greeting, Zhang Laoshan unloaded the pick, moved a square bench from the yard, and told the old man to sit down.He took out a copper basin from the bottom of the rosewood box with his hand, poured a basin of hot water into the basin with the pot on his left hand, and took out a hot towel from the basin, steamed and dripped water, and put it on the old man's head With a cover, first moisten the roots of the hair with steam...

Zhang Laoshan is not familiar with this old man, he only thinks that he is a weird person!

Why do you say weird?

Because I often heard the neighbors say that this old man stays in the yard all day long, does not go out, does not show up until he eats and defecates, no one is allowed to enter his house, and he has no words when he meets people, and he does not answer many questions. No one knows what he thinks or does, the whole street looks the same as him or not... But ordinary people can't escape the custom. When it's time to shave their heads, this old man invites Zhang Laoshan into the hospital to comb his braids carefully.

With such a relationship, the two of them had something to talk about...

Squeeze!
While hitting the razor blade with abrasive paper, Zhang Laoshan kept his mouth open and said, "What do you think this person lives for? Not for this mouth! Both hands are for the mouth, so you don't have to be busy all day." , the mouth must be hungry... Now the world has changed, some people eat official meals, some eat foreign food, but what do we eat? We only eat the "jujubes" that fell from the hands of the "monkeys", picked up Can't eat fresh..."

"People live in the world, happy in the open, rest in the dark!"

The old man replied: "In hot weather, hide in the shade and take a nap, and in cold weather, sleep in the sun!"

"You're talking about enjoying happiness..."

Zhang Laoshan watched the knife being polished and felt that the blade was almost ready, then took off the hot towel and began to shave the new stubble on the old man's head.While scratching, he said: "...life is full of excitement, it all depends on tossing, officials toss about rank, power and salary, what we toss about is food, drink, clothing, housing, buying and selling money. This world is also tossing, if you want to go to the latrine to have a look Go, the old books have been wiped, they say this is called: innovation and removal of the old...Let's not talk about anything else, just say that now everyone shaves their heads, backs, crews, and bald heads, and no one wears braids anymore , I'm about to die in this profession... Shaving my head and face, and shaving my face is a free gift!"

After hearing this, the old man frowned suddenly into 'dried dates', feeling uncomfortable in his heart.

Immediately afterwards, I heard Zhang Laoshan continue to say: "You want to talk about this braid... In the early years when the braids were cut, people hung up thick and long braids in front of the shop and sold them. Roots, they were all taken home and used as flies..."

"Tsk!"

Before he finished speaking, the old man's body suddenly shook, Zhang Laoshan's hands trembled in shock, and a razor cut a hole on his head.Zhang Laoshan was stunned, and quickly blocked the opening with soap foam, so that no blood would come out, but his scalp hurt so badly!

"You are..."

Zhang Laoshan glanced down, holding the razor and not daring to move again, seeing the old man's expression become serious.Zhang Laoshan wondered in his heart, he didn't know that the straightforwardness of his words offended this strange old man.The old man let out a long sigh, shook his head and said, "No...it's nothing, please continue!"

Zhang Laoshan was stunned for a moment, and said no more.He casually dismantled the braids, spent some effort, combed them with a comb, then re-braided them, grabbed the scissors and trimmed the thin yellow hair forks neatly, and finally said: "Oh! I look at you! The root of the braid is unraveled again, and I have a recipe, which seems to be to use hemp leaves, nettles... three liang each, peeled walnuts... Forget it, I'll copy one for you tomorrow!"

The old man thanked: "Thank you!"

puff!
Zhang Laoshan took off his scarf, dusted his trouser legs with a hot towel, took the silver dollar handed over by the old man, and put it into his bosom.Then he quickly packed up the burden of shaving, and before going out, he bowed his hands to the old man, turned around and opened the door, and plunged into the alley...

creak!

An hour later, the courtyard door was pushed open again.The braided old man changed into a capacious mandarin jacket, and with a stack of yellow paper in his hand, he walked straight to the south of the city.Around noon, the old man walked quickly through a dense forest outside the city without resting. The grass in the forest grew over his body and the rocks were in disorder.Until they came to a wide area, there was a lonely tomb buried in front of them!The old man approached and pulled the weeds in front of the monument with his hands, and the scarlet letter on the tombstone slowly revealed, engraved on it:

The tomb of his beloved wife Lan Xin'er!
"You are still the same, but I am old..."

The old man bent down and sat beside the tombstone, sighing: "After walking this way, my legs and feet are so sore!... The day before yesterday, I was urged to go through the dark by an urgent case in the underworld. When I walked halfway, my legs and feet became weak. In the end, it was Cui Pan I was ordered to send the five ghosts to carry me into Yin... You said it was a mess!" At this point, the old man paused for a moment, and then said: "...Later, Cui Panming asked me if I had a wife, family and children to take care of me in the yang world. , I coaxed it to say that it has no wife and no children... In fact, others do not know that I have already married you in the dark!"

While talking, the old man felt sad for a moment, patted his clothes, stood up slowly, grinned, and said in a choked voice: "Look! I newly braided my hair when I came here, lest you say that I am usually sloppy. Sloppy..." After finishing speaking, the old man was holding a stack of yellow paper in his hand, and was about to put it on the grave, but when he lifted his hand, his body froze there, unable to move!
Looking at the grave - there is a deep palm print!
"Bold..."

The old man's heart skipped a beat, and he exclaimed, "Who dares to leave a handprint on the grave?"

At this moment, I suddenly heard a shrill voice behind me saying: "Although the trees are luxuriant, they are invisible for a long time, and the steles are solid, but there is no heir to defend them! Xuanwu hides its head, the blue dragon has no feet, the white tiger holds the corpse, and the red bird weeps bitterly!  … ...The 'Four Ghosts of the Lonely Grave' are all in place, and the corpse buried in this tomb is about to change in less than two years!"

"who is it?"

After hearing this, the old man couldn't help but gasped.He hurriedly turned his head to look, and there were actually two people standing in front of him!

One of them was Zhang Laoshan who shaved his head, and there was a young girl standing not far from him.I saw that the girl was about eighteen years old, her face was as white as snow, her eyes were vivid, she was wearing a gray plain shirt, a cloth bag was slung over her shoulder, and she was carrying a mahogany sword.The girl glanced at the old man with her eyes first, then she opened her mouth and said with a smile: "Old Mr. Bai! You have such good eyesight that you actually found such a unique 'ghost land' to raise corpses!"

The old man frowned, his face changed angrily, and he shouted: "Zhang Laoshan, you..."

"Hehehe..."

The girl suddenly laughed loudly and said, "I never imagined that Daoist Bai Shibao, who killed the 'Miaojiang Gu Master' Ma Zu, quelled the 'Hail of the Underworld', and was conferred the title of 'Yin and Yang Tongshi' by the King of Ghosts, turned out to be the head of the weeping grave." The old man who laments his life, the scenery is no longer..."

As soon as Bai Shibao's identity was revealed, he immediately said angrily: "Don't say it again, don't blame me for being rude?"

"Good talk!"

The girl suddenly pulled out the mahogany sword, flicked her palm, and threw a magic talisman directly at Bai Shibao.He yelled anxiously: "The little girl's surname is Ma, come here to kill your dog!"

(End of this chapter)