[one]
The bamboo craftsman has no name and no surname, everyone just calls him a bamboo craftsman, so I follow suit.
Taking advantage of my parents' unpreparedness, I climbed over the wall and left the hospital, and rushed to the bamboo strip maker's house in a hurry. The room is cool with bamboo air all year round, and the fragrance is like the fairy garden told by the storyteller, so that when I think of the fairy, the figure of the stripper sitting by the paper window appears in front of my eyes. As a craftsman in a remote town, he is unreasonably beautiful.
The bamboo craftsman doesn't talk often, and when he saw me coming, he asked, "Are you escaping again?"
When he was expressionless, I felt a little embarrassed for him, put on a mischievous smile and said: "Good master, let me hide for a moment, the martial arts training is really miserable."
The bamboo craftsman didn't nod his head or push him away, he just pretended not to see it. I was able to drag a bench with a smile on my face, and sat with my chin resting on the side to watch him cut out thin strips of bamboo, and then use them to weave sieves and mats.
My father and mother are both from the rivers and lakes, running a small sect with little reputation. It is said that in the generation of the ancestors, there was a moment of prosperity, but unfortunately, the talent was withered, and it was passed down to my father's generation where only four apprentices were accepted. In addition, there are occasional neighbors who come here to learn some superficial kung fu.
My father was quite worried about this, and he often gave me advice, asking me to devote myself to practicing martial arts and revive the sect. But I was born lazy, and lacked interest in the hard training of breath adjustment, recognition of acupoints, and horse stance, so I lived very hard every day.
In comparison, it is still interesting to watch the bamboo craftsman work. His pale fingers fluttered up and down, and the long bamboo strips flicked like spirit snakes, constantly shuttled back and forth under the control. I have had a closer look at the hands and fingers with thick and rough calluses, and they look like they have been worked hard.
I frowned tightly, and he might have looked funny, so he turned to me and asked, "What are you worried about?"
I said, "Your hands are ugly."
In fact, what I regret is that his face is matched with such a pair of hands, which really doesn't match.
He finally laughed. At this time, my father's roar came from outside the house. I jumped up and wanted to slip through the window, but my father rushed in and grabbed me. My father reprimanded me a few words, and apologized to the stripper: "My son has caused you trouble."
He smiled and said it's okay, he took a look at me, probably to see if I was crying or not. I made a face at him and mouthed, "See you tomorrow."
My family is a frequent visitor of Bamboo Carpenter, and every time I invite him to make bamboo baskets and plaques. Speaking of which, when the Bamboo Carpenter first appeared in the town, it was also my parents who rescued him.
He was a teenager then, in such a state of desperation and injury that he almost died in the street. My father carried him back home, my mother was proficient in medical science, and worked tirelessly to make medicine for him, and it took three days to snatch him back from the hands of the king of Hades. After waking up, he forgot his first and last name, and he didn't remember where his hometown was, let alone why he was here. It happened that the old bamboo craftsman here was getting old, so he was taken in as an apprentice to help with work.
It only takes a few months for the bamboo strip craftsman to work more delicately than the old master. The bamboo strips are measured by a ruler. Later, the old master died, and he became the town's stripper.
Neighbors and folks inevitably had some speculation about his background. He doesn't look like a craftsman, let alone a warrior. If he is a scholar, he has a somewhat unspeakable open-mindedness. My parents also asked him privately if he still remembered a little bit of the past, seeing him shaking his head all the way, they had no choice but to give up.
Only once, I followed him to the bamboo forest five miles away to watch him cut bamboo, but I fell asleep waiting in the forest. When I woke up, I was lying on the fallen leaves, and my nose was filled with the bitter fragrance of grass and trees. I opened my eyes, and vaguely saw a silhouette of a person holding a bamboo branch in the haze.
At that time, the sun was waning on the western mountains, like a layer of golden veil woven by mist on his flying clothes and hair. He seems to be dancing with a sword, but also seems to be just dancing casually, against the flying forest leaves, so that I can't remember if I am in a dream.
Later, when he didn't mention it, I didn't dare to ask, for fear that he would never let me find him again.
[two]
My parents' martial arts are mediocre, and they failed to teach any masters, and the apprentices all let them meddle in their own business. In the winter when I was seven years old, it snowed heavily and the dripping water turned into ice. My brother picked up a dying man from the road. His body was so bloody that I hid outside the room and refused to enter. My father counted roughly, and counted seven or eight kinds of sword wounds on his body.
My mother persuaded: "This person has offended such an enemy, I am afraid that he will cause trouble if he is brought back." But my father said: "I can't just leave him alone. When he wakes up, let him go."
No one thought that the man was a despicable thief. He lived in my house for three days, and the medicine my mother prepared for him was still boiling on the stove, and he had already rolled up some broken silver and fled without a trace.
No one even thought that he was hunted down because he stole the secret book of the Bakumen, which is flourishing in the Jianghu.
A few days later, I climbed over the wall and slipped to the bamboo forest again. It was almost noon when I played, afraid that my parents would come to find me for dinner, so I rushed back with a blade of grass in my mouth. Before he reached the town, he suddenly saw several black smoke rising from a distance, as if seven or eight families were on fire at the same time, and faintly heard bursts of strange cries. I remembered the countermeasures my father taught me when meeting bad guys, and quickly hid in the shade of a tree, and approached slowly on tiptoe.
The Eight Bittersmen came out to hunt them down, and lost the trace of the thieves, so they decided that someone was hiding, arrested people everywhere in the town and questioned them, and set fire to the house when they encountered resistance. The neighbors who knew about it lured them to my house in order to avoid the disaster of killing them.
When I saw the gate of my house, it had been crushed.
A group of crimson-clothed men rushed out, bloody footprints all over the ground. The bodies of my parents were like two odd-shaped puppets, lying at the door with twisted limbs. A crimson-clothed man was pulling a long knife out of my senior brother's stomach, and brought out a piece of intestine. He wiped my senior brother's body in disgust.
A pale hand suddenly covered my mouth from behind. I was picked up by someone, and the familiar bamboo fragrance lingered between my mouth and nose.
He quickly backed away, and I struggled to see my parents again, but he cut me on the back of the neck with a hand knife, and I don't remember the rest.
I had a serious illness, and it was half a month after I woke up again. Before the Eight Suffering Gates withdrew, my house and the corpses were set ablaze.
Throughout the winter, I slept on the stripper's bed at night, and ran to the ruins during the day, and sat there for half a day with my hands clapped. Sometimes half a porcelain bowl and a piece of cloth are found in the snow, and they are all taken back to the bamboo strip maker's house to be stored. He didn't say a word about it, and he didn't see it.
As the spring blossoms, the neighbors whose houses were burnt down began to rebuild their houses one after another. I heard them laying bricks and walls, and I was really jealous.
One day, four or five neighbors from the town came to knock on the door. I was hiding in the back room, and I heard an old man persuade: "The child has killed the whole family, I'm afraid it's bad luck, and he provoked the group of demons again. It's hard to guarantee that he won't bring more disasters..."
The bamboo craftsman was silent, and after a while, the old man said again: "You are not unreasonable people. Although you are also a foreigner, as long as you send the child away, you can naturally continue to live in the town."
At sunrise the next day, I was already on the rickety donkey cart, supporting the few belongings of the stripper. The bamboo craftsman held the rein with his back to me. I was tired from crying, so I stared at his thin and straight back through my red and swollen eyelids, until I saw the peace in my heart and fell asleep. When he woke up again, he was still driving the car in the same posture, as if he hadn't moved a bit. After driving for a few days like this, the grass grows beside the road and the warbler flies, and the spring mountain is like a smile.
[three]
The bamboo craftsman took me to live in a more remote village, and took me as an apprentice logically. In hindsight, things in the world always seem to have a causal cycle set in the dark, and there is never half a mistake.
I'm already at an age where I know good and bad, and I know he's been kind to me. I helped him chop firewood, light the fire, sweep the floor and cook, and I quickly cut the bamboo strips he needed. Bamboo craftsmen have never liked to talk. Sometimes I wake up in a dream about the old things, covered in cold sweat, and feel that the house is frighteningly quiet. I quietly moved towards his side of the bed, and felt him turn over in the dark, and his callused warm palms patted my back a few times. But I felt ashamed again, gritted my teeth and retracted.
He, a young man, led me to live in seclusion here alone, and the residents of the village have inquired a lot, both openly and secretly. Several older children surrounded me, laughed and called me a motherless bastard, and said he was useless. I half-understood, turned around and found the leader's home by myself, and lay in ambush outside for half a day, when he went out to fetch water, taking advantage of his unpreparedness, he raised the bamboo branch and gave him a violent twitch.
The older boy roared and wanted to pounce on him to fight back, but I beat him so hard that he couldn't resist, and the howling sound spread half a mile away. By the time the adults of his family came to drive me away, he had already been knocked unconscious by me.
Back in the house, the stripper dug out the pile of rags I had hoarded from under the bed, and held up half a porcelain bowl, about to throw it on the ground. I cried and begged him, but the bamboo craftsman sneered, "Your father and mother only want to see you so promising?"
My anti-bone clamored again, and said fiercely: "Weaving bamboo like you is useless! If you can't kill bad guys, you can only be bullied for the rest of your life!"
Instead of being angry, the bamboo craftsman smiled, put down the porcelain bowl, and fined me to be grounded for a month. He has become more fierce than my father in the past. In addition to making me help every day, he also forces me to recite books and practice calligraphy, and wants me to pass the provincial examination in the future. I was very lazy in studying, but I was keen on picking fights with those older kids. I still remember the tricks my parents taught me back then, and the strikes were so ruthless that they beat them all to their knees.
But this is not enough, I want to beat to death people who are a hundred times stronger than them.
Occasionally, I get painted on my body, but I can't hide it from the eyes of the bamboo craftsman. He punished me not to eat, so I sat on the bed with a hungry stomach and adjusted my breath. I didn't study hard at the beginning, but now I practice hard, but I can't find the way.
The bamboo craftsman said, "Do you want to take revenge?" I asked back, "Isn't it right?"
He said: "I won't let it."
I said angrily, "Why do you stop me?" He was not angry, and said calmly, "Your parents have saved my life. I will raise you for them, and I will not let you die in vain."
I said: "If you really want to repay your kindness, you should help me avenge this great revenge!" I was full of anger, but he was indifferent: "I can't do it, and you can't do it either."
I misread him. I looked at him carefully after that day, and found that he was not as tall and straight as I remembered, maybe it was because I grew taller. Wearing coarse clothes and doing dull work, he looked more and more like those humble villagers. He is not as good as my parents.
But he looks so good after all, and he has a lot of skills. Over the past few years, people from nearby villages have come to be matchmakers, and even some girls' families don't care about me being a burden.
The bamboo craftsman has never married, I once asked him why he didn't get married, he just said: "It's fine now, it's annoying to have one more person."
I said: "There is no trouble between husband and wife." I racked my brains and recalled, "She can raise eyebrows with you, talk with you, and add clothes for you..." He said: "Aren't you doing all these things."
I recalled it for a while and said: "She can still share the same bed with you."
He said: "That also has you."
I can't refute him, but I always feel that something is wrong. I was getting older, and I also heard vaguely mentioned by those older children that men and women in the same bed should hug each other, kiss and do some dirty things. I couldn't figure out what was going on, but I dreamed that he was hugging a woman with a vague face, biting each other with their mouths without knowing why. Just so ignorant, muddled, wet with urine.
That morning I sneaked out of bed, but the stripper didn't say anything. A few days later, he built a new bed, and we slept in separate rooms from then on.