The New Year’s dinner is rich, and all kinds of delicacies on the round table are shining under the candlelight. The colors are bright and the heat is lingering. Everyone is smiling.
Shen Qingxuan has always paid attention to his body, he may have become a doctor after a long illness, he never eats too much in every meal, and even mixes meat and vegetables, and occasionally drinks to promote the circulation of blood and bones, naturally forming a way of nourishing his body. It's just that I'm in high spirits tonight, so I don't care about these things, I eat less food, but drink more wine. Relatives and friends at the same table pushed each other to congratulate each other, and the drinks were particularly refreshing.
Yi Mo seldom moved his chopsticks, but he also drank some wine. The people at the banquet were not strangers to him, and because of Shen Qingxuan, he was even familiar with them, since they brought wine cups, Yi Mo drank them one by one without refusing to save face.
Everyone in the banquet is all dressed up for the festival. Although the color of the robes is not dazzling, there is also a kind of low-key luxury. Green is emerald green with hints of purple; green is green with green tinge, with the blue of lake water. That kind of dyeing can be done by unusual dyeing workshops, and I don’t know how many silkworm mothers collect and how many cocoons are taken. The silk is taken, the thread is spun, the cloth is woven, and how many medicinal materials are soaked in it, and finally it becomes a cloth, which is then tailored by a special person. , made into a robe, and finally the embroiderer took it over, made thread to make silk, and wove and embroidered it carefully.
It is these exquisite workmanship, but no one can compare to Yi Mo who is dressed in a simple black robe and does not even wear a hair crown.
This person was still disheveled, with an indifferent expression. Sitting at the banquet, even though he was silent and only drinking, his gestures and gestures showed an extraordinary demeanor.
No one knew his reason, and no one even dared to ask easily.
After so many days, they only dared to go around and ask Shen Qingxuan, what is his background
Shen Qingxuan only said: Strange person. I will not say another word.
Shen's father traveled abroad in his early years, and it can be said that he traveled all over the world. He has seen and learned a lot, and his heart is naturally extraordinary. Knowing that this person is unusual, but seeing that he gets along well with his son, he doesn't care about those worldly things. During the banquet, they toasted frequently and drank with Yi Mo, but never asked any unnecessary words. From the side hall next door, there were occasional conversations and laughter from the women's family members, and even children's shouts. A banquet was extremely lively.
Until late at night, the cold was a bit overwhelming, the girls brought seven or eight braziers in, put them one by one, opened the windows, removed the dishes from the table, put dried fruit snacks on them, reheated the wine cup and made hot tea , just retreated. The female relatives next door also left with their children and maids, and returned to the house to rest. For a while, except for the maids and servants, only these people in the hall were keeping watch.
If you are full of food and wine, you may not be full, and if you are full of wine, you may not be able to talk about sex.
On New Year's Eve, a group of people gathered around to watch the night and naturally began to talk about the world. Let's start with the politics of the court. When it comes to the current emperor, everyone in the world knows that the emperor is a virtuous emperor. Unavoidably a bit soft, now that the crown prince has not been established, the battle in the inner palace is already in full swing.
The person who said this drank a lot of wine, so he used the word "in full swing", which made everyone at the table couldn't help laughing. The fight for the heir apparent can be regarded as the cruelest thing in the world. How can it be "in full swing" if the flesh and blood kill each other
Father Shen shook his head, made the person who said something wrong to punish himself with three glasses, then picked up the wine again, changed the subject, and talked about strange things in the world. The topic was picked by him, so he was the first to say that New Year's Eve was supposed to be festive, but everyone drank too much, the candles were flickering, and the room was warm, making everyone lazy. Although the atmosphere was not bad, it was also Not enthusiastic. So Father Shen thought about it, and when he mentioned an old incident, it was something he had personally experienced—it was said that he sold goods that year—in the early years, he was physically strong, and he often led his own caravan to transport goods back and forth, passing by along the way. Tour the scenery. That year, he led the caravan to follow the established route, but unexpectedly encountered a heavy rain, and the caravan had to find a ruined temple to hide from the rain. It rained heavily and fell all night. They were trapped in the temple, and they had no choice but to sleep all night. A group of people waited until dawn the next day before opening the temple gate, packed up their luggage, fed the horses, and prepared to go on the road again. Just as the horses were ready, they saw a person suddenly walking out of the temple where only their group of people and their goods were. The person was completely black, wearing a bamboo hat and covering his face with a black veil. Everyone was very surprised by the sudden appearance of the man, but they felt it was strange, so no one dared to ask him why he appeared suddenly. I saw the man walk out of the ruined temple, stood at the temple gate for a while, then made a circle somehow, a group of people came out of the temple suddenly and neatly. There were about eight or nine people, all dressed in black, covering their faces and not showing any flesh. Then the leading man bowed to the group of them, led the neat group of people, and left like that.
Having said that, someone asked again during the banquet: "Didn't you see them in the temple before?"
Father Shen waved his hand, signaling them to continue listening, but they also felt that it was strange, so they went back to the temple to search around, but found some traces of someone staying behind the clay Buddha statue. It turned out that they came in panic the night before, and didn't look around carefully. The group of people in black came in to hide from the rain before they came in, but they came later.
Father Shen paused, stroked his beard and said, "You all thought this was just an ordinary thing, and I thought so too at the time, and two years later, I met that man in black again in that temple, who also led A group of people are in the temple, but my servants dare not go in, why do you say?"
Facing everyone's doubts, Shen's father laughed and said: "You should have heard that Bian Nan has a secret technique called corpse driving."
After the last two words fell, most of the people in the banquet shuddered and were half sober.
Shen Qingxuan really didn't expect to talk about this on New Year's Eve, he was stunned for a moment, and said: "I also have a story here. But I read it from the book, it's just that it's unlucky to talk about it tonight, so I won't talk about it."
All the people were drinking, and at the same time, the men at the banquet all boasted of being bold, and felt that these stories were extremely exciting, so they all yelled for him to tell them wherever they wanted to.
Shen Qingxuan couldn't help it, took the wine and said: "Forget it, if I spoil the joy, I'll punish myself first." After drinking the wine, Shen Qingxuan picked up a peanut and dipped it in, and said, "What I'm telling is the story about peanuts. .”
But that was another dynasty. At that time, the world was in chaos, rebels and bandits were everywhere, and wars continued. At that time, there was a village in the east, and peanuts were often grown in the village. The peanuts were harvested and fried for sale, or processed for dipping, which was also a good income. Everyone in the village is also kind, helping each other, and the neighbors are very kind. Unexpectedly, a bandit broke into the village one night, robbed a child in the village, and threatened them to redeem it with a hundred taels of silver. The child was originally a child of an ordinary family in the village, and there was no one hundred taels of silver, so he had to go around asking for money, thinking that his neighbors and friends were all good people and would be able to help, but unexpectedly, no one in the village was willing to contribute even a cent. It's just because it was kidnapped by bandits, if they collected the silver taels, I'm afraid it would increase the viciousness of the bandits, so they will come back to kidnap them next time. Therefore, every household is not given a penny. In the blink of an eye, the three-day period passed, and the man's wife was in a trance since she knew the child was tied up. She couldn't get a drop of water, slipped and slipped into the well and drowned while fetching water. With nothing in his pocket, his wife and children were scattered and his family was destroyed. The man suddenly hated his neighbors in the village. Pick up the hatchet that night, go in one by one, and wipe out one by one. Then he committed suicide himself.
In that kind of peanut village, the peanuts were ripe the next year, and the peanut dealer came with a donkey cart, but there was no trace of popularity in the village, and some peanuts in the field had burst out of the ground. The peanut peddler went down to the ground, dug up two peanuts and opened them, but his hands trembled and he ran for his life in a hurry. Just because the peanuts split open, the red clothes inside also burst, revealing the peanut kernels inside.
In that year, in the peanut fields of that village, there were faces, old or young, with vivid eyebrows and eyes.
After Shen Qingxuan finished telling the story, seeing the crowd staring blankly or sluggishly at the peanuts dipped on the table, with a cold expression on their faces, he had no choice but to punish himself with three cups. Master Shen also felt unwell. He drank a cup of hot wine and looked at Shen Qingxuan. Shen Qingxuan was smiling, but his eyes were watching the expressions of the people in the table, and he took all the reactions of those people into his eyes and pondered carefully. . He paid so much attention to it that he didn't notice his father's gaze. Master Shen looked at him, and for some reason, a sense of strangeness suddenly rose in his heart, as if his son grew up overnight, feeling close but far away.
This feeling is not good, Master Shen shook his head and put it out of his mind. He took the peanuts for dipping, put them in front of everyone with a smile, and said: "Come and taste it, don't be polite, this is not a peanut with a human face." It made everyone laugh while feeling cold.
The rest of the people did not have the eloquence of the Shen family's father and son. Naturally, the places they traveled and the books they read were not as good as them. Afterwards, they told a few stories, all with a bit of charm and fragrance, most of them were wits The anecdotes of beauties are also mixed with some legends of fox fairies and ghosts, all of which have happy endings. Everyone finished talking one by one, but Yi Mo didn't speak at the table, so all eyes stopped on him, waiting for him to tell a story.
Yi Mo put down the wine cup, thought for a while, and then said: "I don't have much story to tell, why not continue with the previous one."
Everyone at the banquet thought it was interesting, but any story is finished after it is finished, there is no reason to continue it, since he said so, he must be able to listen to it. So they booed and asked him to continue the story of the fox girl repaying her favor.
Yi Mo said: "You all say that it is good for a fox girl to be affectionate, but I don't think so. But anyone who is affectionate in this world will be hurt by love. If you don't believe me, I'll tell you—"
The fox girl repaid the scholar's kindness, fell in love with the scholar in her heart, married him, and then became a good wife and mother of mortals. For the next few decades, husband and child, life is happy, it should be good. But he never thought that after decades, the scholar has become gray-haired, the child has grown up, and the fox girl is still beautiful, and her age has not changed. The scholar was approaching old age, and knowing that his days were numbered, he told the fox girl to take care of herself after his death. In the end, I left another sentence: If there is a destiny, we will marry each other in the next life. The fox girl valued love and righteousness, and she was supposed to return to the mountain to practice as soon as she died, but she was reluctant to part with her husband who had lived for decades. After the scholar died, the fox girl buried him, but she never returned to the mountain, but continued to wander in the mortal world. Looking for the reincarnation of her husband in order to continue the relationship.
This search lasted for a hundred years. In a hundred years, there were demon priests who wanted to subdue her and took her inner alchemy as a weapon, and there were monks who exorcised demons. The fox girl has no peace since then, she fights with monks and Taoist priests, escapes by chance, but is seriously injured. The fox girl knew that she was seriously injured and could not stay any longer. She knew that her husband's reincarnation might be not far ahead, but she had no choice but to hide in the mountains to recuperate. After raising it for more than ten years, I went down the mountain and continued to search. When she finally found her husband's reincarnation, the husband in the previous life had already become someone else's husband, and the husband and wife were equally loving, like honey mixed with oil. The fox girl was heartbroken, but she didn't give up. She went to him again and again, saying that she was his wife. The scholar didn't recognize her, only saying that she was crazy. The fox girl was really crazy and looked for him again and again, and told him these words time and time again. When the scholar saw her beauty, he felt a little moved in his heart, so he secretly had a tryst with her behind his wife's back. After several times, the scholar's wife in this life found out and arrested the two of them, forcing them to die. Although the scholar thought the fox girl was beautiful, he had already got his hands, so he abandoned the fox girl and left with his wife. The fox girl was abandoned by this, but she still didn't give up. She finally annoyed the scholar, and at the same time, a monk came to find her, so she joined hands with the monk to catch the fox girl.
The fox girl was trapped in the demon lock net by the monk, begged bitterly, and shed tears, but the monk cast a spell to reveal her original shape. The scholar didn't believe that she was a demon at first, but now he believed it, he was terrified, picked up the wooden stick in his hand, and beat the snow-white fox violently. , died sadly.
Thousands of years of Taoism and cultivation, but in the end, mortals were beaten to death with sticks. It was her husband who killed her.
Yi Mo chuckled: "The happy ending you talked about, in my opinion, is just the moment in front of you. How can you imagine what will happen in the future?"
After listening, everyone booed or sighed, with melancholy and regretful expressions. Only Shen Qingxuan sat upright in a daze without saying a word, his face pale.
At this moment, the servant girl knocked on the door and said in a low voice, "Master, it's time to set off the fireworks."
The people at the table happily left the table one by one and went outside.
Shen Qingxuan was still sitting, but Yi Mo got up.
Shen Qingxuan looked at his back for a long while before saying: "If there really is an afterlife, don't come looking for me, even if you look for me, I won't recognize it."
Yi Mo turned around and replied, "That's natural."
Shen Qingxuan just smiled. The faint melancholy in the smile is well hidden.
Master Du Shen, when he walked out the door, he found that his son hadn't come, remembered that he was sitting on the chair, and no one pushed him, so he hurriedly turned back, but after hearing such a conversation, his thoughts were completely lost, and he stood there in a daze. Just when Yi Mo came out, the two met face to face, and as soon as their eyes met, the other's expression was fully caught in their eyes. Yi Mo froze for a moment, then frowned slightly, finally stretched his brows again, passed him by without saying anything.
Master Shen looked at his back, before disappearing without a trace in front of many bright lanterns, his heart became clear immediately, and he no longer hesitated.
Shen Qingxuan also pushed the wheelchair out at this time, looked at his father standing at the door strangely, and called out: "Father?"
Father Shen responded silently, walked behind him, and led him out with the help of a wheelchair, silently watching the fireworks ignited at midnight, rushing towards the sky, bursting into a large swath of gorgeous sparks.