The man in his thirties coming over from the opposite side made me feel a little dangerous. Although he was smiling and looked like a big brother joking with the little girl next door, there was a murderous aura under his smile. This person must have had a glorious life, but his age made it impossible to guess the exact time of that experience.
More importantly, judging from the amplitude of the man’s arms shaking, his skills are definitely not inferior to mine and Monk Shi’s.
While I was secretly on guard, the man had already walked to the table: "Girl, tell me, what's wrong?"
The little girl quickly told the story with grievance, and the man slapped his thigh after listening: "These two brothers eat really well! Quick, give me a steak and two pancakes, and don't forget to give me some green onions."
The little girl covered her head and shook it twice as if dizzy, then she gritted her teeth and said, "Don't forget, you are the owner of the restaurant!"
The man said as a matter of course, "What's wrong, boss? The tradition of 'wrap everything with pancakes', which was first invented by people in Guanli and carried forward by people in the Northeast, can't be broken just because there are two dung forks on the table, right? This time I roll steak, next time I'll roll lobster. Don't waste time, get it done."
"You're the boss, you're right!" The little girl was so angry that her face turned blue.
Monk Shi laughed and said, "It's still more fun to have a meal with Old Ye! Come on, let me introduce them to you. This is my brother, Wu Zhao. This is also my brother, Ye Jin."
Ye Jin clasped his fists towards me and said, "Brother Wu, is our beef authentic?"
I laughed and said, "It lacks flavor without the scallion dipping sauce."
"Haha..." Ye Jin and I smiled at each other and sat down. Ye Jin pulled out a bottle of liquor from his pocket like a magic trick: "Authentic Northeast Shaodaozi, want to try it?"
"I must try it!" I saw that there was no wine glass on the table, so I simply emptied one of my water glasses.
Ye Jin filled our glasses without saying hello and drank them all. After Shi Heshang and I finished our glasses, Ye Jin gave us a thumbs up and said, "Great!"
At this time, the little girl had already put up the pancake and steak with a pouty mouth. Ye Jin stretched out his hand and pinched the little girl's pouting lips, which made the little girl wipe them several times in anger. Ye Jin smiled and said to the monk: "Let's talk about business! This time one of my business partners encountered some troubles, and they also asked many people to come over, but it didn't work. After thinking about it, I found that you are the only reliable one, so I called you over."
Monk Shi pointed his hand at me and said, "If you can't handle it, I guess I can't do anything about it either. But my brother is an expert, with his help, there will be no problem."
Ye Jin then looked towards me and said, "If Brother Wu can help me, I would be very grateful."
I said, "I haven't seen the business yet, so I can't say for sure whether I can take it. It would be embarrassing if I can't help."
"Brother, you are very honest. Let's eat quickly and then go to visit our employer's home." Ye Jinzhen rolled up the steak with a pancake and bit it with green onions. He finished everything on the plate in no time and dragged us out of the restaurant.
He dragged us into an off-road jeep before he spoke: "My friend and I were jointly developing a tourist attraction. Everything was going well, but when we dug a small temple, something went wrong."
"I was not at the site that day. My friend was directing the construction. She told me that the grab crane drove onto a small dirt slope at the entrance of a temple and just couldn't get up. Normally, a dirt bump more than a foot high should be flattened even if pressed hard. But as soon as the crawler of the grab crane pressed upward, it started to tilt to the side and couldn't get up no matter what, even after changing several drivers."
When I heard this, I couldn't help but interrupt and ask, "Where's the foreman?"
From ancient times to the present, wherever there is a large-scale construction project, there will always be a foreman. The foreman's job is not just to lead people to work. They also have to be able to understand some things. If they encounter anything serious, they have to stop it immediately, otherwise, they might offend some immortal.
Ye Jin said: "At that time, the team was led by an old foreman who was always quite steady in this regard. He even went to the bumpkin's place to check and said that there was something blocking us from continuing the construction, so we had to ask the immortal to come and send the gods away."
The "groundbreaking ceremony and sending off the gods" is actually a kind of reconciliation between the dead and the living. As long as both parties reach an agreement, it can be a matter of breaking ground a few days earlier or later. Generally speaking, there will not be too much conflict when sending off the gods.
It seems that Ye Jin's friend is doing things in a fairly conventional way.
Ye Jin said: "My friend, although he doesn't believe in this kind of thing, is not the kind of person who doesn't know his place. He even invited a great immortal to come and send the gods off. The ceremony was quite grand, and even three kinds of animals were used for sacrifice. However, the bumpkin still couldn't get over it. The great immortal they invited said that the true god in the temple didn't think the sacrifices were enough. A grand sacrifice had to be held."
"A grand sacrifice?" Monk Shi said sarcastically, "The three animals have been sacrificed, what else does he want? He has to kill a living person?"
There are two types of sacrificial offerings: Tailao and Shaolao. Tailao is for the emperor, and uses cattle, sheep, and pigs of uniform fur color; Shaolao is for the princes without cattle, and is generally used as a sacrifice. Next, chickens, pigs, and fish are used by the poor people as the three animals. To simplify it a little, the pig is replaced with a pig head.
Nowadays, in the Northeast, offering a pig's head, a whole chicken, or a whole fish is considered the three animals. Usually, three meat dishes, two vegetables, five home-cooked dishes, and three plates of steamed buns are considered the offerings, and large sacrifices are rare.
After listening to what Monk Shi said, Ye Jin also smiled bitterly: "That's exactly what happened! My friend's brother got furious at the time, and he stood at the temple gate and cursed on the street. He roughly meant that the person in the temple was shameless, you want a sacrifice, but I won't give you anything!"
"That guy really had a bad temper. After he finished scolding, he gave the workers more money without saying a word, and dug a trench from the outside of the mound to the bottom of the temple gate, saying that he wanted to install a gun underneath, and blew up the temple as well."
"As a result, when they dug under the temple gate, they suddenly dug out a tomb. At that time, the girl still didn't believe it, so she asked people to dig a few more times, and a stone coffin was dug out from the tomb."
"When the construction workers saw the stone coffin, no one dared to touch it, for fear of getting into trouble. Although the boy was shouting happily, he was stunned when he saw the stone coffin. He was so scared that he couldn't speak for a long time."
Monk Shi couldn't help but ask after hearing this: "Are you sure it's a stone coffin?"
Ancient people usually used wood to make coffins, even the emperor's coffins were the same. However, in addition to wood, there are two other types of coffins: stone coffins and copper coffins.
There are many different opinions about the use of stone coffins and bronze coffins.
Some people say that stone coffins are cheaper than wooden coffins, so only those who cannot afford wooden coffins will use stone coffins. Bronze coffins, on the other hand, are used to show nobility, so only noble people can use them.
However, this statement is not recognized by those who practice the art.
Speaking of cheapness, the labor for carving a stone coffin is not much cheaper than that for a wooden coffin. Moreover, in terms of value, golden nanmu is far superior to a copper coffin; in terms of nobility, the kings and princes can use silver or even gold to make coffins, so why must they use brass
The most widely circulated saying in Taoism is: stone coffins can suppress evil, while bronze coffins can suppress demons.
Wherever a stone coffin or a bronze coffin is dug out, bury it back where it was, and then ask a master of magic to suppress it again. Otherwise, there will be endless trouble.
This saying is also widely circulated in the Northeast, and it is understandable that those people were frightened by a stone coffin.
Ye Jin continued, "It was indeed a stone coffin. I saw it with my own eyes. When the kid saw the stone coffin, he got scared and didn't know what to do. He just stood beside the coffin and stared at it until someone touched him, and then he reacted."
"The boy wanted to leave, but he tripped and fell to the side. His hand hit the coffin, and the lid of the coffin snapped in half and fell to the ground. A cloud of black smoke came out of the coffin. All the people standing near the coffin were vomiting because of the smoke. When they had vomited enough, they fainted on the ground."
"My friend quickly organized a group of people to send them all to the hospital, but the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with them. Everyone thought it was the stench of the rotting corpse that was causing them to become sick."
"But after a few days, those people started to develop black spots on their bodies, left and right. Everyone was screaming in pain, including my friend's brother. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong with him, so he told him to stay in the hospital for observation."
"Some people said that this matter needs to be solved by a great celestial being. My friend did find a lot of people, but after seeing it, they all shook their heads and no one dared to get involved."
Ye Jin turned to look at Monk Shi who was sitting in the passenger seat: "I thought that since you are fearless, you might be able to do this job, so I brought you over."
Monk Shi turned around and asked, "Brother, can you take it?"
I shook my head: "Again, I dare not say anything about a business I haven't seen before."
"Then let's see first." Ye Jin said nothing more and pulled us to the manor in the suburbs: "That's my friend over there... Where do so many people come from outside?"
I looked in the direction of Ye Jin's finger, and saw hundreds of people gathered outside the gate of the manor. Some people in the front were carrying a stretcher, and some people in the back were holding white banners with red paint sayings like "Kill a life, pay a debt", "Return my relatives, return justice to me"...
I couldn't help but frowned: "What's going on?"
Ye Jin whispered: "I don't know, let's go and take a look..." (To be continued)