Fang's ancestral hall is no different from ordinary ancestral halls. There are many tablets enshrined in the ancestral hall. In front of each tablet is a small and delicate incense burner. There are incense candles and melon and fruit offerings on the table, and three futons are placed on the ground.
It can be seen that people often come to clean here, and every place is clean and there is no dust at all.
Shang Kui walked around the ancestral hall twice, and found everything he could find, but found nothing unusual.
He turned to look at the Fang clan chief next to him and asked about Fang Wujiu.
The answer he got was almost the same as what Fang Huai said.
After Fang Wujiu worshipped his parents here, he left and never saw him again.
No one knows where he went.
Wen Jiucheng asked, "Which two are the tablets of Fang Wujiu's parents?"
The Fang clan chief pointed to the two tablets in the lower right corner and said, "It's these two."
Wen Jiucheng stepped forward and stared at the two tablets for a while, but didn't see anything unusual.
He sighed, it seems that the senior brother did not leave any clues here.
With the mentality of coming here and not being able to come here in vain, Wen Jiucheng asked the Fang clan chief for three sticks of incense sticks.
He knelt on the futon and kowtowed three times to the tablets of Fang Wujiu's parents, to show his respect for his elders.
He stood up abruptly and inserted the incense sticks into the incense burner placed in front of the two tablets.
No one noticed that when he was putting incense, his movements stopped for a while.
After offering the incense, the group left the Fang's ancestral hall.
The Fang clan already knew that the affairs in Fang Wujiu's house were known by the county governor. They were afraid of harming themselves, so they hurriedly told everything they knew, and also spit out all the money that Fang Huai had bribed them.
As punishment, Jian Shujie doubled the Fang family's tax this year.
Double the tax, which means that the Fang clan will turn over all this year's harvest to the government.
Fortunately, the harvest in the first two years was not bad. Every household has surplus grain. With the surplus grain, they can barely survive the next year, and they will not be starved to death, but it is certain that the life of tightening their belts will be difficult.
At the warm invitation of Jian Shujie, Wen Jiucheng and Shang Kui went to the county governor's office.
They had a very sumptuous dinner in the Sheriff's House.
When he was full of food and drink, Shang Kui declined Jian Shujie's enthusiasm to retain him, and took a carriage back to the inn with Wen's Old City.
Because there was a lot of wine at the banquet, when Shang Kui returned to the inn, he was already drowsy.
But he still fought hard and called all Yulinwei over to ask them the results of their inquiries during the day.
After some inquiries by Yu Linwei, they learned that the old immortal lived in the view of freedom.
The Zizai Temple was originally just a little-known Taoist temple in Fufeng City. After the old immortal lived in, the incense there suddenly became vigorous.
Many people in the city will go to freely watch the old gods fortune-telling. It is said that the old gods' hexagrams are extremely accurate and can be called iron-clad.
Every day, he would do trigrams for free to others, and then he would have to collect money for others.
It is said that one hexagram of the old god requires at least several hundred taels of silver, and even a thousand taels of gold.
In addition to fortune-telling, the statues in Zizai View are also a major feature.
That deity was personally enlightened by the old god. As long as you invite it back and worship it devoutly, you can get what you want.
Of course, idols are not free. A idol costs at least 12 taels of silver. The better the workmanship, the more expensive the price.
Nowadays, almost every household in Fufeng City offers statues of gods, and the status of the old gods in their hearts is even more lofty.
After Shang Kui heard the report, he only felt that there were so many rich people in Fufeng City!
A Yulin Wei said: "The old god will explain the Taoism in the Taoist temple on the 15th day of every month. As long as the believers come to listen to the Taoism, they can have a free fasting meal in the Taoist temple that day. These two days of each month There are many people in the Taoist temple.”
Some people really want to listen to Taoism, and some people just want to eat a meal.
But no matter what the reason is, it can bring a lot of popularity to the view of freedom.
Wen Old City calculated the time, it happened to be the fifteenth tomorrow.
He said to Shang Kui.
"Tomorrow, we can mix in the crowd and enter the view of freedom, and see what kind of character the old immortal is?"
Shang Kui nodded and said yes.
After Wen Jiucheng returned to the guest room, he first read the book for a while, and when the night was completely dark and no one could hear the sound of people outside, he put down the book and blew out the candle.
But instead of going to bed, he woke Shang Kui, who lived in the next room.
Wen Jiucheng whispered a few words to him.
Then Shang Kui called two Yu Linwei and asked them to put on black night clothes to go out for two laps.
The two Yulinwei were at a loss.
But they wisely did not ask much, and did as the commander ordered.
As soon as the two Yulin guards left the inn on their front feet, two spies followed from the inn on their back feet.
This scene was seen by Shang Kui, a monk in the old city of Wen who was standing by the window of the guest room on the second floor.
Shang Kui cursed in a low voice.
"Sure enough, someone is staring at us in the dark!"
Wen Jiucheng whispered, "I want to go out, you have to help me divert all those spies away."
Shankui said it was fine.
Under his arrangement, the Yulin guards left the inn one by one.
Behind almost every Yulinwei, there will be a sneaky spy.
It was not until the seventh Yulinwei left the inn that there were no spies behind him.
To be on the safe side, Shang Kui sent two more Yulin guards out. After making sure that there were no spies to follow, Wen Jiucheng changed into dark clothes and left the inn.
He used Qinggong to walk through the night and came to the door of Fang's ancestral hall as quickly as possible.
The door is locked.
Wen Jiucheng took out an iron wire from his sleeve, shoved it into the keyhole, turned it twice, and with a click, the copper lock opened.
He opened the door and walked in slowly.
In the dark night, the densely packed tablets looked particularly infiltrating.
Wen Old City went straight to the tablet of Fang Wujiu's parents.
He picked up the small incense burner placed in front of the tablet. The incense burner was filled with incense ashes, and three incense sticks that had already been burned were inserted into the incense ashes.
Wen Jiucheng reached out into the incense burner, flipped his fingers inside the incense ash twice, and when he pulled it out, there was already a folded note between his index and middle fingers.
When offering incense to Fang Wujiu's parents this afternoon, Wen Jiucheng noticed that something was hidden in the incense burner.
He guessed that it might be a clue left by the senior brother,
But he was afraid that it was not safe around him, so he didn't say anything at the time and left as if nothing was wrong.
It wasn't until he was sure that no one was following him that Wen Jiucheng dared to come out and take out the things hidden in the incense burner.
…
Good morning everyone~