I am born with insufficiency

Chapter 43
Today's funeral is for the 16-year-old girl Xiuxiu, who fell into the lotus pond and drowned two days ago. Ling An went to her home to inquire, and indeed it only cost half a penny.

It's just that the family was annoyed by Ling An's questioning, so they picked up a sugarcane and beat it, but Sun Xiaokong didn't get hit.

"Half money? It's not enough to buy a coffin. You can't take care of everything. Last time, you took a tael of silver from Mr. Zhang Dashan for the treasure of the store that was soaked in seawater."

Hua rang the bell and yelled, and then thought, "Uh, if it's a paper coffin, it's pretty much the same... But, only half the money is charged, and it takes so much effort, and it's like beating flags and throwing paper money to dance to the gods, how can it be counted?" It's also a loss-making business, what are they planning?"

"Yi Xiaosheng thinks, as long as you spend a small five hundred Wen, you can get rid of the deceased, and you don't have to worry about the funeral. Most people are still happy. In this way, the women's business can continue, and the accumulation Less is more." Chen Chuzhi said.

At this time, the shopkeeper also interjected: "That's right, business is pretty good."

The store owner counted on his fingers: "I won't talk about it if it's a long time, just this month. The second daughter of the Li family in the south of the city is 16 years old. She had a quarrel with her parents and she couldn't think about hanging herself that day." I made her mother cry and passed out several times."

"The eldest daughter of the Zhang family in the east of the city was 14 years old. She went to the mountain to collect nectar, but was stung by a wasp. Her parents were reluctant to spend money on medicine for her. After two days of pain, she died."

"There is also a new daughter-in-law from the east of the city who just entered the house of Ma Xiucai. The young couple are loving and loving. That day when Xiucai was studying, the new daughter-in-law was doing needlework with her son in her arms. Do you think it's strange? Do it well." She fell down, and the big scissors in the betel bag flew up and pierced into her chest impartially, and she lost her breath on the spot. Ma Xiucai cried so hard that people looked at it strangely. Distressed."

"Oh, it's a pity that they are all young girls' homes, so they just disappeared."

The more Gu Buquan listened, the more he felt a chill down his back, and there was a familiar smell.

It is the same as Liming Qianzhuang.

"Only pick up young women, business is pretty good..."

Gu Buquan was muttering, and met Ling An's eyes, obviously, he also had deep doubts about it.

In the year since Butterfly Dream Village appeared, how many young women died in the city?
After a long period of silence, Ling An finally spoke: "There are people in the beheading business, but no one in the loss-making business."

Naturally, Hua Rattle couldn't understand, so he raised his eyes to look at Gu Buquan.

Gu Buquan nodded: "What the idiot said is true. The so-called businessmen can't get up early without profit. People have to eat and wear clothes. No matter what line of work they do, they are all rushing to make a profit. However, this Diemeng Village is so labor-intensive. If you don’t make a profit, you will lose money, so it can be seen that the profit is not in the funeral, but in other things.”

Hua rattles the bell and shakes his head: "If you're not in the funeral, are you making money for the dead?"

Ling An heard that and suddenly slapped his head and stood up: "The paper coffin was burned, and there is no dead body."

But he quickly sat down, took a look at Gu Buquan, and said nothing.

Hua Yaoling also quietly glanced at Gu Buquan, but said nothing.

After a long time, Gu Buquan raised his head, looked at the two of them, and whispered, "Lift the grave."

Lifting the grave was a thorn in Gu Buquan's heart. I can still vividly remember the scene when Master's grave was opened not long ago, but it also revealed the secret of Master Jin Chan's escape.

It seems that this is the only way to uncover the secrets of Diemengzhuang.

Only Chen Chuzhi was puzzled: "Dare to ask you, what do you mean?"

"Dig the grave, don't you understand human language?"

After Hua Yingling finished speaking, she quickly covered her mouth and looked around. Fortunately, the shop owner was busy soliciting business, and no one cared about them.

She breathed a sigh of relief, but she couldn't stop muttering in her heart, should she follow Gu Buquan and the idiot to dig the grave, or stay with the poor scholar in the inn?
At the beginning of the night, the bustling night of Fuzhou City was filled with a little disturbing fog, but the people in the city didn't notice anything wrong. Occasionally, there were a few cries from the family who lost their daughter, but they were soon overwhelmed by silk and bamboo wind music. The sound drowned out.

Before Chen Chuzhi met Gu Buquan's "group of people", he never imagined that he, a scholar who has read sage books, followed the three of them, a monkey and a turtle, and waited until midnight in the wasteland outside the city. , Then sneak into the cemetery by feeling the blackness, and dig the grave!

What made him even more unexpected was that when a pit was dug, there was no corpse in the grave!

Digging again, still no corpse.

"It's unbelievable, it's just unbelievable."

Looking at the big empty pit, Chen Chuzhi was so startled that he sat down on the ground and gasped for breath.

"What's so good about being a scholar? They're poor and cowardly, and they're afraid of corpses even if they don't exist. In my opinion, even if you become a high-ranking official in Spring Examination High School, you won't be able to do anything great."

Seeing Chen Chuzhi's terrified and helpless appearance, Hua Yaoling looked down upon him even more, intending to scare him.

"My lord, the place where you sit is a cemetery."

Chen Chuzhi immediately got up with a grunt, patted the coarse clothes again and again, and kept muttering: "Amitabha, the ghosts and gods in the four directions can't see me, can't see me."

While thinking, he retreated away from the grave, hid behind a big tree, and stretched his head to look around.

Gu Buquan blew on the torch in his hand, flickering like a will-o'-the-wisp, which frightened him into shivering.

Hua Yingling laughed until the flowers and branches trembled. Looking back at the pit, she couldn't help shivering.

"Could it be that they hide the dead body and make another yin marriage?"

Hua Yingling's argument is not unreasonable. In Maple Leaf Town, there is also a custom of yin marriage. When a young unmarried man dies, his family is afraid that he will be lonely in the underworld, so they will try to match him with a yin marriage. This requires the woman's corpse To bury it together, if the other party is a young and beautiful woman, it will cost more money than a marriage of a living person.

Could it be that Diemeng Zhuang earns money for yin marriages?
"However, you can't hide the fact that you have a yin marriage." Gu Buquan shook his head.

Whenever there is a family with a yin marriage, it is also very solemn to give a betrothal gift to the female family. The marriage is handled in the same way as a living person. It is nothing more than to tell people that the dead man is not a lonely ghost. There are also wives in the underworld.

For the woman, it is a good thing that the dead daughter has a home and can receive a gift money.

Therefore, Diemeng Zhuang can earn this money in an open and honest manner, there is no need to be sneaky at all, and both men and women should give them thank you gifts.

"But where did the corpse go? Why did they do this?" Facing an empty tomb, Gu Buquan couldn't figure it out, just like facing the empty tomb of Master, only feeling that his eyes were shrouded in a cloud of mist .

"If something goes wrong, there must be a demon." Ling An used a wooden stick to pull the soil scraper back into the pit, and said, "It's time to stay."

Hua Rattle was taken aback, looked around and felt goosebumps all over her body: "Live here? I don't!"

"What he means is to stay in Fuzhou City for a few days and meet the beauties of Diemengzhuang." Gu Buquan still couldn't help touching his increasingly thin silver bag, after all, he lacked confidence.

Just before she could figure out how to get the money out of the flower rattle bag, twelve "beauties" suddenly descended from the sky and surrounded them.

"Where did the bold robbers come from, how dare they dig graves at night! Do you know that this is Ling Chi's crime?" The leader, the woman who called Mengdie, walked towards them, pointing her sword at Ling An.

As if Ling An didn't hear it, he used wooden sticks to fill half of the soil before, but now he dug it up bit by bit.

A woman next to Mengdie held a sword and yelled at him coquettishly: "If you don't stop, what are you digging for?"

Ling An didn't raise his hand and didn't stop, and replied in a muffled voice: "Digging treasure."

Gu Buquan suddenly understood Ling An's intentions, and pretended to be mysterious: "Hush, keep your voice down, don't startle my thousand-year-old ginseng."

The woman was furious, "Kuye dug the grave and stole the buried treasures. We have caught them on the spot, and they will be captured immediately!"

Gu Buquan smiled and said: "This sister is joking, may I ask if there is a tomb or a stele here? What I dug at night is a thousand-year-old ginseng. How can there be a grave robbery?"

"That's right, what I'm digging up is only a thousand-year-old ginseng. What does it have to do with you waiting for the funeral? If you startle our baby, you pay for it? One or two people can get a thousand taels of silver." Hua Rattle finally became smart again. , with one hand on hips and one slender finger almost poked the tip of the woman's nose.

The woman was stopped by the question, so she had to look at Mengdie, who had a sneer on Mengdie's beautiful face.

"You two women are quite weird, I like it."

Before Gu Buquan could react, he saw a puff of white smoke rising in front of his eyes, smelled a familiar faint fragrance, and said "No", he collapsed powerlessly to the ground together with the flower rattle.

Immediately afterwards, Ling An dropped the wooden stick in his hand and also fell down.

"Take it away." Mengdie ordered coldly,
"Elder Sister, these two girls are just enough to make up for it. But what is this man doing with him? Why don't you just beat him to death and bury him in the pit."

Mengdie glanced at the woman: "This person has some kung fu, first take him back to ask about his origin, and wait for the master to decide whether to keep him alive or not."

"Yes." The woman hurriedly stepped back and waved her hand, and the women carried the three of them away like a coffin.

Watching the woman's figure gradually disappear into the night, Chen Chuzhi came out from behind the big tree tremblingly, let out a long breath, clasped his palms together and said: "Amitabha."

He ran away.

(End of this chapter)