Paper horse incense shop

Chapter 11 Guilty Conscience
  My second uncle and I stood in front of Zhu's house and looked at each other for half an hour.

After a long while, I bit the bullet and asked:

"Second uncle, you didn't write the words 'Let Xie Jinhua and Zhu Daqian renew their relationship' into the deed, right?"

"Can not remember."

The second uncle raised his eyes to the sky, and after a long while, under my gaze, he replied in a low voice:
  ".It seems to have been written."

I turned around and left, but my second uncle quickly grabbed me:
  "A'Bai, A'Bai, I'm a white baby——! Look, we're all here, so let's go in and take a look first."

"Maybe there is a one-ten-thousandth chance of a change?"

The corners of my mouth twitched:
  "We are already married, and our children and grandchildren are all over the place. How can we turn around?"

"He also said that the relationship between two people is stronger than gold. If you don't marry each other, you would rather be a widow for the rest of your life."

"Isn't this coaxing me instead of coaxing children?!"

The second uncle quickly grabbed me:
  "Calm down, you are here, but you still have to go in and take a look. What if there is something hidden? At that time, filial piety was very important. Parents did not want their children to be alone for a lifetime, and it was common for them to be forced to get married. What could be possible? It’s hard to say what the reason is.”

I nodded repeatedly:
  "Yes, not only are they forced to get married, but they are also forced to have children. There are many of them in a lifetime!"

The words were harsh to say, but I still entered the house with my second uncle.

Zhu Daqian's home is actually very magnificent, with high walls and green tiles connected to form a quadrangle with two entrances and two exits. It has just rained, and water flows from the dragon's spine and flows into the patio.

Let alone a small rural village like ours, even in a big city it is the kind of beautiful scenery that can make people’s eyes brighten.

I looked around a few more times until my second uncle found someone, asked where the ancestors of the family were, and brought some things to visit.

Of course we can't say that we are here to ask about Zhu Daqian's past love affairs, but we are just here to give something away in the name of visiting the elderly in the village.

The middle-aged man opposite the second uncle is forty or fifty years old. I heard that he is Zhu Daqian's youngest son.

He spat first, took the things, and pointed randomly towards the side room behind him.

I watched the man throw the things brought by my second uncle on the ground, and I felt very uncomfortable, but my second uncle held my hand and walked away quickly.

The house where Zhu Daqian lived was naturally the main house, which was the brightest place in the whole courtyard. When my second uncle and I walked in, Zhu Daqian was leaning on the bedside, trembling non-stop, as if he wanted to stand up.

His beard and hair were all white, and he was as thin as a bamboo pole. There were large age spots on his face, hands, and body, and his eye sockets were sunken. It was obvious that his days were numbered in the true sense.

The whole house was filled with an indescribable smell. The smell of feces and urine was mixed with the smell of sweat, and there was even the smell of some food. Just one breath was enough to make your eyes smoke.

How could I bear this? I quickly opened the door to the main room for ventilation.

The second uncle stepped forward to say hello and said a few casual remarks. Although the other party looked old and spoke slowly, the regulations were still clear.

So the second uncle went straight to the point and said:
  "Brother Zhu knows a woman named Xie Jinhua?"

As soon as he said this, Zhu Daqian's eyes widened in disbelief, then he stretched out his thin eagle-claw-like hand, grabbed his second uncle's hand, and kept murmuring:
  "Golden Flower. Golden Flower"

"You guys, how do you know Jinhua? My Jinhua, my Jinhua."

As soon as I saw something was going on, I quickly pulled out the manuscript I had just typed up on the road and asked:
  "Grandpa Zhu, who does this golden flower belong to you?"

"Do you two like each other? We are moving graves in the village these days, and we accidentally dug up Xie Jinhua's grave, so we found it. If you are willing, how about taking the bones back and burying them together?" This is me I discussed the manuscript with my second uncle on the road and buried it together. I reluctantly agreed to the statement "renew the relationship" written in the deed.

The old man had a look of recollection on his face, his chest was rising and falling, and finally he tilted his head and fell back onto the bed:
  "Okay, okay, okay!"

"I have been thinking about her for so many years."

"You don't know, we were both seventeen or eighteen, and she was beautiful and capable. We had been dating for almost two years, but my parents didn't agree and forced me to marry the eldest lady who owns a soy sauce shop in the town!"

"Jinhua was already pregnant at that time. We couldn't stand the arrangements of our elders, so we immediately wrote letters and agreed to elope. Unexpectedly, when Jinhua passed by a mass grave, the road was slippery on a rainy day and she fell. She fell down inside the cemetery. It’s difficult to give birth.”

Zhu Daqian's eyes were filled with turbid tears that did not fall for a long time:

"When I arrive, there will be one dead and two dead. I hate it!"

I was a little moved when I heard it, but when I calmed down and thought about it, I felt something was wrong.

When I saw my second uncle's half-smiling eyes, I suddenly felt bad.

Sure enough, the next second, the second uncle raised his voice and said:
  "Since Brother Zhu said this, I have some confidence in my heart."

"To be honest, the two of us were actually entrusted by Xie Jinhua to do the Zhonggui matter. Listen to her and come to find out what you mean."

"Since you still think about her, I'll call her here."

Before the second uncle finished speaking, he saw Zhu Daqian's eyes widening, and his whole old and skinny face was trembling:
  ".You, she, why did you listen to her and come to me?"

My second uncle and I looked at each other, turned around and went back to the village. We found our shop, grabbed the ugly paper man and ran away.

I am young and fast on my feet. In less than an hour, I arrived at Zhu’s house with an ugly paper figure. Before I even entered the door, I heard Zhu Daqian fidgeting:
  "You can't, right? What kind of gods or ghosts are there?! Hey, I understand, you dug Xie Jinhua's grave and opened your mouth to ask for money, right?"

"Brother, I'm not talking about you. How can you say that you are a very old man, and you still bring your own children to cheat? I will leave these words here today. Even if Xie Jinhua comes, you two can't get it. A penny."

When I arrived, I vaguely talked to Xie Jinhua about the Zhu family. When I heard this, the paper man in my arms struggled to break free and threw himself through the door crying:

"Brother Zhu! How can you get married?!"

"Didn't you love to call people Huahua the most? How can you now call them names?!"

The moment the ugly paper man threw himself through the door, I heard the sound of heavy objects falling to the ground. When I entered the door, Zhu Daqian was already lying on the ground shaking like chaff:
  "There are ghosts! There are ghosts!"

"Help! There is a ghost! The female ghost has faked the corpse!!!"

Zhu Daqian waved the crutch in his hand crazily to drive away the ugly paper man trying to get closer.

The force of waving the crutch was obviously not small, and he looked completely different from the one who was lying on the bed dying.

Many things in the house were knocked to the ground by him, making a series of unrelenting sounds and movements.

Xie Jinhua repeated in disbelief:
  "Brother Zhu, it's me, Jinhua!"

Zhu Daqian's voice was almost on the verge of collapse:
  "Get out! Get out! Every injustice has its owner! Don't come here to sideline me!"

(End of this chapter)