stubborn thief

Chapter 11 Tree Fairy Temple

Liu Chengzong was standing on the side of the road watching Li Hongji go.

The man from the northwest was full of food and drink, with broad shoulders and a whistle stick, riding the overwhelmed little donkey, roaring the old tune of Qin Qi, and disappeared into the desolate ancient road full of yellow sand.

Perhaps it was because Liu Chengzong knew what this person did in the future, so he had an extraordinary sense of ritual for this scene.

In fact, he knew that Li Hongji was just staring at him, and he would borrow a usury loan that would never be repaid, even if he was shameless.

The frontier army also set off not long after Li Hongji left, and he was the last one to keep up with the team in order to call back the wine shop shopkeeper.

They have military law, no one eats the wine from the liquor store, but they use a lot of firewood, and the shopkeeper's lame appearance doesn't look like his son is helping to chop wood.

The surplus five catties of mutton were all left to the shopkeeper.

Firewood is not expensive, nor is it worth five catties of meat, but it is not a matter of whether it is expensive or not.

At least in Liu Chengzong's eyes, this is also a ceremony.

With this ceremony, they are soldiers; without this ceremony, they are bandits.

Unfortunately, in the end, Liu Chengzong didn't see what happened to the baby girl in the shopkeeper's house.

When the border army passed Mizhi, he didn't meet Li Hongji on the official road. Liu Chengzong guessed that he was still borrowing money from Aijuren's mansion.

Later on the road, he thought about this man over and over in his mind.

He felt that even if he, his brother, and Cao Yao were born in a better era, it would be difficult for them to live a stable life. They would either be officials, generals, or they would still choose to be bandits.

All are risky jobs.

But if Li Hongji is placed in a better era, he may really be able to live his life as an ordinary person.

It is a pity that the turbulent times are coming. In the face of the famine, war and plague sweeping the world, anyone will be crushed into a pool of flesh and bones, smearing the country.

From the back to the south, there are even more difficult mountain roads to walk. In the evening, passing Mizhi to Suide, the frontier soldiers thought that there was mutton to eat at night, so they raised fire and walked for a while.

Unlike the night after 400 years in memory, there is no light pollution in this era. Everyone seems to have night blindness. Some people really have it, and some people have difficulty seeing even without night.

Fortunately, there were still torches to illuminate them, so they passed Wuding River to Huaining River, and walked for more than 20 miles towards Qingjian.

Who would have thought that after walking through Suide, they could not find a place to stay for a long time. It was not until the second watch that the hungry frontier soldiers finally found a dilapidated Shuxian Temple at the foot of Guandao Mountain.

Shuxian is the companion god of folk beliefs in northern Shaanxi. It has a similar meaning to the Foxxian Temple. The earliest is to build a temple for a thousand-year-old tree and kneel to worship.

People believe that these gods have abilities far beyond their duties, and they usually worship whichever is closest.

As for folk beliefs, generally the poorer and more isolated places are, the more they believe, but this has nothing to do with poverty or isolation itself, mainly because people born in these places are more likely to encounter problems that are difficult to solve.

There are fewer solutions that can be taken, and there is really no way but to rely on external things for psychological comfort.

It doesn't matter whether you are in good spirits or not, and if you want to be chaotic, no matter what your appeal is, you often have to do things in a temple.

This is busy destroying the spirits of the basic townships and villages in Daming.

Solving the most problems with the smallest organization is a difficult problem in any era.

To solve this problem, there are often three religious nunneries in larger temples in northern Shaanxi.

The so-called Sanjiao Nunnery means that there are bodhisattvas in the temple, gods in the temple, and sitting Buddhas in the contemplation.

It is normal to ask the goddess to send a son to get a bumper harvest, to seek medical treatment from the master, and to ask the emperor to send his son.

The ecosystem of the Internet age and the logic of trying to catch all the sheep to death are nothing new.

As early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Shaanxi religious circles had already implemented this matter.

As for these small temples that lack incense in the barren mountains and mountains, they are more resourceful and have a wide range of businesses. Basically, to the surrounding people, the old tree in this temple is an omnipotent and almighty fairy.

Shu Daxian's cave house is also a three-religion nunnery.

I don't know what year and month of ink was left on the west wall of the courtyard. Liu Chengzong lit a torch and illuminated it, and he saw that it was written: Night dreams are ominous, written on the west wall, when the sun shines, it turns into auspiciousness.

Seeing him laughing straight, he thought that it would be auspicious for night dreams, so there was no need to write it on the west wall.

This made him feel a lot of belonging to another memory - 400 years of vicissitudes, the left eye twitches to make a fortune, and the right eye twitches to fuck your mother's feudal superstition.

The ancestral spirit is still the same.

The boiled mutton is very fragrant in the pot, and the large chunks of coarse salt are sprinkled on it, and nothing else is put in. The smell also makes Xiao Zhanfeng look up and squinting, stretched his long legs and trailed the smell toward the cauldron. Sniffing while walking.

Even Mei Dianmei stopped, and when there was food to eat, even if it was released from the cage, it would not run around, and dozed off on the cowhide boots on Liu Chengzong's feet, very well-behaved.

After traveling all day, the frontier soldiers were very tired. Except for the fire soldiers who had to set fire to cook, the others leaned against the wall and didn't want to move.

A few clean-lovers took off their helmets and towel, sat next to the bonfire and discussed how to get some sulphur powder to take a bath.

In the Shuxian Temple, the elder brother and Cao Yao set torches to draw the terrain, while Tian Shoujing and Gao Xian each led three or five subordinates to go around outside the temple and dig traps outside the courtyard walls.

At this time, Liu Chengzong was very idle. Everyone else was in the smallest military unit, but he was not attached, and he only had food and no work.

Cheng Ri was wearing a knife and arrows, and let the red flag carry the armor.

I originally thought that I had a warhorse anyway, so I could go out hunting when I was marching, and I would also be able to subsidize the team to eat. Who ever thought that the Yuhe Fort was [-] miles in diameter. There is a place for him to hunt.

What's more, the further south you go, the more chaotic you are, and the less you dare to leave the army.

At this time, Liu Chengzong sat down on the steps of the main entrance of Shuxian Temple, holding the book "Jin Ping Mei" to make paper, and drew the map in his memory on the pages of the book with charcoal in his hand.

This book is Liu Chengzong's favorite thing, or he entrusted the South to the merchants when Mizhi was practicing martial arts with the yamen. The banned book is amazing.

The pages were nearly ripping him through.

As for the charcoal pen in his hand, it is not a novelty. He used a used pencil stick with charcoal to make do with it. Hard pens have always been available in ancient times, but they are not elegant and cannot be used on the table.

They are only forty miles away from Qingjian, which is why they have to dig traps outside the courtyard wall at the Shuxian Temple at night. Qingjian is almost the birthplace of the rebel army in northern Shaanxi. There used to be many thieves, but now these thieves became rebels.

Only Liu Chengzong can call the name, the king of the word, Guo Tianxing, Hun Tianxing, the eight kings and others, all of them are from Qingjian.

The names of this group of people are better than others. The reason for not using their real names is simply to hide their identities. Either they used to be border soldiers, or they were from local surnames, and they all became bandits in this mountainous area one after another.

Back to Yan'an's hometown, only a hundred miles away.

Note:
Pencil - ancient name lead, a tool for writing words.Lead, lead powder; cocklebur, wood chips.

Han Dynasty "Xijing Miscellaneous Notes" Volume [-]: Yangzi said good things, always cherished lead and raised cassava, followed various officials, and visited the four corners of Shufang.

(End of this chapter)