Chapter 14

Ning Wanzhu felt a little strange when she saw a charcoal stove was lit in the corner of the mountain hut.It is still autumn, and the weather is still warm. This Dujia village is a valley in the mountains, so it doesn't feel cold at all. I don't know why the people here light their stoves.

However, when Ning Wanzhu took a closer look, she found that beside the charcoal stove, there was a table lying horizontally. On the table was a row of tools neatly placed, and beside the tools, there were many small objects in a haphazard manner.

Ning Wanzhu climbed onto the chair, leaning on the table with her left hand, and picked up an object. It was a sandalwood grate. On the handle of the grate was a row of neat and elegant swastika patterns. It is brown in color, with lines everywhere, and the surface of the grate is slightly concave, which looks like a carved pattern, but it is not the same when you look closely.Except for this comb, most of the other objects on the table have this brown pattern.

"This, could this be..." Ning Wanzhu was taken aback, and looked up at the row of tools, only to see that the tools were long and short, iron needles of different thicknesses, and one end of the needle was inserted into the wooden in the handle.Ning Wan and Zhu Xin picked up a handle and looked at it carefully, only to see that the iron needle had obvious burn marks.She tried to fit a part of the iron needle to the pattern on the grate, and it seemed that the slightly blunt end of the iron needle just matched the slightly concave pattern on the surface of the grate.

Ning Wanzhu thought: Could this be the branding pen and ironing needle used in pyrography?She looked carefully at the row of tools, and saw a rather unique branding pen at the farthest end. The pen cap made of high-quality steel is not ordinary at first glance.She gently picked up the red sandalwood branding pen, and saw seven small characters branded on the pen-"Fang Duruo, a man from the mountains".

Although these seven small characters are branded on the wooden pen, they are still dignified and sharp.

However, after opening the brass cap of this branding pen, Ning Wanzhu saw that the dark red pen body and even the iron nib were stained with a dark brown mark, as if immersed in the pen body. Can't wipe it off.

"Who's in the house?"

An old voice sounded amidst the sound of rain.The door of the hut was swung open, and an old man in brown clothes with gray hair appeared at the door.It was the old man in brown that Ning Wanzhu had seen earlier when he passed this mountain pass.

"Old man, I'm really sorry. We were passing by to take shelter from the rain. We saw no one in the house and the door was not bolted, so we came in on our own initiative. Please forgive me, old man." Mo Mei's clear voice sounded.

At this time, Ning Wanzhu was still standing by the table in the corner of the room, holding the rosewood branding pen in her hand.When the old man saw her, he rushed to her and said mercilessly: "You girl, how can you mess with other people's things at will?"

Ning Wanzhu shyly jumped down from the chair and said, "Old man, it is indeed my fault that I moved your things. I just want to ask..."

She wanted to ask the old man in front of her if she knew the magic skill of pyrography.

It's just that she was frightened by the menacing look in the old man's eyes.The old man looked very old, dressed in brown cotton clothes, only dressed as a craftsman.He looked about sixty years old, with a slightly curved back, gray hair and beard, pale face, and wrinkles.However, the old man's gray beard was as hard as iron, and the halberds were stretched out, which immediately made his face look extremely rough.His slightly cloudy eyes were staring closely at Ning Wanzhu's face.Ning Wanzhu bit the bullet, and continued: "Grandpa, this..."

She put the cap of the branding pen back on, and held the pen up to the old man, wanting to ask if it was a tool for pyrography and how to use it.But before she could ask, the old man murmured: "Impossible, it can't be you, Ah Ruo..." Following her, she saw a big teardrop bursting out of the old man's eyes, Ning Wanzhu Frightened for a moment, he quickly changed into a girl's tone, and changed his tone: "Grandpa, if there is something unhappy in your heart, please tell me, maybe it will make you feel better."

The old man listened to Ning Wanzhu's words of comfort, but immediately turned his head away, trying to forcefully hold back the tears in his eyes.

Mo Mei saw the two talking here from a distance, and hurriedly leaned behind Ning Wanzhu, only to see that Ning Wanzhu was facing the old man, with a white and tender hand open, palm open, The branding pen was in the palm of her hand.

However, the old man suddenly wiped his face with his sleeve, changed a ferocious expression, and said, "Whose girl are you, why are you so uneducated! Get out, and you are not allowed to come back again!" As he spoke, he stretched out his hand and picked up Ning The collar behind Wanzhu's neck, like catching a chick, lifted her to the door, opened the door, and threw Ning Wanzhu into the rain without saying a word.

Mo Mei was taken aback when she saw this, fearing that her young lady would be hurt, she hurried to see her.She said loudly: "Crazy old man, this is the lady of my Ning family. If there is any damage, I will ask you!"

By this time the rain had eased a little and the sky had brightened.Ning Wanzhu turned over from the wet and thick fallen leaves. She was not injured at all, but unexpectedly, the branding pen was still in her hand. The old man seemed to have completely forgotten to take back what belonged to her from her hand .

Mo Mei came out and saw that Ning Wanzhu was fine up and down, left and right, and said angrily: "Miss, this weird old man is really rude, let's ignore him and go back to the cart."

Mo Mei said this very loudly, but the old man didn't seem to hear it at all, turned his back and went back to the house by himself, and closed the door with a "bang".

When Ning Wanzhu was still staring at the branding pen in her hand in a daze, Mo Mei had already pulled her back to the cart of Cao's family.Seeing the two of them coming out, the coachman of Cao's family said, "Miss Ning, the rain has lightened, and we can leave in a little while. The villain has already tidied up the carriage, but I'm afraid it's still a bit wet. Ning Take it easy, miss."

Ning Wan and Zhu Lian said "it's easy to say", and climbed into the cart, only to find that the driver had rolled up all the soaked mattresses in the cart compartment and piled them in a corner of the compartment, exposing the pine boards at the bottom of the compartment.And the coachman spread a layer of oil paper in advance, so that Ning Wanzhu and Mo Mei could sit on it without the danger of getting their clothes wet.Fortunately, since the rain was light, no new water droplets seeped in from the outside of the car.After waiting for a while, the cart can move forward.

When Ning Wanzhu returned to the Ning family's Zhuangzi, Momei Molan washed and changed her clothes.She hid the branding pen she brought out from the mysterious old man in her study, and then excused herself to practice calligraphy at night, lit the oil lamp, and pondered over the branding pen by herself.She pondered for a long time, and finally decided that she wanted to try it herself, whether she could draw a decent pyrography with that soldering pen.

On the second day, Ning Wanzhu found Mo Mei and asked her to go to Du's Village to find out what kind of person that strange old man she met yesterday was.Mo Mei took the order with a smile, probably she went to find Ning Dayong and Ning Xiaoya again.At noon, Mo Mei came to report back, saying that the strange old man was also surnamed Du, a carpenter in Du's Village, but he was withdrawn and didn't interact with others. A hut, living alone.

"So it's a carpenter!" Ning Wanzhu thought, no wonder there are so many wooden objects in the old man's house.It is not uncommon for a carpenter to pyrograph this craft.Because carpenters have the easiest access to materials for pyrography.

Mo Mei still felt a little resentful, and said to Ning Wanzhu: "Miss is still talking about what that man is doing, isn't he just a strange old man, an old carpenter? Our lady went to his house to flatter him."

Ning Wanzhu felt a little sad, thinking of the sadness and loneliness in the old man's eyes when he faced her.She recalled the old man's face again, and she couldn't help but feel a little familiar.Thinking of this, she did not respond to Mo Mei's words.If given the chance, she would really like to see the old man again and ask him why he was so sad when he saw her, and what kind of story was hidden behind that rosewood branding pen.

That night, Ning Wanzhu then locked herself in the room by herself on the pretext of copying "The Commandments for Women" and "The Rules for Women" in the study.

She had approached Ning Dayong in advance and asked him if he could find some large pieces of bark or cork for her.Ning Dayong quickly found the things she wanted, and polished the inside of the bark clean and smooth, wrapped it with a piece of green cloth, and handed it to Ning Wanzhu.Although Ning Dayong is usually reticent, he is serious and careful when he does things.Ning Wanzhu nodded secretly, thinking that Ning Dayong was a useful person.She thanked him solemnly, but Ning Dayong was just a dull boy, he couldn't say anything, he just turned around and left.

As for Ning Wanzhu, she took out a piece of bark and baked the red sandalwood iron on the oil lamp for a while. Seeing white smoke gradually coming out from the tip of the iron, she felt that the temperature was high enough, so she went to the tree. There was a scratch on the skin.

With a sound of "嗤——", there was indeed a brown mark on the inside of the bark, scratched on the inside of the milky yellow bark, which was extremely conspicuous.

Ning Wanzhu was overjoyed, but after the second stroke, the temperature on the tip of the branding pen was not so high, and the color of the iron was much lighter.Ning Wanzhu let out an "oh", and slowly began to feel the relationship between the temperature of the branding pen and the color of the painting.However, when the third stroke was made, there was a "chi" sound, and Ning Wanzhu screamed "Yeah". It turned out that when she fell this stroke, she was weak and weak, and the tip of the pen slipped, and she made a mistake all of a sudden.The painting that Ning Wanzhu had already drafted in her heart beforehand didn't look like that at all.

Ning Wanzhu smiled wryly for a moment, comforting herself that everything is difficult at the beginning.Right now, her only tool is this branding pen, and her materials are only a few pieces of tree bark.The only thing that can guide her in using the pen is the words "Fang Duruo, a man from the mountains" on the branding pen.

It took her all night to barely "draw" a simple look, and she was already so tired that her neck was sore.She soaked the branding pen in water, wiped it dry, and hid it in her copper pencil case.Only then did he blow out the oil lamp in the study and go back to sleep with Ye Momo.

(End of this chapter)

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