After Xiao Mo left, Chiba only rested for a few minutes before continuing to search. Along the way, I met several local residents, took out sketches and asked them, but they all shook their heads and expressed ignorance.

It seems to be in the wrong place.

It was past dinner, and despite the rumbling of her stomach, she still didn't stop. After walking around the ancient town again, she turned back to Xiao Mo's house, and was just about to go in to rest and drink saliva, when she suddenly heard the sound of "Bang Bang Bang" under the river on the side.

Following the prestige, a gray-haired old woman was squatting at the water's edge and beating her clothes, a very primitive way of washing clothes, and she walked over curiously.

The old woman was thin, and she kept beating with a wooden stick, and her movements were very skillful. But because the river bank was slippery, half of her feet were soaked in the water, and her body was trembling, which looked very dangerous.

"Be careful!" Chiba walked down quickly and grabbed the old woman in her arms.

The old woman had a kind face that can only be seen in a picture scroll—a pair of dark and shiny eyes embedded in the deep sunken eye sockets, and the deep wrinkles on the forehead are the confirmation of weather. The most important thing is that although she is old, she still has a pair of pear vortex when she laughs, showing warm vitality on the shriveled skin texture, and she must have been a beautiful woman when she was young.

"Grandma, it's dangerous for you to wash clothes here alone, let me help you."

"It's okay, I've washed my clothes all my life, and the river is good to me, never scaring me." The old woman said happily.

"These things should still be done by young people, and it would be a shame if there was a mistake at your age." Chiba rolled up his sleeves and helped her ashore, and then picked up the mallet of the laundry, and knocked it up with a clear eye, "You take a break, I'll come." ”

The old woman no longer refused, and was very pleased to see her turn over and over a few pieces of clothing, and wash them in the water.

Afterwards, Chiba washed the bucket and put the clothes in.

"Where do you live, I'll help you bring it back?"

The old woman kept smiling, pointed to an old tiled house not far away, and led her over.

The two folio wooden doors have rotted out of the pitted grooves, and the rusty knockers are hung with old-fashioned copper locks. Hearing someone push the door, a fat cat jumped up the wall and looked down at the owner and visitors from above.

The road into the house was covered with moss on both sides, and Chiba couldn't help but worry for the old woman, if such an elderly person accidentally slipped, the consequences would be unimaginable.

The old woman leaned against the wall and stepped into the back room, and brought out a knee-high stool and invited her to sit down. Then, she grabbed two more Wen Xian Fruits from the table and stuffed them into her hands.

"Eat this."

She thanked her, put the fruit in her pocket, and took out the roll of the sketch from her bag, and spread it out in front of the old woman.

"Grandma, can you help me see if this bridge is from you?"

The old woman held up the painting and looked at it from far and near.

"Yes." She said very firmly.

This voice rekindled the belief that Chiba was about to cool, and his heart was immediately surging.

"Are you sure?"

"How can I be sure, this is the old bridge." The corners of the old woman's mouth curled up couldn't hide her nostalgia for the past, "It's still beautiful as before, and the ones made now are simply nondescript." ”

"Ponte Vecchio?"

"Yes, most of the bridges in the town used to be of this style, but one year when the officials renovated them, the beautiful bridges all changed. Nowadays, there is no earth, no one has the scenery of the past. Tell me, isn't this one better? The old woman said as she touched the bridge in the sketch.

"Yes, it's much better looking than it is now." Chiba hurriedly passed over, and then asked, "But other water towns also have bridges of this style, how can you conclude that it must be Qingshui Town?" ”

"Look at the pillar, with buds on it. Other places are either Yanglian or Covered Lotus, but we use budding lotus in Qingshui Town. ”

After listening to the old woman's explanation, she looked at the sketch carefully and was stunned. I was surprised that the painting looked like poor workmanship on the surface, but the details were so finely outlined that I had never noticed it before. The second frightened old woman is still deaf and clear at such an advanced age, and the most inconspicuous place can not only be seen clearly, but also immediately matched with the past.

"Then can you help me see where this bridge is?"

"I'll see." The old woman held up the sketch again, looked at it again, and for a while, smacked the shriveled mouth, and said, "It should be the Flat Leaf Bridge...... Look, doesn't it look like a flat leaf? ”

Sure enough, the bridge on the paper looked like a willow leaf lying across the river from a distance.

The old woman pointed to the house on the other side of the bridge and said, "Yes, it is the Flat Leaf Bridge, which is the courtyard of the goldsmith Liu." ”

Chiba was so excited that she almost shouted! With the clues of the bridge, and the clues of the buildings, the hidden message of the sketch is about to come out.

"Where's Goldsmith Liu's house? Where is he? ”

The old woman pursed her lips and shook her head: "The bridge has changed, the house has been demolished, and you can only wait a few more years to find Liu Jinjiang." ”

"How many more years?"

"Yes, I'll go down in a few more years and see if I can meet them." The old woman joked.

"He's dead?"

"I've been dead for years."

"Are you familiar with him?"

"Who in the town didn't know him back then, and he was a well-known gold master. It's not that others can't do it, but because he has excellent skills and unique ingenuity, and there is no one to beat from Tuolan Mountain to Tuolan Mountain, so he is famous. The gold ornaments he made were different and lifelike, and he couldn't pick a second one within a hundred miles. ”

An object suddenly flashed through Chiba's mind.

"Can you tell me his story?"

"He was a low-key man, he didn't deal much with people, he was only focused on gold, and he didn't care about anything else. But he is such a person who has no quarrel with the world, and God doesn't seem to treat him very much. ”

"Why?"

"The two children died young." The old woman said with a sad look, and Chiba couldn't help but hold her hand.

"What kind of gold jewelry does he wear?"

"There are too many, flying in the sky and running underground, the sun, moon and stars, pigs, dogs, cows and sheep, no he won't. From ordinary people to officials, who have a married daughter and a wife's birthday, they all come to him to make jewelry. ”

Unable to suppress the restlessness in his heart any longer, Chiba opened the bag and rummaged for a while, and finally took out the cosmos brooch.

"Grandma, can you see if he did this?"

The old woman took it and looked at it several times, shaking her head and nodding her head.

"Like his craft, but it's definitely not his work, maybe it's an apprentice who did it."

"He has apprentices?"

"Well, there's more than one. Because the child was gone, it was a pity that there was no successor to his skills, so he simply recruited some apprentices outside and passed on the skills. Yes, this thing must have been made by his apprentice, yes. The old woman looked at the brooch again, and said with great certainty.

"Why are you so sure he didn't do it?"

"When he was younger, he also made flower and plant shapes, and I was fortunate enough to see it, and the style is very similar to this, but the skill is much higher. Later, he killed and stopped doing anything flowery, so this thing must not have been made by him. ”

"Why didn't you do it later?"

"His wife has the word 'flower' in her name, and then ran away with other men, and took away half of his life savings, so he was taboo and no longer made things shaped by flowers and plants. But his female apprentices liked this kind of stuff, so I guess they mostly made it. ”

"He's taking in a female apprentice?"

"Well, my daughter studied there for a while. I loved it when she did it, and I understood a little bit when I looked at the doorway inside, so if you show me this thing, I can recognize it at a glance. ”

The old woman's extraordinary observation really impressed Chiba, but Liu Jinjiang and her female apprentices were all mysterious, which made her even more curious.

"Wait......" The old woman turned and walked into the house, and for a long time she found an old photograph and handed it to her.

When I took it, it was a black-and-white photograph of a dozen young girls standing in two rows, their faces full of confidence and triumph. They all have smiling faces, but their movements are different, as if they are showing something. On closer inspection, she found that most of them had a shiny thing in their hands, presumably gold jewelry.

"This is my daughter, married to a foreigner." The old woman pointed to a young girl on the far left in the front row, her face full of pride, "I gave birth to her in my forties, and I almost had a difficult birth." ”

It is not difficult to find that these women are all Guerlain and beautiful, and Xizi's figure is stunning.

"Why does he only accept female apprentices?"

The old woman smiled: "He also took in a few male apprentices in the past, and he treated each other sincerely and taught them with all his heart, but he didn't expect that one of them was the one who kidnapped his wife in the end." ”

"I see."

"These girls are no worse than boys, I think they were the twelve golden flowers of Qingshui Town back then."

"Twelve Golden Flower ......" Chiba subconsciously counted on the photo, no more, no less, exactly twelve people.

And in an instant, she fixed her eyes on a woman on the right side of the back row, whose face was half covered, her hair stood on end, her hands kept shaking, and the photo was also trembling - the woman was none other than her mother Mo Lianzhi!

"Grandma, do you know her?" She asked the old woman questions in a trembling voice, an indescribable tension enveloping her body.

"This girl......" the old woman closed her eyes and pondered for a moment, then finally shook her head, "I don't remember." ”

"Is the other person in the photo still in town?"

"How can a small place like Qingshui Town hold these children, and they have already gone out to the world."

"Where's your daughter, I want to see her!"

The old woman looked confused, startled by her sudden reaction.

"What are you looking for her?"

"I have something very important to ask her, this ......" her finger pointed to Mo Lianzhi in the photo like an electric shock, "This person is my mother!" For a moment she cried.

The old woman was also amazed, and took her hand and kept stroking it.

"It turns out that your mother also worked as an apprentice at Liu Goldsmith, so you can also be regarded as a child of our Qingshui Town."

"Well, I want to meet your daughter and ask her something about my mother."

"It's not easy, she married to the United States."

"Is there a phone number for her?"

The old woman pouted and waved her hand: "I never use a phone, but I have her address, what is it called, 'save it', I'll show you." As he spoke, he entered the house again, and quickly came out with a card.

Chiba took it and looked at it, and the card reads - 111 Mingshi Road, Santa Barbara, California, USA, Liu Meixian.