The last courtyard of the mansion is the living place of the Li family's master. When he was still healthy in his early years, he was full www.biquge.info of gold and jade, and he was rich and rich. However, since he fell ill a few years ago, those extravagant ornaments or calligraphy and paintings have been put away by Li Qi, the ruler of the Li family's generation. Now, except for the copper incense burner and the few furnishings on the Bogu shelf, this room can no longer be seen to be inhabited by people who control the lifeblood of the Li family.

It had been raining intermittently for the past few days, and the sky was heavily covered with stratus clouds of soot, and even the day was very cloudy, not to mention the already late winter morning.

The room echoed with the sound of breathing similar to the twitching of bellows. The fine silk cotton was wrapped in a thick cotton tire, and a soft fox skin blanket was placed on it, but the skin exposed outside the quilt was still unhealthy, dying blue gray.

The breathing pole is like a hole in the bellows, under the heavy bedding, atrophied, you can count the ribs of the chest and struggle to shrink a little, but the nose is only inlet in but not out. The frail Hehe, who almost never stopped, seemed to be desperately reminding the bored, numb people that the old man lying on the bed of the green bat's sour branch was still nostalgic for the world, desperately trying to survive.

"Pain, ......" The phlegm sound was wrapped in a muffled shout, and it rolled out of the old man's mouth and fell to the ground, not even the dust could be shocked.

Wrinkles and age spots take up most of the space on this face. The sparse old man's eyebrows were raised on both sides of the stagecoach, and it was said in the photo book that this was a young man's wealth; Although the middle of the person is long and deep, the lips are particularly cold. After years of illness, the old man's cheeks have been thin and out of shape, but his cheekbones are high, and he didn't have a generous temperament when he was young.

That's true.

A maidservant girl came with a basin of water and a handkerchief, and carefully wiped away the cold sweat from the old man's head, and the warm fingers of the fifteen-year-old girl accidentally touched the wrinkled skin like cracked bark or deep ravines and cliffs, and she shivered, and trembled and pulled the exclamation that she almost blurted out from between her teeth little by little, and swallowed it back to the bottom of her stomach.

The servant girl remembered the skin she had touched earlier when she had collected the corpse of her companion, cold, stiff, and without a trace of life.

She silently wrung out the handkerchief and put it on the edge of the copper basin, and suddenly calmed down. The maid hurried with the basin of water that was beginning to get cold, and soon the footsteps faded away after the door was reopened.

Li Yongbo sat in the small flower hall connected to his father's bedroom, from the beginning of the year to the present for more than an hour, the servants were busy going back and forth from the eldest young master of the Li family, and he did not react, only when a few stewards returned here from time to time, he came out of his anger, listened to the report or gave orders.

His back stiffened, his hands pressed against his thighs, and the flesh of his cheeks hidden in the shadows occasionally twisted strangely, with a look of gnashing of teeth, but it was soon overshadowed by a real, unbridled apprehension.

Li Yongbo stared at the blue and white porcelain bowl for a long time, and then looked up and stared in the direction of the door. The bluestone slab outside the corridor was still damp, it was the rain the night before, he could still recall the clear sound of the rain, and suddenly remembered that the beloved three-room concubine turned over and asked him in the dark in a daze, Uncle Guan'er, are you still not sleeping?

In the dark night, I could only see an undulating, indistinct woman. Volume curves. How did he answer? Li Yongbo suddenly found that he couldn't remember his answer at that time, but it was probably because the rain was too noisy.

The little servant Fugui walked for almost half an hour, and the eldest young master of the Li family was a little impatient, he wanted to take a sip of tea, but when his fingertips just touched the porcelain, he was furious and almost flipped the table: "This is going to die!?" Which one is going to freeze to death in the winter!? He jumped up and slammed the blue and white tea bowl on the ground, and the dark brown tea splashed on the corner of Li Yongbo's brand-new Songjiang cloth robe with the tea leaves, and he jumped on the spot.

The servant who was serving the tea knelt down with a thud, trembling as if he was sifting chaff.

The maidservant who had been waiting in the patient's bedroom earlier came out. Seeing this scene, she almost didn't hold the copper basin in her hand, and wanted to go back, Li Yongbo had already seen her, kicked the kneeling subordinate away, and shouted impatiently at the maidservant: "How is the old man?" Have you choked? ”

"The owner is still angry." The maidservant replied cautiously, "I'm crying out in pain." ”

"It hurts, it hurts, but it doesn't hurt when you die." Li Yongbo replied impatiently, and he spat on the terrazzo ground angrily, "Why don't the old immortals know that one is a hundred?" He was really impatient to wait, and Yinzhong was called up, thinking that it was such a trembling thing, but the old man refused to die, so he waited in vain for a long time.

"Take care of the old man." In the end, Li Yongbo decided to go to sleep first, and before leaving, he threw down the order: "Call me when the old man is breathing." ”

The maidservant hurriedly made a blessing and replied, "Yes."

After a tantrum throw, the inexplicable depression deposited in the bottom of his heart dissipated a little, and after two circles in the small garden outside the flower hall, Li Yongbo turned back again, not in a hurry to leave - he originally planned to go back to his yard, but after thinking about it, it was not appropriate. Today was a big day, he thought to himself, and paced back and forth in the room a few times. Speaking of age, this eldest young master of the Li family is also about to reach the age of establishment, and he acts intentionally or unintentionally imitating his father Li Qi's style.

"You go and see," he casually called an errand, "Fugui died in the third master's house?" I didn't come back for half a day. Impatiently, he commanded, "Make a cup of hot tea!" Li Yongbo emphasized uneasily: "Put it in the warm nest and bring it over!" ”

When the eldest young master of the Li family was in the house and threw fire on his subordinates, Master Yan turned a corner in the alley in the front yard, and then walked around between several cramped courtyards - there were distant relatives and subordinates of the Li family living here, some distance from the main house, but not too far away.

At last he stopped in front of a mottled and tattered door, and knocked on the door with his knuckles to a pre-agreed rhythm: "Knock—knock—knock." ”

The door was immediately opened, Wang Huanzhi lifted the hem of his clothes, stepped into the threshold and said to the visitor in a deep voice: "Go in and say." ”

Little by little, the dark clouds pressed down on this small town in southern Sichuan, and the soot-dull sky mixed with the edge of the earth. The mist swirls on the streets with black tiles and gray walls, and the figures looming in the fog are coolies who carry torn jackets on their shoulders and carry short beats, there are those who frown and sleeve their hands and wear cotton decorated with cotton sold from Songjiang to make jackets and straight jackets, the girls who shout hard are the little girls on the lotus root powder sweet soup shop, the white radishes are neatly stacked in the bamboo baskets, the peasants who enter the city look at the overcast sky with their flat shoulders and are worried, and the soldiers who are worried about the lack of a penny and worry about collecting taxes do not let go. Only the old man who sold charcoal wrapped his own white hemp wrapped around his head, and the low pack horse piled up the charcoal on his back, walking the streets and alleys, so busy that the water and rice did not touch his teeth, and after a short time he touched the heavier and heavier coat, and smiled and relieved his eyebrows.

The air, soaked and able to pull out a handful of water, was chilly and smelled of mildew and decay. The tall, half-bare branches of the kudzu tree have withered half of the yellow leaves, and half of them have new leaves. The mist-wetted tiles had a dark hue that was not very conspicuous against the gloomy sky. On the other hand, the heavy moss clinging to the corners of the walls and under the roof tiles condenses the water vapor, which is a bit verdant.

The Li family's mansion gradually calmed down after the hectic early morning. The second steward personally took people to invite Liu Daoshi, who is the most famous in a radius of 100 miles, and asked him to serve him with good tea and good fruits in the back hall; The servants finally finished changing the furnishings in the front yard, and as far as the eye could see, it was all blue and white, and they had already hidden the white linen belt in their clothes, and only waited for the mourning in the backyard to start.

Li Sanzhong pressed the bridge of his nose hard, he was a tired person, his eyes were red, and he relied on a cup of thick and drunken Tuo tea to refresh himself. The biggest steward of the Li family stopped, and the subordinate who reported the incident was immediately silenced and respectfully buried his head deeper.

"You say, Zhong Guan'er is not in the well now?" The voice of the chief steward sounded calm at first glance, but there was an intriguing voice that made the servant who reported the matter shrink his neck, and lowered his voice tremblingly: "Yes, the well water steward over there said that half an hour ago, Zhongguan'er straightened out the affairs of the well, and left after eating useless." ”

"It stands to reason that this is also the time to come." Li Sanzhong pondered for a moment, and the unsettling thoughts that had been forcibly suppressed earlier gradually rose again, his face was not obvious, and his heart was as lively as an exploding oil pot, but now at this time, he couldn't allow him to think deeply, he only said lightly: "Boguan'er said that the news of the second young master was immediately transmitted, and the protagonist didn't see Zhong Guan'er, I'm afraid he won't be able to take his last breath." ”

The little servant saluted and trotted away.

The chief steward squinted his eyes and looked at the figure of the servant in Tsing Yi and finally disappeared behind the huge banana tree in the corner, stood for a moment, and finally couldn't hold back - Li Sanzhong asked the squad leader next to him in a low voice: "Did Fugui come back from the third master?" ”

Chang Sui hurriedly told him that he hadn't seen any movement on the third master's side yet.

Li Sanzhong didn't say much, just waved his hand and asked Chang Sui to listen to the news again. He watched the chief follow the order, turned and walked to the front hall, thinking to himself, that room has been almost forgotten in the decades that the owner has been in charge, and now, what is the idea? Will the decades-old peace of the Fushun Li family completely disappear with the sudden death of the family?

Wang Huanzhi's expression became more and more obscure in the dim light.

"According to me, I don't need to go to such trouble." The man in the clothes who sat opposite him frowned and said, "As for Li Yongbo's waste, hand the account book under his nose, and he doesn't know where to draw a circle and a fork." ”

"No." Another person at the square table immediately retorted: "What the protagonist wants is not a tattered Li family, and now that the brute force is overwhelming the whole clan, he must be a hidden danger in the future." ”

"Li Yongbo has a good calculation, he just wants to sit on the identity of the master and concubine, and he wants to open the ancestral hall first, unless he shouts and kills, otherwise the beginning and end of this matter is not idle." The man in the clothes raised his eyes and looked at Wang Huanzhi: "Wang. Wen. Chapter, what do you say? ”

Master Yan's face turned cold, and he squeezed the words out of his teeth word by word: "If he, Li Yongbo, dares to open an ancestral hall and pollute the master's background, we just can't help it," he paused slightly, and his eyes slid across the two people's faces without warmth - at this moment, he had nothing to do with Master Salt who was busy on the salt well in the town on weekdays, among them, the killing was decisive, and it was chilling, and every word in the exit was like bathing in blood, "You know, the sediment is rising, and it is showing a thunderbolt method!" ”