I reflexively stood up, trying to find the name on the trunk.

"The name has long since been erased." Xiao Se guessed my thoughts, "Zihan said that this village is cursed, but in fact, the people who cursed are the villagers themselves, and their hearts are too dark. ”

"Does the curse have anything to do with that pair of men and women?" I was puzzled.

Xiao Se propped his hand on the trunk of the tree and stood there looking down at me. "In Shakespeare's classic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the hero and heroine cannot love each other because they are burdened with family feuds, and the two villages of Yejia Village and the adjacent Luojia Village, where we are now, have almost no one dared to intermarry for more than 200 years because of the vendetta of extermination." In my shocked gaze, he recounted the history of the village that had been passed down orally for generations:

Legend has it that during the Qing Dynasty, there were eighteen well-known strong men in Luojia Village in the south, who had always coveted the land of Yejia Village and wanted to expand their territory. One night, they led a group of strong men to suddenly break into Yejia Village, killing more than 30 men in the village, leaving only women and children in the entire Yejia Village, and there was no labor. The popularity of Zhangjia Village in the southwest is not enough, and they have stood up for Yejia Village. There were three Jinshi in Zhangjia Village, all of whom were high and famous, and the people of Luojia Village did not dare to provoke them, so they had to restrain themselves, so the women and children of Yejia Village admired the people of Zhangjia Village.

However, the people of Luojia Village did not know that in this disaster, a boy named Ye Zu escaped by chance, and later he took the township examination and passed the Juren examination in one fell swoop, and then became an official. As a result, the arrogant Luojia Village was suppressed, and the territory retreated again and again, and it is now a very small village. Ye Zu returned to Yejia Village after a few decades as an official, and his descendants multiplied here and developed into today's village. Before dying, Ye Zu left a sentence: "My descendants of the Ye family are not allowed to marry the Luo family, otherwise a catastrophe will befall the village; If you are close to Zhangcun, you will live and work in peace and contentment, and the people will be prosperous. ”

After listening to this legend, it dawned on me: "The Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet that we are going to rehearse is related to this legend, right?" No wonder Zihan wanted to take us to Yejia Village to collect style. ”

Xiao Se nodded a little heavily. "It doesn't matter if it's just a legend, the point is that to this day, the people of both villages still believe in it. No matter which family is asked, when it comes to the ancestral motto that the two villages cannot get married, almost everyone knows about men, women and children. Although the two villages are only a few miles apart, few people have dared to cross the Thunder Pond for two hundred years. On the contrary, with the longing for 'living and working in peace and contentment, and prospering', there are more than 400 households in Yejia Village, and no less than 100 households have intermarried with people in Zhangjia Village. Like Ye Qin and Zhang Dayong, it is an example of intermarriage between the two villages. ”

"Is it true that there has never been a man or woman breaking the ban? The couple you just talked about...... "I vaguely guessed the relationship.

"Let's go." Xiao Se put his hat back on my head and wanted to tie it to me.

I brushed his hand away and fastened the strap myself.

Xiao Se stopped talking, and I didn't speak either. We walked one after the other, and he was obviously familiar with the forest, bending left and right, weaving through the trees, and he walked very fast, stopping from time to time to wait for me. Then, we walked out of the mountains and forests and arrived at the stream where we met Zhao Junning yesterday.