I couldn't help but be secretly excited, because I believed that I had finally found a place that was connected to Fan Yaoqiang's previous life.

I saw Fan Yaoqiang standing on the stone arch bridge in a daze, staring blankly at the flowing water under the bridge.

For a long, long time, Fan Yaoqiang raised his head, looked around a few times, and slowly walked down the stone arch bridge and walked to the other side of the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge is a small village.

The village was full of newly built small buildings, and Fan Yaoqiang stood at the entrance of the village, unable to move his feet anymore.

"I remember the stone arch bridge, but ...... This village ......"

This village must be completely different from the one he remembers, I had predicted that.

So I'm not discouraged. As long as I can be sure that Fan Yaoqiang has been to this village in his previous life, even if I go door-to-door to visit, I can always find out his identity in his previous life.

So I started asking people in the village, and I don't remember that forty years ago, a man who had been a Taoist priest suddenly came back to the village.

No one answered me.

At least the dozen or so villagers I asked at the beginning shook their heads when they heard that I was asking about something forty years ago.

In the end, I had to go to the village committee first and ask the village chief to help me remember what happened 40 years ago.

I didn't expect things in the world to be so coincidental, just when the village chief took my documents and checked them carefully, Fan Yaoqiang suddenly pointed to a photo frame on the wall, stammered and asked, "This, this, this...... Who is it? ”

The village chief glanced at Fan Yaoqiang in surprise, as if he felt that this child was very rude.

However, for the sake of my face, the village chief still answered truthfully.

"This is a family portrait of our family, taken thirty or forty years ago, when I was exactly 12 years old. Because my dad was the previous village chief, he kept hanging this photo on the village committee. Later, he retired, and I was elected as the village chief, so I let this photo hang here and never took it down. ”

Fan Yaoqiang didn't say a word, and kept staring at the photo.

In the photo, there is a family of four, a couple holding a five or six-year-old girl, and an eleven or twelve-year-old boy standing next to him.

The man in the photo is still very young, younger than the village chief looks now.

After a long time, Fan Yaoqiang turned his head to look at the village chief, and pointed to the photo in a daze and asked the village chief: "This man ...... Is it Brother Zhenyuan? ”

The village chief said "ah", immediately looked at Fan Yaoqiang with a low face, and asked him: "You kid, how do you know my father's name?" How old are you to dare to call me Brother Zhenyuan? ”

Fan was speechless for a while, so he had to turn his head to look at me.

I was happy in my heart, and hurriedly asked Fan Yaoqiang: "Do you think of ...... That person's name doesn't have one? ”

Fan Yaoqiang understood very well who I meant by "that person", so he thought about it carefully, and it took him a long time to spit out a few words: "It seems to be ...... People call him ...... Li Xiaodao! ”

As soon as his words fell, the village chief jumped to his feet, his face full of surprise and disbelief.

"Li Xiaodao? You kid...... Know my cousin's whereabouts? My dad always talks to him, you won't be my cousin...... Son, or grandson, right? ”

I was surprised and delighted, and hurriedly asked the village chief about "Li Xiaodao".

It turned out that "Li Xiaodao" was not the real name of the village chief's cousin, just because this cousin had been a Taoist priest for more than ten years, so the people in the village called him "Li Xiaodao".

Li Xiaodao's common name is Li Zhentang, his parents both died of illness when he was young, and Li Zhentang can only follow his uncle and aunt.

But there were inevitably some stumbles between uncles and nephews, and when Li Zhentang was a teenager, he was beaten by his uncle for being naughty, and Li Zhentang ran away from home in a fit of anger.

- I guess it was during the time when Li Zhentang was wandering away from home that he met Genting Daoist. The Genting Daoist saw that he was pitiful, so he took him as a disciple.

But soon the head of Genting Dao discovered that Li Zhentang was not good at nature, so Yunding Daoist had all his skills, but he did not teach Li Zhentang a single star.

Li Zhentang probably secretly harbored a grudge against the Yunding Dao people because of this, so he took advantage of the Yunding Dao people's wandering to steal the Yunding Dao people's treasure "Reincarnation Spirit Rune", plus the white jade gourd.

Before returning to the village, Li Zhentang first sold the white jade gourd to Zhang Yuhe, so when he returned to his hometown, he made the whole village think that he had made a fortune.

Naturally, his uncle and aunt were more enthusiastic about him, keeping him at home while asking for help him set up family affairs.

It's a pity that Li Zhentang's vision is quite high, and several matchmakers have been rejected by him.

As a result, before the family affairs were decided, Li Zhentang left the village again, and this time he left, and never came back.

Of course, these old events all happened when the village chief was very young, so the village chief didn't know everything.

We went to the village chief's house and visited the village chief's 70-year-old father, and only then did we inquire about Li Zhentang's affairs clearly.

Fan Yaoqiang looked at the appearance of Li Zhenyuan, the father of the village elder, obviously a little excited and a little sad.

However, his thinking is not a child, and of course he will not rush to talk about "brotherly love" with this old man.

And the old man didn't look at Fan Yaoqiang very much, but in the end, the old man suddenly remembered something and asked his village chief's son: "Your cousin's small wooden box, I asked you to put it away, is it still there?" ”

"It's still there, I'll look for it!" The village chief replied, and sure enough, he went to rummage around the house.

I asked the old man again if he remembered more things, and the old man shook his head and said, "When people are old, their memory is not good, let alone what happened forty years ago!" ”

He pointed to a photo album and said, "Fortunately, he came back a few months ago and took these pictures, otherwise I wouldn't even remember what he looked like!" ”

The photos he said were all black and white.

Li Zhentang's appearance in the photo looks very ordinary, and he can only be regarded as having good facial features.

But I don't know why, those photos give me the feeling that this person named Li Zhentang is very scheming.

Fan Yaoqiang has been holding the album, looking at those photos, it seems that he feels sad when he thinks of the past.

However, he hid this sadness as much as possible, and did not show a "tearful" expression in front of the old man.

Later, the old man took the album and flipped through it, and those old photos seemed to remind him of some of the past.

So he suddenly said to me, "I remember...... After my cousin came back, he ran to the county seat two times in three days, some people said that he went to the county town to find a woman, and some people said that he met a beautiful girl who worked as a waiter in a Lingxian restaurant, so he was unwilling to introduce several relatives to the matchmaker. My parents seem to have asked him privately, but he is not close to my parents, so ...... I don't know if it's true. ”

Although the clue provided to me by the old man was not very important, it pointed me out a direction of investigation, so I still felt that I had gained a lot.

And the small wooden box that the village chief found immediately afterwards became a key evidence to solve all the mysteries.

(See Chapter 047 "Old Things")