When I was younger, I was afraid to see him talking, and I often ran away without waiting for him to finish.

And when he can't see it, we little children often imitate him and scare others.

At that time, the children in the village were indeed afraid of him. When a child is crying, the adult just says, "If you cry again, Daddy will come!" "The child will be scared and silenced.

The crooked Taoist didn't tell me about the time when he and my grandfather went to catch millet, and I heard this from my grandfather.

On the afternoon of the old man's visit to Thrush Village and his hurried departure, the crooked Taoist priest came to his grandfather's house and had an early dinner. The custom here is that if you want to ask someone else to help with something, you usually have to take care of a meal. Crooked Taoists have many rules and requirements for eating at other people's homes. He was particular about his food, and he demanded that there should be at least three dishes on the table at his host's house - leeks, shrimp, and dog meat. Because these three dishes can replenish yang energy. It's not that hard to get. He didn't pick up any chopsticks for cold dishes such as bitter gourd, lotus root, and callus white.

Grandpa also said that the crooked Taoist priest has dried longan in his house all the year round, and he eats that thing like medicine several times a day, a few pills at a time, very regularly.

At that time. Longan is a rare thing, fruits such as apples and bananas are rarely eaten by ordinary people, and longan is even rarer than apples and bananas. But he was able to eat every day, several times a day. So people within a radius of 100 miles know about it.

Some people are greedy, and when they see the crooked Taoist priest, they ask for a few dried longan to taste.

Naturally, he refused.

But on two occasions he secretly asked me to give me a few dried longans. I refused. I didn't dare to ask for his things, and I felt that everything on him had a mysterious smell. He didn't ask for anything from him both times when he saw me. After that, it was not given again.

After eating a very early dinner, the crooked Taoist priest followed his father to the old man's house. Grandpa didn't stop by to Feng Junjia's house, lest he ask this and that.

As soon as he entered the old man's room, the crooked Taoist priest grinned and said, "The yin qi is too strong! ”

Grandpa said, "Don't worry, it's just that there are many spiritual houses." ”

After entering and seeing a spiritual house next to the corner, the crooked Taoist priest said, "The big house is a hut, and the ghost is crying in the house." ”

The old man saw that the crooked Taoist priest said this. Asked, "Are you saying there are ghosts in my house?" ”

Dad explained, "He's joking. The big house is a hut, and the ghost is crying in the house, which is a riddle. The riddle is the mosquito net, which means that the mosquito net is like a hut, and the hut is in a big house, which is a big roof hut. The mosquito net buzzed in the room, which meant that the ghost was crying in the house. ”

The crooked Taoist smiled crookedly at the corner of his mouth, nodded, and said, "But it's not wrong to describe your house." If you put all the spirit houses here, you're bound to attract something unclean. ”

The old man smiled, "You are right. I often hear a knock on the door in the middle of the night. One time I got up. When I opened the door and saw a man standing in the doorway, I asked him what he was doing. He asked me if I had a house to live in. I let him stay for one night, but the next day someone came to buy my house, and when I was about to take it away, the house suddenly fell apart. I knew there was something wrong with the person who had come to borrow the room the night before≡ after that, I heard a knock on the door again at night and stopped getting up to open the door. ”

The crooked Taoist priest took out a few yellow paper talismans, handed them to the old man, and said, "You put these talismans of mine on the doors and windows, and there was no knock on the door after running." ”

The old man waved his hand, pushed the yellow paper talisman back, thanked him for his kindness, and said, "Just let them knock, you can't borrow them, and you can't scare them." ”

Daddy smiled and nodded.

The crooked Taoist priest put away the yellow paper talisman in a curtled manner.

Grandpa looked at the sky and said to the old man, "It's almost time, shouldn't you get ready?" ”

The old man also looked at the sky and smiled, "It's still early." ”

"Aren't you going to carry a lot of food to the Blind Valley? It's going to take a while to make those things. Daddy said. This statement slipped through the cracks.

The old man said, "So you saw me carrying a bamboo basket to the Blind Man's Pass." But you don't have to worry about the time, I've already made those foods, just put them in the pot and stuff them before going out. ”

So, the three of them sat in the hall and talked for a while, waiting for the night to fall. The three of them chatted with each other, but their minds were not on chatting.

The crooked Taoist priest later told his grandfather that he had been in a rather anxious mood that night, and he was uneasy to explain. This is also the reason why as soon as he entered the door, he said, "The big house is a hut, and the ghost is crying in the house". That was actually his most intuitive feeling. Foolish spitting skills.

The old man's mood has always been very entangled, although he promised to lure his father out, but he is still not firm enough at this time, just like a father treats a child who has sinned, on the one hand, he hopes that the child will go on the right path, and on the other hand, he wants to favor the child, even if the child will continue on the wrong path.

Grandpa's mood was influenced by the old man. He was very aware of the old man's psychology, and fearing that he would change his mind at any moment, suddenly decided not to take them to the Blind Valley. So Grandpa paid attention to the slightest change in the old man, and his mind was not on the chat at all.

The three of them chatted thoughtfully. At this time, a man walked outside.

The man stepped over the threshold and asked aloud, "Is this the house seller?" ”

The old man hurriedly got up and replied, "Yes." ”

The man looked at the three people in the house, and finally looked at the old man, and said, "Hello, hello, I am from Mujiazhuang, I heard that your spirit house here is doing a very good job, so I came to take a look." ”

Grandpa looked at the man a little raw. But it is not surprising to hear that it is from Mujiazhuang.

The village of Mujiazhuang is a bit different from other villages. The village is cowered in the foothills of a very remote mountain, with just over a dozen households. Other villages believe in the principle of "if you want to get rich, build more roads", and build the roads in the village wide and convenient, but the roads in Mujiazhuang are dilapidated and narrow, which is very inconvenient. Some people go out to visit relatives, and even if they can take the shortcut of Mujiazhuang, they would rather bypass it. Not only because the road is so bad that you almost have to walk on tiptoe when it rains, but also because the village is as silent as it is at night. Very few people in the village came out, and I don't know if they were huddled in the house or if they all went out. So even if you pass by there during the day, pedestrians don't feel comfortable.

The girl in that village married far away, unlike other villages, where she couldn't walk more than ten miles and met relatives who were near or far. There was once a girl who fell in love with a young man from a neighboring village, that is, our village, but the girl's family did not agree, and the girl was so angry that she threw herself into the water.

The young man in that village did not marry a girl from the neighborhood, and the girl who married in was either from Sichuan or Guangxi. The dialects spoken by those girls were incomprehensible to the locals, so they could not communicate.

"Mujiazhuang's? You people from Mujiazhuang have never come to me to buy a spirit house before. Come and take a look, except for the five old spirit houses, and the two at the door have been booked, you can choose the rest. The old man said.

The people of Namujiazhuang walked back and forth in front of the spirit house, hesitating.

The old man urged: "Young man, we are about to go out on errands, do you think you can be a little faster?" ”

"Uh-huh." He responded.

The old man went to the back kitchen and heated the prepared dishes in a pot, then put them in a bamboo basket and covered them with a cloth.

Grandpa and the crooked Taoist helped to load the dishes, ignoring the person who claimed to be Mujiazhuang.

The old man carried a bamboo basket with vegetables and wanted to go out. Grandpa secretly pulled him and whispered, "Have you noticed, is this person who came to buy the spirit house very similar to the person who came to knock on the door at night as you said?" ”

The old man was stunned for a moment, thought about it, and said in surprise: "Hey, don't say it, as soon as you say it, I remembered it, it does look very similar!" ”

The crooked Taoist priest was also surprised, and whispered: "Actually, I also found out that something was wrong with him, but Ma Xiucai, you just heard him say that he heard a knock on the door in the middle of the night, how do you know that this person is the one who knocked on the door and stayed overnight?" ”

Grandpa said in a low voice: "Count." ”

The crooked Taoist priest didn't understand and asked, "How can this be calculated?" ”

Grandpa said: "Why can't this be calculated? When something is lost, you can count it from the time it was lost to where it was lost. Similarly, if you know when and where you found something, you can work backwards when it was lost. ”

The crooked Taoist priest suddenly realized and said, "Oh, so you count it like this!" You count him as if he had been lost and found, know where he was when he entered the door, what hour it was, and then pinch whether he had been here before, and then speculate if he was the one who had come to borrow that night, like something that had not been lost? ”

"That's right. I figured out that he had indeed been here before, but he had just said that he was from Mujiazhuang and that it was the first time he had come here, so I speculated that he was hiding something. Although there were footsteps when he first entered the door, it was not the footsteps of a normal person. All things considered, I think he should have been the one who came knocking on the door that night. Daddy said.

The old man was a little panicked when he heard his grandfather and the crooked Taoist priest say this. He said uneasily, "What is he doing here again?" ”

Grandpa said: "He should know about our plan tonight, and he came to make trouble on purpose." ”

"I didn't offend him, I agreed to borrow it that night, and I didn't complain about him when the spirit house was broken...... Could it be ...... Could it be that he knocked on the door again later, and I didn't open the door for him, which made him angry? The old man guessed.

Grandpa shook his head and said, "No. I see that he came here tonight under the behest of someone, and his target is not you, but Xiaomi. Grandpa remembered the person who used the ghost gate array to hinder him from going to Maoling Mountain that night.

The old man's original decision shook at this time, he put the bamboo basket on the dark stove, folded his arms and said, "Then I can't go to the blind man's pass." ”

"Why can't you go again?" Daddy asked.

"If I take you there, at least for the sake of Xiaomi. If other unclean things take advantage of it, wouldn't I be sorry for Xiaomi? ”

Grandpa patted the old man on the shoulder and said, "I won't let him succeed." You pick up the bamboo basket, and let's go to the hall together. ”

The old man suspiciously lifted the bamboo basket again, and followed his grandfather and the crooked Taoist back to the hall.

The man was still admiring the spirit house in a fake way, pinching his chin with one hand and making a difficult choice.

Grandpa took the initiative to catch up and asked, "Have you thought about it now?" ”

The man squirmed his lips and said, "It's hard to choose." ”

Grandpa said, "In that case, why don't you go with us to the Blind Man's Pass first?" We're going to go there and run some errands and come back. ”