It was quite amazing to hear the old man call us to go to the "finance room", it was a kind of excitement, apprehension, uneasiness, anticipation, and trepidation...... How to describe this kind of mixed feeling, it's like an idol that you like very much but feel that you can't have anything to do with your eight poles suddenly appears in front of you, and looks at you affectionately, wanting to invite you to a drink.

My heart beat a little faster at this time, but my steps followed my mother towards the secret room like a mechanic, and Bingbing was obviously a little nervous.

I walked to the door, took a deep breath, and stepped into the big iron gate that had caused us to be beaten so badly. Although the sun is still bright in the summer evening, the room is very dark because there are no windows, only a few faint red lights can be seen, and the room is filled with a strong smell of black agarwood.

Dad "snapped" the switch somewhere inside, and the room was suddenly illuminated, and before I entered the door, I had flashed in my mind all kinds of pictures about the layout of the "financial room", such as a large safe, or even a large row of tin cabinets against the wall, etc., and a little more vulgar, such as a few huge treasure chests or even a large coffin, stuffed with gold, silver, jewelry, or simply bundles of banknotes.

However, the scene in front of me at this time was obviously not in my prediction at all.

The old mother closed the door and stood quietly by the back of the door, and the old dog Ah Qi lay silently by the door. Dad stood at the base of the wall inside and didn't say much.

I guess they wanted us to be quiet and have time to take a closer look at the room.

The house is not big, about 50 square meters, the whole ground is made of pieces of bluestone bricks the size of lactone tofu, the wall is a dirty white lime wall, there are no pillars in the middle of the house, on the main wall directly opposite the door, there is a painting of about eight feet of ink and blue hanging in the middle.

The painting is roughly a small S-shaped ditch, with a man and a woman sitting on both sides of the ditch, and a stone platform in the center of the ditch, on which there is an endgame of checkered chess.

The man and the woman are playing against each other across the water, the man is wearing a white robe and playing a black spot on the chessboard, with a calm face; The woman was wearing a black robe, twisting a white child in her hand, holding it to her ear, closing her eyes and thinking deeply. In the canal, several swimming fish are walking around the stone platform, a round of crescent moon half-hanging branches, and a little fallen leaves are floating in the middle of the water.

I have been under the influence of my family since I was a child, and I have been extensively involved in Chinese studies, although this painting is refined in pen and ink, large blank, and full of antiquity, but the layout or content of this picture is a type that has never been seen before, and there is no inscription or stamp.

On both sides of the painting hangs a couplet of old colored wooden plaques, and the engraved font is somewhat similar to the Great Compilation but not very similar, and it has never been seen before. According to the glyph of the big seal, it should be like these two sentences:

The eight characters in Qiankun do not come out of the yin and yang poles,

The three thousand intersecting between heaven and earth show the five elements of life and death.

There is a long case in front of the calligraphy and painting, offering a copper incense burner, which is rising with repeated white smoke, and the dark fragrance smelled before is estimated to be volatilized here, a pair of electric candles are separated, the bulb has been aged, and the light is not very sufficient. Then the whole table was filled with empty cups of all kinds, large and small, more than a hundred of them, and nothing else.

On the ground in front of the long table were two straw futons, which looked very old, and they had been sunken in the middle, and some of the grass threads had been worn out.

Looking back at the lime walls on both sides, it seems that there are not only white stains, but when you look closer, there are white drawings with very slender and very light Chu Shi color.

The content of the paintings is all like the portraits of people on the river during the Qingming Festival, including farmers in the countryside, vendors in the market, and soldiers marching on horseback. Due to the wide walls and the fact that the figures are only a few centimeters high, the entire wall is quite large-scale.

However, it is completely different from the Qingming Riverside Picture, and it is also a little creepy to watch, that is, there are many creatures that do not look like people but have human shapes in these characters, such as winged flyers in the air, entrenched people with human faces and snake bodies in big trees, and fish-faced human body divers in the river......

And then go to the side wall at the other end, and look at it as well. There are two whole walls, all of which are this kind of eerie picture.

If you look closely, there is always a hint of sadness in the eyes or movements of all human beings, and when you compare the expressions of those monsters, they all look arrogant and domineering.

Before Bingbing and I could study it carefully, I only heard my father say sullenly: "Okay, there is still time for you to take a closer look at these in the future, now go over and kowtow." ”

To be honest, when I saw those two futons, I actually had an urge to kneel down and kowtow, but because I didn't dare to be rash, I was afraid of breaking some rules, so I kept suppressing this impulse.

Hearing my father's prompt, I quickly stepped forward a few steps, knelt down with a puff, and bowed respectfully to the ground four times, Bingbing was beside me, and also bowed down with me at the same time.

Squinted and saw that Bingbing was also pious, and suddenly wanted to laugh again, what appeared in his mind was the picture of the ancient church marriage on TV.

Of course, I didn't laugh, I just thought to myself: This shouldn't be the ritual before the division of the family property, is it that Bingbing is going to be married to me without my consultation?!

Who is the person in this painting, and are all the cups on the table for the two of them to drink? Then this throughput is enough.

What does my dad have to do with the inexplicable kneeling that he said on the phone before? ……

When we were lying on the ground and didn't know what to do next, my father told us to stand up, and then my mother opened the door.

"Come out." Mom beckoned us out, Ah Qi jumped out the door first, followed by us, and Dad turned off the lights and followed, still locking the door.

"Let's go, let's eat." Dad took Ah Qi all the way to the outer hall.

My mother then came over to ask me about the afternoon, and I told me about what had happened again, but she just nodded secretly and did not answer.

Bingbing took the opportunity to run to the edge of the pool, took out a pack of pretzels from his pocket, crushed them and fed them to the koi, talking to them amusing as he fed, the water was popping, and it could be seen that the fish were excitedly competing for the delicious meal brought by their little master.

My mother has also walked to the outer hall, maybe to tell my father about me.

I waited for Bingbing to finish feeding the fish and walked out together. The two of them didn't say anything in parallel, although I still had a stomach full of doubts in my heart, but there was a problem that had been stuck with me for many years and finally figured it out, the secret room was not a financial room, and the beating I received when I was a child seemed to find a reasonable step, so that I no longer felt wronged.

After washing my hands, I walked to the dining room in the front hall, Aunt Hu had already prepared all the meals, my mother was already seated, and my father's fixed position had already placed wine glasses, and I didn't know where to go.

Bingbing and I both sat in our respective seats that we had developed a habit of growing up since childhood, and the seating chart in our house was clockwise according to the round table, my father was sitting facing the door of the restaurant, and on the left-hand side was me, my sister, Bingbing, and my mother. Although my sister is not here now, that seat is still empty.

Today is a vegan banquet on the table, usually on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar calendar at my parents' house, Bingbing and I have already eliminated this habit of keeping track of eating vegetarian since we were in college, and we came according to our own preferences.

But today is not the first or fifteenth day of the new year, and I am indeed a little puzzled by a table of vegans, so I don't think about it, anyway, there are a lot of strange things I encountered today.

After Aunt Hu served the last dish of mixed mushroom kelp soup, she took Ah Qi to the kitchen to eat.

Before my father came, my mother first said: "Staying at home tonight, your rooms have been cleaned up, the mats have been wiped and dried, and you will go back to the city when you get up tomorrow." ”

I didn't say anything about it, I didn't know what my dad was going to say next, but fortunately no one asked me out tonight, otherwise if I had to leave, it would definitely be another lesson. Bingbing didn't even look at me, so she readily agreed.

At this moment my father walked in, holding a rectangular cloth bag of yellow brocade, which must have been wrapped in a box or something, about the size of a pencil case.

After he entered the door, he put the box on the empty seat of my sister next to me, and it seemed that he was not ready to open it now, and then he sat down in his seat, opened the half bottle of Luzhou Laojiao on the table, and slowly poured it into the cup, and we looked at him quietly, because of the rules of our family, before the old man does not move the chopsticks, no one else can move.

After he finished pouring the wine, took a small sip, raised the chopsticks and took a handful of bean curd water spinach in his mouth, we also started with chopsticks, Bingbing first filled a bowl of soup to drink according to their Cantonese habits, and I poured a cup of cucumber juice for my mother first, and then poured a cup for Bingbing and myself.

After swallowing the food, my father slowly said: "I have worshiped the ancestors of our Zang family today, so they are all vegetarians." ”

Bingbing and I looked up at each other, it turned out that the ink painting in the secret room was the ancestor of our Zang family?

After a pause, my father said something slowly, and as soon as this sentence came out, the spoon of Bingbing fell, and I choked on a sip of drink and coughed repeatedly.

He said:

"We, the four of us eating at this table now, including your sister who hasn't come back yet, to be exact, none of them are people."