So I continued to ask this old man, I said, then the Buddhist temple you have here, did you also have this kind of temple fair in the past? For example, what is the birthday of the Bodhisattva, and how many people come to worship? The old man flattened his mouth and said, our place, the place is small, and it is not very popular, the temples here are donated by those rich families themselves very early, there is only a lay mother-in-law in it, and the incense is not very good on weekdays, and I have been here for so many years, basically rarely engage in such temple fairs, and those days are really lively for a while.

I asked the old man, it was lively for a while, does it mean that there are a lot of people who come in those days? The old man nodded and said, there are a lot of people here, but most of them are still our locals here. The temple fair lasted for three days, the first two days were lively, and on the third day, the temple door was closed, and I heard the knocking inside, and I didn't know what I was doing.

I quickly thought about it in my heart, and found that the time was very consistent with when Uncle Liang had an accident, and if it weren't for someone like me, who originally pretended to be dark in his heart, it would be difficult to combine these two seemingly unrelated things. So I continued to ask the old man, were the strangers who came at that time the people who came to burn incense, or the people who came to organize the temple fair? The old man smiled and said, which one will come here to burn incense, which one to burn, we are a small temple here, there are a few Bodhisattva clay bodies in it, others want to burn incense and worship the Buddha, I don't know how to go to those big temples to worship, all those people have more money, and they are playing! Although I have some opinions on this uncle's disrespect, after all, it is people's own freedom of choice. So I then asked him, were these people who came from outside at that time all the people who ran the temple fair? How many people are there? The old man said, there are only a dozen people, eating and living by the temple, the house there is empty, and I said hello to the neighborhood committee here and stayed for a few days. Hey? Young man, you ask these to be sprinkled?

I said that it was okay, so I asked casually, "Uncle, can you tell me where the temple is and where your neighborhood committee is?" Although the old man was puzzled by my random question, after all, he couldn't have imagined what information I was trying to get. So he stood up, pointed to the north, and said follow this road, go all the way to the base of the wall, and then turn right, and on the road you can see a stone stake on the side of the road, and the word Amitabha Buddha is written in red on it, and when you go there, you can see a house with a red roof, and that place is the temple I mentioned. The neighborhood committee is not far from the temple, next to the police station.

I'm actually surprised that such a small place is equipped with such a high-level place as a police station. So after thanking the old man, I called Hu Zongren, and he said that he was in the restaurant where we had eaten before, and he was going to ask the old people around him to see if he could get any information. In order not to induce Hu Zongren to look in my direction, after all, it would be best if he could find new clues, so I said that I would go to a temple in the north to have a look, and call me in time if there is any new situation. Before hanging up the phone, I asked Hu Zongren to call Sister Liang again, telling her to stay where she was and not going anywhere, and if anyone came to ask her or find her, she asked us immediately. After Hu Zongren agreed, I hung up the phone.

This remnant part of the old city, according to my memory, is about 1/5 the size of the original site of Jiangbei City, maybe less. I think it should be when I came to play when I was a child, my legs were still relatively short, so when I continued to walk north from the small cigarette stall, this bend and turn, it was just such a stone road, although there were many forks in the road, but I still relied on an excellent sense of direction, and successfully found the root of the wall. The place at the base of the wall is a well, and the manhole cover is sealed, thinking about it, it is estimated that no one will draw water from the well to drink, after all, this is also a city. After seeing the well, I found that there was a stone tablet next to the well, and the words "Jiangbei District Cultural Relics Protection Unit" were engraved on the stone tablet, and the time of payment was 1990. On the city wall not far behind the stele, there is a very obvious blocked doorway, because the stones in the doorway are very different from the surrounding environment. So I don't know exactly what is behind the wall, but judging from the branches that stick in from the wall, it should be a small hill behind it, and when this gate was not blocked, it should be a junction in the old Jiangbei City that can go out of the city to the north.

According to what the old man said, I walked in the direction of the right, although there are many old houses nearby, but it is quiet, it is estimated that most people just occupy the property rights here, and I do not live here, so in the daytime, I can also clearly hear my own footsteps walking on the stone road. I didn't go far before I saw a stone stake about the height of a calf on the edge of a corner stake, which was a cuboid shape, but it was irregular all around, like a small piece knocked down from some larger stone. Judging by the mud between the stone stakes and the ground, it has been here for many years, perhaps even older than my age. And the top is clearly engraved with the four big characters of "Amitabha", the red painting is a little faded, and the edge is not sharp, so these words should have been carved when the stone stake was laid.

I began to look around, trying to find a house with a red roof, but when I looked up, I found that this place has been downhill along the path, and I can see that there is no city wall at the end of the downhill road, and I can see the Jialing River directly. And I quickly found the so-called red roof among the many black roofs.

In fact, it is not pure red, but a slightly golden kind of cherry red, which is a glazed tile, which seems to occupy a small area, and it should have been repaired by the person who donated the temple at the beginning. There were a lot of plastic bags hanging on the roof because people were throwing garbage everywhere, and some garbage that I couldn't tell what it was. I visually measured the distance, which was only a few hundred meters, so I followed the road, and after calculating the distance, I cornered into a small alley on the side. On both sides of the alley sat some old women, all wearing the kind of plush hats that only old people wear, some were beating wool, some were eating melon seeds, and some were chatting without a word. But in front of them, a bench was set up, on which was placed a frame or plank, and on which were incense candles of various sizes and styles were displayed.

Obviously, the temple is nearby. And these grandmothers, probably idle, here to set up a stall to pass the time, it doesn't matter how much money they can make, people of this age, how to live a day safely, it is estimated that it is their greatest wish. So when I walked past them, they all raised the incense candles in their hands and said to me, "Young man, why don't you burn incense, buy some incense?" Originally, I had these things on me, but since I came to one party's territory, it was still a bit unruly to bring my own incense candles, at least that's not what the master taught me at the beginning. So I bought three sticks of incense and a pair of candles at one of the mothers-in-law's stalls, and the other women didn't look unhappy that I hadn't chosen them, because they were just here to pass the time.

After giving the money, I asked the old woman, I said where the temple is, how to get there, the old woman counted the money while pointing in one direction, saying that it is to turn the corner. So I continued to walk in the direction she said, and sure enough, when I turned around, I saw two large columns on both sides of the door, and on the plaque on it, there were three words written on it, "River Temple".

This is a small temple without a temple gate, and I didn't think it was a river temple, before I saw these words, I thought it was a Guanyin temple or something. However, the worship of the river god has appeared since ancient times, and the river god was originally considered a Taoist immortal, but shouldn't this be a Buddhist temple? Or is it that the person who donated the temple at the beginning was just to accumulate virtue and do good, but during this period, he didn't even distinguish whether the ancestor he worshiped was a Buddha or a Taoist?

With these questions in mind, I walked to the inner hall, which was not at all a small square patio, and the other three sides except for the temple gate were divided into many small grids, and in each grid, a clay statue was placed. There is a large incense burner in the center of the patio, but even the stoves used to light the fire on both sides have no flame at all, and the incense sticks in the incense burner already look very old, and it can be seen that no one has come here to burn incense after the temple fair that day.

On the right-hand side after entering the door, there is a merit tablet, and the names of many people are densely written on the merit tablet, and these people are probably the people who donated this temple in the first place. On the other side of this monument, it is engraved with the reason why this temple was donated in the first place, probably in the late 80s, where the river along the ladder was once a place for boats, and this road is the road with stone stakes that I just walked, and most of the people living around here are slender men who pull boats on the river. But here is the confluence of the two rivers, the water flow is relatively turbulent, and the river is very wide, there are many reefs at the bottom, so there are often shipwrecks, people are superstitious that the river god is catching the strong man, so they donated this river temple.

But when I walked around and looked at those gods carefully, I felt a little funny and said, the gods and goddesses here are all over the place, from the river god and mountain god, to the land father, from the Buddha, to the Guanyin Bodhisattva, and even to Lu Ban and Yue Fei and Emperor Guan, suddenly surrounded by so many gods and goddesses of various families makes me feel like a superstar, but in fact, people's belief in religion has always been mostly in a very superficial state, they are to seek blessings, only to believe you, to burn incense and worship, As for who blesses them, they don't really know, and it doesn't seem to matter that much to them.

Since I came, even if it was just some superficial clay body, I still respectfully offered incense as a disciple, only three incense sticks, so I bowed all my minds, and then I inserted incense candles, and then said that in this small area of about 100 square meters, I was looking for some clues that I thought were valuable.