I nodded to her, and she said, "You come home with me, and I'll pour you water to drink, and you must be hungry when you're thin." ”

I followed the old woman into the village, and the group behind me began to talk again.

"Mrs. Wu is pretending to be a good person again, and she doesn't have a long memory of being stolen from a drinking pot last time."

"I guess I want the family to go to the mountains to help him inquire about her son's whereabouts, she has been dead for more than ten years, and she still doesn't give up, I think she is crazy."

"If you are old and have a son, and people have not seen the body, how can you believe that your son is dead."

I didn't listen to the rest of the words, but after following my mother-in-law home, my mother-in-law poured me a bowl of herbal tea, which was a dish for people to eat small yellow rice in the old days, which was very small, and there was a gap in the bowl.

I drank four or five bowls of herbal tea in a row, only felt that there was a faint sweetness in the tea, this village is far away from the normal human living environment, living in such a mountain, herbal tea can have sugar in me a little curious, I am not convenient to ask, so I said: "Mother-in-law, your tea is so sweet, I haven't drunk such delicious water for a long time." ”

The mother-in-law said: "My son used to like to eat sweet things, so he planted some sugarcane and sugar beets in the backyard all year round, squeezed some sugar and stored them when they were ripe, and put a little herbal tea in the summer, for fear that my son would suddenly come back and not have herbal tea to drink." ”

So, my mother-in-law and I started talking.

Mother-in-law's surname is Wu, and the people in the village call him Granny Wu, who will be seventy years old during the Chinese New Year, and the people in the mountains do not eat well, they age quickly, and Granny Wu is a little hunchbacked, so Granny Wu looks older.

Granny Wu told me that this village is called Shanqian Village, which means a village before entering the mountain. There are a lot of such villages nearby, the village is surrounded by a big mountain, the big mountain is called Funiu Mountain, it is rumored that Lao Tzu passed through here before entering Kunlun, met a green ox with a successful cultivation here, it was collected as a mount, and rode out of the customs, and later someone opened a mountain here to establish a faction, because of the Taoist gate on the mountain, it was changed to Qingyun Mountain, and the Taoist gate on Qingyun Mountain was called Qingyun faction.

There are many villages near Qingyun Mountain, and every year there will be children or teenagers who go up the mountain for interviews and want to enter the Daomen, but in the dozens of villages near Qingyun Mountain, it is already good to have three or five people enter the Daomen every year, and the rest can either choose to carry water and cook in the Daomen, dig dung and farm the land, or they have to go home in disgrace.

Those who can be selected to enter the Dao Sect and become Qingyun's disciples will be sent a lot of money and food by Qingyun, and will give them the opportunity to go out of the mountains to make a living and enjoy happiness.

Therefore, people in nearby villages dream of letting their children enter the Daomen, which is a matter of honoring their ancestors, which is equivalent to students being admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University.

However, the only difference is that entering the Daomen only depends on qualifications, and children with good bones can enter the Daomen without any tests, and people who are born mortals can't enter no matter how hard they try, at best, they can stay in the Daomen and earn some money to support their families.

Twelve years ago, Granny Wu's son Wang Xiaohai was one of the lucky ones, the only child in Shanqian Village who was selected to enter the Taoist Gate that year, Wang Xiaohai was only fifteen years old at the time, and now he should be twenty-seven years old.

But for so many years, her son has not been heard from since he entered the Qingyun Sect, and he has not even replied to a letter.

Granny Wu said: "I went to the mountain several times to look for it, but the disciples guarding the mountain did not let me in, they said that Qingyun Mountain is so big, countless disciples live in the treasure hall of different mountain peaks, and there is no way to find it. I heard that once a cultivator learns a great skill, it will take several years to sit down and settle into a fugue, but we people in the mountains don't understand. The disciples who guarded the mountain told me that even if a person died, as long as it was not a sect fighting, they would notify the relatives of the deceased one by one, but no one informed me. I've also heard of people who have never been down a mountain in their entire lives, and their relatives in the world go to them to influence their monastic minds, and I think so. But the old man and I are old, and we used to be strict, Xiaohai doesn't like me and the old man very much, maybe he didn't contact me because he was angry, but the old man has been dead for seven years, and before he died, he kept talking about asking Xiaohai to come back and burn some paper money for him, and I was almost in the ground, so I wanted to see him again. ”

I heard Granny Wu say this, it was very clear, not like a conjecture caused by missing her son too much, which also explained my intention, Granny Wu heard that I also wanted to worship the Daomen, and she was very happy, as if she was about to hear the news of her son.

I said, "Granny Wu, I'm a little older, so I don't necessarily choose to go in, and I don't understand the entry rules of the Daomen, so don't get your hopes up." ”

Granny Wu said: "It's okay, my mother-in-law believes that you can be selected for the Daomen, and when the time comes, you just need to give your mother-in-law a letter." ”

Granny Wu made me a lot of corn buns, and also scrambled a few eggs for me to eat, I haven't eaten anything for a few months, and I was a little moved for a while. In the evening, I took a shower with well water behind Granny Wu's house, and carefully shaved the beard on my face with a fish intestine sword.

Granny Wu's wardrobe was made by her and her old man, and I couldn't wear her son Wang Xiaohai's previous clothes, so she could only give me new cotton clothes in exchange for rice. ”

It reminds me of my own mother, who also liked to keep the belly pocket I wore when I was a child, and I don't know if she was also like Granny Wu when I was not at home for a long time.

The next morning, when I left, Granny Wu filled me with a few more buns, and he sent me to a place far away from the village before going back, I took out two small bottles of ointment obtained from the Yaowang Cave and handed it to Granny Wu and said, "Mother-in-law, this is my family heirloom ointment, which can cure all diseases and detoxify, if you are not feeling well one day, just eat a little bit." ”

"And such a spiritual medicine?" Granny Wu was a little surprised.

I nodded and said, "But don't tell anyone about this medicine, otherwise it will bring a lot of danger to you and me." ”

I now understand the truth that the husband is not guilty and is guilty, so Granny Wu nodded and said that she understood. When she saw me leaving, she stopped talking, waved goodbye to me, and said, "Mother-in-law, don't worry, I will help you find out Wang Xiaohai's whereabouts, and I will do what I say." ”

I said goodbye to Granny Wu and followed the direction she pointed out and rushed to the mountain gate of Qingyun Mountain at noon, at this time there was a group of people in front of the mountain gate, all of them were young and beautiful teenagers, and some of them were accompanied by well-dressed middle-aged people, who looked like bodyguards escorting them.

There was a small makeshift teahouse in front of the mountain gate, and I asked a person who looked like a little second and said, "May I ask my brother, is it the period when the Qingyun Sect recruits disciples, why are there so many people?" ”

Dian Xiaoer said: "Guest officer, you are better to come early than to come by chance, the Qingyun Sect expanded its enrollment for the last time before entering the winter, and it has expanded its enrollment several times this year, because the qualifications of the disciples recruited in the spring of this year are too ordinary, and even some Taoist leaders have to go to the secular world to find disciples with good qualifications, this expansion lasted for three days, and today is already the last time, if you come one day late, I am afraid that it will have to wait until the beginning of spring next year." You come in to drink tea, I'm afraid that the Taoist chief in the mountain is taking a nap, by the way, you are here to do the business of the Daomen? ”

"I'm here to participate in the disciple selection." I said a word to the shopkeeper, and then walked towards the teenagers in front of the mountain gate.

The shopkeeper was stunned for a moment when he heard my words, and then said: "It's really a big forest, there are all kinds of birds, and there are more than thirty people who want to worship the mountain gate, I'm afraid that they are older than the Taoist elders, can I also try it at twenty-seven this year?" ”

"What, that uncle in the old padded jacket wants to become a disciple of the Qingyun Sect?" A fat boy laughed and pointed at me behind his back.

A group of teenagers who were chatting listened to the fat boy say this, and they all looked at me and began to talk nonsense.

"The hair is gray more than a handful, isn't it too eye-catching to wear this cotton pants and cotton jacket, the Daomen selection is not a draft, even if it is a draft judge, the teacher has to give a bad review, right? Ha ha. ”

"There are a lot of neuropathies, and it's not bad for this one, and there must not be a few strange things in any entry selection."

"But he's too weird, who doesn't dress himself up beautifully when he enters the Taoist selection, he really thinks he's an ascetic, and the shoes he wears on his feet are also straw sandals, and he is not afraid of the soles of his feet being pierced when he walks in the mountains, and he is not afraid of his feet being frozen."

The straw sandals on my feet were knitted for me by Granny Wu last night, because I couldn't wear her shoes, and I couldn't catch up with the temporary shoes with thousands of soles, and he saw that the soles of my feet were grinding out a thick layer of calluses, so he made a large straw sandals for me, and put a layer of old soles on the ground.

"Hey, look at him, look at him, he looks like a cripple!"

"Shhh, you're so disrespectful, what's wrong with the lame, it's not very lame, more than a hundred catties of dung buckets, you must pick it up and leave!"

A group of teenagers burst out laughing, and they were all about to laugh at their sights.