It's a gray courtyard house. Boxy, simple and dignified. On the mottled eaves, the passage of time and the vicissitudes of the world have been witnessed.

Standing outside, although it is not clear how many courtyards it is, but judging from its scale, it looks like a rich and noble gentry in the old days.

In the courtyard, a tall and blooming begonia crossed the top of the eaves, and the branches were covered with red and delicate flowers. The breeze blows and shakes off the endless fragrance of flowers.

The three of us got out of the car and walked lightly to the door of the courtyard.

At the gate, there are two majestic white marble lions. On a vermilion Ruyi door, two golden tiger head door cymbals were nailed.

My mother breathed a sigh of relief and said, "This should be Old Man Yan's home."

With that, she stepped forward, let out a long breath, and knocked on the door cymbals.

With a "squeak", Zhu Men pulled out from the inside, and a thin old man with a full of snow leaned out from inside.

The old man looked arrogant and asked in a cold voice: Who are you looking for?

My mother, who has always been quick to talk, was aroused by the old man's gaze, and was speechless for a while, only smiling wryly.

Sister Yun strode forward, pointed at my mother and me, and said: "Old man, this is my mother, that's my brother, we are the descendants of Zhao Mankang, and we are looking for elders to help."

Sister Yun's words made people listen to it, and they couldn't help but feel warm with joy.

For the first time, she called her aunt her mother, which is definitely a natural expression of her love in her bones and heart.

"Zhao Mankang?"

The old man's eyes were slightly raised, as if he was a little impressed, but it was difficult to think about it for a while.

I stuck up to me and said, "Shaft, mad cow, do you remember?"

"Oh, remember, benefactor."

The old man's cold face was instantly released, a smile hung on the corner of his mouth, and a few turbid tears fell from his eyes.

Then, he opened the red door and welcomed us warmly.

Standing next to a shadow wall, the old man held our hand and asked emotionally: Brother Zhao is okay?

My mom wiped away her tears and said, "My dad passed away five or six years ago."

The old man's face condensed with a sincere sadness, and he said sadly: The kindness of the old brother, I will never forget it.

My mother bowed deeply to the old man and said, "Uncle Yan, my daughter and son may have received that kind of thing......

The old man raised his hand and waved his hand, and said with a calm expression: "Niece, you don't have to say it, from the moment you knocked on the door, I have already guessed, come with me."

The old man led us through a vermilion screen door and walked to the front yard full of bonsai.

Immediately afterwards, he took us through another door, and walked into the square and spacious courtyard through the Yongdao, where several jujube trees and pomegranate trees were planted, and the tall red begonia that Fang had just seen outside the courtyard was planted in the center of the courtyard.

On both sides of the road, there are red and green hand-copying verandahs and east and west wings with red doors and red windows.

Seeing that we were about to enter the hall at the end, the old man led us to the west and went around to the backyard.

As I walked to the backyard, I glanced at the second main room, facing west of the hall, whose doors and windows were painted black. At first glance, it can't help but be chilling.

The last row is the back cover room, which is the residence of the female dependents.

In this way, this is a quadrangle with three entrances and three exits.

In the courtyard, it is gloomy and lonely, if it weren't for a few blooming flowers and trees to add a little spring, it would make people mistakenly think that they had entered the Netherworld Ghost Mansion.

The old man pointed to a bedroom in the northwest corner and said, "That's my grandmother's room, you two go in with me."

Before entering the house, the old man held my arm and said with a smile: "Niece, this boudoir is for my grandmother, and the evil spirit is too heavy, so don't go in."

"Well, okay, I'm fine, I ask Uncle Yan and my grandmother to save my children."

My mother bowed to the old man again and said sincerely.

The old man nodded and led Sister Yun and me in.

After passing through a study and through a screen, the old man led us into a smoky room.

In this room, the display is relatively simple: an embroidery bed, a wardrobe, a round table, and two brocade stools. In the southwest corner of the room, there is a shrine with incense and candle offerings on the table.

However, the most striking are the two portraits that hang on the wall behind the shrine.

These are two portraits of a man and a woman.

The two looked very young, estimated to be less than twenty years old. The male, handsome and elegant, wore a black tunic suit; The woman, beautiful and intellectual, wore a red cheongsam.

The faces of the two are full of green and sweet smiles, just like a couple.

The portrait has been flushed with the yellow of the years, and the two people in the painting must have become an ancient legend.

The old man pulled me and Sister Yun, knelt in front of the portrait reverently, knelt on the ground with both hands, and kowtowed three times.

Then, he lit two earth-colored Buddha incense sticks, handed one to Sister Yun and me, and said in a low voice: Let's see if the Divine Ancestor Mother-in-law is willing to help you both.

Sister Yun and I didn't dare to squeak, holding incense in both hands, kneeling quietly in front of the portrait, as if waiting for the mercy of the gods.

A pillar of incense had already burned for a small part, and there was no movement.

I wondered: What is the origin of this god's grandmother, and is it really so effective?

As soon as I finished thinking about it, a strange cold wind suddenly blew in this empty room.

This yin wind born out of thin air, the furniture that shook "squeaked" and trembled, and the people who blew were constantly excited.

However, when it blew over the pillar of Buddha incense, the smoke on the incense head did not disperse, which was very surprising.

After a while, the wind cleared, and the room returned to silence. But the smoke on the Buddha incense began to flutter up and down.

The old man came over and said with a smile on his face: "Quickly insert the Buddha incense into the incense burner and come out with me."

Seeing the relaxed look on the old man's face, I felt that the "Divine Ancestor Mother-in-law" he was talking about was willing to help.

When we went out, the old man welcomed us to the front row of the hall, and when we sat down, he took a sip of tea and told us an old story.

A hundred years ago, there were two wealthy local gentry, namely the Zhou family and the Sun family. Compared with the two, the Zhou family is slightly better.

Due to various reasons, the two families have always been at odds, and once fought against each other.

In many ways, it was the Zhou family who pressed the Sun family. For example, the number of servants in the family, the area of the land owned, the advantages and disadvantages of the tenant farmers, the value of the gifts given to the local governor, and so on. Without exception, the Sun family was defeated.

The funny thing is that the masters of the two families are also inferior to each other in the matter of marrying wives and concubines. Mr. Sun has a three-room wife, and Mr. Zhou has a four-room wife.

God is fair after all. Master Zhou, who has had no heirs for decades, has been unable to have children since then after his eldest wife gave birth to a daughter. And Master Sun's third aunt gave birth to five sons and three daughters for him, which can be described as a full house of children and grandchildren.

The last born in the Sun family was a boy, born to the third aunt, named Sun Mosheng. Because he is the eighth in the family, he is also known as the eighth young master.

In the second year after the Eighth Young Master was born, the daughter of the Zhou family landed in the world, named Zhou Duohuan.

One is a handsome and clear young master, and the other is a delicate and intelligent young lady. Fate finally tied the two together.

There were a lot of family rules in the old days, and the two had an immortal enmity, so for more than ten years, they only knew their people and never met them.

Many years later, in a bamboo pavilion by the lake, he wanted to leave the pavilion, but she just entered the pavilion, and she unexpectedly bumped into her arms. The four eyes are facing each other, the handsome faces meet the pretty faces, and they are excited by each other. In an instant, ripples rippled on the surface of the lake.

That day, the two didn't talk much, they were all looking at each other infatuatedly, and they didn't want to leave for a long time.

Since then, an inexplicable affection has quietly bloomed in the hearts of the two. At that time, Sun Mosheng was fifteen years old and Zhou Duohuan was thirteen years old.

In the years that followed, the two hid from their families and had many trysts in the bamboo pavilion.

In a secret meeting, two innocent teenagers unexpectedly discovered the happy marriage between Grandma Sun and Butler Zhou in a small boat.

The two hurried away in shame and anger. Who would have thought that in a hurry, the Eighth Young Master actually left a poetry book on the shore.

That night, the second grandmother of Sun who was as good as she could quietly slipped into the eighth young master's room, she handed the poetry book to the eighth young master's hand, and tried her best to seduce him. And the eighth young master, who already belongs in his heart, is still unmoved by the teasing of the second grandmother Sun. Before leaving, Second Grandma Sun warned that if the Eighth Young Master dared to leak the matter of the lakeside, they would not be able to live in peace.

A few days later, the fortune teller told Master Sun that he would be restrained by the Eighth Young Master this year, and the method of turning auspiciousness was to let the Eighth Young Master leave him.

Don't think about it, most of this fortune teller was found by Sun Er's grandmother.

The extremely superstitious Master Sun listened to the fortune teller's words and insisted on sending the eighth young master to study abroad.

Before parting, the eighth young master took the eldest lady's hand and swore to heaven that when he returned, he would marry her. The eldest lady was in tears, and she said sincerely that she would not marry in this life.

Although time is in a hurry, in the eyes of two painstaking people who have been thinking about it for a long time, life is like a year.

A year and a half later, the Eighth Young Master finally returned. The whole person has become a new look: a black tunic suit, shiny black leather shoes, a flat inch head, and a gold wire glasses with two round lenses.

In that era of feudal rigidity, contradictions and chaos, the ideas he conveyed, such as that people are transformed from monkeys, that all people are created equal, that a husband can only marry one wife, and so on, all made people jaw-dropping and felt that he was extremely dangerous.

The Eighth Young Master never forgot the bitter promise he made to the eldest lady.

When he proposed to Master Sun to marry Miss Zhou and go to the Zhou family to ask for marriage, he was strongly opposed by the two families.

Master Sun thinks that the two families have been at odds for generations, so how can we marry the children and grandchildren of the enemy? And Master Zhou not only didn't agree, but also nested a belly of anger, he thought that our Zhou family is such a daughter, your Sun family and my Zhou family are not right, how can they climb high? Besides, your grandson Mosheng is an old man born in a partial room, with a humble identity, and he can actually open his mouth?

Now, not only the two masters of Zhou and Sun disagree, but even the wives and concubines of the two families of Zhou and Sun are also openly or covertly opposed.

The second grandmother of the Sun family kept instigating the contradictions between the Zhou and Sun families next to the pillow of Master Sun, and vainly said that if the eighth young master married Miss Sun, he would obey his words, and Miss Sun would listen to his father.

The second grandmother's words were not cold, and the chief housekeeper of the Zhou family gathered around Master Zhou, frowning and admonishing that Sun Mosheng was never qualified to marry the eldest lady, but he was afraid that this kid would be bad and do bad things to the eldest lady. For today's plan, first, the eldest lady should not be allowed to come and go at will, and second, the eldest lady should find a wishful husband as soon as possible, so as to eliminate Sun Mosheng's evil thoughts.

When Master Zhou came to the door of Sun Mosheng, he had already seen the feelings that made him difficult to accept and hated from his daughter's radiant eyes. The butler's words woke him up like a dream.

A few days later, without his daughter's consent, Master Zhou announced in public that he had married her to the youngest son of Boss Liu, who was engaged in a tobacco business in the county.

After hearing the news, the eighth young master and the eldest lady tried their best to oppose it, but the orders of their parents and the words of the matchmaker could not be disobeyed. The two whispered and prepared to elope.

Just as the two slipped out of the village, they were caught by the housekeeper Zhou who was secretly watching.

The Zhou family severely beat the eighth young master, and threatened that if he dared to hook up with the eldest lady again, he would have to be stripped alive.

At the time, no one took pity on what happened to them. Grandma Zhou looked down on the Sun family at all, and was reluctant to help her daughter speak, and although Grandma Sun had the heart to help, she could only persuade her son to die.

Of course, there was Zhou Da's housekeeper and Sun Er's grandmother making waves in it, and their vows finally came to naught.

After a month, the eighth young master, who was gradually healing, suddenly realized that instead of being so painful, it was better to let go as soon as possible, he could never marry for the rest of his life, but the beloved eldest lady couldn't never marry for the rest of his life, right?

In an extremely difficult tryst, when the eighth young master finished saying what he thought in his heart and the eldest lady slapped him, the two silently parted with tears in their eyes.

I thought it was over, but the nightmare had just begun.