In the streets and alleys of the city, only the guards who keep watch every night and the sergeants who patrol the city with tung oil torches will step on a series of deep and shallow footprints on the snow-paved road, and they will be covered by new snow. In this kind of cold night when you can't spit out half a foot of hot air, if there is nothing that you really have to do, no one is willing to get up from the warm quilt and hot kang head and go out to suffer the cold.

This is not yet the coldest time in Jinju, when every household in Jinju has a neat stack of non-perishable vegetables in the vegetable cellar, and the men have prepared the charcoal fire for wintering firewood, and their mother-in-law and aunt hugged in the same bed, all day long either sleeping in the dark, or doing the obscene thing of giving birth to a baby, so some Jinju people ridiculed themselves, saying that it is no wonder that the population of the family is increasing year by year.

3939, called the dog at the door, it is said that some children in the family can't hold back the feces and urine on the kang on the cold day of Sanjiu, and the mother-in-law is too lazy to clean up, so she called the housekeeper dog in.

"It's cold and snow falling, be careful of the candle!" The rustling voice of the husband is not light or loud, every time he strikes the gong, he shouts such a sentence, although the snow falls, but every household is still burning the kang at night, and the fire and burning the house are every three or five times, a few years ago, there was a fire that burned half of the city, a family burned up at night and the wind was strong, and it burned to dozens of houses in less than half an hour, and then the guard of the watch had one more duty to pay attention to whether each family caught fire.

When he was patrolling the remaining half of the street, the husband pulled up the coat on his shoulder, coughed vigorously twice, and was about to shout again, but he saw three people hurrying by, one of whom still had a wooden box hanging around his neck, and his clothes were all solid black, and he walked past him in silence.

It would not be auspicious for a person dressed like this to walk like this on such a day.

The snowy night blows the light window brighter, and the three or five pedestrians are the same, and they do not carry lanterns in their hands, and they jump out of the crooked lines on the white street.

"A few steps further on, the one that has been repaired is it. The person standing on the far left stopped, stretched out a hand from his coat and pointed to the small courtyard ahead, "Do you really want to go in alone?"

"Naturally. ”

The people on the left and right all stopped and stopped, and the person with the ebony box hanging in front of the three of them breathed slowly, and the coldness that was included in his body calmed him down, and he took a step forward, two steps, towards the small courtyard

"We're all outside, if we can't do it, just say it!" the person to his left seemed to be a little uneasy, and raised his voice slightly to his back.

The figure of the person walking towards the small courtyard paused for a moment, and did not look back, and continued to walk forward after a while.

"This guy. ”

Gu Sheng, who was covered by the hat, was a little helpless, took off the hat and stood under the eaves of the street with the person left behind by him, carefully breaking off the ice cubes on the top of his head first, otherwise he would be smoked by the heat, and it would inevitably smash the head and bleed.

"Uncle Seven, if something goes wrong for a while, do you have to?" Gu Sheng pulled the sleeve of the old man beside him, "Zou Yongan's old lady is not young, if there is a three long and two short and then take a life, whether it is the dart head or my father, there is no way to explain it." ”

"The guys who eat are all here, your seventh uncle hasn't seen any strong winds and waves, and you need to worry about your little rabbit cub salty and eating radishes?" The old man scoffed, waving his hand to flick a layer of snow beads on his coat, "This kind of scene, in the early years, it was not possible to see dozens of times a year, but in recent years, it has only been slightly better, who dares to pat his chest and guarantee that he will not die?"

The person with the ebony box hanging on his chest was already standing in front of the gate of the dilapidated courtyard, and through the hole in the crumbling courtyard door, he could see the situation in the courtyard, there was no debris, a few large wells along the stones, and the house in the courtyard was lit with a swaying lamp as big as a bean, and the chopping wood was about the same thickness and stacked into a small hill on the side of the courtyard wall, and the adobe bricks in several places in the courtyard wall also collapsed, and the fallen bricks were also piled up in a corner of the courtyard, which was not an easy job, waiting for a man to come back and rebuild it on the wall.

The man in this small courtyard will never come back.

There is only one of the two bronze knockers left on the crumbling courtyard door, which has been rubbed and shiny by unknown generations, waiting there alone for someone to ring, and the corners of the cedar door panels are crooked and obliquely engraved, but they are covered by old dirt, making it easy for people to see clearly.

The hand that originally raised the copper knocker was gently put down, and he squatted down to see the nick on the corner of the door panel, which was Yong'an, the four characters of soft branches, and the handwriting was immature.

Zou Yongan.... Zou Rouzhi.... That's about the name of the brother and sister.

The brass knocker was finally snapped, and there was a muffled sound on the cedar door, but it was pitifully light, far from being heard by the people in the house, but then there was a second sound, a third sound, and before the scene of a cup of tea arrived, the voice of a young woman came out of the house, followed by the sound of getting up in a hurry, and the eager voice of the old woman.

The two people under the eaves looked at the door of the courtyard opening, and the people in front of the courtyard said their intentions in front of the courtyard gate.

"Uncle Seven, the medicine box is ready. Gu Sheng lowered his voice and disappeared in the shadows under the eaves, but his eyes did not leave the somewhat dilapidated courtyard gate, "Brother Wei is not a person who will come to things..."

"Then why did you still promise him to go?" the seventh uncle opened the medicine box again to check, "This kind of thing has always been done by the dart head and the old man in the dart game, you young people, in the matter between life and death, the vision is still shallow." ”

Looking at the people in front of the courtyard gate and the people in the courtyard for a long time, they did not make a sound, and they did not move their bodies for a long time, until he didn't know how often, his hands and feet were a little sore, and the people standing outside the courtyard gate entered the small courtyard, and the backyard door was closed, and he could no longer see half of the situation in the courtyard.

"Brother Wei said that his life was exchanged with Brother Yong'an, and this matter had to be done by him. Gu Sheng lowered his head and thought, "Besides, I am convinced of Brother Wei." ”

"From Suzhou to Jinzhou to take this dart, it has only been less than half a year, and people who have never been alive, how can you be convinced by people who are not convinced by anyone at your size?" The old doctor took out a slender hollow copper rod from his body, one end of the copper rod looked like a small pot, and the other end was made into a round mouth, like a mouthpiece of Sheng.

The delicate skin pouch poured out the fine yellow-brown dried grass leaves in a small pot at the end of the copper rod, compacted them finely, and then lit them with the fire fold that ignited the fire, and the yellow-brown fine grass blades burned slowly, a little red spark, he took a sip from the other side of the round mouth, and the little spark brightened up a little, white, faint, ethereal, and the smoke slowly rose.

A puff of white smoke also came out of his mouth, and the old man showed an intoxicated look, leaned against the street wall, held the copper pole in one hand and a half, and let out a low silent thought:

Qingsi only hopes to leave home, and goes down the world with a sword.

Success or failure is half a Jiazi, and the white-headed people return to their hometowns.

Gu Sheng knew that the old doctor of Wuhe Dart Bureau, who should be called Uncle Seven, was originally a scholar, and he gave up medicine after repeated attempts, saving the lives of thousands of people, and each doctor saved one person, if it was a poor person who couldn't get the bundle of pulses, then let the family plant three or five apricot trees outside the city, and practiced medicine for more than twenty or thirty years, and the apricot has become a forest.

"Seventh Uncle, what is this?" The wisps of white smoke were also heard by Gu Sheng, and he only felt that the originally tense heartstrings slowly relaxed, and then his throat was numb and itchy as if someone was scratching it with a chicken feather, and he asked with a wry smile while coughing.

"The tobacco in the south is the medicine of the nine tricks. The old man who was called the Seventh Uncle leaned against the courtyard wall and swallowed the clouds and mist, and the white smoke swirled nearby, teaching people to see his face clearly, "It is something that can make people relax and calm down, but don't smoke too much, after all, the medicine that healers use to save their lives, too much, and many of them are also poisons that can kill people." ”

The old man narrowed his eyes, took a deep breath of the copper rod, and then gently slurped the copper rod on the wall, and the embers were snorted out along with the ashes.

The copper pot that was refilled at the front end was lit, and the old man took out a piece of snow-white gauze from the medicine box to wipe the suction nozzle, and handed the copper rod to Gu Sheng beside him.

The young man curiously took the copper rod, unintentionally held it in front of him, and was burned, hurriedly and carefully stretched out four fingers with both hands to pinch the farthest place from the copper pot, put his mouth on the other end of the copper rod, and took a deep breath, the spicy smoke irritated his throat, as if someone had burned extremely spicy sea pepper noodles in a charcoal fire.

"Try two more puffs. The old man smiled and looked at Gu Sheng's wrinkled facial features, and gave this proposal.

I took a tentative breath, and the spicy feeling was no longer so strong, but was replaced by a tingling warmth that spread from the scalp to the soles of the feet, like a person who has been frozen for a long time, suddenly in a hot spring, and fluttering as if in the clouds.

He sucked greedily, and was about to take another deep breath when the old man next to him snatched the copper rod from his mouth.

"The first time you try this thing, it's best to take a shallow breath, if you start to get addicted, it's a harmful thing. He put away the rod and tied the knot with the leather pouch containing the tobacco, "Listen." ”

It was not as worried as Gu Sheng had before, there was no crying of a woman crying in the small courtyard, only the young girl was sobbing softly and was pressed very low, and the old woman's gentle voice was not heard much.

Not far from the small courtyard, the silent two were ready to rush into the small courtyard at any time to use medicine stones to save an old woman who had just lost her child.

The smoke is sloppy, the snow is falling, and the snow on Jinju and Wonseong does not have any momentum of getting smaller or bigger, just like the voices of the people in the small courtyard, but in addition to calmness, there is also a sobbing and sadness that is difficult to hide.