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Chapter 1 The Master of Yizhuang ()

There is a mountain city called Chenjiachong more than 20 miles northwest of Shaoguan, because of the special geographical location, some merchants who are unwilling to pay tariffs detour from here to avoid the checkpoint of Shaoguan, so that this small mountain city has become as prosperous as Shaoguan County, and even surpassed. However, to the surprise of those passing merchants, the Qing court garrison in Shaoguan turned a blind eye to this phenomenon, perhaps because there were people above Chen Jiachong to maintain it, or perhaps the Qing court's attention was focused on the revolutionary party in the south, in short, for some unknown reasons, Chen Jiachong became a paradise in this troubled world.

Chen Jiachong, as the name suggests, most of the people are surnamed Chen, although there are officials sent by the Qing court in the mountain city, but the real master is Chen Deshang, the head of the Chen family. Chen Deshang's Chen family is from Suzhou, and his ancestors served as the governor of Jiangsu during the Kangxi period, and in the early years of Yongzheng, he served as the commander of the Han army in the Jiangnan Green Camp, but unfortunately it didn't take long for him to be dismissed because he was involved in the corruption case of the Cao family in Jiangnan, and he almost robbed his home. Later, because his ancestors were good at leading troops to fight, he was favored by Yongzheng's compatriot slave Nian Qianyao, recommended to Yongzheng, and was reinstated as an official, and went to the northwest with Nian Qianyao to quell the rebellion.

It's a pity that the good times didn't last long, as Nian Qianyao was deliberately suppressed by Yongzheng, the ancestor of the Chen family was also dismissed from his post because he was too close to Nian Qianyao, and was finally transferred to the Governor of Liangguang as a titular official. Because the Chen family has experienced ups and downs several times in the Kangyong and Yong dynasties, there is a risk of raiding the family and exterminating the clan every time, and the deep sense field is too complicated. So Chen Jiazu took the initiative to resign from his official position, changed to business, and under the guidance of that master, he bought a piece of land in the northwest of Shaoguan and built a small village, which was the predecessor of Chen Jiachong.

Although the Chen family suffered frustration in the officialdom, they were extremely proud in the shopping mall, and after several generations of operation, they became Huguangfu, with shops in southern states and counties such as Hu, Guangzhou, Zhejiang, and Fujian, and even some businesses in the north. At the same time as the wealth surged, Chen Jiachong also expanded more than ten times, from a small village in the mountains to a mountain city with quite large specifications. Over the years, many of the children of the Chen family have also been promoted in the scientific examination and entered the court as officials, and even if they did not have the middle lift, they would serve as masters and tax collectors in the official mansions of Huguang and other southern regions.

Although the official positions held by the children of the Chen family are some inconspicuous small official positions, the successive heads of the Chen family are good at management, and use some means to increase the influence of the children of the Chen family in the southern officialdom, and repeatedly break the wealth to do good deeds, so that the Chen family has also won a good reputation among the people, and the influence of the Chen family in the south is getting bigger and bigger. As a result, in the reign of Daoguang Xianfeng, the governor of Liangguang, who took office in the south, was not the first to visit the local ministers, but to visit the head of the Chen family in person at Chenjiachong, as if he had become an unknown emperor in southern China.

Later, with the decline of the Qing court's national strength, the Chen family, under the guidance of the descendants of the master, began to make friends with various forces, so that the Chen family was able to stand tall in the troubled times, even if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom made so much trouble in the south, it did not hurt the Chen family in the slightest. It was also under the guidance of that successor that the Chen family risked being accused of being foreign slaves, vigorously befriended foreigners, and illegally bypassed the Qing court to trade a large amount of contraband with foreigners, thus gaining the absolute trust of foreigners and becoming the general agent of foreigner firms in the south.

During the Tongzhi period, Cixi listened to the government and began to rely on the Westernists such as Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, and Li Hongzhang, and the relationship between the Chen family and the foreigners was put on the surface, and the influence of her government began to extend to the north. Cixi felt that the Chen family's power in the south was too large and wanted to cut it off, but because of the relationship between foreigners, she did not dare to do it directly against the Chen family, so she supported a Hui merchant Hu Xueyan to suppress the Chen family and draw the foreigner power from the Chen family.

It is a pity that Hu Xueyan is only a business wizard, but he does not understand the way of being an official and the international form, under the deliberate guidance of the contemporary head of the Chen family, he has achieved great success in the shopping mall in a short period of time, and gradually replaced the Chen family's position in the southern shopping mall. But it was also under the fiddling of the head of the Chen family that Hu Xueyan gradually became empty-eyed and began to impact the interests of foreigners, so as to offend the foreigners. As a result, not only did foreigners dislike him, but even Cixi began to dislike him. Later, the head of the Chen family designed a trap to make Hu Xueyan invest heavily in the construction of a silk factory, and spend all his money to buy new silk in the country, so that he monopolized the domestic silk industry, and then borrowed the hands of foreigners to block all his sales channels, and at the same time sent people to withdraw money from the money houses opened by Hu Xueyan everywhere, causing a wave of runs on the previous behavior, so that Hu Xueyan had to sell his property and repay the arrears.

On the surface, it was the head of the Chen family who manipulated a qiē, but in fact, this qiē was made by the later disciples of that master to give advice to the head of the Chen family, so that he only made one move to make Hu Xueyan never turn over. However, he injured 10,000 enemies and 7,000 himself, although Hu Xueyan was eliminated by the head of the Chen family, but the Chen family itself was also injured, so that the merchants of Jin, Hui, Guangzhou, Hu and other places seized the large market left after Hu Xueyan fell before the Chen family recovered. Although the Chen family also regained a lot of the market afterwards, compared to the Chen family's shopping mall power before, this thing is insignificant, fortunately, the Chen family still has the card of this foreigner, and still has absolute influence on Huguang and Guangzhou.

Although the head of the Chen family has extraordinary influence in other places, except for the descendants of the Chen family and the collateral children of the Chen family, most of the people do not know the true identity of the head of the Chen family, and in their eyes, the head of the Chen family is just a great benevolent person with amazing wealth and always doing good deeds. One of the greatest good deeds done by the head of the Chen family is to collect the bones of those who are in the wilderness of violent corpses in the troubled times and wars, and those who know their identities will send people to find their relatives, and those who are unknown will set up a righteous village to raise them, so as not to become wandering ghosts. When it was the middle of the seventh month, they invited the virtuous people of Longhu Mountain and Maoshan and the monks of the major temples to do the Dharma and save the dead. This good deed has been carried out for more than 100 years since the first generation of the Chen family migrated here, and has become a major event in the local area.

In 1907, on the ninth day of the seventh lunar month, less than a week before the Midyear Festival, the eminent monks of Huguang and Guangzhou, Zhenren 6, were invited here to prepare for the Water 6 Festival in the seventh and a half months. In addition to these high-ranking monks and real people, even the foreign monks who preached in the two places also wanted to come and make a kick, so as to spread their own foreign churches. Chen Deshang, the contemporary head of the Chen family, who is proficient in Western studies, welcomed this, and in his view, it was also an opportunity to take advantage of the beliefs of foreigners to strengthen his position among foreigners.

In addition to these people from other worlds, there are also many clan squires from all over the country who are also famous, among which in addition to wanting to get in touch with the Chen family and catch the line of foreigners, they also want to pray for themselves through this grand event. In the past few years, the Boxer Rebellion shocked the world, but because it was used by Cixi to fight the foreigners, many merchants who did business with the foreigners suffered losses. It is precisely because they have to leave their hometowns that many businessmen are deeply uneasy about their future, so they want to take advantage of this festival to seek peace of mind for themselves, and also want to meet those rare monks and real people, and ask them to cast spells to wash away their bad luck.

As night falls, the people of the mountain city gradually turn on the lights, and the tourists on the streets do not decrease because of the arrival of night, but there are more and more signs, many unmarried couples will run to the small river outside the city to put lanterns, and those businessmen will gather in the green buildings in the city to contact feelings. There is a small road extending south from the west gate of the mountain city, and there are no lanterns lit by the Chen family on both sides of the road like other roads outside the city, which makes the gloom and coldness here and the hustle and bustle of the city form a sharp contrast, and people can't help but feel particularly gloomy when they walk on it.

The trail continues to the west, at the foot of the Peach Blossom Mountain outside Chenjiachong, one turns southeast, bypasses the mountain city, and connects with a mountain trail to Shaoguan, while the other road continues to extend to the Peach Blossom Mountain, and finally over the Peach Blossom Mountain, and a mountain road on the other side of the mountain into the hinterland of Hunan. This peach blossom mountain is the Chen family's industry, there is no household on the mountain, all of them are planted with peach blossoms, and there is only a Yizhuang built in the middle of the mountain.

is different from the Yizhuang in the east of the mountain city, this Yizhuang should be a big monster of Chen Jiachong. Its construction time is the same as that of Chen Jiachong, when the head of the Chen family bought the land of Chen Jiachong, he also bought Taohua Mountain, and at the same time started to build this village. After the completion of Yizhuang, the head of the Chen family handed it over to a layman, for the origin of this Taoist, only the head of the Chen family and a few clansmen know, others only know his name is called the Nine Streams Idler, and every time the head of the Chen family sees this layman, he is a teacher and respectful. After that, the heads of the Chen family were courteous to the owners of the Yizhuang at that time, and it can almost be said that they were responsive, and every time the Chen family had a crisis, the head of the Chen family would go to ask the owner of the Yizhuang for advice, and every time the head of the Chen family returned from the Yizhuang, he would soon be able to turn evil into good fortune, and the Chen family's career was also thriving.

The people of Chen Jiachong did not know the relationship between the owner of Yizhuang and the Chen family, but they knew that the Chen family respected the owner of Yizhuang very much, and set the Taohua Mountain, where Yizhuang was located, as a forbidden place, and no one was allowed to disturb him at will. Although the Chen family has great respect for the owners of Yizhuang in previous generations, the owners of Yizhuang are not arrogant because of this, but they are born extremely low-key, and they seem to be no different from ordinary people. He will walk around the mountain city almost every day, and some people in the mountain city will enthusiastically come up with ideas to solve problems, and it seems that he has a variety of postures in his head, from farming to national affairs, almost knowing everything. However, each generation of Yizhuang owners will leave Chen Jiachong for five or six years, and when they come back, they will be sad for a long time, and they will be closed to customers, and even the head of the Chen family will not be seen.

The previous owner of Yizhuang died ten years ago, and he was replaced by a seventeen-year-old orphan named Xu Changqing. The origin of this Xu Changqing is also extremely mysterious, when his mother came to Chen Jiachong alone with a big belly, and after staying in Fengxiang, the largest inn in Chen Jiachong, she committed suicide by hanging herself that night. Because his mother is richly dressed and her identity is by no means an ordinary person, the Chen family attaches great importance to this matter, and after many visits, they only know that she has appeared in Changsha, with an accent a bit like a northerner, and the only token related to her identity is a jade pendant, which is engraved with words that even Chen Jiachong's most learned people can't understand.

The next day, after the head of the Chen family invited the owner of Yizhuang at that time, the owner of Yizhuang recognized at a glance that the text on the jade pendant was a kind of writing that was once popular in the Chu State during the Spring and Autumn Period. However, at that time, this kind of writing quickly disappeared from the people of Chu, and only a small number of nobles of Chu State knew this kind of writing, and now there are even fewer people who can write this kind of language, and even the owner of Yizhuang can only recognize it, but he does not understand the meaning of it. Although Xu Changqing's mother's identity, the owner of Yizhuang was very lucky to save Xu Changqing, who should have been suffocated in his mother's belly, and brought this congenitally deficient coffin back to Yizhuang to personally take care of it, and finally accepted him as an apprentice and taught him his skills.

When Xu Changqing inherited Yizhuang, although he was still young, no one in Chen Jiachong dared to underestimate him, Chen Deshang also followed the ancestral rules to teach him, respectfully called him Mr. Xu, and asked him for solutions when he encountered difficulties.

On this day, Xu Changqing went to Chen's house to help those craftsmen decorate the Water 6 Dojo, and arranged the seats for the senior monks and real people who came from various temples and Taoist temples, and arranged them according to each other's Taoism and reputation, so as to avoid unnecessary disputes in the middle of July. After dinner at Chen's house, Xu Changqing left Chen's house alone and walked towards Yizhuang on Taohua Mountain, along the way the locals of Chenjiachong stopped when they saw him, saluted him, and respectfully called him Mr. Xu, this scene made many businessmen who came to Chenjiachong for the first time think that he was a big man.

Although it is already summer, because this is in the mountains, the temperature is still a little cold, Xu Changqing is still wearing his simple gown, the sleeves are slightly rolled up, and the slender fingers are as white as jade, and if you look closely, it seems that a layer of white light is covered on the surface. His face was delicate, his willow eyebrows and thin eyes, his thin cheeks and the slanking look in his eyes gave him a morbid elegance, and if he had a book in his hand, he was like a well-read scholar. In addition, there is a very striking vertical red mark in the middle of his forehead, which is the birthmark he wore when he was born, but to outsiders it looks like an eye that is not fully open.

In the south, due to the lax control of the Qing court and the impact of foreigners, many young people with new ideas cut off the braid on their heads, which represented servility, but Xu Changqing, who was also a young man, did not follow the trend, and the big black and bright braid was neatly combed up and hung down to the waist. At the end of the braid, Xu Changqing tied it with gold wire, tied a golden bell on it, and when he walked, with the swing of the braid, the bell made a very pleasant sound, which made people feel like there was a clear stream pouring in from the top of the head, washing the body and mind, not only the mind became much clearer, but even the fatigue and pain of the body would be relieved. Although Xu Changqing was dressed as a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, the exquisite Western pocket watch hanging on his chest gave him a touch of Western style.