The twelfth round

Because the soldiers from the township came from the direction of Yiyang, Ding Xiang's father did not dare to risk his life no matter what. After thinking about it, he went straight to Ningxiang in Dongshan and went to Changsha. It's a pity that he is penniless, and he only arrived in Changsha for a few days by half-begging and half-begging, and he has a lot of money on weekdays, and when has he been so humiliated when he walks the rivers and lakes. Speaking of this, Lilac Dad said with emotion that it really responded to the old saying that the dragon was stranded on the beach and was played by shrimp, and the tiger fell in Pingyang and was bullied by dogs.

Hungry and cold, Lilac's father tried to go to Changsha to find some acquaintances, hoping to raise some plates and then go to Caowei Street in Nanxian County to meet Uncle Lilac. After going around and looking for several acquaintances but not finding a whereabouts, he wandered around the market in a somewhat disheartened and frustrated manner.

When he turned a street corner, he accidentally collided with a person, who was knocked to the ground and scolded when he got up: "Blind, hurry to go to the funeral and reincarnation!" Lilac took a closer look, her eyes suddenly lit up, and she shouted loudly: "Hey, Manager Xiao, I bumped into you, I really can't make a deal, but it just so happens that I'm looking for you."

When the man saw it, he was stunned for a while, a trace of surprise flashed across his face, and then he smiled again, and said, "Oh, it was the Jade Master, I am fortunate to be lucky, what do you have to ask for?" Ding Xiang's father listened and hurriedly pulled Manager Xiao into a restaurant, and after politely sat down, he told him about his situation and origin.

The chubby Manager Xiao squinted his eyes and listened carefully to Lilac's father's speech, and when he talked about escaping from prison, his face that was still smiling froze. When Lilac Daddy talked about borrowing money to entangle, he propped one hand on the table and tapped it lightly with his index finger. Suddenly, he turned around and shouted at the guy in the store: "Boss, come to a bowl of noodles, increase the amount!" Fu turned around again, raised his other hand, interrupted Lilac's father, and said, "Lord Yushi, you can afford to look down on me, and I believe that I will tell me, and it stands to reason that you will help this no matter what." It's just that I've been really tight lately - when I first went out, I brought a few money and planned to sell some rice oil, and I don't want to pay it back if I give it all to you, and my brother won't accompany you to grow old if you are in a hurry. After speaking, he hugged his fists and got up and left, and when he went out, he turned around and said: "Lord Yushi, now that the army is in chaos, be careful, all as brothers."

Looking at Manager Xiao in the distance and the money on the table, Lilac's father had mixed feelings in his heart. I think that when Manager Xiao was running the timber and tung oil business, Lilac's father helped him a lot.

Once, when Manager Xiao released the row along the river, the wood was scattered and floated down for more than ten miles. At that time, Lilac Daddy used his prestige and fame to summon more than a dozen peers to pick up wood along the river. There are more than ten pieces of wood floating to the downstream bend has been Ningxiang Weishan Tao's name of the owl of the peer tied up and tied on their own row, at that time Lilac Dad relied on the crowd, half coaxed and half frightened to take it back.

Since then, the two have become irreversible, and every time they go to Changsha, Manager Xiao will be entertained, and they will take care of each other in business, so they don't want to think about today's situation.

Lilac Daddy paid for the noodles with Manager Xiao's money, and it was not a problem to make do with the rest of the money for three or five days, just go to Nanxian County. When he got out of the store, Lilac's father was secretly sad, and he had already broken off his heart to seek help from friends. I want to try my luck everywhere tomorrow, even if I have anything to do, even if it is coolie, I will ask for a three-year-old first, and I will not be hungry and slowly raise some money before making plans.

That night, I found a shop and squeezed a dozen people for a night, and I looked around for trouble without breakfast, and walked through several wharves and finally found a wharf by the river in Qinwan Town, where I found a coolie who carried rice and got off the boat. At that time, he was afraid of causing trouble, so he pretended to be illiterate and asked the head of the ministry to fill in a fake name of Li Benchu and get in. In the first few days, Lilac's father suffered a lot, his back was sore when he finished work, and his shoulders were red and his skin was oozing blood, and he gradually got used to it after more than half a month.

I worked like this for more than four months, and after deducting one month's salary from the deduction, I have made up the travel expenses. At that time, there was a one-meter boat that happened to go to Yiyang, and Lilac's father said that he begged the familiar boatman to lobby the boss, and finally got the boat owner to agree to piggyback after several entanglements. It's just that the living expenses are more paid, so in order to thank the boatman, Lilac's father gave him all the things that he couldn't take away on weekdays, and the seized wages were also abandoned, and he took a boat along the Xiangjiang River to Yiyang.

After arriving in Yiyang, he immediately set off to Caowei Street in Nanxian County, and walked along the remote countryside for fear of being recognized. If you are hungry, you can find a small shop to play a guy, eat one meal a day, the store does not dare to live, find a bridge pavilion bridge hole in the dark to make do with clothes and sleep in clothes, and continue to rush at dawn. In the plain area of Dongting Lake District, there are many river ports, and I passed several ferry ports all the way, and finally arrived at Caowei Street in June. According to the agreement with Uncle Lilac, Lilac's father found a place to live on Caowei Street and lay down, often thinking about the old and young in the family in the dead of night, and waiting for his brother to appear near the agreed place during the day.

Left and right, waiting, didn't wait for Uncle Lilac news.

Finally, at noon one day, when I was eating at the Qiaotou restaurant, I heard three people drinking and bragging about current affairs, and I accidentally learned the news of my uncle.

One of them said: "Last year, the Communist Party attacked the city of Anhua during the Chinese New Year and ran away hundreds of prisoners. My cousin was in charge of affairs under the county magistrate, and later returned to the county seat with the army, and many bandits were killed in various places. That county magistrate Cao Yong, who was originally a colleague of my cousin under the county magistrate, was bewitched by the Communist Party and made an internal response, and was killed on the city wall on the spot, and rolled to the city and the blood stained red on the street! That's miserable..."

Hearing this, Lilac Daddy was like five thunderbolts, and his eyes were dark, and he stumbled and forgot to pay for the meal, and got up like a soulless man who went out of the store. The guy in the store was dusty, and hurriedly caught up with him and said, "How many customers, do you still pay for food?" Lilac's father didn't say a word when he heard this, and walked away lightly. The guy standing at the door of the store with the money looked at the distant Lilac Daddy and muttered, "Who is this..."

Back at the residence, Lilac's father slept with his head covered for a whole day and a night, and the door did not come out. When the owner of the shop saw it, he thought something was wrong, and greeted him several times a day. I got up at noon the next day, wiped my face and checked out, and when I left, the shopkeeper glanced at his pale face, and was a little glad that this person was gone, if there was really a disease in the store, it would be a bad thing.

After two days, Lilac's father finally calmly sorted out some clues, and decided to go to Wuhan to find something to do first, and grab some money to wait for the wind to be quieter before making plans. I made up my mind, and went to the ferry in the afternoon of the same day, and the endless Dongting Lake was already long in the sky and clear water, and a few boats and sampans could be seen sparsely in the shadows.

After waiting for a while, he finally waited for a small ferryboat, and Lilac's father took his burden and walked quickly with an umbrella to meet him. There were no ferrymen on the boat to get off the boat, so Lilac's father jumped on the ferry and said to the boat boss, "Boss, take a ferry to Huarong."

The shipowner looked up and down, and said, "Okay, sit down." Lilac Daddy put down his burden and sat down with his umbrella on his lap, when a woman came out of the cabin, strong and dark, with a pair of small eyes embedded in the disc-like face, blinked at Lilac Daddy, and went into the cabin again.

The boat rowed slowly in the lake, the turning props flooded the lake, the weather was hot and sultry, and the sky in the distance was darkened, and it seemed that it was the rhythm of the rain. Along the way, the owner of the boat chatted with Lilac Daddy, asking Lilac Dad where he was high, where he went, what was going and so on, and Lilac Dad lied that he was passing by on his way back to Wuhan after collecting the debt. At this time, the woman in the cabin carried a kettle, made a bowl of tea, and handed it to him, and when she returned to the cabin, she stared at his burden several times. When the boat reached the center of the lake, the boat owner stopped rowing, sweated with his hands, and said to Lilac Dad: "This ghost day, it's stuffy and hot, dare to love it will rain, take a sip of tea first." After saying that, he turned around and entered the cabin.

Xizhesuo didn't come out for a while, and he heard the two boat owners whispering something. Lilac's father was a little vigilant, and his years of experience as a trader told him that these two people were not good. Lilac's father squinted pretending to be in the cabin. At this time, I saw that the woman was already hiding behind her with a saber in her hand, and she was slowly opening the curtain to observe the opportune scheme, and the man followed behind.

Just as the woman was about to cut with her sword, Lilac's father stretched out her foot and stepped on a flat pole under her feet, and the woman was caught off guard from falling on the board. When the man saw that his woman had missed, he rushed over with his saber and tried to split Lilac's father. At this time, Lilac's father had already picked up the flat burden, first pulled away the sabre that was split, and then swept the thief's waist with a flat burden, only to hear the man's scream and fall into the lake.

At this time, the ferry shook, the woman saw that his man had fallen into the water, and she was unwilling, so she got up and grabbed the bow of the boat and swept over.

Lilac's father grabbed the prop with his sharp eyes and shook it hard, and the woman fell into the lake with a bang, splashing him in the face. Because of inertia, the ferry has rushed out several feet, and the two thieves and thieves in the lake are still fluttering and struggling in the water.

The ferry swayed in the middle of the lake, and Lilac's father bent down and supported the plank with both hands, and it took a while to calm down. Lilac's father looked left and right, and the prop had already fallen into the water with the thief's mother-in-law, and under his thoughts, he picked up the flat shoulder and paddled hard to the opposite bank of the shadows. It took a long time to row to more than 100 meters offshore, and then it rained heavily with muffled thunder in the sky, and when he arrived at the shore, he was soaked.

In the pouring rain, Lilac Daddy walked with one foot deep and one foot shallow, and only after it was dark did he find a group of shops, and he was covered in rainwater into the store. Seeing this, the guy hurriedly stepped forward to greet him, and Lilac Daddy took out a few slips of wet filter money from his soaked baggage. Entering the room, the guy made hot water early, Lilac Dad took off his clothes, and threw them out of the door together with the wet clothes in the baggage, and said to the guy: "Boss, please wash it, it's in the room fee!" The guy picked up his clothes and replied, "Okay, the guests are at ease."

After washing, I wiped my body dry, got into the quilt and slept naked, and didn't get up until the next night, and the food was sent to the room to eat, and the clothes were not dry!

Since escaping from prison for half a year, he has been displaced all the way, and this time the lake was in danger of heavy rain, Lilac's father fell ill in the store, and he was still very sick. The first just didn't think about the food, but after three days, he couldn't get out of bed, he was confused and had a fever and talked nonsense, and the shopkeeper panicked at first sight, and he was busy asking a Tulang to get a lot of medicine.

After taking the medicine for a few days, the fever subsided, and the autumn pendulum was started again, July and August just started the autumn solar term, and the two quilts were piled up and felt cold, and they shivered like a sifting bran, and the boss asked Lilac Daddy's family several times, and what relatives and friends in Huarong could be contacted, but Lilac Dad was just silent.

The shopkeeper couldn't do it, so when Lilac Daddy's body could move one day, he persuaded him to go out in front of a group of shopkeepers, and said to Lilac Dad when he left: "Guest, it's not that I'm ruthless, and you have no relatives or friends to trust." My shop is small, your disease will be contagious, if some are not pursued by the official family, my family will force Liangshan to have no way out! I don't want the store money, all of them should be good, in addition to paying Lang Chinese medicine money, I haven't touched you if you still have a few dollars in your baggage, you go out to find a place to live is the right thing! At this point, Lilac's father didn't want to say any more, so he thanked him and dragged his sick body out of the store.

It's strange to say, when Lang Zhong used up the herbs in the store, the disease was not cured, and after leaving the store, Lilac Dad pulled some herbs with some medical skills he knew, and he didn't play the autumn pendulum after a few nights in the bridge pavilion, but his body bones were weak as a day. With a few dollars on his body, Wuhan will not be able to go for a while and a half, so Lilac's father has to find some short-term coolies in Huarong City. In February, everyone in the small Huarong County knew that Master Zhang, who had a foreign accent, could do things, and the salary was small.

If life goes on like this, there may be a day to turn around, but an incident happened half a year later that made Lilac's father cut off the way back to his hometown and completely lost his home.

Huarong is located in the north of Hunan, north of Hubei, south of Changde Yiyang, west of Xiangxi Congshan Zhongmang, east of Yueyang. Although the land is not large, the re-export business of materials in various places is very prosperous. After getting acquainted with some people, Lilac Daddy asked someone to visit the wharf of a local church uncle called Tuoye, and the workmanship was guaranteed, and he no longer had to work alone for three days and two ends to find something to do, and the salary was higher.

Tuo Ye joined the robe brother club in his early years and was somewhat famous. Brother Pao is a popular folk organization in the three provinces of Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei since the Qing Dynasty, from high-ranking officials and nobles, to homeless beggars, merchants, and laborers. In the old days, there were some advantages to joining the gang, as long as you were an industrial businessman or even an official in politics, as long as you reported your name, the people who were also in the gang would support each other, and Chairman Jiang also joined the Youth Gang! The disadvantage is that once you join a gang, in case the gang has a conflict of interest with other gangs, the gang boss can call on members to come forward at any time, which can hurt your muscles and bones, and at worst you will lose your life.

When he first joined the gang, Lilac Dad relied on his experience as a merchant and peddler in his early years, and he was literate and hyphenated to do things properly, and he gradually won the favor of Tuo Ye in February, leaning on his arm.

At that time, there were three or five gangs in Huarong County, and in addition to Tuoye, there were two most famous, one was called Wu Sanle, and the other was Xie Baosheng.

Wu Sanleprosy mixed in Changsha, Yueyang, Wuhan three towns wharf in his early years, known for his cruelty and ruthlessness, because of leprosy in his early years, the top of his head was full of pit scars, everyone called the leprosy braincase. The older ones also accumulated some money, and returned to Huarong with their abducted wives when they were in Wuhan, and organized some people to force all kinds of things to make money. Many years later, the two sons are also older, like a wolf and a tiger, like him Lao Tzu, and bullying men and women is better than Lao Tzu. It's just that Wu San's leprosy brain case is not good, so he let the following call it Wu Sanye, and those who are familiar with it still call it leprosy skull in private.

Xie Baosheng is a foreigner, he is a rising star of the younger generation, relying on a cousin to do a water police anti-smuggling errand in Yueyang, he has a wide range of connections, and he is bold and bold, and over time, he is better than Lan and forcibly suppresses Wu Sanye, the local snakehead. Tuo Ye is a native of Changde, his uncle's family is gorgeous, and he lives here all the year round, and he is half a local.

But it is said that among the two sons of the third master of Wu, the second son is the most arrogant, and the second in line is called the third young master, because in the old days, the gang respected the second brother, and the name of the second master was taboo in the rivers and lakes. On weekdays, his mother pampered his father, and he was involved in a case of muddy water robe, such as prostitution and gambling, drug trafficking and smuggling. Although Xie Baosheng relied on his cousin's momentum and did a lot of illegal smuggling, he followed some rules and regulations, and his popularity overshadowed the Wu family's father and son, and the Minglu business robbed the Wu family a lot, and gradually accumulated a lot of resentment with the Wu family. Tuo Ye belongs to the Qingshui robe brother, and he is much more low-key, and he is happy to fight with each other.

At that time, there were many prostitutes in Huarong County, and a 16-year-old young girl named Lihong became the favorite of high-ranking officials and wealthy people in a brothel next to the police station in the city. This Lihong was abducted and stumbled, and secretly planned to find a lover to jump into the abyss of this bitter sea. The third young master of the Wu family usually covers the brothel bustard, and when there is a new product in the brothel, he must first pass through his hands, and he is often on call, Lihong was summoned by the third young master several times and recognized his means as a person, and he really didn't want to go against his will, so he had to deal with it in vain. Although Xie Baosheng has a wife, for some reason he has not given birth to a son and a half daughter for many years.

I took care of Lihong's business a few times in my spare time, and I didn't want to have a good impression of Lihong both, so after coming and going, Xie Baosheng actually had the idea of redeeming Lihong as a concubine.

Once the third young master summoned Lihong, Lihong politely refused to make an appointment. The third young master never treated prostitutes as people, and felt that he had saved face, so he immediately invited someone to him. slapped her twice when they met, and also stripped off her clothes in public and insulted her once.

Later, Lihong saw Xie Baosheng complaining, Xie Baosheng heard the fire, and after a few days, he made a bad move, and secretly monitored the cousin of the anti-smuggling team when the third young master was selling guns. Just in Dongting Lake, he announced his personal vendetta, and the arms and bandits refused to cooperate with the investigation and decisively shot the third young master, and the other people on the boat were unharmed, and they came out without incident after being locked up for a year and a half.

If people don't know that God knows it, it's okay, but the third young master died violently for only a few days, then Xie Baosheng actually ransomed Lihong and lived in one place every day as a concubine. Wu Sanye has heard a little about his son's beating of Lihong, plus his son died at the hands of the anti-smuggling team, and what's more, his son has not passed the Qixi Festival, Xie Baosheng actually ransomed Lihong, and the new hatred and old hatred are needless to say!

The boss of the Wu family, the big name Ruixiang, is called Uncle Rui on the road, and he has the name of Jia Rui in the Dream of Red Mansions, but this person is not as cheating and lustful as Uncle Rui in the Dream of Red Mansions, and he has always been an open flame in the affairs of men and women, and he has no patience from Jia Rui. This Uncle Rui is usually confused with people, but his brother is heartbroken, since the second brother's accident, he often said in private, and never let go of Xie Baosheng and Lihong.

At the end of the day, Uncle Rui found a reason, it turned out that there were several wharves in Huarong that were doing various businesses, and one of them was a business of trafficking materials to Wuhan by Xie Baosheng. That Xie Baosheng's subordinate named Brother Yang bullied Xie Baosheng as a foreigner, rebelled against him, and secretly colluded with Uncle Rui, and was cleaned up by Xie Baosheng, beaten violently and drove away. Uncle Narui thought that Brother Yang was his cousin, and beating Brother Yang was to slap their father and son in the face. He asked Lord Tuo to pass the word, two days before the Qingming Festival, on the first day of the third month, he made an appointment with Brother Yang to ask for an explanation, which was really to talk about the fate of the operation of this wharf, and by the way, to help his brother who died in vain to vent his anger.

This matter has nothing to do with Tuoye, and it will be over after passing a word. But Na Tuo Ye didn't know what to think, on the day of the duel between Xie Baosheng and the Wu family's father and son, he actually took Lilac's father to serve as a peacemaker, thinking in his heart to take the opportunity to watch the excitement and collect some people's hearts.

End of the twelfth round