During the Kangxi period, there was a small town in the Northeast called Xiujiaji. Although the town is not big, it is a necessary place to enter the customs, merchants gather, shops are dense, there is a lot of traffic every day, it is very prosperous.

There is a pot shop in the east of the town, and the owner is called Wang Jiusheng. The three generations of Wang Jiusheng's ancestors and grandchildren have made a living by making wine, and the wine made by his generation tastes better and better, so the business is good. As soon as the business was good, there was a great demand for wine, and the workers worked very hard. Wang Jiusheng is an insatiable person, and he can't wait for all the money in the world to belong to him alone. He only cares about working overtime, but he doesn't process money. He was reluctant to improve the food for the workers, cooking brown rice every day, and lacking oil and salt in the dishes. The workers had unspeakable suffering, and they hated him to death in their hearts.

August 15 of this year is approaching, and it is the most prosperous time for the pot. Wang Jiusheng wanted to take advantage of the festival to make a big profit and burn a few more pots of wine, so he asked the guys to rise against the stars and work in the moon, for fear of delaying the soju, so he asked the guys to eat while working, and the sky and day were constantly rotating. Who can stand this? But he still didn't think he had enough wine, so he gritted his teeth and decided to hire another guy. Wang Jiusheng is a miser, the master of and picking beans to eat, the salary is low, and the notice of the hired worker has been posted for several days, but no one has come to apply, so anxious that he eats and sleeps restlessly, like an ant on a hot pot.

On this day, a strong man came to apply. He found Wang Jiusheng and said that he was a southerner, and his surname was Zhang Erbao. He also said that he didn't need to be paid for his work, but only ate and drank his food. Wang Jiusheng was overjoyed when he heard this, and he thought in his heart what was the point of drinking some wine, besides, don't look at him to look very strong, how much wine can a person drink? Even a fool can figure it out. So Wang Jiusheng happily left Zhang Erbao.

Zhang Erbao is not like a southerner at all, with big shoulders and a round waist, and he spares no effort in his work. Since he arrived at the pot shop, the amount of alcohol produced has really increased greatly. This can make the stingy Wang Jiusheng happy. It's just that after a few days of fun, Wang Jiusheng should have cried. Why? Because this Erbao wine is amazing! Three meals a day, no wine, no joy, you can drink a barrel of wine at a meal. Usually thirsty, he also substitutes wine for water, and the most amazing thing is that he is not drunk no matter how much he drinks. When Wang Jiusheng saw this, he complained bitterly. But not long after he hired someone, he was embarrassed to send it away, and he was a little reluctant to say that this Erbao worked hard.

It is said that Wang Jiusheng's cousin Li Dashan also works in the pot workshop, which is a small head. Zhang Erbao has a bold temperament and often speaks for his guys, so it is inevitable to contradict Li Dashan. So Li Dashan said bad things about Zhang Erbao in front of Wang Jiusheng when he had nothing to do, saying that he was rude-tempered, gluttonous and lazy, and drank to his death. Li Dashan's words hit Wang Jiusheng's heart, and he hated Zhang Erbao for a long time. In Wang Jiusheng's eyes, Zhang Erbao is like holding a hedgehog in both hands, throwing, throwing it; Pick it up, you can't leave it behind. In the end, he made up his mind to expel Zhang Erbao from the pot shop, but there had to be a reason to let people go.

A few months later, Wang Jiusheng asked Li Dashan to go out once, first, to urge some of the wine accounts, and second, to find a way to find a guy from the mountains to replace Zhang Erbao. Li Dashan pondered while walking, Wang Jiusheng was too ruthless and picky, he was so tired that he couldn't pay for his life, and he regarded money as closer than his father, although he and he were aunts and cousins, but there was no benefit at all, and he didn't give much money to start work every month. So he didn't have the heart to ask for accounts, walked a few places, ate, drank and had fun for a few days, and then went home. On the way back, when he came to a fork in the road, he saw a taxi sitting on a stone on the side of the road and drinking with a lump of dirt. Eat a lump of dirt and take a sip of wine, and eat with relish. Some people watched the excitement, and everyone talked about it. Li Dashan also followed to watch the excitement, and when he looked at it, he asked: "May I ask the chief, why are you drinking with dirt lumps?" Is the gnocchi delicious?" The Taoist priest said: "One thing descends one thing, and the brine points to tofu." There are so many things in the world. ”

At this time, Li Dashan remembered Zhang Erbaolai. When the crowd dispersed, he told the Taoist priest the strange story of how much Zhang Erbao drank and was not drunk. The Taoist priest was shocked when he heard this, and after a long silence, he told Li Dashan that he had seen in books before that someone had a kind of insect in his abdomen, called "Jiubao", and it was unknown how it was generated. But it is said that whoever has this worm in his stomach will not get drunk in a thousand cups. If you get this worm, put it in the wine, the wine tastes strange; Put it in water, and the water will turn into wine. The person who has a wine treasure in his belly is fat first, and he has big shoulders and a round waist; After being fat and thin, there is only a handful of bones left in the end.

The Taoist priest asked Li Dashan who had a wine treasure in his belly, and if it was a relative or friend, please remove the wine treasure in time, otherwise he would definitely die within half a year. Li Dashan's eyes rolled, his face was embarrassed, and he said, "Dao Chief, you don't know that the sick person is my cousin at home. The Taoist priest nodded and said, "I know that there is a way to crack the ......" When Li Dashan heard this, he hurriedly begged the Taoist priest to tell him the method. The Taoist priest refused to say anything at first, but then he couldn't stand Li Dashan kowtowing and kneeling, tears rippling. The Taoist priest saw that he was eager to save people, sighed, helped Li Dashan up, stroked his beard, and recited the immeasurable Tianzun, good and good, save people's lives, and win the seventh-level floating slaughter, and quietly told Li Dashan the methods of leading out the wine treasure and eliminating the wine treasure.

Li Dashan returned to the pot shop and hurriedly told Wang Jiusheng about the encounter with the Taoist priest, and took the opportunity to flatter. Wang Jiusheng was naturally overjoyed, and discussed with Li Dashan to design the wine treasure in Zhang Erbao's belly. Li Dashan volunteered, and Wang Jiusheng immediately promised that if this insect was successfully introduced, it would work if he tried it, and he would share the income from burning the pot with Li Dashan fifty-fifty in the future. This made Li Dashan so happy that he couldn't find the north.

At this time, it has just entered winter, and the northeast is cold and burns the clay kang. That night, Li Dashan, who was sleeping on the kang, deliberately lied and tried his best to change berths with Zhang Erbao. Zhang Erbao slept deeply, tired for a day, and fell asleep as soon as his head was next to the pillow. Li Dashan's stomach is full of crooked intestines, where can he sleep? As soon as he heard Zhang Erbao snoring, he hurriedly went down to the outhouse to burn the kang to a boiling heat. The heat came up, and it was so hot that Zhang Erbao was churning back and forth. In the middle of the night, Zhang Erbao was so hot that he got up from his sleep. Someone asked him what he was doing, and he said that he was on fire, his stomach was uncomfortable, as if something was moving, and he was so disgusted that he couldn't do it. Li Dashan hurriedly brought a basin of cold water prepared in advance and put it in front of Zhang Erbao, and used his hands to stir up the water. Suddenly, Zhang Erbao spit out a beige insect with a "wow", about three inches long and one inch thick, with two pointed ends, thick in the middle, similar to a jujube core. The insect fell into the basin, and Li Dashan hurriedly took the basin to see Wang Jiusheng. Zhang Erbao lay down in a daze, smacked his mouth, and fell asleep again.

Wang Jiusheng saw the wine treasure and was overjoyed. According to what the Taoist priest said, Li Dashan poured it into the water tank, covered it tightly with a lid, and dipped it in the water after a short time, and the water in the tank turned into a tank of good wine.

The next day, Zhang Erbao woke up and had a headache when he smelled wine, and he had a splitting headache as long as he drank a little wine. Since then, he has not drunk a single drop. A few days later, he said goodbye to the pot brewery and left for the country.

After Wang Jiusheng got the wine treasure, he stopped making wine and dismissed all the guys, leaving Li Dashan to carry water for him. Since then, the money has been rolling in. At the end of the year, Li Dashan asked Wang Jiusheng for money, who thought that Wang Jiusheng not only did not admit it, but wanted to dismiss him. Li Dashan has words of suffering, and his heart is aggrieved.

On this day, Li Dashan went to fetch water again, and he quietly put the prepared half catty of realgar into the bucket and poured it into the jar together with the water. After a while, the water in the tank became muddy and stinky. The liquor sold was stinking swill, and it was all returned. Wang Jiusheng was shocked, and when he looked closely, he found that the wine treasure was dead and floating on the water. Within a few days, the Shaoguo Wine Workshop closed down, and Wang Jiusheng's family and Li Dashan have disappeared since then.

16. Thorns