The red rooster cries at dawn, and the golden crow calls the ancient village. Yun Xuelan, who was sitting cross-legged, glanced at Ding Ye, who was still sleeping beside him, pouted and muttered, "You can sleep better than a pig." He then stood up and kicked the black felt hat over his face. The sun was shining on the face of the young man who was still drooling at the corners of his mouth.

Ding Ye yawned while rubbing his eyes. Yun Xuelan said to him: "Get up, sleep as heavy as a dead pig." If you are so vigilant, how can you wander the rivers and lakes?" But Ding Ye just looked at himself in a daze, as if he hadn't heard it at all.

Yun Xuelan thought that his companion hadn't woken up yet, and said a few words about going into the village, but Ding Ye still didn't respond. Yun Xuelan's brows furrowed, and she was about to squat down to investigate. Ding Ye, who gradually faded from sleepiness, took out two balls of cotton from his ears with both hands and threw them on the ground, and a carp stood up.

Seeing this, Yun Xuelan scolded and said, "You kid is enough chicken thief." Knowing that I will keep vigil, I have something stuffed in my ears and sit back and relax, no wonder last night's movement was not small, but you didn't wake up. As she spoke, Yun Xuelan's gaze turned to the side, and a gust of morning wind blew and raised a cloud of gray-white dust.

Ding Ye also looked at the place where Yun Xuelan's gaze was focused, and there were a few hunting knives and firewood knives lying there sparsely on the ground. "Last night?" Ding Ye muttered to himself, and immediately realized what Yun Xuelan said. He asked with some surprise: "Everyone has been killed by you?" Seeing the acquiescence of the young man in green shirts, Ding Yechang took a breath, looking at the weapons on the ground, there were more than twenty people, and all of them died in the hands of this young man who had been smiling warmly when he got along with him. He couldn't overlap a handsome boy with a ruthless man who wielded a butcher's knife without blinking.

Seeing Yun Xuelan walking towards the village, Ding Ye picked up the black felt hat on the ground and chased after the figure in Tsing Yi.

The two walked along the loess road into the village. The walls of the courtyards throughout the village looked dilapidated. If it weren't for the occasional rooster and dog barking in the yard, I am afraid that people would mistakenly think that this is a village that has been abandoned for many years.

The two stopped by an ancient well. A black iron cable fell down from the mouth of the well, like a python burrowing into the endless abyss. Ding Ye didn't see it, and brought some water up from a wooden barrel next to the well. The cold well water instantly refreshed the boy.

There was a "squeak" and the door was pushed open from the inside. A red figure yawned as he spilled water from the bucket on his other arm on the ground. Behind him, the frost of the green cotton jacket held a broom that was much taller than himself, and followed the boy to sweep away the dust accumulated in the night by borrowing the water sprinkled on the ground, and the girl had to rub her sleepy eyes from time to time.

The boy in red clothes who didn't wake up opened the door for a while, and only after a while did he see Yun Xuelan sitting at the mouth of the well and Ding Ye who was wiping his face with his sleeve next to the young man. The boy rested the small bucket hanging from his arm on the ground and pinched his waist, obviously haunted by his own frustration yesterday, "What are you doing?"

Then the girl who came out of the yard saw the visitor and knocked the boy on the head with the handle of the broom. "Gu Yu, don't be rude, grandpa called them here. ”

The boy named Gu Yu let out an unwilling "oh", picked up the bucket on the ground and continued to sprinkle water, but intentionally or unintentionally raised a lot of water towards the position of the two people by the well.

Ding Ye saw that the boy's naïve appearance was a little funny and teasing, so he took off the black felt hat on his head and fanned it and said: "Sprinkle more, it's hot and tight, quickly relieve the heat for me." ”

The boy, whose face was swollen and redder than his red jacket, threw the bucket towards Ding Ye, turned around and ran back to the yard. It's just that the child is still kind-hearted, and when the bucket is taken off, he still retracts his strength, and doesn't let the small half bucket of water splash on the opposite side of the young man who will grit his teeth in his dreams. It seemed that he felt a little embarrassed about his "mercy", and the boy ran into the yard and cried.

Yun Xuelan took half a bucket of water from the well and poured it into the small wooden bucket discarded by the young man in the red jacket that he picked up. Estimating the trajectory of the two children's cleaning, the water was evenly sprinkled on the road. It is done with the utmost care, as carefully as the last mouthful of life-saving water poured into a dying crop field during a drought. The young man took the broom from the little girl's arms when she was stunned, and did not ask why he had to sweep the road in front of the door after sweeping his yard, but recalled the appearance of the housekeeper in the villa and worked according to the gourd painting scoop.

The young man's movements were crisp and neat, and when his companions were puzzled, he cleaned the road in front of the door. The road in front of the door itself is a loess road, and the so-called cleanliness is nothing more than to make the road surface smoother.

Ding Ye buckled the black felt hat back to his head and straightened it up. Puzzled, he asked, "You have to clean every morning?"

Seeing the girl named Frostfall nodding, the boy asked, "What is there to sweep on a loess road?

The short figure in the green cotton jacket shook his head, "I don't know why Grandpa asked us to sweep the floor after waking up every morning." It is said that every day the children in the village come here to study, and the road to the school must be the cleanest, so that the heart of reading is spotless. ”

Hearing this, Yun Xuelan, who straightened up, looked at the girl with the broom in her hand, with some joy in her eyes: "There are still children studying in your village?"

"Hmm!" the figure in the green cotton jacket reached out and took the broom in his arms, and continued: "The children of the village will come to us every day, and grandpa will teach them to read. Obviously, it was the young man in front of him who helped him finish the cleaning work, and the little girl in the green cotton jacket said a few more words gratefully, "At first, the adults in the village were opposed to their children coming to study, not because they didn't want to. Later, the situation in the village became worse and worse due to the repression of several villages. Grandpa said that as long as the children who came to the house to read and write with him could manage two full meals. The adults in the village gradually let their children come to us, but they still have to sneak around for fear of being known by other villages. ”

"Didn't you just say that the way to study is clean, so that the heart of reading can be spotless? Then why does your grandfather want to let the children in the village study on the condition of taking care of the rice?" Ding Ye asked with some puzzlement.

"Grandpa said that eating is as important as reading, reading is to do learning, and so is eating. I only know that I am immersed in books, I don't care about my livelihood, and I haven't read books to death. Books cannot be eaten as food, but meals can be read as books. The knowledge of the saints is not in the book, but in every meal, every sip of water, every time he ploughs the field, every time he has a relationship with the parents of the neighborhood, and every time he sees and hears on the road. And what is in the books is just the work of compiling and making the knowledge clearer by later generations. It seems that the little girl named Frostfall herself did not understand the true meaning of the old man's words, and just repeated it as much as possible according to the scene in her memory.

Yun Xuelan ignored the pensive companion in the black felt hat and was about to ask a question, but his ears moved, and there was a sound of footsteps on the dirt road. The young man followed the prestige, and the figures of three or three were walking towards this side. The younger one is about the size of the girl in the green cotton jacket in front of her. The older ones were not a few years younger than Yun Xuelan, and several teenagers already had some fluffy cyan stubble on their lips.

The scholars who rushed to the "school" stopped when they passed two young people. Seeing the little girl in the green cotton jacket and the handsome young man in the green shirt greeting each other with a smiling face, he couldn't help but be curious, and after saluting the scholars, he entered the courtyard.

After the little girl in the green cotton jacket asked, she said that her grandfather allowed the two visitors to wait in the courtyard, but he could not disturb the old man's teaching. So in the not spacious courtyard, two teenagers sat on the upside-down barrel and stared wide-eyed.

Outside the house, the green shirt and black felt listened solemnly, and the cranes and young faces in the house were all sitting in danger.

In the hall that was also not spacious, there was no sound of reading aloud as Yun Xuelan thought, and there were even few voices of old men instructing disciples. I could vaguely hear a few slightly childish voices arguing about something.

Ding Ye made a few mouths to Yun Xuelan: "This old man has a few brushes, and he may really be the person you are looking for." ”

The young man in the green shirt nodded and also replied with his mouth: "You speak politely, what if you are a master?"

"What is the origin of this old gentleman?"

Mr. Zhongli said that it was an old friend of his. I don't know if it's superfluous. ”

Ding Ye, who couldn't ask why, simply put away his curiosity. He is not a martial arts cultivator, his ear is not as strong as Yun Xuelan, and he can't hear the thinking of several young men in the house clearly. The boy remembered the scene when he was studying at the most beautiful time in Dingfu.

At that time, he was the same age as Gu Yushuang, but he was half a head taller than the two. He likes to read, but he doesn't like to read in the house. He said that reading is like a fugue, if you read in the house, you will only limit the small world of the study, and no matter how high you fly in this small world, you will only be a bird. If you read outside the study, then the study is the whole world, and it is Honghu and Kunpeng.

So, the stone table in the courtyard was his school. On rainy and snowy days or hot summer days, the people in the house will erect a shed. Only in the south, the winter will not be too cold, occasionally catch up with a few days of abnormal biting weather, Ding Ye is still wearing a scholar's single clothes, but he ordered someone to put on thick clothes for Mr. or send a steaming hand stove.

In the summer, the cicadas in the trees are so noisy that people try to knock out these noisy things with long poles several times. But Ding Ye said that real reading is like mountaineering, not asking outsiders to walk in front with knives and axes to break the thorn vines and push the sand and gravel blocking the road to the side of the road, but to personally climb the mountains and mountains with bamboo canes and shoes.

So in the winter, the sound of the charcoal fire in the hand of the gentleman was accompanied by the sound of trembling reading. The chirping of cicadas in the trees in the summer is accompanied by the sound of panting reading.

He was too young to know why he said that. He was still very young at that time, and he didn't even notice that when he said those words, there were many more wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.

The sound of the door opening pulled Ding Ye's thoughts back. Frost and Gu Yu, one green and one red, two figures came out side by side. Gu Yu saw the two Yunding who sat up from the wooden barrel, "snorted", and walked towards the kitchen angrily.

The frost of the green cotton jacket smiled apologetically at Yun Xuelan. The girl has always been recognizant and always serious like an old pedant, if you are not familiar with the girl, you must think that she is the same age as the old man in the wheelchair in the hall, but she has practiced some kind of Changchun magic. It seems that the old man in the house told the girl to pay tribute to the young man in front of her, maybe it was the day of getting along that made the girl familiar and good for Yun Xuelan, she actually took the initiative to introduce everyone to the kitchen for breakfast and rest for half an hour.

Yun Xuelan declined the invitation to go to dinner with Frostfall, but the girl said that her grandfather was resting and didn't like to be disturbed, so Yun Xuelan still sat back on the barrel and waited for the old man's "summons". Ding Ye, who was familiar with himself, was not polite, and went to the kitchen with the girl with a wicked smile. The fool can also see that the young drunkard's intention is not to eat but to Gu Yu in red clothes.

The so-called kitchen is just a bamboo shed built on the south wall of the small courtyard. There were two large stoves in the shed, and a woman in her fifties was taking out white flowers from the cage drawer of one stove, steaming steamed buns, and distributing them to each of the children who came. Gu Yu, a boy who came here early, stood in front of another stove, took out a spoonful of vegetable soup from a large iron pot and poured it into a white porcelain bowl placed next to the pot. The scholars who got the steamed buns would also bring up a bowl of vegetable soup, and there were no benches, tables and chairs in the room, and everyone sat down against the walls made of wooden planks on both sides, and ate silently.

Ding Ye followed the little girl in the green cotton jacket at the end of the line, smelling the aroma of steamed buns, he unconsciously muttered, "Didn't you say last night when you delivered dinner that your meal was just oil cakes and pickles? Why did you eat steamed steamed buns with fine noodles today?"

Although the young man's voice was small, he was still heard by the boy in red who was serving the soup, the movement in his hand was sluggish, and he raised his head and glared at the young man who was swallowing saliva with steamed buns in the cage drawer. Ding Ye, who was beating gongs and drums in the Five Organs Temple, ignored Gu Yu's eyes, and thought about the fragrant white bun that was about to enter the mouth.

But the boy was almost choked by his own saliva, and a boy who looked like he was thirteen or fourteen years old in front of the frost actually took the last white steamed bun in the cage drawer. Ding Ye was stunned, and the woman lifted a gray cloth covering the plate next to the stove, and a few sheets of bread that had already been baked were spread out on the plate. One red and one green, grabbed a few cakes from the plate with two arms, Gu Yu picked up a white porcelain bowl and sat down in a corner of the wall.

Frostfall turned around and winked at Ding Ye with an embarrassed expression, a little joking and a little apologetic. The young man took the two cakes handed over by the girl, and sat down against the wall like everyone else, but some greedy eyes unwillingly swept over the white steamed buns that were almost half gnawed off in everyone's hands.

"Do you really eat this?" Gu Yu beside him ignored Ding Ye's question, and the boy thought to himself, you finally have something inferior to me, and you don't want to ask me for advice.

"Why don't you eat steamed buns too, instead of eating this dry cake?" Seeing that the boy in red did not answer, Ding Ye touched the former with his elbow again.

"The rice and noodles in the village have to be bought from far away, so in order not to let the people in the neighboring villages know, they are all hidden in the chariots of mule carts, and very few are brought back each time, so they are extremely precious. Therefore, the grandfather always left this food for the village children who came to study, and he counted how much each person ate every day. The little girl in the female padded jacket said, "Grandpa said that a gentleman doesn't say anything, so Gu Yu didn't reply to your words." ”

Looking at the strange gazes of everyone, whether vague or bold, Ding Ye coughed lightly twice and lowered his head to chew the dry cake in his mouth. It's just that the young man is a little sad when he eats, he is not a heartless person, on the contrary, it is only because his emotions are too delicate, and sometimes he is afraid that he will dislike himself for hypocrisy, so he will deliberately pretend that he doesn't care about everything. looked at these scholars who were eating white-flour steamed buns, and then looked at the two people beside him, who were the youngest among the people, but ate the most "shabby" frost and valley rain. Thinking of the old man with inconvenient legs under the sunset yesterday, imagining the scene of the old man teaching and educating people in the hall and in the small school on that side, the young man's heart was a little blocked. He didn't know if the old man was the "master" that Yun Xuelan was looking for, but he was sure that the old man was a noble person for more than a dozen children in this bamboo shed.

The book of Kyushu is loud, and the four seas are prosperous. The champion was nominated in red and the gold list, and the purple robe was rewarded with yellow will. Who remembers the old school? Who remembers the lame teacher?