Qingming breaks the snow, and the valley rain breaks the frost.

In the late spring twilight of the 35th year of Longqing, a teenager was half-lying on the chaise longue in his small courtyard, and there was a pair of floaters who had not been paired with a fan in his right hand to drive away the floaters that had begun to grow in size. A spring rain had just been drained, and the water fell from the potholed eaves, and patted on the edge of a well in the courtyard, splashing a little water and falling on the boy.

He seemed to be a little displeased, and moved the chaise longue a little further away from the well.

The boy's surname is An, and the single name is a pronunciation. His father An Ruyi died early, and his mother renamed him Nian An.

Ice and charcoal do not speak, cold and warm self-knowing.

Nian'an, this child, learned to be independent very early.

The border city where the boy is called Qubai is a place on the northwest border of "Great Xia" that is specially used for merchants to rest. Every year, the merchants who are active here flock to the city from the beginning of summer, and the noise will not stop until the mid-year festival after the eighth day of the ninth month.

Because of this, when Nian'an's demon clan mother was still alive, she relied on selling some exquisite handicrafts to merchants who came and went, although life was not easy, the young man did not worry about food and clothing.

In his early years, he didn't know that the world was difficult, and after his mother died, the burden of life was all forced on him.

......

......

When my mother was alive, I always liked to hold him and look up at the starry sky together. She told him that there was everything in the starry sky, and that when he was lonely, he could try to find warmth in it. In the days that followed, the boy tried many times, but he always felt that the deep night was just trying to suck his gaze into it little by little.

The same is true today, Nian'an is trying to observe the sky again.

In another courtyard separated from Nian An's house, a young girl was squatting on the ground to boil a pot of fish soup, and as the hot white air rose, the meaty fragrance had begun to flow throughout her yard. The girl wanted to find a spoon to taste the saltiness, but was annoyed to find that the guy next door had not returned the wooden spoon.

"Nian'an, where's my wooden spoon?" she said in a hurried tone.

The boy carefully let go of the chaise longue, and his trousers rushed to the back room like a fire, but his foot tripped over a pile of firewood because of his hurry, and one of them stumbled into a pile of debris beside the door, causing a muffled sound and a puff of smoke.

The person on the other side of the wall looked over for a moment, her gaze shining like a sparkling firefly in the moonlight.

"Hey, are you alright?" the cold voice softened slightly.

The boy found the wooden spoon in the pile of debris, and hurriedly tried to get up, but there was a crackling noise.

The girl hesitated, but put down the fish soup in her hand, pushed open a half-human-high firewood door in the middle of the earthen wall. It turned out that her family and Nian'an's family were connected.

By the moonlight, the two people who were already familiar with each other met for the first time tonight.

Nian'an's neighbor looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, but he already had the demeanor and charm of seventeen or eighteen. She wore a headdress with a broken blue cloth on her head, which was not pretty, but with the evening breeze and the bright moon, she stood there with her waist crossed, but it also became a scenery of her own.

The gray-covered boy wiped the wooden spoon on the corner of his coat and handed it over.

The girl reached out and gently dusted off his head, and when she made sure that the boy was okay, she took the wooden spoon and struck him on the head as if punishing.

The wood door closed gently.

Nian An stood where he was and waited until the person on the other side of the chaimen returned to the house, and then turned around and walked into his house.

Heaven and earth were quiet, and the boy seemed to have something on his mind, and he lay down on the plank bed and buried his head in the blue lattice bedding at the head of the bed.

Tomorrow it's April 21.

Two years, today, it seems like a world away.

That summer, my mother reclined on a chaise longue facing the old well, but never opened her eyes again.

Lang Zhong said that it was a strange disease that no one had ever seen, and the people in the town said that he was a disaster that killed his parents.

Nian An didn't care about being called a half-human, half-demon freak, because he was called that for as long as he could remember, so it was right.

said that he was a disaster star who killed his parents, he didn't want to argue about anything, so let's laugh, just laughing and laughing, I don't know how many times he soaked his clothes.

......

The young man raised his hand and gently pounded the bed board, and slowly took out a dusty wooden box from under the bed, and blew it before opening it, and there were dozens of copper plates and a little broken silver lying in it. He took out all the broken silver and put it in his arms, carefully closed the lid, and put the wooden box back in.

He thought about using the money here to go to Qingyang Mountain in the south of the city tomorrow to find the Taoist who set up a stall and ask for some blessing paper

The boy is thinking about his thoughts, and the girl is serving fish soup.

She walked to the door between the two courtyards and knocked three times regularly.

Hearing the sound of the firewood door, Nian An wiped his face with his hand and hurried out to check.

A bowl of fish soup with a wooden spoon and a handful of crushed silver stood there. There were even more pieces of silver than he had just taken out of the wooden box. The corners of the young man's mouth grinned, as if he was afraid of being seen, he buried his head down, and knocked on the wood door three times, which was to express his gratitude, and it was an agreement between him and the person next door.

The sky was about to be dark, the moon was hanging very high, Nian An quietly looked up at the courtyard next door, and could only see a faint busy silhouette.

The owner of the other side of the courtyard is called Wang Qiuqiu, who is also an unfortunate girl.

Thirteen years ago, there was a famine in the northwest, and the imperial court was too busy to take care of itself, and a group of mobs were coerced to Qubai and rushed into the northern city, and Qiuqiu's parents left at that time. Therefore, Qiuqiu grew up eating hundreds of meals. Every summer night when it rains and blows wind, Nian'an's mother will take the little guy next door over to live for a while.

However, Qiuqiu actually has an uncle in Qubai, who is a gentleman who teaches children to read in Qubai Beicheng. Although he was tightly controlled by his aunt, but when he was young, his uncle would still eat some food from his sons every year to help his niece who had lost his parents. When Qiuqiu was seven or eight years old, her appearance gradually grew, and she was taken by her aunt to live there for a few years, and I heard that she also taught her some etiquette that only girls from large families learned.

But the good times didn't last long, probably because of the matchmaker that my aunt had planned in her early years, Qiuqiu finally fell out with her aunt.

Last year, the little girl was slapped twice, dragged a small cloth bag, and moved back to the old house from the north of the city alone.

This year, Nian'an's wooden box began to save money.

He couldn't say why, but he had to leave some for the future. Therefore, in addition to the broken silver that was taken to the south of the city to find the Taoist chief to ask for blessings, Nian An kept all the copper plates that he had worked so hard to save. It is not easy for a helpless orphan like him to make money. What's more, most people in the town think that he killed his parents, and the neighbors around him were unlucky.

That's why everyone is always on guard against him.

The young man is actually very kind to others, and he can remember the etiquette taught by his mother since he was a child.

But there is always something soft in the town.

Therefore, after Nian'an lost his mother, he got a job in charge of transporting water from the Jushi Restaurant in the south of the town, and every day he had to drive a donkey cart for an hour to transport the water and dirt of the Jushi Building to a sewage ditch more than ten miles outside the north of the city to be cleared.

At first, the drudgery of this decade-old tired teenager almost couldn't move, but it seems to have changed a little lately.

This errand was actually given to him by a child of a family in the academy in the city, this person is called Ren Nanhua, who is a well-known scholar and talented man in the northwest in the past two years. From the teacher to the lonely poor child like Nian'an, he treats him as if he is as warm as jade. This is actually an encroachment on etiquette in Confucianism, but Ren Nanhua doesn't seem to care about it, and still goes his own way.

Nanhua Gongzi's hometown is actually not here, he came to Qubai City three or four years ago to study with a famous recluse. His family happens to have some kinship with Qu Bai's big clan, Chang Jia, so people who are familiar with Qu Bai will also call him Young Master.

Although he is a cousin young master, he is probably not as good as the real young master of the Chang family, and he is a moldy head like Nian An, although the steward has given the half-demon boy an errand, but it is the lowest hard work in the restaurant.

However, the boy himself was very satisfied, and after making lunch, he could save some copper plates every month.

For this incident, Ren Nanhua personally came to the door that year to apologize to the boy who had just turned twelve.

Seeing that the crown was like a jade, the Nanhua prince in a green shirt bent down to salute him, Nian An was so shocked that he couldn't speak, and clumsily learned to return the salute to the green shirt.

It looks like a chicken pecking rice.

So Ren Nanhua bent over and took off the crown jade and held it in his hand, bending lower on his waist.

"Both are rotten good guys. This is Ren Nanhua's evaluation after he left.

......

......

At this moment, the galaxy seemed to have fallen asleep, and Nian An could occasionally hear a few frogs chirping in the Wei River not far away. The candles in the courtyard across the earthen wall were also extinguished, and the young man sighed reassuringly, straightened his shoes and socks, and lay down.

Tossing and turning, but the chaise longue dangled in the middle of his vision.

So the boy buried his head in the futon and sniffed, and he didn't know how long it was before he was about to fall asleep.

Half-asleep and half-awake, he heard someone singing outside the window, and the sound was supposed to be that the drunken beggar old man in the north of the city was strolling along the north street again.

"A pot of worship for the rising sun, a pot of respect for the moonlight, a sober person is the most absurd. ”

Nian An blinked vigorously, pricking up his ears to listen more carefully, but there was just silence.