One day in late autumn, the prefect Yi Bingshou of Yangzhou Mansion in Jiangsu Province was processing official documents, and Wang Shun, the chief catcher, led a young man in a blue pipa and horse coat and walked in.

"My lord, who do you think is coming?" said Wang Shun with a grin.

"See Lady I. Mo Yan bowed his hand and said.

Yi Bingshou looked up and was overjoyed, and hurriedly left his seat to the front of the hall and grabbed Mo Yan's hand: "Oh, it turned out to be Brother Mo, I haven't seen you for two years, it's always good?"

The two sat down to drink tea after a little greeting, and Wang Shun was also on the side.

"Lord Yi, don't say that I have something to ask for today. ”

"Please say that this government will do its best to help. ”

"Have you heard of Dongtai's 'One Pillar Building Poetry Case'?"

Yi Bingshou nodded: "It was an old case decades ago, and it shook the government and the opposition at that time, and many people were implicated. ”

"Does Yangzhou still keep the case files at that time?"

"There should be, I don't know what Brother Mo wants?" Yi Bingshou was a little surprised.

"It's nothing, I just want to ask Lord Yi to make it convenient for me to read it, that's all. ”

"That's no problem, Wang Shun, pass on the words of this mansion to transfer the case file of the 'Dongtai Yizhulou Poetry Case' here to show Brother Mo. Yi Bingshou immediately commanded.

"Yes, sir. Wang Shun left in a hurry.

"Thank you, Lord Yi," Mo Yan then asked, "Do you know anything about the Niu Hulu family in the capital?"

Yi Bingshou laughed and said: "Who in this world doesn't know, Niu Hulu is one of the eight Manchu surnames, Niu Hulu is the meaning of 'wolf' in Manchu, the Liao Dynasty called 'enemy Lie', the Jin Dynasty was 'Nu Xi Lie', and the Yuan Dynasty was called 'Yiqi Lie', and in the Ming Dynasty, it was named the Chinese character 'Niu', and later it was called 'Niu Hulu', and there were also 'Lang' surnames in front, which was a typical Manchurian clan of 'one family and two surnames'. ”

"What about Niu Hulu, Chang Bao?" Mo Yan then asked.

Yi Bingshou was shocked: "Do you mean He Shen's father, Niu Hulu, Chang Bao?"

Mo Yan was even more surprised in his heart: "Niu Hulu, Chang Bao is Heshen's father?"

"Yes, the Niu Hulu family is prosperous, and it is distributed in the Eight Banners of Manchuria. This Niu Hulu Chang Bao is a native of Zhenghongqi, a first-class cloud cavalry captain, and the deputy commander of the soldiers and horses of Fujian Province, and has two sons, He Shen and He Lin. When He Shen was young, this Chang Bao died of illness in Fujian. ”

At this time, Wang Shun ran back with a stack of case files: "My lord, the case files are all here." ”

Yi Bingshou stood up and said with a smile: "Brother Mo, you can read it slowly here, and the mansion will arrange a dinner party for you." "After that, I went out with Wang Shun.

Mo Yan sat down and began to look through these case files that recorded the tragic experience of his grandfather's family.

In the case file materials, the confrontation between the government and the people surrounding the "One Pillar Building Poetry Case" is like a life-and-death struggle between swords and swords, and the words leap between the lines one by one. In the end, Xu Shitian, Xu Shitian, Xu Shishu, the two grandsons of the Xu family's grandfather, were beheaded, and his grandmother Miao, granddaughter-in-law Lu and Shen, two boys aged one to three, Shou Nan and Fu Nan, and Xu Suniang were all assigned to the flag people as slaves.

Mo Yan closed the case file, his heart was difficult to calm down for a long time, the initiator of this unjust case, Cai Jiashu and Liu Yong, the Jiangsu scholar at that time, were unforgivable, he decided to go to Dongtai Zhangcha first, and then go to the capital, and at the same time to find out what else survived his mother's family and give him help.

The dinner party of Yangzhou prefect Yi Bingshou did not end until the end of the year, and Wang Shun sent Mo Yan back to the post house to rest. After Wang Shun left, Mo Yan sneaked out of the post house again, called a carriage and went straight to Slender West Lake overnight.

A waning moon hangs in the night sky, a white mist under the Wuting Bridge, the night is cold in the late autumn season, there are no tourists on the shore of the Slender West Lake, and it is quiet all around.

"Guest officer, do you still want to swim in the lake so late?" asked the coachman, puzzled.

Mo Yan smiled faintly, and pointed out his sleeping hole like a point of wind.

On the Wuting Bridge, Mo Yan put down the unconscious coachman from his shoulder, and then looked at the lake with cold moonlight in the fog under the bridge, and chanted loudly: "The green mountains are hidden in the water, and the grass in the south of the Yangtze River has not withered in autumn." The bright moon on the twenty-four bridges is here, where does the jade teach. Old toad, you come out for me"

Not long after, Mo Xuan's dementor saw a slight ripple in the lake, and a dark figure of a big gray toad jumped onto the Wuting Bridge, and he casually woke up the coachman who was leaning on the railing.

"The old man has said don't bother me, why are you here again?" said the coachman in a loud voice.

Mo Yan smiled faintly: "Old toad, what if the old man comes to visit and see him, I heard Wang Shun say that in the past two years, there has never been an incident of a girl being sucked by a girl in Yangzhou Mansion." ”

"That's it, the old man has already changed his ways and devoted himself to cultivation. ”

"I have an elixir here that has been refined by the Metal Soul Realm Swan Demon Pill. Mo Remnant's mind was everywhere, and he took out a golden pill from the storage bag and put it in the palm of his hand.

The coachman's eyes widened in surprise, and the elixir exuded a trace of aura that made him salivate, and he muttered in his mouth: "Jin Shengshui, if the old man takes it, it can withstand hundreds of years of penance." ”

"Do you want 'toads to eat swan meat'?" Mo Yan asked.

The coachman's face was flat, and he said: "Where in the world is there such a cheap thing, let's say, what do you want the old man to do?"

"Old toad, tell me that when He Shen asked you to give Qianlong a cantharid Gu, did he personally look for you, and what evidence are there?"

"It's the old man Liu Quan who is looking for, and he promises that if it happens, he will provide a girl for me to suck and collect yin. ”

"Liu Quan?"

"Yes, Liu Quan, the housekeeper of Hefu, is known as Liu Bald. The coachman said, his eyes greedily staring at the elixir.

"Be specific. ”

So the old toad started from going to Beijing to deliver tea, and explained in detail how to contact Hefu and what Liu Quan wanted him to do.

Mo Yan pondered for a moment and said, "Okay, this pill belongs to you." ”

The coachman was ecstatic and snatched the pill: "Thank you, old man, and take your leave." A black shadow grabbed the pill and escaped from the coachman's body, jumped into the Slender West Lake, and after a ripple, the water surface was calm again.

"Guest officer, how come we are on the Wuting Bridge?" the coachman asked in confusion as he regained his senses and patted his head.

"Let's go, let's go back. Mo said that the two of them got off the bridge and returned to Yangzhou Post House in a carriage.

The next time, Mo Yan and Yi Zhifu and Wang Shun resigned, and went straight to Dongtai Zhangcha alone.

Zhangcha is a thousand-year-old town, also known as Nansha, which gathered sand into land during the two Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties. According to legend, in the Tang Dynasty, there was one tea tree (palm) and one tea tree, and the trunk was more than a zhang high crown and as big as a cover. Fishermen go to the sea to fish, the sea and the sky are often lost, all of them are marked by the two trees of Zhangcha, so they get their name.

At dusk, a young man came into the Shijia Noodle Restaurant in the east of the town and asked for a bowl of hot noodle soup to eat slowly, and he was the only guest that night.

The shopkeeper was an old man with a melancholy face, silently looking out the window, and there was a faint sound of sobbing in the inner room.

"What's going on in your house, shopkeeper?" asked the young man.

"Alas," the old man Shi sighed, "the guest officer is a foreigner, the old shop of the Shi family will close tomorrow, and you are the last guest." ”

"Shopkeeper, the taste of this noodle soup is very good, there will be a lot of customers, why do you want to close the door?"

"The guest officer doesn't know that our Shijia noodle restaurant is a century-old shop, the ancestors moved from Jiangnan to avoid the war during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, and opened this noodle shop here to make a living, and it has been passed on to the old man for more than 200 years. My father once collected a copy of [***], but he was found out and put in prison, and his family borrowed a loan shark to get rid of prison, and since then he has not been able to pay it back. Now the creditor is going to pay off the debt with the house, the old and young seven or eight people are homeless and can only beg everywhere to sleep in the cold wind, the old mother is 80 years old, and the grandchildren are only two or three years old, how can they withstand it. The old man said, his eyes were red and almost crying.

"What [***], is it "A Pillar House Poetry Collection"?"

"Shh," Old Man Shi hurriedly stopped, "The guest officer must not talk nonsense, it will be difficult to be heard." ”

"After hearing that the Xu family was in trouble, all those surnamed Xu in Zhangcha Town went away incognito?"

"Yes, the whole town was like a plague and people were dead, and there were very few people in broad daylight, and when it was dark, there were fires everywhere, some were within the courtyard walls, some ran to the wasteland, and some people smoked from their chimneys all night, and every family burned books for many days for fear of being implicated. Often in the middle of the night to hear hurried footsteps through the door, from time to time there is a boat quietly left by the river in the string field, after dawn people will find that there is another family surnamed Xu closed the door and left the country, and no matter where they go, they will not admit that they are Zhangcha people, they all say that it is Hai'an Jiangyan or Xinghua people Rugao people. ”

"So what happened to Cai Jiashu's family, who reported the Xu family?"

"Hurt dozens of people in the Xu family, and he didn't get well, and it didn't take long for Cai Jiashu and his son to die, and the descendants of the Cai family couldn't bear people's contempt and eyes, and they all avoided other places. ”

The young man was silent for a long time, and then asked, "Did your father, Mr. Shi, save a woman with a burnt face in front of the door thirty years ago?"

I remember that it was a cold winter moon, snowflakes were floating in the sky, and the old man was busy in the kitchen, and the father brought in a frozen woman from outside the door, and only woke up after feeding hot noodle soup. The woman's face was covered with scars, and the old man was very impressed. ”

"And then?"

"Leave her in the store for a night, eat a bowl of noodles and leave the next morning, alas, she must be a miserable person. Old man Shi shook his head and sighed.

"How much loan shark do you owe in total?"

"Alas, there are a thousand taels of silver, what kind of world is this? Old man Shi replied angrily.

When the young man had finished eating, he took out ten ingots of gold worth two thousand taels of silver from his bosom and put them on the table, and asked, "Are these enough to repay the usury?"

Old man Shi was stunned, and stammered: "Guest officer, this, this is"

"Your father, Mr. Shi, saved a begging woman back then, and he was rewarded for his kindness, and the descendants of the Shi family deserve to be repaid. ”

"How is this good" Old man Shi was pleasantly surprised, and hurriedly went into the house to call the family members out.

When the seven or eight men and women of the Shi family came out, the young man had already left, and they hurriedly pushed the door and chased them out, and only the sound of horses' hooves could be heard in the twilight.

"God has eyes, he must be the descendant of the begging woman," the Shi family said with tears in their eyes. (To be continued.) )