Even though I had been away from home for three days, the atmosphere in the village was very different.
On the small mountain road into the village, there is a checkpoint set up by Minzhuang armed with spears, spears and crossbows.
Asked them what happened, no one could tell the reason. They only knew that outsiders entered the village yesterday, and Mr. Liu sent them to set up several sentry posts on mountain roads and hills.
Putting Yang Dingrui at home, Liu Chengzong rushed to nothing. His parents and brothers were not at home. When he looked at the house and stables, his brother's soldiers and horses were not there, which made his heart skip a beat.
After hurriedly placing Yang Dingrui's family members into the wing, they heard someone stumbling in from outside the door. When they went out to see the little bald Shiliu, he was running in with his head sullen. Liu Chengzong grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up. He had short legs. Still flying in the air.
"What are you going to do, Feng Feng Huo Huo?"
The little bald man seemed to be waking up from a dream when he was lifted up. His eyes narrowed and he said, "Brother Lion is back! I got into a quarrel with someone and asked me to get my pipe."
Get a cigarette pouch?
Liu Chengzong knew that his father had a copper smoke pot.
This side is different from the north and south of the Weihe River. That side is affluent and can afford such novelties. Jingyang is the largest tobacco cutting and distribution center in Qin, and it is also accessible.
The soil in northern Shaanxi is thin and it is not enough to grow crops. In the early years, tobacco was planted on a large scale. At that time, tobacco had just entered the Central Plains. People thought it had the effect of keeping out the cold, so they sold it to the border troops in Yansui, Guyuan, and Gansu towns.
Since the arrears of pay began a few years ago, the military officers have no money, and tobacco has gradually disappeared in northern Shaanxi. Nowadays, you can still buy it if you want, but it is much less.
For the old man, he didn't have the habit of smoking. In fact, at this time, most people in northern Shaanxi, including Cao Yao, were not addicted to smoking. He was just a prop at best.
Hearing that the old man asked Xiao Liu to come back and get the pipe, Liu Chengzong was happy, put him down and asked, "Where are we quarreling?"
Sixteen said: "Many people surrounded Uncle Liu's house."
Uncle Liu?
The seventy or eighty households in this village located at the foot of the Black Dragon King Temple Mountain all have the surname Liu. Liu Chengzong pursed his lips to ease his choking and said, "Then what does Uncle Liu do for a living?"
"He has a lot of coffins."
Got it, the coffin maker’s family in Xingpingli.
Coffin makers are an essential role in villages and countryside, just like pig butchers, masons, traveling herbalists, matchmakers, oil presses, weavers, veterinarians, goddesses, opera troupers, sellers, and tofu makers.
In some places, the coffin maker is also a carpenter, but in Xingpingli, because the carpenter was sent to the expedition in the early years, there is also a coffin maker.
Elderly people in the village usually start preparing their own coffins at the age of forty. Sooner or later, their ultimate ideal in life is to have a better house where they can sleep for eternity when they are done.
After buying these coffins, my family had enough space to put them in their own home. If they didn't have space, they would temporarily send them to the coffin maker's house, who would maintain and paint them every year.
So the person who has a lot of coffins at home must be a coffin maker.
Hearing that his father was quarreling with the coffin maker, Liu Chengzong stopped worrying and asked, "What about my brother, who is also quarreling there?"
"Guan Liu went to Guan Cao yesterday, right!"
As the little bald man spoke, he suddenly remembered and hurriedly said: "The management team told me that Brother Lion will go to the ancestral hall when he comes back. There is an injured outsider in the ancestral hall. He said that you will know what happened when you see him."
Liu Chengzu was not mentioned in the co-authorship, so Sixteen forgot about it.
Liu Chengzong turned around and left. After taking two steps, he stopped and waved his hand and said, "Okay, you go get me a big tobacco bag. I'll go to the coffin maker's house first and then go to the ancestral hall."
Xingpingli is not that big. You can see the coffin maker's house just by turning a few corners when you go out. From a distance, Liu Chengzong saw a lot of people gathered around the door of the coffin maker's house, all of them old people.
The old people here are not just talking about their age. In the Ming Dynasty, they had more responsibilities. The ones who changed year after year but remained unchanged were the elected village elders.
In the villages of the Ming Dynasty, as long as it was not a major crime such as murder or rebellion, or all minor matters such as household marriages, field fights, etc., there was no need to go to the county town frequently.
Before he joined the crowd, Liu Chengzong heard his father arguing with others. In fact, he was not arguing with the coffin maker, but with the village elders.
"Where else can we go to collect wood today? The thieves are in the north, and they will attack us at any time. If we ask the thieves to kill us, will they still put us in coffins?"
Liu Chengzong heard that his father was persuading the elderly people in the village to give up their coffins, which made him frown.
The existence of coffins is very important to the elderly. The older people get, the less they care about life and death. They only care about the cemetery and the coffin after death.
In the past two months, they have been building a city in Liujiamao. The clan brothers have cut down forests, collected wood, and excavated mountains to get rocks. Logically speaking, the gap in wood is not big. If they continue to implement this method step by step, they will be able to build an earthen fence on the mountain hill by this autumn.
In his understanding, the situation was not urgent enough to require the elders of the clan to sacrifice their coffins.
The old man Qi leaned on his crutches and agreed to take out the coffins for those under fifty, because the elderly over fifty might need the coffins at some point. My father still couldn't do it, so he had to take out all the coffins.
Liu Chengzong, who was dressed in armor, squeezed his way to the innermost part of the crowd. This group of old people were as old as two and a half of them, so they could only go around and accuse them.
When he entered the middle, he asked Liu Xiangyu, "Da, what happened?"
When Liu Xiangyu saw his son, he looked overjoyed and said hurriedly: "You came just in time. The old Miao Village in the north was attacked by thieves. You have been to the old Miao Village and told the elders how many people there are in the old Miao Village and what the village is like." .”
The old temple village was broken into by thieves?
Liu Chengzong didn't have time to think carefully, so he handed over to the elders around him and said: "Elders, I went north last month. There are seventy or eighty households in the old temple village. Two brothers named Lu are in charge. They have a feud with the Ding family station. , everyone has built a stronghold wall, and the young and strong have weapons."
"I just came back from Ansai City. On the way, I saw a severed hand in the river at Panlong River. I thought something happened upstream. I wanted to come back and take two horses to the north to see, but I didn't expect something like this happened."
"Yes, it's Dingjia Station."
Liu Xiangyu took the words and said: "Lu Bin from Laomiao Village escaped death, and the people from Dingjia Station surrendered to the thief king Zuo Gua and massacred Laomiao Village."
"If an old temple with 70 or 80 households can't stop thieves, can Xingpingli be able to stop them? We need to build a fence around the hills as soon as possible. Not to mention the coffin, we even have to remove the door panels."
Someone said: "Then go to Fucheng and invite the army. If you can't stop it, why build a siege?"
"It's okay to invite the officers and soldiers. We know the officers of the Yan'an Guards well. I don't think it will be difficult to collect food. But Xingpingli has to take care of their food and clothing expenses, let alone a hundred households. What's more, the thieves won't attack when the officers and soldiers come. Is it possible? If we just keep raising it, how much more food and grass will there be in Xingping?"
“In the end, you still have to rely on yourself.”
