Go out the back door of Tianxialou Courtyard in Suzhou and turn right. Walk more than a hundred steps and you will find an alley. The alley sells a variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, and some delicacies.
Next to Tianxialou, after Guinong Villa delivers the best fruits and vegetables to Tianxialou every day, it will sell inferior fruits and vegetables to vendors at low prices at the entrance of the alley. The vendors will also collect high-quality fruits and vegetables from other farmers and hunters. of fruits, vegetables and meat to maintain a living. But the fruits and vegetables from Guinong Villa are delivered at dawn, and within an hour, they will be purchased and divided up by the kitchens in the south of the city.
Lining Tianxialou's gold signboard, the meat and vegetables nearby are not worried about being sold. Residents from the east, north and south of the city come every day, and by the way, they inquire about the recent popular recipes of Tianxialou and some unheard secrets from the farmers. .
It's approaching noon, the sky is dazzling, fruits and vegetables have lost moisture, become dry and clumps, and the meat has a slight odor. There is a sweet water well built by vendors at the entrance of the alley. The vendors selling vegetables will take water in turn and sprinkle it on the fruits and vegetables to maintain their appearance. The meat vendor will get a bucket of clean sweet water, wash the meat, and dry it at the mouth of the sweet water well. The well is cool and ventilated. After drying for a long time, the meat will not rot or spoil.
A carved carriage stopped at the entrance of the alley. In front of the carriage were two Dawan horses bought with a lot of money from the Western Regions. They had broad bones and pure hair, which dyed silky blood-red under the sky. The body of the car is taken from fragrant sandalwood from the rain forests of southern Xinjiang. It is made by skilled craftsmen in the south of the Yangtze River and is completely natural. The sandalwood wood is dense. In the rainy Jiangnan, no moisture will penetrate into the car during the rainy season. When the sun is at its best in midsummer, the car will still be cool and ventilated.
The curtains and curtains come from the finest Yun brocade from the Jiangjia Silk Factory. A palm-sized piece is enough for the vegetable farmers in the alley to tighten their belts and save money, earning money from selling fruits and vegetables for ten years regardless of rain or shine.
The carriage and Dawan horse have a large bronze fish paint pattern on their bodies. In the entire Jiangnan, only the Shen family uses this pattern.
The old man opened the curtains of the car, and the smell of the alley was mixed. He covered his mouth and nose with a fragrant handkerchief, and frowned slightly. The finest silk on his body could not be stretched, and it became wrinkled, like the ravines at the corners of his eyes. My father-in-law took over the stewardship of the Shen Mansion from his biological father forty years ago. It has been forty years now. In the Shen family, except for the head of the Shen family, his words also carry a certain weight.
When the Shen family invites people, they usually send the concierge to deliver the greeting cards to the Shen family. Just wait, and people will naturally come to the door.
Today, my father-in-law is going out in person, because it concerns the young lady and nothing can be done carelessly.
The groom reached out to help the old man, but he knocked him down mercilessly. The old man disliked the smell of horse dung in the hand of the groom holding the reins. In the past, he was served by second-class maids, which was not crispy to the bone and as silky as brocade. The groom knew that his status was not enough, so he jumped out of the carriage and went to the back of the carriage to get the footstool. The old man refused to get off the footstool. Rivers of sewage formed on the ground, rotten vegetable stalks and leaves were trampled into mud, and there was no good place to stay. The boots on my feet are also high-quality goods with twenty taels of silver. Once stepped on, I will just throw them away.
After hesitating for a moment, the old man gritted his teeth and fell to the ground. He stepped on a vegetable leaf and slid towards the sweet water well. The groom didn't dare to help him, and watched helplessly as the old man slipped to the well and knocked away the windlass on the well. The windlass made a grunting sound, and the barrel fell with the hemp rope, splashing water and soaking the old man's clothes.
The vendors laughed loudly, and the old man held the edge of the well steady. He glared at the groom fiercely and blamed him for not helping him. The groom said he was sorry.
The old man regrouped, held on to the wall and walked a hundred steps forward out of the alley. The front door of the backyard of Tianxialou was extremely clean. The gray tiles and white walls are as if washed by water, and the bluestone road is also clean and dust-free.
The old man in the corner wiped off the mud from the soles of his shoes, straightened his clothes, walked a few steps, and knocked on the door knocker.
The kitchen downstairs was in full swing, with people lighting fires, cutting and stir-frying, and the sound of shouting covered up the sound of the door knocker.
The old man waited for a moment, exhaled a breath of turbid air, inhaled sharply to fill his abdominal cavity, and shouted through the wall: "Master Su is here, the Shen family has important matters to discuss."
After shouting at this tone, most of the strength was exhausted. He slowly sat down supporting the wall and fanned himself with a fragrant handkerchief. This matter of asking for help is really difficult.
A butterfly flew out from the wall and landed on Lao Zhang's fragrant handkerchief.
The father-in-law thought that wild butterflies were coming after the fragrance, but something important was going on at this time. He was upset and threw the butterflies away. The butterfly was not afraid of life. It flew three times upright and three times backward around my father-in-law, and then flew back to the courtyard.
There was a sound of the door bolt being raised in the wall. The old man was delighted and stood up in a hurry. He could not lose the courtesy of the Shen family in front of outsiders and be laughed at.
The door was half open, and Zhuang Mengxing leaned out half of his body. When he saw the father-in-law outside the door, he was shocked for a moment. He actually came here in person and said: "The owner of the building is temporarily out of town and won't be back for a while. Outsiders are not allowed in this backyard. You want to Come back later."
Zhuang Mengxing gave the order to expel the guests, and the father-in-law could not go back alone. He put his left foot into the door, took out the lacquered letter from his sleeve, and handed it over: "Since Mr. Su is not here, I wonder if Mr. Su's younger brother is here. This is the handiwork of the head of my family. The letter I wrote, I specifically asked to deliver it to him before going out."
The head of the Shen family, Shen Wanjing, was bedridden three years ago. Now he wrote a secret letter to Su Lingdang's brother. Zhuang Mengxing hesitated for a moment. The letter was indeed written by Shen Wanjing. Jun Bubai came to Yangzhou just yesterday. Today, the Shen family Someone invited me, but there was something fishy about it, so he shied away and said, "That person went out in the morning and made an appointment with Miss Lin from the Sihai Escort Agency for a competition. He hasn't come back yet."
The father-in-law looked suspicious, "I haven't come back yet. Miss Lin came to the Shen family, and I just left. This..."
The poster was out, so Zhuang Mengxing took care of the poster's affairs, "Maybe it was delayed by other things, why don't you wait a little longer."
Unable to enter the Tianxia Tower, my father-in-law was helpless. Withdrawing his left foot and stuffing the letter back into his sleeve, Zhuang Mengxing closed the door and flew back to the third floor. The carriage couldn't get in, and he didn't want to go back to that alley. The old man sat on the threshold, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Someone fell at the entrance of the alley. The old man looked up, opened his mouth with a smile, and was stabbed with a silver spear.
Zhuang Mengxing, who had just returned to the third floor, heard the screams and ducked outside the back door. Butterflies flew out of the fan and lifted up the fallen fragrant handkerchief. The father-in-law of the Shen family was nowhere to be seen outside the door, and there was no smell of blood.
Someone used force outside the Tianxia Tower, and the living people disappeared out of thin air. Zhuang Mengxing shook his paper fan gently, and a butterfly flew into the distance.
A sweet water stall in the south of Suzhou City sells a kind of sweet water called Shui Ba Xian. The ingredients are all dug by the store owner from the pond. The shopkeeper is a widow. Her husband died in the war and she has no children. She supports the sweet water stall by herself.
The girl in purple took two copper coins and bought a large bowl. The storyteller was very kind-hearted. Hearing that the girl said that she came from Jinling specifically to buy her sweet water, he put in an extra half a spoonful and took out the wild mountain honey he had secretly hidden for the girl to try. . During the girl's trip to Yangzhou, she found many favorite rouge boxes, which she enjoyed while tasting the sweet water.
A carved carriage passed by at a high speed, rolling up a small stone. The stone was bounced away, knocking the rouge out of the girl's hand, and a spider crawled out of the rouge box.
A silver thread flew out from the fingertips of the purple-clothed girl, catching the speeding carved carriage in the ruts. Two great horses from Dawan wrestled with the girl, and were dragged back to the sweet water shop by the girl, shouting at the groom to pay for her rouge box.
The groom used to rely on the Shen family's protection. If he bumped into someone on the road, he would just throw some money away to solve the problem. He arrogantly threw a piece of silver on the table and turned to leave. But he tripped over a piece of silk thread and fell to pieces.
"The rouge box hasn't compensated me yet, so I want to leave." The girl in purple squatted down, and the spider on the ground crawled into her palm. The girl smiled evilly and put the spider on the groom's face. It’s been a long time since I’ve played with anyone, so I can have a good time today.
The black spiders weaved webs on the groom's face. The groom felt his face melting and kept shouting for his aunt's life.
In the distance, on the second floor of Zhangjia Winery, Jun Bubai was drinking with Fairy Ye. The noise on the street caught his eye, "That is the little girl who keeps spiders next to Jiang Fanyi."
Ye Xianzi stood up and walked to the window. In Jinling, that girl would always go to the Love Department. The two had a close relationship, "Her name is Zhu'er."
The shouts of the groom could be heard on the second floor. Jun Bubai sighed: "If the groom offends her, it will be difficult for her to escape without peeling off her skin."
Fairy Ye didn't intend to stop him. She took a sip of wine and turned back to the wine table. "She will naturally let him go when she has enough fun."
In the Jiang family in Jinling, the head of the family, Jiang Fanyi, could not step out of the courtyard in his life. When he was four years old, he picked up a baby girl outside the wall by stringing silk together. The baby girl's eyes looked very much like his mother's, so he kept her with her. At first, anyone in the Jiang family would cry when they hugged her, but she would laugh only when Jiang Fanyi was around. When she reached the age where she can remember, she was very envious of the Jiang family's tight ties. However, people with a foreign surname could not enter the Jiang silkworm house. She was depressed for a long time. Later, she accidentally saw a spider that had built a web on the roof beam before the heavy rain. She found another way to use it. The best looking rouge box to keep spiders.
Silkworms spin silk, and spiders build webs. With their own understanding, they realize that thousands of threads are wrapped around their hands, which is almost the same as the Jiang family's threads.
Jiang Fanyi could not step out of Jiang's house. Zhu'er became his eyes. Every once in a while, he would go out to see the outside world for him, bring back some novel things, and tell him what he saw during his travels. Over time, he developed a playful temperament. He not only loves to play, but also loves to tease people.
The groom usually had a good meal, and he could howl a few times when he shouted a stick of incense. The spiders formed a thick web on his face. The groom felt that his whole face was being peeled off, and he whined a few times before fainting.
The spider got tired of playing with it, so he held the rouge box on the ground in his palm, knocked it, and the spider that spun its web jumped into the rouge box. After screwing up the rouge box, I got up and went to drink the sweet water. The sweet water was already cold and I felt unhappy. I wanted to buy half a bowl more, but when I saw the shopkeeper huddled in the corner, I gave up.
A red leaf flew from above the head. Zhuer grabbed it with his empty hand, held the red leaf in his palm, looked at the direction in which the red leaf was flying, and jumped up to the eaves.
On the second floor of Zhangjia Winery, when you saw the spider swinging into the second floor, you moved towards Fairy Ye in vain.
"Sister Ye has seen it!" Zhu'er's mouth was as sweet as honey, calling Fairy Ye so affectionately.
Fairy Ye nodded.
Zhu'er saw Jun Bubai and looked around the table, his eyes rolling.
The guardian was eager, so Fairy Ye said coldly: "Don't tease him."
Zhu'er smiled evilly and said, "Sister Ye, you haven't even come through the door yet, so you're just protecting him like this."
Ye Xianzi took a sip of wine and exhaled like orchid, "If you still want to go to Youqing Company to ask those matchmakers for rouge boxes in the future, just be more calm."
Zhu'er said oh, sat back down next to Ye Xianzi obediently, and started whispering about her daughter's family. Not wanting to be present, Jun Bubai jumped out of the window and landed on the eaves, only to see a butterfly flying past his eyes.
