After Cui left, after discussing many matters related to the funeral, the Cui family left the Chu family with grief.
Grandma Chu finally found an opportunity. She dragged Mrs. Wang aside and whispered through gritted teeth, "Where is that thing? Have you put it back?"
Mr. Wang shook his head with his neck abbreviated: "The third brother and sister have been in the house. After cleaning up, they took me to the kitchen to cook. Finally I was left alone. The second brother and the others had already returned to the house. I didn't I found the opportunity!"
"You greedy mother-in-law, if I hadn't come back first and the Cui family was in a hurry to see the Cui family, you would have been caught. If that were the case, where would you let our Chu family's face be?"
"Auntie, I just picked it up out of curiosity..."
"Fart! Who believes your nonsense? Just look at what you were rummaging over there? Do you dare to say that you weren't rummaging through the kang cabinet when I entered the house?" As she said that, Grandma Chu rolled her eyes at Mrs. Wang again: "What are you rummaging through?" I've hidden that thing well. If the secret is revealed, not to mention the second child, even your father won't be able to let you off lightly!"
Later, this matter almost leaked the truth. Before Cui's burial, Chu's father remembered the pendant that his wife never left her body. He thought about burying it with his wife's coffin as a burial for his wife, but the pendant was not with his wife. He rummaged around the house for a long time but couldn't find it.
Not only that, Chu's father also always felt that the things in the cabinet seemed to have been moved, and they were different from his wife's usual arrangement habits. After thinking about it, he went to ask Grandma Chu.
"Auntie, did you help clean up our house yesterday?"
When her son asked about cleaning up the house, Grandma Chu was alert: "I went to the village to look for milk yesterday. What happened? What's the matter?"
"It's nothing, I just can't find something. Then I'll ask my sister-in-law and my siblings."
Father Chu said and turned to leave. Seeing this, Grandma Chu quickly grabbed her son's arm: "What are you asking? I'm busy!"
Grandma Chu used a lot of strength, but Father Chu struggled twice but couldn't break free: "Grandma, please don't hold me, I'll just ask you!"
Seeing that Chu's father refused to give up and tried to pull away her hand, Chu's grandma panicked and held on tightly and refused to let go: "Why ask, why ask! If it's not just a broken pendant, who can steal it?" You can’t go!”
When Chu's father heard this, he was stunned on the spot. He relaxed his strength and looked at Grandma Chu blankly: "Mom, how did you know it was a pendant?"
At this time, Auntie Chu also realized that she had let the slip out of her mouth in a moment of impatience, and stumbled to explain: "What, what's the pendant, you heard wrong... There are so many jobs at home, why don't you hurry up and help, be careful." It delayed the funeral!"
Father Chu was sure that he heard correctly: "I heard correctly, how did I know that the pendant was gone...Aniang, did you take it?"
"What are you talking about here? Someone took your stuff."
"Then someone else took it, who?" Chu's father asked loudly.
Grandma Chu stared at her second son who was standing in front of her: "No one is there, I don't know what kind of pendant you have!"
"That is the relic of your daughter-in-law Honglian!"
Grandma Chu hurriedly covered her son's mouth: "What are you shouting for? You have to call the whole village, including the Cui family, to let everyone know that there is a thief in our old Chu family, right? There is no one here." Why do you still need a pendant?"
Looking at his mother, Chu's father was a little unbelievable: "So Honglian's pendant was really stolen! Who is it? That is Honglian's relic!"
Seeing that her son refused to give up, Grandma Chu started to play, and stretched out her hands in front of her son: "Okay! Then tie up my mother-in-law, take me to the official, and say that your mother-in-law stole it." Your daughter-in-law’s relic!”
"Aniang! What are you doing?"
Grandma Chu ignored her and continued to cry and wipe her tears: "My life is miserable. My son married a daughter-in-law and forgot about his mother. He has to pour dirty water on his own head. Please arrest me and let the officials beat me." Kill me and make amends to you!"
Father Chu looked at Grandma Chu in disbelief, his eyes covering his scarlet eyes little by little. Two lines of hot tears slid down his cheeks and fell on the courtyard floor at his feet. After a long time, he pushed Grandma Chu's hands away. Dragging his legs that seemed to be filled with lead, he walked step by step towards his wife's coffin in the courtyard, rested his forehead on his wife's coffin, bit the back of his hand and cried for a long time.
After Ms. Cui was buried successfully, Ms. Wang quietly went to the pawn shop in the town. She still felt uneasy with the pendant in her hand. She wanted to go to the pawn shop to exchange it for silver, but who knew that the pendant was not jade at all. , the outside was encrusted with silver, but it was so thin and small that it was not worth much at all. The pawnshop owner felt that if he took it, he would lose it in his hands. No one would do a business that is guaranteed to lose money, so he refused to Wang. Shi, I had no choice but to take it back.
It wasn't until a year later that Chu's father died in depression that Wang finally put her heart back in her stomach. Later, Chu Ren got married. In order to please her daughter-in-law, Wang lied that the pendant was handed down from her mother's ancestor and that she was not very good at it. The precious jade material was given to the newlywed Li!
Mrs. Wang shrank down and moved closer to Grandma Chu: "Auntie, what should we do now? Is it really that Mrs. Cui's ghost has come back?"
"You ask me, I ask who to go to... Master! Didn't Master say that you should return the property to its original owner? Why don't you return it to others quickly?"
When she heard this, Mrs. Wang almost burst into tears: "It's not that I don't know, the pendant has been given to Qinghe a long time ago, why do you want it back! Besides, even if it comes back, the Cui family will all I’ve been dead for almost ten years, who else should I go to?”
"You ask me, who should I ask? Anyway, please solve this matter for me quickly. Didn't you listen to the master? It's just like the sapling. It grows. The longer it is delayed, the less likely it will be for Aren. Okay, you’ll be the one to cry then!”
That night, Mrs. Wang tossed and turned all night. She got up before dawn the next day, made up an excuse with Uncle Chu, and went straight to Qichan Temple with dark circles under her eyes and big blisters at the corners of her mouth. She wanted to I ask the master to give some advice on other methods.
But Mrs. Wang searched all the stalls halfway up the mountain, but she couldn't see the master who told her fortune yesterday. She thought about whether she had moved her place, and walked two times along the road up and down the mountain. She was so tired that she sat down. There was not even a shadow to be seen on the roadside!
Wang didn't want to give up. Seeing that there were many fortune-telling stalls along the road, she wanted to find out something. But it was better not to ask. After asking along the way, not only did she not find out about the master's situation, but she also calculated the fortune several times.
Regardless of whether it was reading words, fortune telling or divination, the first stories were all different. Some said that Wang was hit by bad luck, some said that she was hurt by a villain, and some said that she collided with something. , in short, it all boils down to one point. The Wang family has not been going well recently, and he and his family may be in trouble.
How to crack it, of course it is necessary to eliminate wealth and avoid disaster!
After a day of hard work, a lot of money was spent, and Mrs. Wang was even more convinced of yesterday's master. Today's scammers are not as accurate as the master, and they all try to get a lot of money, bah! They are all liars!
It seems that I have to go to town and get the pendant back!
That night Mrs. Wang mentioned to Uncle Chu that she wanted to go to the town to see her son again: "His father, why don't we go to the in-laws to visit? It's been twenty years since I came back, and there is no news... "
"We'll see what we can do. Why don't we just leave it like that! Besides, spring plowing is about to begin. If we go at this time, we won't delay the work in the fields."
"The worst case scenario is that we can go and come back the same day. What's the point of delaying work! What I'm worried about is A-Ren. What if the current situation in the Li family affects A-Ren's review? Even if you don't worry about your son, you still have to feel sorry for your grandson, right? ! That child has been clamoring for grandma and grandma these days!"
Uncle Chu couldn't defeat the Wang family, and besides, he was indeed a little concerned about Chu Ren: "Okay, I'll go to school early tomorrow morning and ask for leave for Azhi."
When they went to town before, Chu Zhi couldn't stay at home by himself, and he didn't want to go to the old house to live with his grandpa and grandma, so Uncle Chu had to ask for leave for him and take him to the town with him.
Mrs. Wang then remembered her youngest son Chu Zhi, who was in a hurry to go to the town to get the pendant back, but she forgot about it. She thought that if things didn't go well, she might have to stay for a few more days. The whole family would definitely go there. Delay things!
"Dad, why don't you stay at home? Mr. Azhi's request for leave might leave a bad impression on my wife. I can just take my grandson there myself!"
Early the next morning, Mrs. Wang and her grandson got on a rickety bullock cart and rushed to the Li family in the town.
When the first lunar month just came out, Zhao Cheng, Chu Ping and his three families started making copper money and paper burning again. Although Shen Luzhu's shop was not open, it was still making preparations. While making banknotes and paper money, they also studied new styles. paper money.
This came to mind one day when the young couple returned to Shen's house and Shen Luzhu was coaxing her little niece. She used the scrap paper that Grandpa Shen had written prescriptions on and made origami cranes for her little niece to play with. As she folded it, she remembered another kind of paper money. She had also seen it in her roommate's shroud shop in her previous life. She also made it with her roommate's grandmother.
It is a kind of paper money that is made of gold or silver colored paper and folded into the shape of an ingot. It is packed in a transparent bag. Each one is golden and round, and it is very lifelike.
Origami was not difficult for Shen Luzhu. She folded out a fat ingot in just a few clicks. The difficulty was that she didn't know where to find the gold and silver colored paper.
"Chu Yi, where can I buy gold and silver colored paper?"
"A-Zhu is talking about gold foil and silver foil?" As he said that, Chu Yi picked up the ingot that Shen Luzhu had just folded and played with it a few times in his hand: "Azhu, we are going to fold a gold ingot?"
Shen Luzhu smiled at Chu Yi, and they were getting more and more understanding: "This is also paper money, gold ingots and silver ingots! But I'm afraid it won't work with gold foil and silver foil. Those things are too expensive, and there seems to be nothing we can do about it. Fold it like paper."
"Going to visit the town someday?"
"Okay, there's nothing much going on lately anyway."
The young couple took advantage of the fact that the shops had not yet opened and went to the town several times. They visited bookstores, grocery stores and various shops. There were some colored papers, but they were mostly yellow and red, not to mention gold and silver. There was no paper, not even the paints sold in the studio.
When the waiter in the studio heard what Shen Luzhu wanted, he waved his hands repeatedly: "Your Majesty, this is really embarrassing. Our studio has been open for more than ten years, and I have never seen gold and silver paints before. Even if it does exist, ordinary paintings are rarely used, and no one in our town would buy it."
"Thank you, brother." After thanking the waiter, Shen Luzhu was about to walk out with Chu Yi on his arm, but was stopped by another customer who was in the studio.
"Why don't you two go find a craftsman who makes Buddha statues for the temple and ask? I heard that there are no golden Buddha statues enshrined in those big temples. It is said that many of them are not made of pure gold, but painted with gold paint."
Shen Luzhu had heard about gold paint from Chu Yi. It was made by beating pure gold into powder and adding it to the paint to mix it. The method was a good one, but the cost was too high.
But, reconciliation? Maybe we can give it a try. Shen Luzhu suddenly had an idea: "Brother, please help me pack one each of red, yellow, blue, white and black paints!"
"What's the trouble? Please wait a moment, sir!"
Although he only went to sophomore year in college and was not a major in traditional Chinese painting, he was an art student at least. Shen Luzhu asked himself that he could do the color matching, but he hadn't picked up a paintbrush for a long time and had forgotten all about this method. He only thought about it. Find ready-made colored paper or paint!
After buying the pigments, the next step was to experiment with the mixture. Apart from the luster and metallic feel, gold can essentially be regarded as a slightly darker yellow. Shen Luzhu first mixed two types of yellow, brown and lemon yellow, and then mixed them according to different colors. After a little preparation and testing of the proportions, the proportion was finally determined and a yellow color that was slightly darker than grapefruit peel and very close to golden was obtained.
Then comes silver, which is closer to gray. A large amount of white paint is used as a base, a little red and yellow are mixed, and finally a little more blue is added, and you will get a slightly bluish gray with a hint of silver. Translucence.
The color is already very close. Next, we just need to add some gloss, and then it will be more realistic when painted on the ingot.
I originally wanted to add tung oil and other oils to it to turn it into a glossy coating like paint, but the painting pigments Shen Luzhu bought were water-based, and the two could not be blended together well, and there would be layering. The plan If you fail, you have to think of another way!
