In Xingcheng, a crowded street where poor people live is crowded with vendors.
Some of them guarded a stove and set up a table with three or five huge bland sesame seed cakes, which was a big stall. Some of them just spread a dirty rag on the ground and placed some on it. The shriveled corn and purple sweet potato are just a stall.
Others put a cracked bamboo basket in front of them, with some coarse grains lightly filled in it, or they just held a small paper bag with some yellowish salt grains wrapped in their hands. When someone comes, they will Open it for people to see, sell it one by one, and carefully close it when no one asks, as if you are holding gold sand instead of coarse salt...
It is such a dirty and crowded small market, but it is the most prosperous and lively market in Xingcheng City. People are walking shoulder to shoulder and walking slowly. The price of a green onion is higher than the price of three stalls. No matter how good it is, there will be a lot of quarrels. , to finally finalize a deal.
This is the life of these people, day after day, year after year.
In an inconspicuous corner of this alley that is rarely clean, I don’t know when there was a fortune-telling stall.
The stall looked very simple, without even a table. It only had a piece of red cloth painted with Bagua on the ground. Next to it were lottery tubes, tortoise shells and stone bones, and a thin flag was placed behind it. It says "the same hexagram and destiny", which means they work together.
Behind the stall sat an old man with white hair wearing a gray preacher's robe. The old man always smiled. Whenever someone walked by his stall, he would look at him with a smile and then nod. Although he looked very handsome in his outfit, It's quite shabby, but fortunately it's clean, so people don't want to get close to it. But people who come to such a place are probably the ones who don't believe in fate. Often no one actually comes to his stall to tell their fortunes throughout the whole day. What's more, if you want fortune telling, you still need to pay. But these people don't lack anything else. The only thing they lack is money.
Therefore, a clean street corner is still a clean street corner.
Just an innocuous old man with white hair.
The business was deserted, and the old man didn't care. Every day when it got dark and there were no people in the streets, he would withdraw from the stall and leave. Before dawn the next day, he would bring the things to the old place and spread them out. I didn't know what I was planning all day long.
In the early morning of this day, there were not many vendors. Under the dim light from the sky, the old man went to his old place on the corner of the street with the rolled up red cloth and flags in his arms, but found that a young man selling grains had already Spread out next to his stall, five pieces of grain were placed in five bucket-sized guis. Regardless of quantity or quality, they were the best in this area.
The white-haired old man came to his old position, nodded with a smile to the young stall owner who was now next to him, and then bent down to unfold the red cloth.
It was still early, and there were no customers in front of the young man's stall, so he stood up and came to the white-haired old man, squatted down and spread the stall for him, and said while doing so, "Old man, I have been watching you for two days. If you are like this, It's not possible to do business as usual. In today's world, how can people like us come to tell fortunes? If you don't work one day, you will be hungry the next day. Your fate is determined. When you open your eyes every morning, your life's fate will be determined. You can see clearly, what’s there to test?”
He also helped the white-haired old man put up the flag, and then looked at him and said, "Today I will set it up next to your stall. If anyone in this market can come to me to buy grain, I don't know if I have a few on hand." If you have an extra copper coin, if no one comes to your stall to tell fortunes all day long, you can leave here tomorrow and try other places in the city."
After saying that, he returned to the back of his stall, yawned loudly, stretched again, and felt much more energetic.
The white-haired old man opened his ponytail, sat down, and turned to look at the young man at the stall next to him with a smile. All he could see was that he had a deer-like head and mouse eyes, protruding cheekbones, and two mustaches on his lips. No matter how you looked at him, he looked vulgar. So he asked, "Young man, are you born in Xingcheng?"
The young man nodded, "Of course, otherwise how could it be so easy to establish a foothold in Xingcheng City?" He pointed at the pedestrian lanes that had gradually appeared in the market, "These people, as long as they can buy in this alley, Those who eat, rather than beg for food, are basically people born in this city. Originally, there were more people like this, but recently there have been a lot less."
The white-haired old man asked again, "Is it because of the battle between Li County and Yongchang County?"
The young man looked around, then waved his hand to the white-haired old man, and said in a low voice, "Such things are not something people like us can talk about casually." Then he saw that there were no other people around the two of them, and then he resumed his previous attitude. He looked like he didn't care about anything, "If we fight a war, especially if we fight all the way to Yicheng, it will definitely have an impact. Many people who work for wealthy families will suddenly lose their jobs. It won't take many days. Now that I have reached the point where I have to live my life as a prostitute, I really have no choice but to leave this city and go somewhere to make a living." He suddenly smiled sarcastically as if he remembered something, and pointed in the direction of the Summer Palace, "It's just that now People who are causing war, I heard that they rode into Xingcheng a few days ago and were treated as honored guests by the prefect, how ridiculous!"
The white-haired old man nodded, then looked around and said to the young man, "Young man, there are not many people in the market at the moment anyway, and it is idle. Why don't you tell me your birthday and I will make a divination for you. ?" Seeing the young man looking over, he smiled and waved his hand, "I don't want your money."
The young man glanced at him sideways, pointed at the grain in front of him and said, "Old man, if you can really predict the future, you can make a lot of money by just flipping this coarse rice while taking advantage of this wave of war, and you still need it. Do people tell fortunes here?"
After saying that, he turned around and didn't look at the white-haired old man again.
The white-haired old man didn't look at him, because he was looking at the sky. There was nowhere in the sky. From here, a red thread that was difficult to detect with the naked eye fell from the sky and landed in the Summer Palace.
He raised his hand to calculate quickly, and finally put it down slowly, muttering to himself, "You are right, predicting the future... is still too difficult..."
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Just when heaven and earth were pulled together by a red thread.
After there were no more scrap metal stalls left on a certain stall in the market in front of the Summer Palace, the old man in jute clothes also raised his head, his clear eyes blurred for a moment, and then he looked in the direction of the altar. As if he could clearly see everyone there through all obstacles, he frowned slightly, then stretched his brows again, looked at the sky again, sighed softly, and stood up.
He waved his sleeves, and the six-foot black cloth under the stall in front of him folded and curled automatically as if it came to life. He "folded" the few things still on it into it, and finally became a silk scarf as thin as a cicada's wings. In the hands of the old man in yellow.
The old man in yellow put the silk scarf into his arms, looked in a certain direction in the city, and then disappeared.
No one noticed the change here.
It seems like in this world, in this market.
Such an old man has never appeared before.
