At the beginning of the fourteenth year of Xiankang in the Great Zhou Empire, the first month had just come out, and the climate was still cold. Located in a corner of the northwest frontier of the empire, a heavy snowfall fell at night that had not been seen in many years.
At midnight, a strong wind came from the vast dark wilderness and descended from Mobei.
The snow took advantage of the wind and quickly covered almost the entire northwest territory of the empire along the huge mountains extending diagonally, all the way to the capital Chang'an.
In the swirling night snow, on the second floor of a narrow and tall stone-wood building located in the northeast of the imperial city, warm yellow lights were shining quietly all night long.
"Lingyue, I haven't seen heavy snow in six years, which is a good omen."
"With the warning from Jiantian Pavilion, the officials and the people are well prepared and Chang'an will be in peace."
The young and handsome Lingtai Lang of Jiantian Pavilion, with a bit of pride in his eyes, sat down and finished recording. He put down his pen and closed the book. He stood up and carefully returned it to the long bookshelf on the wall among the numerous volumes.
It looks like I'm going to stay here tonight.
But the body is still not sleepy.
Ling Tailang thought for a while, and suddenly felt an urge in his heart. He simply took an umbrella, climbed to the top floor, opened the door and walked into the observatory.
Snow covers the sky, and it is naturally impossible to observe the stars tonight. However, the stars themselves will not stop moving and changing just because they cannot be observed. They may even undergo some huge changes at this time.
Master said that this kind of abnormal movement of the stars that cannot be observed and discovered is called a variable.
Also called Tianzhe.
Variables will always exist, and what the sky wants to cover cannot be explored. Stargazers don’t have to worry about this.
Lingtai Lang smacked it, and that was fine. But he didn't want to go down yet, so he simply moved a few steps to one end of the high platform, held an umbrella and leaned on the railing, and looked down from a high position to admire the imperial capital, which was as quiet as a sleeping beast on a snowy night.
Around this time, in the northwest corner where it first started to snow.
A young man who looked to be about sixteen or seventeen years old was holding a long wooden pusher in his hand. He stood on the dirt roof of his house in the wind and snow, trying hard to clear the thick snow from all directions to prevent the old house from collapsing due to the load. Come down.
This remote place is called Gucheng.
The small earthen city is located on the edge of a huge wilderness, like a rusty iron rod, tied to a large piece of old silk cloth.
Although it is called a city, it is small and dilapidated, not comparable to a random town in the mainland. However, due to the large area of desolation around it, many long-distance trafficking caravans passed by and settled here to rest, so there were still some houses, businesses and people.
"Yucong, be careful. Just push Ma Liu a few times and come down quickly."
"Yes, brother, the snow is freezing and the wind is blowing. You should come down quickly."
In the darkness, two voices danced with the crackling of charcoal fire, coming from below the roof. Whether they were from the elder sister or the younger sister, they were all filled with worry and concern.
"Okay, I'll be down right away."
Seeing that the snow was almost cleared, Ye Yuzhou responded loudly, throwing away the wooden shovel used for snow removal in the front yard.
Patting the snow falling on his hands and body, he prepared to go down from the mountain behind the house.
However, when the person turned around on the high point of the roof, he inadvertently took a look into the distance. His vision penetrated the snow curtain in a trance, quickly passing by the small earth city in front of him, and fell into the distance covered by night and heavy snow, where there was endless silence. on the wasteland.
The young man stood in the heavy snow on the roof, stunned for a while.
In the yard below, two figures, one tall and one short, ran out of the house one after another, standing in the snow, raising their heads and calling to him anxiously and angrily.
Only then did Ye Yuzhou come to his senses, look away, apologized and admitted his mistake and got off the roof.
"Six years."
Gucheng is not Chang'an. There is no Jiantian Pavilion or Lingtai Lang here, and no one would care about recording a snowfall.
But he remembers.
Six years ago, at about the same time, there was such a heavy snowfall in Gucheng. And it’s also snowing at night.
A middle-aged man named Zheng Laomen went to a wilderness more than 40 miles north of Gucheng on that snowy night and picked up two children.
One boy looked about nine or ten years old, and the other girl was only five or six years old.
…………
Zheng Laomen himself is an extremely ordinary Gucheng citizen.
In addition to cultivating the few acres of thin farmland at home, the most important livelihood is to help merchants in the small town load and unload goods, look after horses, and do odd jobs.
Then, occasionally in order to earn more money, or when the family's livelihood is in trouble, I will bravely take on a few dangerous jobs of guiding caravans through the wilderness.
That night, he met the two children because he was leading a group of merchants from the south across the wasteland and turned back late.
When they first met, the two children's clothes were stained with blood, and they were frozen and lying in the snow. Zheng Laomen stepped forward and touched them, but there was no movement. He thought they were dead.
But no, just when he threw a handful of snow in the air and turned around to leave, the boy grabbed his trouser leg from behind with a black and blue hand from the cold...
So, after that day, this widower whose wife died young had three children at home.
A biological daughter, Zheng Yunniang, who was thirteen years old at the time. A boy was having fish porridge at home one day, and Zheng Laomen decided to call him fish porridge. Then by the way, the little girl who was happily playing with a bamboo dragonfly was named Dragonfly.
Dragonflies are clever and cute.
But the boy Yuzhu, from the first day he came to this home, has been dumb and silent, his eyes are like wood, and he has been stupid for a full year. He only occasionally struggles and murmurs in his sleep, which proves that he is not a human being. Dumb.
During this period, many people on the street tried to persuade Zheng Laomen to get rid of this burden as soon as possible. After all, their life in Gucheng is already difficult and not easy.
It’s just that Zheng Laomeng refused to listen.
"Dear your mother, it's our father-son fate." He answered like this every time.
Because of the two extra mouths at home, Zheng Laomen went into the wilderness three more times this year. Fortunately, he came back safely in the end.
A year later, around early spring, an old storyteller suddenly came to Gucheng and lived on the other side of the mountain less than two miles away from Lao Zheng's home.
He had ten boxes of books at home, and two oxcarts were used to transport them when he arrived.
Then he sold the cattle and the cart and bought the house at the foot of the mountain.
Half a month later, he began to make a living as a storyteller in the only small teahouse in Gucheng.
One day later, Silly Fish Porridge from Lao Zheng's family suddenly went to ask him to borrow a book and asked him to borrow a book.
It's been normal since then.
After growing up, he would work on the streets with Zheng Laomen during the day to earn money, and then go find a place to study on his own at night.
Another year later, during the Qingming Festival, when I returned home after reading Yuzhou Night, I suddenly made a solemn ceremony and asked Zheng Laomo, saying that I remembered my late father's surname Ye, and happened to live in Yuzhou, so I wanted to name him Ye Yuzhou.
Zheng Laomen is an open-minded person who is always considerate. After hearing this, he said, "Oh, what's the difference? Or is it my fish porridge?" Dang even agreed, but only asked Yu Zhi to grow up, marry a wife, have more children, and take two surnames: Zheng.
Then, he took the initiative to ask Yu Zhi if he also remembered the situation of Dragonfly's family.
Ye Yuzhou said to remember something.
From then on, Dragonfly also had a famous name, called Li Yingyue. As she got older, she began to read and read with her brother, while also learning needlework and housework from her sister.
Although the life of a family of four in a border town is not rich, it is not enough to starve or freeze. In short, it is ordinary.
However, the pace of time keeps moving, and even if it is just such an ordinary day, it is not easy to maintain it forever. No ordinary person can predict when accidents and disasters will suddenly come.
When Zheng Yunniang was seventeen and about to get married, in the autumn of September, something happened to Zheng Laomen.
Just like many people who ventured to be caravan guides in Gucheng in the past and present, they calmly and suddenly led a caravan out once and never came back.
There was only talk on the street that bandits were rampant in the wasteland recently, and the scattered cavalry of the Beiqi barbarians began to enter the country again to plunder. Even the officers and soldiers of the Zhou Dynasty only guarded the camp and took precautions, and no longer went out to patrol.
As a result, someone soon hung up the old wooden warning sign on the dilapidated earth city gate of the small town. Everyone in Gucheng was not allowed to leave the wasteland in the near future.
At this point, the matter of Zheng Laomen's disappearance is over.
There will be no follow-up.
Never before, when something like this happened in Gucheng, no one would come forward to organize help to find the person or retrieve the body for burial. Because such behavior is too dangerous, and the price that may need to be paid is far greater than the sudden disappearance of a person on the street and the exposure of his body in the wilderness.
The people of Gucheng have already acknowledged this matter.
In this place, such things are not uncommon at all, it just depends on who is unlucky and when.
This year, Ye Yuzhou, the adopted son of the Zheng family, was about fourteen years old.
As a young man, he is neither very tall nor strong. Except for the fact that he has been foolish for a while in the past few years, he usually does not leave a deep impression on the people of Gucheng. Generally speaking, he is diligent and sensible, does not talk much, and is more prudent. Do not show off your courage and fight ruthlessly.
The day after the villagers concluded that Zheng Laomei had an accident.
early morning.
It's not bright yet.
Cold wind, wet fog.
Gucheng people get up, open the door, and prepare to start their day-to-day work.
The fourteen-year-old adopted son of the Zheng family came back from the wilderness outside the city alone.
Passing through the low city gate, passing the warning wooden sign above the head, quietly and unexpectedly, one appears on the street in the center of Gucheng.
He was wearing a torn black shirt, and an old hatchet was tied to his back.
He held his right hand in front of his chest, pulling hard on a rope to pull a shelf woven with vines behind him. On top of the shelf was the body of his adoptive father Zheng Laomei who had been pierced through the chest by a sharp arrow.
The left hand hangs down, holding a head.
A head chopped off with a hatchet, the head of a Beiqi cavalryman.
This head is worth five taels of silver.
That morning, almost all the people in Gucheng came out of their houses. The crowd stood quietly on both sides of the street, watching him dragging the trellis, holding his head, gritting his teeth and crossing the street step by step to return home.
After offering sacrifices to his adoptive father, he took the head to the officers and soldiers to receive a reward of silver.
No one knew whether Ye Yuzhou killed the Beiqi cavalryman. Most people guessed that this was absolutely impossible, thinking that he happened to encounter the body of a Beiqi soldier and chopped it up.
But no matter what, just because he did this, in Gucheng, a place where the folk customs are not simple at all, no matter how greedy and vicious the person is, they would not dare to bully the three orphans left by the old Zheng family. Malice.
From then on, whenever there was collective discussion in Gucheng, Ye Yuzhou would always be regarded as the head of the family, and he would be called to sit on a stool, listen to things, and talk.
Five taels of silver bought a good coffin and a tombstone...
On the day of Zheng Laomen's burial, he gained a lot of respect that he had never had before his death. Among the coffin-carrying team of the Eight Bearers and Eight Guardians, several of them were the most influential people on the streets of Gucheng.
The old storyteller also paid a visit after the crowd dispersed. After paying homage, he planted a willow tree on the side of the gate of Zheng's courtyard.
He said this was the custom of the place where he came from.
He also said that it would be better for Yun Niang and Dragonfly to go to the teahouse to help him. Dragonfly would be responsible for holding a plate and discussing rewards with the guests who were listening to the book. Yun Niang had a good voice and learned a few songs, so she could help him drink tea while he relieved himself. Empty time.
This was to take care of the orphans and provide them with food. Yun Niang agreed after asking her brother. Then he spread the word and refused the matchmaker, saying that it was because his father passed away and his younger siblings were still young and they had stopped talking about getting married in recent years.
Ye Yuzhou returned to the street.
Just like his adoptive father Zheng Laomei, he continued to load and unload goods for passing merchants, take care of horses, and do other chores.
I am growing stronger and stronger day by day.
Sometimes when I meet merchants who are generous with their money, but no one takes the job as a guide in the wilderness, I occasionally come out to take it a few times. However, every time at the end, my sister will inevitably make my sister cry, her eyes will turn red, and she will be beaten and beaten. scold.
This family, three orphans, continues their ordinary life in this difficult border town.
Fast forward, two years later, and another heavy snowfall in the dark night.
