Murong Chuyi seemed to be in a very wrong mental state. He had always been a man who seemed disconnected from the world, and there were never too many waves between his eyes and eyebrows. Even when he left angrily in a dispute with Yue Chenqing on Bat Island, his mood was under control.
But now he was like a cold lake in early spring. Some things couldn't be hidden under his frozen ice. Even though they were separated by some distance, they could obviously feel his anxiety and depression.
"What? You're asking about a house by the wharf from more than 30 years ago?" The innkeeper's was cracking his calculations on his big fat belly. He was calculating money happily, so he only mumbled absently. "Oh right, I ran the wharf in my early years, but there are so many houses beside the wharf in Lin'an. There are not hundreds of them, but nearly 80. I can't remember every house."
"That family's surname is Chu."
The shopkeeper hemmed and hawed, "Surname Chu, there's a lot of those too. This surname is not rare in Lin'an."
Murong Chuyi was asking about a family named Chu… From more than 30 years ago?
Mo Xi thought a little, then immediately understood. At the Duanyang Festival, Yue Chenqing once said that these years, Murong Chuyi seemed to be looking for his real family. However, there were not many clues in his hand. He only knew that he was taken back from the temple by Murong Huang for adoption. In his swaddling clothes, there was only one piece of paper with a scrawled character "Chu" on it, but nothing else.
The Murong family had a single name for men and double names for women. However, Murong Huang was weak when she was young. The fortune teller said that he would give her a man's name to support her, so the emperor made a special case for their family. However, Murong Huang always thought that the two names were better. After adopting the abandoned baby, she took the name of Murong Chuyi for using the "Chu" left by his family.
Murong Chuyi thought there were more clues recently, so he would find this restaurant now and ask the shopkeeper about the past from 30 years ago. Sure enough, Murong Chuyi did not leave, but took a gold coin from his spatial bag. He pushed it with two fingers and handed it to the shopkeeper. "Think about it carefully again."
As soon as the shopkeeper saw the coin, the fat fingers of the abacus immediately stopped. As he put the coin away, he looked up with a smile and said, "You are welcome, sir. Actually..."
His smile suddenly froze when he saw the appearance of Murong Chuyi.
Murong Chuyi: "What?"
However, the shopkeeper seemed to pry the layer of rock deep in his memory and stared at Murong Chuyi for a long time. After staring at him a long time, he suddenly went "ah" and opened his eyes. "It's you?" But then he shook his head again and again. "No, no, no, it's not her?"
Then he rubbed his face.
"No, you aren't her..."
The shopkeeper's words were confusing, as if he was shocked and confused. But Murong Chuyi seemed to understand what he said. He grabbed his arm and took a step forward. The phoenix eyes flashed with a bright and indeterminate luster.
Murong Chuyi murmured, "Thirty years ago, at Lin'an port, you knew something, didn't you?"
The shopkeeper's expression was just like a dream. After a long time, he was relieved. He saw that all the guests and his subordinates around him were watching him with curious eyes, so he took out a sweat towel and wiped his greasy face. After a moment of hesitation, he said to Murong Chuyi, "Immortal… Follow me upstairs first. I'll do it… I'll do it. Go upstairs and I'll talk about it."
They went to the stairway.
Gu Mang saw Mo Xi's sword-like eyebrow frown slightly. Looking at his eyes, he asked, "Do you know the pretty man in white?"
He had just learned the word "pretty" from the boat lady. Seeing the beauty of
Murong ChuYi, he simply called him "Pretty Ren".
"..." Mo Xi said, "Yes, you knew him before. You just forgot."
"Oh, then shall I go and say hello to him?"
Mo Xi grabbed his wrist, pressed him down, and shook his head.
"He has his own private affairs to deal with. Besides, you and I are not familiar with him. It's embarrassing to meet each other at this time," he murmured softly.
"Eat first."
There were footsteps at the stairs as they went to have a conversation in the room. The shopkeeper led Murong Chuyi to a private room. Though Mo Xi could not see the two men, their voices became clearer.
The porcelain lanterns were tinkling, and the tea was brewing. Then the shopkeeper's weak voice came from behind the bamboo curtain. "I dare to ask, which year was the immortal born?"
Murong Chuyi reported the year of his birth. The shopkeeper listened and murmured several times. It seemed that he was calculating something. Then he sighed again and again.
"Is it true… Is that what she said?"
Murong Chuyi's voice was as moist as the jade soaked in water, but the emotion wrapped in it was like the melting flow under rock. "If the shopkeeper knows something, why not say it clearly?"
"I... Alas, I'm not sure, but the appearance of immortal is... " The shopkeeper sighed again and said, "Well, well, I'll tell you what I know first."
"This is exactly what happened more than 30 years ago..."
The shopkeeper opened his mouth slowly. His voice seemed like he was in a trance.
"More than 30 years ago, I came to run the wharf on the waterway of Lin'an. At that time, I was a poor guy. I didn't know when I would get my next meal. Sometimes I was so hungry that I would pick up the pieces of cake and steamed buns dropped by people on the ground."
"Once when I was picking up steamed bread at the wharf, I was seen by the owner of a small restaurant on the water bank. The boss was a kind-hearted person, so he asked me to sit in his shop and made me a bowl of fried rice and a bowl of dried seaweed and shrimp soup."
"There were two daughters and one son in the old man's shop. The three helped their dad set up the restaurant together. I still remember that the rice was fried by his eldest daughter. He put a spoon of lard and a spoon of soy sauce in it. It was a bowlful of delicious and hot food. When I was in short supply, I used to eat in his shop, but I didn't eat in vain. When I finished eating, I helped his family to do some heavy and rough work."
The shopkeeper took a few more sips of tea to calm his mind, then spoke.
"The surname of this family was Chu. All of them were good people. Yao'er was still young. Those two sisters were famous beauties in Lin'an City. Fang Yi and Ji had many rich businessmen come to propose marriage. However, their father doted on them a lot. Those rich businessmen could not marry them openly because of their families. However, the old man was reluctant to let them be taken as concubines. He would rather let them choose on their own, than marry them out hastily."
"The famous flowers had no owners, which naturally made people long for them. At that time, the names of the two sisters spread further and further, and the suitors became more and more difficult to deal with. Finally, some domineering aristocratic lords were also attracted. If the soft ones couldn't do it, they would come with the hard ones and force their father to make friends."
"And then?"
"Later..." the shopkeeper sighed, "in fact, I didn't see what happened later. I started a business in shipping. I was in Quanzhou for more than a month. And when I came back, the Chu rice shop had been burned to a scorch."
Murong Chuyi: "!"
"I asked the neighbors around me, but they all faltered and didn't dare say more. At that time, I was young and angry, so I rushed to the government without thinking. The grand master told me that the Chu family couldn't stand the entanglement of relatives who broke the threshold, so the family moved out of
Lin'an City."
Murong Chuyi's voice was so cold that he could hardly contain his anger.
"Why would they burn the old house when they moved away?"
The shopkeeper said, "I thought so, too. I knew at that time that the government had not told me the truth. Alas, after all, I was indebted to the Chu family. I didn't want this matter to pass by in such a vague way, so I was constantly searching for clues and asking others in Lin'an City… Later... Later..."
"What happened afterwards?"
Even after such a long time, the shopkeeper was still in a lot of pain when the old story was mentioned again. His voice was shaking, and he drank several mouthfuls of tea and lowered his voice. "Later I went to find it myself. At last, I found it in the suburb of Lin'an I found the body of the Chu family's father with his head separated from his body..."
When he said this, he could not help shivering and his eyes were red. He did not dare to describe the specific situation any more. After a while, he said, "I was afraid and sad. I was crying and suddenly I heard - then, in the depth of the haystack, there was a faint sound of small pieces. I went and see their youngest hiding in the depth of the haystack looking like a kitten, he also was covered in blood."
Mo Xi heard this and was very angry. At the same time, behind the bamboo curtain came a bang of broken porcelain.
The shopkeeper said, "Immortal, you -"
It seemed that Murong Chuyi was too angry and too depressed, so he accidentally crushed the cup in his hand.
"You, your hands are all scratched… Take... "
Murong Chuyi said lightly, "No matter."
Silk cloth rustled. It seemed that he took a towel to wipe the blood for himself. Then he whispered, "Go on."
The shopkeeper made a sound, and his eyes were red. He hadn't recalled it for many years. When he really looked back, his mood gradually began to diffuse.
He was silent for a while, and then said, "The child was still very young, I asked him, and he couldn't speak clearly, I asked where his sister went, but he just cried. I buried the father of the Chu family and brought him back to the boat where I ran a business. He was not old enough to remember anything. I hoped he would live a peaceful life in the future, and I hoped he would never mention this story again. I hoped he would not remember this hatred when he grew up...
"
"Slowly, day by day, even the child who couldn't speak this very well, really didn't remember it. People in the city gradually forgot the Chu family… Until one day."
After a pause, he said, "The eldest daughter of the Chu family had suddenly come back."
"But she was completely different," the shopkeeper sighed. "Unkempt and disheveled, suffering from heartbreak. She kept saying that she had a child, but she had left the child for a while. When she was asked when she had the child and who she had the child with, she couldn't answer. When she asked where her sister had gone, she cried all the time, saying not to blame her. She also had her own difficulties."
Murong Chuyi: "..."
The shopkeeper took out his handkerchief, twisted his nose, and said sadly, "The people in the government heard the news, took her to the doctor and determined that her spirit had been greatly provoked. After she could not recover to normal again, so they did not take care of her. When the villagers saw how pitiful she was, they gave her a lonely cottage to live in. At first, there were many people visiting her. But gradually, when they found that she had little words in her mouth, they felt bored and no one would care about her."
"I took her brother to see her, but her brother didn't know her or remember her at all. As soon as she saw the child, she began to cry, saying that she shouldn't have been so cruel, throwing away her child. That she shouldn't hate the child no matter how much she hated it, and that she saw the child become a ghost, sitting in blood and watching her. Alas..."
"Although there was no evidence of that, most of us also knew that their family was not moved at all, but were taken in by some dignitaries of Wangdu, abducting their daughters by force. I'm afraid that the father of the Chu family was so eager to protect his daughter that he was brutally killed for them. Yao'er was also left in the haystack to die by himself."
The shopkeeper stopped speaking and stayed silent for a while.
"Miss Chu said at that time that she had a child, and she kept shouting that her sister should not blame her. She had her heart. Slowly, everyone wondered if she had done anything to survive and killed her sister… So she was the only one who came back alive, but the other Miss Chu was gone."
Murong Chuyi's face gradually darkened. It seemed that he was unwilling to accept that this was the truth. "..."
"Because of this conjecture, people began to alienate her, satirize her, and make fun of her madness."
"I was… I didn't stop it at that time, because I didn't know much about her. In the past, it was Miss Chu'er who was more gentle and enthusiastic. As a sister, she was not very talkative. I think she might have done something to her sister before she was driven mad by self-accusation. It was always a knot in my heart. I didn't know it until she died…"
Murong Chuyi was shocked, and suddenly interrupted him, saying hoarsely, "What? She... No more?"
"I've been away for years..." The shopkeeper sighed sadly and remorsefully. "When she left, I went to see her off. Maybe it was the last bit of radiance, but she seemed lucid for a moment. At that time, she told me... "
The shopkeeper stopped for a moment, as if wondering if he should tell him the last secret.
At last, he looked at the face of Murong Chuyi, which was very similar to the old man, and finally said, "She said that when she and her sister were kidnapped by the nobles, she knew she could not escape, so she pretended to be obedient, volunteered to untie the clothes. She tricked the other party to relax their vigilance, and finally found an opportunity to let her sister escape. But her sister thought that she wanted to survive in spite of her father who had given himself up for them. She hated her very much, saying that she would rather die than receive a favor from her." Murong Chuyi: "..."
"At this time, I know that the villagers misunderstood her. She didn't live for herself and kill her sister. The so-called hardship was actually the reason..."
"She urged the her sister to run away, but she was rejected and misunderstood, unable to achieve it. Her heart was anxious, and she thought that they were now in the king's capital, full of powerful aristocrats. How far could her sister escape even if she heard her words?"
"Miss Chu thought about it day and night, and finally thought of it. She had seen many nobles when she was being courted by nobleman, so her last plan was to let her sister get the care of one of them."
"In order to live well and not be humiliated, Miss Chu had been watching and choosing. She wondered who could accept an orphan girl kindly. The nobleman must be good enough, upright, and in a prominent position to be able to hold the rank of an official. At last she targeted two people."
Murong Chuyi: "Who?"
The shopkeeper said, "Fuling Jun, Mo Qingchi. And Wangshu Jun, Murong Xuan."
Mo Xi could not prevent himself from feeling cold hearing the name of his father in this dialogue, and suddenly opened his eyes.
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The author has something to say: PS. in the last chapter, the boatman is a little colored egg. She is a two dog Mo Huo Zeng Zeng Zeng did not know her first grandmother. She used to be a boat lady in Lin'an. Later, she became a family. Slowly, her lineage moved to Hunan, Hubei Province. This boatman, of course, is also a butterfly bone beauty, but she is a gene carrier. Like Duan Yihan, the mother of two dogs, she is not different from ordinary people except for her special beauty. She just continues her genes. These can't be written in the text, and they're not suitable for writing, so at most, they can only write one eye with the eye color similar to the two dogs, but they can be used as words to tell you, baaha ha ha ha ha ha ha~~~
Then PS. the next door dog son's latest release yesterday, I can go to see what I have seen, and I also put the original chapter on the back of my neck. I was very helpless to change the line of stepping on the Immortal King into holding two for three years. I'm afraid that the image of his son's maniac will never be reversed = = forcing Liangshan series to whine~~~~