Li Chongrun didn't understand what the man and the dog were feeling. He stopped writing and drawing on the roof of the car and looked outside the car with some confusion.
Outside, there are ruins on the roadside.
Half of the earthen wall, which was blackened by the fire, stood there miserably, and it could be vaguely seen that it had once been a house.
There is an old willow tree beside a pond covered with reeds. Many branches of the willow tree were burned off by the fire. Under the remaining half of the branches, there is a dilapidated Buddha statue.
After being exposed to wind and rain, the clay sculpture on the outside of the Buddha statue peeled off a lot, and the linen silk used for lining the shoulders and head leaked out.
The once delicate paint on his face was also scratched by the rain, turning into black streaks along the corners of his eyes and the bridge of his nose, as if he was crying.
Several fat monks in gray cloth robes were directing a few civilian workers to work. Many ditches had been dug at the site, and some construction timber and bricks were piled messily on the roadside.
Perhaps they wanted to flatten the small pond, and thought that the clay Buddha statue might be a good material for padding the pond. The monks were preparing to instruct the folk to push the Buddha statue into the small pond.
Several people were timid and did not dare to step forward to take action. The leading monk slapped them several times with a whip and made countless salutes to the statue. Only then did the people prepare to take action.
The little monk Jianzhen finally couldn't bear it any longer. He shouted and rushed off the donkey cart. He rushed to the Buddha statue in a few steps and tightly protected the Buddha statue behind him with his thin body.
The thin dog named Sister loyally protected her little master and barked loudly at the monks.
Li Chongrun chatted a lot with the young monk Jianzhen in the past few days, and he could vaguely understand some of the dialect he spoke. He could barely make out the words "bodhisattva" and "master".
After listening to his words, the leading monk showed a ferocious smile on his face. He held the whip in his hand and slapped Jianzhen's cheek with the whip handle, making a snapping sound.
The thin dog named Sister very bravely rushed towards the monk, and was kicked to the ground by other monks who were surrounding him. It seemed that his bones were injured. After struggling several times, he could not get up from the ground.
stand up.
When Jianzhen saw that Gouzi was injured, it seemed that the anger that had been buried in his heart for a long time burst out at once. A fierce and abnormal roar burst out from his somewhat thin body, shaking the reeds by the pond.
The willow tree covering the Buddha statue shook the crying Buddha statue.
The Buddha statue was cracked.
A cloud of gray dust spread all over Jianzhen's head and face, and a few broken bones mixed in it fell from his head.
One of the broken bones still had some sharp stubble, and a long and thin cut was made between Jianzhen's eyebrows, and a thin line of blood flowed down.
Jianzhen had no time to take care of this, so he took out the wooden sign that he had always carried with him and smacked the fat monk at the head with all his strength.
The monk sneered disdainfully, waved the whip in his hand, and was about to hit Jianzhen.
Only halfway through the swing, the monk realized that the whip seemed to be tied to something and could not be swung.
Looking at it in the blink of an eye, the monk was shocked. It turned out that several other monks following him had been knocked to the ground by a little girl in fancy clothes.
A somewhat sturdy young man was standing behind him, with the whip in his hand, and his eyes were looking at him coldly, as if he were looking at a dead person.
Li Chongrun himself felt a little regretful. When he grabbed the whip with his hand, his palm seemed to be scratched and it hurt.
"Who are you? You dare to harm the Buddha's good deeds. Aren't you afraid of retribution?"
The monk yelled at Li Chongrun with a stern expression, but ignored the little monk Jianzhen who was calling him. He was hit in the head by the wooden sign he waved. With a dull sound, the fat monk fell softly to the ground.
.
One sound, two sounds, three sounds...
The sound of knocking on wood turned into the sound of breaking wood, and finally turned into the sound of pounding garlic. The dust on Jianzhen's body was scattered by his violent movements, and there was a vague human figure, which gradually disappeared into the howling cold of winter.
In the wind.
Several farmers working on the side were shocked by this scene. Several big monks in the village who were usually domineering and domineering ended up like this. Several farmers were so frightened that they did not dare to run. They just knelt down.
On the ground, he kept kowtowing to the three people in the field.
"Go and call Muramasa."
Ruiniang, who followed, knew the story of Jianzhen and roughly guessed that this was the culprit who caused his family to be destroyed.
But this matter had to be explained eventually. After asking the peasants who were as frightened as rabbits, I found out that they were the surrounding farmers, so I asked them to call Muramasa.
As if they had been granted amnesty, several civilians ran towards the village on all fours. Several of their shoes were lost and they didn't even have the courage to turn around and come back to pick them up.
The young monk Jianzhen, who had been beating for a long time, finally couldn't beat anymore. The wooden sign in his hand had broken and was covered with a mixture of red and white things. Jianzhen's eyes were a little straight and weak. He gasped and stood up.
When I saw the small dog that was already in Gongsun Lan's arms, I wanted to find out.
But as soon as Jianzhen moved, he rolled his eyes and silently threw himself towards the ground.
Hearing that the person's name had been revealed, Muramasa from the nearby village rushed over anxiously, and what he saw was such a strange sight.
Several guards in gray clothes were holding horizontal swords and were cautiously surrounding the small temple that had been destroyed by fire.
There was a pool of blood on the ground, and a figure dressed as a gray-robed monk fell in the pool of blood, but his head and face had been smashed into pieces like rotten watermelons, and his appearance was indistinguishable.
A somewhat sturdy young man with blood stains on his body held another blood-stained child in his arms, holding his hand between the child's pulse and wrist, as if he was diagnosing his illness.
The kid looked familiar, as if he was the young monk from the small temple before.
A delicate girl with picturesque features was carrying a long knife on her back and squatting on the ground with her arms around a thin dog. In front of her were three monks, also wearing gray cloth monk robes.
A woman dressed as a landowner was waiting in front of the temple gate with a smile as if nothing had happened. When she saw me coming, she explained the matter carefully.
Muramasa naturally knew the identities of these monks. He said they were monks from the big temple on the other side of the mountain. They were often sent here by the temple to collect debts and had killed several very kind-hearted families. Although
He is not a person full of evildoers, but he cannot escape the criticism that he deserves to die.
After listening to Ruiniang's story about the little monk Jianzhen, and seeing the wooden sign that Jianzhen used to take revenge, Muramasa knew that the kind old monk who lived in this dilapidated little temple before,
He was a little shocked that he died at the hands of a few of them.
"These scoundrels said that the temple had collapsed, so they wanted to recruit some farmers to rebuild the temple. I saw that they had taken the old monk's certificate, so I transferred the farmers to them. The little boy is absolutely helpless.
It’s something.”
Li Zheng heard Li Chongrun speaking a few words to Ruiniang in Mandarin, and thought of it. He heard that a great big shot had recently arrived in Yangzhou City, and was personally sent by His Majesty, so he vaguely guessed Li Chongrun's identity.
He switched to Mandarin and called Li Chongrun "Qu Lai".
After hearing Li Zheng's words, Li Chongrun realized that it was not a sectarian dispute at all, and that the old monk's death was simply due to the fact that these monks took notice of Dudu.
In the Tang Dynasty, the application for an ultimatum was extremely strict. The ultimatum of a dead monk would be taken back to the state capital, and would be re-issued only after the handover was confirmed. If you want to apply for a new ultimatum, you must either hand over a large amount of money to the Yamen, up to dozens of guan.
, or we can only wait for His Majesty’s gift.
Therefore, there are many lay people in many temples who are waiting to become monks. They do some homework as monks, but they have not received the ordination certificate and cannot be ordained. The longest ones even have to wait for decades.
Because with the ultimatum, you can be exempted from taxes and corvee, which is like robbing money from the emperor's mouth.
Poor little monk Jianzhen's unknown master was guilty of having a jade, and he ended up like this.
Li Chongrun carefully checked Jianzhen's heart pulse, and found that it was just some anxiety that attacked his heart before he fainted. At this time, his heart pulse was smooth and there was no serious problem.
Seeing that the village chief could speak Mandarin, he asked a few more questions about these monks, but the village chief didn't know all the questions, which really made people angry.
The remaining three monks had already woken up, and when they were frightened by Li Chongrun, they shook out all their origins from the bamboo tube like beans.