After sleeping in the mountains for a night, Zhu San left Jiangdu County the next day. Fortunately, he met an old man driving an ox cart. He trotted up and asked, "This old uncle, are you going to Gaoyou County? You guys have to walk a lot."
Today, my legs are tired, can I take a ride?"
Seeing Zhu San alone, covered with dust, and at such a young age, the old man shouted enthusiastically: "Why is such a young boy going out alone? Thank you for your hard work. Come up quickly. My husband lives outside Gaoyou County. I'm just dropping by."
I’ll take you for a ride.”
"Thank you, old uncle!" Seeing his agreement, Zhu San laughed cheerfully, jumped on his back, and sat on the carriage.
"Where did the little baby come from? Why are you going out alone? Where are your adults?" The old man in the oxcart asked with a kind and caring look on his forehead while narrowing the wrinkles on his forehead.
"The adults are all at home. I am from Moling County and came to Gaoyou County to study." Zhu San told the truth and had nothing to hide.
"Moling County? It's amazing! Crossing the river and crossing the county, you can actually come here at such a young age. It's really extraordinary and amazing." The old man with the oxcart boasted in surprise, without any disbelief, and asked again
: "Then which gentleman are you looking for in Gaoyou County?"
Now that I entered Gaoyou County, I happened to ask this old man for directions. Thinking of this, Zhu San replied: "Old uncle, did you know that there is a Mr. Zhang Jian in Meihua Villa?"
"Plum Blossom Village? Mr. Zhang Jian? I haven't heard of it. Could it be the hermit master? You'd better go to the city gate and ask about this. There is a lot of information there." The old man with the oxcart shook his head and suggested.
That was all that could be done. Zhu San thanked him again. He had been walking on his feet for the past two days, but he was exhausted. He moved to the wooden edge of the carriage and leaned against it to make himself more comfortable. He shook his head and looked at the old man.
Waving the whip, he drove the old cow forward. But the old cow was really old. Although he was panting, he couldn't get up any faster.
Listening to the squeaking wheels and watching the old cow walking forward leisurely, Zhu San suddenly felt relaxed. In his previous life, he was fine when he was young. He drank, drank, and had fun and got through high school, and then he was one step ahead of others.
Walked out of campus.
Soon the hard days came. The ruthlessness and indifference of the society made him start running around all day long. He did not study for a long time, and he grew up miserable. Without a diploma, high education and technology, he could only do the most painful and tiring work.
After he was thirty years old, he got married and bought a house. Everything was weighing on his shoulders. He began to drink alcohol. He became numb and confused in the hard work. From before his car accident, he had never had a moment of relaxation. It was precisely because of the influence of his previous life.
All the influences have resulted in never enjoying the leisurely taste of life.
He even always felt that only those old people in their twilight years would hold a purple clay pot full of tea stains, leaning on a wicker chair at the entrance of the alley, stroking the shiny handle and savoring the last afterglow of the sunset.
Young people should be busy and work hard for their careers. Development and success are the most important things.
Zhu San suddenly discovered that this slow-paced life seemed to be very good. There was no pressure for promotion, no need to be a house slave, no need to worry about genetically modified foods, milk mixed with melamine, etc. It was natural and simple, which should be regarded as Taoism.
Carefree.
I didn't deliberately force myself to study in Gaoyou County before, but now I think it might be a good step.
I'll take Bajun from Jiangdong as my teacher, use my IQ and the knowledge of later generations, and study hard. Even if I can't become a high official, there will be no problem in getting a small official position in Jiangdong. Then I can marry a wife with three obediences and four virtues.
Isn’t it all together?
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, heroes fought in Jiangdong. In fact, there were very few wars in Jiangdong. Among the safe states and counties, only when the little overlord went to Jiangdong, they experienced war, but it ended soon. It would not be until decades later that the Sima family
He fought in, but he was already in his seventies at that time and might have died long ago. As long as he stood in line when Sun Ce came, he should be very happy and carefree in the future.
Zhu San leaned on the rickety bullock cart, thinking happily. His heartbeat slowly slowed down with the rhythm of the wheel, and he gradually fell asleep. It was very fragrant and very fragrant.
While driving the ox cart into a mountain road, the cliffs on both sides gradually became lower. After passing through a forest, a khaki city wall gradually came into view, more than two feet high, made of concrete.
"Xiaowa, the county town is here, Xiaowa! Wake up!"
The old man in the oxcart pushed Zhu San, who was sleeping, and said lovingly: "I'm really exhausted, my dear boy."…
Zhu San woke up leisurely and looked at the unfamiliar environment around him. In a daze, he glanced at the old man in the oxcart. His hitchhiking experience clearly appeared in front of his eyes. He immediately became energetic and looked at the flow of people coming and going in the city.
At the door, he jumped down and asked: "Grandpa, are you here?"
"We're here, go into the city by yourself. There are guest rooms in the Zhang family's old store in the city, which are cheaper. My father-in-law's family is outside the city, so I won't accompany you in. Be careful." After the old man with the oxcart enthusiastically asked,
He said goodbye to Zhu San and drove away in an ox cart.
When he met a good person when he went out, Zhu San waved his hand to send the cart away and disappeared. He looked at this strange city and strode forward.
The room in the old Zhangjia store was indeed as cheap as the old man said. It cost twenty-three cents a night. Of course, this did not include food. It was seven cents cheaper than the Dukou Inn in Moling County. Zhu San didn't know how many days it would take him to find out.
The place where Plum Blossom Villa is located.
So I paid 300 yuan in one lump sum, which was enough to stay for about ten days.
Early the next morning, Zhu San got up. After washing his face and cleaning his teeth, he first prepared to go to the city gate to inquire, because many villagers outside the city came to the city to do business in the morning, and Meihua Villa was located outside the city, so naturally these villagers outside the city knew him.
There are more possibilities.
"Uncle, do you know the nearby Plum Blossom Villa?" Zhu San asked a man picking vegetables.
"I don't know." The man shook his hand to express that he didn't know.
"Auntie, may I ask how to get to Plum Blossom Villa?"
"Plum Blossom Villa? I don't know, I haven't heard of it."
After asking many people, no one knew anything, which made Zhu San very upset. Didn't Uncle Wang say that Mr. Zhang Jian was the Eight Horsemen of Jiangxi and a famous scholar? How could he be like a hermit and hide in the valley?
Hard to find.
In the rising sun, Zhu San has been asking for several hours, and he has run out of questions. He is going to ask the last one. If he still doesn't know, he will go back to Zhang's old store and find another way. Asking questions like this is not a solution.
Method.
"Plum Blossom Villa? I know that after leaving the city and heading into the mountains, there is a pine forest. Crossing it, you can see a mountain stream. Walking up the stream, you can see a large number of plum blossom trees."
"Let me tell you, there is something very strange about this plum blossom forest. I entered it by mistake before and walked around two sticks of incense before I came out. There must be something ghostly causing trouble. It is said that the Plum Blossom Villa is in the middle of the plum forest. The owner of the village is a strange hermit. It's a pity that
I am just a woodcutter, and I have no chance to see you."
The last man Zhu San stopped to ask was a woodcutter. When he talked about the plum forest, his eyes were full of fear and he pointed in a direction outside the city.
"Little boy, why are you asking this at such a young age? Go home and eat quickly. The mountains are not a place for you to play." The big man came back to his senses and saw that he had said so many words to a young man inexplicably.
He lit the fire and left.
Zhu San was a little stunned by the woodcutter's words, so mysterious? But then he thought about it and thought that this plum blossom forest should be a natural maze, so mountain people often get lost in it, so it becomes mysterious.
But he is not afraid of these things. When he joined the army in his previous life, the instructor learned how to identify directions in the woods.
After jogging back to Zhang's store, Zhu San bought some dry food and water bags for emergencies, and headed into the mountains in the afternoon.
Following the woodcutter's guidance, after entering the mountain, they first saw a sparse pine forest at the foot of the mountain, with hares, birds and other pets inhabiting it. Zhu San, a foreigner, scared them away.
The mountain stream at the end is crystal clear, with occasional small fish swimming in it, which makes Zhu Sanjiang drink up the water in his water bag.
Walking up the stream, halfway up the climb, you can see plum blossom trees scattered deep in the jungle on the left. Following closely, there are more and more plum blossom trees, and they are getting denser and denser, some are high and some are low, and there are countless plum trees.
Nowadays, in late summer and early autumn, the plum blossom trees are bare and arrogant, as if they don't welcome him in.
Sure enough, after walking for a few more minutes, Zhu San found that he was still in the plum forest, and it seemed that he had just passed by this place.
"It seems that I need to determine the direction first."
Zhu San came to a plum tree, kicked the weeds under the pole, slightly inserted his hand into the soil to feel the humidity, stood up, took out the dragon scale dagger, selected a plum branch that was about as thick as his own arm, and cut it off with one knife.
.
Looking at the cross section, it was sparse in front and dense in back. Then when I came to a place where the sunlight could be seen, I inserted the plum branch upside down into the soil.
Within a quarter of an hour, mark the reflection of the branch, stretch out your palms in a vertical shape, and make an arc like a compass, with the center of the circle facing downwards, consistent with the expression of the annual rings and soil moisture, this side is the south.
Zhu San calculated in his mind that when he entered the Plum Forest, he walked from west to north, so now he should go to the southeast and search deeper to see if he can encounter the Plum Blossom Villa. Otherwise, he can only go down the mountain first and come back tomorrow.
Then he walked for a while, and at intervals not far away, Zhu San cut off the branches of plum blossoms and pointed them at the tree rings to ensure that his direction had not changed. Fortunately, when he was about to give up, a clearing finally appeared deep in the plum forest, covering an area of
Ten acres.
The long wall was covered with moss, and even the corners were covered with cobwebs. When we came to the gate of the villa, there were no bronze lions, lanterns and other decorations as Zhu San had imagined. It was obviously very desolate.
If the pair of wooden doors at the door and the wooden plaque with the name Plum Blossom Villa above were not clean and dust-free, Zhu San would have doubted whether he had come to some mountain spirit ghost village. At night, female spirits such as vixens would come out and think that he was a ghost.
Ning Caichen.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Knocking on the wooden door, after a while, no one came to open it. Zhu San was confused and stepped back. He looked at the wooden plaque and saw that it was Plum Blossom Villa. That’s right, that’s what Uncle Wang told him. Could it be that Plum Blossom Villa is not the only one in this area?
One family?
I tried knocking again, this time with more force, and with all my strength, I made a thumping sound, but the wooden door did not move at all.
There must be someone living in the villa, otherwise there were traces of cleaning at the door and the door was locked so securely, otherwise he would have kicked it twice and broken the door open.