The wind is holographic, and the twinkling starry sky is still there. The sound of wooden fish on the mountain has also been silenced, except for the chickens in the distant villages and the insects on the surrounding barren beaches, the scene is like a dream as the Buddhists say, and any description is almost superfluous.

Xu Yan and Li Fang had also left, and the brothers, who had settled a hundred years of family feuds, took off their clothes, put everything on the shore, and slowly rocked the boat to the center of the river naked.

The terrain narrowed dramatically here, and the current was rapid, so the brothers carefully flipped the boat over and swam back to shore, where the poison sank into the water.

The carnival feast began, and with the sound of the gongs upstream, the people who were downstream heard the sound of cannons, and the torches were extinguished, and all of them were rekindled in an instant, and the banks along the river for miles were illuminated by patches of firelight, and everyone shouted in a low voice, which was magnificent.

People poured into the river like a tide, and the Wu brothers also rushed from upstream, wielding knives and slashing big fish in the water all the way. The elder brother continuously cut off the water snake drunk by the medicine in the moonlight, while the younger brother thought about the beautiful Li Fang, and he had little to gain.

Neither about revenge, nor about women, is the subject of tonight. The theme of tonight is "fishing", people cross the sea to show their powers, who is luckier, men are the main force of fishing, they all want to wait for the dawn, so that their relatives are happy and surprised, so they swim around desperately.

Until the next day, there are children picking up fish and shrimp on the shallows, and such a festival has been held once a year since then, just like dragon boat rowing during the festival.

Li Fang reluctantly said goodbye to her hometown, and followed Xu Shen to Jinling by land with a nervous mood. Along the way, Xu Ye's brow was furrowed, and the drought affected many villages that lacked water.

The pressure of survival is increasing, and the hot weather is becoming more and more anxious, and it is easy for a little spark to explode like a cannonball.

Xiejia Village, which is 100 miles away from Xiaojia Village, is surrounded by beautiful mountains and rivers. The folk customs are fierce, and generations have lived and multiplied here.

Since the Qin and Han dynasties, people with the surname Xie have continued to migrate southward, and the farthest migrated to Hainan and Taiwan, and before the Song Dynasty, it has become one of the great surnames in the south of the Yangtze River, and the population in the Ming Dynasty is about 20 of the hundred surnames.

Today's surname Xie is no longer the Eastern Han Dynasty after the generation of the "Cui Lu Wang Xie" of the four seas of the family, in the old days Wang Xie Tang Qianyan, flew into the homes of ordinary people.

Today, there is a terrible trembling atmosphere in Xiejia Village, like the white clouds and birds in the past, and the crops and vegetables in the fields. The dogtail grass on the wall, and the waterwheel hoe and all kinds of things, all have an angry atmosphere.

The blood-soaked descendants of the village ran around like crazy, shouting, flames spewing from their eyes, tightening their belts one by one, releasing their strong arms, rubbing and sorting out the various kinds of guys they were ready to fight.

Men who are a little older, although they should be mature and steady. They kept admonishing young people not to be impulsive, but their compassionate faces clearly showed anger and fortitude.

The older generation gathers in twos and threes, secretly calculating which strategy to win, whether to engage or defend, to compromise or negotiate. The women were partly worried about their husbands and sons. Pray that relatives can turn evil into good fortune; The other part sighed and sympathized with the thought of the misfortune of jumping into the well if it happened to him.

The children were stunned as they watched the adults hurry, with strange expressions on their faces and strange words. And their parents told them not to go to the nearby Wangjia Village to play, in fact, they were not even allowed to go out at the gate of their house, with inexplicable suspicion and fear. Leaning on the wall and watching.

At this time, all the work in the village stopped.

The road on the barn was crowded with heads and footsteps, filled with heavy sorrow and tragic shouts, and the air in the whole village was about to burst in this tense atmosphere, and all the men were as crazy as drunkards, and the sheep ran in panic on the hillside, the cows were desperately fighting in the shed, and the earth dogs barked one after another like war drums.

Boom! Boom! The real drum sounded, shaking the mountains.

The drums of Xiejia Village have been followed for hundreds of years, and can only be heard every year when the Spring and Autumn Festivals are held, because of the fall of the surname, because of the trampling of foreign races, the sound is deep and sad, and it also has the majesty that can shock the blood of the people surnamed Xie. So every time it suddenly sounds, it's either a group of gangsters who are coming, or something inexplicable has happened with a certain village.

In the past ten years, the drums have been sounding quietly twice a year, but today they are making an exception.

When the drum sounded the second pass, the martial arts training ground in front of the Xie clan ancestral hall was filled with countless people, and it was slowly increasing, extending out in rows.

Soon, the third drum beat sounded more powerfully, and the landslide roared like a crack in the cracked earth.

The patriarch slowly walked onto the stage, and after several exhortations, the boiling villagers quieted down a little.

The patriarch with half-white hair had just passed his sixtieth birthday, his spirit was very vigorous, his eyes were blazing, his voice was loud, and he said to the big guy sternly: "Since the Wei and Jin dynasties in our Xie Jia Village, the only thing that the ancestors and ancestors can't bear is to be bullied by outsiders, who doesn't know the battle of Weishui?" ”

"Whoever endures humiliation is raised by a son of a bitch!" The villagers shouted half-frantically.

The patriarch continued: "In the previous dynasty, there were only a few men left in my Jinling Xie clan who died in battle, and they also cut off the relationship with the few rooms that were officials for the Tartars, who didn't respect the other rooms?" Now, if Wangjiacun does not hand over Wang Gui to compensate for the life of our Ying Fang's daughter-in-law, our surname Xie will not be able to take revenge, and we will not be bullied like this.

But let's not be busy at the moment, wait for Wangjiacun to reply to our ultimatum, and see how to make a decision, but we must prepare first. ”

"Patriarch, our guys are ready." "Don't worry, your old man, the Xie family is not afraid of death." The men shouted again, raising their sticks and rakes in their hands.

"Good!" The patriarch said in an encouraging voice: "Go back, no one is allowed to act rashly, and come back tomorrow to hear the news." ”

After sending the patriarch away, everyone dispersed in groups, saying righteous and indignant words to each other, and they were all very excited.

The most eye-catching is Uncle Mao's son Bangping, who has always been extremely diligent and courteous, but at this moment his face is sad, his eyes are red, full of tears, and he swears in public that he must step on the ancestral hall and ancestral tomb of the people of Wangjia Village, otherwise he will not live.

Among other young people of the same generation, there are many similar, young and hot-blooded people, but the one who is full of unscrupulous foul language, and the most angry one running around is Xie Yan, a junior in the village, nicknamed Slanted Eyes.

He clutched his stick tightly as he ran, and shouted hoarsely: "Lao Tzu is going to feed the of the woman in Wang Village to the dog!" ”

It turned out that one year by the river, he secretly glanced at a woman washing clothes in Wang Village, revealing a small half of her breasts. When the woman found out, she immediately sank her face and cursed, "What do you look at?" Sooner or later, he will die of eye sores. ”

Xie Yanxin was small-eyed and superstitious, so he thought that he had been humiliated and unlucky, and endured until now, and finally after the unfortunate incident, he advocated the most fiercely, and his actions were also the most crazy.

At that moment, he was happy and angry and wanted to run to Ying Fang's house, but on the way, he suddenly turned to the wine shop, drank three taels of sorghum wine in one go, and said loudly to the diners present: "What other wine do you eat?" Our Xie Jia Village has been bullied to the head, are you still in the mood to do it? ”

Xu Yan, who was eating and resting, glanced at him unhappily, and Li Fang blinked her delicate eyes and frowned in confusion.

"Are you drunk?" A drinker asked.

"What do you say? The dog was drunk. Xie Yan looked angry, "Are you all dead?" Ying Fang's daughter-in-law, what a virtuous woman who lives at home, how filial and good a person she serves her elderly mother-in-law? Now she's dead, dead, jumping into a well! ”

"What? Is this true? More than a dozen drinkers exclaimed, almost none of them were from their own village, but most of them were very familiar with Xiejia Village, and they were all suspicious.

"Ahh Li Fang was also taken aback, and Xu Yan's gaze became a little colder.

Someone said incredulously: "Isn't this one corpse and two lives?" Ying Fang's daughter-in-law is pregnant. With two lives, isn't Ying Fang's family going to be extinct? Two lives! ”

Another drinker asked, "Why did you jump into a well and die?" ”

"Why?" Xie Yan smashed the wine bowl with a snap, "It's not Wang Gui's bastard of Wangjia Village, he met Ying Fang's daughter-in-law, and he was in the dry ditch in their village, first with soft, and then with strong, and did things that were unreasonable." This damn brute! Ying Fang's daughter-in-law came back and cried for two days and nights, but her mother-in-law did not listen to her persuasion, and she jumped into the well and died this morning, alas, two lives. ”

After saying that, Xie Yan roared and ran out, so the guests in the wine shop were also angry, and they paid their bills and left in a hurry.

The anger spread more and more to the whole village, Li Fang looked at her sweetheart worriedly, Xu Yan said: "I can't ignore it because of the reason, but I have to report this matter to my father, let's go." ”

"Yes." Li Fang's hanging heart was put down, and she stood up busily.

On the earthen fort on the border with Wangjia Village outside the village, twenty or thirty people took turns guarding it, and a team of twenty people patrolled back and forth in the village. Many descendants gathered below, shouting loudly to the opposite side to demonstrate, no one cared about the royal law, the clan society in the ancient countryside has always been like this, the stronger the power of the local clan, the more similar disputes will be resolved by themselves, and the government generally does not dare to interfere too much, and often turns a blind eye.

Reason was gone, and they were desperate to catch a spy in Wangjia Village, and cut off the tip of the bamboo pole hanging high on the earthen fort, which was a happy thing.

People kept asking each other, "Did you catch it?" The result was no, and everyone was disappointed for a moment of silence.

Not really!

Suddenly, someone explained loudly: "The people of Wangcun have always been afraid of death, cowardly, and leprosy dogs, and they are all hiding on the kang and shivering." ”

"Haha!" Everyone laughed as if they had been victorious. (To be continued......)