The little crybaby in the group, the young master is a softie

When Zhang Zhili saw the yamen runners pulling out the wooden board, he remembered the scene of his father beating the servants. But now, he and Tang Jiu had clearly come to ask for help, so why was there only disgust in the eyes of the county magistrate?

"Sir!" After he came to his senses, he threw himself at the county magistrate's feet, "Please don't hit Brother Tang Jiu, we didn't lie, my father..."

"Come here, drag this crazy kid away!" The county magistrate spitted on Zhang Zhili's face, "If you dare to talk nonsense again, you will be punished too!"

Tang Jiu was pinned to the ground and saw Zhang Zhili being dragged out of the county government office. The child's cotton shoes fell into the snow, revealing the white socks embroidered with lotus pods.

The heavy wooden board of the yamen runner fell on Tang Jiu's back, and pus mixed with blood seeped into his collar, but he smiled because he heard the county magistrate secretly ask the legal advisor: "Has Zhang Dafu's money arrived?"

When they returned to You'an Hall, Zhang Dafu was smoking a pipe. He stared at Zhang Zhili's swollen eyes and asked, "My dear son, have you grown strong? Do you dare to sue your father?"

"They are all human beings! Not animals!" Zhang Zhili gritted his teeth and said, "I will seek justice for Brother Tang Jiu!"

Zhang Dafu couldn't bear to punish his son. He sighed, turned to the bloody Tang Jiu and hooked his finger, "You, follow me."

"You are not allowed to bully Brother Tang Jiu!" Zhang Zhili stood in front of Tang Jiu, but was quickly held aside by the servants and could not move.

When the door of the study closed, Zhang Zhili heard Tang Jiu's suppressed groan of pain. In the second half of the night, the door of the study opened. Tang Jiu staggered out like a bloody man, with half a silver hairpin stuck in his chest.

"Brother Tang Jiu!" Zhang Zhili had been waiting outside the door. Seeing this, he rushed over and supported him.

Tang Jiu leaned on him and barely stood still. His face was as pale as a corpse. Before he could catch his breath, he heard a series of screams of children in the yard.

After finally moving to the courtyard, Tang Jiu's pupils contracted violently. More than a dozen children were lying in a pool of blood, the youngest was only eight or nine years old, their throats were cut, and blood formed a winding river on the bluestone slabs.

On that snowy night three years ago, Tang Jiu also watched Zhang Si die. At that time, he would cry and wipe the ice beads from his companion's eyes with a rag.

But now, he just felt like there was a fire burning in his chest, burning him so much that he wanted to tear open his chest, take out his broken heart, and throw it on Zhang Dafu's smoking couch.

"Let's set a fire." Tang Jiu grabbed Zhang Zhili's little hand, "Burn these man-eating evil ghosts to death."

Zhang Zhili looked up and saw the fire dancing in Tang Jiu's eyes. It was not despair, but hatred quenched with poison, colder than the water in the abandoned well in the backyard.

"Okay." Zhang Zhili gritted his teeth and said, "I know where the granary is, and also where my father hid the banknotes..."

The fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the Lantern Festival.

You'an Hall was decorated with lights and regular customers wearing fox furs sat in the warm room, waiting to drink the "top scholar milk specially provided for the Lantern Festival."

Tang Jiu was dressed up as a fortune-bringing boy. The lump on his chest was oozing blood mixed with cinnabar, and under the candlelight it looked like a blooming flower of evil.

Zhang Zhili stood beside his father, holding a lantern soaked in kerosene. He saw Tang Jiu nodding to him and saw the servants carrying hay to the granary.

I saw the greedy eyes of the regular customers. Those eyes were exactly the same as when my father looked at the silver, both of which were hooks that wanted to kill people.

"Serve the food!" Zhang Dafu's voice was filled with excitement. "Let the gentlemen have a taste of our You'an Restaurant's top-quality milk!"

When Tang Jiu approached with the silver pot, Zhang Zhili could hear his own heartbeat.

The moment the lid of the pot was opened, he slammed the lantern against the gauze on the roof. Flames leaped up, illuminating the bloodstains on Tang Jiu's chest.

"Fire!" The old customers screamed and ran to the door, only to find that the wooden door was blocked tightly.

Tang Jiu took out the fire starter hidden in his sleeve and threw it into the granary full of hay. Thick smoke instantly filled the entire yard.

Zhang Zhili looked at the fear in his father's eyes and suddenly laughed. The laughter mixed with the thick smoke and made him cough, but he couldn't stop.

He saw Tang Jiu running in the sea of ​​fire, setting fire to one room after another. The remaining children rushed out of the woodshed holding kerosene lamps, like a group of little ghosts holding lanterns.

When the fire engulfed the warm room, Zhang Zhili saw Tang Jiu kneeling on the ground choked by the smoke. He wanted to rush over to pull him away, but the housekeeper grabbed him in his arms and ran for his life.

"Put out the fire!" Zhang Dafu cried, "I'll give you silver! Thousands of taels of silver!"

In response, Tang Jiu threw a torch at him.

The flames licked Zhang Dafu's fox fur, and it instantly turned into a fireball. When Zhang Zhili was carried out of You'an Hall by the housekeeper, he heard Tang Jiu's laughter mixed with the loud noise of wood collapsing, which sounded very much like the sound of drums in front of the county government office.

He looked back, and the last thing he saw was a charred figure in the sea of ​​fire, gesturing to him to go away.

"Brother Tang Jiu——!!!"

Zhang Zhili let out a cry of grief and fainted.

When he was fed the third bowl of talisman water despite his high fever, he heard the monks' chanting outside the window mixed with the sound of scratching.

He wanted to turn around to look, but his cousin held his shoulder and said, "Don't look. The masters are performing a ritual to send those little ghosts to the afterlife."

Half a month later, he was in good health, with a bowl of lotus seed soup placed by his bed. My uncle stroked his beard and smiled maliciously:

"It's good that Li Ge'er is fine. The foundation of the old house has been raised three feet, and a senior monk from Mount Wutai has been invited to set up a rebirth formation. Those wronged souls have long gone with the smoke."

Zhang Zhili looked out the window at the newly planted sycamore tree, whose leaves were still stained with cinnabar powder used for rituals. The pus and blood on Tang Jiu's chest was also a dark red color, and after drying it looked like withered petals.

"Brother Tang Jiu and the others..." Before he could finish his words, a spoonful of lotus seed soup was stuffed into his mouth. The soup tasted bitterly sweet. "Did they really go to reincarnate?"

"Of course." The eldest uncle said confidently, "The monk said that the rebirth array leads directly to the west heaven, and even the King of Hell will give our Zhang family some face."

When he arrived in Suzhou three months later, there was a piece of charred cloth hidden in his luggage. It was picked up by Zhang Zhili from the fire scene. He didn't know whether it belonged to Tang Jiu or some other child.

Whenever he couldn't sleep on a rainy night, he would take out a piece of cloth and put it against his chest, as if he could feel the weak but firm heartbeat in that bony chest.

Twenty years passed in the blink of an eye. Zhang Zhili completed his studies, married and had children, and returned to his hometown. He quickly took back all the property that had been occupied by his uncle.

The original You'an House was transformed into a money house by my uncle, and changed its way of eating people. Zhang Zhili burned it clean with a torch, and it became the current Dushi Canfang.

On the day when the restaurant opened, Zhang Zhili specially chose Tang Jiu's birthday and worked with the servants. In a trance, he always felt that Tang Jiu was following him.

"Dad, why do we add lotus seeds to the porridge?" his son Zhang Wenbin asked in a baby voice, holding up a small wooden spoon.

"Because lotus seeds can clear the heat in your heart." Zhang Zhili touched his son's head. "Only when your heart is clear can you see the suffering in this world."