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

After closing the store late at night, Zhang Zhili often sat under a locust tree, imagining Tang Jiu leaning against the tree trunk listening to him talk, and muttering to himself.

"Brother Tang Jiu, we saved three more children today," he took out the silver hairpin in his arms, which was melted and recast by the broken hairpin on Tang Jiu's chest, "There is a boy with eyes like yours, and he has two dimples when he smiles. Brother Tang Jiu, did you hear that?"

As soon as he finished speaking, the locust tree rustled automatically without wind.

Sometimes he would bring a jar of old wine, sprinkle it under the tree roots, and watch the wine seep into the soil. He imagined that this was the plum wine that Tang Jiu loved to drink, and that when he was drunk he would forget the pain on the road to the afterlife.

On the day Zhang Wenbin came of age, Zhang Zhili took him to a moss-covered screen wall and pointed at the dark red spots in the cracks of the foundation stone:

"There used to be a well here," his throat suddenly tightened, "buried...a group of children who never grew up. They should have been like their father, marrying the girl he loved and giving birth to chubby white babies."

Zhang Wenbin saw the pain in his father's eyes and suddenly understood why the porridge from Dushi Canfang was always mixed with a faint smell of burning. That was the sin engraved in the Zhang family's bones and blood, and it had to be redeemed with a lifetime of good deeds.

Time flies and we come to the modern times.

Zhang Zhili has become a centenarian. His legs and feet are becoming less and less flexible. Sometimes he even forgets how long he has lived, but he still stubbornly stays at Du Shi Can Fang.

Zhang Wenbin felt sorry for his old father and tried his best to persuade him to return to the villa to spend his remaining years in retirement.

On a summer afternoon, Zhang Zhili walked to the window shakily with a cane. The glass reflected his frosted hair. It had been two hundred and seventeen days since he last went to Dushi Canfang.

"Brother Tang Jiu, I'm old and can't walk anymore. Will you blame me for not visiting you..." Zhang Zhili murmured, "My uncle said you were reincarnated, but I always feel like you're still here..."

The old pocket watch suddenly beeps, a reminder of Tang Jiu's birthday. This day, engraved in his bones and blood, is still as vivid as yesterday even though Alzheimer's disease has eaten away at his memory.

He looked at the rose bushes in the courtyard. The setting sun stretched the shadows of the flowers very long. A figure flashed behind a cluster of red roses, causing his pupils to shrink suddenly.

The gray-blue color of the jacket overlapped with the moonlight leaking through the woodshed in his memory. The thirteen-year-old Tang Jiu had wrapped himself in a torn quilt and counted the grain of the wood beams in that light and shadow.

"Tang, Tang Jiu, Brother Tang Jiu!..."

Zhang Zhili stumbled down the spiral staircase. A hundred years of time suddenly shrank into a thin needle, pricking his temple and making it throb. His cane hit the steps and broke into two pieces, but he didn't care and climbed down the last three steps using his hands and feet.

Tang Jiu quickly stepped forward, squatted down to support him, and sighed softly: "You are so old, why do you still love wrestling like you did in the past."

This familiar tone shocked Zhang Zhili suddenly, as if time had gone back to the woodshed a hundred years ago.

At that time, he always loved to stumble and run to find Tang Jiu, and the other party would grab his collar with his hands covered with grass debris, and say with half disgust and half helplessness:

"Little fool, why are you running so fast?"

"It's really you..." Zhang Zhili's cloudy eyes welled up with tears, "Brother Tang Jiu, you're not... you're not reincarnated, are you?"

Tang Jiu lowered his eyelashes, "No. I'm trapped." His voice was neither happy nor sad, as light as a feather, "trapped in the afterlife array set up by your great uncle, together with those children..."

"What!" Zhang Zhili's pupils shrank violently as if struck by lightning. "You said the children...they didn't pass away?"

Tang Jiu nodded gently, "The so-called rebirth formation is nothing more than a soul-soothing formation. Your uncle asked the monk to perform a ritual, not to send us to the afterlife, but to nail our souls to the spot so that the descendants of the Zhang family can sleep peacefully."

Zhang Zhili's lips trembled violently, and he suddenly remembered the day when Du Shi Can Fang opened. When he was pouring wine under the locust tree, he always felt that there were tiny footsteps lingering around.

It turned out that it was not an illusion, but those children who had not been able to pass away were watching him.

"I thought... I thought you were all free..." Zhang Zhili suddenly grabbed Tang Jiu's wrist, "I was stupid, I believed their words..."

"Don't be like that." Tang Jiu held his hand with his backhand. "Look, we are out now, aren't we? It was the three kids who taught us how to break the formation and kill the assassins sent by the monks, and that's how we overturned the Soul-Suppressing Nail..."

Zhang Zhili recalled the strange things that happened in Dushi Canfang. The plates broke inexplicably and there was a burning smell in the kitchen, but he could never find out the reason. It turned out that the noises were the struggles of the trapped souls.

"I'm sorry..." Zhang Zhili burst into tears and raised his hand to slap himself, but Tang Jiu firmly grabbed his wrist, "I should have thought of it earlier, I should have checked it earlier..."

"Shh-"

Tang Jiu patted his back gently with his other hand, "The fragrance of the porridge from Dushi Canfang has long overshadowed the smell of blood. Those children all said, thank you for your lotus seed porridge, it's much sweeter than the milk-inducing medicine."

Zhang Zhili was stunned. It turned out that the children had heard all the words he had talked about in the empty courtyard all those years. Tang Jiu had received all the plum wine that was spilled under the locust tree.

"You know what?" Tang Jiu chuckled and took out a sesame candy from his pocket. "Actually, every time you go to the kitchen, I follow you. When you stand in front of the stove stirring the porridge, I float on the beam and watch you. I feel that the little fool who wanted to water me back then has really grown up."

Zhang Zhili took the candy with trembling hands. In these hundred years, he had never been alone. All his confessions and persistence were silently witnessed by others.

"Brother Tang Jiu, from now on, I will drink plum wine with you on your birthday every year, okay?" Zhang Zhili held Tang Jiu's hand tightly, as if he was holding a treasure that had been lost and found again.

Tang Jiu raised his eyebrows and flicked his forehead with his fingers: "Well, let me make a promise first. If you fall like today again, I won't help you."

As dusk engulfed the courtyard, Chen Yifan and Mu Yang hid behind the wrought iron fence, watching the white-haired old man and young man hugging each other on the stone steps.

Chen Yifan gritted his teeth and rubbed his nose, his Adam's apple rolling as he cursed "fuck", but he himself didn't even hear the tremor in his tone.

Mu Yang lowered his head to adjust his cufflinks, but pulled them crookedly. Finally, he simply turned his back and said in a muffled voice as if stuffed with cotton: "Don't look at it. If you keep looking at it, tears will fall."

The two of them retreated on the moonlight.

Only when they turned the corner did Chen Yifan suddenly raise his hand and pat Mu Yang's shoulder: "The story of that old guy and the little devil is more tear-jerking than a fucking TV series."

Mu Yang didn't respond, but suddenly turned into a convenience store when passing by, and stuffed a can of beer into Chen Yifan's hand when he came out. This was the Nth time they had expressed their tacit understanding in this way in the seven years they had known each other.

At the same time, Su Yang was being dragged by three little kids to run into the courtyard. His younger brother Yuanyuan sat on his neck, pulled his hair and shouted, "Go, go, go, dad, speed up!"

Sister Tuantuan grabbed Su Yang's left hand and stuffed candies into her pocket, while Lingling stood on tiptoe to reach the juice bottle in his right hand and shouted in a baby voice: "Daddy, hold Lingling! Give Lingling the fruit in Daddy's hand!"