my mountain and river space

Chapter 8

After his mother and grandma brought the dishes to the table, Xu Ling just took the things to his room and put them away.The house of his family is old-fashioned, facing south from the north. The walls are built of green bricks below 2 meters to the ground.The advantage of this kind of house is that it is warm in winter and cool in summer.There is a hall in the middle of the ground floor, and there are two rooms on the left and right. There are two wing rooms on the east and west sides of the outer courtyard.One of the East Wing rooms is for farm tools, and the other is for toilets.The cowshed is next to the implement shed by the yard gate.

Grandpa took out a small bottle of medicinal wine that he treasured, and poured a small glass for Xu Ling and his father each, and he also poured a glass for himself. Xu Ling was always surprised that both his father and grandfather were better at drinking. Just pour.

On the table are Xu Ling's favorite dishes, sautéed bacon with garlic, stewed chicken with shiitake mushrooms, dried loach with garlic and soy sauce, stir-fried eel with chili peppers, and a few home-grown vegetables.After finishing the wine, Xu Ling ate three bowls of rice in one go. His grandmother kept telling him to slow down, for fear that he would choke.

After dinner, grandpa went out to play chess with the uncle's neighbor, the seventh uncle. Xu Ling and his father sat in the yard with a small table in front of them, drinking tea and chatting.Only then did I know that my father wanted to cut off too many dry branches from the mountain chestnut tree behind the house and just use them as firewood, but he stepped on the air and fell from a height of more than 2 meters. Under another tree, I picked up a branch that my father got down. I was terrified at that time, and I hurriedly helped my father to the house of Grandpa Yaozi, a villager, and asked him to use medicine to fix his broken leg.On the night when I got home, my mother also caught a bad cold and had a high fever. She tormented my grandparents and uncle all night, and called Lao Yaozi's grandpa in the middle of the night. He didn't feel better until he took the medicine.

Today is the third day, and it is almost healed, but my father's foot may not heal within 2 months.The rice was about to be harvested, and Xu Ling came back just in time.

The next morning, Xu Ling woke up to the sound of birds chirping. He checked his mobile phone. At 06:30, he got dressed and opened the wooden window on the second floor. They are all hazy in the mist, like a dream, like a fairyland on earth.

Last night Lu Qian, Xu Bing, and Liu Yuehan all called to ask him if he was home, and the last three of them chatted with him for an hour, and the three of them were able to talk.Then I took out my laptop and chatted with other students for a while, and then fell asleep directly, so I got up early.

Maybe it was his mother who heard him getting up and called from below, "Xiaoling, are you awake? Hurry up and have breakfast."

Going down to the hall, only my father repaired the barrel at the door, and filled the gap with a piece of wood. "Dad, where are the grandparents?"

"Your grandpa went to cut pigweed, come back soon, your grandma is doing laundry."

Xu Ling went into the kitchen, and after washing, helped his mother bring porridge and dried radish to the table.

While having breakfast, my father asked, "Your uncle came this morning and said that you resigned. What's the matter?"

"Dad, I haven't been at home for six years. Grandpa and grandma are getting old, and you are no longer young. My son must come back. Besides, I don't believe that I can't do anything at home. Grandpa and grandma, what do you think?"

His grandma didn't speak, but looked at his grandfather, after all, the old man is the head of the family.

After thinking about it for a while, Grandpa said, "Have you really thought about it? Then try it at home first. If it doesn't work, if you go out to work, our old bones can survive for a few more years."

"Dad, what do you ask him to do at home? Feed pigs? Raise chickens and ducks?" Xu Ling's father retorted.

"There's nothing wrong with raising livestock," said Xu Ling's mother.

"Girls with long hair but short knowledge, what do you know?" Xu Ling's father said with a bit of anger.

Indeed, it is not easy for them to train a college student. When he was admitted to Peking University, the county magistrate and township secretary all came to congratulate him.During that time, Xu Changhe walked with his head up and his feet were floating.Now I want to come back to farm, isn't this slapping him in the face, and when I go out later, someone will ask him, yo.Changhe, your son from a prestigious university has come back to farm, how much extra grain has been harvested per mu of land.Just thinking about it makes me angry.

"Then let's set a time limit, 2 years. After 2 years, there will be no improvement in the family. Hurry up and go to work. Xiaoling will be 24 this year, and I'm going to get married first." After finishing speaking, the old man took out the dry tobacco rod, pinched some shredded tobacco, He took out the match and lit it, and started to smoke.

"Grandpa..." "Either do as I say, or you go out to work now."

Now Xu Ling was out of control, looking at his parents and grandma, they kept nodding their heads.

Let me go, this script should not be like this. After scratching his short hair, Xu Ling had no choice but to agree first, take your time.

Walking out of the courtyard, Xu Ling first came to the banyan tree in the south of his house. According to Xu Ling's grandfather, this banyan tree has been recorded for thousands of years. If there is no record, I don't know.

The banyan tree covers an area of ​​nearly a thousand square meters. Don’t think this is an exaggeration. The trunk of the banyan tree is no longer visible. The middle trunk is surrounded by many thick air roots of tens of square meters. It is estimated to be thousands of square meters, and no one can enter.The height is also 30 meters. It is now a paradise for little birds, big birds?Above, his grandfather said that there was a nest of golden eagles that came from nowhere. The big bird was not looking for death, so it flew up to it.

Under the banyan tree, there are some stone benches made of stone brought back by his grandfather. Xu Ling sits on them, looking up at the green trees, the air roots fluttering with the breeze in the morning, feeling like an old man’s beard gently brushing on his chin. Dangling, the vicissitudes of the millennium are only shown on the fallen air roots of the banyan tree. Watching the generations of the village grow old, the only aerial roots of the banyan tree continue to increase, and the fallen air roots continue to grow larger and deeper into the ground.

Xu Ling simply stood up and walked towards the taproot. When he was a child, he remembered playing hide-and-seek with his friends in the village and the police caught thieves here.

I found a gap to get in, and slowly moved in. I haven't seen it for several years, and the gap to get in is getting smaller and smaller, and the surrounding area is densely packed.

After entering, Xu Ling found that the soil underground was wet, and the trunk was so big that it would take four or five big men to hug it.The mottled bark on the main root shows that the banyan tree has an ancient and vicissitudes of life.

At this moment, Xu Ling suddenly discovered that there was a large hole in the bark on the main trunk at the height of a person, and there was a light green bead inside the hole. Who threw the glass bead here, it must have grown into the tree now, I stretched out my hand to button it, but it didn't come out, but I didn't want the bark to cut my hand, blood flowed out, and slowly seeped into the tree , and then directly absorbed by the green beads.

Seeing this strange scene, Xu Ling stepped back straight, but hit the root of the air. At this moment, a light green bead flew out of the tree, turned into a stream of light and flew into Xu Ling's heart , Xu Ling was so shocked that he almost gasped.

He took a deep breath, stretched out his hand to touch the position of the heart, saw that there was nothing wrong, and was about to go out the same way, suddenly, Xu Ling found that he was no longer at the root of the original banyan tree. The place to see clearly is only about 10 meters in radius.There is black oily black soil under the feet, and there is a small stone pool with high black soil in the middle, and a spring water as thick as chopsticks is bubbling out of the pool.

What's going on here, Xu Ling is confused, is it a light green bead?At this moment, the dense fog suddenly surged, and a huge amount of information directly entered Xu Ling's mind, but Xu Ling also passed out directly.

(End of this chapter)