The house is money, the story is life

"Why don't you bloom?"

Xu Zhengran heard himself repeating the question again, facing a dry peach tree.There were no flowers or leaves on the tree, but there was a faint shadow sitting on it, no more than an inch long, with fluttering clothes, and the branches under him were trembling uncontrollably.

Xu Zhengran didn't know what the situation was, but he knew that he was talking to that thing.Seeing that he was still ignoring him, he spoke again: "Hey, what about you, all the other peach blossoms are blooming, why don't you bloom? You don't even have a bud, aren't you ashamed?"

The shadow finally spoke: "No."

"Then you are really thick-skinned." Xu Zhengran heard himself say this, "So why don't you bloom?"

The shadow ignored him again.He stood up, burrowed into the branches under his feet, and disappeared neatly.

Xu Zhengran: "Well...it's okay, then I'll ask again tomorrow morning."

After he finished speaking, he turned around slowly, his long, loose sleeves drooped, and the hem of his clothes rubbed against the delicate shoe surface.Xu Zhengran didn't know what he looked like, but he knew that what he was wearing now was definitely not a sweatshirt and jeans.This is not his body, and he has no idea of ​​its origin.

"Don't come." A moment later, a muffled voice came from the branch, "You are too annoying."

agree.Xu Zhengran nodded inwardly, and then said, "I'm not bothered, it's because you are so weird."

——And he doesn't even have the slightest control right, and he can't even speak for himself.Really suffer.

Xu Zhengran was gloomy in his heart, but his mouth was sharp, and he repeated the question tirelessly: "So why are you not willing to bloom? It's almost clear, what a season."

The shadow was probably really annoyed by the question, and climbed out of the branch again, sitting on the branch with both feet hanging down, with a somewhat impatient tone: "Whether I bloom or not, what does it matter to you?"

"Isn't that what you said." Xu Zhengran spoke again, his voice sounded like a boy's, "Look at this mountain full of peach forests, you are the only tree left without blooming, what a disappointment."

"That's because they're stupid. They're all ignorant dead creatures, who wants to be like them." Shadow snorted, "Besides, what do I have to do if people spoil the fun? I just don't want to spoil the fun."

"I know you're unusual, so I'm here to beg you." The young man who spoke was good-tempered, still smiling, "Let's discuss it, can't we just open it for a day? Just a day."

"No." After the figure finished speaking, it went back into the branch again.Xu Zhengran quickly said: "You hide well, I will come back tomorrow."

"Don't come!" A voice came from the branch again, but the tone was much heavier, "I'm really annoying! If you come again, I'll beat you!"

How dare you - Xu Zhengran retorted in his heart, feeling his body turning around.Immediately, I felt my consciousness drifting away, and my perspective floated up, but it was myself who escaped from that body, changing from the first perspective to the third perspective.Xu Zhengran was already confused, and now he didn't even know what kind of existence he was. He couldn't see his hands and feet when he lowered his head, and couldn't make a sound when he spoke. He just hung there quietly, like a theatergoer.He didn't have the opportunity to observe the young man until now, but he only had time to capture a leaving figure. He could only roughly judge that the owner of the body was not old, had a good figure, and a good family background—although he didn't understand ancient costumes, he Whether the material is good or not, you can generally see it.

Xu Zhengran wanted to see more clearly, but his vision gradually blurred as the boy moved away, until the boy's figure disappeared completely, and the picture in front of him suddenly became chaotic, as if cutting from a long shot to a montage, with several scenes interspersed Overlapping, the backgrounds are all the same hillside, the protagonists are all the same dead tree, and the voice-overs are all the same sentence: "Why don't you bloom?"

Are you bothered?It's annoying!The same sentence came to ask every day, Xu Zhengran, a bystander, felt that he couldn't be bothered anymore, let alone the peach tree, which came out to attack him a few days ago and told him not to come, and then he simply pretended to be dead, and pretended like this for a few days , probably pretending to be dead is useless, so he simply jumped out and said, "I'm dead, don't come here."

juvenile:"?"

Peach Tree Spirit's tone was cold: "My main body has been dead for a long time. Didn't you see that I don't even have a leaf? I've already been out of flowers. You have to force me to say it to be happy?"

The screen freezes.The boy was stunned, and Xu Zhengran was also stunned.

Then, the boy stopped talking.He turned and left silently, and Xu Zhengran's eyes darkened a little bit, and finally was completely covered by darkness.The last scene remaining in his field of vision was the silhouette of Peach Tree Spirit's thin shadow standing on the top of the tree, and his back moving away from the boy, motionless.

When his eyes lit up again, Xu Zhengran found that his perspective had returned to the young man. In front of his eyes were swaying dead branches and red paper fluttering, and he was also holding a stack of red paper in his hand.Xu Zhengran was stunned for a moment before he realized what he was doing - he was standing in front of the dry peach tree, tiptoeing to hang red paper on the branches.

"I'm really sorry." The young man said, lowering his eyes and not daring to look at the faint figure standing on the branch, "I was bothering you so much before... I will lend you a branch to hang these, and I will show her tomorrow." Pick it up after it's over."

After a pause, he said again: "If you want to keep it, you can hang it here for you. If it breaks, I'll come and replace it for you."

Tao Shuling looked at him silently, and then said after a while: "Who do you want to bring to see the flowers?"

"The girl I like." The young man smiled, "But I don't like it too much now... She is going to get married next month, and I want to bring her over to have a look. She always said that she likes Peach Blossom Manpo the most. Zhuo Zhuo, I just want to take her to see it myself."

"Stupid." Tao Shuling sneered, "She's about to get married."

"I know, it's because I won't see her again, so I want to take her to see her."

"If you satisfy her, what can she return to you?"

"I don't need her to pay it back." The young man said, "I'm not offering favors, let alone lending money. I just want to be nice to her."

"and then?"

"Then there is no more. She is already married as a woman, so what else should I do? It's all because of this, so I can only stop."

Tao Shuling snorted coldly: "It will be fine if you continue."

"You said it lightly. It's not so easy." The young man smiled, let go of his hand, took a step back, and looked at the red trees all over the tree: "The color is not right, but it is also beautiful. Do you want to keep it? Or just like that Hang on, otherwise everyone else has flowers, but you don't, how lonely."

The Peach Tree Spirit was silent for a moment, then jumped down and stepped on another branch, with eyes level with the boy.After patting his clothes, he spoke again: "Tell you something."

"what?"

"I lied to you." Peach Tree Spirit replied, "My body is not dead. I can grow leaves and bloom."

After speaking, as if he was afraid that the young man would not believe him, he even raised his finger.Immediately a little leaf bud popped from the branch.

"I just forgot how to open it. In the past, the flowers were always picked by people, and the leaves were also picked, so I was unhappy. Gradually, I forgot." Tao Shuling's tone became a little unhappy, "People are very annoying. .boring, vulgar and obnoxious."

The young man smiled shamelessly: "Don't say that, there are some people who are interesting, elegant and likable, such as me. Don't beat me to death with a stick."

"Don't fight." Tao Mu Ling said, raising his eyes to look at the young man, his eyes passed through the young man's eyes, and fell into Xu Zhengran's.Those were a pair of pale gold eyes, strange and innocent.

"Tomorrow is over, are you still coming?"

Boy: "Huh?"

"After tomorrow, take off all these papers. When I remember how it blooms, I will open it for you to see."

The young man smiled: "But how do I know when you remembered?"

"You'll know if you come here often." Tao Mu Ling's tone was taken for granted, "If I accidentally miss it, I'll go find you."

"Can you still walk? It's so powerful." The young man marveled, "That's good, it's settled."

After speaking, he seemed to find it interesting, and lightly touched Tao Shuling with his hand.Tao Shuling didn't dodge, just stood there, Xu Zhengran watched the little faint figure getting closer and closer to his fingers through the eyes of the young man, until finally touched, and with a plop, it melted For a puff of smoke.

Xu Zhengran slowly opened his eyes.

Raising his hand and rubbing his eyes, he climbed up from the table, looking at Zhou Tang with curious eyes.

Zhou Tang: "You look quite calm."

Xu Zhengran rubbed the corners of his eyes to himself: "What's not calm, isn't it just watching a few scenes."

"It's best to think like this." Zhou Tang nodded, and was about to pour water when he lifted the kettle, when Xu Zhengran suddenly asked, "What happened after that?"

"How about what?"

"You know what I'm talking about." Xu Zhengran pursed his lips, "I later...I mean, what happened to the boy with the red paper..."

"He often ran to the hillside where peach trees were planted. After running for three or four years, he died of a serious illness. The day of his funeral happened to be winter, and the entire hillside was in full bloom with peach blossoms. It was very spectacular, but it was a pity that he couldn't see it. "

Zhou Tang pushed the water glass to Xu Zhengran, with a few words of understatement.Xu Zhengran held the cup in his hand, but didn't drink it, and pressed his fingers against the wall of the cup until his knuckles turned white: "And then?"

"Then the body of the Peach Tree Spirit was chopped off, and his own spiritual body became fragmented. A part of him was made into a small wooden sculpture, which was passed around among the people, and finally fell into the hands of a night walker. The night walker collected him and tried to use the aura left on it, but instead activated part of the spirit body left on the wood carving. The spirit body was broken and incomplete, with a lack of IQ, and he was muddled, and he only remembered so much of what should be remembered Sporadic, but they all took it seriously, and ran to find someone on the first day of freedom... You know the story behind it."

Xu Zhengran exhaled and blinked hard: "Not all of them are known. What about the ending? The ending of the story, tell me."

"I don't have an ending here." Zhou Tang shook his head, leaned over and picked up a black cloth bag from under the table and put it on the table, "The ending is with you."

Xu Zhengran held his breath, and opened the cloth bag with trembling hands, revealing a palm-sized gilded wood carving, a beast standing proudly, with a ball under its feet.

The wood carving was full of scars, and the middle of the beast's face was heavily carved, with deep marks.Xu Zhengran stared blankly for a moment, but finally couldn't hold back, and burst into tears.

"This guy is so stupid." He complained while weeping, "This is not a lion, it's obviously a unicorn..."

"If it wasn't for Qilin, you wouldn't have won the 5 yuan." Zhou Tang said calmly, and put an invoice on the table, "I received it from the night walker's son, and it cost more than 7000 yuan. .You write down my Alipay account number, and remember to transfer it to me later.”

Xu Zhengran: "..."

"The money has arrived, and I will give you an extra set of spiritual body recovery courses." Zhou Tang said, stood up, took out a pair of plain glasses and put them on, and the fox eyes behind the lenses were almost narrowed with a smile: "As for How far you can do it depends on yourself, Xu Daxian."

After seeing off Xu Zhengran, Zhou Tang went up to the second floor and saw Xia Shi was sitting on the bed wrapped in a blanket reading a story, with a pile of A4 papers scattered around him.

"It seems to have grown taller." Zhou Tang sat next to Xia Shi, "The clothes are a bit tight, may I get you a new one?"

"Do as you please." Xia Shi casually dropped the A4 paper in his hand, "The experience points have all returned to zero, does it matter what clothes you wear?"

"Unhappy?" Zhou Tang chuckled, lowered his head and picked up the paper, took out a box from his pocket and handed it to him, "Would it make you feel better to see this?"

"There's nothing unhappy, I'm used to it." Xia Shi said, taking the box, "It's like this every time, growing up, getting upset, becoming weird, doing unnecessary things, and then returning to zero, so I always Less than thirty...huh?"

He picked up an exaggerated cross earring from the box, and frowned thinly: "Why give me this?"

"Didn't you say you wanted..." Zhou Tang paused, as if he understood something, a trace of sadness flashed in his eyes.He stretched out his hand towards Xia Shi, "Forget it, pretend I didn't say it. Pay me back this."

"...No." Xia Shi pondered for a moment, shrank his little hand, avoiding Zhou Tang's hand, "Although I don't know why I wanted this at the time, it's what I wanted after all. I'll take it."

He put the earring back into the box, climbed to the head of the bed and put it in the nightstand.In a blink of an eye, he saw Zhou Tang staring at him in a daze, and asked strangely, "What's the matter?"

"No, it's nothing." Zhou Tang pushed his glasses and turned his head away, "By the way, there are still some organized stories on the computer on the first floor, I'll get them for you."

"No hurry, anyway, I don't have much appetite." Xia Shi said, moved to the edge of the bed and sat down, his legs dangling slightly, "You just finished solving Xu Zhengran's matter, right? Come and repeat it to me."

"I haven't sorted this out yet..."

"No documents." Xia Shi interrupted him, "As far as you are concerned. I haven't heard you tell a story yet."

"You have heard of it." Zhou Tang reminded him, "A year ago."

"Really, I forgot." Xia Shi said lightly, "Then tell me more. Whatever story you want, let me listen quietly for a while."

He tilted his head and looked out the window, just as he saw the setting sun cast beautiful traces along the window sill.

"After listening to this passage quietly, it's time to find a new story."

——The end of a volume of "Song of Combing Plum Blossoms"