The New Year's dinner was sumptuous, with all kinds of delicacies on the round table shimmering under the candlelight, with bright colors and lingering heat, which made the index finger move. At the same time, it was a reunion dinner. The banquet was full of laughter and congratulations. People are all smiling.

Shen Qingxuan has always paid attention to his own body. He has been a doctor for a long time. He never eats too much at each meal. It is also a combination of meat and vegetables. Occasionally drink a drink to promote bone and blood circulation, which naturally forms a way of self-cultivation. It's just that I'm in high spirits tonight, so I can't care about it. I eat less food and drink more wine. Relatives and friends in the same seat pushed each other to congratulate each other, and the drinks were particularly refreshing.

Yimo rarely moved the chopsticks, but he also drank some wine. He was not unfamiliar with the people in the banquet, and because of Shen Qingxuan, he could even be considered acquainted. Since they brought the wine cups, Yimo did not shy away and drank them one by one.

Everyone in the banquet dressed up for the festival. Although the color of the robes was not dazzling, it also had a low-key luxury. Green is emerald green, revealing a faint purple; green is blue gauze green, glowing the blue of lake water. That kind of dyeing can be done in an extraordinary dye house, and don’t know how many silkworm mothers collect how many cocoons, take silk, spin thread, weave cloth, go through the dip dyeing of many medicinal materials, and finally become cloth, which is then tailor-made by special personnel. , made into a robe, and finally the embroidery mother took it, cut threads and made silk, and woven and embroidered finely.

Even with these meticulous work, no one can compare to Yimo, who is dressed in a simple black robe and does not even wear a crown.

This man is still disheveled, his expression is indifferent, sitting in the banquet, even if he doesn't say a word and only drinks, he shows a kind of extraordinary bearing with his gestures.

No one knew his origin, and no one dared to ask lightly.

After so many days, they only dared to go around and ask Shen Qingxuan, where did he come from?

Shen Qingxuan only said: Strange people. No more words to be said.

Father Shen walked outside in his early years, which can almost be called traveling all over the world. He has seen and learned a lot, and his mind is naturally extraordinary. Knowing that this person is not ordinary, but seeing that he gets along well with his son, he does not care about those worldly troubles. During the banquet, they raised their glasses frequently and drank with Yimo, but never asked any unnecessary words. There were occasional chats and laughter from the female relatives in the adjacent hall, and even the shouts of children. A banquet was very lively.

Until late at night, the cold was a bit overwhelming. The girls brought in seven or eight braziers, put them down one by one, opened the windows, removed the dishes on the table, placed dried fruit snacks, and re-boiled the wine cup to make hot tea. , just retreated. The female relatives next door also left with their children and girls, and returned to the house to rest. For a while, except for the servant girls, only these people in the hall were vigilant.

A full meal may not be enough, and a full drink may not be enough to talk about sex.

On New Year's Eve on New Year's Eve, a group of people gathered around to watch the night and naturally began to talk about the world. Let's start with the government and the government. When it comes to the emperor today, everyone knows that the emperor is a virtuous ruler. It is inevitable that it will be a little soft. Now that the prince has not been established, the inner palace is already in full swing.

The person who said this drank a lot of wine, so he used the word "hot", which made everyone at the table couldn't help but laugh. The struggle for succession can be regarded as the most cruel thing in the world. Mutual flesh and blood, blood relatives kill each other, how can it be "in full swing"?

Father Shen shook his head and asked the person who said the wrong thing to punish himself with three drinks. He picked up the wine again, and changed the topic, talking about strange things in the world. It was up to him to pick the topic. Naturally, he first said that the New Year's Eve was supposed to be festive, but everyone drank too much, the candles were shaking, and the house was warm, making everyone lazy. Although the atmosphere was not bad, it was also Not enthusiastic. So Father Shen thought about it, and talked about an old incident, but he had personally experienced it—say it was selling goods that year—he was in good health in the early years, and often led his own caravan to transport goods back and forth in person. Sightseeing along the way. That year, he took the caravan along the set route, but unexpectedly encountered a heavy rain, and the caravan had to find a broken temple to hide from the rain. It rained heavily, and it rained all night. They were trapped in the temple and had no choice but to sleep all night. A group of people waited until dawn the next day before opening the temple gate, packing up to feed the horses, and preparing to start the road again. As soon as the horses were ready, they saw a man suddenly come out of the temple where there were only their group and the goods. The man was completely black, wearing a hat and covering his face with a black veil. Everyone was greatly surprised by the man who suddenly appeared, but they felt strange, so no one dared to ask him why he suddenly appeared. I saw the man walked out of the ruined temple, stood at the temple gate for a while, and then moved around for some reason, and a group of people suddenly and neatly walked out of the temple. There are about ** people, all dressed in black, with a mask covering their bodies, not showing a bit of flesh. Then the leading man bowed to their group, led the neat group, and left.

Having said this, someone asked during the banquet, "Did you not see them in the temple before?"

Father Shen waved his hand and motioned them to continue listening, but they also felt strange, so they went back to the temple to search around, but behind the clay statue of Buddha, they found some traces of people parked. It turned out that they were in a panic when they came in the night before, and they didn't observe the surroundings carefully. The group of people in black came in before them to hide from the rain, but they came later.

Father Shen paused, stroked his beard and said, "You all think this is just an ordinary human affairs, I thought so too at the time, and then two years later, I met the man in black in the temple again, and he also led the way. A group of people are in the temple, but I and my servants dare not go in, why do you think?"

Facing everyone's doubts, Father Shen laughed and said, "You should have heard of it, Bian Nan has a secret technique called chasing corpses."

When the last two words fell, most of the people in the room shuddered and were half sober.

Shen Qingxuan really didn't expect that the New Year's Eve would talk about this, so he was stunned and said, "I also have a story here. But I read it from the book. It's just that it's unlucky to talk about it tonight, so I won't talk about it."

The crowd was drunk, and the men in the banquet were all proud of themselves, and felt that these stories were extremely exciting. Wherever they were willing, they all shouted for him to tell them.

Shen Qingxuan couldn't, he took the wine and said, "It's okay, I'll punish myself for a drink if I ruin the joy." After drinking, Shen Qingxuan picked up a peanut and said, "What I'm telling is this story about peanuts. ."

But it was another dynasty. At that time, the world was in great chaos, rebels and bandits were everywhere, and wars continued. At that time, there was a village in the east, where peanuts were often grown in the village. The peanuts were harvested, fried and sold, or processed into peanut dips, which was also a lot of income. Everyone in the village is also kind, helping each other, and the neighbors on the left and right are especially loving. Unexpectedly, a bandit suddenly broke into the village one night, robbed a child in the village, and threatened them to redeem it with a hundred taels of silver. The child was originally a child of an ordinary family in the village, and where there was a hundred taels of silver, he had to ask for loans everywhere, thinking that his neighbors were good people and would be able to help, but no one in the village was willing to give anything. Just because it was kidnapped by a bandit, if you collect silver taels, I'm afraid it will increase the viciousness of the bandit, and you will be kidnapped next time. Therefore, every household is not given a penny. The three-day deadline passed in a blink of an eye, and the man's wife had been in a trance since she knew that the child was tied up. She couldn't get any water in. She slipped into the well and drowned and drowned. There was nothing in the bag, and the family was broken up, and the man suddenly hated the neighbors in the village. That night, he picked up the hatchet, went in one by one, and wiped out one by one. Then he killed himself.

In that kind of peanut village, the peanuts are ripe in the second year, and the peanut seller brought the donkey cart to come, but there is no trace of popularity in the village, and some peanuts in the ground have burst out of the ground. The peanut peddler went down to the ground, dug out two peanuts and opened them, but his hands shook and he ran for his life in a hurry. Just because the peanuts cracked, the red clothes inside also burst, revealing the peanut kernels of the human face inside.

In that year, the peanut fields in the village had human faces, old and young, with lifelike features.

After Shen Qingxuan finished telling the story, he saw the crowd staring at the peanut dip on the mat in a daze or sluggish, with a chill on his face, so he had no choice but to punish himself with three cups. Master Shen also felt unwell in his heart. He drank a cup of hot wine and looked at Shen Qingxuan. Shen Qingxuan was smiling, but his eyes were thin and he observed the expressions of the people in the table. . He paid attention very seriously and did not notice his father's gaze. Master Shen looked at him, and for some unknown reason, a strange feeling arose in his heart, as if his son grew up overnight, and there was a feeling of being close but far away.

This feeling is not good, Master Shen shook his head and dismissed it from his mind. He brought the peanut dipped in, and sent it to the crowd with a smile, saying, "Don't be polite if you come to taste it, this is not a human face peanut." This made everyone laugh at the same time.

The rest of them did not have the eloquence of the Shen family's father and son, and the places they traveled and the books they read were naturally inferior to them. Afterwards, they told a few stories, all of which brought a little charm and fragrance. Most of them were geniuses. The anecdotes of beautiful women, and also some legends of fox fairies and ghosts, are all happy endings. Everyone finished speaking one by one, but Yimo was the only one in the room who didn't speak, so their eyes stopped on him, waiting for him to tell a story.

Yimo put down the wine cup, thought about it first, and then said, "I don't have much to tell, so let's continue with the previous one."

Everyone in the room thought it was interesting, but as long as the story is finished, it is over, and there is no reason to continue. Since he said so, he must be able to listen to it. So they all booed and asked him to continue the story of the fox girl repaying her kindness earlier.

Yimo said: "You all say it's good for the fox girl to be affectionate, but I don't think so. Everyone who is affectionate in this world is hurt by affection. If you don't believe it, I'll tell you—"

The fox girl reported the scholar's kindness, fell in love with the scholar in her heart, married him, and then became a good wife and mother to mortals. In the following decades, the husband and the child, the life is happy, it should be good. But I never thought that after decades, the scholar has gray hair, the child has grown up, the fox girl is still beautiful, and her age has not changed. When the scholar was about to become old, he knew that there was not much to come, so he instructed the fox girl to do it for himself after he died. Finally, there is another sentence: If there is fate, we will marry again in the next life. The fox girl was very affectionate. She should have gone back to the mountain to cultivate as soon as the book died, but she was reluctant to live with her husband for decades. After the book died, the fox girl buried him, but she never returned to the mountain, but continued to wander the mortal world. Looking for the reincarnation of the husband, in order to continue the front.

This search is a hundred years. In the past hundred years, there have been Taoist priests who wanted to send her down and took her inner alchemy instrument. There were monks who wanted to eliminate evil. Since then, the fox girl has no peace. She fights with monks and Taoist priests. She escaped by luck, but she was seriously injured. The fox girl knew that she was seriously injured and could not stay any longer. She knew that the reincarnation of her husband might be in front of her, but she was helpless and hid in the mountains for recuperation. After raising it for more than ten years, he went down the mountain and continued to search. When she finally found her husband's reincarnation, the husband of the previous life has become someone else's husband, and the husband and wife are equally loving, like mixing oil in honey. The fox girl was heartbroken, but she didn't give up. She looked for him again and again, saying that she was his wife. The scholar did not recognize each other, only said she was a lunatic. The fox girl was really crazy to find him again and again, and told him this time and time again. The scholar saw her beauty and felt a little emotional, so he secretly had a tryst with his wife behind his back. After coming down again and again, the scholar's wife in this life found out, arrested the two of them, and forced each other to death. Although the scholar thought the fox girl was beautiful, he had already won it, so he abandoned the fox girl and left with his wife. The fox girl was abandoned by this, but she still didn't give up. In the end, she annoyed the scholar, and at the same time, there was a monk who came to her door, so she joined forces with the monk to catch the fox girl.

The fox girl was covered in the demon lock net by the monk, begging for each other with tears and tears, but the monk cast a spell to reveal her true form. The scholar didn't believe that she was a demon at first, but now he believed it, and he was horrified. He picked up the wooden stick at hand and beat the snow-white fox. , sadly breathed out.

Thousands of years of Taoist cultivation, but in the end, mortals were beaten to death by random sticks. It was her husband who killed her.

Yimo chuckled lightly: "In my opinion, the reunion ending you are talking about is just the time in front of you. How can you imagine what will happen in the future?"

After listening to this, everyone shuddered or sighed, and their expressions were melancholy and regretful. Only Shen Qingxuan sat dazedly without saying a word, his face pale.

At this moment, the maid knocked on the door and said in a low voice, "Master, it's time to set off fireworks."

The people in the seat happily left the seat one by one and walked out of the house.

Shen Qingxuan was still sitting, but Yimo got up.

Shen Qingxuan looked at his back for a while before saying, "If there is an afterlife, don't come looking for me, even if you look for me, I won't recognize it."

Yimo turned around and replied, "That's natural."

Shen Qingxuan just smiled. The faint melancholy in the smile was well hidden.

Master Du Shen, when he walked out the door, found his son not coming, remembered that he was sitting in a chair and no one pushed him, he quickly turned back and went back, but after listening to such a conversation, he suddenly lost his mind and stood there in a daze. Just as Yimo came out, the two met face to face, their eyes just met, and the other's expressions were all in their eyes. Yimo was stunned for a while, then frowned slightly, and finally stretched his brows again, and passed him by without saying anything.

Master Shen looked at his back, and with just a flash in front of the many bright lanterns, he disappeared without a trace, and his heart immediately became clear, and there was no more hesitation.

Shen Qingxuan also pushed the wheelchair out at this time, looked at his father standing at the door strangely, and shouted, "Father?"

Father Shen made a false response, walked behind him, and took him out with a wheelchair. He was speechless all the way, quietly watching the midnight fireworks ignite, rushing into the sky, and bursting with beautiful sparks.