A bus was driving in the southwest mountainous area, with nearly ten men and women sitting in the car.

Peng Shengli, who once secretly gnawed cold steamed buns on the roof of the dormitory building, has already become a successful person. He is out for fun. Everyone is dressed casually, only Peng Shengli is wearing suits and ties, and his outfit is like going to participate in business negotiations.

In Ding Ming's words, when working is a suit, when holiday is a suit, when dating is a suit, when travel is a suit, when Lao Peng is almost sleeping in a suit.

Perhaps this is a kind of compensation for the bad youth. When I was having a drink and having dinner last night, facing the teasing of my old friends, Peng Shengli said in alcohol: "When I was a child, I didn't even have a TV in the village. The first time I saw a suit was worn by the teacher who came to the village to teach. I felt very energetic at that time and dreamed of having one. But it was not until I graduated from college and was taken to Sogou to work, that I bought my first suit in my life. Whether it was psychological compensation or showing off, I felt that wearing a suit was handsome, and I was full of strength."

Zhou Zhengyu's mouth was still so damaged, and he laughed: "The insurance seller also thinks so."

Peng Shengli smiled and didn't respond, but his wife sat next to him and looked at Zhou Zhengyu with dissatisfaction.

Yes, Peng Shengli is already married. His wife is his fellow villager. They met in a village in the neighborhood of junior high school and are currently working as a teacher in a primary school in Beijing. Last year, they secretly asked for certificates, but no one informed them. They only held a re-organization when they returned to their hometown during the Chinese New Year, and invited relatives and neighbors in their villages to have a wedding banquet.

This time, Li Yaolin also brought his wife and threw her children to his parents. The main purpose was to reminisce about the past with his old friends, rather than to come back to attend the 100th anniversary of the school.

Ding Ming's doctoral girlfriend has officially been upgraded to a wife. She is currently staying in the capital with a big belly and is taken care of by his mother-in-law throughout the process. One is a busy person at the company's president, and the other is a top student who only has cells in his eyes. She looks too lazy to hold a wedding, and plans to go on her honeymoon and get married after the child is weaned.

At this time, several women were chatting together in the car.

Lin Zhuoyun unexpectedly shared the same language with Peng Shengli's wife, and both were interested in literature. In contrast, Li Yaolin's wife always talked about trivial matters and liked to talk about gossips of colleagues in the unit, which really made Lin Zhuoyun not interested. In order to avoid neglecting the other party, Lin Zhuoyun deliberately talked about the issue of child education. Li Yaolin's wife really had a brain wave with Lin Zhuoyun and began to discuss how to correct children's mistakes.

The singing videos are fermenting on the Internet. Although the topic is extremely popular, Lin Zhuoyun has not been exposed much. Because the official videos of Fudan Social and Political College were not uploaded to the Internet at all, the fuzzy versions that were thrown on students took on their mobile phones.

Until a student uploaded close-up photos, Lin Zhuoyun was finally recognized.

An online writer under the Banyan Tree was very surprised to post on the Tianya Forum, and linked the photo of the student, and posted several photos and said: "It's incredible that I actually knew Song Weiyang's wife - there are photos as evidence. These photos were taken by the authors under the Banyan Tree during an offline party. At that time, no one knew that she was the editor-in-chief of Banyan Tree Magazine, and a well-known veteran author on the website under the Banyan Tree..."

Then Lin Zhuoyun's mobile phone was blown up, and many other authors, including Ning Caishen, Lu Jinbo, etc., called her to verify. Ning Caishen even had doubts and asked whether the author of "The Three-Body Problem" was Song Weiyang, and when will the update be restored?

Immediately afterwards, people visited magazines to seek commercial cooperation with Lin Zhuoyun, which made Lin Zhuoyun so annoyed that she came to travel with Song Weiyang.

"Are you coming soon?" Ding Ming asked looking into the mountains.

An old farmer driving a donkey cart came towards me. Song Weiyang asked the driver to stop, stretched out his head from the car window and asked, "Membersman, how to get to Shanshenmiao Village?"

"Wow! Wow!"

The old farmer pulled the reins and braked, and replied in a strong dialect accent: "There are still more than ten or twenty miles ahead, and I walked along the county road. When I arrived at the town, I changed to the mechanical farming road to Bamen Village. After passing Bamen Village, I went up the mountain to Shanshen Temple Village."

"Thank you, fellow villager," Song Weiyang threw out a cigarette, "Soon!"

The old farmer was like a martial arts master taking a dart, and reached out to hold the cigarette with great accuracy. He looked at the trademark on the filter and found that he didn't know the brand, so he grabbed the cigarette behind his ear and waved his whip to start the donkey cart: "Drink...drink!"

The bus continued to move forward, and the friends coming from the city seemed to be quite interested in the means of transportation such as donkey carts, and they started chatting.

After leaving the county road, the bumpy mechanized farm road almost shook the bus. This is nothing. The broken mechanized farm road can only reach Bamen Village. If you continue moving forward, you will only have a small mountain road left, and everyone must abandon their cars and walk.

Shanshen Temple Village is where Nie Daxian lives now.

The Mountain God Temple is the righteous Taoist temple of the abbot Nie Daxian.

The mountain road here is not steep, and there is even a roadbed two or three meters wide.

This roadbed was built during the land reform in the 1950s. The government guided villagers to level the graves and clear the land, and expanded the two-foot-wide mountain road into a dirt road more than two meters wide. Unfortunately, Shanshenmiao Village is too far off, with almost no motor vehicles entering and leaving. After decades, there were only roadbeds left, with weeds on both sides, only a path into the mountain was exposed.

Everyone walked in the mountains for more than 40 minutes and suddenly heard a sound coming from the front.

When I turned the valley, I saw that men and women were carrying their hands to build the road with their hands in the scorching sun. The weeds and trees on the roadside have been cleared, and the collapsed places are made of stones. The women squatted and paved the road with gravels.

Zhou Zhengyu took a bottle of Coke and asked, "Membersman, is there a Shanshen Temple Village in front?"

"Opportune." A man holding a sledgehammer nodded.

Zhou Zhengyu asked again: "Do you know Nie Jun? He is a Taoist priest."

The man immediately grinned: "Teacher Nie's friend, he is in the village. You can go back with the stone mover and you can get to the village in forty or fifty minutes."

What the hell is Teacher Nie?

Several villagers came over with wheelbarrows, unloaded the gravels on the truck, and then turned back to the village. Song Weiyang and the others hurriedly followed.

There were all kinds of talks along the way, and these villagers praised Teacher Nie as a good person, but as for why a Taoist priest could not explain clearly when he became a teacher.

The friends' legs were all weak and they finally arrived in the village.

In fact, all the way, they belong to the territory of Shanshenmiao Village. The so-called "village" is where the village committee is located. This terrain is flatter, so there are more dense farmers living in it.

"Fuck me, what a big temple!" Li Yaolin said in surprise.

It is indeed quite big. There is actually a towering temple in this deep mountain.

The temple gate is built with good stone, and you can vaguely see the three big characters "Mountain God Temple". The wall is more than two meters high, but many places have collapsed. The inside and outside of the wall have even been reclaimed into vegetable fields, with summer vegetables such as cucumbers planted.

Before entering the temple, you can hear the sound of reading aloud.

Two ritual doors and four pillars.

On the two pillars of the first door are hung with signs such as "Shan Shenmiao Village Villagers' Committee". On the two pillars of the second door are hung with couplets. The first couplet says: Chase tigers and wolves for three thousand miles away, and the second couplet says: Keep millions of people's families close to each other.

The couplet is engraved on two nanmu boards, and the golden paint has been weathered and mottled. When you get closer, you can still see various children's graffiti, such as the words "Three Thousand Miles" below, which reads "Wang Chao is a big fool"; and for example, there is a steaming lump of shit next to "Million Homes", and a stickman urinating on the shit.

The side halls on both sides of the ritual gate are used to make village committee offices, accounting rooms, etc.

After passing through the ritual gate, I immediately saw a flagpole, and the five-star red flag fluttered in the wind.

The main hall dedicated to the mountain god was directly converted into a classroom, and there was a sign hanging at the door - Shanshen Temple Village Primary School.

Song Weiyang stepped on the stone steps to the front of the hall, and saw that the main statue of the hall still existed, and was glaring at the front. There should be other statues on both sides, but they had been removed long ago, leaving only a few stone foundations there.

There are several rows of desks in the hall, and there is a blackboard on each wall on both sides.

Nie Jun was sloppy with a beard, combed with a bun, wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and slippers. He was standing in front of the blackboard on the left to teach Chinese. The students on the right were writing math homework with their backs facing Nie Jun.

Feeling that someone was coming at the door, Nie Jun turned his head and looked at it, and immediately said to the student with a smile: "Copy the new words I taught today 10 times."

The students were not surprised either. Some children carefully copied new words, while some children looked at the guests outside the door curiously.

"Why are you here?" Nie Jun came out wearing slippers.

Zhou Zhengyu threw the coke in his hand over and asked, "Didn't you say you are a Taoist priest? Why did you come to be a rural teacher?"

"Just drive the ducks to put them on the shelves." Nie Jun smiled bitterly.

It turned out that according to Nie Jun's investigation and research, this mountain temple was built in Zhongbai, the Qing Dynasty.

The ancestors of the villagers were all subordinates of Li Dingguo. After their defeat, they fled here and settled down. After more than a hundred years of reproduction, the village became richer and richer, and there were also family inheritances of poetry and books. Finally, a high-ranking official was released during the Qianlong period.

This mountain god temple was built by a high official. The mountain god worshipped in the main hall was actually the famous king of the Qing Dynasty, Li Dingguo. The other statues were all subordinates of Li Dingguo. There were even other side halls, and the Empress Palace worshipped the Princess of Li Dingguo. It was changed into a classroom before, but due to the fewer and fewer students, the Empress Palace was abandoned and now it has become Nie Jun's study.

The abbots of the Shanshen Temple were all served by the village chief (class chief). During the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Shanshen Temple was also lent to guerrillas as a military camp, so it had a passion in New China. Not only was it not demolished, it was recognized as an authentic Zhengyi Taoist temple. However, the abbot of the Shanshen Temple could no longer be served by the village party secretary and the village chief, and it must be served by Taoist priests with Taoist ancestry.

Later, the village committee requisitioned several side halls of Yimen, and the Mountain Temple and the Niangniang Temple were used as classrooms.

No matter what, there has always been an abbot in the mountain temple, and this abbot has always had official Taoist rituals.

Nie Jun said: "I found this mountain temple from the list of Taoist associations. I felt very strange at the time, so I came to take a look and wrote the study of the mountain temple into my graduation thesis. The first abbot here in New China was a guerrilla who was injured and lame. The second generation abbot was the son of the guerrilla. He is currently lying in the ward of the county hospital. The third generation abbot is me."

"I'll ask you why you become a teacher?" Zhou Zhengyu said.

Nie Jun said: "This is a broken place, and the young people who teach instructors cannot keep it. The old principal died again last year, so I can only take over for the time being."

Ding Ming asked: "You are planning to teach here all the time?"

"I can't teach for a few years," Nie Jun smiled. "A few years ago, a policy of abolishing the site and reorganizing the school was introduced. According to regulations, such rural primary schools should be abolished and collectively merged into township middle schools. Some students have already gone to the town central school to study, and only more than 30 students remain in the mountains, so the classrooms in the palace of the Imperial Palace were abandoned."

Li Yaolin's wife asked: "Why don't these more than 30 students leave?"

Nie Jun said: "Adults have to walk at least three and a half hours from here to study. When it rains, it is normal for children to walk four or five hours to school. Those children who go to study in the town have to get up at three or four o'clock in the middle of the night, and it is already 10 o'clock when they arrive at school. After school in the afternoon, they are also 10 o'clock in the evening when they go home. The walking time is more than seven and a half hours a day, and they walk in the dark and walking at night."

"Can't you live on campus?" Ding Ming asked.

Nie Jun said: "The school in the town has only teachers' dormitories. Except for some children with amazing talents and hard work, students in other villages have poor grades when they go to the town to study, because they don't even have time to do their homework every day. Even on the way to school in the dark, only a few students use flashlights, and most students can only turn on torches. The conditions are too difficult. The parents of more than 30 students will continue to stay in the village to study. The leaders of the county education bureau came to mobilize and merge the school in person, but they can't do anything."

Zhou Zhengyu couldn't believe it: "It's been 2005, and there are such backward villages in China!"

"If you want to get rich, build the road first," Nie Jun smiled treacherously, "I told the village director that I can teach in place. You must repair the road down the mountain within two years, otherwise I will leave. When you came, you must have seen that many villagers are building roads."

Everyone stopped talking and looked at Nie Jun silently, as if they wanted to get to know this person again.

Nie Jun was dressed like an unemployed vagrant at this time. Although his hair was tied into a Taoist bun, his shape was very casual, and he used a bamboo chopstick as a hairpin. His dirty T-shirt and shorts revealed his messy leg hair. His slippers were wet with sweat and covered in black dust. His face was covered in stubble for at least a week.

He stood at the door of the main hall like that, and in the distance behind him was the statue of Li Dingguo, who was entrusted as the mountain god. The sun shone on him as if it was glowing.

Song Weiyang remembered Fudan’s unofficial school motto again.

Perhaps, the unruly and secular guy in front of him really contains a "free and useless soul" in his body.

Freedom is not a loose one, but a choice that one makes oneself and bears all its consequences.
Chapter completed!