According to village chief Zhao, most of the residents in the village were reclaimed after liberation, and there were not many households in the village. The Lao Meng family and the Lao Gu family at the east end of the village were both households in the village. They lived here for generations. I guess they could know something. If they didn’t know, I guess no one in the village would know.

Following Village Chief Zhao, he turned around and arrived at the door of a house. The red brick courtyard wall was a square and regular courtyard. The gate was opened with iron plates. He reached out and pushed open the courtyard door. It was a red brick slanted path facing the door. The main room was three large tiled houses. The newly painted windows and doors were brightly colored and looked very festive. There was a layer of plastic cloth nailed outside the window, so it was so shadowless that it could not see the scene in the house. There were two wing rooms to the east, and a livestock circle to the west. A mule and a horse were guarding the trough and eating grass.

As soon as he entered the yard, Village Chief Zhao raised his voice and shouted: "Is Mr. Meng at home?"

As soon as he finished speaking, the door was quickly pushed open from the inside. A thin black boy in his teens walked out and looked out. Seeing that we were a little nervous, he looked up and asked Village Chief Zhao: "Uncle Fourth, my grandfather is at home." He turned around and shouted into the room: "Uncle Fourth, I am here."

When Village Chief Zhao saw that the child was opening the door, he patted the child's head while calling us into the house and laughed: "Meng Xing, have you finished your homework? Have you not gone out to play? I'll bring two people here and ask your grandfather for some old things."

When I entered the house, I saw an old man sitting on the kang in the east room. He was a little thin, his hair was already bald, his face was wrinkled, he only wore an old cotton jacket with thick blue cloth, and he didn't have a coat. He was sitting on the kang with his eyes squinting and smoking a cigarette. As I was looking at it, Village Chief Zhao took the lead and said hello: "Mr. Meng, haven't you been going out at home to check the cards? Are you still strong?"

The old man on the kang was obviously very familiar with Village Chief Zhao. When he saw that Village Chief Zhao had come, a smile appeared on his dry face: "Fourth boy, come on, sit on the kang, why are you going out to play? You can have fun at home. Why are you so idle and I sitting here?" After that, he looked at Daya and me again, and looked at Village Chief Zhao.

Village Chief Zhao smiled and pointed at me and said, "Mr. Meng, this is a person from the city. Here comes to understand the folk culture of our village. You are also an old household in our village. There is nothing you don't know about. So, I'll bring you here and talk about our village with you."

When Old Man Meng heard this, he looked at Daya and me again, nodded and said hello, and asked us to sit down and talk, and then said, "Hey, we rural people have nothing to say. You ask what you have. My old man has lived for a few more years. I am over 80 years old this year, and I am so confused that I can't remember."

After hearing the old man Meng say it, I smiled in agreement and asked politely: "Hello, Mr. Meng, we are from the Chinese Folk Culture Protection Association. Actually, there is nothing else. I just want to ask if you know if there was a temple in our village before? There was a very capable Taoist nun in the temple?"

Old Man Meng lowered his head and sucked two puffs of cigarettes, as if he was trying to recall. After a long time, he seemed to remember something. He reached out and kowtowed the ash in the cigarette pot on the edge of the kang: "Our hometown is in the pass, and he was the first group to come here to open up land. He has been farming and has no education. I heard that this Niangniang Temple was really there hundreds of years ago. It was just southeast of the village. When I was a child, I could find some bricks and tiles with some patterns on it, which looked very exciting.

I also heard from people that the temple was a thief and occupied the eldest place. There were several big houses, and there were gods who came down to the earth to cure all diseases. If you have any questions, you would ask for some medicine. It was so effective. The person who burned incense and made wishes at that time was old. Later, I don’t know what happened. A big fire burned out and nothing was left, and even a person disappeared. It was said that the empress from heaven had fallen to the earth and violated the rules of heaven and was taken back by heaven. I have never heard of the Taoist nun you mentioned.

After hearing Mr. Meng say this, Daya and I looked at each other. We naturally don’t believe in the way of the gods descending to the earth. However, the old man said at least two points. One is that there is really a temple of Niangniang here in history, and the other is that there are indeed masters living in the temple. I just don’t know if the gods and Niangniang whom we saw in the information was the Taoist nun who knew magic. I don’t know if this matter has anything to do with the beads we found.

Since you are here, you will understand clearly before talking. Daya nodded to the old man: "Uncle, look at your old man with a long hair and a young face, and you are so energetic. How lucky is it to be that girl temple you are talking about from here?"

Mr. Meng suddenly smiled when he heard Daya's sanity, and kept exaggerating and talking. Then he thought for a while and told us that the wasteland was about three miles away from the village, just at the east end of the village of Qiantouzhangzi Village. Now it is a broken wasteland. Because nothing planted is not long, it has been piled up.

We chatted with Mr. Meng for a while. The man was very talkative, rumored and said everything, but there was nothing valuable. After leaving Mr. Meng's house, the child who opened the door and named Meng Xing was also in the winter vacation. He was idle and had nothing to do, so he insisted on following us to the Laogu family for a walk.

Along the way, Daya and the village chief were talking about the former temple of the Imperial Temple. The child named Meng Xing, who had been listening to us, interrupted: "I always go to the deserted ridge that my grandfather said, and always play there. Last year, Xiao Yuer said that his grandfather dug out a stone statue there and asked us to see it together, but her grandfather said that it was Xiao Yuer who was talking nonsense. For this matter, Xiao Yuer was laughed at by us for several days and cried for a while."

Village Chief Zhao next to us told us that the child Meng Xing mentioned was the granddaughter of the old man whom he was going to see later. The children in the countryside called him nickname. The child was named Gu Miaoyu and nicknamed Xiaoyuer. He patted Meng Xing's head and told us that Meng Xing was the eldest grandson of Mr. Meng just now. Although he was a little naughty, he studied well and was very smart. He would definitely have a future in the future.

When Meng Xing heard Zhao Cunzi's praise, his face turned a little red, he was obviously a little embarrassed, he smiled shyly, and ran to the front by himself.

The village was not very big, and it soon arrived at the place. The child was fast and had run away. As soon as we arrived at the gate, someone in the room came out.

Running in front was Meng Xing and a girl in her teens, probably Xiao Yuer, and an old man was not far behind. He looked in his seventies and was much younger than Old Man Meng. His body was very hard, his back was not hunched, his legs and feet were quite neat, and his eyes looked very sharp.

When Village Chief Zhao saw the old man, he took the initiative to say hello: "Uncle Lao Gu, have you eaten it? This year your family is amazing, have you sold a lot of corn? "

After hearing this, the old man laughed: "Fourth boy, I just heard the boy from the old Meng family say that someone came to the city. It's true. What's the matter with me?"

Village Chief Zhao was busy introducing each other to each other. Daya and I greeted each other politely, and then Daya started the speech again. The old man was stunned. I was also afraid that Daya would have done it, so I kept smoothing out the situation.

The ancient man had been listening to Daya's verbal language for a long time. After finally waiting for Daya to finish speaking, he smiled at us: "Hey, we are all honest rural people, and we are not afraid of you making jokes. We have never traveled far away and had never taken the train. We have seen it on TV. We won't talk about the big truth, but if there is anything we can help you, the old man would be happy to reach out and talk." After saying that, he asked us to enter the house and chat.

The temperature in the house was not high, and I always felt a little airy around and a little cool. Seeing that there was no chair in the room, I was not polite and sat around the old man’s kang and talked to him about the Niangniang Temple again. What Gu Lao said was similar to what Old Man Meng said, and it was also said that after a fire a few hundred years ago, the Niangniang Temple was burned out, just four or five miles southeast of the village, near Panyingzi Village.

Daya pretended to be careless and asked: "Uncle Gu, I heard from the Meng family that you once dug a stone statue there. I wonder if it is true or false?"

The ancient man looked smiling, but when he heard this, he was obviously stunned for a moment, and the expression on his face was a little unnatural: "Hey, don't listen to the child's nonsense, what's the matter? I just picked up a whetstone and threw it away after using it for a while. Where is there any stone statue?"

Before I could talk to Daya, the little girl named Xiaoyuer spoke: "Master, you have it. I have seen it, so I didn't talk nonsense."

The little girl said this very suddenly. When the old man heard the little girl say this, he immediately said to the child: "What do you know, little baby? Don't talk nonsense, this is the adult business. You go out with the monkey, don't cause trouble here." He drove the child out directly.

The little girl pouted and looked very aggrieved, saying to Meng Xing: "Brother Monkey, let's go to the village to skate?"

Meng Xing glanced at Xiaoyuer, then looked at us, and finally went out with Xiaoyuer.

Seeing that the old man didn't want to talk about this stone at all, we didn't continue to question it. Then we asked Daya some things about Lao Gutou about the Taoist nuns in the temple in the village before, but Lao Gutou knew very little, and he heard his elders talk about it when he was a child, which was basically the same as what Mr. Meng said.
Chapter completed!