The sickly driver was carried away by his family, and most of the onlookers outside the house dispersed.
Occasionally, two or three tourists stumbled in. Seeing that Grandpa Shi looked kindly, they pestered him to give them a reading as well.
Grandpa Shi stared at their rosy faces for a long moment before telling them to go to a pharmacy and buy a pack of digestive tablets.
They were simply full to bursting with nothing better to do.
He had already said he was a Badai, not a doctor.
He was in his eighties; they shouldn't make fun of him.
...
The Oil Baba made by Auntie Shi still tasted just as it did in her childhood memories. Paired with a table full of sour soup barbel fish, cured meat fried with sour bamboo shoots, chili-braised eel, deep-fried river crabs, and homemade cherry wine, it was enough to make anyone's mouth water.
Zhang Qiuyu and her husband, who were tagging along for the meal, didn't even have time to say a word, burying their heads in their rice bowls and devouring the food like mad.
What made one's mouth water most was the blood-cake duck—a dish made by stir-frying spicy duck meat together with cakes made from duck blood and glutinous rice. Anyone who had tasted it would never forget the flavor.
“Grandpa, I'll grab food myself! I'm not standing on ceremony with your family!”
The corn rice in Nan Zhi's bowl was piled into a mountain, yet Grandpa Shi and Auntie Shi kept urging her to eat more. Grandma Shi had passed away early, and Uncle Shi worked in the city, so there were usually only three people in the household year-round.
“It smells so good! While I was away, I kept craving this corn rice, along with the home-cooked cured meat and sour fish. Anything bought outside just isn't authentic.”
“Then why didn't you say something to us? Your aunt smokes cured meat every year and always keeps some saved for you, just waiting for you to come home for New Year's.”
Hearing Nan Zhi's words, Grandpa Shi squinted with laughter, watching the children eat with a loving gaze. His aged, wrinkled face radiated joy, the laugh lines around his eyes never fading for a second.
“Are you staying for a few extra days this time? If your grandma down below knows about this, she'll definitely be happy too.”
At this, the old man seemed to recall something. He thudded his cane heavily against the ground, the loose skin on his face quivering:
“Don't pay any mind to that Second Uncle of yours and his family! You stay as long as you want. In the past, you were young and couldn't make your own decisions, but now, I want to see who dares plot against you or the ancestral house!”
The old man's sudden shift in temper startled Zhang Qiuyu and her husband so much that a mouthful of rice stuck in their throats. They couldn't swallow it down or spit it out, able only to look at Nan Zhi in hesitation.
Nan Zhi picked up on the underlying meaning in Grandpa Shi's words and shot an inquiring glance at Shi Hongjiang.
The latter scraped his bowl of corn rice clean before casually wiping his mouth and explaining:
“Sister Zhizhi, you weren't back in the village these past few years, so you don't know. Your Second Uncle's family moved to an apartment in the city and planned to sell the old house, but my grandpa stopped them.
He was indignantly stubborn and went to the Village Party Secretary. But the Village Party Secretary said that the house was supposed to be split between your father and Second Uncle, and if your father didn't agree, the old house couldn't be sold.
Your Second Uncle called your father, but your father was also unwilling to sell it, telling Second Uncle to discuss it with you instead. Since Second Uncle couldn't find you, he could only make a scene with the Village Party Secretary. In the end, my grandpa gave him a good beating, and he ran off and hasn't come back since.
Who knew that a while ago, he secretly came back to the old house again, insisting that things from your grandma's place had been stolen by someone.”
Shi Hongjiang said this with utter disgust written across his face.
—Unless people in the village truly couldn't make ends meet, very few were ever willing to sell their ancestral homes.
Nan Zhi hadn't expected there to be such a story behind it. After entering college, to avoid Second Uncle's family, she had always chosen specific times whenever she called Dao Magu.
As for after Dao Magu passed away, she simply changed her phone number twice, making it impossible for Second Uncle's family to find her.
“My Second Uncle wanted to sell the old house? Under the current market conditions, property with limited property rights isn't even allowed to be bought or sold. At most, you can only sign a lease agreement, and the rent is dirt cheap. Has he lost his mind?”
Nan Zhi hadn't expected that her biological father, who hadn't cared about her for years, had actually acted like a decent human being for once. However, she was more curious about why Nan Fang wanted to sell the house:
“My Grandma and Grandpa's graves are both up on the mountain. If he sells the old house, where will he even return for Qingming and the Ghost Festival in the future?
Besides, when my Grandma passed away back then, didn't their family snatch up all her belongings? How could there be anything left in the old house?”
“Isn't it because he heard rumors? Over the past two years, more and more people have been buying old antiques. Someone heard that your Great Grandpa was a Badai, so they offered a high price for old items from your house.
A while back, Chu Erpangzi's family had a small stone figurine that was bought for two thousand yuan. Your Second Uncle is obsessed with money—how could he not be tempted?”
Shi Hongjiang said nonchalantly:
“When he came back last time, he insisted that your grandma had a few valuable antiques in her hands. But after turning the old house upside down, he couldn't find a thing. He even called the police and the Village Party Secretary over, making a huge racket at your house for a long time. It was beyond annoying.”
Antiques?
Nan Zhi took a sip of cherry wine and asked as if casually, “Are there a lot of people coming to our village to buy old items?”
“Loads! People buying snake gallbladders, Fritillaria, Chinese medicinal herbs... how could there not be? Even the city museum specifically sent people to interview Grandpa, filming him doing an 'extract the black' ritual for someone, and gave him five hundred yuan for it.”
Shi Hongjiang made an exaggerated gesture and winked at her:
“And plenty of people come to the village to buy antiques, purchasing all sorts of weird things. Someone even offered twenty thousand yuan to buy the longevity wood at our house!
Some people heard that my grandpa is a Badai and wanted to buy the bull horns and robes he uses for rituals. Tell me, isn't that bizarre?”
—Longevity wood was actually a coffin prepared for an elder. The Miao held a simple view of life and death and did not fear dying. Thus, if a household had an elderly member, they would prepare a coffin in advance and store it at home.
Back then, Dao Magu had been buried together with the longevity wood prepared for her.
Nan Zhi understood everything clearly in her heart.
It seemed there were quite a few smart people in the world.
With the changes in heaven and earth and supernatural incidents occurring across the globe, even if official sources stayed silent, ordinary people would notice something was off.
Aside from official authorities recording folk arts whether intentionally or unintentionally, some individuals with a sharp sense of smell had also begun making widespread contact with these things.
“My Grandma actually left me a small cauldron. I don't know if it's the kind of antique they're talking about, but keeping it is a memento after all, so I definitely won't sell it.
Grandpa, you should keep all the things in your house safe too. Don't sell them. Even if you don't leave them as family heirlooms for Ah Jiang, keeping them as mementos for future generations is a good thing.”
Nan Zhi spoke with a smile, probing gently:
“Grandpa, that cauldron doesn't look like something from our Miao village. Was it left behind by my Great Grandpa?”
“That's what I say! Ancestral items must never be sold, but that Second Uncle of yours and his family just won't listen. An unfilial, sinful bunch like them will face retribution sooner or later.
Back in my day, if anyone dared sell an ancestral home to outsiders, their ears would be cut off and their eyes gouged out—”
Grandpa Shi cursed in a string of local dialect with full vitality. Once he had cursed his fill, he finally found the time to answer Nan Zhi's question:
“You don't know this, but someone in your great-grandmother's family was a Daoist. Word was that her family used to be rich and had many fine things, though a lot was lost back in those days.
That small cauldron should be an old item. In the past, whenever someone in our village fell ill, your Great Grandpa would scrape out elixir dregs from inside it for us to eat. After eating them, we'd bleed a bit from the nose, and by the next day, the cold would be cured.”
Rate on N.U.
