Part 2 Chapter 28: The Fang Family’s Gathering House
Qin Yiheng looked back and said, "This is not the place to talk." He took me to get the car and asked me to drive. He sat in the passenger seat holding the bird cage and didn't say much. It was not until the car drove back to the city that he lit a cigarette. His expression looked a bit relieved. He asked me to park the car at a nearby restaurant so that we could fill our stomachs first.
We asked for a private room and ordered a few dishes. When the dishes were served, Qin Yiheng did not pick up his chopsticks first, but put the bird cage on the dining table and began to explain to me.
He said that this cage street has not existed since ancient times, but has only emerged in recent years as a place for consignment sales. There are many all over the country, but generally only in large cities such as provincial capitals or municipalities. Strictly speaking, this cage street is somewhat similar to the black market. Although the things sold are not all shady, there are occasionally a few things stolen from tombs. But unlike those underground black market antique trading markets, the antiques that appear in the cage street, that is, funeral objects, are generally not clean. The so-called unclean here means that those things have more or less some evil spirits, and some are even attached with filth. Most people dare not accept them, or some people do not know the truth and accept them and find something wrong, so they send them to the cage street for secondary sale.
Those who know Long Street and are willing to go there to shop are basically knowledgeable people. Their purposes are different, but generally speaking, they are all going there for profit. However, the ways of making profits are different. Some collect some antiques and funeral objects, clean them up themselves, and then auction them; some take some shady jobs, which are small things like playing tricks on gods and ghosts, and big things like doing things that are harmful to the world. But usually this kind of people go to Long Street to quietly check in, which is commonly known as registering, and then wait for the employer's single-line connection. Because although there is no written rule in the industry that says that you can't use magic to do bad things, at least people have a scale in their hearts. If others know about it, they can't get involved in this industry. Therefore, this kind of pay is very high, but there are relatively few people who do it, and they have to do it like .
Some are specially commissioned to buy some spiritual animals, that is, the so-called Wong Tai Sin and Snake Fairy that have achieved initial results in cultivation. They buy them and release them to accumulate merit or to comfort themselves psychologically. In the yard, the cages covered with red cloth are basically filled with these animals. The profit of this kind is relatively high, because the buyers who ask others to buy are either rich or noble, and they usually spend a lot of money. There is also a saying that if you pay too little, it seems that your heart is not sincere, so many people who accidentally or intentionally capture these animals would rather risk being retaliated or being tricked, and are willing to send them here to sell.
There is another type, which is what we see today. When buying things, no one will bid up to grab the goods or first come first served, because the things sold today are more special. These things are Juzhai, which are things dug out from under old houses from all over the country. This Juzhai has been mentioned earlier, and people who come here to buy Juzhai actually have no actual purpose, they just want to find things from their own family.
Our country has experienced several invasions and civil wars, and the subsequent ten years of turmoil. Many descendants of wealthy families have been scattered all over the country for various reasons and are unable to go back to find their relatives, or even if they go back, there is nothing left in their hometown. Some people with a family complex are willing to buy such an object. It is said that the market has been rising in recent years. Juzhai, as mentioned before, is divided into several types. Generally, the more expensive ones are buried by women when they are the head of the family, because they are wrapped in a purse with a note with a sentence written inside, and when buried, people cannot see the contents. In the end, it is not only very commemorative, but also allows you to see the words of your ancestors, which is quite mysterious.
Because they are looking for their own things, there is no point in buying someone else's, so the buyers look for things according to their own surnames. If it is not a special coincidence that two people with the same surname come to buy, no one will fight for the thing.
Qin Yiheng pushed the bird cage towards me and pointed to a spot on the top of the cage and asked me to look. I took a closer look and saw a very small word on it. It looked like it was scratched with a needle or something. The handwriting was very light and it was the word "房".
As soon as I saw this word, I understood why he suddenly brought me here. So the house in the cage belongs to Fang Wanjin?
This doesn't make sense! Fang Wanjin is a celebrity in the industry. He should have heard about their products earlier. He should have bought them a long time ago. How could it be our turn? Thinking back to the mysterious old man who asked me what I wanted to buy the day before yesterday, damn, he didn't expect Qin Yiheng to bring me here to buy this, did he?
This house is not auspicious to me. I remember Qin Yiheng analyzed it for me in the Wan Family Ancestral Hall. Those wardrobes are likely to be the house of a certain house. If it weren't for the suspicion that I had something buried under the villa, we would not have been able to break the situation of the real dragon in Jiuzi Town. I looked at the bird cage in front of me and felt an inexplicable resistance. I wanted to stay away from this thing.
I glanced at Qin Yiheng, and there was a firmness in his eyes. After being together for so long, we had a tacit understanding. I knew it at a glance without asking, and I guessed it was almost right.
Qin Yiheng didn't wait for me to ask, he pulled the bird cage in front of him and said, "I'm afraid Fang Wanjin's words are full of meaning, reminding us to look for this thing. The old man who came to see you before must have had some connection with it. However, all this will only be known after we open the box and see what is written in the Juzhai."
Qin Yiheng turned the bird cage around and said, "This Cage Street, as the name suggests, is made of cages for bird cages. The cages must be old cages that have been used to keep birds. As for why they are all in bird cages, I can't explain it. In short, since the opening of this Cage Street, there has been such a practice that people who come to buy things can only look through the cages and cannot reach out to touch the things in the cages. This may be considered an anti-theft measure. However, this is just my personal guess. And the people who sell things in the Cage Street, that is, the two fat men we saw, must all be "flashers", that is, people who can't close their eyes when they sleep. There is no specific statement in metaphysics, but from ancient times to the present, many places require that the guards of the vaults must be "flashers". It is said that "flashers" guard wealth and no little ghosts will come to steal. However, this is just a statement, and no one can confirm it."
"This Long Street is open only twice a month, on the first and fifteenth day of each month. In the jargon, one is real and the other is virtual. Real and virtual are not the concepts we usually talk about, but a specific name. Real is a living thing, and virtual is a dead thing. Today, we happened to catch the fifteenth day. I came here just to give it a try, but I didn't expect that there really was a gathering of the Fang family at the house."
"Let's eat first, and then find a place to open the cage."
By this time, I was really hungry, so I had a big meal with Qin Yiheng and drank two cans of Red Bull, which made me more awake. After dinner, we smoked a cigarette and took a break for a while before leaving the restaurant and going directly to my house.
After entering the house, we put the bird cage on the coffee table. Qin Yiheng drew all the curtains, set up a table lamp next to the cage, and then carefully used the small pliers and saw on the Swiss Army Knife to break the small wooden sticks on the bird cage one by one. He was very careful, for fear of touching the box inside. Although I was puzzled when I watched from the side, I didn't want to disturb him. After he completely dismantled the bird cage, I asked him: "Why do you have to go through so much trouble? Can't you just take out the box?"
Qin Yiheng didn't answer, and continued to carefully use the Swiss Army knife to try to open the lid of the small wooden box bit by bit.
Now I understood that he didn't want to touch the box. Seeing him like this, I was a little nervous. How the hell, is this like defusing a bomb?
Fortunately, the lid of the box did not explode after Qin Yiheng knocked it off a few times. He watched for a while, then took out the things in the wooden box with his hands. The things were the same as he said, a piece of silk or white cloth, very small. I didn't touch it, so I couldn't tell what material it was made of.
Qin Yiheng carefully placed the thing on the coffee table and spread it out. After it was spread out, it was about the size of an adult's palm. As expected, there was something written on it. But I took a look at it and found it very strange. It was not a word, but something like a table with pictures in it. There were some regular black dots on the top line, which looked a bit like a course table used when I was in school.
Qin Yiheng seemed very surprised, staring at it for a long time with his mouth wide open, but he didn't say anything. I asked him, "Is this the residence of Fang Wanjin's ancestors? Is their family very different? This is not a sentence!"
He looked at me, then at the things on the cloth, and just said "tsk" without answering.
He didn't say anything, so I could only look at it myself, and I lowered my head to examine it carefully. The table was not neatly made, and it was understandable that people couldn't use a ruler in those days, but the drawings on it were also surprisingly rough, with only a few strokes, and each one looked like a totem, but I could barely tell that the drawings were of animals.
The more I looked at it, the more I thought it was odd. What did it mean? Did they run a farm? Was it a sign to mark when to feed the animals, or was it just a recipe to record what animals to eat and when?
I looked at it and pondered it for a long time, but I had no clue at all, so I had to light a cigarette and wait for Qin Yiheng to speak.
He was silent for longer than I expected. I finished my cigarette and went to the toilet to take a dump. He was still thinking. Later, I almost gave up. I asked him if he could hurry up. He came back to his senses and looked at me. He picked up the cloth, turned it over and over in front of the light for a while, put it down in disappointment, and continued to think .
I saw that I could only wait, and after waiting for more than ten minutes, Qin Yiheng suddenly spoke, asked me for a cigarette, took a deep puff, exhaled, and asked me, "Can you tell what is drawn on this thing?"
I almost wanted to slap him when he asked me this question. I had been waiting for such a long time, but this was the last thing he said. Fortunately, he followed up with the next sentence in time: "Even if you rack your brains, you still can't figure it out." Qin Yiheng picked up the cloth, pointed at the animal on it and continued: "My explanation would be outrageous, but I'm afraid this thing is just so outrageous. What is written on this house is a woman's menstrual chart. In the old society, there were no reliable and scientific contraceptive measures like today, so after having sex, whether or not you can get pregnant is basically up to fate. Many wealthy families have some family traditions of their own, which also include some superstitious elements. There are some requirements for when to get pregnant. This is what is recorded on the menstrual chart. It seems to record what was conceived during a certain period of time."
His words made me even more curious, so I asked, "What other differences can a pregnancy have besides a boy or a girl? What else can it be?"
Qin Yiheng curled his lips and replied, "This thing can be recorded and buried in the Juzhai, which shows how important this matter is to this family. Let's not talk about whether there is any meaning behind it being buried. Just from the analysis of this piece of cloth, the woman who buried the Juzhai was probably very worried about getting pregnant at some point in time, and this child, judging from this table, is probably not a human being."
