Chapter 126: The so-called beauty
In front of the Jingde Gate in Shengjing, lanterns are decorated both inside and outside the city.
Sheds and lanterns were erected on the city gate avenue, the east and west turrets, and various palaces and temples. The two lanes of Royal Street were crowded with people, and children from various schools performed "magic magic, extraordinary powers, singing and dancing".
Lu Zong and Du Changqing walked on Yu Street under Jingde Gate. It was the first time Yin Zheng saw such a lively scene and couldn't help but admired: "It really is Shengjing!"
Sunan City also likes to watch lanterns on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, but the lantern festival is far less prosperous than here. The various lantern hills are dazzling to see. The lanterns are tied into different fairy shapes, the clouds and mist are hidden on the colorful sheds, or the large lantern lotuses are solemn and solemn. Among them, the huge Buddha statue is smiling and sitting on the lantern hill, overlooking the busy traffic in the city.
Acheng pointed to the huge golden dragon made of tens of thousands of candles in front of him and said, "Look there!"
The giant dragon is majestic, its body is winding and entrenched on the river bank, its eyes are sparkling, and its scales are actually embroidered with silver thread. Looking from a distance, the whole dragon looks like it will jump out of the water at the next moment and soar into the clouds. go.
Du Changqing glanced at Lu Huan, who was walking beside him, and said with a hint of pride: "How about it, Doctor Lu, it's not a bad idea to come here, right?"
Lu Zhen lowered his head and smiled.
The lantern festival in Shengjing is very beautiful and more lively than in Sunan. Don’t even mention Changwu County. Someone was performing magic not far away. Dozens of people were holding a canoe, covered only by a piece of black cloth, and it disappeared without a trace in front of the crowd in an instant.
Yin Zheng said "Wow" and squeezed in front of people to look at it. She was amazed.
There are still people "stepping on the rope". On a suspended rope, a craftsman wearing a red cloth scarf holds a horizontal pole and walks carefully and slowly from above. The viewers are breathless and terrified.
Miao Liangfang was not interested in this kind of gambling, but he was attracted by the man spitting five-colored water on the street. Those people took a sip of water, held their necks up for a moment, then spat it out, and the spitted water turned blue. Take another sip of water, raise your neck and wait for a few breaths. The spit out turns red, and so on, black, white, yellow...
After looking at it for a long time, Miao Liangfang finally figured out something. He commented unscrupulously in front of the audience: "I have Duliang incense in my mouth. Let me take a look. There should be Qiulong incense, monkshood incense, and benzoin... Otherwise, how can I make sleeves?" Isn’t it so lenient just to make it easier to contain pills when drinking water..."
Before he finished speaking, he was glared at by the performer who spit out five-color water.
At this time, I was walking in front of a vendor selling Ketou dumplings, and there were already diners waiting around. There is a pool of water boiling in the iron pot, and the white **** are floating in the water, like expanded pearls, with a little fragrance.
Acheng was so greedy that he asked Du Changqing for some money and also went in to buy it.
Du Changqing told him: "Slow down, don't get lost in the crowd. Buy two bowls for Dr. Lu and Miss Yin Zheng." He turned back to Lu Chen and said: "This stuff is not very delicious, you can try it as you like... Doctor Lu?"
There was nothing in front of me, and there was no trace of Lu Zhen.
Lu Zhen found that he was separated from Du Changqing and the others, a long way had passed.
The long street was really full of people coming and going tonight, and it was crowded with onlookers. As people pushed me forward, I soon lost sight of the people around me.
She stood there for a moment. Before Du Changqing and the others could be seen, she thought about it, turned around, and continued walking forward.
There are guards patrolling in front of Jingde Gate tonight, so there won't be much danger. Small shadow theater sheds are also set up at the entrances of each lane. In order to prevent the children of our visitors from getting lost. If Du Changqing and the others found that she was missing, they would probably go to the theater in front to wait for her if no one could be found.
Lu Zhuo didn’t look back and walked slowly forward along with the flow of people.
It is late at night, the lights are brighter, and there are more tourists.
Every dozens of steps you walk you will encounter a vendor setting up a food stall selling quail bones, white sausage, crystal clams, stir-fried chestnuts, salted black bean soup and so on. There are also people who are using medicinal puppets. The puppets are made just like real people. They are gorgeously dressed and spin and move when the firecrackers are going off. They are more beautiful than ordinary fireworks.
Lu Zhen slowly walked through the crowd, and among the noisy and laughing noises, some ripple-like music floated. That was the sound of the actors playing the xiqin and perhaps the flute.
Something passed overhead.
Lu Zhen raised his eyes and couldn't help but pause.
In the distance, in the Guangji River, tens of thousands of lotus lanterns are densely floating, while in the night sky above the river, there are tens of thousands of fluorescent lights floating. At a glance, the night is as bright as the day, with brilliant brilliance and melting mist.
There are many people standing on the bank of the river, holding bamboo poles and lanterns in their hands, and they are sending the lanterns into the sky above the river.
Are you putting a floating lantern on...?
Lu Tong stared blankly into the distance, his eyes blank for a moment.
She likes lamps very much, all kinds of lamps.
When I was young, my personality was not as calm as Lu Rou's, and she loved liveliness and novelty. My father often said that among the three children in the Lu family, she had some rebellious traits, was the smallest, and had the most irritable temperament.
She likes crowded places and all kinds of festivals. Every year on the 15th day of the first lunar month, she always pesters her parents to take her to the mountains to release floating lanterns.
Changwu County is, after all, a small place with not many people, and the types of lanterns are not as prosperous as those in Shengjing. At its busiest time, the Jingdemen Lantern Festival is not as impressive as it is right now.
At that time, in order to show that the lanterns were different from others, Lu Zhen always asked his mother to make floating lanterns for her.
Mother is very skillful, and when she makes floating lanterns when she takes them out, she always gets envious and jealous looks from her friends. Rabbits, carps, white elephants, flower baskets. Once she asked her mother to make a toad lantern. The toad was so realistic that it was a bit ugly. Lu Qian said it was an "ugly toad", but Lu Zhu himself was very fond of it. I like it so much that I reluctantly let it go when I put the light on.
Later, she was brought back to Luomeifeng by Yun Niang.
Yun Niang was very kind to her. Lu could read her medical books, poison classics, and pharmacology at will. She would occasionally make snacks and buy new clothes for Lu.
Yun Niang wasn’t very kind to her either. She was Yun Niang’s tool for testing the medicine, and she had to struggle through several life and death situations on her own. Yun Niang also poisoned her so that she could never leave Luomei Peak.
Yun Niang would go down the mountain when she wasn't making new medicines. Sometimes Lu Chen wished that she would never come back, so that the tortured days would end abruptly. But sometimes Lu Zhen hopes that Yun Niang can stay with her in the mountains, even if she is reduced to a tool for testing medicine.
—For example, New Year’s Eve, Yuan Day, or Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. However, Yun Niang has never come back at such a time.
In the seven years she has been in Luomeifeng, she has always celebrated the New Year alone, birthdays alone, and the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month alone.
The Liang Dynasty has a tradition of viewing lanterns on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. On the day of Lantern Festival in southern Jiangsu, people would also set up tents in the city to display lanterns and put floating lanterns by the river. Those bright floating lanterns slowly float up into the sky from the foot of the mountain, but the wind in southern Jiangsu will push them up to Luomei Peak.
At this time of year, Lu Zhuo would stand on the top of Luomei Peak and look down, watching the stars in the world slowly falling to the mountain.
That was the only place where she could get close to the smoke of fireworks.
She would look at the top of the mountain for a long, long time and say to herself: "One more year, one more year before we can go down the mountain."
Until those stars turn from bright to dim, until they go out, until looking down from the top of the mountain, the fluorescent stars gradually turn into nothingness in the night, the bustle fades away, and darkness gradually invades from all directions.
She returned to the thatched hut, and there was no one in the house. Only the wreath she made of wild flowers blew to the ground, reminding her that today was originally a grand festival in the world.
Lu Zhu sat up and walked to the small table to light the oil lamp.
In the copper oil lamp, a small wick swayed, causing shallow ripples in the oil.
Year after year, night after night. Only the rusty copper lamp kept her company.
The girl flicked the wick, and the flower spikes exploded from the middle, spitting out flames and producing light.
The wick explodes, which is a good omen.
She stared at the oil lamp for a long time, and finally said to herself:
Next year...I will definitely be able to go down the mountain next year.
The flowers on Luomeifeng bloomed and faded, the clouds gathered and dispersed as usual, the orioles returned to the treetops in spring, the cool moon filled the mountains on summer nights, the night rain in late autumn, the snowy mornings in winter... The moon waxed and waned, and she repeated the same days.
Another year has passed.
On the dark and deserted mountain, there was no one around. She was guarding the small solitary lamp, her eyes slowly turning red.
"Dad, mother, sister, second brother," she sobbed, her sobs scattered in the wind, "I want... I want to go home."
“Boom—” was the sound of a juggler by the river spitting fire.
The green flame was like a large flower that suddenly bloomed, causing everyone around to scream in surprise. Those flickering sparks fell into the river and mixed with countless flowing floating lights, like the Milky Way pouring down from the sky.
“Dad, lift me up quickly! I can’t see!”
The speaker was a boy of five or six years old. He was sitting on his father's shoulders among the crowd watching the circus. He was holding a bag of roasted chestnuts in his arms and was looking at the fire-breathing craftsman cheering.
The father who was holding him was still very young. He said hello with a smile, lifted him up higher, and told his son to be careful of falling.
In the noisy crowd, everyone was laughing and joking. When the young people passing by passed by, they accidentally caught a glimpse of the father and son looking at the lamp, and their expressions changed slightly.
He looked at the father and son for a long time.
It wasn’t until someone accidentally bumped into him and lowered his head to apologize that Pei Yunying came to his senses and continued walking forward.
On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, people in Shengjing indulged in night walks, and the scenery was noisy. The car is like running water, soft and red like fog. The young man walked through the bustling crowd. The lantern above his head and the chanting beside him couldn't bring a smile to his face. He still looked indifferent and uninterested.
Not far away, there was a singer playing the piano and singing. When he saw this young man walking by, he was very beautiful, like pearls and jade shining brightly on the tiles. He was also richly dressed. He looked like he was an aristocratic son from an embroidered family in Kinmen, so he sang while singing. , while looking at him with a pair of loving eyes and a smile.
Pei Yunying was unmoved.
He walked deep into the crowd and was about to move forward when he suddenly stopped.
Among the crowd coming and going, a young woman was standing not far away.
On a very cold day, she wore a silver-white cloak with emerald stripes, covering the dark blue embroidered brocade dress underneath, as if snowflakes had fallen all over her body. Her black hair hangs down to her shoulders, only dotted with a few small, fluffy snow-white velvet flowers. Like a fluffy little bunny.
The crowds of people in front of the stall were noisy and laughing, but she was looking up at the floating lights twinkling in the night sky above her head.
She looked very seriously, so seriously that she was almost pious. The beautiful lights all around fell on her face, and her pretty face lost its usual coldness and looked childish and clean.
Like a pearl falling in the world.
The performers in the band are singing: "The jianjia is green, the white dew is like frost, the so-called beauty is on the side of the water..."
The so-called Yiren is on the side of the water...
Thousands of streets and lanes are lined with lanterns. The ten-mile long street is noisy with flutes and drums, and the beautiful scenery is difficult to achieve on a good day.
Across the crowds of people coming and going, he silently stared at the person looking at the lamp for a long time, then lowered his head and smiled.
“What a lovely lady.”