Opening the Ancestral Furnace

At the same time.

Dawn breaks over the Gobi Desert.

A single bell rang, breaking the tranquility of Yujia Village.

The clanging sound of metal objects hitting each other echoed through the courtyards of each household.

On the relatively open and flat dam, Yu Qingxiang, leaning on his bamboo cane, scanned the area and, after confirming that most of the villagers had arrived, announced loudly:

"Yesterday, the village received a big order. This order is very important and cannot be delayed in any way. Everyone should postpone their orders for farm tools. For those who have already received deposits, we will go to explain today. Those that should be refunded will be refunded first. If there is any compensation, you can apply for it with me afterward."

"A lot? How many pieces do you need?"

"It's not calculated per item."

"How many days will it take?"

"It's hard to say right now."

The explanation of "fish tilting towards the image".

The young man was about to ask another question, but before he could speak, an elder grabbed his ear and said, "Yu Siwa, just listen to my orders. If you say another word, don't come to wish me a Happy New Year this year."

The young man cried out in pain and begged for mercy, which elicited laughter from the crowd.

"Cough cough."

Yu Qingxiang coughed twice to draw the villagers' attention back, and then asked several clan elders to write down the names of the people in each household and assign them jobs according to their abilities.

The clan elders had already spoken with Yu Qingxiang beforehand, and they were now looking very serious, not daring to be careless in the slightest.

They read out the names of those who managed the furnace, those who wielded the hammer, and those who could read the fire.

Some families were rushing to deliver twenty hoes, muttering a few words under their breath, but then turned around and told their sons to go back and put out the stove. Others were already calculating whether they had enough charcoal and asked their wives to go to the back slope to borrow two baskets of hardwood.

Several children squeezed at the back, standing on tiptoe to look ahead.

Yu Qingxiang saw it and pointed it with his bamboo cane.

"Young people should not touch the furnace; they should do simple tasks. As long as they do them well, they can still add a stroke to the furnace record."

Adding ink to the furnace book is very important in Yujia Village.

Children begin recording their daily lives from birth, adding or subtracting entries as they go, until their coming-of-age ceremony.

If you add enough strokes, you can receive personal instruction from the clan elders. According to your parents, that's a real skill. Children compare their skills with each other from a young age.

Upon hearing this, they were even happier than the adults.

A boy missing a front tooth immediately ran home, but turned back halfway and tugged at his father's sleeve: "Dad, where's my little sieve?"

"I asked you to take it to sift sand the other day, and you can't even remember where you put it. You want to add a name to it?"

"I remember now! It's behind the chicken coop."

"Then hurry up and find it."

The people around laughed.

The villagers all got busy, and no one asked what this big deal was.

If the village chief doesn't say, then it's not the right time to ask.

In less than half an incense stick's time, everyone had dispersed, and the sounds of activity returned to the gates of each household.

Some were moving charcoal, others were cleaning the furnace, and still others were carrying long ladders to retrieve the old bellows that had been hanging on the roof beams for many years.

Zhaoyue looked around for a long time.

"Village Chief Yu, you only said a few words, and they all sprang into action?"

Yu Qingxiang said, "The Yu family makes a living from this, so when the bell rings, it's time to get to work."

"What if someone is unwilling?"

"Then I won't come."

Zhao Yue waited for the next part, but Yu Qingxiang had already turned and entered the courtyard.

It chased after them for a couple of steps, then looked back at the village. Sure enough, two houses were closed. A girl of about seven or eight years old emerged from one of them, carrying a wooden basin, and ran to the next house, clearly not wanting to miss this opportunity.

In the courtyard, Shen Gui sat by the stove.

Yesterday afternoon, Yu Qingxiang led several elders through the old records of the ancestral stove. They went from house to house through the night and didn't return until late at night. Now, his eyes are dark and his hands are filled with yellow paper covered with writing.

He put the paper on the table.

"Senior Shen, I've done the inventory. All the old materials left by the patriarch are still there, and they're sealed very well."

Yu Qingxiang paused for a moment, then said, "But the refining time may be much longer than I told you before."

Shen Gui asked, "Is it because you've never done it before and are you rusty?"

"Senior, please take a look."

Yu Qingxiang pressed down on several marks on the paper with his fingers.

"To this day, the Yu family has passed down its skills in such a way that, in order to prevent one person's heart from ruining the whole family, the ancestor deliberately broke down the skills when passing them on. No one has learned the whole set of skills. It is enough to make ordinary objects on a daily basis, but it is not an ordinary object that can be made at close range. It requires the best people from all branches to come together."

"The two furthest away are in Qiwu Kingdom, guarding the shop in Mingyu City. One can lock the inner pattern, and the other can extinguish the last fire. They are both indispensable. I sent someone to deliver the message last night, but the road is difficult to travel. Fortunately, there is Xuanma Company in the city to return. Going there will be a bit slow, at least half a month."

Where is Mingyu City?

"From the capital of Qiwu, it takes half a month to travel north along the trade route. The first half of the journey is through Gobi Desert, and it becomes easier once you enter the Snow Water Valley."

Shen Gui picked up the old paper on the table: "I'll go."

Yu Qingxiang was taken aback for a moment, and was about to wave her hand to refuse: "You are a distinguished guest, how can..."

"That's it," Shen Gui interrupted.

Yu Qingxiang couldn't persuade him, so he stopped arguing.

He turned and went into the house, took out a palm-sized iron plaque with the character "fish" cast on the front and several hammer marks of varying depths on the back.

"This is a family heirloom. The people in the shop will see it and come back with you."

He wrote another short note, folded it, and tucked it into his key ring.

"Qiwu Kingdom is not large. It is a vassal state of Yan Kingdom and has its own set of laws. The city does not check the demon register, but you need to have a place to stay to enter the city. The fish shop is in Lu Lane in the West Market. There is an old iron fish hanging on the door. Just bring the shop sign as a guarantee."

Just then, a loud crash came from outside the courtyard.

Zhaoyue tried to help by carrying a wooden bucket that was even taller than herself, but half of the bucket of water spilled all over herself.

Shen Gui got up and walked out, kicking it: "Don't make things worse, I'm leaving."

Zhaoyue wiped her face: "Where to?"

"Mingyu City".

......

When the two left the village, the sun had just risen above the Gobi Desert.

The mode of transportation was naturally Shen Gui stepping into the air, while Zhao Yue was lifted into the air and enjoyed a wild, exhilarating ride.

The ground below was all yellow earth and gravel. It took half a day of flying north for the ground to gradually change color.

First, some low-lying thorny grass appeared in the cracks of the rocks, and then, further on, a thin line of water appeared in the dry riverbed.

After traveling for another half hour, the mountains of the Gobi Desert gradually closed in.

Snow still clung to the distant mountain peaks, and melted snow flowed down between the rocks, being channeled into narrow ditches. The grass along the ditches was taller than elsewhere, and occasionally patches of low trees and fields could be seen, not lush, but tearing open many gaps in the gray-yellow landscape.

The outline of a city could already be seen in the field of vision, similar to what the village chief had described.

Shen Gui fell from the sky.

After Zhaoyue regained her balance, she ran to the side and dry heaved a few times before feeling a little better. Seeing that the young master had already walked far away, she hurriedly chased after him.

The surrounding environment was unfamiliar to Zhaoyue, and it wasn't the desolate Gobi Desert, which made it very excited as it traveled.

It would bend down and fiddle with the willow leaves for a while, then wade into the stream, only to jump up and down as soon as it touched the water because it was so cold.

"Young master, the water here is much cooler than in Beiyang!"

...

afternoon.

The two arrived at Mingyu City.

The city is not grand or expansive; it is surrounded by mountains on three sides.

Two snowmelt rivers flow through the city, and the houses along the rivers are mostly covered with blue tiles, with irrigation canals running along the streets.

Two lines of people were queuing up at the city gate to register to enter the city.

When it was Shen Gui's turn, Zhao Yue skillfully reached into her bosom. She was used to passing through the city gates of Yan Kingdom and took out the Guest Minister's Token from the Outer Mountain.

The guard didn't even look at the token, he just asked:

"Where are you staying?"

"Aren't you going to watch this?"

"Take back the things from Yan Kingdom."

The guard tapped the table with his pen. "I'm asking you where you live."

Zhao Yue turned to look at Shen Gui.

Shen Gui placed the Yu family's iron plaque on the table.

The guard flipped over the iron plaque, touched the hammer marks on the back, and then glanced at the shop sign on the key ring.

"Yu's Iron Shop?"

"Yes."

"Where do you two live?"

"Um."

The guard took notes, pausing at Zhaoyue's name.

"Which photo should we take?"

"Illumination."

"The 'moon' in 'the moon'?"

"right."

After he finished writing, Zhaoyue couldn't help but ask, "Don't the demons here need certificates of being good demons?"

The guard didn't even look up.

Zhao Yue pouted and followed Shen Gui into the city. After walking a long way, she didn't forget to turn back and spit: "What's with the arrogance?"

The number of demons on the streets of Mingyu City was even greater than that in Yan Kingdom.

A cat demon with gray ears was selling boiled beans by the river, with two men carrying ore squatting beside him.

The cloth seller was a man, but the waiter who greeted customers was a fox. The monks who patrolled the streets walked among them, only looking at who was blocking the way, not who had fur on their faces.

However, each shop has a small sign hanging by its door.

Some are engraved with mountain patterns, some with water patterns, and even those without either of these will display the name of a large shop or sect.

Here, having power and connections is very important, even more so than the laws of the imperial court.

The fish shop is located deep in the West Market.

That alley was full of blacksmith shops, and you could smell the coal smoke from afar.

A palm-sized old iron fish hangs on the door of the Yu family's house. When the wind blows, the fish's tail hits the door panel with a soft sound.

The shopfront is not wide.

Various farm tools and several stove tongs were hanging on the wall, and two plows without wooden handles were placed on the ground.

A middle-aged man sat behind the counter, working on an abacus.

Shen Gui went inside and placed the clan plaque on the cabinet.

The sound of the abacus stopped.

The middle-aged man picked up the clan plaque, first looked at the front, then ran his thumb over the hammer marks on the back.

Please have a seat.

The man strode into the backyard, and soon brought out an elderly man with gray hair. The two checked the clan tags, asked nothing, and then turned around to start packing their belongings.

Zhao Yue stared in disbelief: "Aren't you going to ask what we're going back to do?"

The middle-aged man tightly bound his bundle.

"The ancestral tablet has left the village, which is no small matter. Even if we ask, we'll only hear about it when we get back."

After he finished speaking, he looked at Shen Gui and became much more polite, but he still only regarded him as an honored guest of the village.

"This deal can't be delayed. We'll leave the city tonight, and Xuanma should be back in a few days."

The middle-aged man took out another bunch of keys, picked out the largest one, and handed it to Shen Gui.

"The village chief must be one of our own if he can get you to deliver the tokens. We'd appreciate it if you could watch over the shop for us for a few days. It's fine if the front door is closed. There are several boxes of good iron piled up in the backyard. We don't want anyone sneaking in from the other side of the canal and taking everything."

"..."

Shen Gui took the key.

The two shouldered their bags and quickly left through the back door.

The shop fell silent.

Zhaoyue climbed onto the counter, opened the account book that had just been closed, and saw more than a dozen debts recorded on the first page, so densely packed that it gave her a headache.

It looked around for a while, then looked up and asked:

"Young master, have you ever sold anything before?"

"no."