"Little Yuanhou, the rice bowl I eat from is exactly this business. Besides, there's nothing to worry about, I've seen my fair share of storms and never capsized."
"That depends on Liu Xiazi to pick the day, but I estimate it'll be soon. We must get a head start. Your grandfather Yuanhou just came to deliver clothes and said that they're about to organize everyone for river-dredging."
"Yeah, it's digging the river, an old tradition for decades, not just from our... no, pretty much all able-bodied men from the entire Jiangsu countryside have to participate.
So you see, we have to conduct the funeral rites before river-dredging."
"We have to conduct the funeral rites before river-dredging, otherwise there won't be peace at home."
Not far from Li Sanjiang's house, Niu Fu stopped under a tree by the small river, leaning on the tree with one hand and undoing his belt with the other, preparing to relieve himself.
After finishing and doing up his belt, he somehow felt his back straighten a bit and even hopped on the spot.
Looking back at Li Sanjiang's house, Niu Fu couldn't help feeling impressed:
"It seems Uncle Sanjiang and Nanny Liu are both quite 'spiritual'!"
Li Zhiyuan entered the room and saw Aunt Liu coloring paper figurines. Aunt Liu smiled and waved at him:
"Xiao Yuan, want to come play?"
"No, Aunt Liu, I have something to do right now."
"Alright, you go take care of your business first." Aunt Liu laughed, finding the boy's serious demeanor really cute.
Li Zhiyuan carefully moved a paper house that was blocking the staircase and went downstairs, where he saw a rusty iron door.
There were a pair of cloth shoes in front of the door. Li Zhiyuan bent down to find a key inside, inserted the key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open, immediately a musty and moldy smell gushed out.
Inside it was pitch black, Li Zhiyuan reached out to the wall near the door, groping around, and finally found a string and pulled it down.
He pulled it a couple more times.
The light didn't come on; the string broke.
Without a choice, Li Zhiyuan ran back upstairs, and from the drawer at the entrance, he found a flashlight.
He opened the back cover which was empty, luckily the batteries were also in the drawer. He inserted two large batteries, screwed the cover back on, tested it, and it lit up.
Returning to the basement, he shone the light inside. The space wasn't very big; it was not dug out to the original floor area of the first floor, but there were plenty of items, neatly organized into categories.
It seems, the Grandmaster had really organized this place thoughtfully at the time, but it really had been years since anyone had come down - the dust on everything was thick.
Li Zhiyuan approached a shelf, his gaze first drawn to a Peach Wood Sword. He took it and blew on it, sending dust fluttering.
"Cough...cough cough..."
After coughing, Li Zhiyuan carefully examined the sword with the flashlight.
It was carved with various incomprehensible patterns and had reflective metal pieces attached, and there were also some seal characters.
In summary, its style was very rustic, and it had rich details.
Li Zhiyuan admired it meticulously and with great interest, until he shone the flashlight on the lower end of the Peach Wood Sword's hilt and read the words there:
"Shandong Lin Yi Furniture Factory."
He put down the Peach Wood Sword and picked up a Copper Coin Sword next to it.
This time he learned his lesson, first checking the hilt, then examining the sides of the sword, and after confirming there were no factory markings, he observed the body of the sword closely.
"Kangxi Tongbao, Qianlong Tongbao, Jiaqing Tongbao..."
Although the copper coins weren't very old, they seemed authentic.
However, when Li Zhiyuan continued to shine the flashlight carefully, he suddenly found something else mixed in, significantly larger than the copper coins.
He tried to pry it out with his finger, but it wouldn't budge, so he continued to search elsewhere on the sword, quickly finding more of the same size - this time he saw clearly...
They were lots of one- and five-cent coins!
The outer part of the sword used Copper Coins, but inside were only coins, and he couldn't even find a ten-cent coin.
Although cent coins are still money... it couldn't be considered counterfeit, could it? But such a mix made Li Zhiyuan feel odd inside.
After putting the Copper Coin Sword back, Li Zhiyuan continued his search.
He saw two very large flags, or rather, given their long strip shape, it would be more appropriate to call them banners.
These two banners took up a lot of space on the table; one was entirely black, while the other was purple.
The black one had lots of skulls and flood dragons embroidered on it, giving off a malevolent aura;
the purple one was embroidered with many flowers, birds, and a Golden Dragon, radiating an upright vigor.
Li Zhiyuan tried to take one down but found he couldn't move it with one hand alone, so he leaned closer to the tabletop and shone the flashlight close, continuing to search meticulously.
He didn't know what he was looking for, but he felt he should be able to find it.
Indeed, on the wooden handle of the black banner, Li Zhiyuan found a row of crookedly written brush script: "Li's Funeral Team."
Even that wasn't in traditional characters but in simplified ones.
Li Zhiyuan recalled the funeral at Big Beard's house when Little Huang Ying's funeral team took out a lot of Magic Artifact props, which were all counted by bundles and thrown onto a truck after the event.
Soon, on the purple banner, Li Zhiyuan also found characters, this time in traditional script, with an additional line:
"Xue's Funeral Team, mistakenly believing their son is born without a butthole."
Li Zhiyuan exhaled, pulling the banner fabric back.
The anticipation and excitement he felt when he first came in had now faded, and the current him felt even more at peace inside.