Zhou Yan hadn't forgotten what Xiao Yu had said about wanting to eat mutton skewers. Arriving at the Earth God Temple, not caring about the lateness of the day, he skinned and cleaned the remaining sheep in the temple's backyard, beside a mountain spring pool used by pilgrims.
The first thing I did after cleaning the mutton was to choose the best part and cut it off for marinating.
The rest is reserved for frying or roasting. The rest, whether it is lamb ribs, lamb heads, lamb hooves, or lamb offal, are all prepared for stewing.
It was a bit late, but neither of them was aware of it. After Xiao Yu finished feeding the child, he ran over and made more than a dozen goat tripe dumplings with the washed goat tripe, and also made a few sections of blood sausage and a few sections of goat sausage with the goat intestines.
Zhou Yan waited until he finished making trouble before putting the mutton into the pot.
Xiao Yu was steaming rice on the other side. He steamed more rice so that they wouldn't have to worry about missing their meal on the way.
By the time the large pot of rice was cooked, the barbecue that Zhou Yan had marinated in advance was almost done. The two of them didn't even bother to eat the rice, and just ate it with the barbecue and the rice soup scooped out from the steamed rice.
After finishing the barbecue, the mutton soup is almost ready.
Zhou Yan was the first to scoop out some of Xiao Yu's lamb tripe buns, lamb sausage, and lamb blood sausage. While helping to slice them, he was stuffed with half a lamb tripe bun in his mouth, and the taste was surprisingly good.
Of course, he himself prefers to gnaw on big chunks of leg bones and lamb ribs.
It must be said that winter is the perfect time to eat mutton. As they ate the mutton soup and chewed the meat, they were sweating profusely. Luckily, they had taken a good bath in the hot springs beforehand, otherwise, they would have definitely stunk from all the sweat.
☆
After eating and drinking his fill, Xiao Yu, with his whole body steaming, sat cross-legged in the main hall of the land temple. He simply offered a plate of black dates, a plate of hawthorns, and a plate of walnuts, and began to absorb the incense of the land temple.
Without the help of the divine seal, he tried for the first time to absorb the power of the incense with his body in the form of incense tempering. Zhou Yan seemed to be separated from Xiao Yu because the divine seal was separated from him. Only what the other party could absorb, he could absorb as a guardian.
Therefore, while Xiao Yu was meditating, he was busy lighting a fire to ensure that it would not be so cold at night.
Xiao Yu's ideas are often wild and imaginative, but it must be said that having a big imagination has its advantages.
Before he knew it, he had successfully absorbed the incense from the land temple.
After he was able to absorb it normally, Zhou Yan sat cross-legged and absorbed it as well.
The Earth God Temple was once glorious. Although the two of them attracted only 30,000 incense sticks each in one night, it was still pretty good.
However, this time the incense is not free.
☆
At daybreak, before Xiao Yu could even finish his practice, a subtle awareness guided his consciousness to the sight of an old man in his sixties or seventies laboriously treading through the snow, leaning on a cane as he made his way up the mountain. From that awareness, he knew this man was the patron saint of the local land temple.
The Tudi Temple has been here for over 400 years, and the current temple keeper's family has been passed down for six generations. As the current temple keeper is nearing the end of his life, the temple wants to treat him to a good meal.
This request was not difficult. Xiao Yu said he could meet it.
So, when the old man limped up to the land temple and knelt down to worship and burn incense devoutly, there was a plate of hawthorn, a plate of black dates, a clay pot of steaming mutton, and a pottery bowl of steaming white rice on the altar of the land temple.
The old man lying on the ground vaguely saw in his mind a short old man smiling and inviting him to a whole lamb feast. He could smell the aroma of meat.
Looking up, I saw that on the altar, there were not only fresh hawthorns and black dates, but also a large earthenware basin of mutton. The mutton was obviously not a whole sheep, but the head, feet, and bones of the sheep were visible to the naked eye.
When the old man saw this scene, his nose felt sore and tears streamed down his face.
☆
He is sick and feels that he doesn't have much time left!
Current national policy no longer allows people to continue to worship gods. To ensure a path forward for future generations, he, as a temple keeper, only dares to come every few days. Today, he wanted to fulfill his ancestral responsibility before his death.
Resign!
But this pot of steaming mutton soup and the white rice beside it seemed like the land god's affirmation of him and his family. It also made him feel even more ashamed!
"XX Land God Temple, the twelfth generation temple priest Li Fengnian kowtows to the Land God Fude Zhengshen. Thank you Fude Zhengshen for protecting XX for four hundred years. Today, Li Fengnian feels ashamed of the ancestral foundation and resigns here alone. Please punish me, Land God!" the old man shouted loudly.
On the altar, the three incense sticks he had just lit were burning rapidly.
The old man looked up and saw this, crying breathlessly, muttering "Grandpa Land, Grandma Land" and kowtowed three times.
☆
When he looked up again, the bowl of meat and rice that had been on the altar was now in front of him. In a trance, he saw the Earth Grandfather and Earth Grandmother, dressed in gorgeous red divine attire, thinking kindly and gently about him as they left hand in hand.
The old man burst into tears, crying like a child.
After crying for a long time, he dragged the clay basin in front of him. The mutton soup inside was surprisingly hot, as if it had just come out of the pot. This made the tears that had just stopped fill his eyes again.
He tried to pick it up, but couldn't. He could only hunch over and clumsily climb down, carefully taking a sip of the overflowing soup. His appetite was just as good as he'd imagined. It tasted just like the mutton soup his grandfather used to eat with him when he was a child.
He picked up the sheep's head and began to chew it. The delicious smell of meat reminded him that he hadn't eaten meat in a long, long time. As he chewed, tears streamed down his face. Seeing him start eating, the invisible Xiao Yu pulled Zhou Yan away. Shortly after they left, the old man's eldest son and grandson came over.
Originally, the next lord of this land temple should have been chosen from among them, but now the situation has changed and they can only work hard in the village to farm.
When they walked in and saw their father crying and gnawing on meat, they were stunned. After asking, they learned that the land grandfather and land grandmother had passed away, and this was the whole lamb feast they had invited him to.
Although the old man's children and grandchildren were equally devout to the God of Land, they were more out of a sense of responsibility and faith in the land. Soon, however, the old man's grandson discovered three sacks of corn kernels, three sacks of sweet potatoes, and three sacks of potatoes under the sackcloth on the altar. Each sack had two characters written on it.
offerings.
Is this the offering to the God of Land over the years?
With so much grain, given the harvest this year, it would be enough to feed them for at least half a year.
The father and son immediately knelt down in front of the old man and promised: "Don't worry, Dad, when the country allows it in the future, we will definitely rebuild the land temple and invite the land grandfather and land grandmother back."
The old man looked at his son and grandson with tears in his eyes and said with trembling lips, "Okay, okay, then I will also watch over you well in the underworld."
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