Steal the day

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Reinvent the golden body

One day, in front of the Huiyin Temple on the banks of Hangzhou's West Lake, there came a master, four servants and five people, led by the master who looked brightly dressed and very stylish, with a glittering "emerald" embellished on his hat and a dazzling jade ring on his hand. The abbot of the temple, the monk Fayin, concluded that this person was not an ordinary tourist, so he personally accompanied him with great courtesy and invited him to visit the whole temple.

Although the Huiyin Temple is now dilapidated due to its disrepair, this guest has looked very carefully at the temple's hall, pavilion, niche and Buddha, and asked very carefully. The Monk of Fayin wondered why he was so interested in Huiyin Temple, and he said such a thing with a solemn look.

It turned out that not long ago, this guest had a dream, dreaming that when the god Wei Dazun guided the West Lake for him, and swam to a dilapidated temple, the god Wei Dazun very earnestly told him: "If you can fund the restoration of this temple, you will enjoy immeasurable blessings." So after waking up from the dream, this guest took the servant to pack up and set out, every day to look for the temple he saw in his dream, he had been running for more than ten days, and he did not want to come to the Huiyin Temple on the shore of the West Lake today, and everything he saw was as he saw in the dream.

When the Monk fayin heard the guest's words, he was really surprised: "So, the benefactor has come to fund the repair of this temple?" Seeing the guest nod, he couldn't wait to ask, "Then when does the donor plan to start construction?" ”

The guest thought for a moment and said, "The work will only be done sooner or later, and the master will rest assured." It's just that we came out this time, only with coils, did not bring silver tickets, the construction of the use of a large number, rongdang estimation, after some time ready to come again. ”

The Fayin monk Xiu Monastery was eager, and when he heard that he could not start construction immediately, he could not help but be a little disappointed, so he opened his mouth and did not squeak.

A servant named Yuan San, who was following behind the guest, saw the clue and immediately came up to his master and said, "Young master, the little one has an idea." Isn't the young master's fellow villager, Old Master Zhang, who is serving as a county commander in Haining? It is better for the young master to borrow a sum from him temporarily, and then let the little one go back to take it back to return to Old Master Zhang, so that he can start work as soon as possible and save the young master the pain of the round-trip trek. ”

He didn't want to be a guest, but he shook his head repeatedly: "Old Master Zhang is stingy, and the silver in his hand is not easy to borrow." ”

Yuan San said, "Young master, it's good to borrow or not, let the little one run a trip to try, anyway, the road is not far, maybe you can really borrow it?" ”

The guest groaned for a moment and said, "Well, just try it." ”

The Monk fayin was very happy when he heard this, and immediately asked the young monks to clean out a few open houses and invite the benefactor to stay. The little monks saw that the four servants had been huddled around their master, and their carry-on luggage was four gorgeous large chests of camphor wood, so they inquired curiously about the details of their master. Only then did I learn that the master's surname was Yuan, a Native of Liuhe, Jiangsu, who had traveled to Yunnan for many years, and whose official residence was Sima in southern Yunnan, and now he had left his post; the old lady of the Yuan family was previously a big salt merchant in Yangzhou, and the Yuan family could be described as a rich party in the local area, and the tea house liquor store was not mentioned, and there were more than twenty pawnshops under the name alone; as for Tian Mu, every autumn harvest, the Yuan family sent down to collect rent alone. The servant's introduction made the little monks stunned.

Moreover, after Sima Yuan settled down in the guest room, he took out two large pieces of silver and handed them to the monk in charge, saying that he was talking about the food and accommodation for their party; then he wrote a letter to Old Master Zhang and handed it to Yuan San, asking him to go to Haining to borrow silver as soon as possible; then, he asked the Monk of Fayin to invite a craftsman to estimate the cost of repairing the temple. Upon hearing that the temple needed about six thousand taels of silver, Sima Yuan smiled: "I thought that I would always have more than 10,000 taels of silver, and I didn't want to be able to get things done in such a way." ”

A few days later, Yuan San returned and told Sima Yuan: "Old Master Zhang is doing the Haitang project and is very busy, he said that he should not have taken care of this trifle, but seeing that he and the young master were fellow villagers, he asked Xiao to bring back five hundred taels of silver." The little one had already typed a note to Old Master Zhang, and now presented the silver for the young master to look at. ”

When Sima Yuan heard this, he couldn't help but mutter, "As I expected, he was so stingy." As he spoke, he asked Yuan San to hand over all five hundred taels of silver to the Fayin monk, saying, "Master, then please use this silver to prepare materials for construction first, and the remaining five thousand five hundred taels, I will immediately send someone back to get it, I can't miss anything." ”

The Fayin monk saw that Sima Yuan was doing things, so he seized the time to recruit craftsmen to start the work first. The first to start construction was the Daxiong Treasure Hall, where the roof, walls, doors and windows, and even the offering tables were all repaired in turn and restored to their original state.

Sima Yuan was very diligent and would come to the scene every day. Half a month later, when the main hall was about to be repaired and completed, Sima Yuan said to the Fayin monk: "Although the Buddhas in the hall are all golden, but after all, they are old, since Yuan Mou undertook to repair, he had to repair a perfect, I want to change all these Buddha statues to full body gold, I don't know what the master intended?" ”

When the Fayin monk heard this, he was stunned: If you want to put gold on the whole body of these great Buddhas in the hall, this alone will add more than two thousand taels of silver! He couldn't help but fold his hands together, and his mouth kept saying, "Sima Yuan, you are really a living bodhisattva who saves suffering and saves suffering!" ”

FaYin immediately summoned the monks to discuss and wanted to hire gold smiths from the city of Hangzhou. One of Sima Yuan's servants heard this and interjected that he had a cousin who was a gold master in this line and was now working in Huzhou, and if needed, he would be brought in. The monks heard this and said yes. So a few days later, the servant's cousin rushed to Huiyin Temple with five or six goldsmiths. Because it was the work introduced by the cousin, the craftsmen said that they would do it, and without breathing, they immediately set out to clean the Buddha statue and scrape the old gold.

Within a few days, the work of scraping the old gold was completed, but at the juncture where the Buddha statue was about to be repainted with gold, trouble suddenly came!

Early this morning, a man stumbled into the temple, saying that he had come from Liuhe and was a servant of the Yuan family, and when he saw Sima Yuan splitting his head, he shouted: "Young master, things are not good, Mrs. Tai suddenly had a stroke, lying unconscious on the bed, and the young lady asked you to go back quickly." ”

Sima Yuan was shocked: "How is this good?" ”

After a pause, he suddenly seemed to remember something, and asked the visitor: "It has been five or six days since I sent Yuan San back to get the silver, why didn't he come with you?" ”

The servant replied, "After the family received the trust, they spent the silver from the Yongchang according to the number, and also asked the dart boat to escort Yuan San all the way." Mrs. Tai's stroke was on the second day of Yuan San's departure, because of the urgency, the small day and night dry road came galloping horses, naturally faster than Yuan San's boat. However, a small estimate, Yuan San should also arrive soon. ”

Sima Yuan listened, thought about it, and said to the Fayin monk, "Master, I'm really sorry, the old mother suddenly fell ill, and I can't help but rush back to fulfill my filial piety as a son." In this way, I left two servants here to take care of it, after Yuan San came, in addition to returning The five hundred and two silver of Haining Zhang, the rest of the part was accepted by the master, if it was not enough at that time, I would be responsible for the end, although the master was assured. When my mother's condition improves slightly, I will come back immediately, and no matter what, I will start and finish the temple repair project. ”

When the Fayin monk saw that Sima Yuan had arranged things properly, he couldn't help but nod his head and say, "Sima Yuan is so bothered, the old man has taken it." Lao Gong wished Sima Yuan a smooth ride and ordered Tang Qian to ask for peace on his behalf. ”

In this way, Sima Yuan took his servants and rode away, and the two who remained were waiting in the temple for Yuan San to come with silver. But who knew that the left and right waited, that is, they did not see Yuan San's shadow, the Fayin monk was very confused, and the two servants were also panicked, remembering that the messenger had said that Yuan San was escorted by a dart boat, and they greeted the Fayin monk this day, and then went to the dock to see. Unexpectedly, these two people disappeared for five or six days. What surprised the Fayin monk even more was that even the few goldsmiths who worked in the temple did not know when they ran away without a single one.

Don't these goldsmiths even want their wages? At this point, the Monk Fayin felt that something was wrong, and immediately ordered him to inspect the guest rooms of Sima Yuan and his servants, only to find that although the two large camphor wood boxes were still there, there was nothing in the box. The Fayin monk was so anxious that he stomped his feet one after another, and immediately sent someone to Liuhe, Jiangsu Province, to secretly visit, it turned out that there was indeed a Yuan family in Liuhe City, and the Yuan family did indeed have a person who was Sima of Southern Yunnan, but this Sima had been in office, and had not returned home to raise relatives, and the yuan family's parents had long since died, so why talk about the rich side?

In this way, Yuan Mou, who was giving alms to the temple, was actually a fake guy. However, why did he want to engage in this ghostly name? The Fayin monk was confused. At present, it is impossible to attach gold to the Buddha, where is so much silver? The Fayin monk wanted to come and go, so he had to use oil painting to clean up the mess, so he sent someone to invite craftsmen from Hangzhou city.

Those craftsmen came to the temple and listened to the Monk Officiating to talk about the things before and after, and immediately approached the Buddha statue to take a closer look. Not wanting to see this, they lost their voices and shouted, "Hey, you guys are fooled!" ”

The Fayin monk asked urgently, "What do you mean by that?" ”

The craftsmen said, "You see, these Buddha statues were originally gilded all over the body, but now they have been scraped away, and the jewels embedded in the forehead have also been dug up, leaving a hole one by one." ”

When the Fayin monk heard it, he suddenly wet his whole body with cold sweat, where did he know that this Huiyin Temple, which was built in the Northern Song Dynasty, had become so unbearable because it had experienced a long period of military and horse chaos, but in the Ming Dynasty, the weaving eunuch Sun solemnly repaired this temple, and once gilded each Buddha statue with rare treasures embedded in its forehead.

Moreover, after using five hundred taels of silver as bait to defraud the gold powder and jewelry worth hundreds of thousands of taels of silver scraped from the Buddha statue, they made a joke to the Fayin monk, left a jewel on the forehead of one of the Buddha statues, and stuffed a note on the hand of the Buddha statue, which read: Please keep this bead to make up for the unfinished project of your temple.

Later, it was identified that the bead was a "cat's eye", as big as a cherry, and after washing the dirt, it shone brightly. The Monk had no choice but to order the beads to be sold, and the silver they had exchanged for painting the fifty-six Buddha statues of the size of the temple's main hall and the auxiliary hall were painted with oil, and the auxiliary hall, the back garden and the monk's room were renovated. A month later, the mess was cleaned up, but just thinking about it, the Fayin monk was still depressed in his heart...

(Wang Yuxiang)