Once upon a time, there was a small town. There was a rice shop in an alley on the west side of the town, and the owner was Luo Xiaosan, who lived here for generations. Luo Xiaosan was honest and kind-hearted, and guarded the rice shop with his wife Zhang shi, barely surviving.

Luo Xiaosan was next door to a large family, surnamed Jia. The family was very rich and the largest family in this town. It is said that a relative of the Jia family was a high-ranking official in the court. Every year, when this relative came, the Jia family and local officials would lead a huge team, beating gongs and drums, and walking arrogantly back and forth around the town several times. Then the Jia family sent servants to search around the town. Whoever found any treasured treasures would buy them at a very low price. If the family did not want to, bandits would enter the family's house that night, and after killing and setting fire, they would snatch the treasures.

The people of the town went to the official office to report the case, but the official office suppressed the case, and the next day the family was retaliated against by a group of bandits. Therefore, the people of the town dared not speak out, and they could not bear it, so they moved out of the town one after another. The Jia family forcibly occupied the houses left by the refugees, opened various shops, and became the local emperor here.

That evening, Luo Xiaosan saw that no one was coming to buy rice, so he was about to close the door. Suddenly, he heard a scream from the gate of Jia's house. He looked over there and saw several servants pushing an old man to the ground from the steps. A few vicious wolf dogs barked wildly and pounced on the old man with grinning teeth. A broken bowl in the old man's hand fell to the ground and shattered, and a cane was thrown far away by the servant. Only one of the servants said viciously: "Old man, you don't even look at what place this is, you dare to beg for food here, and you are all unlucky."

Luo Xiaosan hurriedly ran over, picked up her crutches, shouted the wolf dog away, and helped the old man up. The servant looked at him and said, "Don't mind your own business, be careful that you have good fruit to eat."

Luo Xiaosan didn't dare to say much, so he helped the old man into his shop and asked his wife to bring a bowl of rice. The old man stretched out his dirty, thin hands, grabbed the rice in the bowl and put it into his mouth, and soon finished the big bowl of rice. Luo Xiaosan asked his wife to bring a bowl of hot soup, and the old man drank the hot soup, and his face gradually became rosy.

The old man was very grateful to Luo Xiaosan and his wife, and finally said, "I'm a beggar who lives by begging. I passed by here today, tired and hungry. I wanted to go to ask for a meal, but I didn't want to be thrown out by those servants. Fortunately, I met you, or I don't know if my old bones can survive tonight."

Luo Xiaosan only saw clearly at this time that the old man was very thin and had a pointed face. He had a few beards on his cheeks and stretched out to both sides. His eyes were small and round, and his ears were also very small. He was wearing a long grey-brown shirt, which was already worn and worn.

The old man was overjoyed when he heard the words and thanked Luo Xiaosanlian.

From then on, the old man helped Luo Xiaosan take care of it in the rice shop, and Luo Xiaosan and his wife treated him like their father. But soon Luo Xiaosan found that the old man often put some rice in the backyard and buried it in the soil. He asked the old man, and the old man said, "I used to beg, but now I live here and eat and drink. Thinking about the past, I habitually hide the rice."

Luo Xiaosan no longer asked, anyway, most of the rice was very old, and some were still wormed.

This morning Luo Xiaosan was keeping accounts in the back room when she suddenly heard the old man screaming outside, then ran under the table, her whole body trembling. Luo Xiaosan went outside and saw that someone had come to buy rice. The man was holding a cat in his arms, the cat's nose twitching, "meow meow meow", manic and restless, suddenly jumped out of the owner's arms and rushed into the back room. I saw the old man jump out and hide behind Luo Xiaosan, his body shaking constantly, his face full of fear.

Luo Xiaosan hurriedly called the man good rice, and the man scolded him, and the cat jumped into the owner's arms and left. The old man trembled and stood up from behind Luo Xiaosan. Luo Xiaosan felt very strange and asked, "Are you afraid of cats?"

The old man said in shock, "Once I was really hungry and panicked, so I sneaked into a family's kitchen and was about to steal something to eat. I didn't want a cat to suddenly jump out of the stove and scratch and bite me, scaring me and making me sick for several days." As he said that, he lifted his left sleeve, and Luo Xiaosan saw that there were indeed a few scabbed paw marks on his left wrist.

Just as he was speaking, he heard drumming sounds coming from the next door. After a while, Jia Hu, the owner of the Jia family, took a large group of people and went out. Luo Xiaosan said, "It seems that the relative of the Jia family, who is a high-ranking official, is here again today, and I don't know who will suffer this time."

At noon, a large group of people entered Jia's house, and the old man said, "This family is not small."

Luo Xiaosan said: "Don't be too loud, if you are heard by the next door, you will get into trouble."

When it was time for lunch, Luo Xiaosan asked his wife to set up the meal and was about to eat when Jia Hu led a man in a gorgeous satin gown to the door of the rice shop, followed by more than a dozen servants and some warriors in iron armor and holding sharp weapons. Luo Xiaosan hurriedly went forward, his face full of smiles, and a servant said loudly to him, "Lord Jia wants to take a look at your backyard, why don't you quickly invite Lord Jia in!"

Luo Xiaosan saw that the person dressed in gorgeous clothes was Jia Hu's relative who had often come to this town in the past. He did not dare to neglect, so he quickly made a way to let this group of people in.

The man went straight to Luo Xiaosan's backyard, looked up at the big tree in the backyard, looked around, and kept nodding, saying, "Great, this place is great! Jia Hu, it's here!"

That big tree was left by Luo Xiaosan for generations, and it is said that it has a history of three or four hundred years. The big tree is lush with branches and leaves, and it takes more than ten people to hug it. It is green all year round, even in the coldest season. It is also green and green, and it also exudes bursts of fragrance. Once, a merchant from the capital was willing to pay a high price to buy this amazing tree, but the legacy handed down by the Luo family ancestor was: No matter how difficult it is, you can't make this big tree leave the Luo family's backyard, otherwise the Luo family will decline from now on.

Jia Hu turned to Luo Xiaosan and said, "Luo Xiaosan, my second uncle took a fancy to your backyard and offered ten taels of silver. How about it?"

Ten taels? You can't even buy a shabby thatched house, isn't that obvious? Luo Xiaosan heard that, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

It turned out that the second uncle of Jia Hu's father-in-law was seriously ill. Seeing that he had only been alive for a few days, he ordered his son-in-law to find a good place for him. There must be a big tree to cover the tomb, so that future descendants will be protected by it and prosper. This father-in-law is the prime minister of the court, and his cronies are all over the key departments of the dynasty. For the future, Uncle Jia Hu searched everywhere for the grave of his father-in-law. Having tea in the backyard of Jia's house just now, he saw this towering tree on the partition wall and immediately came to check it.

When Jia Hu heard that this was happening, he patted his chest and said to his second uncle, "As long as I build a tomb here, I will also let my house out."

Looking at Luo Xiaosan's hesitation, Jia Hu said viciously, "Luo Xiaosan, it's not that you don't know, my second uncle is now suppressing bandits, and he has tens of thousands of soldiers under his command. If you don't agree, the second uncle will give you the name of a bandit, so that your whole family can die without a burial place. We will come to take over the entire courtyard tomorrow, you are ready."

Saying that, he took out ten taels of silver, stuffed it into Luo Xiaosan's hands, and walked out with the man and the second uncle.

Luo Xiaosan sat on the ground and cried. The old man came over and comforted, "Move away, your arm can't twist your thigh, if you don't agree to them, we will be even worse off."

Luo Xiaosan cried and said, "Where can we go? The Luo family has been honest for generations, and they have never punished anyone or hurt anyone. I didn't expect that when they came to me, this little thing of ancestral inheritance would be destroyed in my hands."

The old man said, "In today's world, the emperor is stupid and the traitor is in power, so how can we commoners survive? Hey, let's go, take those rice and take it step by step."

Luo Xiaosan couldn't help it, so she had to pack up the things in the shop with tears and stay in an inn in the town for the time being. Soon the houses of the Luo and Jia families were all demolished, and a huge cemetery began to be built there.

The old man would go out every night, and when he came back, he would give Luo Xiaosan some silver taels and ask him how he got the silver. The old man smiled, but did not answer, just said, "The grace of dripping water, when spring returns, watch, then Jia Hu and his second uncle will not end well."

The cemetery was soon repaired, and Jia Hu and his second uncle came to the cemetery and looked at the magnificent tomb, which was very quiet under the shadow of the big tree. Suddenly, the big tree shook violently, the green leaves on the branches fell one after another, and strange sounds came from inside the tree. Just when the two were surprised, several servants rushed over and shouted, "Young master, it's not good, something has happened at home!"

Jia Hu quickly followed the servants and ran to the east street of the town. He came to the house that had just been built and was stunned by the scene in front of him. He saw countless mice moving around frantically, and when he saw the wood, he chewed desperately. The servants chased them everywhere. The mice jumped on the servants, barking and biting, and after a while only a white skeleton was left of the servants. And many mice were gnawing on the pillars of the house, and soon the house was crumbling.

Frightened, Jia Hu ordered the remaining servants to take out lamp oil, pour it on the rats, then light torches and throw them at the rats. At a moment, the whole house was full of mice on fire. They were scurrying around, jumping up and down, and in an instant the house was ablaze, and billowing smoke mixed with a pungent smell filled the whole town.

Jia Hu was so scared that he quickly ran out, and the rats that were not burned to death followed him. Jia Hu ran all the way, and every time he passed his shop in the town, he screamed for the people inside to come out and help chase the rats. The rats rushed into Jia's shop and set the house on fire. The whole town was in flames for a moment.

Jia Hu ran to the cemetery and found that there were many poisonous snakes crawling there, desperately devouring the rats that were running around. Countless rats attracted countless poisonous snakes. Jia Hu and his second uncle wanted to run to the town, but before they could run out of the cemetery, they were bitten by poisonous snakes, convulsed for a while, and died.

The old man walked out of the tree hole and looked at the corpses of mice and poisonous snakes all over the ground, his face full of tears. He squatted down and turned into a huge mouse, squeaking. When the poisonous snakes saw such a fat mouse, they all crawled towards him.

Soon the fat mouse had only fur left, and the venomous snake searched everywhere for a while before slowly disappearing. And all the Jia family's shops in the town were also burned to ashes.

After the imperial court investigated the matter, the emperor issued an order dismissing the prime minister, raided his home, and exiled him to the frontier, but the prime minister died before leaving the capital. The emperor also ordered the return of the land in the town to the original people, and the people who fled also returned to the town one after another.

The people in the town later learned that the Jia family had taken over the houses of the people and renovated the houses, so the mice who used to live in those places lost their shelter, so they ran to Luo Xiaosan's rice shop and hid in the big tree. Their leader turned into a beggar, looking for a place to hide food. They were going to enter the Jia family to check, but they didn't want to be saved by Luo Xiaosan. The leader ordered the mice not to steal the rice of Luo Xiaosan's family, and he hid some old rice every day to barely let the rats survive. Not wanting the last shelter to be occupied by Jia Hu, the rat king decided to take revenge on the Jia family.

Luo Xiaosan returned to his backyard and saw overgrown weeds, and the old tree had become a hollow tree. He walked into the tree hole and found that it was very spacious, and there was a lot of silver inside. It seemed that the rat king stole it from Jia's house. Luo Xiaosan used the silver to spread the rice again, and every day he would take some rice and put it in the tree hole, and the next day, the rice would be gone.

Later, people from the town who came to buy rice often saw Luo Xiaosan drinking with an old man in a gray-brown gown in a tree hole. The tree slowly grew and flourished.