Grandma was sleeping on the bed, with a kind smile on her face and her hands flat beside her. How could there be chicken feathers and blood on her body?
"Little Sangmenxing, are you trying to fool me? My own grandma dares to joke, are you tired of living?" The village chief cursed angrily, picked up the tobacco pole and hit me on the head, waved his sleeves, and left .
I ran to the chicken pen in the yard and counted, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...
There are only five chickens, but my family obviously feeds nine chickens!
Did I see it wrong? Was the chicken stolen by a yellow wolf? I stared at my grandma lying quietly on the bed, feeling uncertain.
The news of grandma's death spread quickly, and the teacher's team came in the morning.
Here in our country, when a person dies, he or she must ask the master to perform the ritual. This usually involves several middle-aged men wearing red clothes, wearing various masks, singing and dancing, and then holding many ceremonies. When I was a kid, my grandma told me that if we don’t do this, the human soul will not be able to return to Huashan.
The person who came was a farmer-like person. He looked at my grandma briefly and asked me to prepare three thousand yuan. In the evening, I would bring someone over to make rice cakes and give me a thin-skinned coffin.
I gritted my teeth and was in embarrassment. Grandma only left me more than 3,200 yuan. If I asked my master to do this, would it be enough for me to live on? I might not be able to study either.
"Your grandma was bitten by a snake and poisoned to death. It was caused by evil spirits. If you don't make Daluo, the flower in your grandma's soul will not be able to return to Huashan."
He looked at me puzzled, and then explained: "Huashan is a mountain covered with flowers. Each of us has a flower in our soul. After death, the flower returns to the mountain. When a woman is pregnant, Huapo will come from Huashan." Pick a flower and give it to her, and she will be born as a human being."
I roughly understood what he meant, that is, he asked me to make a choice, whether grandma could not be reincarnated, or choose three thousand yuan.
I finally gave a deposit of 500 and asked them to come over in the evening.
The man patted my shoulder, smiled, got on his bicycle and left leisurely.
The sun didn't come out all day, and there was a slight drizzle in the afternoon.
This rain smells faintly fishy, but I can't name it specifically.
I put on my hat and dug a grave in the cemetery. Even though the soil was very loose, I worked all afternoon to dig out a shallow pit.
Forget it, wait until the master comes and ask them to dig deeper.
In the evening, the teacher's team arrived as scheduled.
There were seven dark-skinned men riding bicycles and tricycles, with a donkey pulling a cart behind them.
"Little brother, where is your grandma?"
I led them to the back room.
When I came back from digging the graveyard, my grandma's eyes opened for no reason. They were wide open and red, and blood kept oozing out of the corners of her eyes. It was scary to look at it.
"Your grandma is being invaded by evil spirits. Without further delay, it is better to keep everything simple and open the altar as soon as possible." The teacher in charge had gray hair and bright eyes, looking very energetic.
"Thank you, Master." I stood aside with fear and began to think wildly.
I was wondering, what does the devil look like?
A group of masters lifted a thin-skinned coffin from a cart. The coffin board was only about the thickness of a finger. It was deliberately made very flat to save wood. I was afraid that it would not be able to cover it.
Grandma's body was extremely stiff, as if a steel bar had been driven into it. One person lifted her head, and the other person lifted her feet. Her body was not bent, like a straight piece of wood.
When I passed by, I could smell the stench, which was also mixed with an indescribable fishy smell.
"Grandma..." I murmured softly and wiped my grandma's face with a towel, but because of the blood dripping from her mouth, nose and eyes, my whole face turned red, which made her look a little scary.
"Look here, kid, we're going to build a coffin."
Yesterday morning, grandma was still cooking pots and rice, but now only one day has passed, and he has turned into a cold corpse.
Call her, but she doesn't respond; call her, but she doesn't move. I don’t know how many years later my grandma will turn into a handful of loess. Those bits and pieces of emotions, and the scenes of getting along with each other, all appeared in front of my eyes. As the coffin board fell and closed, she said goodbye to me completely. .
My master gave me Bai Xiao and set up a brazier for me to burn paper money in.
The fireworks smoked my eyes. I cried for a while and my eyes were swollen. I looked at the method in a daze.
There is an Eight Immortals table next to the coffin in the main room, with many pictures of gods on it. There are chickens, fish and meat in a dustpan in the middle, and a few incense sticks are stuck on something like a rice dumpling.
Two masters stood nearby, one holding a small sheepskin drum in his arms, and the other holding a pair of cymbals. The five masters in the middle put on red robes and picked masks from the table.
The mask is of an old man with a long beard, grinning to reveal a pair of big white teeth, the white eyebrows on the forehead are slightly curved, the muscles of the cheeks are raised above the eyes, the wrinkles are clearly visible, and the overall image is vivid.
The other mask has the face of a young woman, with an invisible colorful headdress on her forehead, and she is also smiling.
The masks of the five masters were all different. After putting them on, they took on the magic weapons.
Bells, daggers, tortoise shells, axes, and bamboo slips, one for each person, stood around the table of the Eight Immortals, and the ritual ceremony of playing with bamboo began.
"As soon as I ask you to come to the Longhu Meishan Temple. In return, please—"
The ancestors of this master, the Three Yuan Zhenjun, Master Zhang Datian, Master Nagarjuna, Master Mei Mao and Faqi Jiulang, wear the Sixth Middle School.
The generals and officials around——
The boy who leads the light, the boy with golden light, the boy with silver light, the pearl inkstone, the thirty-sixth light east. "
These words were pronounced in the local dialect, and the song sung afterward seemed to be in a foreign language, which was not understandable at all.
Singing, dancing and drinking tea, this ritual ceremony came to an end.
The teacher brought an empty old dustpan, put a cup of white rice in it, covered it with a long white cloth, and wrote my grandma's name and birthday on the white cloth with a brush.
After singing and dancing again, the teachers slowly lifted the white cloth over their heads and asked me to stand behind and follow them until we walked out of the yard and hung it on a tree.
One of the masters, who was in his prime, walked up to me and said, "Child, the ceremony is finished. You take us to the cemetery. Now we are going to be buried."
I was stunned, feeling a little fooled, and asked him why he did it so fast.
The man sneered: "If someone is willing to pay for it, we can certainly do it for seven days and seven nights. Don't say anything, just lead the way!"
I gritted my teeth and got angry, knowing that no one would support me as a "little disaster star", so I had to break my teeth and swallow it.
Grandma's coffin had been carried out of the main room, and she began to recite new words: "To raise the earth, raise the earth, to raise the golden earth. One point is the wood of Jia and Yi in the east, two is the fire of Bing and Ding in the south, three is the gold of Geng and Xin in the west, and four is Ren and Gui in the north. Water, five o'clock central Wuji soil..."
I carried a large flagpole with white flags hanging next to me, and led the way to the cemetery tremblingly.
