I worshiped three times and kowtowed nine times at the Liu family ancestral hall, killed pigs and sheep, offered incense and prayed. After that, I changed my surname to Liu, called Liu Wenshan, and lived with that young woman, Liu Ruxiang.
The second day after arriving at Liu's house, Liu Ruxiang set rules for me.
"You are not allowed to call me by my name, and you are not allowed to call me 'hey'. You have to call me master."
"From today on, I will sleep in the west room and you will sleep in the east room. If you dare to cross the line, see how I deal with you."
"You will have to do all the housework in the future, such as washing clothes, sweeping the floor, mopping the floor, etc."
I nodded in agreement.
Liu Ruxiang put her hands on her hips, puffed out her plump breasts, and raised the corners of her mouth slightly, saying she wanted to reward me and ask me what I wanted.
"Help me get grandma back."
Liu Ruxiang frowned: "It's not possible at the moment. Let's find another one."
I also said that I wanted to go to school and then go to junior high school. She said it was simple and the family would take care of everything.
"Since you can't think of it, I will give you a good fortune. I said before that you were born with double flowers and will definitely die on your eighteenth birthday. So from today on, you must learn the Zhuang Family Teacher's Law from me and copy it every day According to the textbook, you must accumulate seven or forty-nine merits before the age of eighteen, and use this as the basis to practice precepts and become a monk, so that you can live safely."
But since there are risks before the age of eighteen, Liu Ruxiang said that now she must "plant a life tree for me and recognize my uncle" to get rid of the bad luck.
Early the next morning, she dug a small pit as big as a basin in front of her house, and brought back a small peach sapling with green leaves from the wild. This is my life tree.
I moved a bench and sat next to it, holding the corner of my clothes and looking a little reserved.
She had a bright red apron tied around her waist. She took the meat, brown sugar, and rice wine that her neighbors bought at the last market, plus a bowl of rice and two eggs, and placed them neatly beside the pit.
Another strange man was called and said that to perform this ritual, a man with both parents must cultivate the soil and plant trees.
"You little bastard, come here and kneel on the edge. When I chant the incantation later, you have to pray to the tree fairy for blessing. Do you remember it clearly?"
"I know." I nodded, walked to the edge of the pit and knelt down.
When everything was ready, Liu Ruxiang cleared her throat and began to sing a mantra loudly: "The Chen family of Yumen and Chen Wenshan have two fates that conflict with each other, and there are lingering disasters, such as convulsions and scabies, measles, or parents punishing each other. The sun and the moon are uncertain, but relying on divine power, one can escape from death and change the life after death..."
She chanted the same mantra three times before she stopped, picked up the sapling next to her and put it into the pit to straighten it up, then sprinkled a handful of loess, and then called the man with both parents to come and cultivate the soil.
The small shovel picked up the loess and covered the roots of the peach saplings until they were filled and patted. Only then was the planting done.
Before it was over, Liu Ruxiang twisted a few grains of white rice and threw them under the saplings, and hung a red cloth strip on a small tree branch. The whole ceremony was finally over.
She picked up the pork belly, eggs, sugar, wine, rice and other items on the ground. He went to the kitchen and fried some sugar, cut the meat into pieces, added two spoons of salt and stewed it, boiled the eggs and threw them into the pot to simmer, and asked me to go out and recognize my uncle.
Liu's entire village is very big, with so many small bungalows that you can't even see the end of it.
She took me to the gravel road at the entrance of the village, took out scissors and cut off a lock of my hair. She tied it with a red rope and tied it to the treetop above my head. She pulled me up and stood watching from a distance. He said that the first person to pass by the red rope would be my destined uncle.
After a while, a middle-aged man rode a bicycle and drove slowly past the treetops.
"Hey, don't leave!" Liu Ruxiang rushed up and shouted.
The man braked and got off the ground, stopped and asked, "Xiaoxiang, what's the matter with you?"
"I took this little bastard to recognize his uncle, and he happened to recognize you."
Liu Ruxiang pointed to the hair tied with a red rope on the top of her head, pulled me over, and pointed at the man riding a bicycle in front of her: "I will call him uncle from now on. His house is not far in front of our house. It is a tall red-tiled house. . You have to pay filial piety during the holidays, don’t be a stranger, you know?”
I nodded in confusion: "I understand."
My uncle rubbed my head and smiled: "Hey, good guy, it's not a bad idea to pick up a nephew when you go out."
The meat was stewed at noon. Liu Ruxiang asked me to give half of it to my uncle and kowtow to him. I ran over and got two candies.
When she got home, Liu Ruxiang had already put the dishes on the table. She just picked up her chopsticks and explained to me why she wanted to recognize her uncle while eating.
"The fates of nephews and uncles are related to each other. So there is a saying that if you shave your head in the first month, your uncle will die. Because hair is also a kind of human flesh and blood, shaving your head is equivalent to injury in numerology, and shaving your head in the first month will further reduce your luck. , that’s why it affected my uncle.”
"Besides, having one more uncle in the Liu family can be regarded as one more elder to support him."
I looked at the food on the table absentmindedly, glanced at Liu Ruxiang secretly, quickly picked up two pieces of fat meat, held the bowl and ate with my head.
"Pa—" Something knocked on the forehead.
Ouch!
"Why did you hit me?"
I looked up and saw Liu Ruxiang staring at me with a pair of beautiful eyes, and said coquettishly: "You little bastard, have you never eaten in your life? Let me finish my question first."
I put down the bowl and stared directly at the braised pork.
"Did your mother give birth before you were born?"
As I recalled it, something suddenly came to my mind.
That was when I was very young and my father was still farming at home.
Every Qingming Festival, he would take me to visit the grave, usually buying five bundles of yellow paper and an apple. After the papyrus was burned in front of the graves of my mother and ancestors, my father would squat by the pond in front of our house holding the apple. He said, child, go and be reincarnated quickly, find a good family to have the baby, and so on.
Then he would throw the apple in his hand into the dark pond.
At first, I didn’t understand why my father threw away the fragrant and sweet red apples so that I could eat them. Then I saw the apple slowly sinking into the water and disappearing completely.
On the way home, my father told me that my mother had been pregnant with a boy before, and she also encountered dystocia, and the midwife asked her to take care of him.
He said that he should be safe, and then my brother died. According to the rules, he couldn't be buried in a grave, so he put it in a sandbag and sunk it in the pond.
But when it was my turn, my father was not at home, and my mother made her own choice to keep her young, and I was successfully born.
Later, one Mid-Autumn Festival, I poured the apples I bought from the market into a basin and washed them. I watched the apples floating on the water, no matter how hard I pressed them. I suddenly sat down on the ground and my whole body became cold.
When the cook heard me tell the story about my brother, his expression turned gloomy.
"If nothing else, your sinful body was given by your brother, and his fate merged with yours!"
