In many places in the south, there is a custom of raising gods.
Carrying the God, also called the Wandering God, is a folk activity with a long history.
Every time during the Lantern Festival or important days of the first lunar month, people would carry out various gods-traveling activities in their hometowns.
The process is to go to the temple, put the statue of the god into the palanquin, and then carry it out of the temple to travel around, accept the incense and worship from the people, which means that the god descends to the people, patrols the countryside, and bless the peace of the community.
Along the parade, there are usually gongs and drums, lion and dragon dances, and related folk performances.
It can be said that every time the gods are raised, it is very grand. Today is the day of the wedding of Zhenjun Erlang, so naturally it is no exception.
It stands to reason that this kind of activity is routine, everyone is already familiar with the process, and it usually goes smoothly, but today I encountered a problem this time.
I don’t know why, but people from the next village happened to come out to pay homage to their gods today. While they were parading in the street, they bumped into each other outside the village.
It is no coincidence that the god brought out by the village next door that day was the Monkey King, the Monkey King...
That day was actually not a day for raising gods. It was said that someone in the neighboring village was sick and could not be cured anywhere, so the purpose of raising gods was to ask the gods to cure the illness.
In the temple in the next village, a Monkey King was enshrined, and the Monkey Brother was carried out that day.
As a result, Erlang Shen and Sun Wukong bumped into each other on the road outside the village, and the two men started fighting.
Of course, when we talk about a fight, it's not that two great gods appeared in the sky to fight, nor did they possess mortals to fight. In fact, the gods on both sides collided together for no reason.
It was rare for two statues of gods to collide. People on both sides were stunned, but they couldn't control themselves at all. They just bumped into each other while carrying the gods.
At this time, someone said that Erlang Shen and Sun Wukong were enemies. If it weren't for Erlang Shen, Sun Wukong would not have been thrown into Taishang Laojun's alchemy furnace, so it is normal for them to fight.
So everyone hurried forward to dissuade them, and finally separated the ones who carried the spirit. Everyone went back to their homes. This was considered as giving up.
In fact, when I heard this, I didn't believe it.
Not to mention the festival between Erlang Shen and Sun Wukong, that is purely a story made up in Journey to the West. After all, both of them are righteous gods. Sun Wukong has become a Buddha, how can he still be so naughty...
I think these may be people from two villages who usually have some conflicts. It happened that one was carrying Erlang Shen and the other was carrying Sun Wukong. They happened to get together, so they would fight in the name of the gods. This is also possible.
But no one can tell the truth from falsehood in this kind of thing. In short, after the ceremony is over, the girl is married to Erlang Shen and then goes home to raise the child.
Uncle Ma's senior brother witnessed the whole process. The more he watched, the more he felt something was wrong. He felt that there was no righteous god in the so-called Erlang Shen.
If not, it might be an evil god, or even a ghost.
But he couldn't say such a thing. He could only go to the girl's house after the ceremony and tell her family that it was impossible for a real god to have sex in a dream, let alone to get pregnant by a mortal.
The family was also surprised. Seeing that the Taoist priest had extraordinary talents and a righteous face, they asked him what to do about this matter. Now the whole village knows, the wedding has been held, and they are waiting to have a baby...
The senior brother didn't have any good ideas, so he took out three talismans and handed them to the family, saying that you should keep these talismans until a few days later. If everything is safe, if there is something wrong, just put them away. If you turn this talisman into water for her to drink, it can protect the lives of your whole family.
After explaining, he went out and continued to travel around.
To be honest, there were far more weird things in that era than now, so he didn't pay much attention to it and forgot about it after he left.
About a few months later, when he was about to go back to the mountain, he suddenly remembered this incident and turned back specifically to see how the girl who married Erlang Shen was doing.
Soon he arrived at the last village, but he didn't go directly to ask. It would be too abrupt. He happened to be tired from walking, so he meditated and rested under the big tree at the entrance of the village.
As a result, it didn't take much, just ten minutes, the villagers gathered around, and then someone hurriedly ran over. Gudong knelt in front of him and said that the gods would help him. He opened his eyes and saw that it was the girl's old father.
He quickly got up, helped the old man up, and asked about the past few months, only to find out the whole story.
It turned out that after he left, the girl's family was all on tenterhooks. Seeing the girl's belly getting bigger and bigger, they didn't know what was inside, and they were afraid of something happening every day.
They also went to the hospital for a check-up, and they said it was indeed a pregnancy reaction, and through X-rays, they could see that there was something in their stomach.
So they were even more frightened. No one knew what kind of child this beautiful young lady could have with Erlang Shen.
At that time, rural areas were also lagging behind. After this check-up, she never went there again. After a while, the girl felt that her stomach was moving, and her body was obviously different.
The biggest symptom is that she often has nightmares. There is always a horse-faced ghost in her dreams that scares her. Every time she wakes up, she is frightened.
Then I felt very irritable, and later I still had insomnia. I finally squinted for a while, but when I closed my eyes, the big ghost came.
The family asked a midwife who could feel her pulse to come over and take a look. She felt her pulse and told them that the baby in her belly was probably a ghost fetus.
Ghost fetuses are different from normal fetuses. Generally speaking, they can be delivered within three to four months, but no one knows what they will be like after they are born.
The midwife said that she had only encountered this kind of situation once in her life of delivering babies. At that time, the woman was also pregnant with a ghost fetus and gave birth more than four months ago. As a result, she gave birth to something neither human nor ghost, and it moved around. The whole family was frightened to death.
Because it was unlucky to give birth to a ghost fetus, the family put the ghost fetus in a bag and threw it directly into the mountains when it was dark.
This time, the midwife suspected that she also had a ghost fetus in her belly, because stories of gods and humans having sex in dreams have existed since ancient times, but in the eyes of an experienced midwife, most of them were actually nonsense and were done by ghosts. !
When the family heard this, they remembered what the Taoist priest said before and couldn't help but become afraid.
It happened that at this time, the girl had an inexplicable stomachache. After a short time, she was sweating profusely and rolling all over the floor.
The midwife was also a little panicked. Although she knew that this might be the work of evil spirits, she was helpless.
At this time, the family remembered the three talismans left by the Taoist priest, and hurriedly found them. After a moment of hesitation, they turned into water and gave it to the girl to drink.
