This quarrel continued for a while, and finally ended with the boss turning around and leaving. The eldest son walked straight to his father's coffin, knelt on the ground and sobbed silently. Seeing that the farce was over, the onlookers gradually dispersed, everyone talking about their own things.
The current time is close to 11 o'clock at night. According to the ancient time, this moment already belongs to Zi hour. Generally speaking, Zi Shi and Wu Shi are the dividing points. The six hours from Noon to Zi Shi are the process of Yang Qi changing from strong to weak from noon to night, but the opposite is true from Zi Shi to Noon. Since it is the time when yin and yang meet, generally speaking, noon time is the time when yang energy is the strongest, while zi hour is the time when yin energy is the most intense. In principle, the moment when Yin Qi is full is also the moment when the souls of the dead are easiest to gather and sense.
Therefore, in many places, especially in the countryside, if someone dies, a vigil is usually held. This is to let the deceased know that they are being memorialized.
Looking at it like this, Uncle Zhou must have waited until 12 o'clock before he was willing to go back. With almost an hour left, I started walking around and observing the construction of this family's mourning hall. This is an earthen house. Most houses in rural areas have a small courtyard. The first room after entering is the main room, which is used to receive guests and is also the face of the family. Old Wang's coffin was parked in the main room, and outside the threshold was a paper-burning brazier. In this village, most elderly people will prepare coffins for themselves in advance and choose a piece of land for burial after they die. Obviously, Lao Wang was no exception. Judging from the paint already applied on the coffin, this coffin must not have been prepared just before his death.
In the main room where the coffin is placed, outsiders, except for relatives of one's own family, generally do not enter. They all stand outside the door to worship. So I didn't go in and take a closer look. At this moment, I saw a black, short shadow flash past in the main room where the coffin was parked.
Out of professional instinct, it caught my attention immediately. I started looking for Mr. Wang’s family at the scene. The eldest, second, their wives, and the third were all outside the house that I could see. Only the 30-year-old son who was crying and making a fuss was missing. .
Among the people who were able to enter the main room, this child is the only one I can't find. So I was thinking that maybe I was worrying too much. The black figure just now must be the child, when suddenly there was a panic from the main room. of cries. That voice was the voice of a child, the voice of the third son.
The child's voice was already relatively sharp. In the middle of the night, when the number of worshipers was gradually decreasing, the cry was even more distinct. After hearing his son's cry, the third child called out a few times. After noticing that the child was in the main room where the coffin was parked, she quickly walked in. When she passed by me, I paid attention to her expression. She seemed a little annoyed. She probably thought why this naughty child was acting like this. Disobedient, I just got into trouble and got into a fight with my eldest brother, now why am I running into the main room to cause trouble again.
But less than a minute after the third child walked into the main room to look for the child, I heard her cry out in terror. This time everyone present was shocked, even me. The third child is already in his thirties, how could he be so ignorant of the rules and yell in front of his father's coffin? The eldest brother and the second child stood up and rushed into the main room. Soon the eldest brother walked out with the third child in his arms, while the second child supported the third child and followed him out. The third child looked pale, as if he had been hurt by something. frightened.
The boss put the child on the ground. The child was still crying and kicking his legs on the ground, looking very resistant. The eldest son looked a little anxious, so he asked the child what happened and why he started crying. The child didn't answer, but kicked his legs as hard as he could, causing a lot of dust on the ground to rise. The eldest child turned around and asked the third child what happened. At this moment, the child in the eldest child's arms suddenly stiffened his arms and legs, stiffened his body, and began to twitch.
Now even I was frightened. Is this a case of strangulation? The eldest son saw that the child was convulsing badly, so he laid the child down on the ground. When the third child saw the child's appearance, he ignored his own panic and crawled over on his hands and knees and started calling his child's name. After the child twitched for a while, he quickly calmed down and did not respond to the calls of his mother and everyone.
This made me feel a little puzzled, so I asked Uncle Zhou, is there a doctor in the village? Hurry up and call for a doctor. Uncle Zhou also looked a little anxious. He said that the nearest doctors were in the next village. It was so late now and the mountain road was not easy to walk. When the doctors were invited, they might not be able to help. When I looked at the child, I felt as if he was absent-minded. His eyes only opened a small slit. Through the slit, you could see the lower half of the black eyelids, which meant that his eyelids were turned upward. Both hands and feet were placed flat in a regular manner, but the sole of his left foot was crossed over his right foot in a pigeon-toed shape. He looked very much like people of our generation, the kind of standard that would be worn when taking pictures in a photo studio. And the artificial posture. The child's hands are hanging on both sides of the body, but the fingers of the right hand are slightly raised, forming an angle of about 45 degrees with the ring finger.
I couldn't help but push through the crowd and walked in, squatting down next to the child. I originally thought that the child might have an epileptic seizure or epilepsy, but I always felt that something was wrong, because I had seen these two diseases in the past. Yes, so I know that when I get sick, I won't be as calm as I am now, and I will definitely twitch from time to time. But the child in front of me has a very peaceful expression, with tears hanging from the corners of his eyes, but he is motionless. If it weren't for his breathing The undulating abdomen looked no different from that of a dead person.
I reached out to hold the child's hand, but found that it was extremely stiff, as if he was secretly trying to resist external force. A ten-year-old child shouldn't have such strength. It was only then that I realized that this child was not suffering from epilepsy. His current condition must be caused by other reasons, and this reason had nothing to do with the disease.
Before I came here, I promised Aunt Xu that I would not reveal my knowledge of occult arts to anyone. Because the social customs are not good, this kind of display may attract people with bad intentions. Although there were not many people at Old Man Wang's funeral, there were still so many pairs of eyes staring at me at the moment. But if I were asked to leave this child and act stupid, I felt that I still couldn't do it. Master once said that there are nine doctors out of ten. Although we are not doctors, we do the same things as doctors. We use different methods to save others. Should so-called doctors abandon the principle of saving the world in order to protect themselves? ?
At the moment, I didn't have time to think about it in detail. Regardless of Uncle Zhou's obstruction, I reached out and opened the child's eyelids. The boss of the Wang family yelled at me and said, "What are you doing?" I told him, "Let me see, maybe I can help." And I told him that if the child is not saved now, he may not be able to be saved.
I am indeed not lying. After liberation, many people began to accept the new society and new trends of thought. Some old traditions were not widely known because they were too mysterious. When atheism education began to sweep across the country, At that time, any theist was put on the opposite side of class to some extent. Although Master and I were respected by others in the past and would take the initiative to visit others when they encountered troubles, but if we think about it carefully, most of the reasons why they came to visit us were because they had nothing to do. At this moment, Master and I are both Not counting their life-savers, but at most life-saving straws. After all, we are different from doctors. We live in the dark side of society and morality. Helping people and saving people should be regarded as a professional duty in our opinion, but in the eyes of those seeking help Later, most of them became a transaction of taking money to eliminate disasters.
Therefore, when most people, including myself, encounter some sudden and incomprehensible situations, they tend to associate such things with diseases. Fortunately, I can investigate the cause, otherwise I will wait until the treatment is fruitless before seeking help from metaphysics. , in fact it was already too late, at least the time to seek medical treatment was delayed.
After hearing what I said, the boss of the Wang family said nothing. The child lying on the ground had the same expression as before. If he were a normal person, even a vegetative state, or even if he had fallen asleep, if I reached out to touch his eyelids, he would blink instinctively, but this child's eyes remained motionless. The light on the mourning hall was very bright. When I opened my eyelids, I found that the child's pupil was already a big black dot. This was obviously inconsistent with logic, because the stronger the light, the smaller the pupil will be. It is said that the eyes know how to control this. Depending on the amount of light entering, the child's reaction at this moment can only tell me one conclusion, that is, the child's body is still alive, but his consciousness is no longer under his control. In other words, my touch, including the light that his eyes are exposed to , he couldn't feel it anymore.
Seeing this situation, based on experience, the child's soul is no longer in the body for some reason.
In the view of Taoists, the human body is just a container, and the thing that controls this container is the soul. The soul is divided into two parts: soul and soul, with a total of three souls and seven souls. The soul is only called the soul when the physical body is not dead. If the physical body dies, the soul is exactly the same as a ghost. What usually causes the separation of the soul and the body is a violent impact, a sudden fright, or a squeeze from an external force.
Based on what just happened, violent impact is obviously the first thing to be ruled out. If the child suddenly cried in the main room, it must have been frightened. But since he chose to cry, it means that at least when he cried, the child's The soul and the body are in sync, which means that although such a fright can make the child cry, it will not scare the soul out of the body. Then there is only the last possibility left, which is to be squeezed out by external forces.
Thinking of this, I couldn't help but look at the main room where the coffin was parked.
