This shows that someone has come here to worship, not long ago. The roof of this tomb, the color of the stones, etc. are all obviously newer than the other tombs, so I concluded that this small tomb was the last of the seven or eight tombs to be built.
This discovery made me a little excited, because since arriving here, I have been wondering who the little boy led by the landlord is. Even if I asked old villagers like Tian Deping, they didn't know. So at this moment, I began to stubbornly believe that the grave I found was that of the child.
There is a custom in rural areas that if a child dies under minors, it is called "death in infancy." Children who die young are usually described by the elderly as not having enough cultivation in their previous lives and not being able to fully cultivate themselves as human beings in this life, so they never grow up. Therefore, when dealing with the funeral of children, there are many bad habits spread in rural areas.
For example, water burial is placed on a bamboo raft and floated down the river. If it sinks in the water, it is regarded as reincarnation. However, this is extremely bad for the soul of the deceased. It binds the ghost in the water for life, isolated from the world and never sees the light of day. Another method is to dig a hole and bury it casually in the mountains and forests. The reason why they are buried in the mountains and forests is that they will not see the light of day. Moreover, it is difficult to find graves in the mountains and forests. It is not easy for the living people to find the graves, so they gradually lose their concern.
Such bad habits are extremely unfair in treating the souls of children. Although the tomb in front of you is buried with other large tombs, there is no inscription on it, which means that this child is a nameless person. Even if such a child has a good tomb, he will not be able to find his own when he gets to the city. The name, the city god refused to accept, could not leave, could not go back, and naturally turned into a lonely ghost, wandering around from then on, until one day it exhausted itself and disappeared.
I asked Tian Deping, this small grave may be the grave of the child your daughter saw. Do you know who is buried here? Tian Deping shook his head and said he didn't know. He only knew that the landlord was an only son, married to a wife, and had a child. However, they left the village together, and the child was still alive when they left, and she was a girl. This small tomb had been there long before the landowner left the village. However, we people in the mountains had little knowledge. We only knew that this was a tomb, but we never thought about whether the person buried there was a man or a woman, old or young.
However, Tian Deping said that despite this, he can help me ask others. The farmland here is cultivated by a villager in the village. He knows this villager and can call and inquire. I looked at the sky. It was almost 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and there were still almost two hours until dark, so I thought this was not bad. If this villager knew something about the situation, it could save me a lot of time, at least I would save money. I had no time to investigate by myself, so I agreed to Tian Deping and asked him to help me invite the villager.
While waiting for Tian Deping, I was the only one in the entire tomb group and on the mountain. The incense of my soldiers and horses has been burned out, and the soldiers and horses have completed their mission and brought me to the next clue. There was no water source on the mountain, so I couldn't use the water bowl to check whether the tomb was that of the child. I could only pass the time by walking around.
Fortunately, people in the village walked faster, and soon Tian Deping brought a slightly older villager over. Although this villager was not young, he was still in good health. Tian Deping gave a brief introduction, but he did not tell the villagers that I was a Taoist. So I asked about the situation of the small tomb to see what the villagers knew. The villager told me that he usually helps sort out the weeds and clean the tomb here, but in recent years he has not had time to come here specifically. Yes, as for the smallest grave, I have seen people come to worship it on the first day of October every year.
The first day of October is the Winter Clothes Festival. In some places, it is also called the "Cold Food Festival". It is the day every year when the dead are given warm clothes. Because the weather is getting colder, they are afraid that the dead will have no clothes to survive the winter. The Winter Clothes Festival, along with Qingming Festival and Zhongyuan Festival, are the three major days for Chinese people to worship the deceased. On this day, people usually go to the tomb of the deceased and burn some paper clothes and shoes.
I asked the villager, is the person who came to worship someone from the village? Can it still be found? The villagers said that she was from the village, a widow from Tian's family. Before liberation, she and her husband worked as a groom for the landlord, and the other worked as a maid at the landlord's house. I asked him again, who is buried in this grave? Is it the widow's husband? The villager shook his head and said no. His husband was buried in another place. In this grave, it was said that there was a half-year-old child.
In this way, I confirmed the identity of the owner of the tomb. It was the child held by the landlord. Judging from the description of the Tian sisters, this child was dressed in rags and came from a poor family. So why would such a child be buried with the predecessors of a wealthy family like a landlord? The ghost of the landlord came to seek revenge on Tian Xiaofang, so why was he holding the ghost of this child? This widow only worked as a servant in the landlord's house, so she had no reason to come to the grave to worship. But now that she is here, why does she only worship this grave and ignore other graves?
Although I am young and have never seen many such ill-mannered parents, it is not difficult for me to imagine that, if my guess is correct, the child in the grave should be the child of this widow. And the father of this child should be the landlord!
Many of the landlord class in the old society had a similar situation. Moreover, in that chaotic era, it was relatively normal for a rural landowner to have three wives and four concubines. Maybe one day the landowner would fall in love with the maid at home and give birth to a child. However, due to the family's reputation, he could not give the child a family identity, so he could only let the maid raise him as a child without a father. . Later, the child died, but after all, it was his own child, and it was a boy, so he was buried with the family's predecessors. However, although the child returned to the ancestral position, he was still nameless and had no status, so the tombstone was not included. There is no engraving either.
In this way, everything can make sense. The ghost of the landowner returned here and has been lingering around here. He must also care about this child in his heart.
It was getting late now, and including the time to go down the mountain, it was almost dark when we reached the village. So I thanked the villagers and went down the mountain with Tian Deping. First of all, I needed to confirm my guess. If the widow had come to worship the child last year, she would definitely feel sorry for the child's soul wandering around. Not to mention being with a hanged man. Secondly, even if I was brave, I would not dare to stay in a dark cemetery after dark. I had already experienced the quiet and eerie atmosphere when I followed my master to dig the nuns' graves for the first time.
After going down the mountain, under the guidance of the villagers, we found the widow's home. It was an old lady in her sixties. When we approached, she was cooking. Tian Deping told me that the widow took her husband's surname, so she was also named Tian, but no one knew her original surname. It is said that she stayed in the village when she fled, and the landowner who took her in was the one who took her in. She has a son who is also a farmer in the village. I guess that this son should be the child of the widow and her late husband, and the half-brother of the child in the grave.
Everyone in the village knew Tian Deping, so he stepped forward to express his intention and briefly introduced me. When I asked about the tomb, the widow became a little wary. I thought it was better not to deceive her at this time, so I honestly told her what I was investigating and my occupation, but I didn't mention what happened to the Tian family's daughter.
After hearing what I said, the widow held the hem of her clothes in her hands and didn't speak for a long time, as if she was considering whether she should believe what I said. In order to dispel her doubts, I relayed the description of the child by the youngest daughter of the Tian family to the widow. After hearing this, the widow trembled slightly with her hands and began to wipe her tears silently. She said softly, no wonder I burn clothes for him every year, but he still often comes to me in his dreams, saying that he is cold and hungry.
Her words were equivalent to admitting that the child was her own son, and basically confirmed that my speculation was correct.
This child originally died young and has long since become a lonely ghost without a name or status. Although the landlord should not have any ill intentions towards this child, the landlord is still a hanged ghost after all. When the two ghosts come together, they will actually influence each other. Yes, this is also very bad for the child himself, because the landlord committed suicide. Counting from the time of death, the tragic situation of his death will be repeated every 7 days. As time goes by, the resentment will become more and more serious. , then it will be difficult to tell this apparently harmless child.
If I want to take away the ghost of this child, it is actually not difficult. Assuming that it will not resist, I only need one thing that belongs to it. With a little ritual, I can collect it as a soldier and keep it under my altar from now on. With practice, given time, one can transcend. It’s just that the ghost of the landowner may not let me do this. So I said to the widow, I am here this time to help you give birth to your child as soon as possible. Do you still have anything from his lifetime? The widow said that there was also a plain silver safety lock, which was given to her by the landlord secretly when she gave birth to her child, saying that he wanted the child to take it with him so that he could grow up.
After saying that, she walked into the house, and after a while she took out a piece of jewelry wrapped in floral cloth. When she opened it, she saw that it was a Ruyi lock hanging around the baby's neck. It had turned yellow and black. I told the widow, please let me keep this thing temporarily, and I will return it after I send your child away. But the widow shook her head and said there was no need to return it, and sent him away. Please help me bury this lock in front of his grave.
Farewell to the widow, I can only stay one more night at Tian Deping's house tonight. After dinner, I was lying in bed wondering what direction to take to solve the problem the next day. The situation in front of me was basically clear and complete. All I needed to do was take away these two ghosts. After all, the ghost of the landlord was more difficult, so I decided to go to the grave the next day and set up a town in advance to isolate the landlord from the children, giving me time to take away the ghosts of the children. Although this will inevitably anger the landlords again, there is not much that can be done.
After a tiring day, I fell asleep quickly. But when I was sleeping until midnight, I was awakened by a slight touch. It felt like there was a little bug crawling on the bridge of my nose. There were no windows in my room, but the light switch was on the wall next to the bed, so I turned on the light in a daze. It didn't matter, it almost scared the shit out of me.
A man with inverted triangular eyes, a livid face, and a landlord's round hat on his head. He has raised eyebrows and squinted his eyes to reveal a stiff smile. The skin at the corners of his eyes showed many wrinkles due to the deliberate smile. His mouth was slightly open, a long tongue stretched out, and he was licking the tip of my nose...
