Taboos in the Underworld: Starting from being paid a lot of money to beg for a child

After all the thrust was removed, Master Wang still didn't stop, and kept waving the bamboo branch up and down in his hand.

He cursed loudly at the same time.

This reminds me of the previous scene in the village where deceased people burned their funeral homes.

In the past, when someone died in the village, on the day of burial, they would find a wide place and ask a master to build a spiritual house there using strips and paper of various colors. The spiritual house was usually square and similar to the shape of an ordinary house. Not much difference.

The roof is made of black tiles and paper with white edges, and is more than one meter high. Two or three meters wide, it looks beautiful.

Usually around 11 o'clock in the evening, the spirit house will be burned. When burning the spirit house, some young people will be asked to hold bamboo branches and form a circle with their backs to the spirit house. After lighting the fire, everyone will circle around and hold the The bamboo branches were swept up and down towards the outside, and they kept swearing in their mouths, saying that they were afraid of wild monsters coming to rob the house, so they had to drive them away.

And now this Master Wang is the same as those at the vigil, but his movements and sounds are much more exaggerated.

After Master Wang finished scolding, he threw the bamboo branch towards grandma's grave, then took my hand and ran to his house without saying anything.

At this time, the rain gradually became lighter.

Entering Master Wang's house, both sides of the hall were lined with large and small paper figurines. Those paper figurines were made lifelike by Master Wang. Some were upright, some were bowing, some were squatting, and some were bowing.

Even the expressions on the face are painted very vividly, especially the blush on the cheeks and the copper coin marks on the lips.

Red like a fire.

Because the door of the main room was open, a stream of cold wind poured into the room, making the papers swish and sway in the wind.

I shivered all over. After being frightened by the thing on my grandma's grave just now, I no longer have much resistance to these things.

"Master Wang, I..."

I said with trembling all over, the temperature in Hunan in early spring was very low, and being drenched by the heavy rain, I already couldn't bear it. Master Wang was also wet all over. He just pointed to a door inside and said:

"You go to the stove to light a fire and cook, and I'll go change clothes."

I nodded, walked to the stove house, grabbed a bunch of leaves from the firewood pile beside the stove and started to light a fire. After a while, the fire was already burning brightly.

Master Wang changed into dry clothes, took a small stool and sat next to me and said:

"Are you here because of your sister?"

I originally wanted to ask what the mysterious figure on the grave that looked like my grandma was, but as soon as he mentioned my sister, I nodded quickly and said:

"Yes, Master Wang, my sister screamed just after the thunder in the sky, and then I went to hug her, and she foamed at the mouth and fainted. My dad said it was because the thunder scared her away, so I Come and ask you to come and take a look.”

"Haha, your dad just doesn't want to make you sad. In fact, it's not the thunder that scares him, he's just scared by you."

Master Wang added firewood to the stove as he spoke, his tone calm and without any surprise at all.

I quickly asked:

"Why are you scared of me? I'm her brother. She liked me the most when she was little."

Master Wang shook his head, stood up and brought over an aluminum pot. He put the aluminum pot on the stove and added water to it while saying: "To be precise, I'm not scared by you, but by the yin energy in your body. What have you done recently? Why is your yin energy so strong?"

"Master Wang, don't pursue this now. Since you know the reason, please help me and treat my sister. Let's go to my house now, okay?" Seeing Master Wang preparing to boil water, I couldn't help but feel a little anxious. .

Master Wang said, "Don't worry. It will be fine once you get out. I can't help her now. She will be fine if she gets some sunshine after dawn."

"It was raining just now, will there be sunshine tomorrow?"

Now I'm afraid of the sun because I can't touch it at all.

"Well, yes, you don't have to worry too much about your sister. What you should worry about more is yourself." Master Wang's face was heavy.

This is the third person who has said this to me. The two old men in front of me met by chance, but I have known Master Wang for many years. Although I was disrespectful to him before, he did not argue with me, but said calmly. Something went wrong with me.

I didn't ask what was going on. These were meaningless. It was difficult for me to understand what happened recently. I felt that even if Master Wang told me the reasons, it would be difficult for me to understand.

I just opened my eyes and looked at Master Wang and asked sincerely:

"Then what should I do? Can you help me?"

Master Wang didn't answer me, he just stared at the dancing fire in the earthen stove, his face looked extremely heavy.

I looked at the little reflections of fire reflected in his eyes, and seemed to see some hope.

Although he didn't answer me, at least he didn't avoid my question.

Master Wang was in a daze for a while and said:

"Have you tried to see if the water in the pot is hot?"

I opened the lid and put my hand into the water. It was already hot, but it was still within the range of my body's tolerance.

I nodded: "It's already hot, but it's not hot yet. It's not good enough to take a shower."

I thought he boiled water for bathing. After all, you just got caught in the rain. If you don't take a hot bath as soon as possible, you will easily catch a cold.

Master Wang stood up and said, "Then it will burn for a while longer, and you can add more firewood."

"Yeah" I agreed and watched Master Wang turn around and enter the bedroom next door.

After about a minute or two, Master Wang came out and made a fist with his right hand, as if there was something hidden in it.

He said, try again and see if the water is hot.

I opened the lid of the pot again and slowly put my hand into the water. When my fingertips touched the water, it felt very hot. I didn't dare to reach down anymore. I quickly pulled my hand back and said to Master Wang:

"It's already very hot."

Master Wang put his right hand on the aluminum pot, rubbed it slowly a few times, then opened his palm, and mixed some black powder into the hot water. The powder looked like black ash.

Master Wang found two dirty black rags and placed them on the handles on both sides of the aluminum pot. Then he picked up the aluminum pot and said to me:

"You bear with me."

As soon as he finished speaking, before I could react, he quickly poured all the hot water in the pot onto me.

I subconsciously wanted to hide, but still couldn't.

When the whole pot of sleep came into contact with my body, I was ready to be burned.

I don't know what Master Wang means. He is not afraid of scalding me even if he pours such hot water on me.

Just when I felt confused, a cold and biting feeling spread throughout my body, and I kept shivering.

This feeling is much colder than the feeling of being caught in the rain just now.

It's like someone poured a bucket of water with ice cubes on you, and then blew a big electric fan on you like crazy.

The heat in the body was rapidly drained, and the whole person became more and more exhausted.

How is this going? I couldn't even feel the temperature brought by the flames in the stove. Everything in my body was just cold, a kind of coldness that penetrated deep into my bones.

But that was clearly a pot of scalding water. Why did I feel so cold?

My consciousness became more and more blurred. I recalled the cold feeling when I walked out into the sun in the morning. Compared with now, it was not cold at all.

The cold now seems to freeze me to death anytime, anywhere.

Gradually I couldn't hold on any longer, and my body slowly fell to the right, and finally I lay on my side on the short bench I made, my body shaking constantly.

When Master Wang saw that I was already lying down, he put down the aluminum pot, added a spoonful of water to the aluminum pot, took out three raw eggs from the sideboard and threw them into the pot, and added a few pieces of wood to the stove. .

After doing this, he took out a dry thick branch from behind and whipped it on me.

It wasn't just the branch of a tree. Even though I was wearing quite a lot of clothes, it still hurt when it hit my body, a burning pain.

This pain was in stark contrast to the cold feeling that spread throughout the province.

It is simply the legendary world of ice and fire.

Master Wang smacked his mouth and muttered some unintelligible words.

I opened my mouth to ask Master Wang what he was doing, but no sound came out at all.

But what makes me happy is that with Master Wang's continuous beating, my consciousness gradually became clearer.

And what makes me feel even more comfortable is that I can directly feel the warmth brought by the fire in the stove.

Very warm and comfortable...