Chapter 38 Section thirty-seven

The old man said gently: "Yes." The old man was calm on the surface, like a calm pool of water, but he always felt that there was something like a carp under the pool, stirring up the torrent below. "Since you have raised it, why should you confine it after death? Could it be that all the things that the dead once owned must be kept after death?" he guessed.Before his grandma died, she did not want her children to change her into new clothes so as to preserve her dignity when she was dying.Because his grandma knew that after she passed away, everything she had used would have to be burned on the day of the funeral so that she could still use it "over there".She was reluctant to waste the new clothes and wanted to leave them to the living.Could it be that the purpose of confinement of the cat's soul is to let it "over there" still accompany its former owner?

The old man said: "This is about an event that happened a long time ago. About two hundred years ago, a man went to visit his distant relatives. He passed an inn in the evening and decided to rest for a night and start his journey the next day. The innkeeper enthusiastically arranged a room for her. When she lay down to sleep, she was hurt by a hard object on the bed. She got up and saw that there was a peach wood wedge nailed to the bed. She wanted to put The wedge was pulled out, and as soon as her hand touched the wedge, she heard a shrill meow. Immediately afterwards, the light in the room became much darker. She looked back and saw a thin woman standing by the window with a pale face. It was that woman who blocked the moonlight She rushed out of the door in fright, and hurriedly called the innkeeper. When the boss came to the room with a lantern on, the woman was nowhere to be found. The boss said that there is no other female guest tonight except her. "

At this time, a gust of wind blew by, and the wind was not cold, but he couldn't help shivering. "She asked the boss, is there a cat in the store? The boss said, there is no cat, but there is a dog. At least it can prevent thieves. When she saw the boss saying this, she suspected that her eyes were dizzy and her ears were ringing, and she had an illusion for a while. The boss comforted her and was about to leave with the lantern. She asked again, "Boss, but there is someone on the bed?" The wooden wedge that jumped out, it hurts when you sleep, can I pull it out? The boss's face changed drastically when he heard her say this, and he said in horror, absolutely not! Seeing the boss like this, she knew that he had something to hide The boss saw that he had exposed his flaws, so he explained helplessly, this female guest officer, I usually don’t rent this house to others. The other rooms are already full today, so I have no choice but to let you live here To be honest, before the inn was built, it was a deserted cemetery. After the inn was built, I often saw a woman moving around in this room. I didn’t dare to say anything for the sake of business, so I secretly called a Taoist priest to come and see , The Taoist priest told me to nail a peach wood wedge on the side of the bed. Then he disappeared.” The old man pointed to the wooden wedge on the cat’s grave, giving him the illusion that it was the wooden wedge that had been nailed to the bed.

He remembered that when his mother burned paper for grandma, she also said that she heard a cat meowing.