Chapter 27 Chapter Twenty-Six

The story tends to be complete and near the end. We present the unknown from beginning to end below. Decades ago, a group of naked peasants went into the city at night with loads of radishes in them. They took off their clothes for two reasons: One, because it is hot. Second, because of saving cloth. Those old people who still have some memories of distant things, if they have not completely forgotten the past suffering life, can understand the full meaning of the word "Saving Bu". This group of bare-bottomed men saw a strange sight at night: two men in black were walking unsteadily on the long street. The yellow paper on which the talisman was written hangs down on his face.In front was an old man with a strange appearance, carrying a bamboo basket and shaking a black bell. He led the two people behind him forward while throwing paper money.

"What do they do?" a young man with bare bottoms asked an old man. The old man showed fear and said, "You're dead." The young man continued to ask, "What do you mean?" The old man replied: "It's about exorcising corpses. The two men in black at the back are dead people, and the one walking in front is exorcising corpses." A person spoke up and said, "Brother Thumb, aren't you quite brave? Do you dare to snatch the hat from the dead body?" The young man said, "There's nothing you dare to do, just wait." This young man is Thumbs.

Thumb quickly caught up with the three men.He approached from behind on tiptoe, the mortician found him vigilantly, and immediately rang the copper bell, and the two corpses stood motionless by the wall. The mortician said softly: "If you drive in the middle of the night, strangers will avoid you." Thumb found that those leaning against the wall were indeed two dead men, with sallow faces, closed eyes, and yellow paper with symbols on their foreheads.Brother Thumb opened the talisman, and the dead man suddenly came back to life, and a powerful fist stretched out from under the robe, hitting Brother Thumb right on his lower abdomen.

Thumb was bent over in pain, and it took him a while to stand up, only to find that they had gone. Thumb thought about it for a long time, and found it very strange. A dead person can never walk, let alone hit someone with his fist. He followed the paper money on the ground all the way and never came back. After death, people pay attention to returning the fallen leaves to their roots, and they must be buried in their hometown.The last wish of a foreigner who dies in a foreign place must be to be buried in the tomb of his ancestors, and his filial sons and grandsons must be moved back to their hometown. However, people are very taboo about corpses, so there are no boats or carriages willing to transport them.Coupled with the underdeveloped transportation, rugged roads, and frequent trekking through mountains and rivers, this unique and mysterious profession of expelling corpses appeared.

Chasing corpses is actually carrying corpses.The mortician leads the way, and the apprentice follows behind with the dead body on his back. He walks day and night, walking like ghosts in the wilderness trails or secluded alleys, shaking copper bells, and throwing paper money. The familiar atmosphere makes people afraid to get close to it. The mortician must meet three conditions to recruit apprentices: short, ugly, and bold. At dawn, Brother Thumb found them in an inn.The mortician confessed the secret to Big Thumb. He claimed that his surname was Meng, from Xiangxi, and he took two dwarves as apprentices. These two dwarves were Ding Busan and Ding Busi.Thumb said that he would not talk bluntly, nor would he make things difficult for them.

Thumb became the third apprentice of the mortician. Thumbs up has parents, but is an orphan.His father was drinking all day long, his mother remarried to another country, and his home was not his home. At that time, he was just a grass in the field, no one cared about him, and his whole life would be over when his childhood was over. .He could have started to paste matchboxes for the family at the age of 14 like the children in the neighbor’s family. He had to paste thousands of matchboxes a day for several years. The house, I am old, the child grows up, and the child repeats the endless ordinary life of spring, summer, autumn and winter.

He chose to run away from home and embark on another unknown road. The mortician had a daughter who weighed 240 jin. She was Meng Ni, and her weight increased to 350 jin.The mortician wanted to recruit Thumb to be his son-in-law, but Thumb refused.He didn't dislike her being fat, he said this: "I hate women." After the death of the mortician, Thumbnail, Meng Ni, Ding Busan, and Ding Busi, the four of them formed an instrumental music team for weddings and funerals, and played suona and gongs and drums at weddings and funerals.There is a group of people like this in rural areas when they get married or mourn.Because of their strange appearance—two dwarfs, a woman fatter than a pig, and an ugly one—they were so popular that they attracted so much attention that the dutiful son at the funeral forgot to cry. The newlyweds forget to laugh.

This instrumental group was also the predecessor of the circus. After a while, the instrumental music team took in a new member. His name was Han Baosan, nicknamed "Sanwenqian". He could juggle, played the flute and made a cobra dance.Under San Wenqian's proposal, a circus appeared. Sanwenqian said this when describing the bright future: "Make a lot of money, buy whatever you want, order a table of wine and food, only eat one bite, travel every day, and see all the good places, but it's not enough." As we said before, San Wenqian looks like a murderer, with a pair of small eyes that are almost covered by unkempt eyebrows, always showing a fierce look, broad back, bow legs, strong muscles, and callused big hands. I have suffered a lot.Although Sanwenqian is very ugly, but Brother Thumb thinks he is simply a handsome man.

Thumbs hates women because - he likes men. At that time, it was considered indecent for a man and a woman to fall in love freely, and even a couple holding hands in the street would be despised and ridiculed. Homosexuality was undoubtedly a greater sin at that time, a kind of The act of being reviled by thousands of people is a big secret that can only be buried in the bottom of my heart. If it's not considered a blasphemy of love, we have to say—Brother Thumb fell in love with Sanwenqian. He fell in love with him. What kind of pain and struggle did they have? What kind of thrilling process did you go through from temptation to rejection to acceptance?

How many dark clouds must a man have before he can create and hide the fleeting lightning in another man? They wandered all over the world, peonies bloomed in other places, and apples fell in other places. In 1980, they bought a basket of rotten apples, and Big Brother peeled an apple, which was not a very bad apple in the basket of rotten apples, as can be seen from its shape.Put that apple on the table and keep it for three Wen. From that apple in 1980, they remained single until their death, neither married nor married, but they had a son.Sanwenqian picked up a freak in the trash can, he named the abandoned baby Han Shaojie, Ding Busan and Ding Busi called him Young Master Han, Meng Ni called him Datou, Sanwenqian and Big Brother called him for the son.

Master Han is withdrawn, introverted, and shy. This child's only hobby is to wear a raincoat. Only when it rains, only when he wears a raincoat, can he cover the big tumor on his neck and avoid being caught like a normal person. Onlookers, not ridiculed.We forgot to say one thing - on November 21, 2000, that day, he expressed his love for the first time and the last time, before he walked into that steamed stuffed bun shop, before he met the girl selling steamed stuffed buns, he I once asked the police to put on a raincoat for myself. Because the sun was shining brightly and it was not raining, the police rejected this seemingly absurd request. The total number of words he had spoken to her was no more than ten sentences, but each sentence was full of fragrance, which permeated the fragrance in the years after Young Master Han was behind bars. There is only one horse in their circus. Of course, all circuses have nothing to do with horses. Horses are used to pull carts, pull tents and various props.Later, the horse died and they ate it.When this grass-roots team reached the border, two new members were added: Ma Youzhai and Shanya. Ma Youzhai can juggle, Shan Ya is a monkey artist.The main reason why Brother Thumb allowed him to join was that they provided a new means of transportation. Shanya told Brother Thumb that there were elephants in the tropical jungle on the nearby mountain. They waited on the mountain for a week and captured a baby elephant. The baby elephant pulls the cart, grows bigger and bigger, and finally grows into an elephant, and eventually dies. The elephants died and they ate all winter.Elephants get smaller and smaller until only a skeleton remains.They used all their savings to buy a truck that was dying.Shan Ya served as the driver. At that time, his legs were still intact, and the truck sometimes got stuck in the mud. He used a jack to fight the storm. One winter, when they were on the bridge, the truck turned off and Shanya blocked the wheels with stones, so Ma Youzhai climbed under the truck to troubleshoot the problem.Because the ground was icy, the stones slid, and the truck slowly backed down the slope. If the truck was not stopped in time, Ma Youzhai under the truck would be crushed to death, and the whole truck would fall into the ditch under the bridge. Everyone shouted, and in a crisis, Shan Ya stretched his leg under the wheel, the truck stopped, and Shan Ya became crippled from then on. Later, when Shanya was arrested, Ma Youzhai asked Paozi to do everything possible to rescue Shanya. The father and son had this conversation: Paozi said, "Uncle Shan Ya is in prison, how can I save him? Unless he calls on the master, he will go to the prison with a gun." Ma Youzhai said: "Then rob the prison!" Paozi asked, "Why do you have to save him?" Ma Youzhai replied: "My life was bought with one of his legs." Paozi said, "The possibility of success is very small." Ma Youzhai said, "I just want him to know." Paozi asked, "Know what?" Ma Youzhai said: "Know that I am not an ungrateful person." Shan Ya heard the gunshots in the prison and understood everything. He jumped off the building not to escape, but to commit suicide. During the short time he was in the air before he hit the ground, those things that disappeared reappeared one by one.He remembered that they lit a bonfire on the snow outside the tent, the heavy snow was still falling, they were drinking, Ma Youzhai put his arm around Shanya's neck, and Big Brother put his arm around Sanwenqian's arm, one pair was brothers, the other pair were lovers, The circus is their home. Ma Youzhai: "I want to befriend you." Shan Ya: "Aren't you brothers now?" Ma Youzhai: "We have to hold a ceremony." Brother Thumb: "Let's go to my hometown and do fruit business with the Burmese when we have made money." Ma Youzhai: "We have forest farms, all of which are red pine trees. We can occupy a forest farm and hunt." Shanya: "My hometown has a mine. It used to be, but now it doesn't exist. Now there are only stones." Thumbs up: "The income these days is not as much as before." Shan Ya: "What if there is no income, what if no one comes to the circus?" Three Wenqian: "It's a big deal, I'm going to be a beggar." Big Brother: "I won't let you be a beggar, I will let you have a lot of money." Shan Ya: "If we break up, we won't be able to see each other at that time." Ma Youzhai: "There is no feast that never ends." Shan Ya: "At that time, only the small cigarette pack was with me. You didn't know why you went there." Now that the story is coming to an end, it is necessary to talk about another family member of the circus—the cigarette pack.The drugged-up monkey spent several years at the zoo before being released into a wildlife sanctuary. Also, we can't forget the thief, the kid who stole a bunch of bananas at the zoo: Balang. Balang's mother, Gu Li, was aging rapidly, which caused her skin and meat business to plummet. Sometimes, no client looked at her for half a month, and she finally had to take Balang back to her hometown.They grew cotton and lavender. In order to prevent the child from being mischievous, Gu Li sent him to school.This should be a very bad ending for Baron. When this happy little elf wanders in the lavender fields, when he is in a daze in class, he sometimes thinks of his puppy brother, the little boy named Wangwang should be back home! Now let's talk about Meng Ni's ending. For a long time, Meng Ni felt that she was the happiest woman in the world, and she was loved by two men.These two men are both dwarves and look exactly alike. When did their love come about? What were they thinking as they walked with the dead body on their backs? How did winter pass? How do rose flowers bloom quietly? How does the dawn shine on the orange trees in May, and how does the rain wet the sorghum in October? As long as you have love in your heart, you will know all the secrets. They express lovesickness with the voice of magpies, pass letters with spring flowers and autumn leaves, and express their hearts with moon and starlight and even the whole universe.When the mortician decided to marry Meng Ni to Big Brother, one of the two dwarves wept in the south of the city and the other in the north of the city. They gave birth to each other, hatred from the older brother, love from the younger.Their hearts were as hot as fire, but they were as cold and ruthless as the two poles of the world.My brother didn't talk to Meng Ni for three days, and three days was already the limit he could bear.On the fourth day, Ding Busan asked Meng Ni: "Ni, are you getting married?" Meng Ni replied: "I want to marry you." After Ding Busan left, Ding Busi came to ask Meng Ni: "I know you want to be a wife for Brother Thumb, don't you?" Meng Ni replied, "I want to be your wife." She loves two men, and she can't choose between her brother and her brother.It wasn't until later that she realized that what she really loved was her younger brother.She once took Ding Busi to the Civil Affairs Bureau, and she said to the person in charge of marriage registration: "I want to get married." The person from the Civil Affairs Bureau asked her, "Where is your husband? I mean, where is your fiancé?" Her husband is under her skirt. The shy dwarf would not come out, he would not hurt his brother. Many years later, Ding Busan died, and Ding Busi was shot. Meng Ni was already Meng's mother-in-law who killed dogs and sold meat. Granny Meng brought back Ding Busi's body from the execution ground. In the village where Sophora japonica flowers were in full bloom, Granny Meng lay down on a pile of straw at the neighbor’s house and slept for a while. The sun shone warmly at noon in winter, and the straw stack was right by the roadside. Incomparable body.She took a nap like no one else was there, snoring like thunder. People didn't understand why she slept here, but people clearly remembered that it was the last time they saw her. A year later, the local road was demolished, and people found that the door of Granny Meng's house was nailed from the inside by wooden strips.Through the dilapidated windows eaten by termites, you can see that the plastic flowers on the table inside the house are covered with dust and cobwebs.The demolition workers split open the door with an ax—the lonely old man was found dead. She was lying on the bed, turned into a skeleton, and there was another skeleton lying beside her.