Chapter 218 Chapter 54: The Old Man in the Spiritual House

"One hundred and one?" Xuan Po's eyes widened. Luo Fu's tears came out again: "If foxes are also considered human beings, you are indeed the one hundred and first. I don't want to remember so clearly, I only remember how many men I slept with, and I don't remember what each man looked like , even though I shared the bed with them." A large teardrop slid down her left cheek.Xuan Po felt distressed for a while. Xuan Po stretched out a hand to wipe the tears on her face. Luo Fu pinched Xuan Po's wrist, and she couldn't help crying even more because of Xuan Po's gentle movements or because she remembered the terrible past.More tears flowed like a fountain.

"My favorite poor scholar, but he is not one of them. That abominable fox is the first." Luo Fu's lips were bitten by teeth, blood came out, and bright red slowly crawled out from the corner of his mouth.Usually there is someone else's blood. "And you are the only person I've ever slept with who won't hurt you." Xuan Po nodded: "Don't say it, Luo Fu, don't say it." He grabbed Luo Fu's shoulder with both hands and shook it gently. I don't know, when my father counted his life on the abacus, whether he counted a person like Xuan Po, whether he counted a womanizer and a man who didn't kill him.Perhaps this was irrelevant to Grandpa, so it was not mentioned in the manuscript.However, the shrewd Gui Taoist priests must have missed it, and this was the most erroneous mistake of the Gui Taoist priests.He originally wanted to use that poem to attract the attention of a womanizer, but he never expected that she would fall in love with the person who read the poem, let alone that the person who read and listened to the poem would actually expose his lie.

That night, Grandpa fell ill.After all, the age has come, and the day and night of drawing symbols has exhausted Grandpa's physical strength.Coupled with his non-stop smoking, lung disease is more frequent. Grandpa was lying on the bed, his lips were pale.He called his grandma and asked her to help him go to Wentian Village to find an old man who was a spirit house. I haven't mentioned the old man in Wentian Village who is a spirit house before. He is too old, and he pants very badly when he walks. carry such a large load.So it gives people a feeling that they are going to die soon, and maybe they will fly away and return to the west in one night.

This old man has no children and lives in a cramped alley in Wentian Village.Sometimes, my mother and I have to go through that alleyway when we go to grandpa's house. Of course, we can go around it by another way.If the weather is a little more humid, my mother and I will not walk that lane, and would rather walk around it.I only pass there occasionally on sunny days to take a shortcut. Because there are old houses on both sides of the laneway, the walls are much higher than ordinary houses.Moreover, most of the old houses are no longer inhabited, lack of maintenance, and the walls and tiles are toppled.

When my mother and I passed by, we were always worried that those crooked walls would fall down, and we always wanted to pass through this alleyway quickly.However, if it rains, the drainage in the alley is not smooth, and the mud is very deep, and it is easy to fall if you walk too fast.Therefore, my mother and I would rather walk more than take the shortcut there. The old man who worked as a spiritual house lived in that alley, except for occasional chopping of bamboo to buy paper, other times he lived at home.Passers-by outside only need to hear the sound of chopping bamboo in his room to know that the old man is still alive, and they can also predict that someone nearby has died.Because the old man's masterpiece, the spirit house, can only be used at funerals.

I don't know from which dynasty this kind of funeral became popular. After a person dies, relatives always burn something for him.I have heard that valuables are buried with many other places, maybe this is similar to burning things.In our place, on the day of burial, houses made of paper and bamboo are burned for the dead, so that the dead have a place to live in the underworld.It is also necessary to burn some gold and silver mountains for the deceased. Of course, gold and silver are difficult to burn, so they also use paper and bamboo to make the shape of a mountain, and then draw many ingots on the paper.

The spirit house uses bamboo as the skeleton, and then glues white paper on the outside, and then draws doors and windows on the white paper.When burning the soul house, one person is needed to take care of it. The soul house cannot fall down once it is burned. The paper must first burn the skeleton and stand there, and then the skeleton will burn slowly.If the white paper on the spiritual house falls down before being burnt out, the spiritual house will not be given to the deceased intact.For this responsibility, one must blame the person who burns the spirit house for not being able to maintain it;

Therefore, not everyone can make a spiritual house, and it was considered a special craft in the countryside at that time. The old man in Wentian Village is especially good at this.Without children to support, it is not enough to rely on the help of the village, so he earns some money to buy oil and salt by this craft, and wins everyone's respect. Although I know this person, I don't remember his face at all.Although I often went to my grandfather's house at that time and passed by there often, I rarely saw him face to face. Several times when I came back from my grandfather’s house, my grandfather wanted to send me over a mountain between Wentian Village and Huamei Village. Many times my grandfather sent me to the door of this old man’s house and then stopped.I continued to walk home, but Grandpa turned around and entered the old man's house.I can guess what Grandpa will talk to him about, not about hell, but about the past when they were young.

Unless someone came to ask him for help, grandpa generally didn't like to talk about alchemy with someone casually.It is estimated that the same is true of the old man who works as a spiritual house.Sometimes, I feel that people of their generation are like supporting actors on the stage. Thinking of them, I can't help but sigh, and feel that the vicissitudes of life are a kind of cruelty. Grandma walked to the old and shrinking alley in the night, and knocked on the old man's door. "Tuk Tuk Tuk—" The sound of knocking on the door awakened a sleeping dog inside the door.

"Wow——" The earth dog responded to the knock on the door, but woke up the old man in the back room. "Who--" came an old voice.Because the walls on both sides of the alley were very high, the sound could not come out of the alley. "It's me, Ma Yueyun." Grandma didn't give her own name, but her grandfather's.