Chapter 110 Sign
Not to mention the confusion and curiosity of the two uninvited onlookers who had come to watch, the young man who had just gotten married and became a father did not react for a long time, either because he was stunned by joy or had other thoughts in his mind. The most excited person at the scene was actually the little black cat... If it had not suddenly howled angrily, Qing Bai Xiaowu would not have noticed that the cat was there.
This sudden howl was filled with anger and shrillness. Xiao Wu was startled. He covered his still chest and muttered, "What is it grieving about? Is there something wrong with that cub? Is it the father's problem or the mother's?"
Qing Bai lifted the red cloth hanging in front of him and opened it a little. This temporary sedan chair parking lot borrowed the wall in front of the ancestral hall to bear the weight of bamboo poles, and the other three sides were surrounded by bamboo poles and red cloth to form a semi-enclosed independent space that was square when viewed from above.
The sedan chairs entered from the side covered with red cloth. Twelve sedan chairs were lined up in order according to the Chinese zodiac. Three bamboo mats for drying grain were spread on the ground in the middle, and various offerings were piled on them like small mountains. An eight-immortal table was placed opposite the sedan chairs against the only solid wall. On the table was a large incense burner. In addition to burning ordinary incense candles, there was also a long and thick extra-large incense stick. Even though the extra-large incense stick was half burned, it still stood out from the crowd and was inserted in the center of the incense burner like a stabilizing needle. It didn't look like the incense was used to worship the gods, but rather as if it was... timing?
They found a good position and just went around to the side where the sedan chair was parked. This way, even if they lifted the red cloth, the sedan chair would still be in front of them to block them a little, so they would not come into contact with the people inside immediately.
After Qing Bai surveyed the layout of the sedan chair parking lot, the young man, overwhelmed by joy, finally reacted. He didn't seem particularly happy, though. As one of the people involved, he was even more bewildered than the two onlookers. "...Didn't you say you weren't in a rush to have a baby? Grandma and the others have urged you so many times, both openly and covertly, and you haven't relented. How...how did you suddenly get pregnant?"
Yes, it was too 'sudden'... Qing Bai recalled the young woman's attitude when their grandmother stuffed a red envelope into the ceremonial officer just to touch the statue of the Rat God and pray for a child. Although she didn't express it very directly at that time, it could be seen from some subtle details that she was actually resisting. She even had a feeling that it was none of her business and she was just pretending to be obedient and cooperating with the elders in the family because of her status as a new daughter-in-law.
And in the time it took the sedan to travel from one end of the town to the other, she happily announced she was pregnant? Even the pika, which has the shortest gestation period among mammals, needs fifteen days to conceive.
Putting aside how she knew she was pregnant in such a short time, if she had known for a long time, why didn't she tell her family? Just looking at her attitude towards pregnancy and childbirth, which suddenly changed 180 degrees, it was very problematic.
Through the gap between the sedans, Qing Bai could clearly see the two people standing in front of the Eight Immortals Table. The young woman lowered her head slightly, and her expression could not be seen clearly, but judging from the upturned corners of her mouth and the shallow dimple next to her lips, she should be smiling.
The little black cat squatting on the pile of tribute looked up at the woman, its pupils wide open, mouth slightly open, revealing two sharp cold lights. If cats had expressions, then its expression at this moment would be quite complicated... It was terrified, confused, and a little bit disbelieving. It seemed that it was even more difficult to accept than the man who just found out that he was going to be a father.
"Children must be born..." The woman's hands, with rough knuckles and skin far from soft and delicate, gently and carefully stroked her still-flat belly, as if... as if she could feel her child's heartbeat through the fabric of her clothes and her still-unfurled belly. But because her belly wasn't showing, her loving and gentle gestures seemed a little awkward and out of place. "We're having a child. Don't you like it?"
The man looked at the woman's flat belly and shook his head subconsciously, looking a little confused. However, he did not say whether he liked it or not. Instead, he said, "What about our business?"
The woman paused in stroking her belly and suddenly looked up. Her eyes flashed with a chilling light against the backdrop of the candlelight in the large incense burner on the Eight Immortals Table. Her hands were still on her belly, but the bulging veins on the back of her hands and her slowly clenched fingers showed that her emotions were not as calm as she appeared. At this moment, she was like a mother animal protecting her cubs. Although she didn't move much or make any loud noises, she was full of aggression.
"You don't like our daughter?"
...In just such a short while, you even figured out the baby's gender?
"I like her. How could I not like my own daughter?" The man accepted the gender of the baby in the woman's belly very naturally and was very open-minded. "You're right. We have to have children anyway. It's better to have them sooner rather than later. If we have them sooner, we won't have to listen to them urging us every day. After the baby is born, let Mom and them take care of it, and we can focus on business."
After hearing what the man said, the woman's hands with bulging veins returned to normal, and she seemed quite satisfied with his attitude. On the contrary, the black-haired little cat below her stood up like a sea urchin again, and danced on the pile of tribute with its claws and teeth bared as if to vent its anger. However, its own body was too small, and no matter how much it jumped around, it could not cause any substantial damage to the mountain of tribute.
Seeing this, Xiao Wu couldn't help but complain, "This cat is so involved in other people's pregnancy and childbirth, isn't she? She's so excited, as if she's not pregnant with a human baby but a mouse baby... Hmm? A mouse baby?"
As soon as these words came out, the image came to mind. Xiao Wu and Qing Bai looked at each other and shuddered. Recalling the various strange behaviors of the young daughter-in-law, the more they thought about it, the more they felt that there was something wrong with her stomach... Not only the black cat but also the Rat God, who was regarded as the Goddess of Fertility, had a strong sense of participation in her pregnancy and childbirth... After all, the sudden change in the young daughter-in-law's attitude happened after she had a close contact with the statue of the Rat God in the sedan chair.
Having witnessed the Rat God's appearance firsthand, Qing Bai forced himself to pick up his already shattered scientific perspective: "There must be reproductive isolation..."
Hearing this, Xiao Wu couldn't help but look at Qing Bai deeply. This look was very complicated, with pity and a sigh of "young people are still too naive".
"Reproductive isolation can't save the metaphysical world... If those demons and monsters want to, they can even create new species if they work hard." After saying this, Xiao Wu's own words brought back some unpleasant memories, and a slightly vicissitudes of life appeared on his face. "Do you want to see them? The underworld is lucky enough to have raised a few..."
"No, thank you." Qing Bai didn't want to know what the new species that were created looked like.
While the two of them were chatting, the young couple over there was not idle either. They dug out a bamboo stick tube from somewhere. The bamboo stick tube was full of history. The mouth of the tube was polished round and smooth by countless times of shaking the sticks. The originally beautiful and smooth red paint on the tube body was mottled and fell off because it had been passed through so many hands. Only a few small pieces of dark and black paint were left stubbornly attached to the tube, like old bloodstains that had penetrated the texture of the bamboo tube.
The young man handed the fortune stick to his wife and said, "You've just been praying to the Rat God and you've already got good news. It's only logical that the child should be registered under the Rat God's name. And today is a good day, so let's draw a fortune stick for her."
The woman nodded, took the fortune stick, turned around and came to the Rat God's chariot, and knelt down without hesitation, without even a cushion. The black cat was so anxious that it kept circling around the kneeling woman, but no one paid any attention to it.
The woman clasped her hands together and bowed three times devoutly to the small clay statue of the Rat God in the sedan. For the last bow, she knelt on the ground for a long time, muttering something silently.
At this moment, the originally festive red cloth wall suddenly moved without any wind. Against the backdrop of the dim candlelight and the swirling smoke on the Eight Immortals Table, the shadows of the red cloth were projected onto the only solid wall. Not only did it look twisted and swaying like a demon, but now all four "walls" were red. This color, which seemed festive and auspicious during the day, was extremely gloomy and depressing at this moment. Add to that the neatly arranged tall and heavy old-fashioned sedan chairs, and the slender and frail woman kneeling in front of the sedan chair, as if she would be swallowed by the dark shadows in the sedan chair at any time... It was really hard not to suspect that this was some old-fashioned ghost scene.
After the kneeling, the woman stood up and shook the bamboo tube quickly a few times. Although she didn't use much force, a dark bamboo stick shot out of the tube like an arrow. If the threshing ground had not been paved with cement, the bamboo stick would probably have "penetrated three inches into the ground." Even so, the stick rolled and jumped a long way away... As luck would have it, it finally fell right in front of the two people hiding behind the sedan chair.
Xiao Wu quickly leaned forward to take a look, then whispered the words on the signature: "Don't be unfilial and waste your life."
Qing Bai: "This is a line from the 'Song to Encourage Filial Piety'..."
After the two exchanged these two sentences, they quickly hid the red cloth in tacit understanding. Not long after the red cloth fell, the young man stood where Qing Bai and Xiao Wu had been and bent down to pick up the bamboo sticks on the ground.
Perhaps because the light at the back of the sedan was too dim, the man did not stay for long. He picked up the fortune sticks and returned the same way. Only after he reached the range of the bright light from the burning incense sticks in the incense burner on the Eight Immortals Table did he carefully read the fortune sticks. Then his face changed instantly.
The woman, still kneeling on the ground, had a premonition when she saw her husband's expression change. Her already fair cheeks also turned a little colder. She stretched out her hand to the man: "Give it to me."
The man looked hesitant, but he handed the signature to his wife. "Don't worry, we are still young..."
These words were like the spark that ignited the fuse of a bomb, which instantly blew away the woman's remaining sanity. She grabbed the sign from the man's hand, and the movement was so big that she almost fell down. The black cat that had finally calmed down next to her was frightened, and its two black claws subconsciously stretched out towards the woman, as if to help her, but not to support her, looking funny.
The woman scanned the handwriting on the signature, as if she didn't understand it. She held the bamboo stick and read it over and over again, word by word, and then she breathed a sigh of relief... Breathed a sigh of relief?
This reaction was so unexpected that both the man and the cat were stunned.
Xiao Wu even began to doubt himself and turned to Qing Bai for confirmation: "What's written on that stick... shouldn't be anything good, right?"
"Hmm." Qing Bai didn't know much about the fortune sticks, but he knew what they meant: "If you don't practice filial piety, you'll be punished in vain." No matter how you looked at it, it wasn't a good thing.
After receiving a positive response from his companion, Xiao Wu was puzzled: "Then why did she react like this?"
As soon as I got pregnant, I found out that I was carrying an unfilial son... Although this method of knowing is neither scientific nor rigorous, the atmosphere of feudal superstition is so strong here that it can be considered professional. And emotionally speaking, it is also difficult to accept, right?
Not only Xiao Wu wants to know this question, but the woman’s husband and the cat next to them also want to know it.
The man cautiously tried to comfort his wife, who seemed to be a little abnormal due to the great shock: "It's okay, we didn't plan to have a child so soon... She was just an accident..."
The black cat, who was very involved, didn't care whether they could see it or not, and nodded its head frantically to show its agreement.
The woman wasn't as fragile as they thought. She stood up and put the stick back into the holder, saying calmly, "I thought it was a child, what's wrong with that?"
The black cat, which had been nodding like crazy, paused. It was just that it had nodded too vigorously before, and although the movement had stopped, the inertia was not so easy to dissipate. For a moment, its small chassis was pushed forward by its big head - and it rolled into a sedan at lightning speed like a black bowling ball.
The man hesitated, wanting to persuade her again, but the woman spoke first: "As long as our daughter is healthy, that's all that matters. As for whether she's filial or not, we'll have to wait until she's born and slowly teach her... People are alive, but fortunes are dead. How can we just follow the fortunes for everything? Don't you agree, husband?"
The man was silent.
Little Wu, who was hiding in the back, was deeply moved. He grabbed the red cloth and sighed, "Is this the selfless and great maternal love in the legend? It can even defeat feudal superstition! Wow, it turns out that there is only one good mother in the world!"
Qing Bai coughed lightly and signaled Xiao Wu to pull the red cloth gently. The red cloth was just placed on the bamboo pole and there was no fixed measure. If it was pulled down accidentally... the scene would be very lively.
"Oh, oh, oh!" Xiao Wu quickly let go, a little embarrassed, "I'm an orphan, and it's easy to get... carried away when I see things like this."
Qing Bai nodded in understanding: "Me too."
Are you too? What? An orphan? Or are you also prone to addiction?
Xiao Wu's head was full of questions, but she didn't have time to think carefully, because there was suddenly a burst of firecrackers outside, accompanied by the twelve ceremonial officials' long voices and the uniform sound of "inviting the gods".
It was not until then that the two of them noticed that there had been no sound of cooking from the open-air stove next door for a long time.
The reason for not cooking anymore is naturally because all the dishes have been prepared, and having all the dishes ready means the feast can begin, and of course one must first "invite the gods" before the feast begins.
They didn't know where the 'gods' had gone, but the statues of gods that had been carried all the way in sedan chairs were all sitting obediently in the sedan chairs.
The god that the townspeople wanted to invite was, without a doubt, the statue in the sedan chair.
The sound of firecrackers stopped, and footsteps began to sound. The people who came to invite the gods approached the sedan chair parking lot step by step. Xiao Wu hurriedly gave Qing Bai a look, and while those people were still some distance away from them and there was red cloth covering them, they had to quickly move to the destination they had previously decided on.
Qing Bai nodded... However, things did not go so smoothly. Who would have thought that at this time, the 'roadblock' was not the townspeople approaching step by step from behind, but the twelve gods who came back to eat the feast after smelling the delicious food!
Xiao Wu looked up at the twelve black mists that suddenly appeared above the sedan parking lot, swirling and surging with their fangs bared, and almost bit his teeth to pieces.
There was no time or space for them to sneak around now! Xiao Wu made a decisive decision, aimed his gaze at the direction, grabbed Qing Bai, and rushed out: "Let's go into the ancestral hall first!"
"Don't be afraid! You have the talisman I gave you, so you can even get through hell! Even the ghost king and the demon king won't be able to do anything to you for a while—Ah!!!"
Xiao Wu's clear voice suddenly rose, sharper than fingernails scraping against a blackboard. Qing Bai had no idea what was happening. He was completely helpless at this moment. After an inexplicable dizziness, he fell into a sticky darkness...
After recovering from his shock, Qing Bai immediately raised his hand and groped in the darkness: the width on both sides was limited, there was a roof on top, and all sides were covered with a layer of smooth fabric. Most importantly... he was sitting at the moment, and under his butt, there was neither a bench nor a cushion, but something that was not very soft, but warm, like a thigh... Not only was there a thigh under his butt, but his sensitive ears also keenly detected a shallow and steady breathing from behind.
Qing Bai instantly came to two conclusions - he was in the sedan chair, and there was more than one person in the sedan chair.
Who else would be in the god’s sedan chair?
Qing Bai's mind flashed quickly with the faces of the 'Twelve Gods' he had seen before. Just as he was about to struggle, his waist suddenly tightened. The man panting behind him seemed to have anticipated his reaction and raised his arm to wrap around his waist. Then, a familiar and pleasant voice, accompanied by the heat of its breath, hit Qing Bai's pale ears: "Don't move."
Qing Bai didn't just not move, his entire body was frozen... How could Jiu Nian be in the sedan chair? ! !
"...Are you scared?" Jiu Nian subconsciously touched Qing Bai's waist, which was as stiff as a puppet in his arms. It was so thin and skinny, with no flesh at all...
After Jiu Nian touched him, he realized that his behavior was extremely rude and inappropriate. He was about to apologize when his nose suddenly hurt... It turned out that Qing Baidian had hit his nose with the back of his head.
"Feel sorry……"
"sorry……"
The two spoke in unison, which was a bit funny but also inadvertently eased the awkward atmosphere in the sedan.
Qing Bai smiled silently, turned his head to look at the nose that he had accidentally injured in the ninth year, but was first met with a pair of glittering golden eyes.
Qing Bai knew that Jiu Nian's eyes were golden in beast form, and he had seen them many times in recent days, but he never knew that the same pair of eyes could be so different in different forms. In beast form, he only felt that they were majestic and sacred, and occasionally a little creepy wild. But in Jiu Nian's human form, he only felt that his golden eyes were... tempting.
He is seducing me. This was the only thought in Qing Bai's messy mind.
So the two of them just stared at each other quietly for a long time, feeling inexplicably confused.
Just when Qing Bai's rationality and patience were exhausted and he was about to resist the temptation and decide to do something drastic, he saw Jiu Nian's thin lips slightly opened, and his voice was gentle: "Your mask... is quite unique."
Qing Bai: “…”
My rationality returned instantly, and I even wanted to go back to half an hour ago and kick the me who was persuaded by Xiao Wu to wear a mask to prevent revealing my identity:)
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