Chapter 2

Husserl was an unemployed vagrant who was very interested in folk funeral customs. He was so bored that he couldn't sleep, so he went out for a stroll at night. He walked to a village in the city and saw someone had died there and people were crying. He was very interested and just walked over.

The people here originally wanted to drive him away because he looked like a gangster, but he went home, changed his clothes, got some money, and distributed it to the people he met. Then these people agreed to let him stay in the village for a while.

When others asked him about it, he said that he was a university professor specializing in folk funeral customs.

The dead man was a little boy who was less than ten years old. Normally, children who died before adulthood were not allowed to be buried in the ancestral tomb. However, the boy's family was unreasonable and caused chaos in the village, so the villagers had to agree.

Husserl laughed and said, "It's quite similar to me."

As he spoke, he casually plucked a blade of grass from the side, threw it into his mouth, chewed the broken grass roots, held the grass stick in his mouth like smoking a cigarette, sucked the sweet juice from the plant, leaned against the huge tree trunk at the entrance of the village, and looked inside. The village where someone had died was preparing to send the body away.

A large number of villagers were in mourning, and the village was a gray, black and white color.

The team in the front was holding huge, colorful wreaths, leaving everyone behind. As they walked, they looked like swaying zombies. When the wind blew, the elegiac couplets attached to the wreaths fluttered, making the unique sound of paper being blown by the wind, as if someone was snoring or saying hello.

In the second quarter, the team carried straw baskets and pulled out white paper money in the shape of concentric circles and yellow-green jute paper money with cursive stripes, and threw handfuls of it into the sky.

The scattered paper money could not fly into the sky, but fell down in mid-air, swirling around overhead for a while as if reluctant to leave, and then slowly falling down to the ground. It was shaken by the wind and rose and fell with the footsteps of passers-by, as if the ground was breathing, and as if every piece of paper had a life.

In the third quarter, the team lowered their heads and cried, all covering their faces, as if they were ashamed to see people, or as if they had no facial features at all. Sobbing sounds came from their throats, and from time to time they wiped their cheeks with the backs of their clenched fists. The skin on their hands was wet, as if they were crying really hard, as if they had a very deep relationship with the dead.

Husserl saw this and thought it was funny. He also knew that laughing out loud at this time would be too arrogant and he might get beaten, so he turned around and hid behind a tree. The tree was very big and the trunk was thicker than three people hugging it. He would not be easily discovered hiding behind it.

But if he hid, he would not be able to see the funeral, so he thought about it, climbed up a tree, and looked down from a high place to look into the distance.

The funeral procession was getting closer.

The fourth team came over. They were all strong young men wearing short sleeves and panting heavily. They walked forward step by step. Every step left a new footprint on the ground. On their shoulders were wooden sticks as thick as their arms. The sticks were tied to ropes. At the same time, the thing touching the sticks and ropes was a coffin among them, and the coffin did not touch the ground.

But it looks really heavy.

Logically speaking, the weight of a child cannot make four normal adult men breathe, but the way they are sweating profusely cannot be faked, so it can only be a problem with the coffin.

Husserl murmured, "Interesting."

He blinked and suddenly felt a little confused. Why did it seem like there was one more person in the team?

He tried hard to figure out which one was the extra one, but couldn't find it.

Feeling a chill on his back, Husserl jumped down from the tree and quickly found the second villager who was watching the excitement like him. Husserl patted the villager on the shoulder, and the villager was also startled and shouted, "What are you doing?!"

He almost jumped up, his face turned extremely pale, as if he was terribly frightened.

Husserl smiled, stuffed some money into his pocket, and leaned in close to ask in a low voice: "Excuse me, do you know how many people participated in this funeral?"

When the villagers saw him giving them money, their expressions softened. After they received the money, their attitude became much better. They smiled and said, "I know. Seventy-two."

Husserl didn't bother to ask him what he was talking about and ran away. The team he just saw was clearly seventy-three people!

The villager wanted to say a few more words, but when he turned around, he found that everyone was gone. He snorted, waved his hands and said, "Coward, you are so timid, why are you watching a funeral!"

He was a little scared, and took out the money he had just received from Husserl from his pocket, trying to count it to comfort himself. When he counted to the last one, he found that it was a very real ghost money. His face changed drastically, his arms trembled, and he immediately threw the paper money on the ground, cursing it for bad luck, and turned around and ran away.

When the Crying Mourning Stick people floated here, they thought they must not have had time to leave. Unexpectedly, after walking around, they didn't see the people they were looking for. Everywhere was empty. They were scared away in advance.

Okay.

Anyway, for the crying stick man, the most important thing is to cry. The louder, more real, more painful and sad the crying, the better. The second thing is to patrol and maintain order. If anyone doesn't cry, he will be beaten until he starts crying.

The mourning was over, and while others were crying, the happy people had disappeared, and the mourners were preparing to return to the funeral.

Halfway through the walk, a drunk with squinting eyes and reeking of alcohol appeared in the middle of the empty road. It seemed that the drunk couldn't find the toilet at home, or maybe he just wanted to be closer, so he found an empty bush, unzipped his pants and urinated inside.

He closed his eyes and shouted happily: "Comfortable!"

As he was talking, he was about to walk away with his trousers picked up, but when he fumbled for his belt, he couldn't find it. Curiously, he opened his eyes and lowered his head to look for his belt, which he didn't know if it had fallen on the ground. He noticed a snow-white hand reaching out from the side, and in that hand was the belt he had missed.

He reached out to pick up his trouser belt and said with a smile, "Thank you!"

As he spoke, he raised his head and looked at the person who gave him the belt.

The man was wearing a white cross-collared shirt, and his snow-white hair, neither too long nor too short, fell softly on his chest. A linen hat covered his forehead and cheeks tightly as if it was sewn on his head. His eyes were hidden in the shadows under the hat, and the exposed skin was as white as his clothes. The only color on his lips was bright red as blood, and they were slowly raised, as if they were about to open in response.

Judging from his smile, the person in front of me seems to be very friendly.

The drunk man's blurry eyes had low resolution, and he couldn't make out what the face of the person opposite him looked like. He tried to open his eyes wide, but still couldn't see clearly, so he moved forward. The crying man didn't like this kind of distance, so he lightly floated back and moved away from him. He was stunned for a moment and almost fell to the ground. He realized that his behavior might be too intimate, and chuckled.

"Excuse me," the drunkard shook the back of his head and hair, waved at the crying stick man with his greasy fingers bent like chicken claws, and shouted very enthusiastically, "Little brother, don't run away. I'm a good person, a very good person. I don't know if you like drinking? My brother's house is right here. I'll take you home to drink! It's so boring to drink alone."

As he was talking, he suddenly squatted on the ground, covered his face and started crying: "I am so miserable! I can only drink alone! Wuwuwu——"

The crying stick man stayed away from him. He cried so miserably and was so sad. There was no need to torture him anymore.

After the drunkard finished crying, he fell asleep on the floor and didn't even think about going home.

But when he was dreaming, he thought vaguely, "That's not right. Shouldn't a normal person's nose be under the hat? Why can't I see that person's nose? Does he have no nose?"

The drunk suddenly awoke from his dream with a start. He was horrified, his back and clothes soaked with cold sweat, and goose bumps appeared all over his body. He crawled to the doorstep of his house, his legs were as soft as noodles, and he couldn't even stand up. He muttered, "Don't look for me, don't look for me!"

He remembered that the man had no face at all. The blood-red lips he saw were actually wounds of flesh that had been forcibly split open! The color he saw was the blood flowing out!

He was so drunk that he thought the wound was on his lip and the blood was the color of his lips!

The drunkard closed the door as soon as he got home, took out a candle from the moldy and dusty cupboard, lit it, and trembled as he closed his eyes and prayed to God: "Save me..."

After lighting the incense, he drank a lot of wine and fell asleep on the ground.

The mourning stick man floated back into the funeral.

"Don't be sad, sister. The dead cannot be resurrected."

"Yes, you cried so sadly, and it made us sad too."

A group of people sat together and choked up as they talked.

The crying man stood beside them, covering his face, and began to sob.

It cried and squatted on the ground, looking like it was about to faint.

An auntie felt sorry for it, thinking it was crying because it was too sad. She touched its head through its hat and said softly and gently, "Children are so kind. My dear, even if someone close to you dies, they will still hope that you can live well. Did you have a good relationship before?"

The crying stick man leaned against his aunt's legs and nodded slowly.

Although the aunt thought it was unreasonable for the baby to be so cold when it was so close, she didn't think much about it. Seeing the child nodding so cautiously, she felt sorry for him. She thought of her own children, who were all naughty. She felt even more sorry for the child who was crying and about to faint: "Don't cry, dear. Auntie will buy you something to eat, okay?"

The crying man just cries.

The aunt didn't mind, she kept on nagging and comforting it, talking about the child at home: "Look, at this age, people hate ghosts."

The aunt looked at the photo and couldn't help crying, "It's a pity that he died so early."

The crying stick man pulled out his stick and hit the aunt, who passed out.

[Everything goes to extremes and then turns into the opposite: People who are too sad will develop transference when they are hit by a crying stick

The dead cannot be resurrected, but the mourning stick can replace you.