"Place a bowl of clear water before the threshold, five grains to ward off evil spirits, a Bagua mirror to lock the door, and blood-written characters to ward off the underworld messengers."
Yuan Ying put the silver bracelet back on Xiuxiu's wrist, and the Rebirth Mantra engraved on the inside of the bracelet shone as brightly as day.
"His spirit is attached to the paper offering and cannot pass through the Five Grains Formation."
Before Yuan Ying could finish speaking, a rustling sound came from outside, as if someone was turning over stacks of paper money, interspersed with the soft laughter of a baby.
She suddenly grabbed my shoulder and pointed at the bronze bowl: "Look at the water!"
The clear water in the bowl was swirling eerily, reflecting Xiuxiu's face, but revealing a stitched scar below her right eye.
The ever-burning lamp in front of the shrine swayed in the morning breeze, and I then noticed that Yuan Ying had secretly embedded four copper coins in the four corners of the door frame when she was setting it up.
The coins from the reigns of Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong are known as the "Four Emperor Coins" used to ward off evil spirits.
Xiuxiu suddenly murmured in her unconscious state, "Daddy, hug me... Paper Brother..."
Unconsciously, her fingertips traced the lines on her palm, which slowly coalesced into the character for "debt," like a death warrant etched into her very bones by the underworld.
With a "whoosh".
Yuan Ying lit a stack of gold ingots and quickly muttered a few words.
As Yuan Ying read faster and faster, the footsteps outside the shop gradually faded away.
The water in the bronze bowl finally calmed down.
But when I looked at the Bagua mirror, I could clearly see a shadow wearing a red vest loitering behind the door frame reflected in the mirror.
He held up a paper baby in his hand, the paper baby's eyes were two black holes, facing me in the mirror, and a stiff smile was tugged at the corners of his mouth.
When I turned my head...
The candles in front of the shrine had all gone out sometime ago.
Only the peach wood sword in the hands of the patriarch statue had a few pieces of burnt paper ash hanging on its tassel, shaped just like a baby's small hand.
Xiuxiu slept on her cot for a whole day. When she woke up, there were seven burnt paper effigies of young boys piled up beside her pillow.
Each boy had a charred hole in his chest, as if something had burned through it from the inside.
She touched the red mark behind her ear and suddenly said, "Grandpa, I dreamed about Dad. He was standing in a paper shop, holding a paper baby in his arms, but the baby's eyes..."
She paused, her voice growing softer and softer.
"They were two black holes, and it felt like there were many hands grabbing me from inside, just like the ones I saw in the closet that day."
I looked at the paper offerings shelf behind the counter and noticed that the boys and girls who had been tilting their heads had all straightened up at some point.
However, extremely fine blood lines seeped from the eye sockets of each paper figure, outlining patterns resembling a baby's palm on the white paper.
Yuan Ying stood in front of the shrine, rearranging the fragments of the Bagua mirror.
The moment the lenses snapped together, a blurry black shadow was reflected in the corner of the wall behind Xiuxiu, slowly crouching down as if coaxing an unseen baby to sleep.
Two days later, no more bloodstains appeared on Xiuxiu's clothes, and the red marks behind her ears had faded to almost invisible.
But ever since then, whenever it rains late at night, the paper-crafted shelves in the shop would make a rustling sound, as if someone were sorting through the paper boys and girls one by one.
Once, when I couldn't sleep, I saw a paper baby carriage on the top shelf by the moonlight. The wheels were slowly turning, as if there was a child really sleeping inside.
When Xiuxiu came to the store for the last time, she brought a cloth bag embroidered with a good luck charm, saying that she found it in the deepest part of her own wardrobe.
The moment we opened the bag, Yuan Ying and I were both stunned.
Inside was half a tattered piece of baby hair and a yellowed note with the handwriting of Bald Old Third: "When Xiuxiu was one year old, we consulted a fortune teller who said she was a 'yin-destined person' who could protect her father from disasters..."
There was a line of even smaller words on the edge of the note, as if it had been added later: "But I never expected that the disaster that a person with a Yin destiny would have to exchange for their own soul."
The cloth bag slipped from his hand, and the baby hair inside was swept up by the draft and fell into the incense burner in front of the shrine.
In the instant the sparks flew, I seemed to see countless tiny shadows appear in the firelight and then quickly disappear, as if they had never existed.
Yuan Ying bent down to pick up the cloth bag and suddenly said softly, "Bald Third Brother never knew until his death that what a person with a Yin destiny can block is never the Yin debt he stole, but the cruelest human heart in this world."
Outside the window, thunder rumbled faintly, signaling an impending downpour.
As I gazed at the neatly arranged paper offerings on the shelf, I suddenly noticed that the corners of each boy and girl's mouth were slightly upturned, as if they were smiling, or perhaps crying.
In a corner of the shop, there is always a faint sound of footsteps, as if an unseen person is pushing a paper baby carriage and slowly strolling in the shadows of midnight.
Three days after Xiuxiu left, Yuan Ying suddenly placed the half-piece of baby hair under the bone-revealing mirror.
A bluish mist rose from the surface of the bronze mirror, and tiny runes appeared at the tips of the baby hairs.
It was the baby outline that Baldy San embroidered on the inside of his red vest.
She held the tortoise shell and pondered for a long time. The divination result showed "Blood is seen in the Dui Palace, and the Li Fire burns the bones".
Yuan Ying suddenly looked up at me and said, "Go and bring Xiuxiu here. Although the red marks behind her ears have disappeared, there are still fragments of Bald Lao San's Reincarnation Soul wrapped in her baby hair."
When I arrived at Xiuxiu's workplace, her colleagues said she wasn't there; she seemed to be in the parking lot downstairs.
When I arrived at the parking lot, I found her squatting in a corner, drawing the outline of a paper effigy of a boy on the ground with a twig.
Hearing me call her name, she suddenly slashed her palm with her fingertip, and blood dripped onto the drawing paper. The paper figure's eyes blinked strangely.
She hurriedly wiped away the blood with her sleeve, but I noticed that there was a red mark on the inside of her wrist that looked exactly like the baby hair talisman.
"Yingniang said there's something behind your ear."
I moved closer to her, and in the afterglow of the setting sun, I saw that there was indeed a thin red thread, as thin as a hair, buried under the skin behind her ear, with a tiny paper figure tied to the end.
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