Chapter 476 Birthday Ceremony
There is a stream in the suburbs, and there is a moon in the stream.
A ghost was wandering by the stream.
The sky here is pitch black, the stream is faintly blood-red, and snow-white lotus lanterns of the afterlife float in the air. Across the stream are collapsed and desolate farmhouses. The abrupt scenery temporarily tears apart Jing Zhui's memory illusion and connects him to a corner of Chepan Village.
The lights are lit and paper money is burned. The flames burn the dark night and the black ashes are flying like butterflies in the sky.
Seeing that the scene was a bit heavy, Ye Xiaoman walked over, squatted beside Zhu Chuideng, and helped him throw a stack of paper crowns, belts, clothes and shoes into the fire to burn. Her face was red in the flames.
"Uncle, is today already the first day of October?"
The first day of October is the Cold Clothes Festival. It is a folk custom to sweep the tomb and burn offerings to deceased relatives on this day.
Zhu Chuideng responded calmly, looking much gloomier than usual.
The rich offerings burned for half an hour before they were finished, but not a single ghost came out to receive them.
The Taotie beast is very greedy. When it eats people, it will tear the human body and soul into pieces and eat them together. Therefore, the villagers of Chepan Village who died cannot even become ghosts.
Since that year, Zhu Chuideng has forgotten how many Cold Clothes Festivals he has spent alone.
Zhu Chuideng turned his back to Ye Xiaoman and looked at the blood moon. The eternal sorrow weighing on his body turned into the bleak black edge of his silhouette.
Who first saw the moon by the river? When did the moon by the river first shine on people?
"The bright moon I saw in my youth is still young, but I have grown old."
Ye Xiaoman wanted to run away when she encountered this heavy atmosphere. She couldn't say anything to comfort others. Instead of accompanying the old man to relive the trauma, she would rather run back and continue to chase him.
The word "old" mentioned by Zhu Chuideng touched Ye Xiaoman's heart a little, and she blurted out, "Uncle, how old are you this year?"
Zhu Chuideng stood with his hands behind his back, his thick dark eyebrows and eyes like a cloud of ominous black fog, only his collarbone was filled with a ray of moonlight.
He turned to look at Ye Xiaoman, who was using a branch to stir the fire and burn the tattered edges of the paper money. "I remember your birthday is also the first of October, right?"
When Ye Xiaoman and Jing Zhui entered Zhu Chuideng's memory, they read all of Zhu Chuideng's memories as a living person, and thus remembered some information.
It's so tragic for an old man that his birthday coincides with the anniversary of the death of the whole village, and he will be punished by the past forever.
"Yeah." Zhu Chuideng was not keen on his birthday. As a man who lost his mother at birth and whose father died early and who had been living under other people's roofs for many years, no one would come specially to celebrate his birth. He turned to respond to his age.
"How old is Jing Zhui?" He was unhappy that he was the only one in the old man's camp, and tried every means to drag Jing Zhui into it. "I'm only a thousand years older than him."
Ye Xiaoman: "...I really can't call you uncle anymore, so I'd better call you uncle."
Zhu Chuideng looked as if he was about to smile, with the demeanor of a playboy. "Isn't it inappropriate for a young girl to pry into someone else's privacy without preparing a birthday gift for her?"
Ye Xiaoman, however, uttered a triumphant syllable from her nostrils, threw away the branch, dusted off her hands, and stood up. "Who said I don't have a gift for you?"
Zhu Chuideng bent his tall body, and the fine lines at the corners of his eyes deepened his smile, so the moonlight that filled his collarbone jumped into his eyes. He waited patiently and without any expectation for her to take out a perfunctory gift, such as something like a lump of longevity noodles.
Ye Xiaoman pretended to search her for a long time.
He opened his sleeves to look for it, then took out the storage bag and tapped it against his ears, pretending to be puzzled and said, "Oh, where did it go?"
The smile in Zhu Chuideng's eyes faded even more, because he knew that she was not prepared at all.
He lowered his eyes nonchalantly, intending to forgive her prank, as he never celebrated his birthday anyway.
"Oh, so it's here."
Ye Xiaoman put her hands on her head and felt something cold with her fingers. It felt like being electrocuted by static electricity from polyester pajamas in winter. She grimaced and shook her fingers, then quickly and accurately pulled out a jade-inlaid hairpin from her bun.
It is both a hair accessory and a magic weapon. Such a practical thing must have been given by Xiao Chujing, the bootlicker.
The pearl flower on the top stretches towards the sky, absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Outside the faint halo, two insect-like black auras are lying, enjoying the essence of moonlight absorbed by the hairpin.
"Hey, turn into a human for me."
Ye Xiaoman used two fingers to pull the black air off the hairpin and put it on the ground.
The ghost energy was so thin that it was almost non-existent. After landing on the ground, it turned into two short black shadows.
The top of the big shadow is just at the level of a person's thigh, while the small one is as short as a melon and can only reach other people's knees.
Wearing the farmer's gray cotton-padded jacket, one of them was sucking his fingers foolishly, and the other one was looking mischievously with a snotty nose, staring at people blankly with his eyes wide open.
They were Zhu Xiaoge and Zhu Xiaomei, the children of Zhu Chuideng's uncle, the two burdens raised by Zhu Chuideng himself.
"Ah, the evil woman who kidnapped us!"
Brother Zhu screamed as soon as he saw Ye Xiaoman. He and his younger sister had been living well in Chepan Village, but this woman took advantage of Zhu Chuideng's inattention and packed them up in a large sack and took them away, putting them into her magnificent storage bag.
"Lululu, bad woman~" Zhu's younger sister followed her brother in making trouble. The two of them hugged Zhu Chuideng's thighs and hid behind him, making faces at Ye Xiaoman.
Zhu Chuideng was caught off guard.
He couldn't believe it and pulled the two little ghosts out from behind him. Their ghost aura was so weak that it almost disappeared. His hands passed through their bodies in vain, and his burly body was so fragile that it trembled.
Although he tried his best to rescue them, Brother Zhu and Sister Zhu were still eaten until only a little bit of their souls remained. He later collected them for a long time but only found a few spots of light smaller than rice grains.
He let the light spots parasitize in his memory, and the light spots would turn into fireflies at night, flying across the starless and lightless wilderness, briefly warming his sky.
He never thought that one day these two little kids would be able to come together and form human form again.
Brother Zhu looked at his tall and strong cousin and said innocently: "Gao Da, you have aged a lot——"
Zhu Xiaomei immediately turned her attention away from Ye Xiaoman and chimed in in a baby voice, "The tall one has become the big one!"
Ye Xiaoman's ears were buzzing from their noise. She pulled out two lollipops made of paper money from her bosom. The rough craftsmanship showed her carelessness. She lit them on fire and gave them to them. "Eat, shut up."
Zhu Xiaoge and Zhu Xiaomei immediately changed their stance: "Beautiful sister-in-law, beautiful sister-in-law!"
Zhu Chuideng squatted down and looked at the two familiar relatives. Even when he squatted down, he was still taller than the children. However, because of his helpless posture of lowering his head and grabbing his hair, he looked like an ashamed sinner and seemed shorter than everyone present.
After a while, he asked Ye Xiaoman in a low voice: "Why..."
Ye Xiaoman explained: "I found traces of them in your memory, but they had almost completely disappeared at that time."
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