Chapter 001 - Ancestral Tomb

　　In 1975 late fall, jiangxi wuyuan south mountain foot, a tall old acacia tree, surrounded by a group of villagers, we all tilt their faces to see pasted on the trunk of a bulletin. 　　The bulletin wrote: 　　According to the county revolutionary committee instruction, where is located in the direction of the Linggu hole graves must be in fifteen days to move by themselves, by then still not moved graves will be regarded as the owner of the graves, by the town revolutionary committee to organize the basic militia unified shoveling, hope that the revolutionary masses enthusiastically cooperate. 　　The inscription is wuyuan county nanshan town revolutionary committee, underneath stamped with bright red big seal. 　　Chansheng squeezed out from the crowd, hurriedly ran to the home. 　　Zhu Hansheng this year twenty years old, weekdays at home with the barefoot doctor's father apprenticeship, do some on the mountain picking medicine, pounding mortar and other trivial things, although the character of the introverted but people are honest and loyal, the village of the old people are very fond of him. 　　The three-room thatched house at the east end of the village was his home, with some herbs such as Codonopsis and Chaihu planted in front of the door, and a big yellow dog lazily ambling on the threshold. 　　"Pops, the town has posted a notice to move the ancestral graves by the deadline!" Hansheng shouted before he entered the yard. 　　"Oh." The house answered. 　　Father is the village's barefoot doctor, medical skills in general, but medical ethics is very good, around ten miles eight villages of the townspeople are looking for him to see a doctor, general illnesses do not go to the town health center. 　　Inside the house, the light is dim, the father sat on a chair holding a stone pestle in the medicine jar pounding medicine, the four exudes a plant rhizome of the earth. 　　"Pops, why did you move all the graves in front of Linggu Cave?" Hansheng asked his father. 　　Father shook his head. 　　"Our Zhu Family's ancestral graves have been buried there in Linggu Cave for many generations, right?" Hansheng said longingly. 　　"Yes, the age is too long, we can only manage to great grandfather's generation, let me see, tomorrow is gengxu day, suitable for breaking ground to move the grave, let's go tomorrow at the hour." Father's fingers pinched and counted and said. 　　Hansheng's mother died a long time ago, it was his father who worked hard to bring him up alone, relying on a little bit of ancestral medical skills to eke out a living. The old Chinese medicine, more or less involved in a bit of feng shui geomancy, in the past, my father also gave others a shady house, and then the Cultural Revolution said it was a feudal superstition, was criticized, since then, my father has never mentioned this file. 　　"It would be nice to have something in the old tomb." Hansheng said to himself. 　　"Our family is poor, what else can there be in the old tomb but a handful of bones? Stop thinking nonsense, it's disrespectful to our ancestors." His father glared at him. 　　That night, Hansheng lay in bed and tossed and turned, having trouble sleeping. Digging old graves was a rarity, and the thought of it excited him. 　　Early in the morning, the birds in the yard chattered incessantly, Hansheng early fire, cooked some sweet potato rice. Although the day is hard, he still grabbed more rice into the pot, today is different from the usual. 　　After eating, he and his father carried hoes and shovels, took umbrellas and a few cloth bags and set off. 　　Wuyuan is one of the six counties in the ancient Huizhou prefecture, and is also the hometown of Zhu Xi, the famous rationalist of the Southern Song Dynasty. As far as the eye can see, the pine and bamboo rolling, covered with white walls and gray tiles, flying eaves and horns of the Huizhou Ming and Qing dynasty ancient buildings, smoke curls, quiet like an idyllic landscape painting. 　　Turned up a hill, looking back at the southwest direction, when Zhu Xi returned to his hometown to sweep the tomb of the twenty-four (meaning twenty-four filial piety) ancient giant cedar, so far more than eight hundred years, still silently standing in the Wengong Mountain. 　　"Keep up, it's almost seven o'clock, don't miss the time." Father urged in front. 　　Hansheng reluctantly turned to follow. No wonder some people say that Wuyuan is the most beautiful countryside in China, which is categorically not true. 　　Ahead was a turquoise bamboo forest, through the bamboo forest was the famous Linggu Cave. This area of the mountain are limestone, Jiangnan rain and more, erosion out of many caves, Linggu Cave is one of the largest, it is said that no one has ever been into the end of the single stand in the mouth of the cave, will feel a ghastly wind coming, small children do not dare to approach, legend has it that the black mouth of the cave will be small children will be sucked into the. 　　Bamboo forest has seen scattered graves, some tombstones fall to the west and east, that is the ground everywhere across the bamboo whip arch over. The Zhu family's ancestral tomb was still ahead, not far from the entrance to Linggu Cave. 　　"Gaga." Two crows stood on the grassy grave looking this way. 　　"Here it is, this is your great grandfather's grave." Father said and put down the hoe he was carrying, the tombstone was also askew. 　　Chansheng shouted and blasted away the two blackened crows. 　　"Chansheng, you have to remember to hold your breath when you plow through the coffin boards, there is corpse gas in a sealed coffin, you will get sick if you inhale it." Father raised his hoe. 　　"Does corpse gas have a color?" Hansheng asked. 　　"There is, but ordinary people can't see it." Father answered. 　　"What colors are they?" Hansheng pursued with interest. 　　"Well, usually light gray, there are also black, like thick smoke, very evil, the most terrible is the red corpse gas, stained on it is hopeless." Father said. 　　Chansheng listened to it, a pang of fear in his heart. 　　Bamboo forest fog swamp, a mass of Aedes mosquitoes flapped their wings, eyeing these two hot-blooded humans. Hansen could not help but shiver, this mosquito bites noiselessly, the bite of the bag is not big, but the strange itch, you hate can not pick out that piece of flesh. 　　Father a hoe digging soil, forehead beads of sweat. Hansen handed over a towel, grabbed the hoe dry, after all, is a young man, physical strength, the speed is obviously much faster. 　　Father sat to the side, smoked a cigarette, the smell of cigarettes dispersed, mosquito swarms retreated to the bamboo forest. 　　Hansheng hard planing, around has piled up a high pile of soil, just at this time, suddenly under the hands of the feeling is different, "thud" sound, hoe a sinking, wrist flip force, but also hard to pull out a piece of black-brown wooden boards to. 　　"There is black gas, dodge!" Behind a bellowing, father leaped up in the air, one hand pulling Hansheng will push him up. 　　Hansheng looked back, only to see his father's body shook a few times, a hand from his bosom to touch a pill stuffed into his mouth, it turned out that his father had already prepared. 　　Hansheng hid outside the circle, carefully looked at the pit, but could not see anything. 　　Father continued to clean up the floating soil, and then forcefully pry open the lid of the coffin, and then jumped up, open mouth breathing heavily. 　　"Pops, I can't see any black gas." Hansheng assisted his father. 　　"Of course, you haven't learned the method of geomancy and qi observation, so naturally you can't see it." Father said. 　　Hansheng stood on his tiptoes and looked inside the mound. 　　"Wait for the corpse qi to dissipate before you go down." Father lit up another cigarette. 　　"Pops, how come the great-grandfather's coffin has black gas coming out of it?" Hansheng asked in disbelief. 　　Father sighed and said, "Your great-grandfather was also a bone-setter, probably because he was afraid that someone would rob the grave, and put toad mandarin powder inside." 　　"Toad Mandala Powder? This thing can also produce poisonous corpse qi?" Hansheng asked. 　　"This medicine only has the effect of anesthesia, and once it is combined with the rotting gases from decomposing corpses, it will produce a highly toxic black corpse gas." Father explained. 　　"What about the most powerful red corpse gas? How does it come out?" Hansheng felt increasingly irritated. 　　"Pops has been hanging around for a lifetime and has yet to meet it." Father said. 　　It was the hour of the hour, and a ray of sunlight slanted down and shone into the mound. 　　Father jumped up, grabbed his umbrella, and stood on the mound, holding it out of the sun. 　　"The bones of our ancestors can't see the sunlight, Hansheng, the corpse qi has dissipated, you go down and collect the bones for your great-grandfather." Father encouraged Hansheng. 　　Hansheng picked up a cloth bag and boldly jumped down to the pit. 　　A complete skeleton, yellowish-brown in color, but the posture was very strange, bent face down, spine facing the sky. How could this be? The local area had never had such a custom. 　　Hansheng frowned, his eyes swept down inside the coffin, and he did not find any burial items, there was some extremely fine dust at the bottom of the coffin, burying part of the bones. He muttered, squatted down and began to collect the bones, and for the first time in his life, he entered the coffin, his heart panicked and uneasy. 　　One by one, the bones were put into the cloth pocket, the fascia between the bones had long since disappeared, so the joints were separated, and it was easy to pick them up. Finally the skeleton was held up and carefully tucked into the pocket. 　　"Pops, finished picking it up." Chansheng shouted. 　　In the late fall of Jiangnan, the weather was unpredictable, just now there was sunlight shining down, but at this moment it was dark clouds covering the sun and clattering down with rain. 　　"Hansheng, the hour has passed, let's go back." Father looked at the leaden gray sky and shook his head, saying. 　　"What about the other tombs?" Hansheng asked. 　　"Find another auspicious day!" Father took Chansheng's hand and dragged it up. 　　Father and son returned the way they came, and by the time they rushed back to the entrance of the village's eastern home, they were soaked to the skin. 　　Under the big balsam camphor tree in front of the grass house, there were a few people standing, anxiously looking around, as soon as they saw Hansheng's father and son, they rushed to welcome them. 　　"Dr. Zhu, my mother-in-law is about to give birth, please hurry and come." The middle-aged man at the head of the group said anxiously. 　　"Okay, I'll pack up and go." Father went into the house to fetch the medicine box. 　　"Hansheng, I may not be able to make it back today, so count the bones at the eleventh hour, then tie them tightly with strips of white cloth and place them on the niche in the west room, and remember to light three incense sticks." Father picked up the medicine box on his back and instructed Chansheng. 　　"Got it, old dad go early and come back early." Hansheng answered and walked into the west room to put down his cloth pocket. He knew that midwifery was different from visiting a doctor, sometimes a woman would not give birth for a day or two, and his father would have to be there at all times to watch, and he would definitely have to eat alone again tonight. 　　At night when the lamp, Hansheng himself two mouthfuls of rice, look at the clock has been 7 o'clock. The eleventh hour has arrived, he came to the west room in front of the niche, remove the cloth pocket, began to follow his father's instructions in the oil lamp counting bones. 　　Since childhood, he followed his father to practice medicine, more than ten years of exposure, Hansheng is not a stranger to the human body, he knows that the human body has two hundred and four bones in all sizes, but I heard that foreign foreigners have two hundred and six, and their fifth toe bone is one more than ours, but my father has never seen it. 　　"One hundred and seventy-five, one hundred and seventy-six, one hundred and seventy-seven ......" Chansheng mouth chanting, hey, how no? He poured over the bag, it was empty, not a single one. 　　What is missing? A total of twenty-seven missing, he thought about it, why don't you just set it up and see. As soon as he said it was done, Hansen put all the bones together in human order, the end of the eleventh hour, when the clock struck nine, the human skeleton splicing was complete. 　　The skeleton of his great-grandfather lay quietly on the floor of the west room, the only thing missing was a right palm ......