Living Paper

nostalgia/article

Huo Zhenye's expression changed when he took the letter, and Bai Zhun asked, "Are there any literate letter writers in the village?"

"Yes, there is a Mr. Xu who teaches in the village. Apart from teaching children to read, he also writes letters and elegiac couplets for others. Otherwise, you can ask him." The young man answered honestly.

Huo Zhenye showed him the envelope: "Look, is this letter written by him?"

"I don't know how to read. I don't know, but he lives in front, so you can go and ask." He was still in a hurry to bring the ox home to eat.

Huo Zhenye pushed Bai Zhun to the house pointed by the man, Huo Zhenye knocked on the wooden door a few times, someone in the room asked: "Who is it?" He walked over with his shoes and opened the door.

Mr. Xu was wearing a long gown. He lived in the country for many years in the Republic of China. He still had a half-moon head shaved and a long braid. When he opened the door, he saw Huo Zhenye. He was dressed in a Western style, strange clothes, and his face was downcast: "Who are you looking for?"

"We are looking for a letter writer." Huo Zhenye handed over the envelope, "Is this a letter written by you, sir?"

Just now, Mr. Xu saw Huo Bai's two outsiders as dislikes, his face turned pale when he glanced at the envelope, and he was almost out of breath.

He held on to the door frame, and seemed to want to run away, but he didn't dare, and murmured: "You don't talk, you're so powerful, you don't talk..."

Huo Zhenye pushed the door open: "Who entrusted you to write this letter."

Mr. Xu drooped his head and said with a bitter face, "Sangu Tan."

"Hasn't she been dead for half a year?"

Mr. Xu trembled, and his lips turned white with fright: "Yes, he is dead." Tan Sangu is a native doctor in the village who treats women's diseases. She learned medical skills from her father, but she is a woman, except for women. People come to her for medical treatment, but the men in the village look down on her.

Tan Sangu has a weird personality and doesn't like to deal with people all the year round. She lives alone in a small bamboo house far away from the village. After walking for three or four days, she was discovered by a woman who came to ask her to see a doctor.

She had no children or relatives, so the villagers gave her a thin coffin, tied some paper horses, and finished the funeral.

For the coffin-making people in Lingguan Village, it was not a difficult task at all. Everyone finished the work on the same day and burned the paper.

Every family here eats from the dead, and everyone is proficient in funeral affairs. Tan Sangu's affairs are handled very well, except that no one in the village sees women's diseases anymore, and nothing happens.

Until a month ago, that night Mr. Xu had just accepted the students’ Shuxiu, and came back with two or two drinks, counting peanuts and drinking warm rice wine.

Drunkenly drunk, he saw a blue shadow in front of his eyes, dressed as a woman from this village, he smacked his lips and asked, "What's the matter?"

"I want to ask you to write a letter." The woman whispered.

Mr. Xu was so drunk that he couldn't hold a pen and paper, and it was late at night. Although she was an old woman, she had a bad reputation after all. He waved his hand: "Come back tomorrow during the day."

"It won't take much trouble, sir, to write a letter," said the woman. "I can't come during the day."

Mr. Xu wanted to clear his name for the rest of his life. When he heard that the woman could not come during the day, he slapped the table and became angry: "If it is a letter that is not serious, I will never write it!"

A gust of cold wind blew open the wooden window, and the mountain wind mixed with crushed snow made him mostly sober.

The woman was still standing in front of him: "Please write a letter and send it to Shanghai."

Mr. Xu became impatient. He raised his head to see which woman it was. He dared to be so presumptuous in the middle of the night. When he looked up, he was so frightened that he threw his head up and almost knocked his head on the bed.

"Third...Third Aunt." He was the one who wrote the elegiac couplet for Tan Sangu's funeral!

Tan Sangu looked at him sullenly, Mr. Xu thought of it this way, Tan Sangu is notoriously bad-tempered, she treats men, women and children the same.

It's like this when you're alive, and it's even worse when you're dead.

When Mr. Xu wrote the elegiac couplet to Tan Sangu, he left a note. He didn't write any words that the women in the village praised her. .

He knelt on the ground and kowtowed to Tan Sangu: "I read the sage's book in vain, and I will write you a plaque tomorrow, the reincarnation of Hua Tuo."

Tan Sangu woke him up with a blast of cold wind, and she was no longer polite: "Get up, whoever wants your plaque, I want you to write a letter!"

"Write... what letter?"

"I say a word, you just write a word, and send it to me according to the address." After Tan Sangu finished speaking, the paper and pen had been laid out on the table, and the ink stick was spinning on the inkstone out of thin air, grinding the ink.

Mr. Xu's limbs were so frightened that his limbs became stiff. When he was young, it was not like he had never dreamed of studying at night with red sleeves and fragrant nights. Forget about beautiful fairies, and he couldn't afford to offend a dead old doctor.

According to what Tan Sangu said, he wrote a letter and sent it to Bai Zhun according to the address.

"You didn't lie?" Huo Zhenye asked him.

Trembling, Mr. Xu walked into the room, took out a blue cloth handkerchief, and handed it to Bai Zhun: "This is, this is from the third aunt."

A silver flat square is wrapped in the handkerchief.

This is on Tan Sangu's head, how dare he use it, and he doesn't have a wife, this flat square looks like a woman's headgear at first glance, if he really needs to use it, he can't tell because his mouth is all over his body.

No wonder the paper smelt of fear.

Bai Zhun recognized it as Tan Sangu's with just one glance. He took Bian Fang and took out two silver coins to Mr. Xu: "Where is Sangu buried?"

Mr. Xu wanted to take it but dared not, but the living things are safer than the dead ones. He pointed to the mountainside: "It's all there."

"all?"

"About a month ago, there were several heavy rains in succession. A piece of the mountain collapsed, muddy water rushed to the cemetery, and all the coffins that were fished out were parked in the Lingguan Temple."

Everyone is doing rituals to reassure the soul, and burning paper for sacrifices. The whole village burns paper and horse paper to dedicate to the spirits of the mountain gods.Tan Sangu has no children. She was found by a ghost, and she didn't want to make offerings, but only wrote letters.

"Thank you." It was rare for Bai Zhun to be so patient with others, he turned around and left after speaking, Huo Zhenye followed closely behind.

It was completely dark, and the mountains were dense with ancient trees. When the cold wind blew at night, there were sporadic snowflakes. Mr. Xu looked at the dark mountain road, and opened the door for a while for the sake of the two pieces of silver.

To light their way up the mountain.

There are dozens of coffins parked in the Lingguan Temple, and the light from a candlelight illuminates dozens of tablets on several tables.

Bai Zhun paused in front of the temple, and said to Huo Zhenye, "You wait outside."

Huo Zhenye didn't agree. He used the copper coins to look at them on the way here. Outside the copper coin hole, the temple was silent. Inside the copper coin hole, there was a person sitting on each coffin.

Even if he knew that Bai Zhun was not afraid, he would not let him go into the temple alone.

Bai Zhun lowered his head and coughed, "It's up to you."

The snow foam slowly fell, forming a shallow layer in front of the temple. Bai Zhun saw an old woman in a blue cloth go up to him and said to him, "Your master is gone."

The author has something to say: Third Aunt: A letter from a ghost, have you seen it?