Refuse to trample on the pride of heaven

Chapter 343: Life is better than everything, why worry about profit and loss (Xiaoman's perspec

As dusk deepened, a thick aroma of incense wafted from the east end of the village.

When the weather gets darker and the dew is heavier, there are always figures wandering in the wilderness.

The country folk hugged the cracked clay statue and prayed all night long, while the nobles in the town knelt three times and kowtowed nine times while holding the gilded incense burner.

When the stone lions in front of the City God Temple were soaked in black blood for the seventh time, and when the new peach wood talismans in the peddler's bamboo basket were covered with dust, the trembling souls huddled under the shrine suddenly smelled a turning point at dawn one misty day.

Some people saw with their own eyes that the wolf demon that was still wandering outside the fence last night had turned into smelly pieces of meat all over the ground this morning; the old scholar who had been bedridden for half a year was able to pick up a red brush and write the plaque "Cihang Pudu" in the ancestral hall; even more bizarre was that a widower selling pancakes in the East Market dug out a whole ingot of official silver from the flour jar on the birthday of the goddess - the silver coin was still stained with the cinnabar seal of the previous dynasty.

This fanatical belief spread like wildfire, causing the wealthy to tear down their screen walls to build temples and forcing the poor to pawn their quilts to provide for the eternal lamps. While the disciples of the immortal sect were still losing half of their fellow disciples in the struggle to kill demons, Mr. Li from the south of the city was already holding a jade carving of Guanyin, delivering a child, and telling everyone he met that this was the true appearance of the jade girl under the seat of the goddess.

But those ants huddled in the incense ashes are the best at going crazy again and again between despair and hope.

When the incense ashes dissipated and the miracles were no longer seen, the old woman would pick up a hatchet and smash the temple door, and the scholar would use a cinnabar pen to write vicious curses on yellow paper, until another child was haunted on a rainy night - they would crawl back to the ruins on their knees, holding the newly-made clay statue to their chest as if they were holding the last half of a life-saving pill.

Ants trying to survive in troubled times always have to tie their souls to a visible anchor.

When the immortal master's talisman paper turns to ashes, and when the pupils of loved ones turn corpse green, mortals become spider webs in a rainstorm, tightly grasping any fallen leaf that touches them.

The more blood-stained the clay statue of the goddess was, the higher the incense would burn - this was not worshiping a god, but the blood mark left by a drowning person when he had his life-saving straw strangled in his palm.

The wealthy families offered incense and candles as a token of atonement. The rent that they had withheld in the past and the moldy old rice now turned into the gilded eyes and eyebrows of the gods.

The poor people are engaged in a business of exchanging life for life. At three o'clock in the morning, their heart blood is dug out and poured on the incense table. At five o'clock in the morning, they will see the remains of the monster - this kind of business of retribution in this life is more satisfying than that of all the gods and Buddhas in the sky.

The most interesting thing is the elusive backlash. The idle men who muttered about the Empress's evil nature during the day would have their chests hollowed out at night.

So the panic turned into madness, and every household opened the doors and windows, for fear that closing the doors would arouse the Empress' suspicion.

When the "living dead" knocked on the door in the face of their loved ones, they breathed a sigh of relief - this must be a test from the Queen, and they should offer hot blood to show their loyalty.

The sound of iron horses from the temple eaves echoed through the night. Was it a divine oracle or a demon's cry? No one knew.

What people in troubled times never want is the truth, but a reason to kneel down and cry.

The empress's embroidered shoes stepped on thousands of living human skins, and her golden hairpins were strung with still-hot eyeballs, but so what? It was more merciful than teaching people to face this cannibalistic purgatory.

The hall was then filled with incense, and thin wisps of sandalwood smoke rushed into the nose, covering the entire hall. The sky outside was no longer as clear as it was at the beginning, but was blurred by wisps of smoke.

Xiaoman stood blankly among the kneeling people. The incense chips falling in her hands burned her fingers and brought her back to consciousness.

He moved his dull eyes and his confused gaze from the person kneeling on the cushion to the Bodhisattva sitting on the altar.

The Bodhisattva lowered his eyebrows and looked at her with infinite compassion in his eyes. The overlapping layers of red silk above cast a shadow, covering up his original compassion. Xiaoman only felt a chaos in front of her eyes, not knowing what was real and what was false.

She looked up but couldn't see Guanyin's face clearly. The blazing light seemed to burn her eyes, and she heard a scolding.

"Your Majesty!"

Kneel down? Xiaoman looked at the gray ground, then at the lotus platform of Guanyin.

"Kneel down quickly!" Her mother roughly pulled her and forced her down on the cushion. In shock, she looked up at the Bodhisattva above.

Under that heavy shadow, the Bodhisattva's mercy was even greater, and his warm lips looked down at her embarrassment with a smile.

Xiaoman felt dizzy, hungry and wanted to shout out her grievances, but she couldn't make a sound at this moment. There were people kneeling around her, and the dust raised by her knees filled her entire chest. An invisible hand was strangling her throat, and even coughing was a delusion.

The voice sounded again: "Kneel down!"

Xiaoman slowly lowered her head and knelt down as if her knees were gouged out, with her forehead pressed against the ground. Has she become a believer of the Goddess?

She was a little dazed, as if she saw her mother kneeling on a straw mat to wipe the three-foot-high clay statue. Suddenly she turned around and smiled at her father who was squatting by the stove: "Master, let's mortgage the half-acre of thin land in the back mountain tomorrow, right?"

Land is the foundation of the family, and it is something that the villagers will never mortgage no matter how hard or tired their lives are.

Her mother's nails, stained with balsam juice, scratched the mud-stained skirt, with a fanaticism that she couldn't understand: "Make a gold-painted body for the queen, and pray for our Xiaoman to marry into a good family in the future..."

Is this the contentment that my parents always talked about in the past?

The incense in her hand was inserted into the incense burner, and the wild flames in the burner licked her palms. When she came to her senses, the restraints on her back had disappeared, leaving her kneeling numbly on the cushion with empty hands.

She looked up, and the Buddha had the same look in his eyes, meeting hers with the radiance of a god.

It feels like having faith, isn't it?

She couldn't help but glance at the other people in the temple. After a while, countless people bowed their heads heavily, thinking of their mediocre lives and meaningless times.

Xiaoman's linen skirt was stained with incense ash and blood, and she walked against the flow in the crazy crowd.

Her mother's balsam-stained nails dug deeply into her arms, and rouge mixed with blood beads rolled onto the faded futon like a string of crushed acacia seeds.

Ah! Merciful and compassionate Avalokitesvara, you sit firmly on the platform, holding the bottle, your brows and eyes are light, you! You! Can you see me? Can you give up the gold powder on your body? Then reveal your flesh and blood, and give me a piece of Bodhisattva flesh.

The bloody Buddha meat is no different from the meat of other animals.

Bodhisattva, I lie down under you, my eyes filled with tears, drops falling to the ground.

Bodhisattva, you said I was born with sin and was born to atone for my sins. I calculated and calculated, but my sins are not worth mentioning. I am no different from that yellow dog on the roadside, just running around to survive, and occasionally picking up a bone will be taken away!

Thousands of prayers passed by, and the confusion in Xiaoman's eyes became more and more intense.

She doesn't understand yet.

Incense is offered to ghosts and gods, and no one is left in the mortal world——

......

"Kneel down!"

Another scolding, Xiaoman trembled all over, at a loss, that high and mighty Bodhisattva, didn't he pity his believers? Or had he sat on the high platform for too long, and the gold foil had turned into new flesh and blood?

The simple and compassionate face, but pity the world full of greed and anger.

Should she believe the queen? Or should she hate the queen? She breathed in too much dust, and could only make hoarse and mocking sounds, like a monster.

Bodhisattva, will she continue to watch? Watching everyone's suffering, watching countless sentient beings struggling, watching so many people exhaust all their flesh and blood.

Or does the Bodhisattva want to eat human flesh and blood? But isn't the Bodhisattva a vegetarian? So the Goddess also covets human flesh and blood?

Ha! Are you eating the meat that the adults are talking about? This flesh and blood that can’t even produce two ounces of oil, this stinking flesh and blood? !

Xiaoman stood up and looked at the heads of the believers. They were trembling, crying, praying, and killing themselves bit by bit.

Kill yourself? God! Yes, kill yourself!

When Xiaoman thought of the time when she worshipped, her palms cramped in the incense ashes.

Her mother's fingernails, stained with marigolds, dug into her shoulder blades; the smell of sandalwood mixed with blood penetrated into her nostrils; the newly sculpted statue of the goddess on the altar was melting; the gold lacquer flowed down the lotus seat and gathered into sticky amber on the blue brick floor.

"Kowtow!" Mother's voice was like a rusty knife scraping bones. Xiaoman's forehead hit the cold and hard cushion. In a trance, he saw his father squatting beside the stove. The pawn contract for the half-acre of thin land in the back mountain was pressed under the shrine, and the corner of the paper was stained with his mother's rouge...

When the evening drum struck, Xiaoman clearly saw the Bodhisattva's drooping eyelids twitching.

"It's time to stop playing tricks on me."

She watched Lu Wensheng step onto the altar, which split in two under the soles of his boots. The fishy wind that filled his brocade robe swept across her cheeks, mixed with the coolness of the snow water soaking through her cotton socks - just like that year on New Year's Eve, when her father carried her across the frozen river, and the white air he exhaled carried this kind of chilly and clean air.

When the beam of light from the magic mirror pierced in and the glazed pupils exploded, black blood was oozing from the faces of hundreds of pilgrims in the chip. Xiaoman covered her heart - that was not a tremor of fear, but the throbbing of being pecked by fish on the palm of her hand when her frozen fingertips reached into the spring stream.

The incense burner suddenly made crackling sounds. Xiaoman looked up and saw sparks rising up along the red silk. The banners with the words "All wishes will be granted" written on them were twisted into countless struggling arms in the heat wave.

The empress's gold-painted eyebrows and eyes moved in the firelight, and her compassionate face cracked, revealing the moldy straw core underneath.

Xiaoman staggered back and knocked over the gilded incense burner, spilling ashes onto the mural. The flying musicians suddenly shrieked, and the pipa they were holding cracked open, with the strings resembling the filth vomited out by patients with colic.

The immortal master who brought her covered her eyes lovingly, but she still glimpsed hell through her fingers - the three-toed animal foot exposed from the hem of the Bodhisattva's robe was clearly the shape of the cured pork trotters hung in the butcher's yard during the Lantern Festival, and the centipede that emerged from the Buddha's lips had a familiar face embedded in each section of its body: the young girl who died young in East Street, the daughter-in-law who was pawned in West Lane, and the private school teacher who jumped into the well last year...

Kneel down! Kneel down! Kneel down!

Xiaoman seemed to hear those voices again in a trance, but this time, she looked straight up at the platform facing the angry shouts. She stared at the face of the Bodhisattva and saw the maggots crawling out of his sleeves.

A very familiar itch emanated from the ends of her luxuriant hair, which fluttered at the tip of the tail like a nest of dark hair flying diagonally, coated with a layer of flowing gold flakes by the sunlight that came in. When the hair shook and trembled, it splashed onto the murals, peeling off page after page of color and drinking up the umbilical cord wrapped around the stone wall.

Xiaoman gazed at the Buddha image in the shrine and looked straight at the gorgeous murals on the wall. The "Goddess" had drooping eyebrows and eyes, a simple and compassionate look, pitying the world of greed and anger. The worn colors were like mud, and they fell like incense sticks, like a lamp of ashes that had not been dissipated for a long time, burning the body with tolerance and struggle.

She was not born from an embryo soaking in the abdominal cavity, but from a colored outline painting, conceived by people's greed and delusion.

That was the first time Xiaoman realized that the stone wall could be the narrow womb of a female, endowed with the mission of breathing and giving birth to life. Thus, bright colors began to grow and take root, depicting a Zen spirit.

Finally, a Bodhi tree, with a loving mother’s heart as its oil and blood, offers love and nourishment to fill the narrow gap caused by loss of softness.

She seemed to be relieved: The Queen was fake, and she had never been her believer! She didn't want to be fodder!

Watching the leading immortal master biting his fingertips to draw talismans, with blood splattering on the "magic mirror", the buzzing sound like a dragon's roar made her eardrums hurt, but it also tore a ray of clarity in the chaos.

As the morning mist drifted over the blood-stained stone steps, she heard the crisp sound of her bones, like the growth of new bamboo shoots. Tender green shoots were emerging from the pores that were clogged with incense ash.

When the last ray of golden light dissipated, Xiaoman reached out to catch the red silk ashes falling from the air as if possessed by a ghost.

The residual heat burned her palms so much that they hurt, but it reminded her of the moment when her immortal master stepped onto the altar and the corner of his robe swept over the smoldering candle - that dying spark was now rekindling in her chest.

The sandalwood smell in the ruins was slightly dispersed by the night wind, mixed with the scent of Udumbara flowers that drifted from nowhere, which actually reminded her of the osmanthus oil her mother used to comb her hair.

When Xiaoman's fingernails dug into her palms, she realized she had been holding her breath for too long.

The sparks from the edge of the immortal master's robe splashed on the hem of her skirt. There was no burning pain, but instead it was like the hot water bottle that A'niang suddenly stuffed into her arms when she was curled up on the kang in the dead of winter. The warmth that spread from her frozen bones was now pushing out fine cracks in her heart along with the Sanskrit words on his falling eyelashes.

She saw that the fireflies transformed from the crystal chips did not disappear into thin air, but each grain of light etched a strange name on the surface of the tablet.

The faded cinnabar suddenly oozed out blood, which meandered down along the grooves of the word "eternal life", and in a trance, it actually overlapped with the arc of the other person's hair.

When the waterfall of light formed by golden dust enveloped him, Xiaoman felt that it was not the Buddha's halo, but a hundred thousand eternal lamps growing out of his spine. The flames of the lamps were all swaying with the good thoughts of the pilgrims who were swallowed up by the evil temple.

The moment the white flowers bloomed, she seemed to hear the sound of roots tearing through the frozen soil, which was very similar to the crisp sound when she broke the icicles with her own hands in early spring last year.

However, what broke out of the ground at this moment was not wild ferns, but the new flesh and blood from the festering wounds of the believers. The scabs wrapped with gold foil fragments fell off, revealing the pink and tender meridians underneath like babies.

When the divine light flashed across her pupils at the side of the other person's neck, Xiaoman suddenly understood the myriad phantoms in the "magic mirror".

The immortal master in the eyes of every pilgrim is changing - either the Kunlun Immortal Lord holding a sword, or the Bodhi Master picking up a flower, but the cuffs of those phantoms are embroidered with the same patterns, and the hems of their clothes are adorned with golden-red sparks sprouting from their hearts.

She raised her head, people were crawling on the ground, people were walking out of the fireworks, and nine words suddenly popped up in her mind.

"When the incense has burned away, the gods will reveal their true appearance..."