the last priest

Throw a fire into the cave and burn it clean. Although Chaozi is greedy for the wood inside, he doesn't do business that kills people.

When I went back to the dilapidated school at the foot of the mountain, I was dumbfounded when I saw people in sackcloth and mourning everywhere at the gate.

When the relatives and guests saw that the host had returned, the older sisters rushed forward, crying and shouting, telling all kinds of misfortunes after he left home, completely ignoring the reason why he disappeared for several days.

Seeing that Cha Wenbin had also come back, the older man showed distress, and whispered that he went there last night to see if this Cha Taoist priest could make a dojo for him.

When Zha Wenbin saw this scene, he felt a little guilty. Although the woman was not really dead, such a toss was a waste of time and money.

He hurriedly led Ah Fa into the room. In the main room, on the wooden board, a woman's face was being pressed by a piece of yellow paper, and some of his juniors were kneeling all around.

Seeing Ah Fa's return, the crying people cried even more vigorously. Ah Fa was teased like this, thinking that his mother-in-law had really died, tears burst into tears, and he grabbed Cha Wenbin's arm and begged him to save him.

Inside the main room, a painter is busy painting a new fir coffin, and the room smells of fragrant paper, paint and wood.Cha Wenbin bowed his head to the steward who had been following him. The man helped up the people kneeling on the ground, and then called to the aunts who were watching the fun to lead them out to rest.

After a person dies, it is usually parked in the countryside for three days, and it has to be placed in the middle of the gate.It was an old school, and the villagers found a classroom in the middle, with the door open.Before the funeral, the gate was not allowed to be closed, but Cha Wenbin closed the gate now.Except Ah Fa, everyone was isolated.

Cha Wenbin said to Ah Fa: "People in the village talk a lot. After she wakes up, I will naturally lie for you, saying that your mother-in-law was picked up by a fairy girl in the sky to be a maid for a few days. Now The meritorious deeds have been completed, and it’s time to come back.”

Ah Fa nodded his head desperately, although his wife was fierce and aggressive, and she was still in a daze, but she was also a confidant on the kang, how could she be willing to leave like this.

Taking out the evil spirit bell, Zha Wenbin shook the woman's head a few times, and said softly: "When the bell rings, the dream wakes up the soul, and the seven souls return to their positions to continue their yang life."

Take another celestial master talisman, hold it with both hands, and circle the woman's face for a circle, before it is completely burned, throw it into a bowl filled with clean water.

Cha Wenbin handed the bowl to Ah Fa: "Just hold her mouth and pour it in." Turning around and leaving, gently pushed the door open a crack, and the chattering people outside immediately stopped, and they all paid attention to the Taoist priest. Grandpa watched.

After a while, a woman's cry came from inside the room, "You damn ghost, where have you been?" Then came a man's cry, and then a husband and wife hugged each other and cried loudly.

Since then, Ah Fa's mother-in-law often regarded herself as a fairy girl, and pretended to do something for others, but basically it was ineffective. . . . . . .

In my impression, in the three years after the continuation, I have not seen Cha Wenbin, nor heard the news about him from adults.There are also people who thought of this person when they needed to invite a Taoist priest at home, but there was no news of him, whether they invited them by themselves or asked someone to look for them.

Later, when I saw him again, I was already in elementary school. At that time, Uncle Wen Bin was older than now, with weather-beaten brows.It was also that year that Cha Wenbin accepted his first apprentice, and also the only apprentice he accepted in his life.Originally, I had the opportunity to worship under him, but at that time, my understanding of the profession of Taoist priests was only limited to dealing with the dead. I had already begun to receive modern education, and my deep materialism told me that it was nothing more than dealing with the dead. It is a feudal superstition.

Many years later, when I traced the footsteps he walked in the past for a book again, and interviewed many people who knew him and those who were saved by him, I realized that there is really such a thing in this world. something happened.

Many of my childhood memories are blurred.I don't think it was the gathering with my aunt, uncle, and third aunt in my hometown last year. They talked about that person, and the Taoist priests who belonged to that era. Only the Taoist priest who calls the dog knows.

I began to try to look through that memory, to find his lost three years, no one knew where he went.The people I interviewed include Chaozi and Zhuo Xiong, the prototypes in the book, and the man named Dashan. Now they have passed their thirties.I have been trying to find out where Cha Wenbin went for the lost three years, and what happened during these three years.

Later, through many people, I finally found the apprentice he accepted back then, and vaguely restored some things through patchwork and later deduction.

After Afa's family ended this time, Cha Wenbin first went to the provincial capital to visit his son.At that time, Miss Leng was still unmarried, and she was still unmarried even after several years.

His son had already begun to integrate into the life of the city at that time. He was still young and did not understand how he would be different from other male students in the future. It was just that Cha Wenbin appeared once in a long time, and this child gradually began to feel that his father become strange.

Perhaps only the child's intuition is the most accurate, and Cha Wenbin has indeed begun to change in those years.

The first thing that changed was his hand. The fingers on his left hand looked longer than normal, but they were much thinner. It looked like a piece of wrinkled old cowhide attached to a steel bar. The blood vessels and nerves under the skin appeared. Thick, curved and earthworm-like wrapped around the entire back of the hand.His left hand has begun to become unable to fully straighten it, and if he does not use force, it will be bent like an eagle's claw.More and more often, Cha Wenbin chooses to eat with one hand in his pocket, instead of holding the bowl when there are many people.

What changed next was his personality. He began to become a little restless and irritable, often waking up suddenly in the middle of the night, and then couldn't fall asleep again.He began to have verbal conflicts with his friends. In the past, even if Chaozi and the others did something out of the ordinary, Cha Wenbin would stop talking. Now sometimes he would even yell.

What's more, he is becoming less and less willing to go out, shutting himself in the room all day, even sometimes when Dashan comes into the house to bring him meals, he will come out and tell the other two that brother Wenbin's room feels chilly. , I feel uncomfortable all over, and panicked.

During that time, he no longer burned sandalwood as usual, but instead burned ordinary tribute incense.Three at a time, when it goes out, the room is full of smoke all day long, and normal people's eyes would be unbearably smoky, but he doesn't go out.

This situation of shutting myself up all day lasted for about a month.Finally, in late autumn of that year, Cha Wenbin left.What I found was Dashan who brought him breakfast. On the table in Cha Wenbin’s room, he left a letter. The ones that disappeared with Cha Wenbin included his Cosmos Bag, his Seven Star Sword, and There is that little golden tadpole.

There are only eight words in the whole letter: Daochang does nothing but does everything

This is a passage from Chapter 37 of Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching". Scholars today still have different views on this sentence.

Regarding the explanation of Zha Wenbin's letter, I heard it from his apprentice later.

He said: When the master explained this passage to him back then, he said: When Dao biochemically nourishes the world and all things without purpose and intention, it also makes these all things in the world operate according to certain rules with purpose and intention. As a result, it can be said that "Tao" is actually the myriad things in the universe and the earth that are biochemically nurtured in the midst of no intention but meeting the intention, and no purpose but meeting the purpose.

This explanation, I later understood it as Cha Wenbin's view on fate.His life was originally arranged unintentionally, but it seemed to be deliberately arranged by God, a seemingly purposeless event, and finally achieved a certain purpose that God wanted to achieve.

Later, we deduced that during the three years of disappearance, Cha Wenbin was looking for the intention and purpose of the destiny in this way, trying to know the real destiny.As for whether he knew or didn't know, and how he searched for it, we can only start with some things that happened that year.

When Chaozi and the others saw Cha Wenbin again, it was the early winter of the third year. When Dashan lazily got up and opened the door, he found a man in ragged clothes standing outside the door. That man was none other than Cha Wenbin.There was another person beside him, an eleven or twelve-year-old boy, holding a golden toad in his hand, about the size of a palm, with only three legs, one of which was tied with a red thread, The other end of the red thread was hanging on the boy's wrist.