the last priest

My name is Xia Yi, and my hometown is located in the mountainous area of ​​northwest Zhejiang, a small county with a history of nearly 3000 years.From the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to New China, the people here have gone through too many changes just like the history here.

Some people say that the aborigines here have changed for a long time, but the only thing that has not changed are the traces left here that have been forgotten by history.

The combination of my father and my mother gave me the honor to meet a Taoist priest named Cha Wenbin.People who believe in this profession say that he is one of the few Taoist priests who have some real skills. He knows Fengshui, exorcises evil spirits, performs deeds, and calculates fortunes. .

I knew him very early, from an accident that happened to my aunt, and since then he has become the most revered person in my life.

Cha Wenbin, more people call him Wenbin or Brother Wenbin, and some of us children call him Laocha behind our backs.This person is delicate, with a long face, a straight nose bridge, thin lips, slender fingers, a tall and thin body, and his straight body is called a straight when he walks.

When I remember things better, his hair was already a little gray. If he didn't shave for a week, in modern terms, he would be a middle-aged uncle full of vicissitudes and masculinity.If he trims his appearance, changes into clean and simple clothes, and ignores his hair, you will feel that he is an extremely masculine young talent.In terms of appearance alone, he can be called a handsome local man.

Originally, this Taoist surnamed Cha also had a happy family, a pair of children, and a virtuous wife.Originally, thirty is the time for a man to show his ambitions, but his family was ruined and his wife was separated.

Looking at Feng Shui at that time has gradually turned to professionalism, and many Hong Kong bosses have regarded Feng Shui as an indispensable part of the process of gathering wealth.Zhejiang, as a coastal area that opened up relatively early, has a group of people who have become rich first and have begun to learn from the more fashionable Hong Kong people, and the social status of Fengshui masters has gradually increased at that time.

Zha Wenbin was one of the earliest to become famous. He is a well-known Taoist priest in the local area and even in the provincial capital, so there is an endless stream of dignitaries and rich people who come to invite him to see Feng Shui.At that time when Santana was still a representative of the rich, there were often high-end imported cars on the side of the dirt road in front of the small building of the Cha family.

It's a pity that the person who can invite this Taoist priest to come out of the mountain has not yet appeared, but he occasionally appears on some extremely ordinary white funeral occasions in the village.

It is said that some bosses only asked Cha Wenbin to calculate the orientation of the foundation of a factory building, but the bid of hundreds of thousands failed to pry Cha Wenbin's mouth open.He has an apprentice named Tong Hetu, who was kicked out of the teacher's school by him for some reason in the early years, and was taken back a while ago. Except for the homework that ordinary children need to do, he spends the rest of the time studying Taoism at home with him .

Hetu and I are a few years apart, but we know each other.Because of the gate of Cha's house, I am just like my own house, I often go to and live in it.Cha Wenbin will also approve Hetu to go out with us children in summer, but there is only one thing, he can't touch the water.

He Tu explained to me that this is because the water in his hit is too strong, and it will overflow when it hits water again.Once he almost drowned in a small river in front of the school, it is said that his master saved his life.Of course, at that time, I couldn't understand these things at all, and occasionally I would secretly take him to the river to catch fish, but He Tu followed the teachings and never only stood on the bank.

Some smart people saw that the profession of Taoist priests was becoming popular, so they brought wine, meat and sugar bags to the Cha family to learn from them. No matter which relatives you are, you will all be kicked out by Cha Wenbin.Later, more times, people said that Cha Wenbin leaked too many secrets when he was a Taoist priest in the early years, so he made such a mess. This Taoist priest doesn't need to learn.

Being a Taoist priest does not make a fortune!I have heard this sentence often since I was a child, and this concept has always been deeply rooted in my heart, so that it was only after Hetu became famous that I really changed this view.

Every time we go out to play together, it can't be past five o'clock in the afternoon, and Hetu has to go home.According to him, the master will solve the situation when the sun goes down. He has to watch at home and not allow strangers to enter the house.Sometimes Zha Wenbin wants to solve the game by himself all night long. When he comes out in the morning, his face is pale and his clothes are completely soaked.The time it takes for him to solve the game is getting longer and longer. From the earliest time, it will be out in an instant, and now it can last a whole night.

Solution?What kind of game to solve, Hetu doesn't know anything about these things.

There are two rooms in the Cha family that are forbidden to enter, and the doors are pasted with spells drawn on black paper. One room is in the northwest corner of the first floor, and the other is in the east corner of the second floor.These two rooms are not even allowed to enter the river map. Once when I went to Cha’s house to play with glass beads, one of them got stuck in the gap under the wooden door. I used my fingers to buckle it. The temperature in the room is much lower than the outside, and a cold feeling can go from the palm of the finger to the scalp.

Cha Wenbin also has a habit, that is, on the seventh day of every month, he will go to the small hill opposite his house alone with wine and meat.There is the ancestral grave of the Cha family, on which are buried people who left the Cha family, and a man named Dashan.

I have seen this mountain before. It is very tall. I like to sit on his shoulders and see it from a distance.

Hetu once told me in private that the tomb that says Dashan on the tombstone is actually an empty tomb, and no one is buried in it.Many of what he said at that time already had a color that made me feel scared. He said that the grave was actually a tomb of clothes, and Dashan's soul did not go to the underworld, but was locked in the little bell on the grave.Only on the seventh day of the lunar new year, the bell will ring, and it can ring by itself for a whole day without wind. In the rest of the days, even if a typhoon strikes, the bell will be dumb.

What he said was vivid, and I naturally didn't believe it. The child's curiosity drove me to decide to find out.

Because the family was busy during the summer vacation, more than half of me lived in my grandmother's house during the two months, which was not far from Cha's house, separated by two villages.I have already started to learn how to ride half a circle, and I often steal my aunt's new underbone bicycle to check the house. Although I will be taught by my aunt every time I come back, she will still find that the bike is gone the next day.

I went there alone, because I had to keep this from Hetu, otherwise he would definitely stop me.

The mountain is not too high, and there is a path in broad daylight.The lower half is some small bamboo groves, the middle is a tea field, and then there are dense chestnut forests, passing through the chestnut forest is the ancestral grave of the Cha family.

This mountain is full of thick yellow soil, which was the main raw material used to build adobe houses in the past. It is extremely viscous, and this soil is also the best choice for burials.Because the color of the soil in the five elements is yellow, people think that yellow soil is the purest soil. To build a tomb here, you only need to add a small amount of glutinous rice to make a thin paste to make the tomb extremely hard. Dynamite does nothing else.

Therefore, in this forest, you can see tombstones crumbling here and there, and some of them are simply piles of stones that have been overgrown with thatch.Among them are several large stone piles that are no smaller than two bungalows, and those tumbled blue bricks are covered with moss, and God knows which dynasty and generation left them.

Because the sun is good, I don't feel the slightest bit afraid of walking through this kind of old graves.After passing this forest, there is an open land above, where not a single blade of grass grows, and some abrupt huge blue stones randomly occupy this piece of bare loess.There are several graves not far away, all of which are sparse and ordinary small graves. The tombstones of these graves all carry the word "Cha". This is the ancestral grave of the Cha family.

The tomb with the copper bell mentioned by Hetu can be seen from a long distance, because it is different from other tombs.In addition to the tombstone, there is a small pavilion in front of the tomb, which is only a roof the size of a washbasin, and the bottom is made of concrete pillars, and there is really a bell attached to the roof. .

According to Hetu, originally the bell was simply carried on a bamboo pole, but later Zha Wenbin specially paid for the repair of such a small pavilion. In his words, there is a soul inside the bell, and Zha Wenbin was afraid that his brother would get wet Frozen in the rain.

Before I went out, I checked the calendar at my grandma’s house. That day happened to be the seventh day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar. I wanted to see if the bell was as magical as Hetu said, and it could ring without wind. If not, I could go back and scold it. He brags.

The bell is tied with a red thread, and there is a copper coin in the middle of the red thread. Before you get close, you can already hear the crisp bell ringing.

"Ding, ding..."

But when I looked up, the chestnut trees behind me were shaking. This feeling must have been blown by the mountain wind, so it's not unusual.So I sat by the small pavilion and waited. I wanted to wait until there was no wind to see if it could continue to ring.

Sitting there listening to the melodious bells, I only felt that my eyelids were getting heavier and heavier until I closed my eyes and fell asleep lying on the side of the pavilion.

In my sleep, I felt that I was hugging someone's thigh, it was so firm and comfortable.I looked up, it was a familiar face, that person seemed to be called Uncle Dashan.I called Uncle Dashan, he smiled at me, and touched my head, and then I continued to sleep soundly holding his thigh until the loud cry came from my ear. . . . . .