Chapter 351 Between Reality and Story

"Tell me quickly, did you hit Zhou Fei and pierce his hand with a pencil? Was it you? Was it you?"

The more Li Xiaoyun asked, the more anxious he became. His heartbeat almost reached his throat. Finally, his anxiety turned into anger. With a "slap", he slapped Xie Xiaofei's face.

Xie Xiaofei was quiet for three seconds, no more, no less, exactly three seconds. Then, he trembled all over.

Xie Chunping couldn't help it. His left brain was afraid that Xiaofei was beaten stupid by his mother, and his right brain was afraid that his wife had a heart attack or stroke.

"Xiaoyun, Xiaoyun, calm down, calm down, the child is scared, calm down a little."

Xie Chunping only dared to persuade him from the side, and didn't dare to reach out and touch Li Xiaoyun who was angry.

The atmosphere in the living room became extremely strange. Xie Chunping looked at the black coffee table and white bookshelf, and heard his son's strange screams and his wife's abuse. He didn't know how to deal with such an occasion.

Until his wife shifted the spearhead from his son to him.

"Does your family have this kind of situation where people keep moving around all the time? Don't blink, I tell you not to blink."

Li Xiaoyun finally lost his patience with his son and turned his anger to Xie Chunping.

Xie Chunping was also uncomfortable. He didn't understand what happened at all, why Li Xiaoyun was so angry.

But he knew that his wife was a very face-conscious woman. She couldn't dress worse than others, and his son couldn't be criticized by others.

But this child is also born from the genes of two people. You can't scold the man when you think something is wrong, right? Don't women have genes to pass on to children?

"One kept moving, beat up someone's child and came back without saying a word. What about you? You didn't answer a single word when I said ten things to you. You two treat me like this, right? Just watch me busy from morning to night every day, treat me like this, right? Then I don't care, I don't care about anything. You don't care about face, but I still have face."

After saying that, Li Xiaoyun closed the door with a click. Xie Chunping sighed in his heart, which was also a relief.

Looking at his son Xie Xiaofei who was trembling on the coffee table, Xie Chunping's mind was also confused. Let's not talk about the matter of beating people for the time being. Could it be that his son really had some strange problems?

Xie Chunping remembered that he had seen a news on Weibo before, which said that a teacher repeatedly checked whether the door of his home was locked, and there were people who had to wash their hands dozens of times a day. Could it be that his son's blinking and shrugging problems were also uncontrollable?

Xie Chunping didn't believe it. There was no such strange thing in the world. Such things must be considered as being possessed by evil spirits in their hometown of Heping.

He still remembered that when he left his hometown to go to college in Raohai, he returned home in his junior year and heard his mother say that his uncle's child was possessed by evil spirits.

The word "possessed by evil spirits" is not a superstitious word in the mountains of Heping. People use this word to explain many things, such as a woman who is always depressed after giving birth, and her personality is completely different from before. She used to be polite to everyone, but after giving birth, she looked at everyone as if someone was trying to rob her family of money and steal her child.

I went to the village doctor and took some medicine. Anyway, it was sometimes better and sometimes worse. I went to the village masters and they said that I saw something unclean on the day of giving birth. Such unclean things usually run into the child, such as big rabbit spirits, big turtle spirits, and big centipede spirits.

In Xie Chunping's ears, these things are stories from "Classic of Mountains and Seas" or "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio".

Moreover, relatives and villagers in his hometown have also read books, but these folk culture things are just stories. Xie Chunping just listens and never takes them seriously.

There is only one time that Xie Chunping still remembers clearly. When he went home for the New Year in his junior year, his mother said that the child of his uncle's family was possessed by evil spirits.

"How could he be possessed by evil spirits?" Xie Chunping asked.

His mother sighed and served Xie Chunping a bowl of dumplings, "You eat first, sauerkraut dumplings are your favorite."

"Yeah." Xie Chunping liked the dumplings made by his mother the most. He hadn't been home for a year, so he naturally ate them in big mouthfuls.

His mother told Xie Chunping in the same tone as when she told him the weird stories in the village when he was a child: "He is really crazy. In such cold weather, he said he can't wear a coat or a sweater, so he just wears a short-sleeved shirt. Then you know, your brother has been admitted to graduate school, but now he must drop out."

"When did it happen? How come I don't know it?"

Xie Chunping said in surprise.

"I don't know how long it has been. Your aunt wants to save face. Your brother is crazy all day long. He takes a bath in the middle of winter, more than ten times a day, and uses cold water. He said that hot water doesn't work. When asked why, he won't say it. The masters in the village said that the child was entangled by the willow tree on the back mountain."

"Willow tree?" Xie Chunping knew what the willow tree his mother was talking about was. There was a small river on the Heping side. When people died in the villages across the river and on this side of the river, they would send the people to the same mountain.

Pick a good day to bury them, and then it's over.

The funeral ceremony here is not very grand, but it is different on the other side of the river. The funeral on the other side of the river is very particular, even more terrifying than a wedding. Sometimes the family has to stay up for several nights without rest.

Xie Chunping is one of the children who reads more in the village. He knows that these customs on the other side of the river will sooner or later be simplified like the village where he lives.

In fact, many knowledgeable people and thinkers have always advocated the idea that funerals should be simplified. For example, Mozi’s famous concept of "Festival Burial": In the section "Festival Burial", Mozi described the situation of generous burials in society at that time: The coffin must be heavy, the burial must be thick, the quilts must be many, the embroidery must be complicated, the hills must be huge...the gold, jade, and pearls are as large as the body, the strings are economical, and the chariots and horses are hidden.

Mozi pointed out that those princes and adults not only lived a luxurious and lascivious life during their lifetime, but also had to be buried generously after their death, which was a great waste of social wealth. He advocated the use of three-inch thick wooden boards as coffins regardless of high or low, and no burial items. He opposed the three-year mourning system, and opposed the "strong food will lead to hunger, thin clothing will lead to cold" during the funeral period. Thin and weak, the heavy rituals of "helping you to stand up and walking with a stick" destroy your body.

Mozi believed that thick burials and burying useful wealth underground will inevitably make the living poor; long-term mourning will destroy the body and reduce the population; during the mourning period, the people will not be able to engage in production, resulting in "a poor country, a few people, and a poor government." chaos".

Although Mozi talked about the relationship between frugality and people's prosperity from the perspective of a country, it is actually the same for a small village or a small family.