There are four men in the backyard of Chenerzhuang. They usually help their family carry the coffin. That kind of hard work can only be done by a strong man. The four men are built with strong backs and dark muscles. They look ordinary.
If I had to tell you what was good, it would be that the four clerks were all doing fine work at the moment. Each of the waiters used carvings to carve camphor wood and carve camphor wood into wooden figures. Their leg skills were very skillful.
Sawdust fell to the ground in the yard, rolling in rolls, floating gently.
What was very strange was that the camphor trees had just been cut down, but after reaching their legs, the trees seemed to have been dried in the sun for a long time. The bark was peeled off easily by the planer, without any harshness.
Chen Erzhuang, on the other hand, walked straight through the small courtyard and locked himself in the room. He didn't know what he was doing. The other clerks didn't ask. Even Chen Erzhuang didn't raise his head when he walked past, and just concentrated on his work. Do your own thing.
One of the guys has almost carved a wooden figure. The wooden figure looks like an old woman. She is very old. The wrinkles on her face are piled together, and there are many age spots. The vicissitudes of life in the corners of the eyes are also perfectly outlined. It is difficult to imagine what is happening in front of you. A big, thick man could carve it to that level.
He was carving at a slow and slow pace, just like any girl embroidering. The carving knife on the leg was very dexterous, and the wood chips fell one after another, perfectly showing the other parts of the old woman's body. After spending about two hours, the old woman had begun to take shape.
The waiter picked up the paintbrush next to him, and surprisingly, all the paint on his paintbrush was red. And when the paintbrush dipped in red paint fell on the wooden figure, it actually changed into other colors, changing into the color of the wooden figure's skin, age spots, eyebrows, lips, and even the color of scars!
One color transforms into a person in various colors, bringing the image of the old woman to life!
The only puzzling thing was that the old woman's eyes were still the color of the wood, not focused on the color, just like the wooden figures lying next to the coffin in the store.
Then the clerk walked to the front of the shop, took out a pair of shrouds, and put them on the old woman. Then he moved the old woman into the house that Chen Erzhuang had just entered, and then continued to move in a camphor tree, peeled it, and carved it...
Mu Yu cast an invisibility formation on himself and kept watching the four guys working from afar in Chen Erzhuang's backyard, but the doubts in his heart were getting deeper and deeper.
He always felt that there seemed to be a very powerful guy in Chen Erzhuang's yard who was wary of him. The feeling just now was very strong, so Mu Yu did not approach rashly but kept waiting for an opportunity.
However, the whole afternoon, the four guys were doing carving work there without even a superfluous expression on their faces.
At noon, a woman came to Chen Erzhuang with a mournful face. She was a villager from the next village, named Xinghua. Her mother passed away last night, and she came specifically to Chen Erzhuang to arrange the funeral arrangements for her mother.
There are more than a dozen small villages, large and small, and seven or eight large villages nearby, with a combined population of over 10,000 people. Among those who deal in dead people is Chen Erzhuang's family.
It's hard to predict accurately things like birth, old age, illness and death. Sometimes Chen Erzhuang wouldn't receive a single business in a month, and sometimes there would be several trips a day. Everything in life is impermanent, and Chen Erzhuang knows better than anyone who is wrong.
Chen Erzhuang expressionlessly helped Xinghua choose the utensils for the funeral, from incense candles to coffins to shrouds, paper money, and the deceased people to be buried with them. There are many funeral customs in rural areas, including when to light what candles, how many sticks of incense to light, when to call out the soul, and when to chase the soul. Chen Erzhuang knows it all very well.
Those who are in the business of ceremonial affairs will do it if there is a little benefit. The family of the deceased will not bargain with me for a high price, such as the price of the coffin and burial clothes. They will pay as much as they should.
According to the birth date, the funeral was scheduled for the next day.
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Mu Yu had been paying attention to Chen Erzhuang's movements, and he also saw those strange and lifelike wooden figures. Those wooden figures carved from camphor wood are not plants after all and can be controlled by wooden feathers.
As long as Mu Yu is willing, he can even let those wooden people move their muscles and stand up and move around. Xiaoshuai was more playful and kept urging Muyu to let the wooden man dance or something. But considering the person behind the scenes, Muyu naturally refused directly.
The red paint used to color the wood exudes the musty smell of rotting liquid bean. I don’t know if it is made from something, but the smell is very strong.
That kind of paint can automatically change into the color of a person after encountering a wooden person. Such a strange sight is definitely something that ordinary people can do.
Mu Yu just went back and asked Lao Xutou. In the past, everyone in the village knew whether Chen Erzhuang was good at carving wooden figures. They didn't even know that he was good at carving wooden figures, let alone his four big and thick men. .
His four men were from nearby villages. They were all honest men, and they were not said to be very good at sculpting that kind of delicate work.
It looked as if Chen Erzhuang and his four men suddenly became master carvers in a short period of time, and Old Xu Tou also told Mu Yu with certainty that he had never heard of anyone using wooden figures during funerals before. .
Mu Yu became more and more curious about Chen Erzhuang's unusual behavior, but Chen Erzhuang stayed in his room and did not come out. A man carved a wooden figure and sent it to Chen Erzhuang's room for the rest of the time. The doors of Chen Erzhuang's rooms are all closed.
After monitoring for a whole day, Mu Yu still found nothing. Early the next morning, Chen Erzhuang and his four men had already carried an empty coffin to Xinghua's house. The sacrificial candles and other items were placed in the empty coffin.