After offering incense, the clan girls did not leave quickly as usual. Instead, they bowed respectfully to the altar and said, "Clan God, the birthday month is approaching. Recently, there are nine newborn children in the clan who are eligible to receive your blessing."
Luo Yu'an, who was hiding behind the god and making origami flowers, was stunned. God's birthday month? She had never heard of such a term. And the blessing of the newborn reminded her of the gossip she had heard before, which seemed to be some kind of ritual.
Ujigami said in a gentle voice, "According to custom, have them come here on the second day of the god's birthday month."
"yes."
After the two girls left, Luo Yu'an came out of her hiding place and looked at the light gray sky outside. She had been here for a month, in late autumn, and now it was winter, and the weather was getting colder.
When she turned around, she saw the God of Clan looking at her, as if waiting for her to ask something. Luo Yu'an, who had no intention of asking questions, tried to ask under such a gaze: "The God's Birthday Month you just mentioned, is it the time when the God of Clan was born? Why is it the God's Birthday Month instead of the God's Birthday Day?"
She thought of those common festivals. Generally speaking, the legendary gods, gods and Buddhas all had birthdays, but they were all on a certain day.
"Because it takes a month for Ujigami to be born," Ujigami replied slowly.
Luo Yu'an suddenly felt an indescribable strangeness, and he didn't know where this feeling came from. "Where did you... Shishen come from? From heaven and earth?"
Ujigami smiled, "Ujigami was born from humans."
Luo Yu'an didn't quite understand, but she wasn't the type to want to know everything clearly, so she let it go. In her impression, the birthdays of gods and immortals were the days when temples and Taoist temples held ceremonies. She had thought that in the month of the gods' birthdays, this old house would be more festive and lively than usual, but things were a little different from what she thought.
All the red lanterns outside the courtyard were replaced with white lanterns. People walking in the outer courtyard, both men and women, wore black dresses and white flowers. Even the laughter and playing that were common in private in the past disappeared. Even though there were people coming and going in the courtyard, there was an atmosphere of solemnity and deathly silence.
The curtains and draperies of the shrine were changed to black, and when they were hung down, the light inside the shrine was dim. After offering incense, the women burned paper outside the courtyard. The yellow paper was painted with abstract red patterns. While burning the paper, they chanted incomprehensible prayers.
Such behavior can easily be associated with worshiping the dead.
Luo Yu'an was walking on a secluded path in the outer courtyard like an invisible ghost, and heard two young girls who had just come out of a nearby bathhouse chatting in low voices.
"Every time the 'ghost month' comes, I feel scared, as if this house suddenly comes alive, and then dies again."
"Don't make it sound so scary! And you girls are not allowed to mention 'Ghost Month'. You should say 'God's Birthday Month'. If anyone hears you, you will be punished again!"
Ghost Month? In the customs that Luo Yu'an knew, Ghost Month should refer to July, because there is a Zhongyuan Festival, which is a festival to worship ancestors and save the souls of the dead, but most people nowadays no longer care about this. Is their Ghost Month different from the Ghost Month in the sense of ordinary people
At dusk, the shrine courtyard closed earlier than usual, and a burst of music came from outside the courtyard. I didn't know what instrument the music came from, and it was mixed with the sound of tiny bells, which made people feel distant and peaceful, accompanied by a faint human voice chanting, like a lullaby.
Luo Yu'an woke up from a nap and found it was still pitch black all around. She opened the curtain and looked outside. It was still dark outside, but the music and voices she heard before falling asleep had not stopped yet. It just seemed as if they were from a long distance and she could only hear a little noise in the distance.
Suddenly, she felt something was wrong and turned to look at the shrine inside.
The clan god who used to sit in the innermost layer of the shrine was nowhere to be seen, and the small space was filled with a large number of red lines. Luo Yu'an got up and approached the outermost layer with fear, calling softly: "Clan God?"
"What's wrong with you?"
A white sleeve stretched out from the red line, and a porcelain-white hand hung down, waving at her weakly.
Luo Yu'an walked over carefully, stretched out her hands and held the hand hanging in front of her. She felt a cool feeling, as if she was holding a hand made of ceramic.
Suddenly.
The hand suddenly disintegrated into a mess of red lines in her palm and slipped through her fingers.
Luo Yu'an was startled and could not help but stand up. In that instant, she found that all the light around her dimmed and she came to a strange place inexplicably. In the vast darkness, her breathing and footsteps were echoed and amplified. The only thing emitting a faint light here was an old and simple altar, on which stood a life-sized porcelain statue of a god.
The statue was wrapped in dense red lines all over its body, and on its face was a smile of the god that Luo Yu'an was very familiar with. There was a crack on the head of the porcelain statue, splitting the smiling face.
The statue smiled at her, but a deep sigh came from within the cracked smile.
—It hurts so much.
—It hurts.
Luo Yu'an suddenly opened her eyes. It was already bright outside. The sound of the courtyard door opening made her subconsciously stand up and try to hide behind the clan god. When she ran to the innermost room of the shrine, she suddenly started and woke up from her trance.
Was that a dream just now
The same white sleeves as in the dream stretched out in front of her, revealing a porcelain-white hand. The owner of the hand looked at her with the same smile as always: "Come quickly."
Luo Yu'an stopped thinking about the strange dream and hid behind him.
It was the second day of the god's birthday month, and the women brought nine babies as they had promised. These babies were sleeping, and were carried into the shrine by their respective relatives, and placed in a row on a white brocade mat.
Each of those people wearing black dresses or suits looked well-maintained and had a noble temperament, but at the same time, each of them treated the clan god with humility and respect. They did not even dare to say a word to the clan god. After kowtowing and kneeling, they left the courtyard under the leadership of the clan women.
They will return at dusk to pick up their children, who will be blessed by the gods before that.
This process has always been a secretive matter, and even the Lian girl had never seen it, but Luo Yu'an just watched the whole process as an outsider, ignorantly.
In fact, the process was not complicated. Ujigami just brushed the foreheads of these children one by one, then pulled out red threads from his sleeves and loosely wrapped them around their necks.
Although it was not complicated, it was a little scary. The red line slowly moved and melted into the necks of those children, slowly leaving a faint red mark on their necks. Luo Yu'an stared at this scene with wide eyes, and inexplicably felt his neck tighten.
In her opinion, this should be a very uncomfortable thing, but the nine children were just sleeping soundly and did not react at all, so for them, this "blessing" ceremony should not be painful.
Just as I was thinking this, one of the children suddenly moved, wrinkled his nose and started crying softly.
"Ah... a child has woken up." Luo Yu'an looked at the clan god on the altar.
Shi Shen smiled and said: "The blessing awakened in the middle of the journey. This child has good talent and strong inspiration."
The praise from the clan god did not stop the baby from crying. Her cries became louder and louder, and could already be called noisy. She cried so hard that people outside should be able to hear her, but the people outside the courtyard had no intention of coming in to comfort the child. Luo Yu'an listened to the child crying at the top of her lungs, and was worried that she might get into trouble. She frequently turned her eyes to the clan god, but the clan god always smiled at her without any reaction.
Based on his experience over the past month, Luo Yu'an tried to ask, "Should I coax her?"
Shi Shen nodded, and Luo Yu'an even felt that he was waiting for her to say this herself.
A young woman in her twenties who had never taken care of a baby carefully picked up the child wrapped in a package and rocked him gently. This did help a little, and the baby's crying became quieter. Luo Yu'an continued to walk around the shrine holding the child. Because the shrine was not large, she could only walk around the clan god again and again.
After the child finally stopped crying, Ujigami smiled and said, "It was really noisy."
The baby's eyes were bright and dark, and when Luo Yu'an held him close to the clan god, his appearance was reflected in his big eyes. Almost as soon as the clan god finished speaking, the child, who had originally calmed down, cried again.
Luo Yu'an was very patient, probably because she had raised her younger sister before, so she coaxed the child into submission. Just as she was about to put the child back, Shishen said, "The child is really noisy."
Subconsciously, he lowered his head to look at the child, and sure enough, he saw her mouth pout, and she was about to cry again. Luo Yu'an quickly picked up the child again and patted her shoulders, "Be good, don't make a fuss, don't make a fuss at all."
Is Ujigami like an old man who feels lonely when being ignored, or is he like a teenager who wants to play a little naughty occasionally
Luo Yu'an found himself thinking about this question frequently recently, and his impression of Shi Shen kept jumping between these two.
Although there were some minor incidents in the middle, at dusk, the blessing of the god ended smoothly. The nine children were taken away by their relatives, and the courtyard returned to silence again.
Every day when the courtyard was closed, Luo Yu'an could move freely in the courtyard, because at night, they did not dare to enter the courtyard of the shrine. The music that had sounded all night the night before sounded again, and Luo Yu'an lay on the warm ground of the shrine and fell asleep in a daze.
It was the same dream she had last night. She dreamed that the god was on the altar of the shrine, his body scattered into red lines, and his white clothes melted and flowed like candles, turning into a pile of strange things.
As soon as she got closer, she would go into the darkness and see the ceramic statue on the altar slowly cracking from the top. From the dark crack came a faint sound, as if it was overflowing from the ground. Such repetitive mumblings echoed in her mind, as if her spirit was constantly being eroded and polluted.
Waking up in a cold sweat, Luo Yu soothed his rapidly beating heart, came to the altar, knelt on a brocade cushion, put his hands together in a standard posture of praying to the gods and Buddhas, and said: "Shishen, I have had similar dreams for two consecutive days. I wonder if there is any special meaning?"
The curtain was blown open by the wind, and in the floating light, the statue-like god on the altar suddenly seemed to come alive, looking down at her, smiling slightly, "How do you know, it was a dream."
Luo Yu'an was stunned: "Isn't it a dream? That was the scene I saw when I was half asleep at night?"
She breathed a sigh of relief, "It's not a dream." She seemed relieved.
Ujigami smiled for a while, then sighed with a hint of regret, "You don't seem afraid?"
Luo Yu'an: "Knowing that it is something that happened in reality and not an unknown dream, I am not so scared." The main thing is that if the strange thing is the god, I don't feel so scared.
Ujigami gave a preview: "It will happen again tonight, and throughout this month."
Luo Yu'an: "Okay."
Sure enough, she saw a similar scene again at night. She was a little confused about whether it was a dream or reality, but since Shishin said it was not a dream, she just regarded it as not a dream.
The ceramic statue with a crack in it stood on the dark altar, still mumbling from the crack. Luo Yu'an didn't dare to do anything in the past two days, but after asking the clan god today, she became a little bolder and thought that maybe she could take a look at what was going on.
Standing on tiptoe and looking into the crack, she asked, "Is it Ujigami? Why do you say it hurts?"
The numb and unchanging sound in the gap paused for a moment, and suddenly became noisy, with countless identical voices and the same tones overlapping and echoing.
“It’s so dark.”
“It’s hot.”
“I can’t breathe.”
"it hurts."