There are numerous customs for burying bodies after death. Burial is the most common and not surprising. However, in a few areas, many strange and bizarre burial methods have appeared, such as sky burial and hanging coffin burial, which later became well-known. Water burial is less well-known and appears bloody and violent due to the influence of primitive religion.
Water burial and sky burial have similar meanings. The latter is to feed eagles while the former is to feed fish. Eagles and fish are both incarnations of gods. In the area where water burial is practiced, people believe that throwing the body into the river and burying it in the belly of fish is the way to reincarnation and purification of the soul. This is a customary belief in some areas.
There are different ways of water burial in different regions. There are two most common ways. One is to throw the whole body into the river, the other is to throw the body into the river after cremation. Another is to cut the body in half with a knife and throw it into the river. The last one is more bloody, and it is necessary to use extremely sharp wooden knives or stone axes to cut the body into pieces one by one according to the joints and throw it into the river. This process is called dismemberment.
For water burial, you need to choose the time and water area. For example, the last method of dismemberment water burial needs to be done at night and the body parts must be thrown in waters with swirling sea shells.
Chen Yang: "The waters of the sea spiral... We didn't check the well in the ancestral hall carefully. The well water may be connected to the river. We didn't see the river on the side we came in, so it should be on the other side of the uninhabited village. You mentioned water burials. This village used to do water burials. The fish in the river grew up eating corpses. Those fish swam into the water of the ancestral hall through the underground undercurrent and were fished out and eaten... I still don't understand why eating fish would produce sea spiral patterns."
Fish that grow up eating corpses are certainly evil, and the whorls on the arms of Yi Wuzhang and his men must be related to the fish in the ancestral hall's well. But how are the two connected, and what is their relationship with the killing hungry ghosts and the witch spirit vulture
"Fish have a special status in Taoism. Carp passing through the Dragon Gate is considered a dragon's son. The seven stars on the head of a black fish worship the Big Dipper... Therefore, ghosts love to possess fish. If the fish in the well of the ancestral hall really grew up eating corpses, then it is normal for ghosts to possess fish." Du Shuo put his arm around Chen Yang's shoulders and whispered, "Rest first, we'll talk tomorrow."
Chen Yang nodded: "Yeah."
Du Shuo found a clean spot and let Chen Yang lean on him to sleep. His big hand stroked Chen Yang's back from time to time, and Chen Yang soon fell asleep. Before going to sleep, he looked at the nine ordinary people, who gathered in the corner to form two distinct teams. One team had three young people, and the other six people were the team that came out of the bus.
The team that came out of the bus was hostile to the three young men. If they hadn't ignored the advice to cook fish soup, how could they have been trapped in the deserted village? As for the three young men, they sneered and showed great disdain for the six people who were still pretending to be saints.
The four Heavenly Masters were in a separate place, and the injured Zhong Tianshi was taken care of by another Heavenly Master. Yi Wuzhang was whispering with Liu Quanning about something, and the doll was lying in her pocket, drowsy. As for Da Pang, he was still lying on the windowsill looking at the moon, and no one knew what he was thinking.
If it weren't for the deserted village, the scene would be quite peaceful and harmonious. Chen Yang thought so as he fell asleep.
The next day, Chen Yang was woken up. He opened his eyes and found Du Shuo covering his ears with his hands to block out the noise. But the noise was too loud, so Chen Yang was still woken up. He sat up and subconsciously rubbed Du Shuo's palm, then asked in a hoarse voice: "What's going on?"
Du Shuo paused as he retracted his hand, and put it back on Chen Yang's head to stroke his soft hair: "He stole from the company."
Chen Yang: "Don't give me the answer right away. If I talk to you, I will lose the joy of solving the problem."
Du Shuo lowered his eyes and stared at Chen Yang quietly, who acted innocently. Helplessly, Du Shuo told him in detail: "The woman holding the child accused the young man of wanting to steal her child, and the young man denied it. The people in the woman's group did not believe the young man and condemned and doubted him. The young man was angry and frankly said that the child was a burden and it would be better to take him out to explore the way, and the two sides quarreled."
Chen Yang understood and stood up and walked over. The two Heavenly Masters, Yi Wuzhang and Liu Quanning, stood aside and had no intention of moving forward to mediate. When they saw Chen Yang, they waved and called him over. Yi Wuzhang said, "Don't pay any attention to them. They can make a scene as they please."
Liu Quanning told him: "Witch Chief Yi's kid said that they were stealing from the company. We are too lazy to care about it. It's not like we have enough free time to work as neighborhood committee aunties."
"Well, I didn't want to intervene." After hearing the answer Du Shuo gave him, Chen Yang had no intention of intervening. The two quarreling parties were probably waiting for the Heavenly Master to intervene. Only when the Heavenly Master intervened could their play continue. If the Heavenly Master didn't intervene, the quarrel would soon die down.
Sure enough, they stopped arguing after a while. The three young men laughed mockingly, and the woman holding the child ran over and cried to Chen Yang and the others, "They want to steal my child and throw my child to those hungry ghosts. They are not human!"
"They clearly knew that the Uninhabited Village was strange, and they even saw their companions die in front of them. The Heavenly Masters warned us not to eat anything from the Uninhabited Village, but they deliberately cooked fish soup. Could it be that they had secretly eaten food from the Uninhabited Village before and couldn't get out, so they wanted to drag everyone to death together? Such selfish people will secretly kill us in the future if we are not driven out now!"
"Yes! The more I think about it, the more I feel it's wrong. In such a strange place, the Heavenly Master also specifically reminded us that no matter how playful or rebellious they are, they can't play with everyone's lives. Unless they were trapped in the uninhabited village before they met us, they want to drag everyone to death together."
"Now they don't even let go of babies, will they let us go in the future? Heavenly Masters, even if you are kind and compassionate, you should not indulge jackals and wolves to get along with us."
Chen Yang knew the reason for this self-directed theft. It turned out that they talked about the fish in the well of the ancestral hall last night and someone was keeping it in mind. He also guessed that the young man who cooked the fish soup might have been trapped in the deserted village and wanted to drag others to die with him.
The three young men shouted at him, "You're talking as if we forced you to drink the fish soup, you!" The young man pointed at the middle-aged man among the six people and said, "In the beginning, you came to me and asked for money to buy fish soup, but now you're making me feel innocent. Did I hold your necks and force you to drink the fish soup we cooked? Get it straight, you were the ones who shamelessly came to me and asked for fish soup!"
"What? If you had listened to the Heavenly Master and not touched the fish in the well in the ancestral hall and cooked fish soup in front of us, would we have drunk it? We were all starving at that time, and you deliberately lured us. You were deliberately dragging us to death! Heavenly Masters, this group of traitors will kill us, they are not worth saving!"
The three young men hurried forward to explain: "Don't listen to their nonsense, we were just having fun at the time and didn't think too much about it. We didn't force them, they just came to us with the audacity. Look, this is the money they paid for the fish soup." The young man took out a few red bills from his pocket and showed them to Chen Yang and the others as evidence. After reading them, he threw them back to the middle-aged uncle: "I'll give it back to you. We haven't owed you anything now. Stop slandering us!"
"Who stole your child? I didn't even touch him. Look at your child. He doesn't cry except when you hold him. As soon as you put him down, he cries as if he was strangled. If I take him away, he will cry and make a fuss the first time. Let me ask you, have you ever heard this child cry?"
Mutual blame, Chen Yang thought.
The six people who got out of the bus guessed that the three youths deliberately dragged them to death together, and wanted to drive them away in advance just in case. The three youths exposed their deception and shirked the responsibility. The two sides quarreled again.
Chief Witch Yi was very irritable. He smashed a stool on the spot and said coldly, "Have you quarreled enough? If not, go out and lure all the hungry ghosts here. Let's quarrel in front of them."
Both sides were angry and tried to defend themselves. They seemed to think that since they paid for their lives, they had the confidence to speak. Someone said, "Master Yi, even hungry ghosts would be dried up in broad daylight. We also want to solve the problem during the day, so that we don't have to see ghosts at night and guard against internal ghosts during the day."
Chief Witch Yi: "Since we are going to settle accounts, let's settle them together. We told you not to eat food from the deserted village, but you said it was for fun and you said you were lured. What about us? Who deliberately mixed the fish soup into the kettle? It was them." She pointed at the three young men, and then said to the other six people who had nothing to do with it: "Who among you didn't see it? If you saw it, you didn't stop it or warn people. Aren't you thinking, 'If something goes wrong, at least the Heavenly Master will get into trouble with you'?"
All nine of them looked embarrassed and could not say anything to refute. They were all selfish, but they felt that they had no choice, after all, no one wanted to die.
Chief Witch Yi said, "If you keep doing this, get out of here!"
The nine people wanted to say something, but seeing that the Heavenly Master was full of indifference and displeasure, the few who still wanted to rely on the Heavenly Master to survive did not dare to speak anymore. Both sides glared at each other with complaints, and then found a place to sit down and rest.
Chief Witch Yi: "They are in a restless mood now. Before, they were a little afraid to make big moves, but now they are making small moves constantly."
Chen Yang: "Before they realized they couldn't get out of the deserted village, they could have selfishly hidden the food from you. If they found out they would die in the deserted village, and the Heavenly Master could leave alive but didn't save them, I'm afraid it would stimulate them to do something even more terrible."
Last night, I proposed to pay for the lives of these people so that they would feel at ease and would not take the opportunity to drag us down. But today, these things happened. Instead of thinking about dealing with the hungry ghosts and leaving the deserted village, they excluded their fellow human companions.
Chen Yang said to Wuzhang Yi: "Let's go to the ancestral hall first to check the situation."
Chief Witch Yi nodded and said, "Pay attention to the tower. There are many hungry ghosts hiding inside. Hungry ghosts are afraid of sunlight, so the outside of the tower is covered with green plants."
Chen Yang stopped and said, "Are all the hungry ghosts hiding in the tower? Why don't we remove all the green plants and let the sun kill them."
"It's useless." Chief Witch Yi rejected it. "We tried, but the green plants stubbornly stuck into the walls of the tower. Even if we spent a whole day, we might not be able to remove the green plants in a tower. The tower is a special building. Even if we only remove the green plants on the windows and doors, it won't be of much use. Instead, it will anger the hungry ghosts, making them remember our presence and hunt us all over the mountains. Now we are hiding in this tower without green plants because the sufficient Yang energy can temporarily cover up our popularity. But it won't last long."
"Okay." Chen Yang and Du Shuo left the tower and followed the narrow path back to the ancestral hall. The ancestral hall was still gloomy, and the tablets in front of the hall were stacked and stood still, as if anyone who broke into the ancestral hall would be watched by the tablets.
Du Shuo found the bloody wooden sword by the wellhead and called Chen Yang over: "This wooden sword was not there yesterday."
Chen Yang picked up the wooden sword, which was sharpened to a point as sharp as a steel sword. The wooden sword was stained with black blood, and there were also scattered blood stains on the ground. Black lumps condensed in the cracks of the bluestone slabs, which must have caused a lot of blood to flow. He looked into the well and found that the bottom of the well was pitch black and almost bottomless.
Lying at the mouth of the well, he could clearly hear the echo of his own voice. The rock wall in the well was covered with wet moss. Chen Yang stretched out his finger and wiped it, and found it extremely sticky and dirty. He took out his mobile phone and turned on the light to check the well. The mouth of the well was narrow, and the surface of the well was dark and calm. Staring at it for a long time would make him feel scared.
Chen Yang stood up and said, "It's impossible to see clearly what's going on below the well. The water is dark and the sun can't get through." He glanced at the wooden sword thrown on the ground and said, "Did someone perform a water burial here last night? But water burial is feeding the corpse to the river god, and throwing it into the well... is more like feeding the fish."
Du Shuo said: "Go and see the body in the coffin."
Chen Yang was stunned for a moment, but he quickly reacted and ran to check the body in the coffin. After opening the coffin lid, he found that there was indeed a body inside, but it was not the same body as yesterday. Today's body had almost half of its body eaten away, but the flesh and blood were very fresh and had not rotted.
This is a freshly dead body.
Chen Yang: "Who hid the body in the coffin?" He checked the young body and found that he was either one of the three young men who broke in or the person who came out of the bus. There was no sea thread on his intact arm, and the other arm was missing.
Cut off the rotten body and throw it into the well to feed the fish, and then add fresh bodies to the coffin. Chen Yang didn't understand this operation, and looked up at Du Shuo. Du Shuo: "Sacrifice."
"Sacrifice?"
Shouldn't water burial be used to appease the souls of ancestors and guide them to reincarnation? How did it become a sacrifice? No, in earlier times, water burial was indeed a sacrifice to the river god. Moreover, the corpse was not thrown into the river, but chopped into pieces and thrown into the well. But why was it thrown into the well of the ancestral hall alone
Chen Yang stared at the tablets in the ancestral hall for a long time, and his pupils suddenly shrank. He realized something was wrong: "If the villagers of the uninhabited village moved because of the remote location and inconvenience in getting in and out, they should also move the ancestral tablets away!"
In the eyes of some rural clans, the ancestral hall is so important that it is their root. Even if they build a new ancestral hall next to the original one, they will choose an auspicious day to welcome the ancestral tablets into the new ancestral hall. When the whole clan moves, the ancestral tablets will never be left in the deserted village.
Du Shuo said with his hands behind his back: "The ancestral hall is not the ancestral hall of the villagers who moved away from the deserted village, so it is normal that the tablets were not moved."
Chen Yang: “It’s possible.”
The ancestral halls are different in different places. In some places, there is only one ancestral hall for each village, but in some places in the south, there is one ancestral hall for each surname. There are usually several major surnames in a village, and each major surname has an ancestral hall. People with different surnames are not allowed to enter other ancestral halls, and people with different surnames will not be invited to funerals unless they are related by marriage.
"So there is still a clan with a certain surname that has not moved the ancestral tablets. This is caused by either the natural disasters or man-made disasters that caused them to flee in a hurry and they did not have time to move the ancestral tablets. Or, the whole clan was buried in an uninhabited village." Chen Yang stepped forward and wiped the dust off one of the tablets: "Anonymous!"
Chen Yang then wiped off the dust on the other tablets, all of which were anonymous. There were hundreds of tablets in front of him, and the densely packed and stacked tablets were all anonymous. No name, no age or cause of death, and no one erected a tombstone. There was only one tablet with the name "Anonymous" enshrined here. Even the incense, flowers and five offerings would be snatched away by lonely ghosts because there was no name.
"How come there are so many anonymous tablets? Is the entire ancestral hall dedicated to these anonymous tablets? Who is doing this?"
Du Shuo came over and took out a clean tablet at the edge: "There is no dust, it is just made."
Chen Yang took it and looked at it: "Where did the new funeral come from?" He paused, then turned his head to look at the ancient well standing quietly in the center of the courtyard, and said: "There was a water burial last night, and today there are new anonymous tablets. It is indeed a new funeral, so the hundreds of tablets in front of us are all from water burials and then erected and enshrined in the ancestral hall."
Water burials usually involve throwing body parts into rivers, but here they are thrown into a well. Are there other things in the well besides fish? Why are water burials held at the mouth of the well? Who holds water burials for these anonymous people? After the water burials, they build ancestral halls and use tablets to worship them. However, they dare not engrave their names, as if they are encircling them, worshipping them as atonement, but also afraid that they will go to the underworld to complain after having tablets.
Chen Yang put the tablet back on the altar. There were still incense and flowers on the table below the altar, but they had rotted and fallen over after a long time. The oil in the incense lamp was filled with dead insects, the incense in the incense burner was in a mess, and the incense ash was motionless. Suddenly, a piece of incense ash broke off and fell on the table with a "pop".
The sound suddenly rang out in the silent ancestral hall, adding a bit of horror to the atmosphere.
Chen Yang lowered his eyes: "Let's go and see if there are any other ancestral halls."
Da Pang suddenly jumped out and spun around a few times far away from Dushuo, holding a card in his mouth. On the card was written: "There is someone in the woods."
There is a whole forest on the Ergui Ridge, and the uninhabited village is surrounded by the forest. Chen Yang: "Big Fatty, lead the way."
Big Fatty hesitated for a moment and looked at Du Shuo. Du Shuo: "Lead the way." It seemed to have been granted immunity and quickly jumped out of the window and ran forward. Chen Yang also jumped out of the window and landed easily. When he turned around, he saw Du Shuo standing behind him. They smiled at each other and continued to run with Big Fatty.
After running through several alleys, they arrived at the woods. When entering the woods, Chen Yang suddenly looked back at the tower behind him, which was submerged in green plants. At the window, some skinny and black arms tried to reach out of the green plants, but they immediately retracted after being burned by the sun.
Those hungry ghosts were indeed observing them. Chen Yang retracted his gaze and ran into the woods. Du Shuo was already waiting for him in front. This hillside was backlit, and the dense branches and leaves in the forest blocked the light, making it very dark in the forest. The forest was quiet, with no insects or birds singing.
Big Fatty stopped on the tree trunk, waiting for Chen Yang and Du Shuo. When he saw them, he continued to jump, very fast. Almost only a black shadow could be seen flashing among the leaves. It was hard to believe that someone of that weight could have such skills.
The forest was covered with fallen leaves, and underneath the fallen leaves were rotten leaves mixed with soil. Sometimes the fallen leaves would be lifted up and stepped directly into the mud. Chen Yang was holding onto a crooked tree and observing the forest environment. Suddenly, a piece of white bone fell in front of him, which scared him.
Chen Yang stepped back and looked up, and saw a half-man-high wooden barrel placed at the fork of the crooked tree he had just supported. There was a hole in the barrel, and the bones had fallen out of that hole just now.
Du Shuo came over and looked at Chen Yang first. Seeing that he was fine, he looked at the barrel between the branches of the tree trunk: "Ghost Pupa."
Chen Yang looked through the hole in the barrel and saw a complete corpse curled up inside. He asked, "Is this a tree burial?"
The so-called tree burial, like water burial, is a funeral ritual that appears in a few places. Some people believe that trees are the resting place of souls, and deceased relatives can come back to visit their relatives and rest in peace by possessing a big tree. Therefore, tree burial rituals appear, either placing the body in a wooden barrel and placing it on the tree, or wrapping the body in a body bag and tying it to the tree trunk, and some even dig a hole in the tree to put the body in.
These corpses buried in trees are called ghost pupae.
Chen Yang: "It is impossible for there to be two different funeral ceremonies in the same village."
There were more and more problems. The problem of hungry ghosts had not been solved yet, and anonymous tablets and two different funeral ceremonies appeared, which could never coexist in the same village. Different surnames and ancestral halls could coexist in the same village, but two funeral ceremonies rarely coexisted.
The special funeral rituals represent the clan’s religious beliefs in ghosts and gods, and the mountain village will never allow two special religious beliefs to coexist.
Suddenly, a shrill scream and a cry for help broke out not far from the forest. Then Chen Yang and Du Shuo saw a man and a woman running towards them with extremely terrified expressions on their faces. When they ran to them, Chen Yang found that the man was carrying a gray-haired old man on his back.
When the couple saw Chen Yang and Du Shuo, they stopped and said breathlessly, "Run, run quickly. The forest is full of corpses, run quickly." The girl could not say anything and could only nod.
Chen Yang pointed at the ghost pupa behind him: "Are you talking about this?"
The couple looked up and screamed again, even mistaking Chen Yang and Du Shuo for ghosts. They begged for mercy: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We just wanted to come and investigate. We didn't mean to offend you. Young people don't know better. Please don't blame us."
The girl cried, clasped her hands together and kept praying: "Don't blame me if there's anything strange, don't blame me if there's anything strange."
Chen Yang touched his nose and shrugged at Du Shuo secretly to show that he didn't mean to scare people. He said, "I am a human."
The two frightened people didn't hear Chen Yang's words clearly. Instead, the old man behind the boy woke him up with a loud voice: "You are useless! They are human beings, not 'people' who crawled out of ghost cocoons."
The boy put the old man down: "Professor, ghosts are very cunning."
The girl nodded as well. "That's right. Professor, have you forgotten what we just saw? That thing was hiding in the ghost pupa and lied to us that it was not dead, wanting us to let it out. But a dried corpse crawled out and grabbed me. I was scared to death."
Chen Yang asked: "Who are you? What's going on with the mummy in the ghost cocoon?" As he spoke, he looked at the wound on the girl's wrist. It looked quite hideous, but the girl seemed to feel no pain at all.
The old man said, "I am a professor at Z University, and they are my students. They originally wanted to study the reasons why two special burial methods coexist in the uninhabited village, and it just happened to be their topic, so they came together. After arriving, they have been wandering in the forest and can't get out. Just now, my student heard a cry for help from the ghost pupa, and thought it was a living person. He went up to untie the ghost pupa, and suddenly a dried corpse jumped out and scratched my student. We ran fast and escaped, but Zhao Yao didn't feel any pain from the wound. I suspect she was poisoned by the corpse."
Chen Yang: "You also know about corpse poison?"
Professor: "I have studied folk culture for many years and have seen a lot of things."
Chen Yang nodded, took out a spiritual talisman and gave it to Zhao Yao, asking her to stick it on the wound on her wrist: "It can temporarily suppress the corpse poison. You can follow us into the village first and have someone apply some herbal medicine to you."
Zhao Yao's eyes lit up: "Are you Heavenly Masters?"
Chen Yang: “Yeah.”
Zhao Yao and another boy, Zhao Gang, excitedly chatted with Chen Yang and asked him questions, all of which were questions about the Heavenly Master and other things that were of interest to him. They had been exposed to many aspects of belief in gods and ghosts, so they were very receptive. When studying folk culture, they were also very respectful.
Du Shuo and the professor stood aside and chatted. He asked the professor: "How do you know that there are two special funeral ceremonies in the No Man's Village?"
The professor said: "One day, I was reading about special folk funeral ceremonies in China in the library, and a young man talked to me. He knew a lot about folk funeral ceremonies, and our conversation became more and more in-depth. Later, he talked about tree burial and water burial ceremonies in uninhabited villages. I was interested, so I came to check out the research."
Du Shuo: "Do you still remember the name of that young man?"
The professor said happily: "I remember. His name is Meng Xi."