Chapter 215 Dragon King Temple

It is said that good is rewarded with good, and evil is rewarded with evil. The method of refining the ghost flag is to enslave other people's souls. Moreover, he wanted to seize Hu Xiangu's hundred years of practice for his own selfishness, so that his soul was eaten by a pig today. This is also the retribution he deserves.

Avoiding the villagers' thanks, I quietly took Hu Xiangu to find my motorcycle and continued to drive upstream along the river.

On the lonely road, Hu Xiangu, a living encyclopedia, explained the interesting stories of humanities to me, which opened my eyes. Hu Xiangu said that her spiritual intelligence was born in the Jurchen tribe (now Fushun) in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. She was a pet raised by the princess of the tribe. It happened that the Quanzhen Taoist priest found it when he went to Mongolia to preach and returned through the Jurchen tribe.

The Taoist priest saw that Hu Xiangu had spiritual intelligence, and he felt compassion for her for a while, so he found the princess and told her a fortune. The fortune-teller was a big white fox. Finally, the Taoist priest predicted the princess's future marriage fortune, and thus rescued Hu Xiangu, preparing to release her back to the mountains. However, the Taoist priest, who had a compassionate heart, found it difficult to cultivate among wild beasts and monsters, so he recited the "Shangqing Dadong Zhenjing" for Hu Xiangu. Hu Xiangu relied on her newly born intelligence and desire for life, and the few words in her memory, and finally survived the catastrophe, and only in modern times did she cultivate into a terrestrial immortal.

[Little knowledge: In the frontier areas that were not eroded by Han culture, women were free to fall in love. With the unification of the frontier areas by the Qing Dynasty, they were eroded by Han culture, and gradually became arranged by parents and matchmakers. ]

Let me continue with my journey to find the dragon. After two days of walking and stopping, I went from Jiamusi City to Yichun City. The most eye-catching person along the way was the young Hu Xiangu. She was a hundred times more beautiful than those Russian girls, and she could often arouse the admiration of passers-by when she was less than eight years old.

As I looked old due to long-term exposure to the elements, I was often mistaken for her father.

May and June were the farming seasons. I remember there was a saying that winds and rains vary from 100 miles apart. On rural roads, you can often see heavy rain on the east side of the road, but no rain on the west side.

On the morning of the fourth day, I took Hu Xiangu to such a village.

"Aunt, we have been looking for three days in a row. Do you think my grandfather will change his route?"

Since leaving Qinghe Village, we have walked through dozens of villages. I have never been to any store in the village.

Hu Xiangu still had that emotionless expression and said: "It shouldn't be possible. According to what you said, the dragon is lacking in water, so Master Li must not be too far away from the river. However, ordinary streams cannot provide sufficient water essence. The Heilongjiang River has the most abundant water essence in the Northeast."

Although Hu Xiangu lived a long life, she always treated my grandfather with respect as a junior. I looked helplessly at the scorching sun above my head, which made me dry and thirsty. There is still plenty of water in the Heilongjiang River? But if there is enough water, why doesn't it rain? The scorching sun above my head made me feel like I was in a big steamer, and my throat was so hot that smoke came out.

We decided to go into the village to ask again. After all, if we continue to move forward, we may reach a tributary. If my grandfather wants to change direction, he may have to go downstream to the Songhua River area.

As soon as we entered the village, I was attracted by the music in front of me. I saw a crowd surrounding a dilapidated temple, beating gongs and drums. The common people all painted their faces white and danced the Yangko dance. There were also some men and women who led the team by walking on high bridges and blowing trumpets.

In front of the Yangko team stood five men and women in normal clothes. They knelt in front of the temple. Next to them stood an old lady with chicken feathers in her hair. She held a feather duster in her hand and muttered something.

It was the first time I saw this kind of situation. I was quite curious, so I asked Hu Xiangu beside me: "Auntie, what are these people doing? Is it a traditional festival today? Why haven't I seen it before?"

Seeing that temple, it looked a bit like the land temple I visited when I was captured by the Yincha, but the height of the temple in front of me was about the same as the height of an adult. The square where the crowd was dancing the Yangko was not very big, and there were many people watching the excitement around. I and Fairy Hu moved closer to the crowd and heard the witch with chicken feathers on her head leading the way and shouting: "Amitabha, rain will fall and we can eat white flour buns." The crowd also began to shout the slogan along with the witch's words, up and down, and the sound of hundreds of people shouting together was quite shocking. Fairy Hu said to me: "They are praying for rain. Did you notice when we came just now? Now it's past the Grain in Ear solar term, and the people should farm, and the villages less than five miles away from here have already started farming, but their land is still dry and cracked." I understand this. It turns out that this is a temple to worship the Dragon King of rivers. All families near rivers or along the coast will worship gods to keep safe. Most of the coastal areas south of Shanhaiguan worship Mazu, but the north always believes in the Dragon King. It's just that the construction specifications of the temples of the Dragon King of the Four Seas are much lower than those of the gods and Buddhas in the sky. As for the one in front of me, it is only a little over one person tall. Although there are a lot of fruits and vegetables in front of it, the dilapidated temple looks very shabby.

The strange spell that the old witch chanted made me a little confused. Normally, you have to pray for rain by reciting a prayer text, such as the "Prayer for Rain" by the great writer Su Shi, which has hundreds of words of prayer text, showing great heroic spirit, using the people's hearts to understand the will of heaven, and moving the heaven to send down sweet rain. But the old woman in front of me bribed the Dragon King with the white flour bun? This sounds too much of a joke.

"Don't be too surprised, this witch is not lying, I have seen the method of praying for rain in front of me." Hu Xiangu said indifferently.

I smiled awkwardly, because I was not well-informed, but Fairy Hu treated me like an elder and patiently explained to me the folk method of praying for rain. She said that this method was passed down by witches in ancient times. The purpose was to talk to the Dragon King and give gifts to ask the Dragon King to help rain.

But when the witch cut off the chicken's head, the drum sounded, and the Yangko team retreated. Instead, a group of men with painted faces came to the Dragon King Temple. Some of them took shovels and carried cement to renovate the outer wall of the Dragon King Temple.

Then there came boys and girls under 10 years old. They all had pigtails and danced strange dances in front of the temple. I am interested in all kinds of folk witchcraft and couldn't help but take a few more glances. To be honest, the Dragon King's statue had lost its green paint and was tattered. If you don't tell you that it is the Dragon King, you really can't tell what it is.

It was already noon when the temple was repaired, and I found that this village was not very big. Almost all the villagers gathered in front of the Dragon King Temple to watch the rain prayer, which forced the two of us to wait a little longer. The long-awaited "Mantouwen" finally ended in the mouth of the witch. Then the witch asked the people to set off firecrackers to tell everyone that the rain had been prayed for.

When the complicated ceremony ended, the crowd began to talk about it. Some people said, "The village raised so much money to ask the witch to pray for rain. The ceremony was over, but the rain didn't fall. Is she a liar?"

Someone else said, "Yes, the yangko team also danced, and everything was done. What if she is a liar?"

The people next to him complained, "My nephew's land in the neighboring village is about to be rotten by the rain, but we are still so dry that not even a bird comes. I think the village chief must have done something immoral, otherwise why is it raining in the villages around, but not in our Zhenjiang Village."

The discussion became louder and louder. When the witch was about to leave, the crowd could no longer sit still. Someone took the lead to question the witch, saying, "It's not that we don't believe it. You see, the ceremony has been going on for so long, and the young and old men are tired, but look at the sky above, there is not even a cloud. You said it will rain, but we can't believe it."

Someone else continued, "At least let us see some moisture. The ceremony has been going on for three days, and the big sun above is still like a furnace. Isn't this cheating?"

Everyone talked about this witch and put it on the cusp of the storm. I was always joining in the fun, but Hu Xiangu found a relatively quiet place under a tree to close the ceremony and rest. My second grandmother used to be a witch, and I don't have any prejudice against her profession.

The leading man kneeling in front of the Dragon King Temple said to the witch: "Grandma, please help me. If this continues, we will delay the time for farming, and the wheat will not be able to survive in the future. We have no industry here, and the people depend on the land in front of them."

The witch also sighed, looked up at the sky, and said: "Okay, then I will ask the Dragon King to block the sun for everyone first."

This sentence made the people around explode, and everyone stood on tiptoe to watch how the witch asked the Dragon King. The witch knelt in front of the Dragon King Temple and said a lot of words, and then said to the village chief behind her: "Throw a pig into the river and let the Dragon King eat it first. When he has the strength, he will make clouds for us."

When they heard that the pig was going to be slaughtered, everyone was willing to pull their own pigs over. In the end, it was the village chief who was generous and asked his son to drive a fat pig weighing more than 300 kilograms to the riverside. According to the instructions of the witch, he drove the pig to the riverside.

But the pig knew that it would drown if it went into the water, so it refused to go. Later, the witch took a needle and stabbed the pig's butt hard. The pig immediately jumped into the river like crazy. I watched the fat pig swimming to the center of the river. Not long after, I suddenly saw a wave on the river surface, and then the fat pig weighing more than 300 kilograms disappeared! This strange phenomenon amazed the onlookers one by one, but when everyone was quietly waiting for the dark clouds to rise in the sky, they were disappointed that there was not even a gust of wind. Facing the questions from the people one by one, the witch blushed. She then did something impulsive. The witch walked a few steps to the front of the Dragon King Temple, pointed at the temple platform where incense was burned, and cursed: "You, the Dragon King, are so ungrateful. You ate our tributes and gave you a fat pig. You don't even give us a dark cloud. What's the point of offering you a mud loach!" After that, the witch kicked over the tribute platform.

Her impulsive behavior made me frown. It is a big taboo to destroy the offering table and the spirit tablet. No god will remain indifferent. Moreover, based on my experience of dealing with them several times, gods are more concerned about their face. People fight for a breath, and Buddhas fight for a stick of incense, which also means the importance of incense to gods and Buddhas.

But then the witch became more impulsive. She spit a few times at the temple. It seemed to me that she thought that the Dragon King was not here, so she vented her anger on the statue wantonly, in order to take this opportunity to avoid the villagers' accusations.

Maybe he got angrier and angrier, and actually did something more impulsive. I saw the witch actually entered the temple, pulled out the statue of the Dragon King, held it high above her head, and cursed: "Dragon King, Dragon King, we sang opera and danced for you, and killed chickens and cows and gave you fat pigs. Since you don't understand the difficulties of us ordinary people, I will let you taste the feeling of being exposed to the sun."

I shouted in surprise: "Put it down quickly, no!" But because of too many noisy voices, no one could hear me clearly. Just now, at the bottom of the statue, I saw a touch of green, but it was not moss, but was called "Heavenly Root", which means that the gods can feel the people's offerings through their own statues.

It was still a little late for me to speak. I saw the witch's wrinkled face suddenly turn red and white. She hurriedly put down the Dragon King statue, knelt on the ground in panic, kowtowed like pounding garlic, and begged in a tearful voice: "Lord Dragon King, please forgive me. I was wrong, please forgive me!"