Light the sky lantern?!

I was shocked. As a native of Xiangxi, I certainly knew what it was to light a sky lantern.

Lighting the sky lantern is a local name, which is actually the well-known "to drive away the corpse!"

However, I am not very clear about why I call driving away a corpse "lighting the sky lantern!"

There are three evil spirits in western Hunan, such as the corpse driving, the grass ghost, and the girl from the fallen flower cave. Among them, the most famous one is the corpse driving in western Hunan.

The Qing Dynasty widely circulated the rumors of "corpse-driver" in Xiangxi, that is, the corsage-driver uses secret techniques to bring the bodies of people who died in a foreign land back to their hometowns and let them be buried in peace.

But I have been growing up in western Hunan for nearly twenty years and have never seen a corpse driving. It is said that dead bodies cannot be seen. Corpse drivers always travel at night and specialize in picking uninhabited wilderness mountain trails, so almost no one has seen a corpse driving.

I looked at Chen Xiucai in surprise. It turned out that for so many years, Chen Xiucai had been engaged in driving corpses.

I never expected that Chen Xiucai's literary and antique appearance would be the legendary corpse-driver, and it felt like a fantasy.

Seeing that I didn't say anything, Chen Xiucai smiled: "What? Are you scared?"

After a pause, Chen Xiucai curled his smile and said seriously: "Boy, don't underestimate the corpse driving industry. There is so much knowledge in it! Real corpse driving has a set of strict and complicated rules, and will never be like the ones performed on TV! Be calm down and do it well, and you will definitely achieve great things in the future!"

Although I was a little dissatisfied, I didn’t say much on the surface. After all, Chen Xiucai was my savior and now he is my master. If I just turned my hand away, it would be a bit unkind.

I don’t know if it was to comfort me, but Chen Xiucai opened the red envelopes that Wang Laobi had handed over before. There were 120 yuan in the red envelopes, one hundred yuan, two ten yuan, and no RMB with a face value of 20 yuan was issued at that time.

Chen Xiucai stuffed two ten-dollar notes into my hand: "Boy, this is the first time you came out with me. Take these twenty dollars first, and there will be rewards after you finish it! Your life is very simple today, just keep this coffin and burn paper until midnight!"

As the saying goes, if you eat people, you are soft-hearted and use people, and you will be in your palm. I can't say anything. Besides, the job that Chen Xiucai did for me is not tiring. He can earn twenty yuan a day. At that time, I couldn't get such a high salary even when I worked in the factory!

I looked at the hundred-dollar bills in Chen Xiucai's hand with some envy, thinking that the business of driving corpses is really a big deal.

Chen Xiucai put the one hundred dollars in his pocket and smiled at me: "You don't think this business is only one hundred and twenty dollars, right? This is just a deposit! When the person in the coffin is sent back to his hometown, he can still receive a final payment!"

Then, Chen Xiucai stretched out three fingers and lowered his voice and said, "The final payment is still 300 yuan! Boy, you can do it well and you can also give you a bonus!"

I glanced at the coffin, then turned around and looked into the stilt house. Wang Laobi's silly son sat at the door, giggling at us, without any sad expression. He didn't even know what his "wife" was.

Normally, it is impossible for a woman to marry this fool, so I guess that the woman in the coffin is most likely to be the daughter-in-law who Wang Laobi bought for money, in order to pass on the Wang family's family.

The land of Xiangxi is very poor, and many women are unwilling to marry here. In addition, the decadent concept of favoring boys over girls has caused the imbalance in the ratio of men and women here, and many men cannot get a wife. In response to this local situation, some human traffickers have started to think about them, and they abducted women from outside to Xiangxi and sold them to local bachelors in order to make huge profits.

In addition to women who have kidnapped from outside, sometimes locals will sell their daughters at a low price. As long as they are given a bride price, they will sell their daughters to you like commodities, and some people even give birth to daughters to sell them.

I grew up in the western part of Hunan since I was a child, and I know a lot about local things, and we can't do anything about this kind of thing. I just sighed silently, feeling a little sad about this woman's tragic experience.

I squatted in front of the coffin and started burning paper. Although I didn’t know this woman before, I had a “husband-wife relationship” with her, so I still sincerely hope that her spirit in heaven can get rest.

"The woman in the coffin is named Fang Cuicui. She just turned 17 years old this year. She was bought by Wang Laobi from the Niujia Village next door. She wanted to marry his stupid son so that the Wang family would have a descendant. But Fang Cuicui suddenly died of illness. You also know that we are concerned about returning to the roots of fallen leaves. After death, no matter how far apart a person will have to return to his hometown. So, Wang Laobi found me now and wanted me to help send Fang Cuicui's body back to Niujia Village for burial!" Chen Xiucai said.

I put the burning yellow paper on the ground and asked in confusion: "How come a living person is dead? What disease is so urgent?"

Chen Xiucai stroked his beard: "Who knows, we are not doctors, we are just corpse-drivers! Our task is to send Fang Cuicui's body back to Niujia Village safely, and don't need to worry too much about other things, and concentrate on doing our job well!"

I nodded and continued to burn paper.

The day passed quickly, and it was night in a blink of an eye.

The night in the mountains was a little cold. Chen Xiucai walked out of the inner room and handed me a pot of white wine: "Drink some to warm up your body!"

I unscrewed the wine pot and took a big mouthful of it. When I got the spicy white wine, my body immediately felt much warmer.

"It's still one hour before the middle of the day. This is the time when the yin energy is at its peak. You must keep an eye on it. Don't make any trouble. I'll go in and take a nap. When the hour comes, I have to get up to work!" Speaking of this, Chen Xiucai yawned and walked into the side room to rest.

I drank the white wine one by one, muttering to myself, Master, he is too terrible, wouldn’t he just burn some paper? What other mess can happen?

Time passed by minute by minute, and my sleepiness surged up, and I kept yawning.

Just when I was drowsy, a cold wind suddenly blew from the ground. The wind came so strange that it woke me up in a flash.

I glanced at the candle in front of me. The cold wind just now almost blew out the candlelight.

Chen Xiucai specifically reminded him not to let the candles go out, so I quickly reached out to block the wind. After a while, two clusters of candle fires swayed and slowly burned.

I licked my lips and was about to breathe a sigh of relief when I suddenly realized that something was wrong with the candlelight. Why did the candlelight turn into... into... weird dark blue?

The yard was silent, two clusters of faint blue flames jumped in my pupils, and my cold sweat rolled down.

Just as I was secretly surprised, a strange sound came from my ears.

I suddenly looked up and found in fear that a strange sound came from the coffin!

I looked straight at the big black coffin in front of me, my heart hangs in my throat, and I don’t even dare to breathe.

At this moment, something terrifying happened. The pattern drawn with chicken blood on the surface of the coffin lid quickly dissipated. The blood that had already solidified melted again, turning into blood beads, rolling down along the edge of the coffin lid, and then all were sucked into the coffin.
Chapter completed!