The continuous cloudy days have caused the bedding to become damp, and the muddy soil in the forest has turned yellow and turbid by the rain. The claw marks of animals of all sizes are deep or shallow, like rows of small plum blossoms embedded in the mud, with
Fresh imprint.
This is an ordinary day in early summer. In this rainy season, even the most seasoned hunters will not easily go up the mountain. Not only is the road muddy and difficult to walk, but the rain has soaked the rocks softly. Every time you walk, you must be secretly suspicious.
The steps under my feet are alert to the possibility of missteps.
At the foot of Yongjia Mountain, in a small gray wooden house.
The oil candle in front of the window flickered on and off in the heavy fog, and trivial conversations rustled from the wooden house, finally ending with an old sigh.
"It's Ximai."
In the cramped hut with a charcoal pot burning, the old woman put her hands down tremblingly and shook her head.
The woman on the bed was both surprised and happy. She had a beautiful face with dark eyebrows. When she smiled, the corners of her eyes and eyebrows had a childlike look.
She was pleasantly surprised and wanted to get up from the bed, but was forced down by the old woman again. A slight blush appeared on her pale face, which suddenly started to get hot in the humid and stuffy hut, like a flower at the right time.
Red begonia in season.
"Your parents died early, and there are no relatives nearby."
The old woman looked at the woman and sighed: "Yinniang, tell Mother Song the truth, which dirty guy deceived you?"
The old woman was a stable woman who delivered babies at the foot of the mountain, and was also proficient in several good medical skills. The day before yesterday, the woman asked her to come up the mountain because of nausea and vomiting. She thought it was due to the cold, but she didn't expect that she was pregnant with a fetus.
"He's not a dirty kid." The woman's face turned red and she smiled stupidly: "Mother Song, is she a boy or a girl?"
"Yinniang, you can't raise him."
Song's mother just shook her head: "What are you going to feed him with, the pheasants and wild boars in the mountains? If the child is born without a father, he will be despised until death! And you..."
Song's mother hesitated to speak, but finally said nothing.
Fornication without a matchmaker, whether in Jiangbei or Jiangnan, is not a glorious thing. In some states and counties, local village elders will even sink women into deep ponds, and even laws and regulations cannot interfere with it.
"My father taught me how to play traps, and now I am a very good hunter."
The woman named Yinniang raised her head gently, and gently touched her lower abdomen with her fingers, her movements careful and gentle:
"I will raise the child well and make him tall and strong. Mother Song, he is a very good man and he will not ignore me!"
It seems to have always been like this.
Young women are always blinded by love and faint. They are like moths rushing to the flames at night, unable to wait to break through the thin veil.
Song Ma shook her head and sighed. Just as she was about to persuade her again, there were suddenly several knocks on the wooden door.
Before she could turn around, the woman on the bed jumped up quickly, like a happy sparrow. Before Song Ma's scolding could escape her lips, she had opened the wooden door excitedly.
Large swaths of white mist poured into the hut.
A figure in green robes stood outside in the rain and fog, with a low-level bamboo hat covering his face. He raised his hands stiffly, but remained motionless.
After an uncomfortably long silence, a young man's voice finally came from under the bamboo hat.
"The benefactor's beads were left in Wenbaolin the day before yesterday. I was ordered to come over and return them."
The figure in green robe slowly took off his bamboo hat, revealing an indifferent and hard face, as hard as pig iron wrapped in ice.
He ignored the delighted woman, clasped his hands together, and chanted the Buddha's name in a low voice to Song Ma beside him:
"Amitabha, the poor monk's name is Guanghui."
…
…
The door was closed, and the moist white mist was once again blocked out. Song Ma looked back for the last time, only to see that the small wooden house on the mountainside was also blurred in the mist, far away, like floating bubbles on the pond.
The distant mountains and nearby houses are sleeping under the rain, and the world is lonely and silent...
inside the house.
The man and woman faced each other in silence, and no one took the lead to break the silence. The crackling sparks in the charcoal basin flew out, making the already humid cabin even more stuffy.
The woman pursed her lips in confusion. She looked at the man's expression blankly, but there was no expression on his face that looked like a rock carving.
"Ashi, you are hungry now..."
"I heard it."
"I heard it." After a moment of silence, Guanghui repeated softly: "Just now, I heard everything."
"What's wrong with you? We have a child! Are you unhappy?"
The woman smiled stupidly, showing her jade-like teeth: "Ashi, do you like a boy or a girl? If it's a boy, we can teach him hunting and boxing. If it's a girl, we'll let Song's mother teach her embroidery.
Well, wait a minute, Song Ma’s embroidery doesn’t seem to be very good either.”
She lowered her head and muttered twice, then touched her head in annoyance:
"It seems that Xiaoshuang is very good at embroidery, but she doesn't like me. What if..."
"Yinniang."
"Yinniang, wait."
The deep male voice sounded again, and the woman looked at Guang Hui blankly, and was suddenly stunned.
The air became silent, only the fire in the charcoal basin was crackling.
"I have been valued by Zen Master Ran Jin, who is the main sect. He wants to help me leave the Three Hundred Zen Monastery and actually enter the Vajra Monastery to study Zen during the Shurangama Dharma Assembly next month."
Guang Hui didn't look at the woman's face, she just stared at the charcoal basin and spoke to herself:
"Zen Master Ran Jin values me very much. He has accepted me as his disciple. He ignored the precepts and gave me the Buddhist name of Kong Kong Temple... I want to stand out, and I want to read the scriptures of King Kong Temple. What is Zen Master Ran Jin's intention?
, I don’t want to disobey.”
"Ashi..."
"You can't have children."
"Ashi?"
"Can't be born."
The woman lowered her eyes, slowly covered her face with her hands, and her whole body suddenly started to tremble.
"I am a monk, and I cannot break the precepts." Guanghui lowered her voice and remained silent for a long time: "Yinniang, I don't want to stay in Sanbai Chanyuan all my life. I don't want to just live my life like an insect."
"..."
The thick green tea cup was knocked to the ground. Among the broken porcelain on the floor, the woman was crying, frowning and shaking her head in panic.
Beside the charcoal basin, Guang Hui stood still for a long time, then silently took back his steps.
"Think again."
He whispered, then opened the door and turned away without looking back.
A circle of invisible ripples spread out from the mid-air. Guanghui's fingertips flickered, and a few faint golden threads appeared in the rain curtain.
"Ashi!"
The woman rushed forward. She wanted to chase after her, but was severely bounced away by a force. Guang Hui just lowered her head and did not look.
A cage made of gold wire trapped the hut and also trapped the woman's cries.
"Yinniang, my name is no longer A Shi. My current Dharma name is Guang Hui."
The door separated his back far away, and the man's low voice penetrated the rain curtain and seemed to melt into the white mountain mist:
"I'll come see you."
This was their last meeting. Many years later, the man recalled that moment countless times, trying hard to recall every detail, but no matter how he recalled it, he could not remember the woman's face...
That was probably God's punishment for his forgetfulness. He once hated her mother-in-law and the color of the rouge on her face, but no matter how much he hated or was bored, it was no longer useful.
In my memory, fine wisps of rain fell down at that time, and the two people in the rain curtain were silent and did not speak.
The sound of birds in the forest is as clear as the song of a witch...
——
——
On the night of November 6th, the seventh year of Taihe, the moon was at the zenith.
Yongjia Mountain, wooden house.
The woman's body lay under the bed. She died peacefully and lonely. She cut her neck with a knife, like a poem cut off by a sharp blade.
Begonia flowers sadly fell from the branches, leaving only a red patch on the ground.
Guang Hui, who was late, raised his head numbly. His body became colder inch by inch, as if it was filled with ice water. As far as he could see, the baby boy in the bundle was lying on the bedside, with a woman's blood book pillowed under him.
It seemed that Guang Hui's gaze woke him up. After a moment of silence, the baby boy opened his mouth and his eyes widened in curiosity.
