My grandfather was a pig butcher. He had been killing pigs all his life, but he was finally killed by a pig.
No one would believe this kind of thing, it's like a fabricated fairy tale, unbelievable and impossible to imagine.
But I swear to God, everything I said is true.
People in the village say that everything has animism, and my grandfather killed too many animals, which damaged his longevity and longevity, and he suffered retribution, which is why this misfortune happened.
I don't know what karma is, but I know that my grandfather's death was related to his breaking the rules of the pig butcher's profession.
As the saying goes: If you practice three hundred and sixty, you will be the number one scholar.
In our family, there is a second half to this sentence, which is "Three hundred and sixty lines, and there are rules in everything you do."
In my grandfather’s words: Although rules are dead, they are the strict rules in the industry and the constraints passed down from generation to generation by the ancestors.
Whether you believe it or not, follow it or not, the rules are there. It is like a pair of eyes in the dark, always observing what the practitioners do.
Youdao is like a god with a clear mind. Who can guarantee that these seemingly chaotic rules really have no mystery at all?
My grandfather learned art from a master when he was sixteen, and he kowtowed to the master and served him tea.
It was sixty years until his death. There were not ten thousand but eight thousand pigs that died in his hands. They were all killed with one knife, cleanly.
The last time my grandfather killed a pig was at the end of this year.
There are still about ten days until the New Year.
I clearly remember that it was snowing that day, and the snow was falling heavily, as if to welcome the arrival of the New Year.
The person who came to ask Grandpa to kill the pig was Xue Laowu from the next village.
This guy is about the same age as my dad, forty-five or six years old. He is wearing a thick navy blue cotton-padded jacket and a small sheepskin hat. As soon as he entered the yard, he grinned and shouted: "Uncle Musheng, please run for a while."
I was warming up by the fire in the main room with my grandpa. When I saw a guest coming, my grandpa immediately put on his cotton shoes and stood up to greet me, and motioned for me to make a cup of hot tea.
After entering the door, Xue Laowu put down the two bottles of low-quality liquor in his hands, patted the snowflakes on his body and said with a smile: "I haven't been fed for three days. The beast was so hungry that he almost chewed through the pig pen."
Grandpa took out the wooden box containing the butcher's knife from the cabinet and responded casually: "The longer you are hungry, the cleaner your stomach will be, and the easier it will be to handle. By the way, has the hot water been boiled?"
Xue Laowu nodded and said: "I have a fever early in the morning, and I am waiting for you to go over and bleed it with a knife."
As he said that, he took the hot tea I had just made and said with a smile on his face: "This is Xiao Ningzi, she has grown so big in the blink of an eye."
"I'm going to take the college entrance examination next year." Grandpa sat on a stool with a wooden box and said, "My little Ningzi likes to eat pig head meat. I have made a promise to you. After killing the pig, I have to take the pig head away."
Xue Laowu said cheerfully: "Add another twenty kilograms of meat, as well as pig waste and the like. Take whatever you like. It's freezing cold here. How can I let you just pick up a pig head and go home?"
Grandpa said with a smile: "Well, I'll ask you to come and drink when the pork head braised meat is ready tomorrow."
After a while of polite greetings, after Xue Laowu finished drinking the hot tea, the two of them prepared to leave one after the other.
I was bored at home, so I begged my grandpa to watch the fun.
"Wear a hat and a coat. You are in poor health, so don't get cold." Grandpa said with concern.
Without saying a word, I put on my down jacket, told my dad, and followed my grandfather to Taihua Village, where Xue Laowu lived.
Taihua Village is next door to our village, more than two miles away. I helped my grandfather carry the wooden box containing the butcher knife, and it took about fifteen minutes to get there.
Xue Laowu's family is busy with the matter of killing pigs.
Washing the vat, washing the vat, boiling water, and brushing the chopping board, full of new year flavor.
Seeing his grandfather passing by, the acquaintances exchanged greetings, and Xue Laowu led his grandfather to the pig pen.
"Uncle Mu Sheng, I have burned the incense for you. All the incense has turned to ashes and everything is fine." Xue Laowu pointed to the cracks in the bricks in front of the pig pen and said, "Look, the ashes are still there."
Grandpa looked down for a few times and said solemnly: "What you ordered doesn't count. If you ask for the incense, I must order it."
Xue Laowu looked a little embarrassed, but he also knew the rules of grandfather's pig killing, so he quickly replied: "Okay, I will get the incense for you again."
"Don't bother, I have it in the box." Grandpa took the wooden box from my hand, opened it, took out three yellow incense sticks, lit them, inserted them into the soft soil in front of him, and muttered: "All living beings are suffering.
Now that I have suffered this crime, I send incense to my soul..."
Two minutes later, grandpa stood up and said to me: "Ningzi, look at the yellow fragrance. If the fragrance goes out in the middle, you must tell me."
After that, grandpa opened the door of the pigsty and walked in, starting the routine inspection before killing the pigs.
In the eyes of uninformed outsiders, grandpa's behavior at this moment seems a bit ridiculous.
Isn't it just killing a pig? How come it's like a veterinarian treating a patient?
But only I know that the reason why grandpa did this was because of the rules of the pig butcher trade, the so-called six taboos of pig killing.
What are the six taboos of killing pigs?
The first taboo is to avoid killing the official pig.
According to legend, the Lingguan Pig is the reincarnation of a deity in the sky, who came down to earth to survive a calamity. It can only die of old age and cannot be killed by others. Otherwise, its soul will transform into an evil spirit to take revenge on the pig killer, causing its family to be destroyed.
The way to identify Lingguan pigs is also very simple, that is, the Wen Shen Xiang that Grandpa ordered just now.
If the incense disappears when asking the gods, it means that the pig soul has a god and will not be worshiped by incense.
To put it more clearly, you are going to kill me and I still accept your favor?
The second taboo about killing pigs is to avoid killing five-fingered pigs.
Ordinary pigs have four toes, while five-toed pigs have five toes just like humans.
Legend has it that this kind of pig is the reincarnation of a person and carries the memory of his past life.
If you kill them, they will be haunted by their ghosts.
The third taboo on killing pigs is to avoid killing white-headed pigs.
White-headed pigs are also called mourning pigs, which refer to pigs with large patches of white hair on their heads, just like humans wearing sackcloth and mourning.
There is a rumor that if a pig butcher kills a white-headed pig, there will be mourning in the family.
The fourth taboo on killing pigs is to avoid killing pigs that worship Buddha.
Worshiping Buddha does not mean that pigs go to temples to pray to gods and worship Buddha.
Rather, it means that the pig's hind legs will stand side by side, and the front legs will bow, as if worshiping Buddha.
It is said that this kind of pig has opened up its spiritual intelligence, and killing it will bring bad luck to the butcher.
The fifth taboo on killing pigs is to avoid killing tailless pigs.
A tailless pig is a pig without a tail.
Pig butchers believe that having no tail means having no descendants. Killing such a pig will cause you to have no descendants and no descendants.
The sixth taboo on killing pigs is to avoid killing pregnant pigs.
In the eyes of the pig butcher, those who put pig fetuses into pig fetuses are those who have done all the bad things in their previous lives and were punished by God. Such people themselves will be angry at being reincarnated as pigs. If they are killed before they are born, their fetal spirits will become
The evil spirit of the fetus will haunt the pig butcher all his life to retaliate for the suffering of reincarnation.
When I was a child, what I heard most from my grandfather were the rules of the pig butcher trade, so I almost knew the six taboos of pig butchers by heart.
I was guarding the place asking about the fragrance, and my grandfather also quickly completed the inspection.
Xue Laowu asked in a low voice: "Uncle, can you call someone to come over and tie the pigs?"
Grandpa walked out of the pig pen. I don't know whether it was because the ground was slippery or his legs and feet were weak due to age. He stumbled and rushed out, and in a daze, he extinguished all three burning yellow incense sticks.
