Chapter 568: The Funeral Ceremony of the Living Buddha
At four o'clock in the morning the next day, the hotel owner prepared three sets of large Tibetan costumes for the three of us, as well as generous scarves for covering our faces. The strangest thing is that the hotel owner actually prepared those for us.
The leather protective gear that was put on the knees and joints was said to be used later.
The three of us dressed up as Tibetans and followed the boss out of the hotel before dawn. There were no street lights, and there were already scattered Tibetans on the dim Rangtang streets, all facing the same direction.
, obviously all went to attend the ceremony. One thing is strange, maybe because it was too early, we did not find any foreign tourists in the dim streets. There is also another possibility, maybe they are disguised as us, just like us.
Tibetans.
The further we drove forward, the more we noticed something was wrong. Our direction seemed not to be towards the big temples in the Tibetan area, but towards the Sichuan-Tibet Highway.
Just when I imagined the hotel owner asking questions, the hotel owner suddenly stopped at the fork in front of the road, looked back at us and asked in a cold voice: "Do you three still want to participate in the real 'Ada Living Buddha'?
ceremony?"
"'Real...' Is there any fake ceremony?" I asked.
The shop owner smiled coldly: "Of course, the funeral ceremony of the 'Ada Living Buddha' is such a sacred and solemn ceremony, but there are many local people who are not qualified to participate. There were monks who served the 'Living Buddha' in our family tree, and they were barely qualified.
Participate. Have you seen these two branches? One leads to the real ceremony location. The other is a fake ceremony for you outsiders to join in the fun, so you can make it worthwhile."
"Boss, we really need to participate in the real ceremony." I said. The key point is that only in the real funeral ceremony will there be the body of 'Ada Living Buddha'. According to the red silver needle I saw that day
Pointing to it, I guessed that the 'Huihua Stone' was probably worn by Living Buddha Ada during his lifetime.
"Well..." The innkeeper rubbed his hands.
Everyone understood what it meant. I nodded to the two of them, spent all my money, collected two thousand three thousand dollars in cash and handed it to the hotel owner, and then started to set off again. During this period, I found that many people actually chose the same path.
We are different. Most of us go on the route that the hotel owner calls a fake ceremony.
The road we took was winding and close to the mountains. There were prayer flags hanging on the treetops along the way. Besides us, we didn’t find anyone else, which made it look particularly eerie and secluded. The hotel owner kept his head bowed.
Walking in front, he seemed to be very familiar with this road. In the dim light, he did not deliberately look at the road under his feet, but he walked extremely quickly and smoothly.
Wang Bao patted me on the shoulder and whispered: "Did he secretly take us to a place to sell us?"
"Who would buy a fat guy like you who eats a lot and is lazy?"
There are many piles of stones with strange runes painted on them beside this mountain road, which are called "Mani piles" by the locals. It is said that Tang Monk once passed by the Tongtian River on his way back from the West to obtain Buddhist scriptures. The turtle immortal in the river came to see him off.
Tang Monk did not ask the Buddha for advice on how to ascend to the Turtle Immortal, so the master and his disciples were thrown into the river. Many scriptures were scattered in the river. When they were picked up, they were already wet by the river water. Only then did they put the scriptures on the river bank.
It was dried on a large boulder, and when the scriptures were removed, the imprints of the scriptures were already printed on the stone. This was the earliest 'sutra-drying stone' and the prototype of the 'Manidui'.
We walked for a long time and passed many "mani piles" pushed up by the roadside. The patterns on the stones became more and more strange. At first, they were strange scriptures, and later they became more and more vivid like "eyes".
' or 'Bone Claw' pattern.
The sky was getting brighter and we were all a little tired, but the hotel owner led the way without any hesitation, stopping from time to time to wait for us, and then hurried on.
According to the compass display on the watch, I feel more and more that the direction we are walking in is the direction of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway, but the Sichuan-Tibet Highway is on the other side of the mountain in front of us.
Finally, we saw a newly built white tower about three meters high erected more than 20 meters away in front of us. The hotel owner stood under the white tower and waved to us, and then disappeared from our sight.
middle.
We hurried over and discovered that there was a natural cave behind the White Tower against the mountain wall. The cave was only half a meter high and was dark inside without any light beams. It looked like the cave of a wild cat.
Wang Bao said in a daze: "That person...couldn't...have gone in?"
"He went in." Li Menglan said coldly: "There is no other cover here. He just disappeared from my sight. There is no other possibility except entering this cave."
Wang Bao asked me: "Can we get in?"
"Come in." I turned on the high-intensity indicator light on my watch, took the lead and walked closer to the cave. Fatty Wang and Li Menglan also followed.
When I entered the cave, I felt very cold, and the entrance to the cave was very narrow. I felt that my body was greatly restricted when walking through it. I used my watch to look forward, and found that it was a very long passage, and
The further forward, the larger the capacity of the passage, the more you can stretch your body. And I found the innkeeper.
He was still more than 20 meters in front of us, leaning forward with his waist. Perhaps because he realized that the light was shining later, he turned his head and looked at us. At this time, the face of a middle-aged man who was originally sallow appeared.
He looked horribly pale, and his face was numb and expressionless, but there was some sudden desire in his eyes.
There is no light in the cave. Logically speaking, if I shine it with a light, although the innkeeper can see the source of the light, he cannot clearly see me behind the light. But I always feel that the innkeeper’s glance back
, as if he was really looking at me.
Wang Bao said softly behind me: "Zhang Tianju, you have to be careful, there is something wrong with this man."
It's not just him who has a problem. I think. Since we entered Rangtang County, the people we met who were relatively familiar with the road seemed strange. Even compared with the local residents, they all looked very strange. Especially Gubagrad.
.
Slowly, we were able to walk upright in the cave. The compass on our watch showed that we were walking at the bottom of the giant mountain next to the Sichuan-Tibet Highway. This was a passage across the bottom of the giant mountain.
After walking for about ten minutes, there was some flickering light in front of me, and the temperature in the cave began to slowly become hotter. I turned off the indicator light on my watch and tried my best to sneak forward without making any noise. The front slowly moved forward.
There was the sound of Tibetan scriptures being recited. The passage at the bottom of the mountain suddenly widened by more than ten meters. I saw more than thirty Tibetans standing densely in front of us. They had their backs to us and stood motionless, speaking in unison.
They were reciting some kind of Tibetan sutra. I saw the back of the innkeeper was one of them.
We moved forward, but no one looked back because of our approach. I got close to the crowd, and in the gap between the crowd, I saw a fire about five or six meters wide burning in front of me. The fire turned out to be more than twenty
A circle formed by old skulls. There were two fork-shaped wooden racks on both sides of the fire, which were probably placed horizontally to roast something.
Behind the fire stood five or six lamas in monk's robes. These lamas were holding branches and a bowl of water, chanting Tibetan Buddhist scriptures around a human-shaped gold foil, and constantly dipping branches with water and sprinkling it on the gold foil.
.
The corpse in the gold foil should be ‘Ada Living Buddha’.
A group of people meditated on Buddhist scriptures for half an hour, and then a few more people came one after another. They stayed behind us, did not notice anything unusual about us, and followed the Buddhist scriptures devoutly. We were sandwiched between these Tibetans and felt uneasy.
The feeling became more and more obvious. I searched the crowd and found some familiar faces. The thin man who openly snatched away the backpack of a female tourist on the street, the fierce Tibetan leader who instructs a child to stab Wang Bao in the butt with a knife.
As well as Gubagrad. They didn't seem to notice us. They looked at the human-shaped gold foil devoutly and recited Buddhist scriptures. They all looked pale and lost their minds. It was true that they seemed to have a certain belief deeply rooted in their bones, but this was not the case.
For Buddhists, it is more like a cult. Including this ceremony attended by a few people, it is more like a cult ritual.
Among them, I also found a few foreign tourists like us mixed in the crowd. These tourists were male and female, old and young, but they all seemed very uneasy in the continuous and low sound of Buddhist scriptures. I saw
Some people wanted to leave, but were stuck in the crowd and found it difficult to move.
The entire ceremony unfolded slowly in this weird atmosphere. At a certain unknown syllable, everyone's voices suddenly stopped, and the entire cave returned to terrible silence.
The first few lamas started to speak, and I discovered the most terrifying thing: when a group of Tibetans gathered together, they were actually communicating in Tibetan, but none of us could understand it.
These lamas are mostly headed by an old lama with a scar across his face. This old lama is about sixty years old. His skin is very wrinkled, but his eyes are fierce and sharp. He is older but still burly. He is nearly two years old.
With a height of 1.3 meters, from a distance, it looks like a Crouching Tiger Arhat statue carved in a temple. In addition, among these lamas, I also found a rather special young lama, who is probably in his twenties like me.
, his face was delicate and expressionless, but his eyes were very flashing, as if he was conflicting with something in his heart. He stood very silent among the lamas and never said a word.
The old lama was about to speak, but the other lamas immediately kept silent out of respect.
The old lama spoke with righteous words, his voice was strong and a little angry, and his mood became more and more intense as he spoke. We didn't know what he said, but I found that some Tibetans in the crowd were secretly glancing at us outsiders.
people.
Suddenly the old lama became silent and his eyes were stern and precise as he passed through the crowd and locked onto me. For a moment, all the Tibetans turned their heads and looked at us outsiders.
Two Tibetans behind me suddenly stepped forward, grabbed my hands, and pushed me forward. Like me, all the foreign tourists here were pushed to the fire. Except for the three of us, there were
Five foreign tourists.
The white cloth wrapped around our faces was forcibly pulled off, revealing a sign that was not the most obvious of the local area.
Except for me, Wang Bao, Li Menglan, and a young girl who was relatively calm, several other tourists looked very panicked, and even a tall, strong foreign man peed his pants in fear. All the Tibetans looked at us coldly.
of ridicule.
Someone began to tie thick hemp ropes around us. These hemp ropes had been impregnated with special corpse oil. This corpse oil would not be ignited by ordinary fire. I immediately understood why there were frames tied to both sides of the fire.
The wooden frame of things was meant to be burned alive as a sacrifice!
Others among the tourists didn’t understand yet, but they probably sensed the deep hostility of the Tibetans. The man who peed his pants resisted extremely fiercely, clamoring that he would go home and never come back again. The man next to him was
The fierce Tibetan leader in the restaurant took a Tibetan knife and said coldly in Chinese: "Do you think this place is for you to come and leave whenever you want?" Then he hit the man hard on the head with the back of the knife.
Immediately he knocked the man unconscious.
Even when other tourists and even the girl were panicking, I remained calm because I had already greeted Tao Yaoyao and asked her to follow us from a distance.
Just when I was giving Li Menglan and Wang Bao a look, preparing to break out of the encirclement and have an internal and external cooperation with Tao Yaoyao, the young lama who had never spoken suddenly spoke. He stood by the fire and pointed at me, Li Menglan, Wang
Bao, and the relatively calm young girl were saying something to a group of Tibetans. I couldn't understand it, but I felt that all the Tibetans were looking at us and hesitating.
Finally the old lama spoke, probably saying something to let us go. The ropes around our wrists were untied again.
The young lama walked up to us and said to us in Chinese: "Come out with me." After that, he took the lead and looked out of the cave. The girl followed him first. We looked at each other and decided to leave this place first.
Let’s talk about the place.
Three other tourists also wanted to follow, but the Tibetans stopped them with Tibetan knives.
We returned the same way and walked for about ten minutes. Wang Bao asked the young lama in front of him what would happen to the four foreign tourists who were left behind? Before the lama could answer, there was a miserable scream from the other end of the cave.