What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
As we all know, there is a profession in Chinese history that was born with the birth of a dynasty, that is, the executioner. The executioner, also known as the executioner, is a general term for the profession of executing prisoners directly in ancient times, but later people also called some evil and evil people as executioners. Perhaps many people's understanding of executioners is generally through the image of some film and television dramas, and it seems that only those with fierce faces and flesh can engage in this profession.
In fact, in reality, these executioners are more mysterious and strange, the ideas and concepts of people in feudal society have a very serious superstitious color, the ancients have clouds: "There are too many evils before death, and after death, they will be beaten into 18 layers of hell to endure frying and frying." Therefore, if the executioner industry is not forced, no one is generally willing to engage in this kind of work.
However, just as the so-called "three hundred and sixty lines, the line out of the shape", if you simply think that the executioner only needs to cut a knife in the head of the executed prisoner and finish, it is a big mistake, the executioner in this seemingly ordinary industry actually has many unknown secrets, as well as their own unique rules.
The executioner, together with the former coddler in charge of autopsies and the second cobbler who sewed the corpses together, was called the Gate of The Haunted, which was to earn the money of the dead, and the executioner was the most infiltrated. According to Deng Haishan, the last executioner in Chinese history, "although the executioner is despised by the world, not anyone who wants to enter the industry can enter the industry at will."
Deng Haishan continued: "Before entering the industry, first of all, you must find a master who can take yourself, otherwise even if you are a relative of the emperor and the state; secondly, those who are engaged in this line must have long-term experience in the slaughtering industry, and at the beginning of the day, they generally choose winter melons as the object of practice, and when they first visited the teacher, they needed to chop more than 800 winter melons every day to rest, and then slowly became chickens, ducks, geese and other livestock. ”
Deng Haishan also deliberately emphasized several things that the executioner had to do after going to the execution ground, the first was to drink wine to worship the heavens and the earth and worship the ghosts and gods, and when drinking, he could not swallow and had to spit the wine onto the blade, which was said to be to cover up the resentment. In fact, even the knife used above the execution site of the executioner is also calculated, it is said that this knife will be deliberately placed in a relatively cool place, will not be easily shown, only before the execution will be taken out after a specific ceremony.
Any industry has its own grandfather, as an executioner is no exception, it is said that their grandfathers are Fan Duo, Zhang Fei and Wei Zheng, fan duo and Zhang Fei here can understand, after all, both of them have been butchers for a long time. The reason why Wei Zheng was chosen to be the grandfather is more interesting, according to the "Journey to the West", the Tang Dynasty minister Wei Zheng once killed the "Jinghe Xiaolong King" in a dream, so he also became the executioner's grandfather.
In his later years, Deng Haishan was a childless and girlless old man with a thin bone, and many people said that an important reason for the bleak ending in his later years was because he was engaged in this industry, although these people were all death row prisoners, but the executor was Deng Haishan after all, so he killed too many people and beheaded too many people, and committed a lot of yin debts to be doomed in his old age.
Deng Haishan does not seem to deny this statement, and he also revealed a secret that has been circulating in the executioner industry for nearly a thousand years, that is, the master warned himself when he retired, "Every executioner can only cut 99 heads in his life, and once he has cut 99, he must quit, otherwise there will be ominous things."
However, in response to Deng Haishan's pretentious and mysterious statement, many people expressed disbelief, and they even asked Deng Haishan: "Now that you have cut down nearly 300, why haven't you chosen to close it?" ”
Deng Haishan showed a hint of helplessness on his face and said that he despised this profession from the bottom of his heart, but he had to do it for his livelihood, and now many young people are no longer willing to engage in this kind of industry. In 1925, Deng Haishan, who was over the age of flower armor, wanted to stay in the Republic of China's "Shantang" (now the home for the elderly), and the local government refused on the grounds that "killing too much".
In this regard, I would like to say that the reason why many executioners like Deng Haishan appeared in history, even if the sadness of that feudal era was the sadness of their own lives!