Yes, after watching "Xue Gang Anti-Tang" and "Water Margin", irrepressibly, he suddenly wanted one or more worship brothers, although he was still young, but he knew that the road in this world was not easy to walk, perhaps, one day, he also went to the Wagang village, or came to the wild boar forest, when he fell and suffered, and even his life was short, but at that time, his life-beating brothers rushed to save him from the tiger's mouth and give him his life. If all of the above can be realized in his body and under his feet, how great a blessing and creation should it be? Unfortunately, all this was wishful thinking to him—in the small village where he was fostered, he was far from having any friends, and if he escaped being beaten one day, he would have been lucky enough, so that although his body was not full of the desire to worship people, he carefully hid it when he thought about it, and from beginning to end he kept his mouth shut and never told anyone.
Of course he was not reconciled. That famous epilogue, the one he longed to say and even shout out in his own dignity, every few days, he had to recite it many times in his heart: "I and other brothers voluntarily married eight worship friends, and since then, the white head has returned together, with deep affection and friendship; life and death are unswerving, and brothers and sisters are in love; the emperor is in the heavens and the earth, and the heart is realized; the ungratefulness of the back is ungrateful, and the heavens and men are cursed together!" Na tossed the name, forged brotherhood; life and death supported each other, good and evil saved each other; misfortune and happiness depended on each other, and tribulations depended on each other! Over time, the thought of wanting one or more worshippers almost drove him crazy: there were several pairs of worshippers in the village, and all day long he was like a secret agent, sneakily following them, watching them go down to the fields, watching them drink. However, the closer he got to them, the more sad his heart became. The ruined land temple at the mouth of the village, but anyone who worships will make an alliance here, he alone, kneeling in front of the ruined idol, looking to the left, and then looking at the right, as if, in the void on both sides, there are really brothers who kneel and worship like him.
Fortunately, in the end, The Heavens made their own arrangements and sent him to worship his brothers—it was a night when he had just entered the winter to watch an open-air movie in another village, and after the movie was over, he returned to the village where he was staying with the flow of people, just like every previous day, as long as he was in the procession, he was obediently walking at the end, only a little farther away from the crowd, he was at ease, and he would constantly be glad that he had escaped the possible fist and foot or more disasters again. Only this time, he miscalculated: between the two villages, there was a river, and there was a wooden bridge on the river, and when he rushed to the river, the wooden bridge coincidentally collapsed, watching the crowd on the other side of the river completely disappear into the darkness, and then listening to the noise getting farther and farther away, he panicked, realized that something was wrong, and quickly had the courage to shout at the other side, but no one heard his shout, and he was the only one left in the dark wilderness. And this place is not elsewhere, Chu tombs are lined with high tombs, those buried in the darkness, continuously illuminated by the phosphorus fire that flutters from time to time, sometimes faintly visible, sometimes disappearing, when they disappear, it is as if a conspiracy has begun. During the conversation, the sole one only faced him tearing and devouring, and then said that it was coming, so how could he not be frightened by them? He didn't dare to think about it any longer, nor did he dare to look around any further, so he simply went down the river with a hard scalp, shrunken, trembled, and swam to the other side.
The river was so cold and cold, and in just a few minutes, it was like he had swum all his life. Nevertheless, he did not expect that when he came ashore, deeply enveloped him and made him completely immobile, it was not a series of shivers, but rather grievances and sadness: do not say worship brother, when he shouts, above the wilderness, I am afraid that there will not even be a single person who hears his shouting, let alone someone who will come to echo him with his voice. Would such an encounter have to run through his entire foster life here? However, after a while, his grievances and sadness had to give way to great fear: going forward, there was still a high tomb, one of which was said to be the most ghostly place in the ten miles and eight townships, and every night when the wind rose, the sound of fighting would be heard all night, it sounded like the ghosts were fighting, and it was like a dead general awakening the souls in the ground and once again launching a killing campaign. However, the only way back to the village must pass through it, so when he tightened his chest, walked slowly step by step to the bottom of the grave, and then opened his eyes to identify the path of the shadow in front of him, he clearly felt that his body was already unable to move on to himself, he obviously wanted to cross a heart and go forward, but his body only wanted to retreat, turn around and run wildly on his legs, and he was biased, as if the rumors showed, as if specially prepared for him, the north wind suddenly rose, and the legendary sound of fighting came, a sound, Forced into his ear.
Even so, he had no way to retreat, he could only cover his ears and walk forward, but the sounds that came out of the graves became more and more strange: the sounds of fighting gradually receded, the cries sounded, and once they sounded, they could not be contained, and they quickly became vast, as if someone stood in the wind and cried, some crouched under the eaves, someone cried while running, someone hid in the piles of corpses and cried, sobbing, whimpering, and even trumpeting, ups and downs, never ending... Unconsciously, he stood again, and he also thought about simply stopping covering his ears and facing the grave in front of him, in order to tell himself that those strange sounds were just the sound of the wind connecting and penetrating dozens of large and small robbery holes, and all that was left was his own illusion. However, he could not do it, and when he had just found a little courage that was almost torn to pieces by fear, he went to face the grave, but he hurriedly closed his eyes: yes, he was afraid that the ghosts would rush out of those robbery holes in an instant, block his way, ask his name, and take away his soul.
Just when he did not dare to move forward and did not want to retreat, the Buddhas of the Western Heavens blessed him with the companion of this treacherous night road--first a clear dog bark, he was frightened and shocked, and then he saw it clearly, and recognized it, and here it is really famous: every night, if there is a dog barking, and there is an echo of barking in the distance, then the dog will most likely think that he has the echo of his companion, so he barks, and it will not be long before the dog will know, There are not many companions in this world who echo it, and those echoes are only echoes, and they will not continue to bark. Only the dog in front of him, almost every night, had to fight with the echo of his barking until the middle of the night, and if the echo did not stop, its barking would not stop, so that the people called it a mad dog, in fact, according to him, it was just a stupid dog. Now, seeing the grave and the cries as nothing, it suddenly appeared with excitement, not far away, parallel to him, barking all the way to the village; and then, in the dim darkness directly in front of him, he heard someone talking, and for a moment he was stunned, and he woke up like a dream, ran forward like a madman, and caught up with the person who spoke, it turned out that it was no one else, it was a madman who was famous in this place. That crazy man is really a character, once other crazy people wake up, they are afraid that others will say that he is a crazy person, he is not, he is partial to people and say that he is the legendary crazy man, and then watch others flee into the wilderness, but he laughs. The madman, probably like him, went to see an open-air movie and fell behind in the returning crowd, and only then did he fall alone. At this moment, the madman was obviously in a frenzy, looking sluggish, seeing the grave and the cries as nothing, and even more as nothing, and as he walked slowly, he talked to himself, but so good that he quietly followed the madman, as if leaning against a huge windshield wall.
And he knew that this inhumane night he probably would never forget for the rest of his life: first of all, the dog, though it had been galloping and barking, but as soon as it saw him walking slowly, it turned back, and began to gallop and bark again, as if it had never cared about him, and always cared about him; and the madman, still talking to himself, sometimes whispering, sometimes arguing fiercely, but not for a long time, between the two of them, It has always been only a dozen steps apart. Enough, really enough, just a dozen steps, he could concentrate on listening to what was shouting and muttering in the mouth of the madman, and the fears that almost pulled his heart out of his body were getting farther and farther away from him until he couldn't remember it at all. Gradually, the three of them, getting closer and closer to the village, that is, at this moment, when he could clearly see the land temple at the mouth of the village, suddenly, he almost shed tears, and the concluding prayer, yes, was the sentence, "Na tou, brotherhood", which he remembered--although people and dogs are different, although the madman and him are also on the same path, but this inhumane night, this repeated side-by-side and if it is more than a dozen steps away, why not honor the name of the closing prayer? If that is the case, then, are they talking about him and the dog, and the madman, and are not the eight worship friends arranged by Heaven?
So what are you waiting for? He was stunned and looked around for a short moment, when he made up his mind: coldly, he ran past the madman, and then over the mad dog, breathlessly pushed open the door of the Land Temple, and without saying a word, he bowed down facing the ruined idol. Yes, as the saying goes, it is better to choose the day than to collide with the sun, not in his time, at this moment, he will marry the madman and the mad dog Yi Jinlan, there is no wine, there is no rooster for blood, it does not matter, he has a body that can be used to kowtow, and this is enough; more importantly, the rules must be said, raise their hands and feet, they must be worthy of the word "worship", so he straightened his mind, and silently recited the prayer words that he had recited countless times, and then began to kowtow, one, two, three, three brothers, eight prayers. He counted clearly, and of course he prostrated twenty-four heads clearly. When his head was finished, his body was filled with joy and stability, so he got up from the ground, came out of the land temple, and walked to his worshipper. At this time, the moon came out, and under the faint moonlight, he was able to see his brothers who were pulling hard and hard more really: looking at the madman, he seemed to understand what he was doing when he ran into the Land Temple, and stopped talking to himself, although he had his back to him, he had been standing in the same place, as if he was waiting for him, as if he was not waiting for him; and the mad dog, it did not run and bark anymore, originally, what was chewing in its mouth, saw him walk out of the Land Temple, stopped chewing, and looked at him quietly, and he, Every time he took a step closer to it, the sense of joy and stability in his body intensified, and yes, he had already determined that the barking and self-talking that had suddenly ceased, coupled with the plausible waiting that had been bitten to death by him, were nothing else, they were the names of the two brothers in front of him after they had been united in one heart.
The so-called surrender of names, if in the chaotic world, most of them must do illegal things, and then sit themselves with the brothers in the real way, and from then on must not be distinguished, in "Water Margin", even if the leopard head Lin Chong, when he first went to Liangshan, he could not be coerced by wang Lun to ask for a petition, Lin Chong asked Wang Lun: "The villain has committed a capital crime, so he came to join the gang, why should he be suspicious?" Wang Lun replied, "If you really join the company, you will bring a name." "When the hero reaches the end, even the leader of the forbidden army has nothing to do, and can only be depressed all the time." Compared with the head of the Narin Sect, after the worship, he always hated to run on the road of submitting the name: for many days, every day as soon as he opened his eyes, he was wondering how to give his two brothers a certificate of submission that they deserved and deserved. Starting with the madman, in fact, here, everyone avoids the madman, so it is doomed that he cannot usher in the moment when he will draw his sword to the madman, and even so, he will not die, and he will dangle around the madman all day, not far away, like a shadow, it looks like he is waiting for him, but also like he is not waiting for him.
Gradually, he discovered the secret of the madman - on this day, the madman went to his sister's house in the neighboring village, and at dusk, he dragged a whole board of lotus back, and at the narrowest part of the road at the mouth of the village, he and his board car were blocked by another board car, if on weekdays, I was afraid that before the crazy man stepped forward, the opposite board car would obediently retreat and give way to the road, but today it was not, the madman met the fierce character. The two scooters stood in a stalemate for a short while, the madman sneered and walked towards the fierce role, and then lightly told him that he was the most famous local madman, the madman who killed people without paying for his life, even if he knew, the other party scoffed, and directly told the madman that he had long recognized him, and he also knew that he was a madman, and he knew that most of the time he was pretending to be crazy, only by pretending to be crazy, others would be afraid of him, and would be far away from him, in fact, the madman has always been a provocateur, he is afraid of everyone, and later, he is indeed crazy, But he found one thing, everyone is afraid of madness, so even if he is well and sober, in order to make himself no longer afraid of others, he has to constantly pretend to be crazy, constantly telling others to be afraid of himself. You have deceived others, but you can't deceive me, that fierce character holds his arms, facing the crazy person who is pressing up, he did not take half a step back at all, but continued to laugh in shame: Come on, you go one step further and try it!
Looking at the madman again, in a hurry, he was instigated, and subconsciously stood still, his feet rubbing in the mud on the ground. There seemed to be a brief moment when he didn't want to admit it, his eyes became confused, yes, confused and sluggish, it was his handy weapon, and it was conceivable that he had won many battles with them, but, to no avail, his feet eventually betrayed him, first he couldn't help but retreat until he turned around completely, and then he pulled on his own board, walked back, came to a slightly wider place, obediently gave way, and let the other side pass smoothly. When they staggered again, the fierce character sneered at him, and he couldn't stand it anymore, hid behind a car full of lotus, sat down, and secretly and quietly cried. What the madman didn't know was that all this was seen by his own worshippers. This brother, hiding behind several clusters of beech trees, could only witness the madman being bullied and insulted, and had been burning with anger, but he also loved it, watching the fierce character go farther and farther, and then watching the madman's tears flow, not knowing whether he should appear or not. Next, I don't know which tendon was completely touched, the madman not only could not stop crying, but fell to the ground on his back, and then curled up into a ball, and continued to cry loudly, it was also strange, in an instant, his body, as well as the body of the madman, seemed to be opened, and the madman's sadness quickly swept and spread, and finally he could no longer bear it, appeared from behind the beech tree, and walked towards the madman.
Speaking of which, since the worship, the two brothers had faced each other for the first time, but it was obvious that the madman did not want to see him, and not only that, after seeing him, the sky that had collapsed had collapsed, and then collapsed again: the secret had been punctured, which was enough to make him ashamed and confused, and now, even the new secret that had been punctured was also seen, so how could the next few days be lived? So, as soon as he saw him, the madman forgot to cry, was frightened, got up quickly, sat down in the mud, and became more normal than any normal person. After a short silence, the madman asked him what his surname was, and for some reason he suddenly appeared, as if a blackmail that he could not get rid of had just come to his side. Seeing that he did not answer, and in order to get rid of this extortion, the madman suddenly ran to the mountain of lotus, pulled out the thickest one, and went forward and handed it to him curtly. Seeing that he did not reach out to pick him up, the madman did not know how to be good, holding the lotus in his hand, but did not dare to hand it forward, but just blindly bowed his head; however, the madman really thought too much, as a brother with a common heart, how could he not be heartbroken for the brother, and how could he continue this long period of embarrassment and unbearableness? So he turned around and ran, and ran again into the beech forest, and the bushes of the forest wiped his face out of the slits, and he paid no attention to it, except to run, and never to think of him, because he knew plainly: to leave the madman, and to turn a blind eye to all that he had witnessed, that is, a great surrender that he could offer to his brothers.
Well, the next petition, he will dedicate it to another brother. Sure enough, it was much easier to get along with a mad dog than a madman, just bring a little leftovers, throw it to him from time to time, and it would keep wagging its tail and following him. And he, from then on, embarked on a road of no return that had taken great pains to accumulate leftovers, and indeed he had to do so—although he had only just gotten closer, he had already begun to live with it: on this day, on the way out of school, he picked up one ear and suddenly heard a terrible news, it turned out that, because he was really tired of the barking of the mad dog after nightfall, there were several people two or three years older than him, who were conspiring to take its life. The words in that closing prayer, "Death and life are entrusted, good fortune and evil are saved", "Misfortune and blessing depend on each other, and suffering depend on each other", this sentence is to prompt and guide him, he has to change them all into the name of his hands, and therefore, he can only use more leftovers to make the brothers of the worship inseparable from him. After school, or before school, whenever there is a little emptiness, he must find it, and then let it follow him, go to those places where few people have set foot, and when he is with it, what makes him most happy and compassionate is that it is tired of joy, curled up at his feet and falls asleep, and while he goes to brush its hair, he can't help but blame it worriedly: you, you.
You, you, when it really comes into the night, it does not make people worry: this night, he and it, together from the hill, the moon came out, it first barked unintentionally, and sure enough, the wilderness came echoing, all of a sudden, it was excited, and it sounded, one after another, never stopped, naturally, the echo was also a sound, one after another, during which it also had doubts, stopped barking, dementia generally looked at the wilderness in front of it, then looked up at the moon in the sky, and finally looked at him, it seemed, It was looking for the wilderness, the moon, and he wanted an answer, but how could he say it clearly? In the end, he could only let it continue to bark, and, with its barking, it became more and more excited, galloping, leaping, burrowing into the bushes, jumping over trenches that he had not even been able to jump over, and so on. In the face of its various acts, to be honest, from the beginning of the incomprehension, gradually to irritability and boredom, in the end, he only felt hot eyes, just like the night of the eight worships, almost, he was going to shed tears, yes, until now, his worship brothers, in fact, have been handing over his latest name: those galloping and leaping, all of them are prompting and guiding him, perhaps, in the next foster life, he should also be like it, forget the cold, forget the beating, forget the feeling of grievance that comes to mind from time to time, Barking mindfully, and wrestling with one's own echoes until exhaustion, until the next night comes.
The next day, on the way to school, he had the audacity to find the people who were two or three years older than him, and persuaded them that the dog was at best a stupid dog, just so-called, the adults did not count the little people, not to mention, it was still just a dog, everyone, why not leave a dog for it? For his persuasion and lamentations, they only felt strange, and even pushed and shoved him to get out of the egg, he had to get out of the egg, and then silently read the closing prayer several times, yes, it was that paragraph: "I and other brothers, voluntarily married as eight worship friends, since then, the white head returned together, deep friendship; life and death are unswerving, love and brotherhood; the emperor is the queen of the earth, the truth is this heart; the back is ungrateful, and the heavens and men are condemned together!" Na tossed the name, forged brotherhood; life and death supported each other, good and evil saved each other; misfortune and happiness depended on each other, and tribulations depended on each other! "It was also from this day, not anywhere else, in the bamboo forest behind the foster house, that he made a kennel for his brother-in-law, and only in this way would it be placed under his own eyes as much as possible, and in case of disaster, he would be able to rush out and draw his sword to help him at the first time." Also, since then, he has eaten very little at every meal, and more has been left over from him and brought into the bamboo forest. After nightfall, as soon as the mad dog began to bark, he would take out food to seduce it and consume it, of course, between barking and eating and drinking, it had repeatedly lost its way, but often, with a crossed heart, it finally closed its mouth and ran to the meal in his hand.
If the days went on like this, he had no doubt that the mad dog would be completely cured by him, and it would be lost among the dogs, and if so, it would be considered to have saved its own life, and as long as its life was left, his name would be truly handed over. For this reason, he first became a dog, full of eyes only to eat and drink, in addition to the food he saved, in his vision but any little bit of food and drink, he had to hide it and take it back to the kennel. When he was full and drunk, he took him to visit another brother who was suffering—in fact, only the madman was still thinking of himself as a madman, and the people of the village had already seen that he was pretending to be crazy. Finally, his violent neighbor could no longer bear to covet his heart, and even more disregarded his pretending to be crazy and selling stupidity, and taking his only vegetable garden for himself, but in this way, he was no longer pretending to be crazy. Once, he was really crazy, and that night, he lit a fire and burned the neighbor's grain pile to the ground, but fortunately the neighbor ran fast, otherwise the whole family would have been buried in the fire. The madman ignored it, stripped himself naked, holding a kitchen knife, roaring, and wandering around the village from morning to night, fortunately, the violent neighbor had fled with his family to the cloud of nine clouds early.
In this world, I am afraid that he is the only one who knows that his worshipper is still pretending to be crazy. Yes, except when he was with the mad dog, the madman had never been able to escape his stalking: far away, he followed the naked man out of the village, up the hill, and under a huge pine tree. At this time, the other party immediately changed like a person, took out a few clothes from the grass under the pine tree, from top to bottom, and put them on one by one, so that he came to his mother's grave, and then knelt in front of the grave to talk to his mother. Because they were so far apart, he couldn't hear what the other party was saying to his mother, but he also clearly felt that he had heard all those words; and in the middle of the night, by the pond at the mouth of the village, he had seen the madman wash his face, and in order to continue to hide the sky and cross the sea, the madman was still naked. In the moonlight, he saw the other party's skin black and red, and when he thought of the black and red buried in the other party's intimidation, the cold he had suffered, and the road that was full of difficult steps, he couldn't hold back any longer and cried. The madman heard his cries, but only trembled unknowingly, and then turned back and stared at him, and in those eyes, there was no sluggishness, no confusion and obedience, on the contrary, only gratitude, delivery, and the bitterness that he needed to constantly identify but also bite to death. Thus, just as the flood had broken through the embankment, he began to talk to the other party, he talked about the night road by the high tomb, talked about the righteous knot jinlan in the land temple, talked about how the mad dog made him unconscious, and talked about how he was a thief, and followed the other party to his mother's grave again and again. Until this moment, the madman suddenly cried out, and paced towards him step by step in tears, until he was close to him, but he still did not intend to stop, he was still talking, he also had to recite the famous prayer to the other party, and finally, he had to tell the other party that as long as he was determined to turn the sentence of the prayer into the road under his feet, then all around him, the heavens and the earth, were all names that could be held up by their hands and handed over with one heart.
Yes, all around him, in heaven and on earth, were all names that could be held up by them with both hands and handed over with one heart—a few days later, in the middle of the night, he was awakened by the barking of the mad dog, and in order to prevent it from continuing to bark, he got up, went out of the courtyard, and ran to the bamboo forest behind the house, only to know that today is different from the past, and the barking at this moment is not that the mad dog is again enemy of his own echo, but that the few people who have long wanted to end its life are approaching it. At the sight of it, in an instant, he was already devastated, did not care about anything, shouted, and rushed straight up to them; just at this moment, without warning, his other brother of worship, came out of the slash, only to see the madman, as always naked, cursing, brandishing the kitchen knife, first blocking the way of the suspects, without stopping, and he almost put the kitchen knife on the neck of one of them. Of course, the suspects were scattered, crying and running away, and disappeared between bamboo and bamboo in the blink of an eye. Well, now, the mad dog's life is left behind. In this way, he was no longer anxious, but slowly, step by step, to the middle of the worshippers, after which the three of them, sitting around the kennel, stared at each other, for half a day without speaking. For a long time, probably because the moonlight was too bright, the mad dog barked uncontrollably, and what it did not expect was that he, and the madman, would smile heartily, and then follow it, and bark. It was as if they had all made plans, and from today onwards, they would be like it, forgetting the cold, forgetting the beating, forgetting the feelings of grievance that came to their hearts from time to time, barking with one mind, and then fighting with their own echoes until they were exhausted, until the next night came.
About the Author:
Li Xiuwen, born in 1975, is a native of Jingmen, Hubei Province. He is the author of the novels "Tear Mole", "Bound to Heaven", and the essay collection "Mountains and Rivers Robes", "To The Father and Elder of Jiangdong", "Poetry To See Me" and so on. He has won many literary awards such as the Lu Xun Literature Award, the Mao Dun Literary Newcomer Award, and the Southern Literature Festival "Essayist of the Year" Award. He is currently the chairman of Hubei Writers Association and a writer-in-residence of Wuhan University.