Chapter 135: Past Ties and Former Events

Although they had avenged their mother, the mood of the two brothers in the Mountain Lord Temple did not lighten in the slightest.

After the shock and torment of these past few days, the pressure and grievances Sun Erzhuang had been holding inside suddenly burst forth.

The big fatty knelt before Guan Huapo's coffin, his hands resting on the edge of the lid, and let out a long, wailing cry.

Guan Dazhuang witnessed the sorrow, his tiger eyes brimming with tears.

Xu Qing sighed, held three sticks of incense in his hands, and inserted them before the coffin.

When keeping vigil, one must light three sticks of incense to represent Heaven, Earth, and Man. It is said that as long as the incense is kept burning through the night, the deceased and the living can bridge the barrier between the yin and yang realms and feel each other's thoughts.

Besides this, Xu Qing lit a white candle on both the left and right sides of the coffin to ensure they remained lit day and night, symbolizing a guiding light for the soul of the departed.

Just as Xu Qing finished, Guan Huapo's figure appeared once more. However, she did not speak; she merely stared at the two brothers, and finally, she cast a glance at Guan Xiaohu's corpse in the hall.

The old woman's gaze was hollow, and then she began to walk out of the incense hall with stiff, mechanical steps.

The donkey rope on the hall's beam seemed to gain a life of its own; it dropped to the ground with a *thud*. The round loop of the rope looked like a snake's head, and the body like a snake's torso. At this moment, the rope propped up its head and slithered toward the old woman.

Guan Huapo paused. Her mouth seemed filled with sticky rice cake, making her speech thick and slurred. Guan Dazhuang and Sun Erzhuang could not make out what she was saying, but Xu Qing, who understood the language of birds and beasts and could comprehend the words of gods and ghosts, wore a thoughtful expression.

Once Guan Huapo finished speaking, the rope following her let out a mournful donkey bray, then turned around and slithered with a *rustle* toward Sun Erzhuang.

The rope leaped upward, and the noose landed perfectly over his shoulders.

Sun Erzhuang was so terrified his soul nearly left his body. A hanging noose around his neck—was there any way to live through this?

"That is an object your mother left for you; it will not harm you. You need not be afraid."

Xu Qing spoke at the right moment.

Upon hearing this, Fatty Sun, who had been flailing his arms in an attempt to discard the rope, immediately stopped.

"Mother..."

Only then did Sun Erzhuang remember that his mother's soul was still walking away. He hurriedly turned his head to look, only to see Guan Huapo had already reached the eaves of the temple gate.

The old woman seemed to hear Sun Erzhuang's voice, but she only paused for a moment before resolutely stepping into the curtain of rain.

Outside the hall, lightning flashed and thunder rolled, the pale light illuminating the entire Mountain Lord Temple.

Xu Qing squinted as he watched. The colorful rain fell upon Guan Huapo's transparent soul. A moment later, with a *hiss*, white smoke rose, and Guan Huapo's soul vanished from where it stood.

"Mother!"

Sun Erzhuang jiggled his fat and stumbled out of the hall.

He reached out to grab, but caught nothing but rain.

He looked up at the sky, the icy rain hitting his face, blurring his vision so he couldn't open his eyes—he didn't know if it was rain or tears.

The yellow-clad man walked to the eaves and also looked up at the sky.

Inside the incense hall, Xu Qing, who was always tactful, did not wish to disturb the two brothers. He silently stored Guan Xiaohu's body into his box garden, then took out burial clothes, shoes, rouge, powder, and forehead ornaments, and began to prepare Guan Huapo's final makeup.

There are slight differences when applying makeup to male and female corpses.

As the saying goes, men and women are different; men are born rough, while girls are born delicate—hence the saying, "Raise sons in poverty, raise daughters in wealth."

Girls love to dress up, so even for an elderly woman who has passed away, one should apply a fine layer of makeup during the encoffining, allowing her to leave looking beautiful and clean.

By the time the makeup was finished, Sun Erzhuang and the yellow-clad man had returned to the coffin.

Xu Qing pressed his palms together, took the old woman's hands, and said to the two, "I am going to recite a scripture of rebirth for the old lady. You two may calm your hearts and pray for her blessing."

Upon hearing this, Sun Erzhuang sat on a straw mat, mimicking Xu Qing by pressing his palms together and chanting, likely reciting some mantras or verses Guan Huapo had taught him while she was alive.

The eight-foot-tall man beside him followed suit.

At this time, two white candles burned before the coffin. Guan Dazhuang sat by the candle on the right, close to Sun Erzhuang, his hands also pressed together like a Vajra Arhat, his face full of piety.

The candlelight flickered. On the walls of the incense hall, which were covered in mottled murals, the shadows of the chubby fatty and the burly man were cast.

The burly man's shadow vaguely resembled a tiger.

Xu Qing sat quietly at the side of the coffin, eyes closed, silent.

Outside the temple, the wind and rain continued, and the *Scripture of Saving Souls* in Xu Qing's mind began to flip its pages with a *rustle*, as if blown by the wind.

Old Taishan, Guanmen Village.

"Giggle, giggle~"

A childish, milky laugh sounded outside a farmhouse.

"Oh my! Who abandoned a child here?"

In the misty morning of the village, a middle-aged shamaness picked up an infant abandoned at her doorstep.

"You child, abandoned by your parents, why are you still so happy?"

The child in the swaddling clothes continued to smile at the old shamaness.

"It's a girl, and so beautiful. Why would they not want her..."

The shamaness searched left and right but could not find the person who abandoned the baby, so she carried the girl into her courtyard.

This baby girl was Guan Huapo.

Ever since she had a child to care for, the shamaness often performed readings for others; whenever she earned money, she used it to raise the daughter she had picked up.

Whenever Guan Huapo asked about her origins, the shamaness would say she was her biological mother, but when Guan Huapo asked who her father was, the shamaness would always stammer and fail to answer.

Seeing that the shamaness always took her to the Mountain Lord Temple, Guan Huapo would say crisply, "I know now, my father is the Mountain Lord, the big tiger!"

The shamaness would laugh and say, "If the Mountain Lord is your father, wouldn't that make me a tigress?"

Little Guan Huapo, understanding nothing, replied, "If Mother is a tigress, then I am a little tiger!"

Days flowed like water. Little Guan Huapo gradually grew into a young woman, while the shamaness became silver-haired, her mouth sunken and wrinkled, her speech becoming thick and slurred like she was chewing sticky rice cake, no longer clear.

By then, Guan Huapo had taken up the burden of life; every day, besides performing readings and healing the sick, she learned needlework, selling her embroidery to supplement the household income.

The old shamaness was sometimes grateful she had picked up Guan Huapo, but along with that gratitude came a sense of guilt.

Guan Huapo saw it all, but never asked too many questions.

Years flew by. When the shamaness was nearing the end of her life, Guan Huapo kept vigil by her bed. In her final moments of clarity, the old shamaness suddenly told her daughter something.

"Daughter, Mother has failed you. Actually, I am not your biological mother..."

Guan Huapo held the shamaness's hand and whispered, "I know. Actually, I have always known. I am different from ordinary people, and I still remember the way Mother carried me home."

The shamaness was stunned, her eyes unfocused. Slowly, she looked at Guan Huapo again, her voice trembling. "I... I also did a wrong thing. Back then, when I was carrying you and looking for your family, I saw your parents who had abandoned you at the village entrance. But I was already old, and I had no children of my own, so..."

Guan Huapo's body trembled. After a moment of stunned silence, she reached out a hand, wiping away tears while smiling. "They abandoned me. Even if Mother had caught up to them, they likely wouldn't have wanted me. Perhaps they would have just thrown me somewhere else. If that had happened, I might never have met Mother, and I wouldn't have lived until now."

"In my heart, Mother is my true mother."

After the old shamaness died, Guan Huapo became the new shamaness of Guanmen Village.

One day, Guan Huapo was sitting at her doorstep with her sewing basket. While she was mending clothes, a low beastly growl suddenly came from the field across the way.

Guan Huapo put down her needlework and looked up, seeing a large tiger with a white forehead and piercing eyes appearing on the low wall surrounding the field.

If it were an ordinary person, they might have fled for their lives or hidden inside, but when Guan Huapo saw the tiger approaching, she did not move.

It wasn't until the tiger limped toward her, favoring one paw, that Guan Huapo spoke.

"Are you injured, unable to catch prey, so you want to come and eat me?"

The tiger whimpered low, using its injured front paw to nudge the sewing basket in front of her.

Seeing the tiger lying prone, looking harmless, Guan Huapo laughed. "Since you aren't here to fill your belly, you must have encountered a difficulty and want someone to help?"

The tiger whimpered again and lifted its paw.

Seeing that the tiger seemed to possess some human nature, Guan Huapo was no longer afraid. She leaned in and took a look.

She saw a splinter of oak wood, an inch long, deeply embedded in the center of the tiger's massive paw.

"Big tiger, bear the pain, I will use a needle to pick the splinter out for you."

With that, Guan Huapo took a large needle from her basket and picked out the oak splinter.

"Wait here. I have blood-charcoal in my room, it is best for stopping bleeding and relieving pain..."

Before long, Guan Huapo returned with a small jar of blood-charcoal, applied the medicine to the tiger waiting quietly outside, and wrapped its bleeding wound with cloth strips.

After finishing, Guan Huapo waved her hand with a smile. "Go now. Be more careful in the future, don't let these splinters prick you again."

The day after she sent the tiger away, Guan Huapo went to the Mountain Lord Temple to pay her respects as usual. However, when she opened the courtyard gate, she found a dead rabbit at the entrance.

Guan Huapo looked around and spotted the tiger she had treated the day before on a distant earthen wall.

Seeing Guan Huapo looking, the creature let out a low growl, then leaped off the wall and vanished into the fields.

In the days that followed, the tiger would bring prey like millet, muntjac, or wild pheasant every few days, until a month later, when it stopped appearing.

Guan Huapo thought the tiger had finished repaying its debt and the matter was settled.

Unexpectedly, one day two years later, Guan Huapo, who was resting, heard a tiger roar outside her gate.

She hurriedly threw on her clothes, and when she opened the gate, she saw a tigress on the earthen wall with two cubs, watching her.

Guan Huapo was confused, but when she heard the *yoo-yoo* sounds of a cub coming from a dry ditch not far from the gate, she realized what was happening.

When a tiger gives birth to three cubs, one is bound to be a *biao* (a runt). This *biao* is not abandoned because the mother wants to, but because she lacks enough milk to keep it alive, so she has no choice but to discard it.

But this tigress was different; it recognized Guan Huapo and knew she had no children, so it brought the cub it couldn't raise to her.

The tigress seemed to think it was being quite generous, proudly lifting its head toward Guan Huapo from the wall.

Seeing this, Guan Huapo immediately remembered how she had been abandoned by her parents.

She was not like the shamaness; now that the cub's biological mother was right there, she would not sit idly by.

Guan Huapo picked up the cub and went to chase the tigress.

But how could a woman catch a great beast of the mountains?

Seeing Guan Huapo chasing with its child, the tigress opened its mouth wide, grabbed its other two cubs, and bolted into the mountain forest without looking back.

Guan Huapo was both angry and anxious. She didn't even have children of her own; how would she care for a cub, especially a tiger that only ate meat?

But the tigress was gone, and if no one cared for the cub, it would surely not survive.

With no other choice, Guan Huapo bought a lactating goat and began to feed the cub.

Once a girl reaches a certain age, most develop maternal instincts; it is a natural law, a human instinct.

Guan Huapo had no husband or children, and now that she had this little tiger, she truly treated it like her own biological child.

The cub was born thin and small, so she gave it a name: Dazhuang, taking her own surname.

During this time, the tigress sent prey a few more times, but it never actively met with the cub. Each time, it would leave the prey at the gate, call out twice, and vanish.

Although Guan Huapo had the intention of catching it in the act, she never saw the tigress's figure again.

As time passed, Guan Dazhuang grew as strong and fierce as its name suggested. Guan Huapo dared not keep it in Guanmen Village any longer, so she went to the Mountain Lord Temple twenty *li* away and let Dazhuang act as the Mountain Lord.

That way, even if someone saw a great beast nearby, there would be an explanation: they would say the Mountain Lord was manifesting, which would likely cover it up.

As the days passed, once Guan Dazhuang grew up, Guan Huapo used the methods taught by the shamaness to lead Guan Dazhuang onto the path of incense cultivation.

Raised by humans, Guan Dazhuang was naturally intelligent. Within two years, it could speak human language, and within five or six years, it could manifest into the world using incense.

Another few years passed. One day, Guan Huapo was tidying up incense and offerings in the Mountain Lord Temple when she suddenly heard the sound of an infant crying outside.

Confused, she went outside the temple and saw an old bamboo basket at the gate, containing a swaddle, and inside the swaddle was a chubby infant.

Guan Huapo was shocked and hurriedly searched all around, but could not find the person who had abandoned the child.

If it were an ordinary person, they would likely have no solution, but Guan Huapo was different.

She hurriedly lit a stick of incense, and before long, a gust of wind blew, and a robust golden-eyed tiger appeared beside her.

"Why has Godmother summoned me?" the golden-eyed tiger asked in human speech.

Guan Huapo explained briefly. Hearing about the abandoned child, Guan Dazhuang seemed to empathize.

"Godmother, rest assured. I have already caught the scent of the living; wait while I catch them and interrogate them."

"Do not take any lives."

"I understand."

While Guan Dazhuang was away, Guan Huapo looked down at the swaddle in the basket.

Although she had held Guan Dazhuang when he was little, that was a tiger, not a human child.

Now, Guan Huapo wanted to pick up the child but felt lost and didn't know how to start, until the child reached out a hand to her, and she finally came to her senses.

She carefully picked up the infant, and strangely enough, as soon as the infant was in her arms, it quieted down and stopped crying.

Before long, another gust of wind blew, and Guan Dazhuang returned.

"How was it? Did you find the child's parents?"

Guan Dazhuang was silent for a moment before speaking: "I arrived a step too late. The child's parents had both fallen into the ravine and died."

Guan Huapo was troubled upon hearing this.

"What should be done? Without parents, where is this child to go?"

At this moment, Guan Dazhuang said bluntly, "Although Godmother has me to look after her, in the end, it is not as convenient as having a human descendant. Why doesn't Godmother adopt him?"

Guan Huapo had originally intended to do so, but out of consideration for Guan Dazhuang, she hadn't spoken up. Now that her adopted son had suggested it, she was naturally willing to adopt the child.

She carried the swaddle into the temple, with the golden-eyed tiger following closely behind, carrying the bamboo basket in its mouth.

Back in the incense hall, while caring for the infant, Guan Huapo discovered that the baby was wearing a longevity lock around its neck, with the character 'Sun' engraved on it.

The *zoumaling* (revolving lantern) reached this point, basically completing the story Xu Qing wanted to know.

Seeing this, he understood why Guan Dazhuang was different from Guan Xiaohu: the former had not suffered much hardship; the tigress had not so much abandoned him as passed him on to her 'sister.' Guan Xiaohu, however, was different.

That little tiger had truly experienced being mistreated and abandoned by its mother.

Everything that happened after that for Guan Huapo was consistent with what Guan Dazhuang had said, with no major discrepancies.

Xu Qing also saw the scene where Guan Xiaohu attacked Guan Huapo. At that time, Guan Huapo was sitting under the tree in the courtyard, her sewing basket by her side, but she did not dodge, instead saying with self-reproach:

"It is Godmother who failed to teach you well; it is I, your mother, who was not competent."

(End of Chapter) ===== CHAPTER 136 =====