Chapter Fourteen: The Tree That Will Rain

  Xiangxi is officially known as Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, which also includes the cities of Huaihua and Tongren, totaling 28 counties. The area has a complex terrain with many valleys, rivers, peaks and caves. More than 10 counties share borders with Hubei, Chongqing, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces. Before liberation, these areas were all weakly governed regions. Due to the mountainous terrain and poor transportation links, even in the 1990s, the economy and culture remained very backward.

  Our first stop was Yongzhou, the old bus drove on the road, outside the window were rolling dust everywhere, although it was a cement road, but after leaving the county town for a short while, it became a dirt road. I didn't sleep well last night, and I fell asleep within half an hour of getting on the bus. When I woke up again, Ye Fei was calling me to wake up, saying that we had arrived at Yongzhou Station.

  We left Daoxian Railway Station at 9:30 in the morning and arrived at Yongzhou Railway Station at 2:30 in the afternoon. At this snail's pace, plus the transfer, it would take at least two days to reach Western Hunan. After discussing with Ye Fei, we chartered a small truck that knew the way, because taking the bus was too slow and required so many transfers.

  I'm not in a hurry, it's Third Uncle Gong's remains that are in a rush. Generally, people should be buried within three days after death, and absolutely no later than seven days. I also need to find his family members, so the faster the better. That's why I chartered a car.

  The car was swaying back and forth, and I was drowsy all the way. Although I didn't fall asleep, I wasn't fully awake either. We arrived in Jishou, Xiangxi at 1:30 in the middle of the night. The driver said he was too tired and asked to continue driving the next morning, as he was worried about driving while fatigued and it being late at night. After asking locals, I found out that Huayuan County was less than 40 kilometers away. In the past when I went to Huangyao for medical treatment, I walked alone in the middle of the night. Now we had a car and four people. My suggestion was to drive for another hour or so and arrive at Huayuan to rest. However, the driver refused, saying he wouldn't do it no matter what. In the end, I added 20 yuan. It's not worth being tired for just this short distance. These few dozen kilometers would only take an hour to cover, how could we waste another night?

  The vehicle was driving on the mountain road, and the road wasn't easy to drive on. The driver drove a bit fast, although we wanted to arrive quickly, but were also afraid of accidents. However, the driver said it's okay, at most half an hour and we'll be there.

  Although the destination is almost reached, an unexpected situation occurred. I suddenly found that the driver was dozing off while driving! I quickly shouted at him to stop the car. The driver immediately stopped the car and got out of the vehicle to wash his face by the roadside ditch. After that, he suddenly told me that it seemed like we had taken a wrong turn.

  I wiped the sweat and asked him where this road led to, but the driver also said he didn't know, just that he had never been on this road before. So we turned back again, and after a while, we met another car, and only after asking the driver did we find out that it was going to Longtan. Fortunately, the driver at Longtan told us that Longtan is only 20 kilometers away from Wild Boar Ridge, and if you know the way, you can get there in half an hour.

  Because we were afraid of getting lost again, we finally chose to wait in the car until dawn. The next morning, we asked for directions and soon arrived at Yezi Ping. We temporarily rented a room in the town, and for safety reasons, two beds were placed in one room, I slept on one bed with Ye Fei Chao and Xiao Jian Qi slept on the other.

  Yeziping is a small town, the town has six villages, now belongs to Baojing County, just closer to Huayuan County, San Shu said it was Yeziping of Huayuan County, that should be 1920s things.

  Third Uncle Zhou's name is Zhou Yaping, his younger brother's name is Zhou Ya'an. The next day we searched for Zhou Ya'an in each village and stockade of Wild Boar Flat, asking some elderly people who had lived there for a long time, but they all said they didn't know him.

  Finally found it, and the person we asked happened to be Zhou Ya'an's son. However, the result was that Zhou Ya'an had passed away five years ago. But this doesn't matter, can't find his brother, as long as we find the old home of Third Uncle, it's all the same.

  Zhou Ya'an's son, Zhou Yuan Ying, asked us how we knew his father and what brought us to find him. We asked if he had ever heard his father mention having an older brother who went missing in a distant land when he was young and never returned home for decades.

  Zhou Yuan's eyes widened for a moment before he suddenly said that he had mentioned it before, but probably died in the war years. When he was young, his father often mentioned it, and later didn't mention it again.

  I then confirmed that he was indeed a relative of San Shu Gong, so I told him the whole story. However, Zhou Yuan Ying's reaction after listening to it was beyond my expectation.

  When I said to bring back San Shu Gong's remains, Zhou Yuan Ying's face immediately turned black. He said that he had been missing for decades, how did he die and come back now? Our family is so poor that we can't even afford to open a pot, where would we get the money to bury him? Although he is my uncle, I have never seen his face before, I don't want to deal with this matter, let me handle it casually, throw it wherever you want, just don't bother him. After finishing speaking, he walked away without looking back, leaving us standing there like wooden chickens.

  I and Ye Fei ran back and forth for four or five hundred kilometers, but the result was that San Shu Gong wanted to return to his roots, but his nephew didn't want to bother with this matter. When Ye Fei found out that the jar I had been holding all along was actually San Shu Gong's remains, she finally understood my purpose in coming to Xiangxi and said she would slowly discuss her spiritual loss when we got back.

  My idea when I came was to find San Shu Gong's family and hand over the remains to his younger brother, that's it. But I'm still a bit too naive, as the saying goes, "the poor are in trouble, no one asks, the rich are in deep mountains, there are distant relatives". If I brought back a pile of money, I estimate Zhou Yuan Ying would kneel down to welcome me, unfortunately, what I brought back was a pile of bones.

  Zhou Yuanying didn't want to be buried, I couldn't just throw him into a ditch, could I? That's definitely not possible. I had Ye Fei bring Xiao Jianzi back to the temporary rental house in town first, and then I bought a hoe, a knife, a string of firecrackers, some candles, and paper money from the local villagers. Carrying the hoe and holding the urn, I walked alone up the mountain.

  The hills near the village all have owners, and graves cannot be buried randomly on someone else's hill. I can only walk a little further to the ownerless mountain for burial. After crossing five or six hills, I found a place that felt okay and started digging a hole. After half an hour of digging, I buried the bone jar inside. After filling up the soil and leveling it, I burned incense and paper money, and set off firecrackers. This was Third Uncle's funeral, simple and plain.

  The firecracker sound had just faded away, and Tongtong's voice sounded in my ear. She asked me to follow the water ditch between the mountains down, she seemed to feel something familiar. I threw the hoe into the grass thicket, took a knife and hacked out a path all the way, walked for half an hour and came to a small valley. This small valley is similar to the one on Pingtian Mountain in Guigang, but much larger, formed by five mountains piled together, so it's called a mountain valley, not a mountain ditch.

  In the center of this small valley stands a large tree, an unnamed tree, but it's even bigger than that old locust tree in Guigang. The trunk is estimated to be so thick that ten people would find it hard to wrap their arms around it, and its height is at least 70 or 80 meters.

  Tongtong asked me to go under the big tree to take a look. I cut a stick and walked there, beating it against the ground as I went. When I got under the tree, I found that it was actually raining underneath! Outside, it was a sunny day with clear skies, but under the tree, it was raining - this was just too strange! I circled around the big tree several times, and didn't find anything unusual, except for the fact that the trunk of the tree had all sorts of fist-sized lumps on it.

  I picked up a broken branch from the ground and found it was similar to bamboo, surprisingly it was hollow. After removing a leaf, I discovered a small hole about the size of a needle at the base of the petiole. Clever me immediately started analyzing why trees would rain.

  This tree is so big and hollow, the hole inside the trunk is estimated to be as large as an oil barrel. The roots of the tree grow directly on a mountain spring. The spring water cannot spout out of the ground, all surging into the tree hole, and every time this tree drops a leaf, a small hole will appear where the petiole falls off, and the water will spray out from this small hole. If many leaves fall from this tree, each hole has water flowing out, it becomes a raining tree, simply amazing.

  I asked Tóng Tóng if she felt anything familiar here, and Tóng Tóng said no, just that it felt a bit similar to the big tree covered in vines we went to last time. The roots of that old locust tree last time hid an ancient well! Could the roots of this mountain valley also be hiding an ancient well?

  I didn't stay under the tree for long, after returning to the rented house in town, Ye Fei was sleeping soundly. As soon as I came back, she jumped up and said she wanted to calculate my spiritual loss fee. I asked her what kind of spiritual loss she had suffered, but she couldn't say...

  I didn't just leave the bones at her house overnight, but she actually accompanied a dead person's skeleton all the way home, and now she's scared to the point of having nightmares.

  I asked Xiao Jianqiang if he was afraid, Xiao Jianqiang smiled and shook his head. I scornfully said to Ye Fei that Xiao Jianqiang is only four years old and not afraid, you are nineteen years old and still afraid.

  Ye Fei Ji insisted that I compensate her for spiritual loss, 100 yuan would be fine, if not, 10 yuan would do, or even 5 yuan or 1 yuan. I ignored her nonsense, it's rare to come to Xiangxi, after finishing the task, why not play around and have some fun, so I suggested that tomorrow I'll take her on a tour around.

  Ye Fei certainly couldn't ask for more. Not only did she get to have fun without spending any money, but she also earned a daily income of 30 yuan. How could she possibly let such a good deal slip away?

  In the evening, I took out the book that Third Uncle gave me and asked Ye Fei what the few words on the cover meant. Ye Fei told me it was called "Wu Guo Fa".

  Ye Fei Jiao flipped through it for a while, then told me that this was a handwritten copy and looked very old. She asked me where I had stolen the antique from. I asked her to take a look at the introduction in the front and tell me what it said. After Ye Fei Jiao took a look, she said that the first part wrote about inviting spirits, driving out ghosts, controlling spirits, raising ghosts, raising demons, raising corpses, and making poisonous insects, etc. There were many more in the back, but just hearing her read out these few already made my head spin.

  I asked her to flip through and see if there was anything about corpse driving, Ye Fei Jiu flipped through again and said yes, then read it out loud for me. It turns out that corpse driving is a kind of soul-controlling technique, which asks the spirit to attach itself to the dead body, similar to fake corpse, of course this is just an introduction, the detailed method is complicated! Ye Fei Jiu closed the book and threw it at me, telling me to add her salary, then she would teach me to recognize characters, and the added salary would be considered tuition.