Chapter 16: The Postal Stamp Life is just so capricious. When Old Shao was around, I never took him seriously. Now that he's gone to another world, I've become the sole "heir" of his beloved collection of magazines. However, reading books is a dull thing. For someone who loves collecting stamps, the stories behind them must be fascinating, but for someone who dislikes reading, constantly flipping through those books and newspapers is nothing short of self-inflicted torture. Every time I pick one up, an unpleasant feeling arises, and after flipping through a few pages, my eyelids start to droop, and I fall asleep within ten minutes. Wenxiu, on the other hand, is completely different; she can hold those magazines in her hands for hours without saying a word. After finishing, she would vividly recount the stories inside: China's first postal stamp was the "Customs Large Dragon" issued by the Qing government in 1878. This set of stamps had three denominations, with a five-clawed golden dragon in the center, trampling on clouds and waves. According to the denomination, they were printed in different colors: one cent silver was green, three cents silver was red, and five cents silver was orange-yellow. Legend has it that this dragon stamp not only delivered mail but also connected two worlds. There was a childless couple who had been married for over 50 years. One day, the wife went to the temple to pray to Guanyin Bodhisattva, and the monk in front of the Buddha statue gave her a packet of incense ash, saying that the bodhisattva had spoken to him in his dream, asking him to give the first packet of incense ash from that morning to the first woman who came to burn incense. The wife was overjoyed and took the incense ash home, where she ate it with her husband. Soon after, she became pregnant, and several months later, she gave birth to a big fat son. The couple was overjoyed and treated their son like a treasure, carrying him everywhere and never letting him walk on his own. When the son turned three, he still couldn't walk. One day, the son caught a cold, and the old couple took him to see doctors everywhere, spending all their savings, but the son didn't get better and eventually died. The old couple was heartbroken and buried their son in the ancestral tomb, putting all his favorite toys in the grave with him, except for a drum that they kept as a memento. Afterward, the wife sat by the window every day, staring at the drum and crying, gradually becoming thinner. Her husband worried that she would grieve too much and went to the temple where he had gotten the incense ash, seeking help from Guanyin Bodhisattva. The monk was still sitting in front of the Buddha statue, playing his instrument. Seeing the old man come, he took out another packet of incense ash and handed it to him, saying, "Last night, the bodhisattva spoke to me in my dream, saying you would come this morning, so I prepared the first packet of incense ash from this morning for you to take back home and give to your wife." The monk then returned to his meditation. The old man saw that the bodhisattva had indeed appeared again and begged him for a way to cure his wife's illness. However, no matter how much he begged, the monk didn't say another word. The old man took the incense ash home and gave it to his wife to drink with water. That night, she had a dream in which her son was sitting on a wooden horse, playing happily. When he saw his mother approaching, he suddenly looked down and said, "Mother, you've wronged me so much."