Chapter 129
Chapter 129
After the villagers from Liujia Village had left, the simpleminded Wang San asked, “Mother, what did you mean by ‘the Living Bodhisattvas in their families’? Does every family have a Bodhisattva?”
“Where’s ours? How come I’ve never seen one?”
Well-read as he was, Zhao Aiguo understood Deaf Granny’s meaning and answered with a smile.
“Third Brother, our Living Bodhisattva may seem far beyond the horizon, but she is right before your eyes.”
“It’s Old Auntie!”
Wang San still looked completely baffled, so Zhao Aiguo had no choice but to explain.
In ancient times, there was a man named Qi Liang. His family was very poor when he was young, but his mother doted on him in every way and did her best to satisfy his every desire.
Once her son grew up, however, he found fault with everything she did.
He despised his family’s poverty and his mother’s plain appearance.
One day, he heard that Guanyin Bodhisattva would grant any prayer, so he decided to travel to the Southern Sea and find her.
But no one knew where the Southern Sea was.
His mother did not dare dissuade him and could only let him do as he pleased.
She packed all the food the family had left for her son, and he set off to the Southern Sea in search of Guanyin Bodhisattva.
Qi Liang did not even know what Guanyin Bodhisattva looked like. On the road, someone told him, “Turn back. When you see a person wearing their clothes inside out and their shoes backward, that person is the Bodhisattva.”
Qi Liang believed him and confidently started home.
He walked for a very long time without seeing anyone whose clothes were inside out and whose shoes were backward.
He began to wonder whether he had been deceived.
Then the same person appeared again and said, “Just keep going home. When you see someone with their clothes inside out and their shoes backward, that person is the Bodhisattva.”
Qi Liang walked and walked until, all of a sudden, he found himself back at his own house.
Furious, he began kicking the door with loud thuds.
The moment his mother heard that her son had returned, she threw on her clothes and shoes in a panic and rushed to open the door.
When it opened, Qi Liang saw that his mother was wearing her clothes inside out and her shoes backward.
He immediately dropped to his knees before her.
After hearing the story from Zhao Aiguo, Wang San curled his lip in contempt.
“That bastard Qi Liang was no good.”
“How dare he kick the door when he came home in the middle of the night?”
“I always open doors as quietly as I can, in case I wake my mother!”
Chen Fu clearly agreed with him.
“Third Brother is right. That bastard Qi Liang really was a rotten man. We can’t ever be like him.”
“If the three of us meet him, we have to beat him senseless. I’ll pay his medical bills!”
Wang San nodded repeatedly and looked at Zhao Aiguo.
Faced with these two blockheads, Zhao Aiguo could do nothing but smile bitterly and agree that he would join them in giving Qi Liang a vicious beating.
After breakfast, Chen Fu said he wanted to accompany Deaf Granny to Liujia Village, but the old woman stopped him.
“You wouldn’t be any help. Stay here and watch the house. Aiguo will be with me.”
Ever since the incident with Zhao Fei, Zhao Aiguo had seemed like a different man. He kept a low profile and handled matters plainly, without ceremony.
He alerted neither the town nor the village. Instead, he drove Deaf Granny straight to the Liu family coffin shop by himself.
Any place that did business with the dead was bound to be heavy with yin energy.
But the concentration around the Liu family shop was clearly far from normal.
Even an ordinary person like Zhao Aiguo could feel it.
The moment he approached the shop’s entrance, the temperature seemed entirely different from outside.
It was a bone-piercing cold that bored straight into the flesh.
Although it was already broad daylight, the coffin shop’s doors remained tightly shut.
As Zhao Aiguo supported Deaf Granny toward them, he said softly, “These doors were still bare wood the last time I came. They’ve been painted black in just the past few days.”
Deaf Granny looked up, and her brows drew together involuntarily.
The two doors were not simply black. They had a dark crimson cast to them, the color of blood after it had congealed.
“Aiguo, call for them to open the door.”
“If no one answers, pound on it!”
Zhao Aiguo obeyed and struck the door hard with his palm.
Perhaps it was only his imagination, but the instant his hand touched the surface, it almost seemed to freeze in place.
The door was sticky too, and carried a faint, fishy stench.
“Is anyone home? Please open the door!”
His pounding boomed loudly, but there was no response from inside.
Zhao Aiguo struck harder.
“If anyone’s in there, answer me! I’m from the county government, here to check on the residents’ welfare!”
Still there was no reaction. Just as Zhao Aiguo prepared to kick the door, it suddenly opened.
A blast of bone-piercing wind struck him from inside.
The room was actually colder than the outdoors!
Zhao Aiguo could not stop himself from shivering. It felt like stepping out of a room kept above twenty degrees into the winter cold.
The person who opened the door was a girl of fifteen or sixteen.
Deaf Granny knew her.
She was Shopkeeper Liu’s granddaughter, Liu Meina.
Her parents had died young, and Shopkeeper Liu had raised her by himself.
The moment Liu Meina saw Deaf Granny, she looked like a child lost for ages who had suddenly found family.
With a sob in her voice, she threw herself into the old woman’s arms.
“Grandma, you’re finally here!”
Deaf Granny comforted Liu Meina while studying the coffin shop’s pitch-black interior.